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Billy the Kid Week 2011: Review of Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddities

Posted in Billy the Kid, comic books, Frankenstein, monsters, reviews with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, comic books, Frankenstein, monsters, reviews on July 11, 2011 by Paxton

Our last Billy the Kid Week was last August when I celebrated the 22nd birthday of the movie Young Guns. Now, nearly a year later, it’s time for another Billy the Kid Week. This time, I am celebrating the 130th anniversary of Billy the Kid’s death. It happened this week back in 1881. This week, I’ll be reviewing various fiction/non-fiction books featuring Billy the Kid.

For today, I’m beginning Billy the Kid week with a review of the comic book mini-series, Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddities. It was released in 2005 by Dark Horse Comics.

The comic is written by Eric Powell who also writes another popular comic, The Goon. Like most of the Billy fiction I’ll read this week, this comic book assumes that Billy was not killed by Pat Garrett back in 1881. That he somehow escaped. The comic starts off with a drawing of what looks like an old newspaper article talking about the chase, capture and killing of Billy the Kid (left). At the top of the article is an image that homages an old dime novel woodcut from 1881 called “Killing the Kid” (right). I thought, historically, that was a nice touch.

Initially, we see Billy riding a train. A man named Bill Sproule approaches Billy while on the train. Of course Billy is suspicious, but Sproule offers Billy a job with his traveling circus, Bill Sproule’s Biological Curiosities. Billy is reluctant at first, but decides to go with Mr Sproule to see what the job entails.

So, Billy goes to work for another guy’s traveling freak show. Now, I think it’s weird that the title of the book is Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddities. Like Billy owns the freak show. That’s actually what I expected. I guess not. *shrugs* Let’s press on, shall we?

The traveling show is populated by a bunch of awesomely freaky characters like a tattooed lady who’s tattoos constantly change to predict the future and a wolf man. Billy is, of course, stubborn and immature. He manages to alienate all the “freaks” immediately after meeting them. Then continues to use “freak” slurs when describing them. At first, it’s irritating. Billy just seems like a mean douche. But as the story goes on, Billy’s edge softens a bit and he helps the group when they get in trouble.

And they do get in trouble. The group goes looking for a jewel called The Golem’s Heart. It is owned by none other than Dr Victor Frankenstein. So the group goes after it and immediately becomes trapped by the mad doctor. The doctor has been performing ghastly medical experiments on the people in the surrounding town. He plans on using the freaks in some of these experiments.

I love the depiction of Victor Frankenstein in this book (pic on left). It’s eerily close to Peter Cushing, who portrayed Victor Frankenstein in a bunch of movies for Hammer Films in the ’70s (pic on right). Just a really nice touch by the artist.

So Victor traps all of the group in his castle and plans to do horrible, horrible experiments on them. Billy becomes locked in a chest but escapes and helps the group overcome and defeat Frankenstein. They manage to turn Frankenstein’s mutated creations back on him.

It’s a pretty good book. I enjoyed the majority of it and the artwork is perfect for the story. It reminds me of some of the early EC work in Vault of Horror or Tales from the Crypt. Very cool. I can honestly recommend it to people wanting a nice, quick, fun read.

(Via Dark Horse.com)

Last year, Dark Horse released a sequel called Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddities and the Ghastly Fiend of London (that’s a lot of title to type). However, I was not able to track down a copy to read, but it looks pretty awesome. It looks like a Billy the Kid and freaks vs Jack the Ripper. When I finally get a copy, I’ll put up a review. It seems Powell is including his other comic creation, The Goon, as a backup feature to this second volume of Billy the Kid’s Old Timey Oddities. I look forward to reading this.

Stay tuned, this week on the Cavalcade is full of Billy the Kid as we lead up to the 130th anniversary of the outlaw’s death on Thursday.

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25th Anniversary Review of John Byrne’s Man of Steel Part II

Posted in 80s, comic books, pop culture, Superman with tags anniversary, comic books, pop culture, Superman, Superman Week on July 7, 2011 by Paxton

John Byrne’s historic six issue mini series, The Man of Steel, just turned 25 years old. The series would (re)introduce Superman after the Crisis on Infinite Earths mega event which finished up early Summer 1986. I am reviewing the series for it’s 25th anniversary. On Wednesday, I reviewed issues #1 – 3. Today, I’m going to review issues #4-6. For more information about Crisis on Infinite Earths, see my article on Strange Kid’s Club here.

Issue 4 gives us a full introduction to the new Lex Luthor. Instead of the bald mad scientist we all know, Lex has been re-imagined into more of a business mogul, a la Donald Trump. And I think it works much better. In the beginning of this issue, Clark and Lois are going to a party thrown by Lex, so Lois shows up at Clark’s apartment to pick him up. We see several awesome panels of Clark shaving with his heat vision and Lois discovering Clark’s barbells which he keeps to explain why he is in such great shape. But Lois comments they are too light for Clark to keep such a great figure and Clark has to mentally remind himself to get heavier weights (he can’t judge very well because he has super strength). Clark and Lois then head to the event on Luthor’s yacht and it is besieged by terrorists during the party. Superman saves the day, takes down the terrorists, and then Luthor tries to hire him into his payroll all while explaining that he knew the terrorists were going to hijack the boat but he did nothing so he could see Superman in action. The mayor was in attendance and justifiably angry that Lex put all of his party goers in danger, so he has Superman arrest Luthor. Luthor’s lawyers have him out in less than two hours but afterwards he confronts Superman and literally threatens to kill him in front of everyone in the city in the near future. And boasts that he’ll never be arrested for it. It’s intense.

In issue 5, Byrne starts things off with a clever inside joke. There is a great shot of Superman holding up Luthor’s green battle armor from the Kenner Super Powers toy line. A sly little reference that illustrates why I love Byrne’s writing. Anyway, this issue introduces Bizarro although he’s never really called that within the story. In the beginning, we see Superman holding the aforementioned green armor in front of Luthor accusing him of a bunch of things having to do with that armor. Luthor, of course, feigns ignorance and lists out all the reasons why Superman can’t prove Luthor had anything to with the armor. Realizing he has no proof, Superman leaves while proclaiming that he will someday make Luthor pay for all of his crimes. While he was in the office, Luthor scanned Superman’s cellular structure with the intent of creating a super duplicate. The results are immediately fed into a cloning tank (instead of waiting to properly analyze the data) that seemingly successfully creates a duplicate of Superman. However, the duplication process was built on the assumption Superman was a mutated human being and the discrepancy caused the duplicate to fail and collapse (which, as I said, could have been avoided by properly analyzing the data first). Luthor, now armed with the knowledge that Superman is an alien, orders the duplicate destroyed. Next, we meet Lois’ blind sister Lucy. She is so distraught by her recent loss of sight that she attempts to jump off the balcony of her sister’s apartment. Bizarro saves her (we have to assume he escaped because we aren’t told), but she’s blind so she thinks it’s Superman. Superman runs into Bizarro, who has disguised himself as a Bizarro-Clark, and immediately gets into a fistfight with him (sort of a hallmark of Byrne’s Superman). They battle each other for the rest of the issue throughout downtown Metropolis. Finally, Bizarro and Superman collide in a spectacular mid-air collision that reduces Bizarro to a fine dust that falls over Lucy Lane and cures her blindness. We are led to believe that the creature somehow knew its sacrifice would cure Lucy’s blindness.

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25th Anniversary Review of John Byrne’s Man of Steel Part I

Posted in 80s, Batman, comic books, pop culture, Superman with tags anniversaries, Batman, comic books, DC Comics, pop culture, reviews, Superman, Superman Week on July 6, 2011 by Paxton

John Byrne’s historic six issue mini series, The Man of Steel, just turned 25 years old. It was released during the Summer of 1986 to “clean up” the ever increasing super powers and ever more complicated back story of DC’s flagship super hero. For years, this series was the official origin of the post-Crisis Superman. What’s “post-Crisis”? Glad you asked.

Twenty six years ago (Apr 1985), DC released their multiverse changing event Crisis on Infinite Earths. I discussed the genesis of that historical mini-series over on Strange Kid’s Club in a very special installment of Forgotten Favorites. That megaseries changed the landscape of the DC Universe. It ushered in a time of change. Heroes died. Heroes lived. But after all was said and done, everyone had to pick up the pieces and move on.

DC was using the event to update and modernize their heroes. After the event was over, George Perez would relaunch the post-Crisis Wonder Woman. Batman’s origin would be expanded and revamped in Frank Miller’s famous Batman: Year One. And it also was time for DC to give Superman a new start. In the years leading up to Crisis, Superman had become entirely too powerful. I talked about some of his more ridiculous “super powers” earlier this week. The time of Superman igniting suns with his heat vision and juggling planets had come to an end. Crisis writer Marv Wolfman pitched DC on a Superman reboot that would eliminate the super pets, the surprisingly large number of Kryptonian survivors and power down the Man of Steel to more “normal” levels. Wolfman even wanted to eliminate Superman’s adventures as Superboy. Surprisingly, Wolfman made a similar pitch to DC back in the 70s but they rejected it. Now DC was all ears.

Wolfman decided to hire popular writer/artist John Byrne (who had just left Marvel) to help him flesh out the details of the story. Wolfman and Byrne sequestered themselves away and came up with a multi-year plan for the new Man of Steel. A month or so after the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, John Byrne would kick off Superman’s triumphant return with a 6 issue mini-series (re)introducing the new post-Crisis Superman to comic readers. At the end of that series, Byrne would take over writing and drawing Action Comics and the new Superman title and Marv Wolfman would take over writing Adventures of Superman with Jerry Ordway drawing.

Each issue of Byrne’s 6 issue series would re-introduce aspects of the Superman mythos back into the DC Universe. I’ll take a quick look at the first 3 issues today, then I’ll look at the final three issues tomorrow. I haven’t read this series since the mid ’90s, so it’ll be interesting to see if it’s still any good or if it’s totally dated.

Let’s find out.

Issue 1’s prologue begins on Krypton and we learn that this new Krypton is very similar to the Richard Donner version from the movies. It’s very scientific, the landscape is antiseptic and the people are detached from each other. However, despite being highly evolved, their planet is dying. Jor-El is making preparations to rocket his son to Earth. He explains to Lara that he chose Earth because the yellow sun would super charge his Kryptonian cells, making him a “super” man and superior to humans so he can one day rule the planet. The rocket takes off, we see the planet explode and then the prologue ends. We pick up with Clark in high school. He’s a football star. A jock. And kind of a douche. And he’s unaware that he’s an alien. Pa Kent shows him the crash site and explains how he was found in the fields after crashing to Earth. Clark must come to terms with not being human and learning to deal with his burgeoning powers. In the epilogue we see Clark, with help from Ma and Pa Kent, create his super suit and the disguise for Clark Kent. The suit is normal fabric. We learn that Clark emits a force field around his body that protects things close to him, like his clothes. Things outside the field, like his cape, can be torn up or destroyed.

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12 of Superman’s Most Absurd Pre-Crisis Super Powers

Posted in 80s, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman with tags Cavalcade Comics, comic books, DC Comics, humor, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman, Superman Week on July 4, 2011 by Paxton

Everyone knows the many standard powers of Superman; fly, super-strength, super-speed, super-breath, invulnerable, heat-vision, etc. Not everyone knows, though, that he didn’t always have many of these abilities. Not only that, Superman has several other super powers that are less used, but still kept in his back pocket for just the right moment when he can whip it out and dazzle everyone.

As the years went on, and writers kept getting more…”creative”…Supes powers were quickly growing and getting more out of control. These little known powers had stacked up over the years until finally DC had to say, “Dammit, that’s enough” and launched the massive Crisis on Infinite Earths event to just level the playing field.

Let’s take a look at some of the lesser known, and therefore more humorous, of Superman’s Pre-Crisis abilities . I’ll include panels of Superman using the ridiculous powers when I can. If you have trouble reading the text, click the images to make them bigger.

Super-Ventriloquism and other voice “powers” – Not only Super-V, he had a whole bag full of voice powers that writers tended to wield at their hip like gunslingers. Superman could throw his voice over great distances and also possessed super-voice-mimicry, which means he could make his voice sound like anyone else. That power must come in handy at parties when you are stuck talking to the guy who won’t leave you alone and keeps asking you to come check out his “sweet van” out in the parking lot. The one painted all white with no windows (aka RAPE van). If you were Supes, you could throw your voice across the room as someone else calling your name and you can get the hell out of there. Nicely done, Superman. Or, you could just punch a hole in the rapist’s face because you are, you know, SUPERMAN.

Super-Mathematics – Super Mathematics? That looks a lot like regular mathematics to me. By the way, Super Douche, isn’t 20 x 16 x 10 = 3,200?

Super-Weaving – Yes, that actually happened. Super weaving. Not weaving at super speed. Super-weaving.

Super-Hypnosis – Apparently this is why no one recognizes Clark Kent is Superman. And it apparently works even when he isn’t concentrating on using it (I guess that’s what makes it super hypnosis?). However, I prefer to ignore this power and assume that everyone in Metropolis is just that dumb to notice they are the same person. Or they really just don’t care.

Super-Telepathic Will Control – In an early issue of Superman where he’s kidnapped by aliens, he whips out telepathic will control, which allows him to override someone’s mind and make their body do whatever Superman wants. If he can do this, then why would he ever need Super Hypnosis?

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Cannonball Run turns 30 years old

Posted in 80s, Cannonball Run, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags anniversary, Cannonball Run, movies, pop culture on June 19, 2011 by Paxton

Cannonball Run ad

The classic road race movie The Cannonball Run was released on Jun 19, 1981, 30 years ago today. It starred Burt Reynolds, Dom Deluise, Roger Moore, Jamie Farr and a host of other celebrities like Jackie Chan, Farrah Fawcett, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Terry Bradshaw and Adrienne Barbeau.

Watch the trailer:

Some interesting trivia about the film:

The film was originally going to be a straight up action flick starring Steve McQueen. After McQueen’s death, the lead was given to Burt Reynolds and the script was re-written as a comedy.

The race in the movie is based on an actual, real life race that took place over several years in the 70s. I discuss the origins of the real race; The Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash here.

Many of the vehicles, including the ambulance driven by Reynolds and Deluise, were actually entered and run in the real life Cannonball races in the late 70s.

Roger Moore plays Seymore Goldfarb, Jr, a spoof of James Bond, who he was portraying at the time. In the race, he drives an Aston Martin which is famously linked to the British secret agent. However, Moore never drives an Aston Martin in the seven movies he appeared as James Bond. This movie is the only on-screen pairing of Moore and the famous car.

This movie features one of Jackie Chan’s first US appearances. His character is Japanese, even though Chan himself is Chinese. Chan was inspired by director Hal Needham’s use of bloopers during the end credits and from this point on would do the same in all of his own movies.

Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise appeared together in Smokey and the Bandit Part II the previous year. This movie makes several references to that earlier movie including Reynolds mentioning the black Trans-Am and Deluise referencing his doctor character.

Watch the end credit outtakes

The Cannonball Run had two sequels. The first was The Cannonball Run II in 1984. Part II reunited the majority of the cast from the first movie. The second sequel was Speed Zone in 1989. The only returning character in the third movie was Jamie Farr’s The Sheik. The two leads were John Candy and Eugene Levy, friends who appeared together on SCTV and in the movie Armed and Dangerous. Their casting was an attempt to recreate the chemistry of original leads, and friends, Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise.

This movie still holds up today. Reynolds and Deluise are hilarious and it seemed the entire cast had a blast filming the movie. Part II also holds up very well and fans may actually remember more scenes from Part II than the original.

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