What? There Are Two Of Them?

What do you think of when you see the phrase Dennis the Menace?

I think of a little blond haired kid who causes trouble for Mr. Wilson, and has friends named Margaret and Joey.  But that's because I live in Canada, which is saturated with US culture.  If you live in the UK you're likely to think of a small boy with black, spikey hair, who has a small dog as a companion.

Yep, there are two cartoon characters called Dennis the Menace, one from the United States, and one from the United Kingdom.  Even more interesting is that they debuted within a few days of each other way back in March of 1951, and continue to be active in the 21st Century.  The UK Dennis strip is often known as Dennis and Gnasher outside the UK, Gnasher being Dennis's dog.  Conversely the American character's adventures have been simply titled Dennis when they've been offered in the UK. 

It's a bit hard to imagine such co-existence happening these days.   Given the internationalisation of media properties if two creations came out with the same name at about the same time a major legal battle would likely result, with whoever had the most resources winning in the end.

I only found out this interesting fact this morning.  Given how long the UK version has been around you'd think I would have run across him someplace before.

Just Imagine.

I was just looking at someone's favourites over on Deviantart.  One of them was some fanart of Starfire and Wonder Girl from the Teen Titans.  The artist drew what I thought was a rather African-American looking Starfire, and the thought came to mind of Beyoncé playing her in a movie.  And with that thought came the thought of the howls of indignation that would probably result in the dumber and, to be blunt, more racist section of comic book fandom.   They would ignore the fact that Starfire, being an alien, doesn't fit into human concepts of race, and decide that the character is white.  All one has to do is look at the idiot comments that came from some Hunger Games fans when one of the characters  was portrayed by an African-American actress in the movie adaptation.  Apparently the fact the character was described as having dark brown skin in the novel somehow eluded their grasp, and they thought she was a cute little white girl.

(Beyoncé would obviously be the wrong choice to play Starfire in a Teen Titans movie, being too old, but would be a good choice if the character was portrayed in a context where she was older.)

Goodbye, Joe.

I don't remember when I started reading comics.  But a good hunk of my early comic reading was war comics, a genre that's largely defunct.  Most of them were DC, and a lot of them were drawn by Joe Kubert.  Kubert died over the weekend at age 85.  Even at that advanced age he was still working, still doing what he'd first done in his early teens.  Besides his own work Kubert helped aspiring comic artists through his Kubert School, founded in 1976.  His sons Andy and Adam followed him into the business, and there were traces of their father's distinctive style in their work. 

Another important figure from my childhood gone.  Unfortunately I expect to see several others pass away in the near future.

Harry Potter And The Animator's Storyboard?

This week sees the debute of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, the final big screen adaptation of JK Rowling's ultra popular book series.  Hearing a news report this morning on the film made me wonder if there was ever any attempt to make a Potter cartoon series.  It seems highly likely that it was done.  Many franchises have hit the TV screen in cartoon form.  Some were successful, such as the 1980s cartoon version of Ghostbuters and the current Star Wars:  The Clone Wars series.  Others never made it to air, such as the proposed cartoon version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite a short pilot animation that included voice work from much of the cast of the TV series.  Then there are such bizarre examples as Rambo and the Forces of Freedom, based on the Stallone movies.  Perhaps Rowling didn't like the idea of material being produced that wasn't directly based on the books, as the movies were.

For that matter I wonder if there was ever a pitch for a Harry Potter ongoing comic book.  Again this would obviously have revolved around stories not created by Rowling, which is perhaps why it didn't happen.

scans_daily Gets Zapped.

I've mentioned the Livejournal scans_daily here several times. It's a place for presented comic book scans and commenting on the content, especially the frequent silliness of comics and the comics biz itself. But when I went to check out the latest entries tonight I got a screen stating the journal had been suspended. Apparently someone made a copyright complaint against it. Too bad, especially since a huge amount of commentary on comic books and the comics industry has probably been lost. Given that the comm has been running for years and has had posts from comic book insiders like writer Gail Simone it's surprising it would get the chop now. Did someone like DC head honcho Dan Didio finally get pissed off at being criticised so much? His counterpart at Marvel Joe Quesada? Artist Greg Land, a frequent target for his dubious practice of using tracings of porn actresses instead of actually drawing freehand? Guess we'll have to stay tuned to find out.

Here's Johnny!

I've been hanging around Scans Daily quite a bit lately. For some reason this resulted in me thinking about an early example of the work of John Byrne.

Before Byrne joined up with Marvel and eventually became famous for his work with Chris Claremont on the X Men he worked for Charlton Comics. One of the titles he did was Charlton's colour comic adaptation of Space: 1999. (Charlton also produced a black and white magazine size comic of the series as well.) Issue 6 not only featured artwork by Byrne but he wrote the story as well. Frankly I think it's one of the better stories from the comic, featuring Commander Koenig nearly getting killed when an artifact from an ancient war hits his Eagle. Someone I went to grade school with gave me that issue. But it wasn't until years later that I realised that Byrne wrote himself into the story, a self insert to use a term from fanfiction. As you can see from the scan above and the photo of Byrne it's quit obvious Koenig's co-pilot in the story is based on Byrne's appearance. But even more amusing is that he didn't go to much trouble to hide the fact, naming the character Burns. This of course went right over my 8 year old head.

As a fan of Space: 1999 I ended up getting a subscription to the comic. Unfortunately it was cancelled just after I received my first issue, issue 7, which included their take on the second season opener, "The Metamorph." As I remember it I was sent a slip for changing the remainder of my subscription to something else, but while I sent it in I never saw another issue of whatever it was I decided to take in replacement. That's not a huge surprise, as Charlton apparently was already having problems, as it cancelled much of it's lineup in the late '70s. They eventually sold most of their superhero characters to DC, some of whom still exist in one form or another today such as the Blue Beetle.

June 2, 2008 Addenda:

One thing I had forgotten about when I wrote this post is that John Byrne wrote for the actual TV series Space: 1999. The British TV writer of the same name that is, who unfortuately passed away in April this year. He wrote or co-wrote more scripts for the series than any other writer, including the popular Season One episodes "Force of Life" and "Voyager's Return." His post 1999 credits include creating, and writing scripts for, the long running British TV series Heartbeat. It's funny that two people with the same name would produce material for the same property.

Dave Cockrum, RIP.

Sad news to report. Comic book artist Dave Cockrum has died of diabetes related complications. Cockrum worked on numerous titles over the years, but is probably most remembered for his role in turning the X Men from a second string comic property into the juggernaut it would become in the 1980s. Cockrum also played a major role in setting the tone for DC's Legion of Superheroes with his early '70s run as artist on their title. Peter David has a post on Cockrum' death here.

Angelina Jolie, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I was in McNally Robinson today and spent some time browsing through the comic collections. One of the ones I thumbed through was the trade paperback of Marvel's Secret War, not to be confused with Secret Wars, Marvel's 1980s crossover miniseries that introduced Spider Man's black symbiote costume that eventually joined with some other guy and became Venom.(If you're not a comic book fan that last bit likely has you shaking your head.) One of the characters introduced in this series is Daisy Johnson, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who can create earthquakes, and just happens to be the daughter of long running Marvel villain Mr. Hyde.(Long running indeed, since Hyde first appeared way back in 1963.)

And she looks like Angelina Jolie. Quite literally. If you didn't pick up on this instantly you've probably been living in a cave for the last 10 years. In one way I'm surprised they'd do that in our litigious age. Jolie might object to her likeness being used without her permission in a continuing character, since the character has appeared post Secret War. On the other hand this isn't the first time Marvel has done something like this. Justin Hammer, a long running foe of Iron Man's, was all but certainly modeled physically after Peter Cushing, the veteran British actor who appeared in numerous Hammer horror films and as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. For that matter the Marvel version of Hercules, who first appeared in the 1960s, was probably based on Steve Reeves' portrayal of the character.

As for the series itself the art is cool, but I found the actual story a little blah. In it Nick Fury recruits several Marvel heroes for a secret mission into Latveria when the US government refuses to take action against a terrorist plot being planned by Latveria's Prime Minister.(See what happens when you don't read comics? I had no idea that Dr. Doom had been deposed, yet again, as despot of Latveria.) Unfortunately his actions come back to bite him in the rear, as is often the case in covert ops. As this takes place in the regular Marvel Universe this story features the classic white dude WW2 vet with an eye patch Nick Fury, versus the Nick Fury in Marvel's Ultimate line who is a black dude.

With an eyepatch.

On the same eye no less. Geez, why not at least switch eyes?

Included are excerpts from Fury's personal computer files, and I had to smile at the entry for Jimmy Woo. It subtly acknowledges the fact that Woo is no spring chicken, something no doubt intended to make older Marvel fans smile. After all Woo first appeared the late 1950s as an opponent of the Yellow Claw, and apparently current Marvel continuity has him being around in that era. Jasper Stilwell also appears, another nice surprise for long suffering Marvel fans.

While we're talking about Angelina Jolie and comics, here's a suggestion for the braintrust at Marvel's movie division if they stumble across this post. Angelina Jolie as the Black Widow. Seriously, I could imagine her as Natasha Romanov.

Superman, Confused?

Probably not. But there are some contradictory ideas about the Man of Steel floating about right now. On the one hand you have Stephen Skelton, whose book The Gospel According to the World's Greatest Superhero claims that Jerry Siegel and Toronto born Joe Shuster deliberately fashioned the character after the story of Jesus Christ. Given that Siegel and Shuster were Jews this seems a bit unlikely. New York Rabbi Simcha Weinstein thinks that the Old Testament inspired them, not the New. Others have suggested that Supes was Siegel and Shuster's response to a world in which facism and Nazism were on the rise, which as Jews they may have found especially threatening.

On the other hand you have speculation about Superman as gay icon. Along with this we have debate over whether the new movie Superman Returns is macho enough to appeal to teenage boys, and tittilating talk about the efforts apparently taken to make sure no one is offended by Superman's crotch, including rumours of computer graphics being used to make it look less prominent. The idea of a gay Superman is a bit amusing given his romantic relationship with Lois Lane, long at the core of the Superman mythos. In recent years Superman has actually been married to Lois, although last I heard their marriage was on the rocks. I think it might have had something to do with mind control, but don't quote me on that.

As for Superman and matters of faith it seems to me that Superman might just as easily be an agnostic or even an atheist as anything else. After all he came from a world destroyed by a horrible catastrophy. He himself has what could be considered godlike powers, yet knows his own personal flaws, fears, and limitations. And he's had encounters with godlike beings who use their powers to commit acts of evil. So he might be a little skeptical of the idea of a Supreme Being being a proper figure for veneration. On the other hand Frank Miller, in his classic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, has a scene that implies Supes might worship the Earth, given that he refers to it as mother.

Wondering what he might think of Nick Cage calling his kid Kal El I decided to visit Peter David's website. Nothing there as I write this. But if you're familiar with Mr. David perhaps like me you wonder how he has the time to regularly write stuff for his website. This guy writes books, comic books, TV scripts, and who knows what all else. You'd think the last thing he'd want to do in his spare time is write yet more stuff.