Michael May's Blog, page 184
August 16, 2013
August 15, 2013
Daily Panel | To the Bat... trunk?
Remember the other day when I said that Batman operated out of his living room in the early days? I wasn't exaggerating. No Batcave, just a trunk where he keeps his costume.
From Detective Comics #30 by Gardner Fox and Bob Kane.
Tarzan 101 | Tarzan of the Television
Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.
We already discussed Sol Lesser's unsuccessful attempt to create a Tarzan TV show with Gordon Scott, and briefly mentioned that Sy Weintraub was the one to finally make that happen. Here then is a rundown of the four live-action series and two cartoons about everyone's favorite jungle hero.
Tarzan (1966-68; 57 episodes)
When Weintraub's film Tarzan, Mike Henry turned down the opportunity to carry the role to TV, Weintraub went back to someone who'd tested earlier for the film role, Ron Ely. Unlike Lesser's proposed series (which featured Tarzan, Jane, and Boy in their jungle treehouse), Weintraub's made Tarzan a solo act, but more fully embraced Burroughs' literate, articulate version of the character. There was no Boy, per se, but child actor Manuel Padilla Jr - who'd been in the first two Mike Henry movies as two different characters - returned for the TV show as a third, an orphan named Jai.
Like the Batman TV series from the same time, Tarzan attracted a lot of celebrity guest stars. Famous people who appeared on the show include Helen Hayes, James Earl Jones, Ethel Merman, George Kennedy, and Diana Ross. Former Tarzan Jock Mahoney even showed up to play a bad guy.
Apparently the show was expensive to produce, so it only lasted two seasons, but that was enough to give Ely the longest running time playing Tarzan.
Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1976-84; 36 episodes)
Filmation produced this Saturday morning cartoon version that was extremely faithful to Burroughs' novels in, as Griffin puts it, both "spirit and details." I caught a few episodes of Ron Ely's Tarzan in syndication as a kid, but my Tarzan was Filmation's version. Really wish it was available on home video.
Tarzán (1991-94; 75 episodes)
Producers Max and Micheline Keller bought the rights to a Tarzan show in the late '80s and created a pilot called Tarzan in Manhattan. It has Tarzan (Joe Lara) visiting New York City to rescue Cheeta from Jan-Michael Vincent, who wants to use the chimpanzee for medical research. While there, Tarzan meets computer-wiz/taxi-driver Jane (Kim Crosby) and her dad Archie (Tony Curtis), a grizzled private eye. Naturally, Tarzan saves Cheeta and decides to stay in the city to fight crime with Jane and her dad. Perhaps fortunately, it didn't get picked up.
The Kellers didn't give up though and came up with another take: a half-hour syndicated series starring Wolf Larson. This one was set in the jungle and Larson played a grunty version of the ape man complete with treehouse. Jane (Lydie Denier) was a French environmentalist who helped him defend the jungle from invaders looking to exploit its environment. The show made Larson the guy with the second longest running time after Ely (who, like Jock Mahoney in his show, showed up to play a bad guy in Larson's).
Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996-97; 20 episodes)
The Kellers got one more syndicated series out of the ape man with Tarzan in Manhattan's Joe Lara returning to the role. Also set in the jungle, Epic Adventures went for the fantasy feel of Burroughs' books and featured elements like Pellucidar, Opar, the Forbidden City, and the Lost Empire. A lot of Burroughs characters also showed up, like D'Arnot, Nicholai Rokoff, Countess Olga de Coude, Paulvitch, Achmet Zek, Mugambi, the Leopard Men, and of course La of Opar.
The Legend of Tarzan (2001-03; 39 episodes)
Based on Disney's Tarzan movie, this cartoon also went to Burroughs' novels for its inspiration and offered Disney versions of La, Samuel Philander, One-Punch Mulligan, and even Edgar Rice Burroughs himself.
Tarzan (2003; 8 episodes)
Really don't know why people keep wanting to stick Tarzan in New York City (well, I do; I just wish they'd realize it's a dumb idea for a series), but that's what Warner Brothers did for this version with Travis Fimmel as Tarzan and Sarah Wayne Callies as Jane. It was best known though for being where Lucy Lawless and Mitch Pileggi landed after Xena and The X-Files, respectively. They played Tarzan's aunt and uncle who battled over custody of him and his inheritance. Sounds thrilling.
August 14, 2013
Daily Panel | Batmobile, Mark I
Batman's first ride wasn't nearly as cool as his later ones. One of the fun things about revisiting the early Batman stories is to see him develop from a one-man show operating out of his living room into the magnificent icon he would become.
From Detective Comics #29 by Gardner Fox and Bob Kane.
Tarzan 101 | Walt Disney's Tarzan
Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.
I'm not sure why Disney's Tarzan gets a whole chapter to itself, but Griffin does pack in a lot of information about it, starting with its place in the general Disney animation renaissance of the '90s and ending with the direct-to-DVD sequels, Tarzan & Jane (2002) and Tarzan II (2005).
He does include some interesting facts that I didn't know though, like how the lead animator on the Tarzan character was Glen Keane, son of Family Circus' Bil Keane. It wasn't Glen's first work for Disney (he'd also been lead animator for Ariel, the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas), but he was on sabbatical at the time in France and only worked on Tarzan under the condition that he could do it from Disney's campus in Paris.
Griffin also points out some cool features in the background design. The gorillas' environment, for example, was designed to be comforting, with "soft curves, muted color, and diffused sunlight." The humans' camp, on the other hand, had bright, direct sunlight and was surrounded by "tall, straight bamboo, suggesting the skyscrapers of a cityscape."
I also didn't realize that Phil Collins' songs were originally intended to be sung by the cast. I always figured that the intention was to recreate Elton John's success with The Lion King, but apparently Disney didn't sign Collins on as the singer until after they heard his demo tracks.
Griffin also confirms something I'd already noticed about Disney's Tarzan: that its great strength is its ability to show Tarzan interacting with his ape family in a believable, powerful way. That's something that had only been tried twice before - in Tarzan of the Apes (1918) and Greystoke (1983) - and never completely successfully. Tarzan's adoptive mother Kala is a vital character in his origin story and the Disney version is the only one to show how important she was to the ape man. My initial impulse when Disney's Tarzan comes up is to dismiss it (Terk and Tantor are annoying characters and the story grows trite once the humans show up), but it's a worthwhile adaptation if only for the scenes of Tarzan as a young boy.
August 13, 2013
Daily Panel | Batman kills
For the second time in two issues, Batman tosses a bad guy to his death. In Detective Comics #27, he socks the main villain into a vat of acid (and comments, "A fitting ending for his kind"). This time, it's a nameless jewel thief. And in case the diminishing "Yaaaaaa" doesn't make clear what's going on, the story spells it out later when two police rush into the scene who were attracted by "the body of the man who went over the roof."
I don't completely understand why it's important to a lot of readers that Batman doesn't kill. In fact, one of the things that ultimately killed my interest in Batman and made me question corporate superhero comics in general was the amount of attention the comics give to this concept. The Joker's always escaping death to return later was a fun aspect of superhero comics until the genre "matured" and storytellers started wanting to comment on it. Batman developed an explicit No Kill clause in his moral code, which created more commentary, occasionally between Batman and another character.
The thing is: the No Kill clause really is dumb, especially as stories get darker and villains get more violent. At some point, Batman becomes complicit in the suffering and deaths of the Joker's victims because he refuses to do the one thing that he's equipped to do, but the police can't. And it's also dumb to have that pointed out in the comics themselves, because there's no good, satisfying answer for it.
[From Detective Comics #28 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.]
August 12, 2013
Daily Panel | Outlier
From Outliers #1 by Erik T. Johnson. The comic is on sale this week (published by Alternative Comics) and I highly recommend it.
New Kill All Monsters art and other updates
Got a fragrant potpourri of Kill All Monsters news for you this morning, starting with a look at some of the cards Jason made for Kickstarter levels that include sketches. Rather than try to sketch directly in books, Jason went all out and had special cards printed so that he could do something a little nicer.
Speaking of Kickstarter, now that it's open to Canadian projects, Jason's got the itch to run one on his own, which means you'll be seeing another Kill All Monsters comic sooner than expected. Before we release Volume 2, we're going to put together a one-shot single issue (probably around 40 story pages) that expands on the world a little while also tying into the story we're telling in the graphic novels. I don't want to give too much away except that it's inspired by this:
That's a piece that Jason drew for the Monstrosity anthology and it's not the only giant robot pinup he's done lately. He also did this one for this year's Baltimore Comic-Con yearbook, which has a Usagi Yojimbo theme. Mike Spicer did the colors. Really wish I was going to Baltimore this year.
Finally, Jeff Bouchard from Comic Spectrum wrote a very nice review of Kill All Monsters, Volume 1, giving it 4 out of 5 stars, saying that he got a Kamandi feel from it (very cool), and writing that it "provides a visceral experience from the over-the-top battles between monster and mech at the same time weaving deeper plot points that leave you thinking and wondering where the story will go." Thanks, Jeff!
August 11, 2013
Daily Panel | It is the Bat-Man!
I'm fascinated by Batman and Superman's different methods of motivating people. Superman inspires positively through hope, where Batman uses the negative tactic of fear. It's also interesting to me that Superman had to grow into his role, but Batman was a symbol of terror from the get-go, as seen in this panel by Bill Finger and Bob Kane. It's Batman's very first appearance in costume from Detective Comics #27.
I suspect that both characters chose fear early on (though Batman more explicitly so) because it's the easier, more intuitive approach. Take parenting, for example. The quickest, easiest way to get a child to behave a certain way is to threaten and terrify him. But it's not the best way, or the most rewarding, and it doesn't yield long-term results. Eventually the child will grow to the point where she can rebel. That probably explains the differences between the iconic depictions of Metropolis and Gotham. Metropolis is a shining, progressive city, while Gotham is still a crime-ridden slimehole.
I used to think that the difference between the cities was about power. Superman has the power to make everyone behave, while poor, powerless Batman has to scrape by any way he can. That theory doesn't hold up though. For one thing, Superman explicitly doesn't use his power to tyrannically control Metropolis. For another, Batman actually does have a great deal of power in his wealth and fame. He could be using those advantages to change Gotham, but he's not. In fact, he undermines his own ability to do it that way by pretending to be a lazy, hedonistic bastard.
This isn't to say that I hate Batman. I like him a lot precisely because he's a dark, terrifying figure. And since we're always attracted to things that frighten us (as long as they're not too scary), that makes Batman cool. We also probably need Batman as much as we need Superman. If Superman represents what humanity should strive to achieve, Batman represents what we should be running away from.
There are some interesting twists on this though where exceptions prove the rule. One is the campy Batman of the '60s where Batman is portrayed as inspirational. It's especially obvious in the Adam West show where Batman constantly and explicitly tells Robin and others how to be a good citizen. Appropriately, the beautiful, fair city of Gotham reflects that.
Another exception is the Christopher Nolan trilogy. Batman tries to serve as an inspirational hero in Batman Begins, decides he can't in The Dark Knight, then finally figures out how in The Dark Knight Rises. The irony though is that he decides the only way to make Batman an inspirational symbol is to kill him and not be him any more. Bruce Wayne can't figure out how to make Batman a living, active icon of hope, so he retires. We're left wondering if Robin might have more luck, but the message of the trilogy isn't optimistic about that.
In spite of Batman's being a negative, ineffective figure, most people I know would rather be him than Superman. That's because we can relate to him more. We'll never have all the power that Superman does and it's really hard to be as good as what he represents. But Batman... we think we can do that. If we gather enough wealth and enough human power, we're pretty sure we can get what we want. And gathering wealth and power is a lot more immediately satisfying than trying to be better people. So yeah, I understand the attraction. The thing we have to remember though is that it doesn't work.
August 10, 2013
Daily Panel | The Atabithian Aesthetic
From Trillium #1 by Jeff Lemire.
