All posts by Jason Sacks

[February 6, 1969] Are Comics Embracing a 1970s Mindset?

February 6, 2024 Jason Sacks 4 Comments

by Jason Sacks

After the hullabaloo we saw in the world of comics in 1968, our new year of 1969 looks to be equally as interesting. Last year saw both Marvel and DC expand their lines—in Marvel’s case, doubling the number of comics they released—and we fans are lucky to see that diversity.

One of the breakthrough stars of ’68 was Jim Steranko, whose astonishing work on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD provided some massive pop-culture thrills and energy. Steranko’s style feels like nobody else’s in comics, combining a pop-art, hyper-stylized approach with excellent storytelling and a massive dose of energy in his work.

Steranko’s successors on SHIELD don’t have the same flash, but journeyman cartoonists like Frank Springer and Herb Trimpe still bring the goods. The Christmas-themed issue 10 brings some special spy drama and a bit more energy than I’m used to from those artists.

Steranko left SHIELD, but 1969 dawns with an equally epochal run by him on Captain America, with writing as always by Stan Lee. One barely needs to look past the covers to see the energy Steranko brings to the page—see this week’s Cap cover for an example. Inside, the team has contrived to bring back Cap’s pal Bucky Barnes, dead since the end of WWII, and the twists and turns promise to be thrilling.

Amazing spread from Steranko's Captain America

Stan, of course, continues to write much of Marvel’s line, most notably on modern classics Amazing Spider-Man (now teamed with artist Jim Mooney), Fantastic Four and Thor (it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Jack Kirby drawing either). Spidey, in particular, has featured some great tales recently. Last year’s Kingpin tale was a show-stopper, while “Crisis on Campus,” cover-dated January 1969 and released in October, places Spider-Man firmly in the world of today, dealing with the fury and chaos of our complicated world.

Other Marvel books have taken on the modern world, too. Most surprising was probably Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, a book which would be as out-of-step with today as that Green Berets movie if not for the way writer Gary Friedrich tries to bridge the gap, as in January’s story of “The Peacemonger, ” in which a character voices empathy for the enemy and tries to find gray areas between the Allies and Japanese. It’s a bit ham-handed, but the attempt is interesting.

Moral ambiguity in the pages of Sgt. Fury

Maybe the nicest surprises from Marvel have been two-fold over the last year or so.

Stan and co. took a chance spinning the Silver Surfer off into his own series. I had my doubts whether the “Sky-Rider of the Spaceways” could support a title all his own—the character often seemed too self-pitying and dull in previous appearances. But my concerns were confounded. Stan installed artist John Buscema on the new title, and Big John brought the same majestic heroic splendor to the book which he has been demonstrating on Avengers. Silver Surfer #4, released in November, was an early Christmas gift for anyone looking to see gorgeous super-hero art.

The other nice surprise has been the move away from the dull, dutiful Wener Roth art in The X-Men. The aforementioned Mr. Steranko drew two mind-blowing issues before giving way to a young but promising tyro named Barry Smith. Smith copies Jack Kirby’s linework dutifully, but his art also shows the promise of an artist who might break out like Neal Adams recently did. Speaking of Adams, the fan press tells us that brilliant artist will be taking over X-Men starting next month, so I am on the edge of my seat waiting for that day to arrive.

Marvel still rounds their line out with a plethora of other super-hero mags (including Captain Marvel, Daredevil and Doctor Strange) as well as war comics, westerns and Archie-style books.

Over at National/DC, the company feels like it’s on the verge of embracing a 1970s mindset in their comics. I’ve written before about the evolution Batman comics took over the last year, from goofy camp to dramatic tales which fit the character’s long history. Frequently written by comic-strip vet Frank Robbins and neo-comics writer Denny O’Neil, there’s a vitality in Batman, Detective and Brave & Bold which fits our times. This month’s Brave & Bold, which teams Batman with the Teen Titans, and includes brilliant Adams art and a story which beautifully captures the generation gap causing chasms in so many American households today.

O’Neil has also added vitality to another of National’s more stodgy titles, as his take on the Justice League of America has moved the book away from formula and towards a book with one foot in reality. JLA #69, for instance, is a fairly sober look at the rule against heroes killing, an interesting exploration of violence in an era when violence causes hell on Earth.

O’Neil also provides the writing chores for one of National’s most radical changes, in Wonder Woman. Recently editor/writer Mike Sekowsky took over chores on WW, one of DC’s most childish characters, and provided a radical shift in stories. Gone was the patriotic costume, transparent plane and magic lasso. Instead, we have “Diana Prince, The New Wonder Woman”, an adventure heroine in the style of Emma Peel or Tara King. The stories have their flaws—I could happily live without seeing Diana’s stereotypical Asian mentor I Ching again—but Sekowsky’s changes have a thrilling feeling similar to the Road Runner running off a cliff—it feels like these stories will crash, but it’s thrilling to stand on air.

Just this month, Sekowsky is leading perennial also-rans the Metal Men into their own revolution. In Metal Men #39, he has the robot heroes melted down and transformed into human form. This change is wild, unlike anything I’ve seen in comics other than the Wonder Woman transformation, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out.

And while the Superman comics seem as stuck in their rhythm as ever (though the Adams covers on those books are fantastic!), DC also has revitalized some of their other classic heroes. Aquaman, now by the Skeates, Aparo and Giordano, has lovely art and a thrilling exploration of underwater life. Jerry Grandanetti delivers surreal art for DC’s mystical hero The Spectre. And they have transformed House of Mystery from a comic with DC’s worst heroes to a standout horror anthology which is often better than that previous gold standard for horror comics. Warren Magazines’ Creepy and Eerie are having a down year, but thankfully DC has filled that void.

But National’s best comics in 1969 are new series. Beware the Creeper and Hawk and Dove come from the fruitful imagination of Steve Ditko and are offbeat heroic fun, strange action delivered in that delectable, indisputable Ditko style.

Anthro, by Howie Post—a rare example of one man providing writing and art skills for a DC comic—tells the story of a boy and his family during caveman times and is a thorough delight—full of fun characters, interesting action and a low-key comedy mood which makes it a treat each time a new issue is released.

The standout new DC title is called Bat Lash and has nothing to do with the caped crusader and everything to do with the new wave of western characters appearing on TV these days. Batton Lash is kind of an antihero, a rare western hero who would rather pick flowers than engage in a gunfight, a wizard with women and at the gambling table who nevertheless always seems to find himself in the middle of one crazy criminal scheme or another. With gorgeous art by Nick Cardy and great writing by Sergio Aragones of MAD fame (no, really!), this is as good as comics get.

A few other titles not to sleep on at National: despite the toy tie-in, Captain Action is a lot of fun and features art by Gil Kane and Wally Wood; Enemy Ace continues in Star Spangled War Stories, with some gritty, smart stories of WWI from the German standpoint; and even DC’s romance comics have caught up with the times and feature more contemporary-feeling tales.

Archie continues to be Archie, the comics your kid sister loves, while Harvey continues the kiddie comics and Gold Key their unexceptional comics line with the likes of Lost in Space, Three Stooges and The Flintstones. I always think of Gold Key comics as “emergency comics”: to pick up when nothing better is on the stands.

Alright, this Pat Boyette page is nice... — Alright, this Pat Boyette page is nice…

Sadly, Charlton comics are worse than that, usually unreadable despite their comics featuring The Phantom, Popeye and Flash Gordon—though Pat Boyette's art on Flash is dynamic. Their comics have a bottom-of-the-barrel feel to them. Worse, their comics actually smell weird, as if their publisher prints cereal boxes as well as comics.

So, overall, comics in 1969 seem in good shape. From top to bottom, there’s something for most everyone. If I can recommend one comic above all the others, it’s Bat Lash. I don’t think the series will be long for the world—it’s too good to sell well—so grab an issue when you can and you will thank me.

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 28, 1968] Intelligence Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be: Charly

September 28, 2023 Jason Sacks 2 Comments

by Jason Sacks

So far, 1968 has been an exemplary year for science fiction films. Filmgoers have had a chance to watch psychedelic, universe-spanning science fiction with 2001: A Space Odyssey and adventure science fiction with Planet of the Apes and buxom science fiction with Barbarella. And now we have down-to-earth, humanistic – and surreal – science fiction with the new film Charly.

Cliff Robertson stars in the new film version of the already-classic Daniel Keyes novel, which Victoria Lucas gave five stars to back in ’66. And while this film isn’t nearly as good as the novel, Charly still is a clever movie, somehow both a real change-of-pace and a film very much of its moment.

(If you’re confused by that contradiction, dear reader, stick around and I’ll explain myself to you.)

As we come to know him, Charlie Gordon (as the book names him; the movie calls our lead character Charly) is a man with the mind of a small child. He’s mentally impaired, with a low IQ, a childlike take on the world, and a temper to match his frustrations. When Charly is offered the opportunity to become the subject of an experiment to give him super-intelligence, he jumps at the chance. But Charly soon discovers how brilliance and happiness don’t always go hand in hand, and his new intelligence just makes him feel deep angst.

Victoria loved the book for its unique epistemological structure and the way writer Keyes gives the reader deeper insights into Charly’s perceptions of the events which happen to him. That subjective nature gave the book a certain amount of pathos which makes the novel embed itself into readers' minds.

Of course, no film can simulate the effect of a series of journal entries, so we are forced to get by with the events which play out on the screen.

Robertson in this film feels like Fredric March starring in a kind of odd version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this case dumb Charly is a kind of monstrous identity. Not because of his low IQ, but more because dumb Charly acts weirdly. He feels like someone we don’t quite comprehend because he’s so different from most of us.

Robertson method-acts and method-acts all throughout this film, seeming to inhabit Charly’s body and mind. When he has a low IQ, he seems twitchy and odd, a man distorted and damaged by his impairment. It’s a grand, actorly performance, a transformation on the screen, but somehow I just never connected to Charly's humanity. It feels a bit much. For instance, Charly acts kind of jolly when his coworkers at a bakery play a nasty prank on him, and Charly's penmanship feels a bit like gilding the rose on his disabilities.

There are some quite moving scenes, though. One which really stands out happens when Charly attends a class with other severely disabled people. He's the only adult in a room full of children with Down's Syndrome and other disorders. The kids are filmed realistically and respectfully while Charly comes across as a real freak. This wonderful sequence gives the character some real pathos, an undercurrent of sadness which helps to explain his transformation.

Robertson delivers the kind of performance which feels like it’s specifically planned to garner its actor an Oscar nomination. There’s nothing really wrong with aiming for a precious golden statuette, but his performance does seem a bit calculated somehow. I felt like Robertson seemed too smart for the dumb Charly, planned out rather than spontaneous, considered rather than active in his scenes.

The best parts of this film are when Charly is transitioning to becoming smart. He hides out from people, seems to be really beginning to think through his experience, and we can actually see signs of emerging intelligence in these scenes.

As you might imagine, this sequence is where Robertson's calculated performance shines. Here we see the intelligence at work and feel we are watching a real person as Charly figures out how to live in his new experiences.

And then the movie takes a decided turn for the weird when Charly actually does become smart. At first he seems happy to be able to both lead seminars and be the lead subject them. His newfound genius brings intellectual intelligence but not emotional maturity nor insights into the world around him. Charly learns he may have actually been happier when he was innocent about everything which happened around him.

Charly begins to become paranoid, and his paranoia plays out in a series of increasing surreal sequences in which he imagines himself leading a motorcycle gang, endlessly professing love for his psychologist Alice (well played by Claire Bloom), and some oddly brilliant split-screen effects.

Charly even includes an undercurrent of paranoia in Charly's actions, as if he's being watched as part of a government conspiracy. Of course, he may actually be surveilled but we only see the paranoia from Charly's viewpoint, never from an objective viewpoint which might actually provide context for Charly's actions.

We even get a double-exposure shot in which director Ralph Nelson shows Charly running away from his old self, a very over-the-top bit which unfortunately made me laugh. This surrealism is just a bit too much for the narrative structure Nelson has set up in the first half and the movie threatens at times to teeter and fall under the weight of his ambitions.

I do have to mention the excellent soundtrack by Ravi Shankar. The music in this film feels both exotic and comfortable, a fascinating mix of west and east which helps to elevate this film, and certainly gives the soundtrack a very contemporary feel.

Charly is a fairly conventional film in its first half and a determinedly surreal film in its second half. Nelson seems up to the task in the first half but pretty much falls on his face in the second. It's somewhat worth watching for Cliff Robertson's interesting performance. I think his performance will be discussed come Oscar season. And though I only kind of liked this movie, it would be fun to see an Oscar won by a lead actor in a science fiction movie.

Three stars.

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Horror, Movies

[August 18, 1968] The Horror is Real (Targets)

August 18, 2023 Jason Sacks 3 Comments

by Jason Sacks

I’ve reviewed some frightening movies in this magazine before – the existential middle-aged angst of Seconds, the gothic horror of Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf and the eerie uncanny feeling of Planet of the Vampires, among others. But I’ve never reviewed a movie that’s scary in quite the same way as the new movie Targets.

Targets is frightening because it’s so real. It’s loosely based on the story of the Texas Tower Sniper. This real-life horror happened on August 1, 1966, when a seemingly ordinary man, a Marine veteran named Charles Whitman, climbed the long stairs of the Main Building at the University of Texas with rifles and a sawed-off shotgun and then began indiscriminately opening fire during a class break on campus.

Whitman killed 14 people that day, students walking on the campus mall and people shopping along distant Guadalupe Street, people cowering and people walking innocently. 31 more were injured, stark and frightening numbers we all hope will never be reached again.

A news photo from that terrible day in Austin, Texas.

As subsequent news reports shared, Whitman was a man with a bit of a broken life. He was an orphan who was adopted by an exacting family in which the father was never satisfied. He served in the Marines but never saw battle, instead studying engineering. At the time of his shooting, it seems he was in an unhappy marriage and struggling with mental health. And though we might try to guess what caused Whitman to snap that day, in the end, the inner life of Charles Whitman will always be a mystery. And in that lack of closure lies perhaps the greatest horror of all, because Whitman is a Rorschach test, a person onto whom we can project our own confusion, our fears and our worries about the modern world.

The blurry line between fiction and reality

In Targets our killer has the banal name of Bobby Thompson, played by Tim O’Kelly. Thompson lives in the quiet and peaceful San Fernando Valley. He’s in his 20s, lives with his parents and seems like an ordinary young man who suddenly seems to get into his head to… murder his family brutally.

Director Peter Bogdanovich, in his feature debut, does a fantastic job of creating that shock value for viewers, as we are lulled into a calm, false sense of security. Everything at the Thompson house seems very calm and serene on the surface, very 1968 you might say, in which everything seems quite placid on the surface of things.

And just like in our terrible year of assassinations and wars and riots in the streets, below the surface of a seemingly peaceful existence is an unbelievable amount of roiling turmoil desperately trying to escape.

But in this movie, Bogdanovich also brings in another element, one that really gives this film a smartly designed feeling of tension. Because there’s another plot in this film. Boris Karloff essentially plays himself in this movie, in documentary-like scenes in which washed-up old horror actor Byron Orlok decides he is out of step with the times. Nobody likes his outdated style of horror anymore. His work and his style are no longer relevant, so Orlok has decided to return to London to retire.

Mr. Bogdanovich on the left, Mr. Karloff on the right.

But Orlok’s companion, film director Sammy Michaels – played by director Bogdanovich! – persuades Orlok to make one final public appearance in Los Angeles. They decide to attend a premiere of his final film at a drive-in in LA suburb Reseda and arrange his appearance there.

As the day goes on, we witness two parallel threads. In one, we see Orlok make his preparations to attend the premiere and hear him talk about the changes in modern society from his time in the limelight. In the other, deeply chilling thread, we witness Thompson on top of an oil tank in the San Fernando Valley, assassinating innocent people who are just driving down the freeway.

Those assassination scenes feel like they take an eternity because of the smart ways Bogdanovich, designer Polly Plott and cinematographer László Kovács compose the scene: with bland, sun-washed colors, an alienating sense of distance, the random way Thompson seems to be sprawled on the tanker floor. And his escape is also presented in an equally powerful, equally bland way. Though an oil company employee discovers him, that man is dispatched in an un-cinematic manner and Thompson’s escape does not present him in a light that makes the assassin heroic in any way.

Eventually Thompson flees to a movie theatre, the same theatre where Orlok’s film will be premiering. In an ironical fulfilment his own fears, Orlok’s is rendered irrelevant by the real-world horrors of 1968. We see a few scenes of the film. It looks like a Roger Corman adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and ten years ago that film would have fit the times well. But 1968 requires sterner horrors. ‘68 requires Rosemary’s Baby and The Hour of the Wolf and the more existential fears of Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It perhaps requires a different type of horror as in The Devil Rides Out. And it requires the profoundly upsetting horror of Targets.

Targets is not a perfect film. It’s a bit fannish feeling, no surprise because Bogdanovch is a prominent writer for film journals and reportedly is working on a documentary of the great director John Ford. Orlok is named after the lead character in the classic 1922 German expressionistic vampire film Nosferatu – a film student reference if I ever heard one – and the slightly postmodern feel of the Orlok scenes take away from the horror of the massacre.

But despite that, in this year of Kennedy and King, when Cronkite is talking over scenes from Vietnam every night at 6:00 and American cities are on fire, Targets hits close to the bone. I had real trouble overcoming my sheer personal horror at the events on the screen. In other words, I appreciated the artfulness of this movie but it took every force of will to keep myself in my seat and not walk out on it. Sometimes horror is too difficult to face, or maybe it’s too pervasive to face directly. Maybe we need something more indirect to allow ourselves to appreciate the fear. Poor innocent pregnant Rosemary isn’t like us. But Bobby Thompson? Any of us can snap, for no reason. That evil within every one of us is the most frightening thing I can imagine.

3½ stars – but again, be warned this is a very upsetting film.

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 28, 1968] Danger: Diabolik is the Grooviest Spy Movie of the Year So Far

May 28, 2023 Jason Sacks 2 Comments

by Jason Sacks

Danger: Diabolik is the epitome of a comic book movie: it has a wild, often surreal plot. It features outlandish lead characters who could never exist in real life. It includes absurd twists and turns. It has a surreal visual style.

And yeah, Danger: Diabolik is an absolutely wild groovy gas of a film.

It seems appropriate for this to feel like a comic book movie because Danger: Diabolik is adapted from an Italian comic strip which has been running since 1962. One of my favorite comics zines, the Rocket's Blast Comicollector, recently ran an article that talks about how Diabolik is massively popular for its wild spy hijinks, its beautiful lead characters, and for its convenient small size that makes it easy to carry on a train or bus.

Diabolik was created by a woman named Angela Guissani, a former fashion model turned founder and editor at the Astorina publishing house. Astorina started with board and card games, but Guissani hit the jackpot when she invented an idea for a magazine that commuters to Milan could read on their way to work. With insipration from the French character Fantômas, Angela invented a masked criminal who always seemed to escape the law, an anti-hero who could be embraced by the average middle class reader.

And so Diabolik was born, chased by Inspector Ginko, monthly. Within seven issues, the comic was a smash hit as readers fell in love with the masked rogue who could do almost anything, wearing his black suit or special masks as he robbed from the rich, loved his beautiful girlfriends, and traveled between his own secret lairs. He and his women also dressed in gorgeous, of-the-moment fashion, which seemed to sparkle off the page.

All of which makes it a natural to adapt Danger Diabolik to the big screen, especially under the direction of Mario Bava, a man who loves to use color and fashion to tell a story.

And what a wild, wonderful, groovy story this is.

Diabolik the film is true to its comic book roots. Diabolik himself, played with gusto by John Philip Law, is a lover and a fighter. He's a man who clearly can't do anything halfway: during the film we watch him commit not one, not two, but three different heists–plus he blows up a tax building. After one of the heists we watch him make love to his partner Eva Kant, played by the glorious Marisa Mell, on a bed covered with $20 bills, and it's hard to tell if their orgasmic ecstacy is due to Diabolik's superhuman lovemaking or because the couple's lust for cash is satiated at last.

But any satiation only lasts until the next opportunity comes their way, and Diabolik soon is on the trail of the most valuable emerald necklace in the world, stored high in a tower. This set of scenes allows us to watch Diabolik scale high towers, smartly elude guards with diversions and sleight-of-hand, and bring home the jewels to a loving girlfriend.

Even that isn't enough, and in the film's wild and wonderful ending set piece, Diabolik goes from underwater scuba craft to train to steal a giant gold ingot worth more than many small countries which he can use for his own reasons which might involve more sexual relations or might involve building even more elaborate structures for him to live in.

Of course Diabolik is a zillionaire, so that means he has all kinds of gadgets even James Bond would envy – Ferraris and Maseratis of course, the aforementioned scuba craft, fog jets and knockout pills, white action suits and black action suits, groovy showers and an amazing Batcave-like place and wow really doesn't this all sound a little like a world even Bond's nemesis Blofeld would envy?

Honestly, it's all a bit over-the-top at times, like drinking three Italian droppio shots all at once. Diabolik is hyperkinetic, absurdly colorful, ridiculously dynamic and wonderfully silly. Of course it is; with famed British comedian Terry-Thomas as one of the Diabolik's nemesis, it's no suprise this film sometimes veers close to Batman style camp, and even goes over it.

Director Mario Bava does his best to keep this movie on some kind of even ground. He's one of the finest action/horror directors working right now in Italy. I had high praise for Bava's'65 flick Planet of the Vampires, which was spookier and weirder than it had any right to be, and Danger: Diabolik is sillier and wackier than it has any right to be.

The film seems saturated with primary colors, so saturated at times that it almost seems to glow from the brilliant color pallette. The sets, too, seem selected not for their utiliarian use but for their garish weirdness. The chairs and tables in this movie look great, and that's all we need as viewers to suspend our disbelief and glory in the near neon glow of Bava's wild creation.

I should mention that the music in this film is composed by the great Ennio Morricone, whose unprecedented score for 1967's grand epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was one of the greatest media events of last year. His work here doesn't match those unbelievable heights, but it's charming how, for instance, we get a little guitar riff every time Diabolik's car appears on screen, or how occassionally the soundtrack would riff on 1960s surf music.

The spy genre seems a little played out in 1968, with Sean Connery walking away from the Bond role after You Only Live Twice, the Matt Helm movies playing as NBC network movies, and TV shows Man from UNCLE and I Spy soon to be off the air. But if Danger: Diabolik is one of the last of a dying genre, spy films are going out with a kiss kiss bang bang.

3.5 stars

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Comics, TV

[May 6, 1968] Does Whatever A Spider Can! (Spider-Man Cartoon)

May 6, 2023 Jason Sacks 5 Comments

by Jason Sacks

It's hard to be an adult fan of super-hero TV shows these days. The Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons by Grantray and Lawrence are notorious among fans for their super cheap animation. Batman limped through its third season, with its jokes worn out and its campiness turned up past 10 (don't talk to me about the "Joker's Flying Saucer" episode, please!). The new Fantastic Four cartoon is inane, poorly animated and plain annoying.

And then there's Spider-Man. And hey, at least the music in this cartoon is pretty good.

Most every weekend since September (football pre-emptions notwithstanding), we've been granted the pleasure of watching a certain web-head soar through the concrete towers of New York, stalking a never-ending crew of slightly inept criminals while evading the slings and barbs of the editor of the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson.

Every weekend I perk up when I hear this fun theme song. Seriously, you should pop out to see if your local Korvettes sells the 45 of this song because it (pardon the pun) swings!

Spider-Man, Spider-Man
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size
Catches thieves just like flies
Look out
Here comes the Spider-Man

Is he strong?
Listen bud
He's got radioactive blood
Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead
Hey, there
There goes the Spider-Man

Oh yes, that gets me on my feet (granted, I really need that cup of Folgers, but still)…

What keeps me on my feet is… okay, waiting for the toaster to pop, but also to see which classic Spidey villain will appear in this episode. As you can see, we've gotten the Vulture, Electro, Green Goblin and many more on screen so far. It's been a delight to see how the production team modify Steve Ditko and John Romita's designs for the villains for the small screen.

Yeah, the designs have been kinda distorted compared to the original comic versions, but the cartoon designs have been fun.

Too bad the stories have been pretty subpar.

One of the few good things about the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon is that the stories were – quite literally – torn from the pages of the actual comics stories. In this cartoon…less so.

For instance, an episode starring the Sandman as villain has Sandy stealing the largest diamond in the world for some unexplained reason. In another episode, Green Goblin takes up magic as a way of defeating our hero, when magic was never remotely a part of his M.O. Then there's the episode where Electro takes over an amusement park as a way of defeating Spider-Man. We never saw Stan Lee write that story. At least in the episode with Ditko-created villains The Enforcers, they are simply trying to rob a bank. That much makes sense!

I have to admit that despite my whining, the stories do maintain some fidelity to the comics. Just like Stan and John depict each month, Peter Parker is a genius scientist who also has a part-time job at the Daily Bugle, where he works for a nasty brutish J. Jonah Jameson and flirts with the pretty Betty Brant — though Betty is colored with red hair instead of her usual brown, for some reason. Perhaps they mixed her up with Pete's friend Mary Jane Watson).

It's in those sorts of moments, like when we see Peter struggle with his webbing recipe or complain about Jameson not paying enough, that this show becomes the most fun. I also never grow tired of JJJ blaming Spider-Man for every crime the villains commit, no matter how events turn out. You gotta appreciate Jameson's commitment to his own sort of false news! Of course, those moments also echo some of the finest Marvel stories we've seen so far.

There have even been a couple of episodes in which JJJ is basically the villain. In one, he pays for the construction of a suit for villain the Scorpion. Spidey beats Scorpion easily, but at least an effort was made to have Jameson show his hatred of Spider-Man in villainous form. In another episode, JJJ creates a spider-slayer, right out of a classic Ditko issue, but the animation is so awkward and cheap-feeling, that the story just loses its flair.

I guess I'm saying that this show seems cheap. We know from latter-day SatAM classics like Jonny Quest, Herculoids and Space Ghost that a TV cartoon doesn't have to look cheap. But the look at that panel above! You can see the producers didn't even draw in all of Spider-Man's costume, in the interests of saving time and money.

The animators also reuse scenes over and over again to the point of absurdity. If I drank a sip of coffee every time we see Spider-Man swing his web far above any office towers, I might not sleep for a week. The producers seem to have a basket of six or seven specific images of Spider-Man doing his webbing thing which they love to use over and over. I noticed the other week when watching the episode called "The Menace of Mysterio" how the animators will string all six of those images one after the next, then have an inset scene, and then repeat the sequence. I always find myself yawning and reaching for the coffee cup when I see those scenes.Once again, the notorious Grantray-Lawrence studio was behind this quickie cheapie, as they were behind the Super-Heroes show. G-L obviously had a few more dollars to spend on Spider-Man, but twice zero is still zero, and the production values doom this show to be second-rate.

But hey, the theme song and a lot of the incidental music is terrif!

Rumor has the show returning this fall. Hopefully ABC will up the show's budget and G-L will spend a few more dollars on the production of this show. In the meantime, I feel the same mockery for Spider-Man that the Green Goblin shows above. Get on your feet, Spider-Man, and make a fight of it!

by Gideon Marcus

Don't listen to old sourpuss there. While there are episodes that are less than terrific, there are several which are…terrific. Compared to the concurrently running Fantastic Four cartoon, and certainly to the virtually static Marvel "cartoons" of last season, Spider-Man is nothing less than a revolution.

The voice acting is stellar, with the fellow playing Spider-Man and Peter Parker doing an excellent job of distinguishing the two roles. JJJ is an absolute riot. As for the animation and art, the palette is also stunning, especially compared to the drab FF. And it's absolutely accurate; New York is chock full of pink buildings.

The animation is (for TV anyway) stellar, and the composition stands up to any comic book.

One of my favorite episodes, and a scene so good, it got incorporated into the end credits.

Is it a little goofy? Absolutely, though no more so than Batman, and it the show plays off the silliness with an infectious sense of fun.

Mysterio's true form may have been a tiny bit influenced by another contemporary character…

Alright–maybe The Rhino isn't the best villain.

In addition to the theme, Spider-Man has got one heck of a soundtrack, all boffo jazz like Herb Alpert was the band director.

So, give the show a watch. It's already in reruns on Saturday morning, and it's a stand-out. Would it have been nice to have more Green Hornet than Batman? Maybe. But for a cartoon, it sweeps the competition. If it's not exactly like the comic (which is actually currently the best in the Marvel stable), at least it's its own thing, and it does that thing pretty well.

And that's a headline I'll stand by…

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Movies

[April 24, 1968] Terrifying Psychological Horror (Hour of the Wolf, by Ingmar Bergman)

April 24, 2023 Jason Sacks 6 Comments

by Jason Sacks

Ingmar Bergman is back in the cinemas at last! His last movie, 1966’s Persona, received rave reviews of its release, including by me. Persona is a fascinating, deeply haunting film about identity and personality. It is a demanding film in its style, pace and plot but is also an intensely rewarding viewing experience.

Hour of the Wolf continues exploration of many of the ideas he presents in Persona.

Again Bergman films his new feature in his usual black and white, a stark palette which gives his films a kind of painful emotional resonance. Again Bergman sets his film on a remote Swedish island far from most people. And again Bergman provides a meditation on identity, on memory and on the nature of personality.

There’s also one key difference between Persona and Hour of the Wolf that might interest the Galactic Journey audience: Hour is a horror film.

The film stars Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann as a married couple who go off to live on a small island off the Swedish coast. The Von Sydow character, named Johan Borg, is a painter who decides to travel to the island with his wife to find some peace and to do his work. He also wants to help his wife, Ullman as Alma Borg, find peace from what appears to be a recent psychological breakdown.

At first everything seems calm and ordinary on the little island, as the couple find happiness in their togetherness. But it soon becomes clear that Johan is fighting his own inner demons. He is a man of the bourgeoisie who does not belong in society, who has pain and torment from his previous life. It’s clear he has been sexually abused and is tortured by his own sexual inclinations. He becomes distant from Alma and seems to fall apart emotionally.

When the couple is invited to a party held by some other island dwellers, all of this angst comes to the surface in a phantasmagoria of psychological fear. At their castle, he is gawked at and treated like a freak by snobbish and condescending people who are also psychologically broken in their own ways.

The banal madness of the castle dwellers sends Johan into paroxysms of breakdown, imagining the castle dwellers laughing at him (delivered by Bergman in a beautifully componsed, tremendously spooky medium shot which could come out of last year's terrifying Japanese film The Face of Another). From there we get a whole series of terrifying moments – a woman takes off her face like plastic and eyes like they're balls, a man crawls up walls, a man has wings, a character attacks Johan and we see blood. It all builds and builds with anguish and pain.

With all that, somehow there are two moments of deeply contrasting feel which nevertheless each create dread and fear in the viewer. During the dream sequence, Johann’s face is lathered in makeup and he is painted to be a frightening in-between of man and woman. He’s not quite one or the other, and that profound personal ambiguity makes the scene feel full of dread. His identity is nullified, and without identity what are we, anyway?

In the other terrible moment, Johann has a fateful encounter with a young boy while fishing, and the whole scene comes to a dreadful end, and it’s not clear if this is parable or actual, a distorted memory or a moment of terrifying breakdown.

Those scenes, together with the intense feelings of fear and confusion Alma displays on her face, describe a journey into madness and pain that help elevate this film above mere melodrama into something transcendently terrifying.

Though Bergman has never been known as a genre director, Hour fits comfortably in his oeuvre of work. Bergman has always displayed a deep fascination with the elusive nature of human psychology, exploring the nature of relationships in elliptical, often dreamlike ways which expand out perceptions of personality and truth. We see those ideas explored throughout Hour of the Wolf.

Tied to that is his attention to the nature of human relationships and individualism. Each of us is an island, but each of us has deep effect on our loved ones, Johann's breakdown affects Alma's breakdown, and each works in a cycle of cause and effect on each other. Bergman dwells on this topic frequently, and Wolf is no exception.

I've indirectly priased Von Sydow and Ullmann several times here, but I should also take a moment to single out the brilliant cinematography of Sven Nykvist. Nobody shoots a film with the austere beauty of Nykvist. He's the perfect collaborator for Bergman, and I'm so happy to see their collaboration continue with this powerful, starkly beautiful film.

Hour of the Wolf seems to elude meaning on a purely intellectual level. Bergman gives us a narrator whose intentions seem unreliable, so we never quite have a grounding in exactly why he takes the actions he does.

But who among us is always honest with themselves?

On the emotional and psychological levels, however, Bergman’s latest film displays his deep interest in the mysteries of the human soul. The darkest nightmares come from within, and those nightmares are on full display in this remarkable film.

4 stars

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 18, 1968] "You Damn Dirty Apes!" (Planet of the Apes)

April 18, 2023 Jason Sacks 13 Comments

by Jason Sacks

Planet of the Apes is already one of the most talked-about films of 1968. My friends have been buzzing about this movie since it was first announced, and now that it’s appeared Apes is certain to dominate all the chatter until Mr. Kubrick delivers his long-promised science fiction film.

A lot of the conversation has been about the ending of this film. I can’t talk about Planet of the Apes without revealing the incredible climax ending in this review, so if you want the twist to be fresh to you, you will want to turn the page around paragraph twelve of this review. You have been warned!

As you probably know, the movie stars Charlton Heston as George Taylor, an astronaut who journeys with his four compatriots to an alien planet via a deep sleep device. One companion dies along the way, so Taylor and his remaining pals journey across a desert. For three days (and thirty minutes of screen time), Taylor and his friends wander like Moses and the Jews across a desolate desert. Unlike wandering tribes of Israel, the astronauts eventually discover an oasis. This verdant area is beautiful and welcoming and perfect for a skinny dip. It’s also the absolute worst place they can end up.

After their spaceship crash lands in a lake, the astronauts have to flee and try to find civilization.

See, the astronauts' clothes get stolen and then the visitors become witness to an incredible tableau. It seems there are many living humanoids on this planet. They look like humans, in fact. They are dressed in rags, running around like savages, terrified of something even stranger.

The Apes rounding up humans as if people are mere animals.

What sparks their fear is something even more uncanny. What sparks their fear as gorillas. Riding horses. Attacking the humans, and slaughtering them like a big game hunter might hunt gorillas in Africa in our world. The apes are clearly the dominant species on this world. We witness the slaughter of hundreds of humans under the apes’ vicious attack. One of Taylor’s companions is killed in the massacre, while Taylor’s vocal chords are damaged by an ape rifle. Taylor is tied hands and feet, and brought to a very odd sort of jail.

The brutal aftermath of the hunt is reminiscent of the American colonization of the West

Amazingly, it’s a bespoke sort of jail, in which various ape species come to perform experiments on the humans. Scientist apes Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and Zira (Kim Hunter) are amazing in their portrayals of these oddly humanlike creatures, full of empathy and confusion about Taylor and yet also a deep commitment to their own ape world. The script nicely walks a fine line with these characters.

The story squarely embeds Cornelius and Zira in the middle of this fictional world, explicitly having them react as members of their society first and foremost. Our hirusite leads react as apes with moral codes and professional ethics and wow is this a wonderful breath of fresh air compared with the way most science fiction movies portray societies.

"Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"

I’ll move away from this plot summary, at least for the moment (gotta talk about the astonishing ending!) because I must make sure I discuss the many other ways this movie stands out.

First and foremost, Planet of the Apes is a fun movie. It’s full of action and twists and surprises. The crowd at the Northgate Theatre seemed on the edge of their seats the entire time as we watched this film, and the buzz at exit was full of joy.

This scene directly alludes to history and traditions inside ape world. How many science fiction movies build such a complex world?

Which implies the film had a great script. Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone wrote the initial outline, but Michael Wilson completed it. Wilson has previously worked on the David Lean films Bridge Over the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and he brings this film a similar combination of epic feel and personal intimacy we get in those films. Specifically, he creates a complex and fascinating society for the apes. This society has a history, and a religion, and social castes, and even mythologies they’ve created. All of it feels smartly earned, based on how I would imagine an ape society would be constructed, and I keep finding myself pondering this world.

One of my favorite magazines has a great article this month about the makeup required to turn Roddy McDowell into a chimpanzee.

One of the most important things about Apes has been receiving a lot of buzz in Famous Monsters and other recent zines: The makeup in this movie is amazing. I know there’s no Academy Award for best makeup, but the category should be reinstated just for this film. I was initially skeptical about the design of these characters going into the movie, but Dan Striepeke and his crew at Fox deliver an amazing design.

Franklin J. Schaffner directs the film. I’m not familiar with any of his recent work, but I know he directed Heston in The War Lord, and it’s obvious their previous project built some tremendous trust between the men. The direction is solid, professional and not showy. I’ve been pondering what Kubrick might be showing us in his sci-fi film, and I’m sure it will be much slicker and showier than Schaffner’s work here.

Leon Shamroy’s cinematography delivers in every scene, whether the gorgeous vistas of the American desert, the weird interiors of the Apes’ abodes, or the claustrophobic cages. Jerry Goldsmith’s atonal music adds so much to the story being told, and the set design work by Walter M. Scott and Norman Rockett really brings this world to life.

Tailor is paired up in a cell with Linda Harrison (Nova), a primitive, mute woman.

Okay, okay, yeah this movie is fantastic. It’s full of some thrilling and hilarious moments. Heston screaming “get away from me you damn dirty apes” is already starting to enter our lexicon. Sock it to me!

But the biggest reason everybody seems to leave this film giggling, the “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!” or “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!” moment which will go down in history, is that awesome tableau at the very end. Schaffner films the sequence perfectly. Taylor and his female companion Nova are riding a horse on a beach. We think they’re still on an alien world as the camera zooms up. We see a triangle on the edge of the screen, we witeness a pull back, and at last we get a stunning image and a powerful primal scream of anger from Heston…

"Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

Ohh yeah! If you’re not smiling thinking about this ending, you saw a different movie than I did.

This is clearly the best science fiction movie of the year so far. I don’t know much about what Stanley Kubrick has planned, but this odyssey to the Planet of the Apes is stunning.

5 stars.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 16, 1967] The Weird and the Surprising (July 1967 Galactoscope)

July 16, 2022 Jason Sacks 9 Comments

by Jason Sacks

Philip K. Dick has a new novel out. And guess what, it’s very strange. Are you shocked?

The Ganymede Takeover, by Philip K. Dick & Ray Nelson

The space slugs have taken over the Earth.

Those slugs come from the distant planet Ganymede. Earth is their first invasion target ever. But they have ambitions. The Ganymedeans have managed to conquer and occupy our planet. However, the slugs are failing at their third objective: to absorb the people of Earth as their servants.

Resistance is strong in at least one area of the planet: the Bale of Tennessee. There, he will have to fight the Neegs, who are led by a violent revolutionary named Percy X. The dreaded assignment of conquering that area goes to Mekkis, an insecure slug whose fortune bodes poorly.

Mekkis and his fellow conquerors have one great weapon at hand they can use to defeat the humans. A human, the neurotic Dr. Baldani, condemned as quisling, has developed a reality distortion bomb, which can destroy all of humanity. But will he allow that weapon to be used?

The Ganymede Invasion, a rare collaboration between Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, is dense as hell and weird as hell. Dick and Nelson make a pretty good team. Nelson smooths out Dick while Dick makes Nelson weird. Their San Francisco writers’ workshop friends must love the stories the pair creates

Truth be told, I missed Dick’s wild randomness at times; I was genuinely shocked that nearly all the elements introduced in the first chapter resolve by the end! Meanwhile, Nelson pushed Dick to go even further with his usual psychedelia, with references to supermarket carts with submachine guns and to vorpal meat cleavers, among many other stunning images. It’s the Summer of Love and this book came from the San Francisco area, so how can you ask for anything timelier?

The Black Panthers at the California state capitol, earlier this year

Percy X is the most intriguing character in the novel. Percy can be seen as an analog to Malcolm X, which would make the Neegs the equivalent of the Black Panther Party. Or he can be seen as a reflection of Perseus, the Greek legend who slayed monsters and came to found the republic of Mycenae. Either interpretation would fit this story. Percy is a crusader, a fighter against the literal monsters of the Ganymedeans and is a true hero. Heck, the name Ganymede implies a reference to Medea.

Philip K. Dick, Nancy Dick, and Robert Silverberg conversing in lobby, Baycon

I haven’t discussed the sentient hotel rooms or talking, neurotic taxi cabs or even a key Quisling type character in the book. There’s just too much to cover in a review like this and I want you to be surprised by what you read.

The Ganymede Invasion isn’t great Dick, but it is hugely entertaining. And like nearly every novel by PKD, Ganymede is a short quick read. I recommend this oddball collaboration.

3 stars.

by Gideon Marcus

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison

The third collection of Ellison stories contains the now-typical set of introductions which folks often like as much as the stories they precede. It's a thin volume, with just seven pieces, and it suffers for being less tonally nuanced than the prior two collections. The subject is pain, Harlan's personal pain, and while I'm sure the tales were cathartic to write for him, by the end, they all start to sound like Harlan kvetching to us over a Shirley Temple at around 3am.

Not that they're bad–Harlan is a gifted author–but they are somewhat one-note and unsubtle. To wit:

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The last five humans are trapped in the bowels of the sapient computer who hates and torments them. This is the unexpurgated version of the story that appeared in IF a few months prior, with less veiled references to homosexuality and genitalia.

It's a raw, powerful piece. Four stars.
Big Sam was My Friend: An interstellar carnival makes a stop on a planet with a tradition of human sacrifice. Big Sam, the circus strong man, can't let them go through with it…with disastrous results. Interesting more for the detail than the events.

Three stars.
Eyes of Dust: On a world devoted to and obsessed with personal beauty, can deformity be tolerated? Be careful – perfection may need imperfection to exist!

Another passionate story, but somehow forgettable. Three stars.
World of the Myth: Three astronauts are stranded on a planet: a cruel but charismatic man, the woman who loves him, and the nice fellow who loves the woman. They meet a race of telepathic ants, conversation with whom reveals the true nature of the parties communicating. Can the astronauts stand that knowledge?

It's a neat setup, but a rather prosaic story. Three stars.

Lonelyache: A widower is tormented by dreams in which he is hounded by assassins, forced to dispatch them in the most brutal of fashions. Gradually, the man becomes aware that there is an inchoate…something…sharing his apartment, feeding on his unhappiness. Can he escape its thrall before it's too late?

The story with the most Harlan-esque voice. Three stars.

Delusion for a Dragon Slayer: To all respects, Warren Glazer Griffin was the milquetoastiest of milquetoasts. But when he died in a freak accident, he was allowed to live an afterlife fantasy in which he indulged all of his suppressed depravities. The result isn't pretty.

Three stars.

Pretty Maggie Moneyes: Inspired by a true encounter (and with the best introduction of the collection), this is the tale of the woman who sold her soul for comfort, lost it permanently to a slot machine, and resorted to desperate measures to get free.

With the intro, I give it four stars.

For the collection, 3.5 stars.

by Robin Rose Graves

City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin

An amnesiac narrator on a planet of liars. Le Guin takes us far into Earth’s future where humanity has regressed under the domination of a group of aliens called the Shing.

Our main character is Falk, who looks almost human except for his slitted yellow eyes. He wakes up in the forest with no memory of where he came from and mentally reduced back to the mind of a baby. Falk is taken in by a family and rehabilitated, all the while learning their culture, which fears the Shing who now control Earth and hinder civilization from developing to be any larger than scattered small groups of people across the planet. The Shing are most notable for being liars, something Falk is warned about throughout the book. However, in order to reclaim the answers that were stolen from him, Falk must leave the family and seek out the Shing.

The book drags during the first 80 pages as Falk travels alone through nature. This part serves well to relay the isolation of his journey and to show the effect the Shing’s presence has on Earth’s development. However, overall nothing of great significance happens in this part of the book.

Once Falk gets captured by a hostile group of humans, he meets a slave woman named Strella with whom he plots his escape in exchange for her guiding him to the Shing. Here the book becomes interesting, particularly when something Strella says suggests that the reason Falk has been stripped of his memory might be because that is how the Shing punish criminals. It made me wonder if Falk is really the good guy after all.

However, it isn’t until Falk reaches the City of Illusion that the story reaches its full potential and lives up to its name, as deceptions are uncovered and more information is revealed to Falk, who doesn't know what is true and what is false – including everything he has experienced up until this point. He’s unable to trust the Shing and unsure if they have ulterior motives. I had a lot of fun reading these chapters. Something would be revealed only to be quickly disproved and it made for an exciting read where I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next because I barely knew what the truth was – much like the hero.

The end chapters redeem the slow beginning. For a small world, Le Guin well establishes Earth as something distant and foreign to a modern reader. The plot exercises the brain and leaves the reader in suspense. However, this book is far longer than it needed to be. For 160 pages long, the first 80 pages are particularly empty and I think Le Guin could have achieved the same story by cutting out half the words.

I enjoyed this book, but it failed to impress. 3 stars.

The Strength to Dream

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

There have been many surprising entries into SF writing, but perhaps none more so than Colin Wilson taking on H. P. Lovecraft.

Best known as a philosopher, Colin Wilson received great acclaim for his first book The Outsider and continues to be successful in this arena, including last year’s Introduction to The New Existentialism.

He has also attempted to express some of his ideas in popular crime fiction, such as Ritual in the Dark and The Glass Cage.

Neither of these avenues lead directly to science fiction, let alone Lovecraft. So how did it happen?

Apparently, Wilson is a fan of the concepts of Lovecraft and had written an essay saying so but expressing distaste for his actual prose. August Derleth saw this and wrote to Wilson suggesting he write his own book on these themes.

The result is The Mind Parasites, what could be described as Post-Lovecraftian. An optimistic existentialist new-wave cosmic horror, which is likely to either impress or appall the reader!

The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson

The story starts in 1997, with Dr. Austin learning of the suicide of his friend and colleague Dr. Weissman. The news unsettles him, but the world suicide rate has been increasing over the decades and is in fact a major concern of many people. Delving into his papers, Austin discovers Weissman had been experimenting with ways of expanding his consciousness but became fearful of an evil presence.

At the same time Dr. Austin is working on a dig in Turkey. They discover a remarkable Proto-Hattian settlement where the inhabitants worship “Aboth the Unclean” and have massive blocks of stone which should have been impossible to move in 10000 BC. The site becomes a sensation when an elderly August Derleth notes how much this mirrors the stories of writer H. P. Lovecraft.

These two facts come together to form a startling discovery: for centuries mankind has had its progress impeded by a force that feeds on our despair. The Mind Parasites!

Whilst the concepts and themes are definitely of the cosmic horror seen in 30s Weird Tales, it is also most clearly something different.

Firstly, its writing is more academic than purple prose. This story is said to be compiled from a variety of papers in the early 21st century, explaining the unusual world events in the early 1990s. The fact that it is being told from the future provides an explanation for the style and shows the author giving real consideration to the context.

Secondly, in keeping with Wilson’s “New Existentialist” ideals, the characters are not simply the victims of ideas too big to grasp. Instead this is an ode to the limitless potential of the human mind. Rather than nihilistic, the ending is optimistic and the revelation about the true nature of the titular creatures was a fascinating surprise to me.

Thirdly, and what is likely to repel some readers, is that large passages are devoted to discussion of various theories of the mind and man’s place in the universe. These sections read more like Huxley’s Heaven and Hell than an Ashton Smith fantasy. That is not to say there is not plenty of action, with scenes involving wars, ESP and space flight. But your tolerance for exploration of Wilson’s pet theories is likely to dictate your enjoyment.

Grading this on a standard scale is tough as it is so strange and experimental. So I am giving it a – very subjective – five stars!

And because we have so many books to review, we'll be having another Galactoscope in just two days! Stay tuned…

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 12, 1967] The masks we wear; the masks we must wear (the film: The Face of Another)

July 12, 2022 Jason Sacks 3 Comments

by Jason Sacks

Over the last five years or so, there has been a renaissance of movies which take science fiction concepts and turn them into fine — and often obscure — film art. For instance The brilliant Agnès Varda, perhaps best known for her amazing 1962 film Cléo from 5 to 7, used a kind of Island of Dr. Moreau motif for her film The Creatures (released in 1966). That film starts with a car accident and becomes a meditation on the way reality is changed by fiction.

Similarly, the equally brilliant Alain Resnais used the idea of limbo to emphasize the strange, surrealistic lives of the characters in his much-loved (and much-despised) philosophic meditation Last Year at Marienbad.

And anyone who saw Gennadi Kazansky and Vladimir Chebotaryov's charming 1962 film Amphibian Man couldn't prevent themselves from being caught up in the literal fish-out-of-water elements of that most magical and fascinating film.

The Face of the Creator

But the master of this mini movement (if there is such a movement) is Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara.

Teshigahara came to many American viewers and critics' attention with 1962's The Pitfall, a strikingly nonlinear semi-noir documentary fantasy (and yes it is all of that); the film shows the director's vast scope of vision and deep curiousity about the complexity of human nature.

Two years later he delivered The Woman in the Dunes, the film which truly won Teshigahara his international reputation. It won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, and it was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Award by the Academy Awards folks. It's an astonishing work of film art, one of the finer films of the 1960s thus far. It also is haunting on several different levels.

Both Pitfall and Dunes are adapted by novels by the beloved avant-garde novelist Kobo Abe, winner of the Akutagawa Prize and Yomiuri Prize, among many other awards. Apparently Abe's writing style is often labyrinthine, vivid and sensuous in its original Japanese. That style has to be seductive for an ambitous director, and with his success with these two films, now Teshigahara has taken on another Abe film.

The Face of Another uses the idea of a facial transplant to explore the nature of identity, human connection, and the impact of the atomic bomb. At the same time it possesses a stunning visual style which will likely be studied for decades (and which will only be touched on briefly in this essay).

All of this makes for a heady mix, beautifully delivered on screen. The film is often obscure, looks beautiful and is well worth checking out in your local art cinema.

Let me tell you a little more about it.

The Face of Another

One thing I was struck by in watching this movie was in how much it echoes. There is a lot of Frankenstein in here – both Shelley and Karloff versions. It also echoes The Beast With Five Fingers and last year's Seconds, and definitely a lot of French New Wave cinema and even that episode of The Avengers in which the villains traded minds with Steed and Mrs. Peel. Face is original, sometimes radically original. Yet it stands on the shoulders of giants as well.

The movie follows two parallel plots. In the primary plot, a businessman named Okuyama has had his face damaged in a major industrial accident. Forced to live life with a full-face mask, he is horrified and even sadly bemused by peoples' reactions to him. No matter if it's his wife or a stranger, everyone is cold and unemotional to him. His lack of a face has imposed a deep outsider feeling on him. Okuyama is profoundly alone.

Our businessman is bereft, forgotten even by his own wife. Only a young girl with impaired intellectual abilities actually sees and reacts to Okuyma as his own self. Like the Invisible Man, he's an id in bandages, lost and empty. It's the impact of his injuries that matters rather than the injury itself.

In the second plot, a young (unnamed) woman has scars over half of her face. It's implied she got those burns during the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Unlike Okuyama, the woman does not bandage herself, simply covering that side of her face with her hair and handling her pain with some grace.

Okuyama persuades his doctor to create a mask which will allow the bandaged man to look human and have some semblance of a normal life. He believes the mask will be seamless. It will allow him to pass himself off as normal person different than the man he was before.

He can become a new version of himself. And the first thing he does with his new freedom is… go to his old office and see if any of his former coworkers recognize him as their old compatriot (they don't). The second thing he does is even more banal. Frustrated beyond reason at his wife's indifference to him when bandaged, Okuyama decides to try to seduce his wife while wearing his new face. Yes, he's trying to make his wife an adulteress by sleeping with her.

Bizarre.

It's all as bizarre as the conversations Okuyama and the doctor have throughout different Osaka settings, including an odd German bar and the magnificent doctor's office.

Meanwhile, the girl is simply still wandering her life, unmoored and unrooted. Though she is spending much of her time with her brother who loves her (he may love her too much), she is alone. As with Okuyama, people recoil upon seeing her. Unlike with Okuyama, her injuries are more than just symbolic of a single man. Her injuries are a symbol of national guilt. And therefore she is simply more repulsive to the ordinary Japanese person.

I don't want to reveal the secret of how either of these powerful plotlines end — and in fact both endings are powerful.

Now that I've hopefully intrigued you with an idea of what makes the plot so great, let me talk about how great this film looks.

Looking at the Face

For all the praise Teshigahara deserves for his film, we all know a film can never be an individual effort (go ahead, Cahiers du Cinéma, prove me wrong!).

So let me first praise the cinematography of Hiroshi Segawa. His work here is simply extraordinary. The scenes at the doctor's office are symbolic and rich in meaning, not so much a setting as the implication of a setting and all the more powerful for that reason. The backgrounds symbolize all that Teshigahara is exploring in this meditative film.

Scenes on the streets or at bars are composed in beautiful framing and look sensational on screen. More importantly, they're composed in ways that allow Teshigahara to create doubling of his images (that is, the chance to use two images to echo each other).

As I've been alluding to, the production design by Masao Yamazaki is simply exquisite, a heady and head-bending approach to design that manages to both deeply root and profoundly confuse a viewer, a balancing act necessary for the film but incredibly hard to manage.

And of course I must praise our lead actors, especially Tatsuya Nakadai as Okayuma and Miki Irie as the man and woman, respectively. It's deeply impressive to see how richly Nakadai draws his character with his eyes while in his bandages, and with a deep, stiff complexity when wearing the mask. His body tells much of the story, and an attentive viewer can notice subtle physical changes which reflect his changing psychological state.

Irie's acting is equally as challenging and equally as rewarding. She's wearing a giant prosthetic and yet we feel we can easily read her emotions, hear her mood through slight voice inflections and body movements. He ultimate fate feels inevitable but not unexpected. That's a great compliment to Irie.

Looking at the Reasons Behind the Face

Teshigahara is clearly exploring many key themes here (isolation, collective guilt, and the intolerance of outsiders to name but three). I think the most intriguing explanation for this movie is to read it as a parable of the atomic bomb and the long recovery from the War.

Injury and disfigurement is common to see in Japan after the War. Even those who didn't directly experience the atomic bomb still felt the impact of the Bomb on their society. Nobody in Japan escaped those emotional scars. Our two lead characters just manifest those scars in their own particular way.

The Bomb also really and truly ended Japan's history as it had happened up to 1945. Its agrarian, peaceful traditions; its samurai code of ethics and its long and proud defiant isolation were all truly dead in their classical sense. Those were nation — and empire-affirming — concepts through the war. But those concepts were antiques, consumed by the never ending westernization of the post-war period.

Modernity was the future, tradition be damned. Ironically in a culture with a long, proud history of mask-wearing, Japanese people would be asked to put away their classic masks and don the western masks of hats and make-up worn in places like New York, London and Paris.

Furthermore, the Bomb and the subsequent westernization of Japanese society has served to isolate people by breaking down traditional societal structures and even the centrality of family. Akira Kurosawa has explored these topics as well, for instance in the sublime High and Low.

Teshigahara here takes a more symbolic approach than Kurosawa, forcing the viewer to contemplate the future that is developing. Teshigahara is unhappy about that future. The nihilistic ending of the film implies Japan is experiencing changes that might tear it apart.

Living with the Memory of the Face

Last year I raved about the John Frankenheimer film Seconds in these pages. As much as any of the other films I've discussed in this article, Seconds seems the best analogue for The Face of Another. It's a symbolic film, telling a despairing story about someone who gains a new face and goes just a bit crazy.

Both films feature brilliant black and white cinematography, fascinating lead performances, and linger long in the mind after they are done on the movie screen. I hope you didn't miss Seconds. And I hope you won't miss The Face of Another.

Four stars.

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Comics

[April 22, 1967] Make War Not Love (Comics)

April 22, 2022 Jason Sacks 2 Comments

by Jason Sacks

Hello from sunny Seattle, where spring has sprung, the rain has (mostly) stopped, cherry blossoms are on the trees at the U-Dub, and Don & the Goodtimes are topping our city's pop charts.

My friends and I love hearing that wonderful local pop ditty on Kolorful KOL Radio while driving in his Corvair. Most often we wander down to the Spanish Castle, down in south King County (past my beloved Sicks' Stadium where the Seattle Angels play). At the Spanish Castle we get to watch some amazing pop, funk and jazz musicians deliver performances to warm us up on Seattle's rainy nights. Local standbys The Wailers, The Kingsmen and a very talented young man named Jimmy Hendrix have played there. Remember the name 'Hendrix'. According to rumors, he's keeping busy in England these days and may be working on a full album. My friends and I hope our local boy makes good.

But from one type of entertainment to another… It's been about a year since I talked in Galactic Journey about the state of American comic books. This seems like the perfect opportunity to give you an update on some changes I would never have expected.

In fact, before I dig into super-hero comics, I want to look at two genres of comics the fans seldom seem to notice: war comics and love comics. Yeah, neither genre has costumed heroes, but both are fascinating here in 1967.

Make War (Comics) No More?

National dominates war comics, while its closest competitor, Charlton, is frankly pathetic. Where is Marvel in the list? Well, Marvel still publishes Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, but that comic has much to do with life in the army as Gomer Pyle, USMC does. Fury's style of goofy heroism may be a good read for the kiddies but it's too shallow for anyone over the age of 12. Anyone who is fascinated by the horrors and passions of war should read the good stuff.

Our Army at War is the flagship title of National's war comics line. This series stars Sgt. Rock and the combat-happy Joes of Easy Company. For several years now, writer Robert Kanigher has teamed up with the incredibly talented Joe Kubert to deliver some of the finest continuing-character war comics in my memory. Each story is like an opera of violence and martial situations with tight, terse prose matched by a gorgeously intense, slashy but stolid style by Kubert.

In fact, though I've seen Kubert's work for many years – he drew "Hawkman" in the Golden Age and drew the first Flash feature in Showcase, among hundreds of other stories – Kubert's style is hard to describe. Look at the below original page (from a friend's collection) to see what I'm trying to put into words.

Look at the incredible storytelling by Kubert. The tumbling coins on the left add tension while the top three panels on the right show the misery, fear and determination in the eyes of the soldiers. Note, too, the clever way Kubert both divides and unifies the single image. That's a clever use of paradox to heighten the tension of the page. There's just nobody drawing comics like Kubert these days.

In fact, while many fans criticize DC/National frequently for having a house art style, their costumed hero books employ much more homogenization than their war titles . Perhaps Kubert deserves some of the credit for that, as he edits many of the titles.

To a lesser extent, we see Kubert's artistic approach to the other war comics National releases. For instance, Russ Heath is the main artist on the "Hunter's Hellcats" feature in Our Fighting Forces, and Heath brings a slightly more polished but equally visceral style to its art pages. Even old-timer Irv Novick brings a looser, more unconventional style to bear with his stories of "The Losers" in G.I. Combat.

More than anything, the DC war series feature a dark, despairing tone. Readers get a real sense of the horrors of war. Though Capt. Storm or Sgt. Rock may succeed in their missions, the battles obviously take their toll on the protagonists.

I wish the same could be said for the many war comics which quirky publisher Charlton Comics releases. I should talk more about Charlton in a future column. One thing I have to discuss is how their comics are published alongside song lyric mags, crossword puzzle magazines and cereal boxes, but that's a topic for another week.

Instead, I'm here to bemoan Charlton's seemingly endless line of bland, dull war comics. Whether it's Fightin' Marines, Fightin' Army, Fightin' Navy (see a pattern?), War Heroes or Marine War Heroes, these chest-thumpin' men of action seem to never question their mission and never feel any pain from their incredible struggles. If you've ever wondered how the Pentagon would write comics intended for five-year-olds, read a Charlton war comic. I dare you.

While I'm discussing war comics, I should lament again the abrupt cancelation of Blazing Combat, Warren Publishing's often brilliant contribution to the war comics anthology genre. During its four-issue run last year, BC included sensational artwork by comics stalwarts such as Heath, Alex Toth, Gene Colan and many others. Writer Archie Goodwin told stories of wartime combat without filters, unnecessary heroism or national bias. With its ever-shifting anthology approach, Goodwin and his artists delivered stories which felt as contemporary as the Vietnam War and as timeless as the Peloponnesian War. Look, for instance, at the lovely page below drawn by the inimitable Reed Crandall.

These comics were created in black and white, published magazine sized, and often illustrated with ink wash or pointillistic techniques. For those reasons, the stories in Blazing Combat aimed higher than most comic books. Indeed, their audience was mainly adults. Tragically, that selfsame adult audience spelled doom for Blazing Combat. Reportedly publisher Jim Warren had to pull the plug on BC when PX bases across the world canceled their orders after author Goodwin penned a story critical of the war in Vietnam. Sales were too poor to sustain a money loser for long.

Make Love (Comics) No More?

I wish I could praise the many, many love comics published by National or Charlton but I sadly can't. Hey, I'm a man who likes women, I'm fond of my wife, my sister and my mother, so why can't there be comics for women which don't insult their intelligence? Sadly, neither publisher seems able to pull off that skill. This is one area Marvel hasn't plunged into in 1967; probably good news for them. (Millie the Model is more an Archie-style humor comic than a love comic, by the way.)

Once again, Charlton leads the way with garbage, flooding the newsstand with interchangable junk like Career Girl Romances, I Love You, Just Married, Teen-Age Love, Sweethearts and many more. Like the sweethearts candies you got in your fourth grade class on Valentine's Day, these comics are laced with sweetness and may put you into a coma.

The love comics from National are marginally better, at least boasting work by professional cartoonists. But their attitudes seem stuck in the Eisenhower era.

In fact, a reader should expect out-of-date attitudes. Comics like Girls' Love, Young Love and Falling in Love frequently feature reprints of comics from a decade earlier. Staff artists, modify the art to include modern hairdos or clothes. But their conformist attitudes reflect an earlier era when a girl's greatest goal was to be a housewife. It would be a bold statement for one of these comics to reflect the "free love" or hippie movements. The creators need to change with the time. Their musical beats should be attuned to the Beatles rather than Frank Sinatra.

I'd like to think there's a place for love comics in today's era. Perhaps some of the emerging group of so-called underground cartoonists can revive the genre, maybe with a twist. I know I would chortle to see a comic on the stands called Young Lust instead of Young Love.

Make Steve Ditko Comics at Marvel No More

Perhaps the biggest shock of the last year was the resignation of the brilliant Steve Ditko from Marvel Comics. Ditko, who was the prime force behind Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, apparently was engaged in a long, pitched battle with key Marvel editor/writer Stan Lee over the identity of a villain in the already-classic Master Planner saga. Ditko, who was the main plotter for the series, wanted to follow one direction for a character reveal. Lee disagreed and apparently that latest disagreement was the metaphorical last straw.

It's a shame because Ditko was reaching his apex on both series at the time this incident happened. Spider-Man was achieving new levels of bathos and power and was a solid, constantly interesting series.

Ditko's work on Dr. Strange, meanwhile, existed on a level few other comics have ever reached. In a vast, multi-chapter epic spanning some dozen issues, an increasingly desperate and isolated Strange journeys to lands scarcely imagined by mortal men. There, he encounters beings so unknowable and cosmically powered that their mere existence is beyond our mortal ken. Ditko set Strange as one single solitary man desperately trying to save our entire universe even while the rest of the universe continued on, blissfully unaware of the strange battles happening around them.

As you can see in the above excerpt, characters like Eternity live in great cosmic landscapes, full of bizarre and almost incomprehensible sparks which bespeak our insignficance as humans. And yet Strange, a mere human with expanded consciousness, fights desperately to avoid massive cosmic destruction.

That astounding storyline, a truly cosmic saga, drew the curtain on Ditko's Marvel era with a real sense of majesty.

The "Dr. Strange" strip has been drifting without Ditko's presence, with pointless stories and uninspired artwork. But I'm mention to you that Ditko's other great series, The Amazing Spider-Man, has reached new heights in 1967.

John Romita has stepped in to fill Ditko's shoes. Lo and behold, the impossible seems to have happened: the comic has gotten better. Amazing Spider-Man is now more fun, somehow both lighter and darker than before. More importantly, some charming supporting characters have emerged. I'm keeping my eye on Romita's groovy interpretation of Gwen Stacy. She seems like she could become a compelling love interest for poor ol' Peter Parker.

And the series seems to be finding its level. Amazing Spider-Man #50 was just released two weeks ago, so I don't want to ruin its fascinating twists and turns. But look at that wonderful page above and tell me you're not intrigued. Romits delivers drama Ditko couldn't reproduce in quite the same way and points to an exciting new future for the old web-head.

Jaunty Jim Debuts

Speaking of exciting futures, comic fandom has been buzzing over the last few months about the emergence of a new creator at Marvel who seems to have a unique set of skills. Jim Steranko is in a role unprecedented at Marvel, both writing and drawing the "Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD" strip in Strange Tales. As far as I can remember, no Marvel creator has assumed the duties as writer and artist of an ongoing. His work is intriguing and unprecedented, and so far it's been spectacular.

Steranko displays a dynamism and energy in his panels which rivals his mentor, Jack Kirby. His men seem coiled with power, drawn with dynamic foreshortening that holds tremendous power on the page even while the anatomy makes no sense in real life. In the page above, look at the wild energy of the final panel in the excerpt above, with its massive overwhelming machinery contrasting with the negative space to add power to Nick Fury's battle. Nobody, not even Kirby draws like Steranko. Who knows what the man can achieve in the coming years?

The King Remains and Reminds Us Why He's King

…which doesn't mean the King isn't carrying his own weight. Jack Kirby continues to deliver some ace action yarns in Fantastic Four and Thor. The recent Doctor Doom-Inhumans crossover story had me on the edge of my seat, as Doom schemed to assume the Silver Surfer's Power Cosmic and, with that power, control the world. That storyline was a deeply dynamic drama, definitively delineated by Kirby's crispy lines.

The Black Panther is perhaps the most dynamic character find of the last year. He debuted in the pages of Fantastic Four #52. T'Challa is the king of a futuristic kingdom deep in Africa who dons his ceremonial outfit to battle perfidious villainy, in this case embodied in the nefarious Klaw.

It's thrilling to see a Black hero appear at Marvel, especially one who can defeat our estimable heroes in battle while maintaining his regal presence. I'm so intrigued by this new hero. I hope he returns soon. I can't wait to read more about him. (Seems to me he'd be a great member of the Avengers.)

And as for Thor, if there ever was a case where a picture says a thousand words, the below image does that!

If you don't want to read that issue of Thor, you clearly lack an imagination!

The Debut of Batgirl

Life at National Comics has been a little quieter than life at Marvel these days. Their quietness has started to make National's line of heroes feel a bit stodgy compared with their Marvel counterparts. Lately the Justice League of America has veered a bit into camp, which felt appropriate when the Batman TV series was at the top of the charts. Since people are starting to get bored of Batman's repeating jokes, likely sales of Batman-related comics will begin to sag as well.

For instance, the return of the Penguin to comics in Batman #190 boasts a wonderful cover by Carmine Infantino but… darn, look at the stiff and uninspired artwork inside the issue.

Maybe the introduction of the dynamic new Batgirl will revitalize the Batman comics a bit. College student Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Commissioner Gordon, donned her distaff version of the cape and cowl in Detective Comics #359, late last year. Fan reaction to her appearance has been all over the place. Many have praised the idea that this new Batgirl can actually throw punches and kick some heads in – unlike the more old-fashioned Bat-Girl of the 1950s. Others have complained about the need to tie Commissioner Gordon more closely with our heroes. And some younger fans have complained about Batgirl acting like a big sister to Robin, which embarasses him since a girl can often out-achieve him (of course the female fans love that aspect of the heroine).

Under Infantino's pencils, the new Batgirl is a lilthe, athletic fighting machine. She's also kind of a women's libber, fighting with the ability of a man while maintaining her female identity. She would be a welcome addition to the Batman TV series. I hope she gets added to it soon.

Sadly, unless her series takes a radical turn, I can't imagine Wonder Woman becoming a feminist icon. I dare you to look at the cover below and tell me I'm wrong.

The tremendously prolific Robert Kanigher writes Wonder Woman. He's is one of the key forces behind the war comics I mentioned earlier. Maybe's he's too busy in his mental combat to consider the abuse he's heaping on his heroes.

In fact, of DC's heroes line, only "Legion of Super-Heroes" in Adventure Comics resonantes for me (well, okay, one other series has sparked excitement – see below for the details). My newfound love for the Legion surprises me. I usually yawn at the Superman family of titles (which this is part of). Readers get one variation after another of the same full stories. But new writer Jim Shooter has brought a new energy to the future's finest super-teens. Just this year, "The Doomed Legionnaire" brought an unexpected death to the team (I promise I won't tell you who dies!) This month, we're viewing an incredible flash-forward to a time when the Legionnaires are adults. It's spellbinding stuff, written for teenagers with an energy and freshness which makes me wonder if Shooter himself is a teen.

And finally…

This article has aleady run long, so I'd better add a few final notes before I head down to the Spanish Castle to see Paul Revere and the Raiders…

Doom Patrol continues to be DC's ginchiest comic book – miss it and weep, pals!
Archie's super-hero parodies like Captain Pureheart are a giggle a minute if you're in the right mindset. They are well worth your twelve pennies.
Warren continues to publish the outstanding horror comics Creepy and Eerie, and each feature work by the delightful Mr. Ditko. Miss them at your peril.
Look for copies of King Comics' Flash Gordon on your local stands. If you can find it, you will find some breathtaking comic art by the likes of Al Williamson and Reed Crandall.
And lastly and leastly, a reminder that the weakest and dullest comics in the Marvel line is The X-Men. Save your cents for its much better imitator, Doom Patrol. When will Marvel wise up and give up on this series?

Till next time, sayonara!

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The Face of the Creator

The Face of Another

Looking at the Face

Looking at the Reasons Behind the Face

Living with the Memory of the Face

Make War (Comics) No More?

Make Love (Comics) No More?

Make Steve Ditko Comics at Marvel No More

Jaunty Jim Debuts

The King Remains and Reminds Us Why He's King

The Debut of Batgirl

And finally…

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction