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* And Joss Whedon explains why DC Comics movies don't work. He's right and wrong about this; there's something to be said for the "pain" thesis, but mostly it's a failure of writing and directorial ambition, compounded by corporate cowardice...
With just one day before this long presidential election is really, truly, and finally over, here's a collection of presidential pop culture from Again with the Comics.
Dial B for Blog gets nostalgic for the Monkeemen, the secret superhero identity for faux '60s rock band The Monkees. Here's their random cameo in Kingdom Come...
Infinite Crisis was a bad story, but at least it was a story. Final Crisis is a marketing plan. There's the money quote, reader: "Final Crisis is a marketing plan."
In the view of Robby Reed, creator of this web site and author of this posting, "FINAL CRISIS" is VERY well-named, because for me it is a death-knell for DC. They have so little regard for either their own characters or those who buy the comics it is horrifying. I actually hope they go out of business, if they keep this up.
At any rate, before purchasing any new DC title in the future, I will inspect each page for evidence of the continuing pornographic destruction of my beloved childhood characters. If I find any, the book goes back on the shelf. Since EVERY book they publish is now like this, that means no more new DC comics for Robby. I will not miss them!
There's something to that, but I think the problem is actually much worse -- the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign....
The trouble is that no sensible person believes that electing conservative politicians will actually improve the situation because even though some instances of reducing the power of economic privilege would be deregulatory and conservative, actually existing conservatism isn't interested in reducing the power of economic privilege except on behalf of some other, greater privilege. Similarly, the conservative movement is correct to say that more stable family structure would be a boon to America's children, but its operational commitment to family values just consists of the political exploitation of anti-gay sentiment. The ideas have some merit, it's the actual moral character of the people able to move the levers of power that are the problem -- they're not fundamentally interested in the merits of ideas, even their own ideas, they're interested in power and greed.
If the ruling survives a Time Warner legal challenge, it may also open the door to a similar reversion of rights to the estate of Mr. Shuster in 2013. That would give heirs of the two creators control over use of their lucrative character until at least 2033 — and perhaps longer, if Congress once again extends copyright terms — according to Marc Toberoff, a lawyer who represents the Siegels and the Shuster estate.
“It would be very powerful,” said Mr. Toberoff, speaking by telephone on Friday. “After 2013, Time Warner couldn’t exploit any new Superman-derived works without a license from the Siegels and Shusters.”
Of course, my feeling is that a character created 75 years ago shouldn't still be under copyright at all—but it's certainly nice to see copyright law for once protecting creators rather than corporations (albeit belatedly), particularly creators exploited as badly as Siegel and Shuster were.
UPDATE: Keep 'em coming! I've added a whole lot more below.
It was my week to post at culturemonkey this week, and I delivered with a post about the motivations for apocalyptic fantasy, what it is and what it's for. Check it out. Comments, criticism, and elaborations of all sorts are very welcome.
While writing the post, in connection with Ryan's theory that the most salient feature of apocalypse in science fiction is the way in which the same images are simply repackaged for us over and over again, I was struck by the recurrence of a ruined Statue of Liberty as perhaps the quintessential icon of disaster since the 1940s. So struck, in fact, that I began to obsessively collect these images from the 'net wherever I could find them. Submitted for your approval, the fruits of my labor:
UPDATE: Stealing a few more ideas from my commenters:
Part of a campaign promise during the elections in 1978 to bring the "Statue of Liberty to Madison." As a result of this effort the Pail and Shovel Party (Stu was one of the major masterminds) was given the Politician of the Year award for keeping the most campaign promises of any Wisconsin elected officials. The Daily Cardinal was outraged by this expenditure and actually burned it down. The following year after re-election the Statue was rebuilt. A security guard was placed inside of the head after getting an ice fishing hut permit.
Thundarr the Barbarian (My favorite so far. Here's Skot's description from the comments:
In the '70's Saturday Morning cartoon "Thundarr the Barbarian" the Statue is shown in a decayed state at the start of each show, and there's an episode where the evil wizard Gemini imbues the statue with life (but better than in Ghostbusters 2) and an awesome flame-throwing torch! The basic concepts and story ideas for that show came from the fertile but sometimes repetitive mind of Jack "King" Kirby, who also created the Kamandi comic book for DC, as seen above...
The latest Smashing Pumpkins album, Zeitgeist (2007)
Eerie-in-retrospect book cover from Bluejay Books, 1985. The artist's name was Thomas Kidd. (Thanks to revdoug for the email)
UPDATE 2:
Brett emailed in with a great screenshot of the Statue of Liberty in The Fifth Element, which has not been destroyed but rather swallowed by an expanding New York megapolis.
UPDATE 3: Jeff from Gravity Lens sends along this wild image from the recent D.C. Comics "Sinestro Corps" storyline:
Tim in the comments leaves behind links to the Statue of Liberty under threat in X-Men and Children of Men:
And another album cover, this one from New Jersey's own God Forbid's fourth album, IV: Constitution of Treason:
UPDATE 4: Jeff sends along two more, one the usual sort of doomsday image and another desecration of a very different sort:
UPDATE 5:Commenter Ty may have found the earliest example, "The Next Morning" from the Feb. 24, 1887 edition of Life:
UPDATE 6: Later, Ty came back with two more, first from an alternate-universe Statue's destruction by helicopter in Batman Forever
and the other a much-longed-for clip from the statue's appearance in Ghostbusters 2. I can do him one better, though: Google Video has the clip.
UPDATE 7: Over night a few more links were added in the comments, including this beauty from 1889, J.A. Mitchell's The Last American:
as well as two video-game scenarios, World in Conflict and Command and Conquer: Red Alert:
Elsewhere in the world of video games, Eman Resu also points us to the Resident Evil 3 trailer, where the replica Statue of Liberty outside the New York, New York casino in Vegas is used to signify for apocalypse:
UPDATE 8: Another cool one from the comments, a comic-booky illustration (don't know what year it's from, unfortunately) given the title "Cloverfield Monster Revealed!" on Flickr:
(Identified! It's from the "Dinosaurs Attack!" Topps trading card series.)
UPDATE 9: Here's a nice still from Ghostbusters 2 I just found in the Fark thread on this. Incidentally, the Fark link coupled with the Boing Boing link plus a few other big ones (National Review Online?) makes this the most popular thing I've ever posted by a mile, eclipsing even the "Our Brains Don't Work" link on Backwards City from back in 2004. It's kind of amazing.
UPDATE 10: rootbeer277 founds some pictures of the Statue in Superman IVhere:
UPDATE 11: Wow, they're still coming in. Lady, That's My Skull writes in with two more from the comics, Atomic War #1 (1952) and Incredible Hulk #206 (1976).
And Anonymous points us to this Audi ad from the early 1990s:
UPDATE 12: It's been a few days and this post still keeps getting hits. It's getting close to 25,000 people now, which is astounding.
First, from the comments, MagicManky has the Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back parody:
Also in the comments, Slade leaves links to a number of sought-after images of the broken Statue of Liberty overshadowed by the Statue of Justice in Judge Dredd, both film and comic:
Finally, in what's likely to be the last image I add here for a good while, Viktor emails an Italian propaganda poster from World War II which reads "Here are the liberators":
Lots of open tabs from the last few days. Here's a first crack at it.
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