Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
("... the ER looks like the inside
of a charnel house; the patient is flatlining; and the priest is slouched against
the far wall, mumbling something about 'Extreme Unction'...
... but: never mind. Let's
call it a 'miracle,' anyway.")
On Watching a Train Wreck. In Slow
Motion.
(PART FOUR)
Gang:
I had a dream...
... no. No; call it, rather: a nightmare.
I dreamed that the fanboys had finally taken over the world.
No one knew just how it had happened... or even why, for that matter.
Perhaps it was some sudden and inexplicable tilting of the cosmic axis, sending the neatly- ordered china cabinet of Reality hurtling towards the interdimensional "floor" with a resounding, galaxy- rattling kaRASH -- !!
Perhaps it was the agency of some perverse, all-powerful other-dimensional imp, chuckling mordantly to him/her/itself with a noisome and ill- concealed malice.
Or maybe (and this would be my view): sometimes, God's sense of humor ain't always what it's cracked up to be.
(This last theory -- if serving no other rhetorical purpose -- would
serve handily to explain such freakish [and otherwise inexplicable] occurrences
as the tse-tse fly; Rob Liefeld; SWEET VALLEY HIGH; and
the Hanson Brothers. I'm just sayin', is all.)
All that can ever really be known for certain, ultimately, is this:
One fateful Monday morning -- when all of the world's nations had awakened; anent the standard geo-fiscal-political yawnings and stretchings, in turn...
Hard core comics fanboys were in the seats of power, throughout all of the planet's entertainment industries.
All right; all right, then. You can all just bloody knock it off with all of that shrill screaming and tearing out of eyes and whatnot.
Didn't do me one lick of good; ain't gonna help you lot, neither.
The most typical of their unholy number -- one Joe Q. Fanboy, as it so happened -- found his "Todd McFarlane RULSZ" t-shhirted self suddenly in charge of that fanboy Holiest of Holies: DC Comics, Inc.
His close personal friend, Bob P. Fanboy -- by means of auctorial coincidence more severely tortured, surely, than even the most luckless and despised of Third World political prisoners -- discovered himself, even more horribly, doughily astride the mare of Total, Unquestioned Authority for nothing less than the entire American film industry.
MONDAY: Bob Fanboy examines the slate of upcoming film projects on line for Columbia Pictures; Touchstone; Miramax; DreamWorks; etc. with the ruthless critical appraisal of one long-honed on the cinematic oeuvres of Sam Raimi and Tobe Hooper.
*** A smart, sophisticated political thriller -- penned by William Goldman and directed by Ridley Scott -- starring Al Pacino; Dustin Hoffman; Uma Thurman; Sean Connery; and Patrick Stewart.
*** A Tim Burton screwball "caper" flick, with a cast including Dennis Miller; Bill Maher; Jeanne Garofalo; and Steven Wright;
*** The latest Tarantino noir opus slated to begin principal photography, with Jack Nicholson; Samuel L. Jackson,; Gene Hackman; Susan Sarandon; Steve Buscemi; and Ving Rhames.
Bob shredded the production schedule, shuddering. Thank HighFather he'd arrived in the nick of time.
He set about the slow, laborious process of breaking contract after contract, with one unblinking weather eye cocked towards lining up his "dream cast" for a mega-mega-budget production of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.
Idly, he wondered what Sarah Michelle Gellar would look like in a Harbinger costume.
Meanwhile: Joe Fanboy was well occupied, in turn, "cleaning house" over at DC Comics, Inc.
He whistled a faxed memo to JLA scribe Grant Morrison, bluntly demanding the writer, herewith, include Zatanna; the Blue Beetle; and (his own long-standing personal "favorite") Ultra the Multi-Alien to the cast of said comic, in place of Superman; Batman (too many books starring those two; keeping their respective "continuities" unmuddled and pristine was a nightmare just waiting to happen, really); and Wonder Woman (the Marston estate was simply being unreasonable, vetoing his carefully explicated plans for transforming the drab character into the medium's first Militant Lesbian Dominatrix and Pro-Wrestler. The stupid, pig-ignorant philistines -- !).
Morrison (quite naturally) objected to this, in the most strenuous of terms. The book was still DC's top seller, after all... by a not-inconsiderable margin.
"Sales, schmales," Joe glibly responded, and promptly bounced the still-squawking writer from the series. After an agonizing, multi-second appraisal of the working writers currently "at liberty," from which he might conceivably select the most suitable replacement... Joe (ultimately) gave the nod to his old CHAMPIONS role-playing crony, Steve Z. Fanboy. The guy was an absolute, unparalleled genius, after all, at coming up with minutiae-drenched plots and scenarios hinging upon decades-old "back issues" of obscure DC titles.
Joe nestled back in his chair with a happy sigh of fannish contentment; his kingdom further to survey.
TUESDAY: Bob Fanboy -- with the natural savvy and animal cunning given over only to those who have painstakingly read each and every published issue of WIZARD from cover to cover -- came up with an idea for a truly unique marketing "blitz."
If I can get people used to the idea of super-heroes NOW, he mused... then CRISIS [as well as his next two planned film projects: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES SECRET WARS and WITCHBLADE/WILDC.A.T.S.] should REALLY open up to.... ummmmmm.... "boffo box office."
Reaching out and joining paws in unholy unison with Mark R. Fanboy (who was happily engaged putting his own, ahhh, "mark" on the broadcast fare of ABC; NBC; CBS; PBS; FOX; UPN; and the dubba-dubba-WB; his latest brainstorm had been to scrap 60 MINUTES -- dull; dull -- with back-to-back airings the animated X-MEN cartoon), Bob arranged for the entire "Must See TV" line-up of one network to be replaced with:
7:00 - 8:00 (CST) -- THE MARK R. FANBOY COMEDY/VARIETY HOUR... with all of the skits and production numbers revolving around the inherent humor of super-hero comic "continuity glitches" and in-jokes.
[e.g.: in the first episode's opening segment, there was this really killer "bit" about J'onn J'onzz lighting a cigarette; doing a "double take" into the camera; and saying: "heeeeeyyyyy... wait a minute...!" BWAH- ha-ha-haaa --!]
Also: all musical guest stars -- by network edict -- had to have contributed to at least one of the BATMAN film soundtrack albums.
8:00 - 9:00 (CST) -- CBG WEEK IN REVIEW... the intellectual and ratings "linchpin" of the evening, in Bob's mind (he'd sorta, ummm, "borrowed" the title from some dopey thing he'd axed from PBS' former schedule). Five select fanboy "experts" would sit around and (it says here) hold audiences spellbound and enraptured with panel discussions on such riveting fare as "A Seamless and Unbreakable Continuity... or Girls: Which Is Better?" and "Chris Claremont: the Misunderstood Messiah."
9:00 - 10:00 (CST) -- LOST-SUPER-HERO CLASSICS PLAYHOUSE... geez... all of those old episodes of the 70's live-action SPIDER-MAN television shows... just sitting there, on the shelves... gathering dust...
Meanwhile: Joe Fanboy was demonstrating the truth to be found within that ages-old axiom: "In every fanboy, a spine of steel."
Faced with growing intra-company dissent over such bold and controversial moves as his declaring December to be "Lobo Month," with contractually mandated guest-shots of same within each and every DC title published during that time; winnowing the good-selling BATMAN line of comics down to a single monthly title (serves him right, Joe thought, smugly, for having such a sucky movie, last time out) in order to make room on the publishing schedule for four concurrently-running GUY GARDNER TEAM-UP titles; and demanding that John Byrne, Roger Stern and Tom Peyer stage a muti-issue WONDER WOMAN/BIG BARDA /LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES "Crisis On Paradise Island 3000 maxi-series "with lots of.... you know... 'hot lezzie stuff' "... Joe promptly sacked each and every one of the protesting writers under his employ, and re-assigned the entire job lot of DC titles to Steve Fanboy and himself.
"Just like Stan 'the Man' Lee and 'Rascally' Roy Thomas, during Marvel's classic period," he thought, with mounting excitement. With hands all a-tremble in their eagerness, Joe fumbled for his rolodex. He just knew he'd seen Phil Jiminez's phone number in there, just the other day...
WEDNESDAY: London, Paris, Tokyo and Moscow were in flames. Probably just a coincidence, though.
Bob Fanboy was in a foul temper. Stanley Kubrick was proving absolutely impossible to deal with on the CRISIS set, refusing to budge so much as an obdurate inch from his silly, beside-the-point assertion that the film's script needed "less costumes, and more plot, f'chrissakes! The friggin' story doesn't even make any sense! It presumes that the audience already knows who 'Sollovar' and 'Kole' and 'Kamandi' and 'the Bug-Eyed Bandit' are!" Not for the first time, Bob wondered if perhaps -- just perhaps, mind -- he ought to call up that "Alan Smithee" fellow that the film's previous nine directors had pointedly recommended he try, instead.
Joe Fanboy, meanwhile, had found it -- painfully -- necessary to bounce Phil Jiminez from the artistic chores of CRISIS ON PARADISE ISLAND 3000, over a bitter, internecine squabble over whether or not the retconned character of Steel properly constituted a "lesbian" or not.
Too: comics retailers nationwide were voicing their manifest displeasure over his soliciting the latest slate of Bob- and Mark-scripted DC titles with the repeated descriptive slug: "Trust me. It's all 'in continuity' "... and nothing else.
Geez... Howie Fanboy (the friendly, Wolverine t-shirted guy from whom he'd been buying his comics for the last twelve years) never acted that snotty back when they used to play DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS together.
I guess it's true, then, Joe ruminated, sadly. Success really does change people, sometimes.
THURSDAY: Wretched mutants combed the blasted ruins of earth's major cities, seeking something -- anything -- that wasn't too poisonous and/or radioactive to choke a velociraptor's gullet. Meanwhile...
... Bob Fanboy had the studio's press agent issue a terse release proclaiming that his engagement to sensual film starlet Catharine Zeta-Jones was -- regretfully -- "off." Bob considered himself a reasoonably broadminded, au courant kind of fellah, certainly...
... but, really! When she'd looked him straight in the eye and asked: "... but, honey... does it really matter, ultimately, which 'earth' the Blackhawks existed on?"... he knew that it was all over.
Tearfully, he'd demanded that she return his trade paperback of THE JUDAS CONTRACT before angrily shrugging into his favorite Gambit t-shirt and storming out of their Beverly Hills bungalow.
Joe Fanboy, in the meantime, was engaged in a highly-public, paparazzi'd shouting match in the press with Gloria Steinhem, Gloria Allred and Sally Struthers ("Gloria" from the old sitcom ALL IN THE FAMILY), re: the less, ummmm, "savory" aspects of his Highly Personal Artistic Vision, CRISIS ON PARADISE ISLAND 3000. Sheeeeesh... a little light bondage and S&M in one bloody scene involving Wonder Tot and Ace, the Bat-Hound -- rendered in exquisite good taste, one might add, by the now-friends-again Phil Jiminez -- and people just went bloody ballistic! Joe found himself having to mutter "Face Front, True Believer!" beneath his breath with increasing regularity throughout the day, simply to get by.
FRIDAY: Cockroaches gained sentience and opposable digits, thereby becoming the dominant lifeform on the planet. Fortunately, this meant that Image Comics was able to maintain its regular shipping schedule.
Bob's new motto was: "No More Mister Nice Fanboy." The philistines and visigoths who (evidently) comprised the bulk of the film industry were now openly mocking him on a dialy basis in the pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, VARIETY, BILLBOARD, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY and AMERICAN BEET FARMER'S MONTHLY, referring to him as "Pimple Boy." The spurned Catharine, meanwhile, had collaborated with Kitty Kelly on a kiss-and-tell-all slash'n'burn "quickie" paperback, detailing (to his intense mortification) his need for her to dress up like Dark Phoenix and scream "... and now I'm going to DEVOUR your 'world'!" before he could... ummmmm... you know...
... and: every time he called up directory assistance and politely asked for the number of that "Alan Smithee" fellow... those snooty operators all sniggered at him!
Joe Fanboy, meanwhile, was embroiled in a nighmare all his own. CRISIS ON PARADISE ISLAND 3000 was finally proceeding without undue incident (if you ignored the burnings in effigy nationwide, anyway)...
... but now his other "pet project" -- a planned thirty-six issue, glossy, squarebound weekly series repositioning Kyle Rayner and Donna Troy as the true heroic "centers" of the DC Universe's continuity -- was running into snag after snarl. Try as he might, he simply could not find any sensible, satisfying way to retroactively place the former on Krypton, and the other as the true "only child" of Thomas and Martha Wayne.
Cripes, he thought morosely, idly thumbing his way through one of those dopey ARCHIVES books that were still littering the DC offices -- Bob Kane, he'd long since resolved, couldn't draw flies if he was sitting in a dumpster, surrounded by old JOLT soda cans; why DC hadn't given such an important, high-prestige first issue assignment to Erik Larsen, he'd never understand -- this whole 'continuity' thing sure can be a royal pain in the patookis, sometimes.
Maybe it'd just be better, in the long run, to focus on telling really good stories, instead... and just forget all the rest of this brain-dead claptrap."
... and then he realized the full enormity of what he'd just thought... and shuddered.
He firmed his resolve as he'd always done: by re-re-re-REreading ZERO HOUR for the umpteenth time.
And found himself believing, once more.
This has been a cautionary tale.
Page Five... and we nail every last board in place.
Scout's honor.
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE ONE
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE TWO
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE THREE
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE FIVE
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