Beatles Remasters and other bits you need to know.

Well, today is the day I have been longing for and talking about for quite a while. The whole Beatles catalog was cleaned up and re-released today--FINALLY! I caved and ordered the Mono set online and bought five Stereo CD's: Revolver, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, White Album, Abbey Road, and Past Masters. I have only listened to the stereo Revolver CD so far. It's definitely better than the 1987 CD, but I wasn't blown away by it. It's a cleaner, more vibrant sound than before, but I still miss the way my old vinyl albums used to sound. There are some things I was used to hearing all while growing up that just hasn't transferred to digital. Even with the high price tag of $229 on the Mono set I am really looking forward to hearing those CD's as the Beatles preferred those mixes over stereo in the sixties.

In other pop culture news of interest Pat over at Silver Age Comics has a cool post about a Superman Imaginary story. DC's imaginary stories used to catch a lot of ridicule from Marvel and Marvel fans back in the 60's. Later Marvel would come up with their own version of Imaginary stories called "What If" so go figure. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I just finished reading The Marvel Masterworks Silver Surfer Vol 1. First: these hard bound bookshelf collections of Masterworks and the DC Archives are outstanding compilations when reading comics from forty years ago. Vibrant colors and quality printing make them hard to put down. I am constantly searching discount web sites or comic shops for used copies. Secondly: about the Silver Surfer stories in this compilation; it collects the first 6 issues of Silver Surfer. The Silver Surfer was the mouthpiece for Stan Lee and this character gave voice to Lee's feelings and thoughts on racism, ignorance, violence, war, politics, and just about all the hot button issues of the late 60's. I have to tell you that Lee's overly preachy soliloquies get old real fast. After Silver Surfer #1 we pretty much get where Stan is coming from and the proselytizing every issue wears on my last nerve.

Even with that criticism it still has some of Lee's finest writing and plotting along with John Buscema. A word about Buscema's art: Awesome! Totally awesome. Issues 1-3 are good but pretty standard Marvel plotting then it takes off...issues 4-6 are as good as any comic I have ever read. However, the more adult themes and higher price of 25 cents failed to reach enough of the older readers it was aiming for and SS only lasted for 18 issues. I also suspect that not including to the humor of Marvel's most successful comics; i.e., Fantastic Four and Spider-man didn't help. But the Silver Surfer making wisecracks certainly would not have worked. It would have been a good idea to give the Surfer a complimentary character, a la; Rick Jones to lighten things up a bit.

Comic Book Movies

The Summer movies are when the big budget eye popping special effects movies come out. More often than not they aren't satisfying movies. I would have to rate the Lord Of the Rings trilogy as the best SFX movies ever. It's just a great movie in all areas of acting, directing, sets, design, costumes, etc; and it wasn't a summer movie. The LOTR movies were released in the Christmas season. The summer extravaganza begins May 1 with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine".

There are not many comic book movies that would make the great movies list. I enjoyed "Iron Man" quite a bit, but that was because of Robert Downey Jr. He's a marvelous actor and he carried this movie by virtue of his prodigious talent. The story and SFX were good but Jeff Bridges as the bald headed villain was just silly. I really don't have a desire to watch the movie again which is the main criteria for any film to be on my favorites list. The recent Batman movies were very good and well made. I enjoyed watching them when I saw them but not really interested in watching them again anytime soon.

Superman II with Chris Reeve is the only comic book movie I have ever watched several times. Then there are the Spider-Man movies. I have seen Spider-Man 1 twice and consider to be far and away the best of the three movies. Interestingly, I have the DVD set of the tv series "Adventures of Superman" I have seen all of the episodes numerous times. I enjoy the George Reeves rendition of the "man of steel" immensely which will be the subject of a future post. Not that it's great theatre but super-heroes presented in a 30 minute format seems to work best.

I plan on seeing Wolverine and expect it to be a pleasant movie going experience. I also expect it to be immediately forgettable.

UPDATE! After going to Origins: Wolverine with pretty low expectations, I am happy to say I wasn't dissapointed that I actually thought this was a pretty good movie. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber were very good as Wolverine and Sabretooth. The film was much better, in my view, than the trashing it is getting from the critics. It gets a 38% fresh rating at rottentomatoes.com. It seems the chief knock on the movie is that it panders too much to X-Men fanboys and doesn't develop enough backstory on why we should care about what happens to this mutant named Wolverine. If I had come into the theater with no idea who Wolverine was I might have cared (but I doubt it) why Wolverine is called Jimmy by his brother and Logan by everybody else (this was an actual complaint from one critic that I read). Well, so be it then. I really don't care what the snobby critics think. Critics often only review movies for each other; or, for people like themselves, and not for the average movie goer. I've never been much of an X-Men fan but I knew enough about the character to think that the film captured his and co-mutants essence pretty well.

Does this mean I will watch the film more than once? Probably not...unless I happen to come across it on cable one of these days.

The Beatles in the comics.

Growing up in the 60's meant that you saw the Beatles in many publications not the least of which were comic books. I'm not going to talk about comics that were one shot issues that were produced specifically to feature the Beatles. Naturally the DC and Marvel romance comics would have an issue where the Beatles were mentioned as a back drop to some soap opera plot. In fact one of the harder romance comics to find in upper grade condition is "Girls' Romances" #109 from 1965. Beatlemania was in full swing with the Fabs on the cover which is drawn by Gene Colan. Colan went on to much greater heights as a fan favorite drawing superheroes "Daredevil", "Iron Man", "Sub-Mariner", "Dracula", and"Batman", and he does a nice rendering here of the Beatles on the cover.

The Beatles also made appearances in the mainstream silver age superhero comics which were usually quite amusing. Displaying the hipness that would eventually make Stan Lee and Marvel the number one comics company, "Strange Tales" #130, feature the Beatles in a March 1965 issue. The cover shows the Thing and the Human Torch hilariously wearing Beatle wigs. The Thing and The Human Torch are taking their girl friends to see a Beatles concert but have to leave the girls to go and defeat a villain. Bummer man. Stan Lee was definitely one cool cat.

Beating Marvel to the punch though was DC which published "The Red-Headed Beatle of 1,000 B.C." in the Sept 1964 issue of Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy travels back in time and puts on a show for the ancient teenagers with a Beatle haircut and a bongo. Superman being no square himself notes that Jimmy is as popular Ringo.

Obviously, DC felt that Jimmy Olsen being a young cub reporter was able to relate to kids who read comics and were also big Beatle fans. The Beatles are referenced again in "Jimmy Olsen" #88. Superman is doing a twist like shimmy while warbling "YAH YAH YAH".

The most entertaining of all the Beatles references in Superhero comics was in "Batman" #222. This issue has a cover date of June 1970 and came out just as the group was breaking up. The story written by Frank Robbins is a take off on the "Paul is dead" hoax that was perpetrated by a Detroit disc jockey but managed to capture the world's attention. Unlike Paul McCartney who was cut off from the world on his farm in Scotland, which only helped fuel the rumor, and who was innocently unaware of the firestorm; the leader of this comic's fictional band (who were drawn to resemble the Beatles) actually and purposefully planted clues that he was dead and replaced by a doppleganger.

1956 -The Silver Age of Comics

I was born in 1956. Stamps cost 3 cents; a gallon of gas - 23 cents; a gallon of milk - 97 cents.

Among the more notable events besides my birth was the introduction of play-doh but that was hardly the most memorable. Elvis Presley blasted into the national consciousness with "Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog, and Love Me Tender". Even bigger than those hits was Elvis' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and changed the course of popular music forever.

It was also, and as it happens the topic of this post, the dawn of the Silver Age of Comics. The Superman TV show was going strong but comic book super-heroes had all but disappeared. The mainstays of Superman and Batman sold well but were pretty much in a formulaic rut. Comics were more commonly referred to as "Funny Books". Then Showcase #4 nonchalantly appeared on the news stands and racks. Some character in a bright red suit was on the cover and he was called "The Flash". That particular comic reinvented and re-defined the super-heroes from the 40's that faded away.

If you grew up in that period it's doubtless that your images of Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, and today's popular films of superheroes; i.e, Batman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, The X-Men, and the Fantastic Four were forever defined.

Comics were 10 cents then 12 cents, and you could get annuals of reprints for a mere 25 cents. It was hours of cheap, colorful, and imaginative entertainment. There was no color TV not to mention cable and satellite with hundreds of stations, video games, or DVD's. It was a black and white world. Kids could only live their fantasies in a 4 color medium through Walt Disney who was systematically releasing all of his classic films once a year. Far more accessible were comic books which screamed "look at me" "buy me" with their fantastical characters and vivid eye catching colors from the covers.

You will find jillions of sites on comic books but the best one that I have found is devoted to this period and frequently posts engaging synposes of full comics, and loads of information on the creators, editors, artists, writers and publishers. It's mostly DC and Marvel stuff natch, but reminds us that there were other companies out there like Harvey, Charlton, and Dell putting out entertaining books.

Silver Age Comics is updated three or four times a week with new posts and I hardly ever miss visiting it at least once or twice a week. Here is an image from a comic reviewed on this site. Check it out.