Watchmen Advertisements, 1986
Sometimes I Feel Like This
I think it's pretty awesome. The wave is big and terrifying, but the surfer's doing his best.
I wonder how it turned out. I wonder how it will turn out.
Because, you know, the Silver Age
Sentence of the day, from Chris's Invincible Super-Blog: Romance Special: The Time-Travel Heartbreak of Lois Lane.
Anyway, Lois makes the connection that a device designed to stop planets from exploding might be useful in keeping the planet Krypton from exploding, so she gets a copy of the plans and grabs a time machine, a process that takes exactly one panel because, you know, the Silver Age.
From the excellent Chris's Invincible Super-Blog
Lego Yamato; USS Texas
From JapanProbe we have this wonderful find:
In the twilight months between living in the Philippines and moving to New Orleans, Channel 6 in San Diego showed Star Blazers. I found the notion of reviving a dead battleship for the purposes of traveling to space and defending Earth to be inspiring. I thought little that the ship was borne of Imperial Japan. Living in the Philippines fueled my admiration of all things Japanese. The (retrofit) Yamato is a ship I would draw often in class. It's a pity I don't have any of my drawings from that era. Too many moves, too few items kept.
As I think about the idea of recovering the dead Yamato to turn it into a space ship, I'm reminded that only a few years later I read another book about recovering a dead ship, I think it was called "The Ayes of Texas."
Hah! And in a moment later I have a link: The Ayes of Texas by Daniel da Cruz.
I love the big CCCP on the bow of the ship in opposition. It was published in 1982. I probably read it in that year. The Soviet Union was still very much alive, and still very scary, but we would take them down by upgrading our aging Battleships. This post by Claus Valca referencing the book outlines the plot nicely:
Somehow world events conspire Texas to declare her independence (again), fight the Russians who are invading the US and re-fit the hulk of our locally beloved USS Texas (BB-35) into a high-tech ass-kicking machine again. It's kinda dated now, but at the time it stirred this young Texan's heartstrings something special.
That's a great summary of the book. Thanks Claus!
Does this “Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble: Songs of Mary Poppins” record qualify as a mashup?
via the always excellent LP Cover Lover
Beetlejuice & The Joker
I'm sorry to report I forget where I found this last week. But I love this image of two of my favorite tricksters: What's a trickster? In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behavior. (Other fave tricksters: Loki and Coyote).
Three From Moorpark
I like these three shots of Moorpark, taken with my cellular telephone's camera.
Who Watches the Watchmen?
In 1986 and 1987 the comics series Watchmen came out. I was 16 years old at the time and the work was mindblowing. I had been looking forward to it since I had read it was coming in DC Spotlight #1, a freebie I'd acquired at Comic Con the year before. It looked like it would be incredible, and serious, and awesome. It absolutely delivered, and I was happy to buy each issue as they came out. I encourage you to read the series, and read about it, for example on Wikipedia. There has been talk of a movie for as long as the series has existed, with excitement about Terry Gilliam possibly directing at some point. And honestly, I always thought that the thing was unfilmable due to the density of events, dialogue, and texture in the story.
Well the film is set to come out in March, and I think they've got it right. They appear to have stuck to the alternate timeline, and the broad effects the character of Dr. Manhattan has had on world affairs. Witness this purported piece of footage from 1970:
The verisimilitude of that is compelling to me. The main narrative of Watchmen is set in 1985, where Richard Nixon remains President of the United States. This past footage is similar in feel to the background information each issue of the comic. Watchmen contains excerpts from memoirs, news reports, newspapers, political cartoons, political treatises. The comic contained a whole world to explore, in some sense very similar to our own 1980s world, but in many respects quite different too. At the time the threat of nuclear annihilation was very much on our minds. This difference from our own time is possibly the most profound change since I was a teen. It was just assumed that we'd all get killed in a nuclear war eventually, by accident or aggression. Fiction like War Games and Mad Max are predicated on such apocalyptic thoughts. Now the threat people fear most is terrorism, possibly nuclear, but then it seemed quite plausible that the US and USSR would eventually come to war. How the story will play to audiences who don't have the notion of government-sponsored armageddon in their minds I don't know, but I can't help but be moved by the work. Watchmen (the collected version) is the comic I've read and re-read most in the last 25 years. Perhaps the film will be one worth watching and re-watching over the next 25.
