Will Pfeifer's Blog, page 17

Buy My Comics, Make Me Rich: TEEN TITANS #15

While you're out shopping today, picking up those last-minute gifts, be sure to swing by your local comic book shop and purchase a copy of the brand-new issue of TEEN TITANS. The writing comes courtesy of Scott Lobdell and yours truly, with Ian Churchill, Miguel Mendonca, Norm Rapmund and Daniel Brown taking care of the art. 
The story is a tie-in with the big Robin War event taking place in DC's comics, and you can get a sneak preview of the issue here .
Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. (And seriously, buy that issue of the Titans. My kid's gonna need braces one of these days.)

Movies I Watched in November, Part 2

Here's the eagerly awaited (?) second installment of the movies I watched in November...

 I’d somehow managed to miss this 1979 apocalyptic teen film all these years, reading rave reviews (especially one in Danny Peary’s seminal book, “Cult Movies 2”) but never getting my hands on a copy. Thankfully, Turner Classic Movies came through once again, airing a widescreen, uncut, hi-def copy late one night. Even more thankfully, the movie lived up to – and even exceeded – my considerable expectations. It’s one of the darkest, most compelling films about teens I’ve ever seen, focusing on the troubled (to put it mildly) youths of the planned community of New Granada. The adults, in an effort to maximize profits, scuttle plans for a movie theater and roller rink, forcing the bored kids to congregate in a bare-bones Quonset hut, which only cranks up the tension.  When the thrills of the Quonset hut aren’t enough, our heroes (including a very young Matt Dillon) resort to the usual: vandalism, fights, drugs and some unnerving awkward gunplay. The pressure keeps building and building until one night, when all the adults gather at the school to discuss the “youth problem,” the teens lock them inside and blow up virtually every car in the parking lot. It’s like the climax of “Rock ‘N Roll High School” played seriously, and it manages to be frightening and freeing all at once. Definitely check this one out if you get a chance – it puts the tepid teen movies of John Hughes to shame.
 
Re-watched this 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson movie thinking we were doing an Out of Theaters podcast about it. That episode hasn’t happened (not yet, anyway), but I was glad I gave it another look. It’s a big, crazy, overly ambitious movie that, to be honest, is a bit of a mess at times, but it’s a glorious mess, the sort of thing you only get from a filmmaker drunk on both his own power and the power of cinema. Inspired by the music of Aimee Mann, “Magnolia” really feels like a symphony of sorts, with rising and falling movements and themes (in the form of characters, plotlines and dialogue) that echo and contrast with each other. It all builds to a frankly amazing climax, foreshadowed by the sequence when all the characters sing Mann’s “Wise Up” but really coming to life when, in a biblical event (hinted at by numerous references to 8:2 throughout the film) thousands of frogs fall from the sky. It’s a ballsy narrative move to say the least, but it works perfectly, releasing the almost unbearable tension that’s been building for the past two hours. The coda that follows is just-right, too ending the movie with a shot of a genuine smile from actress Melora Walters that acts as the perfect period to a movie that, until that quiet finale, has been a series of bold exclamation points.

Watched this one for the podcast ( listen here ) in ourattempt to cash in on the “Hunger Games” juggernaut. Now, I’ve only seen snippets of “The Hunger Games” movies as I’ve skidded past them channel surfing, but I think I can safely say that 2000’s “Battle Royale” is superior to that other (and later) kids-killing-kids movie in every way. For one thing, the scenes of “The Hunger Games” I have seen sugarcoat the carnage with blurry filmmaking, fast cuts and a general sense that Katniss (Really? Katniss?) isn’t some cold-blooded murderer. “Battle Royale,” on the other hand, starts the killing before the kids even leave the school, and as soon as they’re armed (with everything from a machine gun to a frying pan), they’re slaying each other. What’s more important is that, any comparison to teen-girl-lit-flix aside, “Battle Royale” is one hell of a movie, full of great character moments, suitably over-the-top teen melodrama, strikingly choreographed action and a jet black humor streak a mile long. It’s funny, it’s horrifying and it looks beautiful – as strange as that might sound about a movie piled with the bodies of dead teens. Released a year after the shootings in Columbine, this was  impossible to see in the States for years, something only talked about in hushed tones on message boards and in cult film books. Now it’s easy to see – it’s on Netflix, for corn’s sake! – but thankfully, this isn’t one of those movies that’s only interesting because it’s forbidden. It’s a genuinely good movie well worth watching – but not one for the kiddies.

Movies I Watched in November, Part 1

December is already past the halfway point, but it's not too late to share the first (of three!) posts about the movies I watched in November, is it? (I sure as hell hope not!)

I re-watched this one for our pre-“Spectre” episode of Out of Theaters (listen here), and I’d forgotten just how damned entertaining this Bond reboot was. Daniel Craig is praised for bringing back a certain gritty nastiness (or is that nasty grittiness) to the character, but he’s funny too, whether it’s wrecking someone’s care after he’s been mistaken for a valet or cracking wise under torture. A fine return to form for the series, paving the way for 2012’s even better (in my humble opinion) “Skyfall.” Of course, before we got to that movie, we had to go through…

Not as good as “Casino Royale” or “Skyfall,” but not as bad as its reputation, either. One of the few (if not the only) Bond films to be a direct sequel to what preceded it, it slows things way down (after delivering one of the best Bond car chases in its opening) and focuses on the grief of Bond after losing Vesper, the apparent love of his life. There are some great set pieces, and Craig is even better than in “Casino,” but it just doesn’t have the same punch. Still worth a look, though.
 
Allie’s obsession with all things Potter continues, so now that she’s finished with the books, we’re plowing through the movies. This is her favorite so far, possibly because it contains the first hints of romance, hopefully not because Robert Pattinson guest stars as the handsome-but-doomed Cedric Diggory. (Pattinson’s fine, but I really don’t want anything “Twilight” coming into the house.) My review? After the clumsy first two all the Potter films are pretty good, and though this one gets a little deep into nerd lore with the tournament and the different schools, it’s consistently entertaining, and the end, where you-know-who makes his big appearance, is genuinely spooky.  Another one watched for an Out of Theaters episode ( listen here ), and, believe it or not, the first time I’ve seen this Oscar-winning semi-classic. It’s legendary (notorious) as the first (and only) X-rated movie to win the Best Picture statue, though these days it might land a PG-13. The subject matter is sleazy enough, focusing on a naïve Texan (Jon Voight) who dreams of coming to New York and landing an easy gig as a kept fella to some rich lady. Naturally, it all goes wrong instantly (for one thing, he ends up paying his first intended customer) and before long he’s broke, homeless and hanging out with Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a small-time con man who’s even more pathetic than he is. Very much a movie of its time (1969), “Midnight Cowboy” is loaded with experimental-film-style flashbacks to Voight’s troubled (and confusing) past, plus at least one party sequence that’s trying to capture some sort of Warhol-era grooviness. Those moments were already cliché in 1969 (Ebert complains about them in his original review), but they’re actually oddly fascinating these days, artifacts of an earlier era. Plus, both Voight and Hoffman are excellent, and the scenes of New York as it edges its way to the hell it became in the 1970s are truly fascinating. One warning: You will get very, very sick of the song “Everybody’s Talkin’.” Trust me on this.

Buy My Comics, Make Me Rich: TEEN TITANS #14

Another issue of TEEN TITANS hits the streets Wednesday, this one another writing team-up between myself and Scott Lobdell, with pencils by Noel Rodriguez, finishes and inks by Art Thibert, breakdowns by Scott McDaniel, colors by Tony Avina, letters by Corey Breen, edits by Paul Kaminski, Mike Cotton and Eddie Berganza, with not one by two covers to choose from. Here's the first by Ethan Van Sciver and Brad Anderson...


And this amusing Looney Tunes variant by Joe Quinones and Spike Brandt...

In either version, you get a pretty action-packed story that starts with our young heroes being carted off to jail (for the myriad crimes they've committed over the course of the last several issues) and ends with a lead-in into DC's brand-new ROBIN WAR crossover event. As you might have read on the internet somewhere, this is indeed my antepenultimate issue of the TITANS, but rest assured there's still plenty of craziness to come before I sign off at the end of 16.

Movies I Watched in October, Part 2

The ground is covered with snow (for now) and Thanksgiving is just a few days away, so I'd say it's about time we wrap up the October movie recaps. Once again, let's make this brief...


Obvious, this one is best seen on a big screen in a crowded theater with a like-minded bunch of midnight movie maniacs wearing various combinations of women's underwear and horror props, but I watched it on a small screen alone, and you know what? It's still a lot of fun. The songs are infectious, and Tim Curry obviously gives a performance for the ages. About the only part that drags is the introduction of Rocky, but things (high) kick back into gear for the finale. One thing I noticed this time around: Besides the obvious reasons (aka talent and looks), Susan Sarandon must've been cast for those wide eyes of hers. Half the fun of the movie is watching her astonished reaction to what's going on around her. We devoted an Out of Theaters podcast to this one, by the way -- listen to it here .


Another rewatch for an episode of Out of Theaters (listen to it here). I've seen this movie dozens of times, including a first-run viewing and another in the early 1990s when one of the first alternate cuts made its debut. Still great stuff, and it's funny how all the criticism about the sets being the only worthwhile element have faded away as critics (and modern audiences) have come to appreciate the deeper themes of the movie and the rich performance of Rutger Hauer, arguably playing the hero of the film.


Here's a horror movie that I'd heard plenty about (including the kee-razy twist ending, which I won't spoil here) but had somehow never seen. Thankfully, I spotted a copy of the limited edition Blu-ray (!) at the local used video store and, after watching it in a bit of pre-Halloween prep, I was not disappointed. It's just the sort of early 1980s slasher movie I love, one savvy enough to rip off the central elements of the genre -- summer camp, misbehaving teens, mysterious killer -- but idiosyncratic enough to give those elements a personal twist that makes everything that much stranger. In this case, it's the central character, a virtually mute girl named Angela (Felissa Rose) who is at the center of a series of increasingly gruesome (and clumsily staged) murders. Like I said, I won't spoil the twist, which arrives in the very last frames of the film, but I will say that there are enough plot holes, weird undercurrents and goofball performances to keep you entertained until the big twist arrives. Also, once you've seen the movie, be sure to listen to the How Did This Get Made podcast episode devoted to it. It takes them 15 minutes just to sort out what the heck is happening in the first scene of the movie.


Another great early '80s horror movie, though this one's a lot better made (and acted and shot and scored) than "Sleepaway Camp." Director John Landis hits just about the perfect combination of comedy and terror, and it remains one of the best movies about a regular, likable guy who gets involved in monstrous, supernatural circumstances. Rick Baker's special effects still look amazing after more than three decades, and because they're practical, they don't have the instantly dated sheen of computer effects from just a few years (hell, months) ago. But what ties the whole movie together are the performances of the three leads -- David Naughton as the werewolf, Jenny Agutter as the nurse who falls in love with him and Griffin Dunne as his murdered best friend. Withou them, "An American Werewolf in London" would just be some good (hell, great) special effects and an ironic soundtrack. With them, it's a genuinely involving movie that just happens to have a werewolf in it. Keep an eye out, by the way, for the late, great Rik Mayall of "Young Ones" fame as one of the patrons of the The Slaughtered Lamb.

Buy My Comics, Make Me Rich: CATWOMAN: A CELEBRATION OF 75 YEARS

The long-awaited (by me, at least) collection of the Catwoman issues Pete Woods and I collaborated on won't arrive in stores for a few more weeks, but in the meantime, if you want a Woods/Pfeifer story you can put on your bookshelf, pick up a copy of the brand-new hardcover "Catwoman: A Celebration of 75 Years," which hits comic book store shelves this week.

The more than 400 pages span the entirety of Catwoman's career, from her first appearance in BATMAN #1 (way, way back in 1940) straight up to stories from last year. Along the way, there's some great work by such luminaries as "Bob Kane," Denny O'Neill, Kurt Schaffenberger, Ed Brubaker, Cameron Stewart, Darwyn Cooke and others. By sheer coincidence, two of my favorite Catwoman stories of all time are included: "The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne" by Alan Brennart, Joe Staton and George Freeman; and "The Shadow of the Cat"/"The Cat Who Would Be King  by Len Wein, Irv Norvick and Bob Smith. That two-parter was something I read when I first started collecting comics in the early 1980s, and I still remember it fondly. Nice to have it in the same book as a story I wrote.

The cover, by the way, is by Adam Hughes, who I was lucky enough to have provide the covers for every issue of CATWOMAN I wrote a few years back. She looks pretty damn good, doesn't she?

Movies I Watched in October, Part 1

I'm way, way behind on this post, so let's get through this as quickly as possible. Couple of sentences each, tops! And, without any further ado...



I've seen it before, of course, but watched it again for a recording of our Out of Theaters podcast (listen to the episode here). I have to say, I'm not a huge fan. It's scary, sort of, but more because director William Friedkin beats the audience into submission with loud noises and "shocking" visuals than anything else. If you want to see a really scary Devil movie, stick with "Rosemary's Baby." It's much, much better.


Watched it yet again with Allie. Hilarious. As I write this, the Writer's Guild of American has just released its list of "The 101 Funniest Screenplays," and "Horsefeathers" wasn't anywhere to be found. (The great "Duck Soup" did make the list, along with the less-than-great "A Night at the Opera.") Proof, of course, that lists are meaningless.

Here's one I'd never seen before, a whip-smart 1962 thriller about the supernatural goings on at a British college. Great performances, wonderful atmosphere and a genuinely unnerving climax moved this to the top tier of my "Little Known Horror Classics" list. Be sure to catch it, either on Amazon Prime or next year when TCM inevitably reruns it.


Really enjoyable, consistently exciting and even a bit inspirational, this Ridley Scott science fiction epic (accent on the "science") deserves all the praise it's getting -- and it's definitely Scott's best film since his early '80s heyday of "Alien" and "Blade Runner." Check it out on the biggest screen you can find -- it's that kind of movie.


Solid documentary about Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, two Israeli cousins who wanted to be movie makers in the worst way -- and that's exactly what they did. The meat of this doc comes from the outrageous clips -- no-budget action epics and limp sex comedies with a few oddball high-profile attempts mixed into the bunch ("Superman IV," anyone?). The punchline is saved 'til the end, when we learn that Golan and Globus refused to appear in this movie because, after hearing it was in production, they decided to make their own doc -- and managed to film it, edit it and release it before "Electric Boogaloo" was even finished. Now that's how you make a movie!

Coming up next: Los Angeles 2019, a wolf in merrie olde England and a couple of Halloween movies that will have you shivering in  antici .... pation.

Buy My Comics, Make Me Rich: P. CRAIG RUSSELL'S MURDER MYSTERIES AND OTHER STORIES, GALLERY EDITION

Normally, in these self-promoting posts, I ask you to shell out a couple of bucks for a single issue of a comic book or, every so often, 15 or 20 dollars for a trade paperback. But today, devoted readers, I'm asking you to dip a bit deeper into your waller -- one-hundred twenty-five dollars deep, to be exact. But I promise you, if you're a fan of beautiful comic book artwork in a truly outstanding edition, it's worth it. Hell, it's a bargain!


That's because the book I'm talking about, "P. Craig Russell's Murder Mysteries and Other Stories," is presented in a colossal "Gallery Edition" from Dark Horse Comics, and believe me, this is no ordinary comic -- or even book. You can see just how big it is in the above photo, where it sits with a normal-sized comic book -- which looks truly tiny in comparison. That's because the Gallery Edition, like the Artist's Editions from IDW, showcase the original artwork of the comics, presented at its original size. What's more, the pages are show in high-resolution color, meaning all the corrections, crop marks and brushstrokes are visible. It's like looking at a page of original art -- which makes reading the stories in this format a whole new experience.

I've known Craig since I attended Kent State back in the 1980s, and I've been fortunate enough to work with him twice -- and both stories are in here. The story leading off the book, coincidentally, is "Art Walk," an eight-pager we collaborated on for the final issue of DC's SPIRIT series...


A panel from that story -- Craig's jaw-dropping depiction of the Sistine Chapel -- even serves as the book's endpapers (and features my friend and old college roommate Joe Hendry as the guy with the broom)...


The Gallery Edition also includes "Command Performance," a story I wrote for the HELLBOY: WEIRD TALES that Craig drew, bringing the restless spirits of a Grand Guignol theater to life -- or back to life, as the case may be...


The stories I wrote only take up 16 of the 232 pages in the book. The rest is filled out with works written by Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde, O. Henry, Neil Gaiman and other little-known, obscure talents. There's also plenty written by Craig himself, and even the ones he didn't write were adapted by him, with the distinctive prose of each writer brought to imaginative visual life.

I can't resist directing your attention to one other story in the book, "Human Remains," which is based on a Clive Barker story. Craig drew this one when I was still at Kent, and my friend and roommate Dave Tillett served as the model for the main character while I and some of my other buddies posed for the supporting cast. That's me, many years and more than a few pounds ago, saying "THE MAN DIDN'T TELL YOU TO LEAVE" in the first panel,  and that's my old friend Eric Larson wielding the knife in the second panel. (Everyone ends up dead a page or so later, of course.)


I realize very few of you are willing to spend more than $100 on a book of comic book art, but really, this one is worth all that and more. It's a thick, huge, beautifully produced volume, and Craig's intricate art is the sort of thing that really benefits from the format. If you want to see more, check out the official Dark Horse Comics preview here .

By the way, this one's not available digitally -- for what I'm guessing are obvious reasons.

Buy My Comics, Make Me Rich -- and Listen to My Podcast!

Two quick pop culture items to promote today:


First of all TEEN TITANS #12 hits the stands, written by Scott Lobdell and yours truly, with pencils by Ian Churchill, inks by Norm Rapmund, Colors by Tony Avina and editing duties by Paul Kaminski, Mike Cotton and Eddie Berganza. This one focuses on a handful of the Titans, including Superboy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Red Robin. Covers courtesy of Ricken (above) and Mike McKeon and Dave McKaig (Green Lantern variant, seen here ).


Then, when you're done reading the TITANS, it's time to listen to our extra-special bonus episode of the Out of Theaters podcast, released on Oct. 21, 2015, to commemorate the arrival of Marty McFly, Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty's unconscious girlfriend in the far-off future world of today. You can find it on iTunes or Stitcher (as with all our fine Out of Theaters podcasts) or you can listen by clicking here .

By the way, if you enjoy that episode (and really, why wouldn't you?), be sure to check out a few of our other eps as well. We've covered everything from "Gone with the Wind" to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Death Wish" to "Taxi Driver" (well, I guess those two aren't too far apart -- unless you're talking about quality). Each time, we choose a classic (or at least much-discussed) movie, then I debate its merits with my co-hosts, Billy Kulpa and Kevin Haas. There's a trivia game, plenty of laughs and some solid film talk. Hell, I'd listen even if I weren't on it. Check it out! Please!

A Tour Through the Art Gallery, Part 7: Kyle Baker

Here's an original Joker sketch I picked up from Kyle Baker during an very small comic book show in Akron during (I think) the winter of early 1988. I'm pretty sure Kyle, who was working on DC's Shadow comic at the time, only charged me a mere ten bucks for this beautifully drawn, paisley-covered clown. 
So that's the sketch. Here's the story that goes with it...

I went to that Akron comic book show while I was a student at nearby Kent State with my good friend and fellow comic book fan, Howie Blecher. (He drove.) Like I said, the convention (really more of a sale than an actual convention) was very small, and Kyle Baker was the only guest there, as I recall. God knows why he was there -- as he said, he lived in New York and traveled to Los Angeles, but the middle of Rust Belt, Ohio, USA, was foreign territory to him. What's more, he had no idea what to do on a Saturday night, alone, in Akron. So Howie and I made a suggestion...
Kent, Ohio, was only about a half-hour away, we told him, and we were friends with comic book artists Craig Russell and Jay Geldhof (still are, in fact), and they'd definitely be up for dinner and drinks. Kyle said that sounded great, but he stressed that he HAD to be back at his hotel that night, however late things went, because he HAD to be at the show Sunday morning. Howie and I said sure, no problem. Half an hour trip. What could possibly go wrong?
So we had dinner and some beers at Craigs, and played the game of Pit (a Kent favorite) long into the night. Sometime around 3 a.m. or so, we decided to call it, and Howie and I got set to drive Kyle back to Akron. Trouble was, all the time we'd been having fun inside Craig's house, outside it had been blizzarding something fierce, and the snow was still coming down heavily as we hit the road. Howie, bless his heart, white-knuckled it all the way to the hotel in Akron, then white-knuckled it back to Kent. I got into bed sometime near dawn, spiritually clutching my new Joker sketch.
Epilogue: A few months later, we ran into Kyle at the Chicago Con. We said hi, reminding him about the fun times at Craig's house and how we almost killed ourselves getting back to his hotel. And his response? "Do I know you?"
Ha! Comic artists!