THE GREATEST VILLAINS OF ALL TIME: DR. MIGUELITO LOVELESS

Hopefully the release of season one of THE WILD, WILD WEST on DVD will erase the utter uselessness of the big screen version from a few years back that starred an outrageously miscast Will Smith, and simultaneously introduce neophytes to the awesome villainy of television’s most unique bad guy. I am, of course, talking about the one and only Doctor Miguelito Loveless.

In case you don’t know what I’m going on about, THE WILD, WILD WEST was perhaps the most bizarre bit of fallout from the spy boom of the mid 1960’s, a fast paced, violent western set in the 1870’s that gene-spliced with the superspy genre to more or less invent the concept of steam-powered high technology. In any given episode, invariably entitled “The Night of the (FILL IN EPISODE’S SUBJECT HERE),” the secret agent duo of dashing tough guy James West (Robert Conrad) and master thespian/disguise virtuoso Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) traveled the country in their tricked-out private train, meting out ass-whuppin’ justice to enemies of America and scoring with the hottest chicks that the Old West had to offer. In other words, they set the Wayback Machine and James Bonded up the place. And, amusingly enough, the show was not cancelled thanks to low ratings; it got the axe due to CBS’ campaign to cut down on much if its violent programming content.

West and Gordon’s adversaries were an eccentric lot, each prepared to unleash some sort of mad scheme to overthrow or undermine the US government, but none stood out more than a three-foot-tall, childlike madman whose skills and achievements were far beyond their time.

Doctor Miguelito Loveless was indeed a dwarf, but his diminutive size served as a sharp counterpoint to his gargantuan intellect; during the course of his ten appearances during the program’s four-year run (four of which are found in season one), Loveless would casually gloss over the minor “trifles” found in his lab, such as the phonograph, the camera, penicillin, the airplane, television, and many others, but his awesome technological leaps pale in comparison to his megalomaniacal endeavors, most of which are fueled by petulant desire for retribution against those who wronged him in some way or made the fatal error of underestimating — and thereby patronizing — him due to his size.

The son of a landed Mexican/Spanish noblewoman and an English father, Loveless has a charmingly aristocratic air about him, and he is unquestionably cultured; frequently seen in the company of Antoinette, a talented harpsichordist and songbird, he often performs lovely duets with the chanteuse and during these moments his tender side is most unguarded. He openly displays a great affection for the smaller life forms and goes out of his way not to harm even a fly, but human antagonists are another story entirely.

Ruthless and homicidal to an alarming degree, Loveless has no qualms whatsoever about committing wholesale mass murder in the most violent and sadistic of ways, yet he is surprisingly not evil; the man is definitely insane and probably what we now recognize as bipolar, but his flouting of the law and basic decency when it suits him is a reflection of a frightening amorality that runs unchecked despite the constant interference from James West and Artemus Gordon.

Monstrous intellect notwithstanding, being as small and feeble as he is can be a major obstacle for Loveless, so he must at times rely on the aid of his giant companion, Voltaire (Richard Kiel, later to be more widely known as Jaws in the James Bond films) and the enormously obese Kitty, the presence of whom only adds to the sideshow-like sight of the
wobbly little fellow.

It is difficult to sum up just what it is about this character that makes him a classic without showing you some of the episodes that involve his chicanery, but one thing that is indisputable is that Loveless would have been swiftly forgotten if not for the actor who played him, namely the late Michael Dunn. Dunn was a classically trained stage actor and cabaret performer who suffered lifelong pain common to the complications of dwarfism, and when he was tapped to play Doctor Loveless he was already an accomplished Broadway and off-Broadway player. Other than Miguelito Loveless, Dunn is best known to cult TV geeks for his turn as Alexander in the “Plato’s Stepchildren” segment of the original STAR TREK series.

Dunn as the tormented Alexander in "Plato's Stepchildren."

Notably, that episode has gone down in American broadcasting history for containing TV’s first interracial kiss. Leave it to that intergalactic gash-hound, Captain Kirk, to blaze a trail where no man had gone before (well, not on television, anyway…).

GASP! Captain Kirk paves the way for interracial osh-osh on TV!!!

Tragically, Dunn died from an overdose of prescription medicine, a death that some feel might have been a suicide. Fortunately, we have DVD to preserve his brilliance forever, and if you have never seen his work I strongly urge you to go out and rent THE WILD, WILD WEST season one immediately.

DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE: A REEVALUATION OF MIER ZARCHI’S I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

In the history of cinema there has been a handful of films that have drawn a firestorm of controversy over the purportedly offensive subject matter that the filmmakers chose to present to an unsuspecting audience, among them classics such as THE BIRTH OF A NATION, FREAKS, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, BABY DOLL, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE WARRIORS, and BLUE VELVET. Yet none of these works has been critically vilified as the most hateful film ever made, an opinion leveled by many critics, both professional and armchair, at Mier Zarchi’s 1978 rape/revenge story DAY OF THE WOMAN, or as it has been much better known since its re-release in 1980, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.

I first heard of the film back in the spring of 1980 on an installment of Gene Siskel (the bald one) and Roger Ebert’s (the fat one) “Sneak Previews” during their days as public television mainstays, theirs being one of the few movie review programs at the time. What was interesting about their review of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE was that they took their entire half hour running time that week to pan the flick with unprecedented venom; this was not just a review, it was an outright crucifixion that saw both well-respected critics ranting like madmen about how the film had not one shred of artistic quality, encouraged the audience to identify with the rapists, eroticized the act of rape, and portrayed the film’s heroine as a helpless toy whose sole purpose was to be humiliated and degraded for the enjoyment of the sick audience at which the piece was aimed.

I usually kept my ear to the ground for offensive films at the time, — hell, I still do — and a movie like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE would have played at the nearby and notorious grindhouse Norwalk Cinema, but there had never been a trace of it. In fact, if not for the SNEAK PREVIEWS witch hunt most of the general public would never have heard of the film. And as any idiot can tell you, if you don’t want people to see something, just gloss over it quickly and let it die a silent, lonely death. But when the two most high profile critics in the country take up a whole episode of their show to denounce just one movie, that’s going to raise eyebrows and spark curiosity. And, consequently, box office. In the following two years I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE did decent business in theaters, but it really hit the big time when the VCR boom happened and people could now watch whatever twisted shit they chose to corrupt themselves with, all in the privacy of their own living rooms. And what better way to watch a film that allegedly celebrated the time-honored, old school entertainment that is gang rape? In fact, during the first few years of its release on VHS the flick was a perennial best seller, never leaving the top 50 charts until the late-1980’s, despite being banned outright in several countries. So, just what is this toxic chunk of cinema anyway?

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is about as simple as a story can be: a young woman from the Big City heads out to the Sticks and catches the unwanted attention of four local louts. The louts hunt her in a secluded part of the forest, take turns beating and raping her, and mistakenly leave her for dead. She survives, gets her shit together, and exacts well-deserved, lethal revenge. The End.

Sure, that sounds simple, but what was it about this film that has affected so many on such a primal, visceral level? I’ll, analyze the plot in detail a bit later, but for my own part I can say that I have a real problem with rape, harm to children and harm to animals being depicted as entertainment, and the reviews of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE certainly made it seem like it was created solely for the purpose of giving a vile audience what amounted to some sort of sick rape pornography; I like my sex and violence to stay mutually exclusive, thank you very much, so I went into seeing the film with an already loaded viewpoint.

I first rented the movie sometime in the late 1980’s along with what was considered to be the other “classic” of the genre, Wes Craven’s 1972 “homage” to Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING (1959), the infamous LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. My buddies — a mixed crowd of males and females — and I stocked up on booze, joints and snacks, and ran LAST HOUSE first since it was the senior of the two works, and let me tell you, it was a profoundly disturbing experience since pretty much the latter half of the movie was shot in and around our hometown of Westport, Connecticut, and my friends and I could have hopped into a car and driven to the locations in question within minutes. The horror of seeing the two lovely young hippie chicks unspeakably violated, tortured and murdered by a carload of prison escapees and mental defectives in familiar locations, along with the savage vengeance enacted by the parents of one of them, plunged the viewing room into a deep funk, and we debated running the second film on our double-bill. But we were the hardest of Westport’s fans of evil and offensive films, and to paraphrase Super-Chicken, “we knew the job was dangerous when we took it,” so, with a sense of ominous foreboding, we proceeded as planned.

We knew of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE’S notorious status from the get-go, but nothing had prepared us for the onslaught that we witnessed. The film looked painfully amateurish, the performances seemed wooden at best, and the much-condemned and admittedly ultra-sadistic rape scene felt like it went on for at least half of the film’s running time, with a camera that seemed to linger too long on the ugliness it captured, almost in the same way that one cannot look away from the grisliest of car accidents.

My friends and I were stone-cold stunned; this roomful of wiseasses made not one wisecrack during the proceedings, and the one thing that was said by way of comment came from the crew’s resident ladies’ man, Eric, who postulated, “Jesus…Can you imagine trying to get it into a dry, unwilling female? For fuck’s sake, man!” The three girls in the room nodded in shocked agreement, and even when the film’s heroine achieved her revenge, not one of us felt any form of relief since she had now descended to the rock-bottom level of her assailants. A profound sadness filled us all.

Now I understood the knee-jerk reaction felt by Siskel and Ebert and many other commentators, although I felt that their reactions were a bit much considering how many other films had dealt with similar material in equally harsh ways (LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE leading a very vicious pack, the latter even containing hardcore penetration shots during one of the rapes, a segment that could only have been gotten away with in the film’s native Sweden) but there was something about the film that would not let go of me and I just couldn’t suss out exactly what it was…

After my first viewing, I saw I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE twice more during the next decade, and began to figure out a few of the things that intrigued me about the film:
1. The first thing I noticed after recovering from my initial state of shell shock was that the film has no musical score, a stylistic choice which only ups the tension by giving the viewer no cues as to where the action may go, and also stranding the viewer firmly within the film’s own bleak reality.
2. The desolate location of Kent, Connecticut is pretty much a dead zone, a no-man’s-land in which anything can happen due to its isolation. Having actually been to Kent and felt its ambiance of “you can turn your neighbors into chili here, and no one would ever know,” it was the most perfectly unsettling place to film such a story. It’s funny how horror filmmakers tend to gravitate to Connecticut; LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, and several of the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise were shot there since many of the backwater areas look like the staging ground for many an urban legend featuring teenagers and crazed serial murderers.
3. The justifiably infamous four-against-one rape sequence does not actually go on for nearly an hour, it just feels that way, The actual running time is still excruciating though, since it clocks in at a staggering twenty-five minutes and fourteen seconds of nigh-unbearable cruelty.

Recently the DVD online ordering service I use, Deep Discount DVD.com, had a massive sale, and I finally decided to order the Millennium edition of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE just so I could hear writer/director Mier Zarchi’s commentary track, a track that I imagined would be either a feature length litany of apology and “what the fuck was I thinking,” or an equally long spouting of pretentious excuses for making what is the basest form of exploitation. What I got both shocked and surprised me, so much so that I have completely reevaluated my stance on the film and will now defend it in a court of law as an important, if flawed, work of art.

Having been depicted in the media for nearly three decades as the Great Satan of cinema for masterminding such an incendiary flick, Mier Zarchi opted to avoid commenting on his film since so much has been said on it and for all intents and purposes he has been pilloried right along with it, but he came out of seclusion for the special edition, and thank the gods that he did. Zarchi’s commentary reveals much of the process of crafting an extreme independent film, but his reasons for making this filmic holocaust are not only completely valid, they are downright fucking heartbreaking.

As previously stated, the 1970’s saw the rise in popularity of rape/revenge flicks, a genre spearheaded by the success of DELIVERANCE (which in many was the direct ancestor to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE) and DEATH WISH, and along with it came a certain factor of titillation connected to such content; a titillation that doesn’t address the sheer degrading horror and inhumanity of the act of rape. Zarchi may be the only filmmaker whose vision on this rather touchy subject is informed by firsthand knowledge of the shattering aftermath of rape thanks to a 1974 situation in Queens in which he, his daughter and a friend stumbled upon a naked woman who had been raped and sadistically beaten by two rat bastard motherfuckers who not only robbed her of her basic humanity and broke her jaw, but also intended to slash her throat when they were through having their “fun.” What saved her life was her telling her assailants that since they had knocked off her glasses she couldn’t see them and therefore identification was impossible.

Zarchi and his friend threw a coat around the woman, dropped off his daughter at home, and then made the mistake of taking the woman to the police only to witness her further violation by an indifferent cop who showed her no compassion and clearly wanted to get her processed into the system and out of his hair as soon as possible. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, when Zarchi dropped off his daughter at home, the eight-year-old girl asked her mother, “Mommy, what’s rape?” Can you imagine having to explain that one, especially after the kid witnessed a naked, abused woman with a broken jaw staggering out of the bushes? Jesus H. Christ…

The years went by and Zarchi understandably couldn’t get that scene out of his head, and when the opportunity presented itself he wrote and directed DAY OF THE WOMAN as a no-holds-barred, anti-entertainment depiction of rape whose very simplicity allows the story to say one hell of a lot despite its near total lack of dialogue. And with that, here’s the in-depth plot analysis section!

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!!! THE ENTIRE PLOT IS DIVULGED IN GRAPHIC DETAIL, SO TURN BACK WHILE YOU CAN. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE!!!

Very much wearing its post-liberation-movement sentiment on its sleeve, the narrative introduces us to Manhattanite Jennifer Hills (the unimaginably brave Camille Keaton, great-niece of Buster Keaton), who heads to an unspecified upstate location in the middle of nowhere for a summer of relaxation and creative inspiration in a charming rented house by a placid river (in this case played by an unbilled Housatonic).

Upon arriving in town she pulls into the local gas station and meets Johnny (Eron Tabor, enacting one of the foulest villains in moviedom), the obvious alpha wolf to omegas Andy (Gunter Kleeman), Stanley (Anthony Nichols), and Matthew (Richard Pace), a retarded man-child who the rest treat like a feeble-minded pet. Matthew develops a crush on Jennifer, and when his “friends” learn about it they start to formulate a plan that will serve as the catalyst for this whole horrible mess: they must help Matthew lose his virginity by any means necessary.

When Jennifer gets to her rental house — in which a previous occupant left behind a fully loaded pistol in a drawer where one would expect to find Gideon’s bible —, the location is clearly a tonic for the urbanite and, overwhelmed by the beauty of her surroundings, Jennifer takes an innocent nude swim that is the antithesis of the so-called “male gaze” since Zarchi only gives us the briefest glimpse of her nudity and immediately pulls back to a vantage point from across the river, thereby eliminating the ogle factor and respecting the character’s privacy. Or is the positioning of the camera an indication that Jennifer is being watched by eyes filled with bad intent?

The next day, Jennifer orders groceries from the local market and Matthew turns out to be the delivery boy. The two cheerily banter back and forth as he asks her a series of childlike questions and determines that she comes from New York City (which he eerily describes as “an evil place”), that she is a writer who has been published in “women’s magazines,” and that she doesn’t have a boyfriend at the moment, although even the dim-witted Matthew can gather that she is no stranger to the pleasures of the flesh. She even playfully tells him that she’ll be his girlfriend for the summer; not a great idea in a film of this nature…

Matthew: unwitting catalyst to one woman's worst nightmare.

That night, the boys go fishing and engage in a round table discussion of everything that all men need to know about women, and these Rhodes scholars clearly know it all, including a dead-serious rumination on whether or not women have to take shits just like men do. And after many a spent Pabst Blue Ribbon their determination to get Matthew laid approaches the boiling point…

NOTE: as of this point the narrative is told almost entirely from the protagonist’s point of view, a fact that cannot possibly be overstressed.

For the next few days Jennifer paddles about the river, becoming one with Nature, working on her (painfully poorly-written) novel, and hanging out in a hammock while wearing a very fetching string bikini. At that point, two of the boys wreck the tranquility by zooming about and doing donuts on the river in an annoyingly noisy outboard boat; the intent of this action is not merely to be obnoxious, but is instead a blatant act of scoping the place out to see just how vulnerable Jennifer is. That night, she hears whoops and howls from the surrounding woods that are obviously not made by animals, yet she is not intimidated in the least and defiantly strolls outside to see what’s up. Finding nothing, she retires for the night.

The very next morning the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and Jennifer goes sunbathing in the middle of the river, bikinied and secure in the bosom of the natural world, in every way a longhaired Diana reveling in her wilderness. After a long, tranquil establishing shot, the silence of her solitary idyll is disrupted by that fucking outboard motor and the arrival of Andy and Stanley, both of whom hoot and holler like wild Injuns on a drunken rampage. The boys latch on to the canoe’s tether rope and drag an indignant Jennifer behind them, an unwilling captive who attempts to fend them off with repeated swings of her paddle and a barrage of foul language.

At this point, if we include the stalking/kidnapping, the rape of Jennifer begins in earnest as the boys haul her canoe to the riverside and try to pull her ashore; at no point during this exchange does our heroine back down, quite the opposite in fact as she hurls blow after blow at her assailants, making as much pejorative noise as possible. She breaks away and runs barefoot through the woods, pursued by the two shrieking Neanderthals, and when she reaches a clearing we almost think that she can get away. And then she literally runs right into the engineer-hatted Johnny. He repeatedly knocks her to the ground, as she fights the bastards off as best she can, but it’s a case of four booze-fuelled assholes against a willowy, ninety-eight pounds soaking wet city gal in a bikini, so you do the unfortunate math.

Johnny tears the bikini from Jennifer like he was skinning an animal — this was, after all, a human foxhunt — but she still ain’t having it, so each of the scumbags grab a limb and pin her spread-eagled to the ground. Johnny then urges Matthew to come and get her since “we got her for you,” but Matthew is too nervous and can’t perform (there is apparently some small part of him that knows that this is wrong), so in a moment of “well, what the hell, we might as well since we’ve got her here,” Johnny disrobes and mounts poor Jennifer, thrusting and grunting like the greasy pig that he is. When it is over, all of the men are stunned into silence by what they have done, and they release Jennifer, who stumbles away whimpering into the forest.

Bloodied and dirty, Jennifer staggers like a zombie through a disturbingly phallic forest-scape for what seems like a silent eternity, and then she hears the eerie keening of a nearby harmonica. She turns to see Andy perched upon a boulder and she quickly surveys the area for a possible escape route, but there is none to be had; she is surrounded by the four vermin, and they once again haul her into position for violation, only this time they place her face-down over the boulder, thereby making it simple for Andy to sodomize her while having what appears to be an epileptic seizure. The scream let out by Jennifer at this point will stay with you until the day you die, trust me on that one…

Andy soon finishes, and the boys leave the ravished Jennifer to roll off the rock and bounce off a tree. Before rolling off the boulder Jennifer remains immobile for quite some time, and the viewer even begins to wonder if she’s dead. But Jennifer is made out of far sterner stuff, and she manages to wobble to her feet and make an unsteady beeline to the rental house. As she enters the front yard, she collapses and begins to shake and sob uncontrollably, eventually crawling up the steps and donning the robe pegged next to the door. Soon, she is inside and making her way to the telephone, but when she begins to dial, a leather boot kicks the phone away from her and we realize, to our horror, that the bastards are inside the house and they are not done with their “hijinx.”

Pushed beyond all limits of physical and mental endurance, Jennifer still ain’t having it and manages to not only fight back, but she also motherfucking clobbers Stanley in the skull with a small table before being once more subdued and damned near knocked out, which allows the now-emboldened Matthew to climb atop her and attempt to get it up. As his friends cheer him on, the horny retard still can’t get the job done, so he is unceremoniously pulled off of Jennifer as Stanley sits on her chest while taking a long pull from a whiskey bottle. She seizes the opportunity to plead for her life, telling her assailants that she is badly hurt and to please not rape her anymore because she just couldn’t take it, even offering to use her mouth if that will do. Stanley contemplates that for a moment…before forcefully lodging the whiskey bottle up her tortured vagina and forcing his sorry excuse for a member into her bloody mouth. He then jumps off of her and begins to viciously kick and beat her in a display so off-putting that it even outrages Johnny and the rest, all of whom haul him off of Jennifer. They then leave her on the floor and order the slow-witted Matthew to take a buck knife and do her in once and for all. The redneck assholes step outside and leave Matthew to murder our girl, but he chickens out, rubs her blood onto the knife figuring she’ll just die anyway. I mean, nobody could possibly live through such abuse, right? So the mental defective goes outside and tells his friends that he’s offed their plaything, and they all leave, happy as a tree full of birds.

Needless to say, Jennifer survives all of that unspeakable horseshit and the viewer once more suffers along with her as she cowers, shivers and sobs, back against the wall in a corner, eventually gaining the strength to recuperate. Gone is the wood nymph who is innocently comfortable with her sexuality; that goddess has been replaced by a hardcore spirit of righteous, black-clad retribution, and from now on all bets are off.

The most affecting part of this segment is when Jennifer drives past a cemetery and the viewer looks at the tombstones as rather obvious symbolism, but that idea gets blown out of the water when she turns off the road and pulls up to a church. She walks in with a noticeable intensity, kneels before the altar and quietly says, “Forgive me.” She stands up, crosses herself and walks out. If the Judeo-Christian God is in any way as just as he claims to be — that “vengeance is mine” bullshit notwithstanding — as of now Jennifer is pretty much granted a free pass when it comes to turning those ratfuckers into mulch.

In short order, Jennifer lures each of the violators to horrible deaths: Matthew is granted his fondest wish but is hanged at the moment of his first orgasm, Johnny has his ween removed in a scene guaranteed to make every male in the audience clutch his stuff and scream like a four-year-old,

and the remaining two animals are dispatched on the lake with an axe and their own outboard motor. Once they are all dead, Jennifer guns the engine, the boat now symbolically representing a motorized phallus of death, and sets off upriver to an uncertain fate, a slight half-smile playing on her lips.

Now does that in any way sound like a film that glorifies rape, makes the viewer side with the violators, or portrays the woman as a socket that just sits there helplessly and takes it? I think not, and I honestly wonder whether Siskel and Ebert saw the same movie I did, since if they really had they would have made all of the same observations that I just shared with you. And what’s doubly galling about Ebert's review is that he has gone on record stating that LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is one of his favorite “guilty pleasures.” Then again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since the guy actually recommended COP AND A HALF…

Not enough can be said about the sparse but powerful cast: Camille Keaton is simply amazing as Jennifer, giving a completely believable performance that required total nudity for a large chunk of the picture, to say nothing of being on the receiving end of the pretend rapes. It’s an incredibly brave and rough role to essay, and it makes me sick that both Jodie Foster and Hilary Swank were lavished with massive critical kudos and Oscars for following in the footsteps of a trail blazed by the far-lesser-known Keaton.

And I don’t know how in hell the guys in the film could work up the moxie to even pretend to do any of the shit that their characters pull in the movie; all four are great for what they have to do, but Eron Tabor’s Johnny and Anthony Nichols’ Stanley are so heinously evil that you want to jump into the frame and kick them to death with an iron boot. Richard Pace’s turn as Matthew gets across the child struggling with the basest of male urges, and you almost feel sorry for Matthew when he gets killed because you have to ask yourself just how responsible he was, what with being slow and all that. Sadly, a film of this nature turned out to be pretty much a surefire career-killer, and most of the actors never worked again.

So, there you have the skinny on one of the most controversial films ever made, and while I cannot recommend it to the casual viewer for obvious reasons, I urge you not to listen to the virulent screeds against it that choke the internet; at the barbecue joint I recently discussed I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE with a very sweet lady who comes in every now and then, and because I was reading a book on the making of the FRIDAY THE 13TH SERIES she brought up Zarchi’s film as her favorite horror film and expressed a wish that if ever she could come to the defense of any one misunderstood flick, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE would be the one that she would champion.

Amen to that, sister. Amen.

SUPERHEROIC FASHION (?) STATEMENTS

New York City, and Brooklyn in particular, is a place where people just love to wear superhero emblems and related images on their t-shirts. Usually it's some character that everybody recognizes, such as Superman, Batman, the Flash, or Green Lantern, but now and then you can separate the true geeks from the civilians when they sport the emblem of Professor Zoom (aka the Reverse Flash) or some other nugget of four color obscura. Here are four examples of t-shirts seen in my neighborhood and at the barbecue joint, so see if you can spot the true geek out of the lot.

HE'S BACK, AND NOW HE'S A WHORE!

I know that movies and licensing go hand-in-hand, but this almost made me puke. I tell ya, I didn't need to see Supes shilling for potato chips...

WHAT I DONE BEEN READIN’

With all the running around I have done lately I hadn’t had a chance to leisurely read the ever-growing mountain of comics and books that I accumulate on a weekly basis, so for this installment I just dove in and slammed myself with reading material for the past few days. So, here we go:

BLACK PANTHER #17

I never, and I do mean NEVER, liked the Black Panther when I was a kid because even though he was one the handful of black heroes at the time — thereby making him a mandatory read for us wee highly rhythmic individuals — it was blatantly obvious that he was being written by people who nothing of the Black experience. In other words, well-meaning white folks. Thankfully, these days we have a lot more of us hardcore unemployables making headway in the four-color field, and the Panther is now being scribed by none other than well-regarded film director Reginald Hudlin, a guy who has obviously given a lot of serious thought to what needed to be done to make the Panther a truly viable presence in the Marvel Universe, rather than just being the obligatory noble Black dude; you know, sort of the Sydney Poitier of comics. Prince T’Challa of the super-scientific and uber-badassed African nation of Wakanda finally really comes across as a figure to be respected and even feared, with Hudlin providing him an appropriately regal air of the type not seen in Marvel’s legitimately royal characters since the Sub-Mariner when portrayed well (only the Panther isn’t a stuck-up prick). I read the initial six issues of this series with great enthusiasm and was worried that the high level of entertainment quality could not be maintained after the departure of John Romita, Jr. on art duties, but month-by-month I have been blissfully surprised. The current story arc has to do with T’Challa finally getting off his black ass and finding a bride — what’s a royal bloodline without heirs? — and not just any bride, but none other than Ororo Munroe, better known to you as Storm, the X-Men’s resident weather witch/goddess/hottie/bad motherfucker. Hudlin has worked minor miracles with this development, taking the romance angle and making it genuinely fun and frequently quite funny, with the Panther and Storm proving to be perfect for one another, true equals, a mating of eagles if you will. This current chapter focuses on Luke “Power Man” Cage’s efforts to organize a balls-out bachelor party for our hero with guest stars in tow, and Ororo’s girl-time moments with Kitty Pride and Sue “Invisible Woman” Storm. It’s a fun ride all the way, and I’m very curious to see what happens at the wedding itself; the template for this kind of thing goes back to the wedding of Sue and Reed Richards way back in FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3 (1965), and since that story featured a shitstorm of nigh-incomprehensible action and mayhem that guest-starred damned near every single character in the Marvel Universe at the time, that’s the superhero nuptials to beat. And considering what has gone on since the Panther’s relaunch, I have no doubt that Hudlin and whoever illustrates the event will make it a tale to remember.

CIVIL WAR #2, FRONTLINE #2, FANTASTIC FOUR #538, NEW AVENGERS #21- I have to admit that I was very skeptical upon hearing about Marvel’s latest big crossover “event” since such stories are more often than not anything but, DC’s horrendous INFINITE CRAPFEST, er, CRISIS being a blatant case in point, but I am now officially on board for CIVIL WAR after the first two issues and the few connecting chapters in other Marvel books that I have read. As you may recall, the series deals with a law being passed that requires all superheroes to register with the government for training and to publicly reveal their identities or else face outlaw status and legal/federal retaliation after a disastrous situation in which the New Warriors botched the apprehension of a bunch of bad guys, resulting in the deaths of six-hundred civilians, including children. The first two issues saw the lines being drawn between the supers who support the legislation and those who oppose it for a variety of legitimate reasons, with two major pieces of fallout: Captain America telling the government (in this case represented by the super-espionage group S.H.I.E.L.D.) to stick it up their collective ass when he is ordered to hunt down any of his colleagues who won’t comply, and the shocking (to say nothing of potentially stupid) move of having Spider-Man reveal his true identity via unmasking on live national television. Both of these incidents have already had major repercussions for the heroes in question (unlike the bullshit in INFINITE CRAPFEST) and I am solidly hooked. Cap is now a wanted fugitive who has re-teamed with his old pal the Falcon (a black mutant who has the mutant ability to communicate with his pet falcon, Redwing. You call THAT a superpower?) in an effort to establish a group of like-minded supers who will take the fight to the government, while Peter Parker once again takes it in the ass for doing what he thinks is right; after revealing his identity, with the full approval of his wife and his aunt, he’s relentlessly hounded by the media, has a five-million dollar lawsuit filed against him by the Daily Bugle for “misrepresentation, fraud, breach of contract, and several other related charges,” and gets a real fisting when that dickhead Tony “Iron Man” Stark — an utter fucking asshole of a character who I have loathed since childhood, cool armor notwithstanding, that prick! — suddenly informs him that he’s part of the new anti-unregistered-super Gestapo. Marvel has been at the forefront of the superhero-story-as-soap-opera genre since 1961, hell, they invented the shit, and this current epic brings that element back in spades, both well written and well drawn. More, damn it! MORE!!!

And on the Fantastic Four front during all of this mishegoss, Johnny “the Human Torch” Storm has been beaten into a coma by a group of hooligans in the wake of the anti-super sentiment, and Ben “the Thing” Grimm — one of my top three favorite superheroes of all time — must wrestle with the moral implications of what the superhero registration act means for him and others of his community, and which side of the battle he falls on. Being a Jew, he can see the similarities to the start of horrors directed against a certain ethnic group in the not-too-distant past, and that does NOT sit well with him, especially since Reed “Mister Fantastic” Richards, one of the core of the FF, supports the shit with his usual clueless brilliance.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

SUPERMAN/BATMAN #27

For all intents and purposes this book should just admit what it is and be call WORLD’S FINEST, but since it is one of the most inconsistent books out there, perhaps its current name is all for the best. There’s nothing here to give a shit about other than some of the liveliest art that Kevin Maguire’s done in some time, but the hook of this particular story is that Superman and Batman have had their minds transferred into the bodies of Power Girl and the Huntress, and while that idea goes absolutely nowhere, I just love the idea of Superman having to adjust to lugging around Power Girl’s legendarily huge jugs.

SOLO #11

DC’s hit-or miss SOLO series devotes each issue to a spotlight on the talents of various individual artists and sometimes yields gold for the discerning comics fan; previous issues have given us a solid forty-eight pages of such luminaries as Jordy Bernet, Richard Corben (one of my absolute favorites), Scott Hampton, and the incredibly dubious inclusion of Damien Scott (Mark, what the fuck were you thinking?!!!?), but his time around we get Sergio Aragones SERGIO MOTHERFUCKING ARAGONES, indisputably one of the greatest naturally talented cartoonists ever to draw breath, let alone pictures, and if you don’t go out right now and buy this issue I will hunt you down and pull your scrotum over your face by way of your useless ass crack. Yeah, there have been a zillion collections of the guy’s work, but this one is particularly interesting thanks to Sergio illustrating various true stories from his career, along with a couple of his signature silent tales.

BLACK LIKE YOU: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture

In short, this book is an exceptional history of what blackface and minstrelsy mean in relation to whether or not it is a racist attack or a genuine expression of love toward black people and our culture. It’s a complicated issue, and author John Strausbaugh sets the record straight with a cornucopia of verifiable facts and general info. No joke, this is the best history book I have read since I don’t don’t know when. Jared, say hello to your birthday present.

YAY! HE'S BACK: SUPERMAN RETURNS

So after nineteen years off screen Superman comes back spectacularly in SUPERMAN RETURNS, a film that wisely erases the cinematic abortions SUPERMAN III and SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE from the series continuity and picks up five years after the events depicted in SUPERMAN II. After those celluloid equivalents to a steel-toed boot in the yarbles, I was more than happy to accept even a halfway decent Superman flick, and if truth were told, I enjoyed the new one although it could have used a few tweaks to make it perfect. But the bottom line is simply that I enjoyed it a lot for what it was.

SPOILER WARNING!!! IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FLICK AND PLAN ON ATTENDING, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!

In SUPERMAN RETURNS we find out that astronomers have discovered the remains of Krypton — Superman’s home planet — and Supes got into a spaceship and fucked off into outer space for five years in a quest to determine whether he truly is the last surviving Kryptonian. During Big Blue’s absence, Lex Luthor has gotten out of prison thanks to various legal technicalities and gotten up to his old chicanery, only with the bitterness engendered by having had five years of his life taken away, and Lois Lane has moved on with her life since Superman took off into space with no explanation because he was too much of a pussy to have the common decency to bid her farewell, and has now hooked up with the stiff who plays Cyclops in the X-MEN flicks (and, to be fair, he’s quite good here). During the time he was gone she also achieved two major accomplishments: winning the Pulitzer for an article on why the world doesn’t need Superman (fueled by hardcore anger), and having a son, seemingly from out of nowhere. Needless to say, when Superman comes back there is an emotional shitstorm that makes any fight against supervillains look like a cakewalk. Once those plot points are established we’re off to the races.

The film is a lot of fun, especially if you are a sucker for romance like I am, but here are some geek/nitpicker notes and one major criticism to ponder:

1.My one major gripe is that the film is simply too damned long for its own good at 157 minutes running time; judicious editing could have tightened up the pace, wonder and excitement of the piece, and alleviated the ass-numbing effect brought on by uncomfortable theater seats, but I guess that's what you get when the studio strives for an “epic” feel…

2. Finally a film has the special effects mojo to believably render Superman and what he can do without a trace of blue screen “halos” or painfully obvious wirework. Bravo to the effects team!

3. Okay, so in SUPERMAN II our hero gave up his powers to get some Lois pussy — NOTE: I absolutely loathed Margot Kidder’s Lois, so I thought Superman was a moron for giving up godhood for a chick who was annoying and looked like a coke whore — and apparently he didn’t use a condom. The previously mentioned kid is definitely his, but what sickens me about this scenario is that he used his powers to make Lois forget that she knew his secret and that had been lovers, so when he (and Clark for that matter) disappeared she found herself inexplicably pregnant. Immaculate conception may work in mythology, but that situation had to seriously fuck her up. And despite the kid’s physical frailty, he has at least one of his dad’s gifts, and upon realizing the boy’s parentage Lois would have probably developed a hatred for Superman that would make kryptonite look like a sack of Jolly Ranchers candies. It’s the superhero analog to slipping some chick a ruphie, fucking her, and then knocking her up, none of which she would remember. Man, that’s fucking reprehensible, and I were Lois I would find the biggest hunk of kryptonite I could and shove it right up Kal-El’s Kryptonian fuckstick.

4. Kevin Spacey’s Luthor completely erases the sour taste left by Gene Hackman’s turn in the role (not Hackman’s fault; he was fucked by Lorenzo Semple, Jr’s attempts at needless buffoonery), and he brings a credible threat to Superman despite the fact that his basic scheme in this installment is pretty much a rehash of the land-grab-by-force from the first film, complete with Parker Posey’s Kitty serving as a stand-in for Valerie Perrine’s Eve Tesmacher. And his theft of the crystals from the Fortress of Solitude to facilitate his plan is absolutely brilliant.

5. Sadly, the brilliance of the plan — blending the benevolent crystals with kryptonite, thereby creating a huge island that is toxic to Superman — is marred by the script’s waffling on just how much the shit affects Supes. He flies over miles of kryptonite-laced crystal spires without being affected in the least, lands on an island-sized section of the stuff and strolls about like he’s simply walking down the street, gets stabbed in the back with a stiletto-length chunk of straight Green K, which Luthor breaks off in his flesh, and even lifts the island-sized hunk of crystal/Green K in order to hurl it into deep space, while glowing chunks of the deadly mineral are exposed not two feet from his head. I know you can’t kill off Superman since he’s the star and a perpetual cash cow, but either one of these incidents would have killed him dead, I’m talking tits up and utterly bereft of life.

6. The potentially disastrous addition of the son of Superman is pulled of beautifully; he’s a frail, asthmatic sad-eyed little boy who very quickly figures out the link between Superman and Clark Kent, a bit of info that he keeps to himself. And when Luthor’s tattooed henchman is about to shatter Lois’ skull with a hefty paperweight, the kid kills the guy by crushing him with a grand piano, proving once and for all that you don’t fuck with mommy. I tell ya, I like the little guy.

7. The casting of James Marsden as Lois’ new man was distracting to me since he’s the guy who plays Cyclops in the X-MEN movies, and I kept expecting him to put on the goggles and blast Superman right in the nuts for breaking Lois’ heart.

8. And speaking of Lois’ heart, this film is a romance, first and foremost, and I know that will not sit well with many fans. Well I say, “Fuck ‘em!” I dug the romance and tragedy thereof, so eat me.

9. Brandon Routh has obviously modeled his performance on Christopher Reeve’s previous turns as Superman/Clark Kent, and by the end of the film he has ably stepped into the part, perfectly conveying the hero’s kindness and nobility. I can’t wait to see more of this guy.

So that’s my two cents on the first installment of a rejuvenated franchise. Write in and let me know what you think.

DO WE STILL NEED SUPERMAN?

Yeah, I know I’ve been a bit Superman crazy lately, but the release of the new flick about Big Blue has set me to thinking about whether or not he’s really relevant to today’s audience, a generation under the thrall of hip-hop, “American Idol,” and Playstation. Much like James Bond, debonair agent 007, he’s a relic of another time that has long since passed, and the real trick is figuring out how to make him work in this modern world and render him appealing to not only children, but adults as well, adults who have had a shitload of their childlike sense of wonder kicked out of them thanks to the ravages of environmental decay, 9/11, and the unmitigated horror that is the Bush administration.

My own first exposure to the last son of Krypton came via syndicated reruns of the 1950’s television series “The Adventures of Superman,” with goombah-looking George Reeves essaying the part; admittedly, his was an iconic portrayal for its era, despite his epic underarm perspiration stains, but thanks to the limitations of both budget and 1950’s special effects technology the folks who made the series were never able to pit Superman against anything even verging on a worthy adversary. No aliens, no giant monsters, no other super-powered badasses, just a bunch of boring gangsters and bank robbers who, although they knew he was fucking invulnerable, would empty their firearms into his chest at point blank range without even making him flinch, and when the douchebags ran out of bullets they would chuck the guns at him. And he would duck!

Not long after seeing that stuff, I eagerly dove into the flood of reprint comics that swamped the market at the time, rendering each trip to the newsstand or supermarket into a passport to wild flights of fancy. Both DC and Marvel Comics churned out tons of the classic stories, a boon to the kids of the time since the sometimes 100-page tomes were relatively dirt cheap, and each new issue of Superman’s mags contained a new story supplemented by a fistful of four-color history, both great and not-so-great; DC was notorious for coming up with some of the most ludicrous stories every conceived (the horrendous Superbaby and Wonder Tot series comes to mind), but they were entertaining as hell, and though I was a kid who would say, “This is really fucking stupid,” I couldn’t put them down. And even when those tales resounded with mind-wrenching stupidity, I held Superman in high regard for what he stood for, not merely as the prototype of the superhero as we know it, but most importantly as a symbol of all that was truly right and good. Not so much a personification of the American fighting spirit, since that’s Captain America’s job, but as a good guy whose appeal was utterly universal, bridging the barriers of nationality, ethnicity, religion and even culture. I mean, for fuck’s sake, during WWII he was Emperor Hirohito’s favorite comics character, and the Emperor was frequently depicted on Superman’s covers getting a big red boot lodged right up his ass, along with Mussolini and motherfucking Hitler!

During the 1950’s Superman was literally “the man of tomorrow,” kind of a symbol of the hoped-for utopia-to-come heralded by the dawn of the atomic age and post-war economic and technological prosperity, but then the undreamed of turbulence of the 1960’s rolled around and Supes’ adventures became a parade of truly crazy concepts and “imaginary” stories that took the reader as far out of anything even resembling a realistic context.

It wasn’t until the decade came to an end that Superman became more grounded, and comic book legend Neal Adams lent him an impressive and realistic visual style (an approach that had worked wonders a couple of years previously for Batman, whose general public perception was that of a masked buffoon thanks to the hit TV series starring Adam West). From that point on Superman became a more conventional superhero, the prototype rendered near obsolete by the artistic/storytelling innovations wrought by Marvel Comics since 1961 with the concept of superheroes who were every bit as neurotic as ourselves. Such an approach could never work for the Man of Steel; the paragon of wholesomeness and steadfast stability fretting over paying his rent, or getting into petulant shouting mates with Wonder Woman and Batman? No dice, chum. Well, at least not until the 1980’s.

Superman was redefined during the 1980’s, both in terms of scaling down his godlike abilities (when you’re as powerful as he was at that point, there was absolutely no suspense or any way to challenge him) and rendering his character more “human;” the creative forces at DC played up the angle of Superman having been raised in the American heartland by wise and kindly foster parents who instilled in him a reverence for all life — Superman does NOT kill — and an earnest desire to do good and help his adoptive homeworld as best he can, and I must say that I truly love that interpretation. He’s immensely powerful, but he doesn’t choose to rule over mankind as a cruel despot and is utterly selfless in his approach to his mission, but he is still just one man and cannot solve all of the world’s problems by himself. He is essentially the world’s guardian against threats both major and minor, yet when it comes to mankind’s own personal ills he opts to let the human race attempt to solve its own problems, and that’s what makes his appeal so strong: it’s not just that the people of the world believe in HIM, it’s that he believes in US. The misanthrope in me says that may not make him the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it’s just so damned decent of him.

So as I grow older and the world around us gets crazier and meaner, yes, I emphatically believe in our need for Superman, perhaps now more than ever. For the most part this sorry generation of parents isn’t doing a goddamned thing to influence their kids with any sort of positive example, willingly turning over their offspring to the babysitter of video games and other diversions that require no parental input, and the media is not providing much in terms of heroes for the kids to admire. The cartoon heroes that infest the airwaves these days are mostly foreign imports whose shows amount to no more than half hour commercials for toys and games (except for the generally excellent and clever KIM POSSIBLE), but thankfully Cartoon Network has come to the rescue with JUSTICE LEAGUE and JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, perhaps the two best superhero shows ever aired in the States; Superman features prominently in both series, along with a plethora of other heroes including Batman, Wonder Woman, Green lantern and the Flash, and the requisite action and colorful adventure is laced with many moving character bits.

To sum up, I honestly think that as long as there are human beings we will need heroes, and not just heroes in general, but Superman in particular. The Fantastic Four are there to explore the frontiers of super-science, Batman has his fascist agenda, and Spider-Man is the underdog that we love to root for, but it’s Superman who offers us hope for humanity. Goodness and kindness are both in short supply these days, and he has a lot more to offer than just his fantastic powers. In fact, that’s really what saving the world is all about, isn’t it?

YET ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

Well, today is my forty-first birthday. No big deal really, but I have the day off and I intend to go to a favorite Lower East Side hot dog joint for lunch, maybe pick up a DVD or three at Kim's Video, and attend the 10PM show of SUPERMAN RETURNS. Check in either tomorrow or Thursday and I'll give you skinny on Supes' new flick. And with that, I am off!!!

THESE FUCKING STUPID KIDS

I never cease to be amazed by some of the t-shirts I see people sporting on the street, especially some worn by young barely-teenagers; I once saw a mother and daughter happily sharing a lovely afternoon, all while the maybe thirteen-year-old nymphette rocked a tight shirt that read, “I HAVE THE PUSSY, SO I MAKE THE RULES.” And her mom thought nothing of it!

This afternoon after suffering through six hours of waiting to be selected for jury duty and finally being released, I saw a young Hispanic lad walk past me in what at first glance appeared to be one of the eight million cereal box t-shirts that people wear all over the place, unintentionally rendering themselves free, walking advertising. The familiar Trix rabbit was emblazoned across the kid’s chest, familiar loony grin staring me in the face, and underneath the cartoon was proudly displayed the legend, “SILLY FAGGOT, DICKS ARE FOR CHICKS!”

This dumbass kid had not only the poor taste to wear such an item in public, but he rocked it exactly one day after the big gay pride celebration in Manhattan. I have serious doubts as to whether his parents ever saw the garment, since no parent that I know would have let their child out of the house thusly attired.

I stopped dead in my tracks and was amazed to see that no one else even batted an eye in response. It struck me that the company that produces Trix cereal probably did not license the rabbit for such use — at least I hope not —, I mean, it would be like witnessing a t-shirt depicting Charlie Brown looking exactly as he always does, except smiling while he exclaimed, “I’M GONNA KILL ME SOME NIGGERS!!!”

I sincerely hope that the kid who wore the shirt gets savagely verbally upbraided by his school’s acid-tongued, openly gay gadabout and is reduced to a blubbering mess with no hope of offering even a halfway decent comeback. When your shirt expresses the best wit that you can muster and it’s on this sort of level, that’s pretty fucking sad, dude.

YOUR PUSSY: A COMPLAINT

Ladies, a word, please.

As has been stated endlessly in previous posts, I love me some pussy. Really and truly, I do. However, I have absolutely zero interest in whatever may ail your most holy of intimate places, and I think that most men would agree with me on this.

You see, all of my life I have always had more female friends than male, and many women tend to speak to me with the candor that they usually reserve only for other females (Jeff the bartender calls this my “gay ear”); that’s great, and I am flattered that you feel comfortable enough to let me into the mysterious and arcane world of chickness, but this blessing has often turned into a curse, specifically when you feel the need to fill me in on every detail of your gynecological issues.

Let me assure you that I, and most likely most other men (and many other women, for that matter) DO NOT want to hear about how you just got “the drip” or the relative viscosity of said flow, how your girl stuff may reek like a cheese factory or a trout farm, visceral descriptions of your scorched earth vulvic mound after shaving yourselves smooth and the rashes and ingrown hairs that accompany such grooming habits, the details of your getting genital warts removed, and most of all, the horrific details of your yeast infections and the methods with which you deal with them.

That said, I hereby call a moratorium on any and all such discussions with me unless it is an absolute emergency. I would be more willing to put up with all of this if I were your husband or boyfriend, in other words actually getting some of the pussy whose issues and upkeep I am forced to endure the tales about, but since you have not earned the privilege to pass such info on to me, please keep it to yourself.

I thank you for your time.