It's tough when one of your heroes lets you down...

... but Vince, the motormouth pitchman of the Shamwow commercials, was arrested last month in Miami. What did he do? According to the report over at The Smoking Gun, he repeatedly punched a hooker in the face.

Sad. Like part of my childhood -- or really, part of my pre-middle-age-hood -- has died. I'll never look at a Shamwow ad the same way again.

The young lady of the evening wasn't exactly innocent herself, either (and I mean aside from the fact that she earned her living charging men to have sex with her). According to the report, she bit his tongue and wouldn't let go. Too bad Vince didn't pitch some sort of product that pried a hooker's teeth off your tongue. Now that would've come in handy!

Finally, after all these years, it's fun being a Cavs fan...

'Nemesis wanted for showdown Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Nothing big.'

This one's been all over the Interwebs, but I couldn't resist posting it here. It sums up the oddball glory of superheroes in a mere eight minutes and forty seconds.

Look! Down in the gutter!

If there's one thing I love more than a comic book, it's a dark peek into pop culture of the past. And there's plenty of both in Craig Yoe's fascinating new book, SECRET IDENTITY: THE FETISH ART OF SUPERMAN'S CO-CREATOR JOE SHUSTER.

Admittedly, that's an odd subtitle, but it fits the book's odd story. In the introduction, Yoe tells the familiar tale of how, after Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster lost the rights to their groundbreaking creation, they fell on hard times, with Joe (whose eyesight was fading) forced to work as a delivery boy (well, man) to make ends meet. What Yoe adds to the story is what happened after that -- and believe me, this is where the things get interesting.

Like many an artist past his peak years, Joe wound up in the shadowy world of drawing dirty pictures to make a buck. But these weren't any run-of-the-mill nudie shots. In an oddly fitting twist for someone who helped launch the comic book industry, Joe found himself drawing strange little pictures for a strange little magazine called NIGHTS OF HORROR. It wasn't a comic book -- the pictures and typewritten text were separate, for one thing -- but with its over-the-top plots, boo-worthy villains and damsels in dramatic distress, it sure resembled someone's twisted version of one. It's like those EC magazines Gaines tried after the comics line folded, but with a much lower budget -- and a much higher level of kink.

NIGHTS OF HORROR was clearly aimed at the same demographic buying all those photos of a tied-up Bettie Page. Sold in various seedy bookstores in the Times Square area (and wouldn't I kill to spend a vintage hour or two in one of those), it was cheaply printed, poorly written and, let's be honest, desperately drawn. Joe Shuster had a bold, clean style that screams "Golden Age," but his art hadn't changed much in the decade or so since he worked on Superman. (Maybe that's due to his eye troubles.) His art in NIGHTS OF HORROR looks almost exactly like his Superman art -- and that's why this book is so fascinating.

As Yoe points out, the characters in these twisted drawings, tied up, spanked and worse, look almost exactly like Lois, Superman, Jimmy Olsen and Luthor. They're not, of course (something else Yoe points out -- probably for legal reasons), but NIGHTS OF HORROR gives an unnerving (and fascinating) glimpse at what comic books might look like if the Code insisted on out-of-bounds behavior instead of forbidding it.

The drawings are pretty tame stuff by today's standards (especially considering you're reading this on the Internet, where a couple of choice clicks will take you to some real nights of horror), but titilation isn't the point -- at least not anymore. It's the thrill of peeling back the four-color wallpaper of comic book history and spying something that you never even suspected existed. Major credit goes to Yoe for not only finding these old magazines (by accident, according to his intro), but putting them in historical context and presenting them in a beautifully designed book. It's a sure bet the original copies of NIGHTS OF HORROR never treated Shuster's artwork with this much loving care.

Last year, the comic history scholarship award was easily won by THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE, David Hadju's comprehensive look at comic book censorship in the 1940s and 1950s. It was a long, detailed look at a big part of the comic book past. This year is still young, but it'll take a pretty impressive book to top SECRET IDENTITY. It's scope isn't nearly as wide as THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE, but what it does so well is take a tiny slice of related comic book history and explore it in amazing detail, then (and this is most of the book) reprint those crazy Shuster illos. It's not just fun, it's educational!

And hell, I haven't even mentioned the kill-crazy Jewish kids with Hitler moustaches and their connection to NIGHTS OF HORROR. You'll have to read the book to find out their story.

You can get a sneak peek at SECRET IDENTITY at the blog Yoe has dedicated to the book here. Those wacky drawings can say more than my stunned scrawlings here ever could.

It really is tough all over

Here's a short, fascinating -- but grim -- report about so-called "cyber drifters" -- out of work people in Tokyo living in the only place they can afford: tiny windowless cubicles in a cyber cafe. It's $500 a month, and there's barely even room to lie down, but at least there's Internet access.

Fast food from the swingin' seventies

Inspired by this post over at Lileks.com -- and by the fact that everything is available somewhere in the vast reaches of You Tube -- I thought I'd post a couple of commercials from a long-defunct restaurant that was a big deal back when I was a kid, Red Barn...



The two Muppet-like characters seen here are Hamburger Hungry and Chicken Hungry, and I'm sure there was a Fish Hungry character, too. Here's another ad, this time showcasing what was a pretty amazing innovation of the early 1970s, the salad bar...



Other signs of the times: the prominently displayed Tab dispenser on the pop machine, the haircut on the dad who makes the "halibut" joke and the glasses on the woman who makes the "fowl weather" joke.

We also had (in my home town of Niles, Ohio), a Burger Chef, which was another fast food chain that died sometime in the mid 1980s. The mascots were Burger Chef and his young sidekick, Jeff, and the reason we liked them as kids was they had a "Fun Meal," which was sort of an earlier version of a Happy Meal that came in a cheap cardboard tray instead of a cheap cardboard box. I think there was a prize involved, too. I do remember owning the posters featured in this Burger Chef ad...



I can't remember specifically, but I'm sure I saw that ad back in the day, and I'm equally sure it blew my fragile little mind.

Naturally, this being the age of Wikipedia, there's more information about both Red Barn and Burger Chef than I could ever want -- or, frankly, than I could have ever compiled back when the chains were actually in business. (There are, of course, even fan sites for both.) So I only have one question: Do any of you remember these restaurants?

Well, he can't be any worse than Bernard Madoff

You know who's pretty funny? Jon Hamm. You know what makes him even funnier? A bad baldy cap and references to SUPERMAN IV...

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm - watch more funny videos

Buy my comics, make me rich: CATWOMAN: THE LONG ROAD HOME

It's been a while since I've had one of these posts, and I'm not sure when I'll have another one (though hopefully it won't be too long), but I've got a book on the shelves this week, the final collection of my run on Catwoman.

CATWOMAN: THE LONG ROAD HOME collects issues 78 to 82, which includes her return from the badguy planet of SALVATION RUN, her final beat-down of The Thief and, last but not least, a heart-to-heart talk with the man in the Bat suit.

Art is by the stellar team of David Lopez (pencils) and Alvaro Lopez (inks), colors are courtesy of Jeromy Cox, letters are by Jared K. Fletcher and the original covers (included here, natch) are by the master himself, Adam Hughes. Nachie Castro was the editor who guided this book from concept to comic, and if you want to see a glimpse of him and me, we're the two couch potatoes on page 112.

Pick it up -- it's good stuff, if I do say so myself.

I remember when WATCHMEN was this obscure comic by two British guys that no one ever heard of...

And now it's come to this...

A couple of questions:

1. No Jackie Earle Haley?

2. I wonder what Rachel's audience would think about Jeffrey Dean Morgan's big scene with Carla Gugino? Would they still think he was "hot"?

Some thoughts on WATCHMEN

I posted a basic, by-the-numbers sort of review of WATCHMEN over at my Movie Man blog, but I thought I'd let my geek flag fly over here and just ramble on about some impressions of the movie.

Spoilers aplenty, of course...

1. First of all, I liked it a lot. Like most comic book fans, I've been waiting for this one for years (hell, decades), and I had pretty much assumed it was never going to really happen. To have it in theaters -- and to have it so close to the actual comic book -- is almost enough as it is. To have it actually be good (and yes, I thought it was pretty damn good) is a bonus, really.

2. I have no idea how someone with no previous exposure to the story will feel about it. I've probably read WATCHMEN more than any other work in my life (comics or otherwise), and I know that thing backward and forward. For me, sitting there in the theater, half the fun was seeing how certain beloved scenes would play out. As the movie went on (and on -- it's long, but I'm not complaining) I grew more and more amazed at just how much of the book Snyder and Co. managed to actually get into the movie. But it was complex, both plot and structure-wise. That's why I wonder if someone who didn't already know the story would understand the movie.

3. That opening credits sequence has been praised by virtually everyone, and for good reason. It sums up the offbeat history of this world with wit, charm and style, and throws in some great visual jokes along the way (Silhouette and the nurse re-enacting the famous VJ Day photo, the Silk Spectre's retirement dinner mimicking the Last Supper).

4. I also like the way the movie starts at the very beginning, with the corporate logos simple black on white, pulling out -- way out -- to the smiley face badge. Nice touch, and the later shot of the badge in the bloody gutter pulling way back was a dead-on recreation of the cover and page one of the first issue.


5. Jackie Earle Haley made a pretty great Rorschach, didn't he? I was looking forward to the scene of his arrest outside Moloch's apartment, partly because it was such a powerful moment in the comic, with him screaming "Give me back my face!" It did not disappoint onscreen. Same with his telling the prisoners "You're locked up in here with me" and the entire jail cell sequence. (Except for the change of the line from "Your fingers. My perspective" to "Your fingers. My pleasure." That sounds goofy, and it doesn't even really make sense.)

6. The follow-up to that scene, with Rorschach going into the bathroom (to kill Big Figure) while Dan and Laurie wait outside actually worked better than in the comic. That lack of dialogue (replaced by awkward shuffling of feer) and the swinging door showing flashes of what was happening inside -- something you couldn't do as well in a comic -- was staged perfectly. That being said, Dan and Laurie's fights in the prison hallways were way overdone. They seemed like heroes -- hell, superheroes -- at the top of their game, not former heroes gone to seed. Same for the fight in the alley earlier in the film. In the comic, there are fewer punks, and it works a lot better. (Nice to see they were Knottops, though.)

8. I expected to see Nixon (can't libel the dead, after all) and Kissinger, but seeing Lee Iacocca -- and seeing him (a) as part of a dark cabal trying to pressure Ozymandias and (b) seeing him get shot in the head -- was mighty surprising. Not that I mind (it's a movie, after all), but what's the legality of that sort of thing? (Speak of Ozymandias, you know who would've been perfect as him? A young Robert Redford.)

9. Man, Carla Gugino was born to wear that Silk Spectre outfit, wasn't she? Of all the characters in the movie, she probably looked the least like her Dave Gibbons-drawn inspiration, but who's going to complain?

10. Seeing Nite Owl's garage, with its layers of dust and pieces of superhero debris all over the place was a kick. I especially liked how everytime Archie took off, stuff got blown all over the workshop.

11. I've never seen Jeffrey Dean Morgan or that stupid doctor show he plays a ghost on, but he made a great Comedian. Nasty, funny and lost, sometimes all at once.

12. The Dr. Manhattan elements were handled especially well, and I was glad to see the fractured flashback structure maintained for his origin sequence. Some shots -- like Jenny Slater staring up at the reborn Manhattan -- were right out of the book. And the condensing of his outburst on the talk show to lead to the jump to Mars was a good story choice. (Glad to see they kept the smiley face on Mars, too.)

13. There was some nerdish online debate about the ending, and the lack of the giant squid. I actually thought the movie ending worked as well as the original, tying Dr. Manhattan into the climax more directly. Adding the squid might've been one weird element too many in a movie already full of them. (And the movie does give a nod to the squid -- as glimpsed in an early scene, Veidt's project has the acronym S.Q.U.I.D.)

That's it for now -- though I might post more in a bit. This is one movie I keep replaying in my head.

Wise words from the good doctor

"I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.

Some come from ahead and some come from behind.

But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see.

Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"

From Dr. Seuss' "I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew," courtesy of The Door Next Door on occasion of Ted's 105th birthday.