Darkman #1 - Marvel

Sept. 1990 - The official Marvel Comics adaptation!

This was one of approximately fifteen hundred different one-shot movie adaptations Marvel did in the b/w magazine format in the late 80s/early 90s. Though of course adapting Darkman made a little more sense, because of its subject matter and super-hero(ish) lead character.

I remember seeing the Darkman movie in the theater, and left feeling perplexed, as if the filmmakers didn't quite know what kind of movie they wanted to make. But the movie adaptation, because of its change in format, suffers no such tonal shifts.

No, from the very intense cover (by our pal Joe Jusko) until the final page, this version of Darkman reads like a straight-up horror/action story.

For instance, the scene where Darkman is created after an explosion, it cuts from that moment (via CGI flash-forward) to his girlfriend mourning at his grave:

I remember that moment really taking me out of the movie, since it seemed so showy. But of course here, via the medium of comics, there's no such transition.

The art in the first half of the book is by Bob Hall and Mark Texeira, whose tough, muscular style works well for this story.

Unfortunately, halfway through the book Mark Texeira is replaced by Tony DeZuniga. I've always liked Mr. DeZuniga's work (especially on Jonah Hex), but to me it just doesn't work quite as well.

The final page of the story is about as downbeat as can be, with Darkman rejecting a life with his beloved and choosing to wander the streets and...scaring random people, I guess:

Jeez, what a downbeat ending! I haven't seen Darkman since 1990, is this how the movie ends, too?

Marvel released Darkman as a three-issue standard format mini-series around this same time. I remember the movie not being that big a hit; but since Marvel did a second Darkman series a few years later, I guess they had a better success with it than the movie studio did.

70 Years of Marvel Comics

2009 - It's Marvel Comics' 70th anniversary!

This is a great little magazine, which I didn't know existed until I happened to see it on the racks in a bookstore--a 100-page(!), full-color, glossy magazine all about Marvel and its history. I had to pick it up.

Filled from cover to cover with articles and graphics, it features chronological histories of the various decades, starting in 1939 with the publication of Marvel Comics #1. In addition to these histories (breezily written), there are great little sidebars, like "70 Years of Marvel Monsters", "70 Years of Stan Catchphrases!", and a continuing feature like "70 Years of Costume Chic":

The true "Marvel Age of Comics" starts in 1961, with the publication of Fantastic Four #1. There are photos of the various Bullpen members, plus the artists who drew the stories.

There's a great article about 60s Marvel toys:

...this is a great article, and it comes with quotes from our pal, Brian Heiler. Cool! I could've read twenty more pages.

There are also features on the editors of the Marvel Masterworks series, and the Handbook to the Marvel Universe, giving us a glimpse on the inner workings of how these series are compiled.

After a section on Marvel in the 90s, there are some sketch pages from artists the magazine calls "Young Guns '09", like Marko Djurdjevic:

There are interviews with some Marvel execs (one, with Senior VP of Sales and Publishing David Gabriel, has him talking about how Marvel wants to experiment more with different formats--music to my ears), and "70 Years of Marvel Theme Songs."

The magazine ends with two Golden Age reprints, one from Marvel Mystery Comics #2 by Bill Everett:

...and the last from Captain America Comics #10, by Simon and Kirby:

I was really charmed by the inclusion of these stories, because they're clearly not the most commercial choices--nice to see instead of the umpteenth Spidey and X-Men reprints, they went with something way more Old School.

All told, a thoroughly entertaining magazine, well organized and laid out. The magazine celebrates Marvel in fine style, but also doesn't shy away from some of the more...curious decisions the company has occasionally made. It also has a nice sense of humor, making it a very fun read.

I'd love to see DC do something like this for their next anniversary!

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Well, that wraps up our week of new posts. I enjoyed digging through these musty old magazines again, and by the time you read this I will have gone to yet another comic con, so who knows? I might have some mags to talk about...

Hook: Official Movie Adaptation - Marvel

1991 - Welcome to the official Marvel movie adaptation of the blockbuster Hook!

Ok, that's the hard sell, now to the reality--Hook was one of those really strange moments in movies where you had nothing but superb elements--great director (Steve Spielberg), great cast (Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts) and a classic story (Peter Pan), leading the average moviegoer to think that, as they sat down in the theater and the lights dimmed, you were about to enjoy a bona-fide classic.

But that didn't happen.

No one knows how it didn't happen, exactly, but I remember seeing this movie with friends and we all left the theater kind of shaking our heads, kind of bewildered, and trying to convince ourselves we had, in fact, seen a very good movie (some of these same friends and I would repeat this, eight years later, for The Phantom Menace).

Anyway, one of my favorite sub-themes for this blog is bizarre movie adaptations, something Marvel in particular seemed to revel in. Whether it was Meteor, Jaws 2, or Sheena, Marvel had a knack for finding a film that was either a critical or financial disaster, and hitching their four-color star to it.

But like I said above, who could blame Marvel for thinking this would be a home run? And they certainly didn't skimp on the creative folks--on the inside cover, this book (reprinting the single-issue series Hook #s 1-4) boasts talents like John Ridgeway, Denis Rodier, Gray Morrow, Ray Lago, Anna-Maria Cool (great name!), Craig Hamilton, Charles Vess, Andrew Pepoy, Dan Panosian, Rick Bryant, John Lycas, and Kim DeMulder all contributing to the art! Wow!

The book gets off to a good start, with a tonally spot-on splash page:

...then we get to the boring, humdrum life of the now adult Peter, and the art is, well, pretty routine stuff. Not bad, but certainly nothing all that captivating.

But of course, that could've been the idea--make the scenes in "reality" look kind of drab and ordinary, to better contrast the scenes and moments in Never Never Land. Except, when Tinkerbell finally arrives:

...it all looks the same as everything else. Even when Hook and other fantastical elements show up in the story, there really aren't as major visual changes, like there were in the film:

Now, there are some really nice moments, but I can't quite make out who did what, among the large list of contributors, so I can't guess who to credit for atmospheric shots like this:

In fact, a lot of the stuff set on the water looks to me like it was drawn by Steve Bissette, one of the few comics pros not listed on the credits to this book! This moody page in particular reminds me of his work on Swamp Thing when it was inked by Alfredo Alcala:

But pages like that are few and far between. Near the end, the book gets even more slipshod looking, like this page featuring some panels that to my eye look barely professional grade:

But then there's another tonal shift, when at the very end we are treated to three pages by Craig Hamilton, my pal and master illustrator, who of course hits the exact right fanciful look for this subject matter:

But that's it--after Craig's great three pages, the story is over. We are treated to some nice looking pin-ups, like this one:

...but overall the book, like the movie, is kind of a mish-mash that doesn't really hold together.

I guess, given that the book had to be out in time for the movie (and we've all heard how nightmarish licensed properties can be, in terms of getting the thing through the fifteen layers of people who have to sign off on every little panel), it was unrealistic to turn the book over to just one artist--say, Craig or Charles Vess(who did the superb cover)--and letting them go to town on it, perhaps creating something truly memorable and a creative achievement in its own right, not just a merchandising tie-in to a movie. Oh well.

Robocop 2 #1 - Marvel

Man, did Marvel put out a lot of b/w mags in the early nineties!

I had no idea this existed until I saw it on eBay. Robocop 2, I thought? Aren't we one film too late on this, Marvel?

I remember going to see Robocop 2 in the theaters, having missed the first one the first time around but then later digging it big-time on home video, which I'm sure a lot of other people did.

Hearing that Frank Miller--Frank Miller!--was writing the screenplay got me even more excited, and then all that went out the proverbial window about twenty minutes into the film--it started out bad and never moved from that spot. Sheesh.

I'm sure that Marvel didn't know of the film's crapulence when they bought the rights to adapt it, Frank Miller's name was probably enough to get them to sign on the dotted line. And Marvel doesn't hesitate to tell us of the Miller connection to the film, as they list his credit twice in two successive pages:

The cover by Joe Chiodo is nice(hey, I'm surprised they didn't have Frank's name here, too!), but after that it goes downhill.

The script is by Alan Grant, with art by Mark Bagley and Tony DeZuniga, who try their best, but movie comics are rarely better than their source material, and that's the case here. The film is ugly and depressingly violent; there's really none of the black humor "joy" of the first film. This version is more family-friendly of course(i.e. no sex and a little less violence), but after sixty-one pages and a pin-up I wanted to read a Super Friends or something to cleanse my palate.

Marvel obviously had high hopes for this, they published their version of Robocop 2 in no less than three separate editions, all published simultaneously--as a one-shot "prestige format" book, a three-issue standard-format mini, and this. Geez, what is this, Richie Rich?

Nonetheless, Robocop ended up with his own regular Marvel series(I remember the book's inker, Kim DeMulder, used to show us original pages back when I had him as an instructor at the Joe Kubert School), and he's been the star of other comic book series, as well.

"Thanks, Robocop!"

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark #1 - Marvel

Another one of those "Marvel published this?" discoveries, a comic book adaptation of the Elvira, Mistress of the Dark movie!

The movie industry is like comics sometimes, where a movie meant to capitalize on a hot trend or character comes just this side of too late, and debuts when the trend is cooling down. Often, the movie (or comic) is kind of lame, which is only one more nail in the coffin(an apt metaphor for Elvira).

I remember when the Elvira movie came out--1988--and thinking that it seemed a little late. I eventually did see it, and while I found(and still find) Cassandra Peterson as Elvira charming, the movie had a real slap-dash, thrown-together feel and it was not a great success.

Marvel certainly put an interesting group of people together for the adaptation though--the cover is by the unlikely team of Ernie Colon and our pal Joe Jusko, with the interior art by Colon and Romeo Tanghal. And it's written by Sid Jacobson, Colon's old creative partner from a thousand issues of Richie Rich!

I thought that was a brilliant stroke, getting Jacobson and Colon to do the honors, because their style keeps the story moving at a brisk clip, and trying to get someone realistic to do the art might have killed whatever whimsy might've been found within the story.
Lots of classic Colon faces show up here, like Elvira's sleazy agent(left) and he draws her with all of her...gifts on display, but it looks cute and sexy as opposed to sleazy and exploitative. I think one of the biggest things going for Elvira was that her persona was very aware of what she looked like and always seemed in control, as opposed to playing it as a dim-wit who didn't know her massive boobs were hanging out.

The plot concerns Elvira getting fired from her late-night TV gig and deciding to open an act of Vegas, except that she needs $50K to do it. Luckily, an old Aunt of hers has died, and left Elvira her beloved dog Algonquin and her creepy old house! Of course, that doesn't go over well with the tight-asses who run the town with an iron grip.

Colon throws in lots of fun bits, like in this panel where Elvira is about to be told what her Aunt left her. I love the pure look of bliss she has on her face, and then you've got the varied reactions to her...presence from the other inheritors. My tongue would probably hang out like that if I was in the same room as Elvira, too.

This was the only Elvira comic Marvel ever published, coming a year or so after DC tried making her the host of their new horror anthology, Elvira's House of Mystery. The GCDB doesn't even list this title, it was such a blip on Marvel's publication schedule. Too bad, since I think I would've loved to see Jacobson and Colon do some original Elvira adventures.

Ironically, Elvira would come back in comics as the star of her own title from Claypool, in a title that ran for an astonishing 175 issues--a hell of a run for any character. Props to Elvira and Claypool for finding the right ingredients to make her a big-time comic book star!

Heroes - Marvel

I normally never want to get into anything remotely serious on one of my comic blogs, but when I was going through my bookshelf the other day I rediscovered this one-shot magazine, forgetting I had kept it all these years. And when would be more appropriate to discuss it than today?

This was the 68-page, all-star tribute to the heroes of 9/11, released by Marvel very soon afterwards. It features some of comics' greatest talents, all paying homage to the brave policemen, fire-fighters, and ordinary citizens from that day.

The cover is by Alex Ross, back cover by Joe Quesada and Todd McFarlane, with inside work by Sam Keith, George Perez, Alan Davis, Joe Kubert, Mike Deodato, Frank Miller, Richard Corben, John Romita, Tim Bradstreet, Jim Lee, David Mack, Neal Adams, Evan Dorkin, Michael Avon Oeming, Paul Pope, Dale Keown, Mike Allred, and many more.

Some of these pin-up pieces mix in the Marvel universe's heroes, others didn't. While mixing in, say, the Hulk into a scene involving 9/11 could run the risk of trivializing it, I find those pieces work on a more old-timey patriotic kind of way, like those old Golden Age covers featuring Captain America punching Hitler or selling war bonds. The sentiment behind every piece is obviously heartfelt; Marvel managed to put together a fine package in an amazingly short period of time.

I guess if I had any comment at all, I wish DC and Marvel had teamed up and done one 9/11 book together. How better to symbolize the then-strong feeling of national unity than to show Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Hulk, et. al, working together to help rebuild New York City?