How Can I Ever Forget Them

Peanuts
Charles Schulz (2000)
The final Peanuts comic strip was published in Sunday papers around the world 25 years ago today.  It was printed just one day after Mr. Schulz passed away.

I'm Glad We Didn't Eat This Fine Family

Venom: The Last Dance
Sony Pictures (2024)
This wasn't bad, but I liked the first two movies in the Venom Trilogy more than this one.  I'm sure that I would be able to appreciate the story more if I were more familiar with the comic books.  I had a bit of a difficult time keeping up when it came to the multiple symbiotes, but it was done well enough that it was still enjoyable with my only background knowledge coming from what I could remember from the first two Venom films.

Reflecting On The State Of The Nation

Calvin and Hobbes
Bill Watterson (July 8, 1988)
That last panel really says it all.

At Some Point, You Have To Blame The Sheep

Paul Noth
The New Yorker (August 29, 2016)
The most terrifying thing about the convicted felon who is running for office is the fact that half of the population is some combination of ignorant, greedy, foolish, and/or hateful enough to support him.

Eating Carrots At The Drive-In

Bugs Bunny Issue 124
Gold Key (July 1969)
The wascally wabbit is a long standing member of the drive-in front row crew.

They're Gonna Make Him Do This Till He's 90

Deadpool & Wolverine
Marvel Studios (2024)
The biggest movie that Marvel Studios has released in years premiered in theaters across the country just under six weeks ago.

There has been a massive marketing campaign in the months leading up to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine.  We saw quite a few Heinz ketchup and mustard billboards when we were in New York to see Back To The Future: The Musical this summer, including this massive advertisement on Times Square.

DiGiorno Pizza has also jumped onto the Deadpool & Wolverine bandwagon with their release of four different cross-branded frozen pizzas.  I had the Spicy Wolvie Pie, which is a traditional cheese pizza topped with pepperoni, chorizo, and bacon.  I didn't find it to be even slightly spicy, but it was very tasty.

Deadpool & Wolverine premiered in theaters on July 25th.  I wanted to see it, but there really wasn't any sense of urgency for me.  My local Regal theater tends to keep comic book and animated features on their screens for a ridiculous length of time.  This is pretty irritating because in doing so, they have blocked a lot of great movies from appearing at my local theater even for a single day, but it also means that when they do release an animated or comic book movie, there is absolutely no rush.  I finally got around to seeing it on September 2nd.

I'm not a big enough fan of comic books to have gotten every reference and inside joke, but it was still the funniest comic book movie that I've ever seen.  I think that pretty much anyone would enjoy it.

May The X-Force Be With You

X-Force #1
Marvel Comics (August 1991)

The closest that I came to collecting comic books was when my Nana ordered a Marvel Comic Book Collecting Kit from the Sears Catalog to give me a Christmas present when I was ten years old.  It was a great present, but it never really took hold as a hobby for me.  I picked up a handful of other comics throughout the rest of my childhood, but they were mostly from yard sales and flea markets.  I enjoyed reading them, but didn't really understand too much about the character's histories or the artists and writers who came up with the stories.

X-Force #1 was one of the few new comic books that I had when I was a kid.  I remember that it was sold in a plastic bag that also included a Marvel trading card.  I'm not even sure where I got it, but I read that thing dozens of times to the point where it was in no condition to be called a "collectible" anymore.

One of the vendors at the Vinyl Records Flea Market at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater was S-Mart Collectibles.  His table was set up across from the Mahoning merch table, and most of his stock was comic books that were based on movies, cartoons, or television shows.  He had a small box of autographed comics, including this X-Force #1 signed by co-creator and co-writer Fabian Nicieza.  He and Rob Liefeld not only came up with the X-Force characters, but they also worked together to create Deadpool.

The price was more than fair, and although I strongly doubt that this is going to kick off a comic book collecting binge in my mid 40's, it's nice to have a piece of my childhood back.

Bless Me, Batman, For I Have Sinned

The Slatington Marketplace
Route 873 - Slatington, PA

I'm sure the placement of this merchandise on the shelves was random, but I'd like to believe that there's some lunatic child out there somewhere who prays at night to The Dark Knight.

A Good Dude Who I'm Going To Miss

Ken Box
1956 - 2022

The Hometown Farmer's Market is a place I've been coming to since I've been old enough to walk.  It's only open on Wednesday and a lot of the vendors set up their shops outside, so it's a place that we typically go to quite a bit in the Spring and Summer but not so much in the Fall and Winter.

It was 66 degrees yesterday, which is not at all typical for mid-February in Northeast Pennsylvania, so we decided to stop by after work.  It's the first time that we've been here since last summer.  One of the shops here that I was looking forward to visiting was a used bookstore that's in the back of the main building.  I've found a lot of awesome things here over the years, but the main reason I wanted to stop was to talk with Ken.  He's a hell of a nice guy who I've spent hours talking with about books, movies, and baseball, but especially about music and concerts that we've been to.

The store is still there and it's still open, but Ken wasn't there.  A sign was tacked up out front to let his customers know that he passed away on September 24th of last year.

I didn't know him well, but I'm going to miss him.  I don't make friends easily, but he was an extremely nice person who was easy to talk with and very knowledgeable about rock and new wave.  Every time I came to the shop, we'd end up talking for an hour... and then hour and a half... and then two hours... and it felt like only 10 or 15 minutes had gone by.

In addition to being a bookseller and an encyclopedia of knowledge about rock music, Ken was an artist and he created a lot of framed collages that are still hanging in the store.  The one that caught my eye last year wasn't really a collage like some of the others, but it was a framed collection of The Far Side comics that he cut out and arranged.  I'm a big fan of Gary Larson's comics, and when I noticed this resting on a pile of books last summer, it started a conversation that Ken and I had about The Far Side, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and other newspaper comic strips.  It was still there in the shop last night, so I bought it off of his friend who is now running the shop.  I'm in the process of remodeling an area of my basement as a rec room to read, watch movies, play video games and listen to records, and I'm going to hang this on the wall above the table that's next to my recliner.  

Thanks for being a good dude.  Hope to see you on the other side someday.

That Ought To Pop The Ratings

No Dogs Allowed

Snoopy Come Home
National General Pictures (1972)

The second film based on the Peanuts comic strip was released to theaters nationwide 50 years ago today.  Snoopy Come Home was written by the great Charles Schulz and directed by Bill Melendez.  It was critically acclaimed at the time of its release and has gone on to be a beloved classic.  However, the film did poorly at the box office, earning less than a quarter of its estimated one million dollar budget.

There's a lot of Peanuts cartoons out there, so it's entirely possible that you might not remember if you've ever watched this before, but if you found yourself slowly singing the title of this post in the deep voice of Thurl Ravenscroft, it's a pretty safe bet that you've seen this movie.  If you want to see it on its 50th birthday, you can do so on Amazon Prime.

Beware: Exercise Extreme Caution

Skate Country
East 22nd Street - Tuscon, AZ (2017)
This photo of a Superman mural behind a water fountain at a roller skating rink in Arizona was shared on Facebook a few years ago.  It quickly went viral and has been circulating ever since.

Another Brave Yar Flies Off To Fight The Qotile

Yars' Revenge
Atari 2600 (1982)

The iconic space battle, created by Howard Scott Warshaw, between a vulnerable Yar and the evil Qotile has turned 40 years old this month.  Yars' Revenge has been re-released in numerous forms over the past four decades and is still enjoyed to this day, both by retro gamers who grew up with the Atari 2600 and later generations of gamers who are discovering the classics for themselves.

Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, FL) - May 7, 1982

The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) - May 14, 1982

It's difficult to pin down the exact release date of a game from the 70's or 80's because, in most cases, it didn't have one.  There was some promotion of future releases, but the first time I ever remember it being a specific date was when Midway announced that the home port of Mortal Kombat would be released simultaneously on the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Boy and Game Gear on September 13th, 1993 (also known as "Mortal Monday").  In contrast, the upcoming games for consoles of the 8-Bit Era were usually announced in a "coming soon" list.  If they really wanted to give us more information, we'd get a preview of the game with some screenshots and a vague release date such as "coming in may".

Exact sales figures are another thing that are difficult to pinpoint for games of that era, but there's no question that Yars' Revenge was a massive success.  It's considered to be the highest selling original game for the Atari 2600.  In the years that followed, it was ported to Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, and it was included on just about every compilation of Atari games, including Atari Greatest Hits: Volume 2 (Nintendo DS), Atari Anthology (Xbox, Playstation 2), Atari Vault (Steam), Atari Flashback Classics (Nintendo Switch, Playstation Vita), and on all of the Atari Flashback plug-and-play consoles.

Although there are exceptions like Adventure and Pitfall, most of the top selling games for the Atari 2600 were home ports of games that gamers enjoyed playing at the arcade.  Many others had licensed characters from existing properties that potential game buyers were familiar with, like Star Wars and Spider Man.

Imagine trying to tell a story with your game that connects to its audience without the internet, and without the kind of technology that will allow you to tell that story in the game itself.  How do you inspire gamers to connect with the characters and the world you created when those characters are just a couple of pixels, and without the ability to include words other than maybe "score" or "player 1"?  One way is to include a small comic book with the game, and it's one of the things that I believe truly helped Yars' Revenge to have the impact that it had.

The Yars' Revenge comic was written by Hope Shafer and drawn by Frank Cirocco, Ray Garst and Hiro Kimura.  It helped to explain the battle you were having on the screen with your joystick, and it spawned a number of additional ways in which the story was told.

Not long after the game was released, Kids Stuff Records released a record that told the story of Yars' Revenge, and even included some disco-sounding space tunes that fit the mood of the game.  Five years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Howard Scott Warshaw at the Timeline Arcade in Hanover, PA.  He signed my album cover with "Yars' Truly".  You can listen to the album above, which has been digitized and uploaded by boyjohn who has a channel where he archives children's albums on YouTube.

Dying Easter Eggs With Marcie

It's The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown
CBS (1974)

One of my favorite parts of Easter is watching the Peanuts holiday special It's The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown.  My favorite part is seeing how frustrated Peppermint Patty gets when she's trying to teach Marcie how to color eggs for Easter.

Your Mother's A Tracer!

Chasing Amy
View Askew (1997)

The third movie in the View Askewniverse premiered in theaters 25 years ago today.

In my opinion, this is the closest that Kevin Smith has ever come to doing a John Hughes comedy flick.  I could absolutely have seen this coming out of the late 80's with members of the Brat Pack being cast in the starring roles.   

Some folks may say that this movie hasn't aged well, but I disagree.  A movie can still be worth watching even if your opinions about the characters has changed over time.  In fact, you should watch it today if for no other reason than for the opportunity to reflect on how the world has changed over the past twenty five years.

A movie is a snapshot in time - it holds a mirror up to its audience at the time it was made and remembers what we'd like to forget.  There is no more jarring example of this than the roles given to African American actors and actresses throughout most of the 20th century.  White people today have no problem pointing out how racist many of these depictions are, however they have a bit more of a problem when they have to consider that their parents and grandparents watched those same movies and didn't see a problem.  The truth is that people are a product of the time and place that they happened to be born.  A white person born in the 1930's probably lived most of their lives with views that we would consider today as disgusting, however if that same person were born in 2000, they would never even consider those views as acceptable.  What I think most people fail to accept is that the reverse is also true - if you were born in the 1930's, you would have had many of the same views that you recognize as racist today.  It is also highly probable that all of us have thoughts and actions in our everyday lives that we don't pay any attention to, but that children born in the 2050's will find problematic.  It's something I think about every time I put gas in the car or throw away a disposable product.

 

Chasing Amy is filled with jokes that that are cringe-worthy today, but the plot stands up.  From the first time I saw this movie as a teenager, I thought of Alyssa Jones as a strong woman who won't stay in the boxes that people put her into.  It's pretty clear, from her backstory and her relationship with Holden, that she is a bisexual woman who has a healthy outlook on sexuality.  She owns who she is, and she makes no apologies for it.  However, she finds intolerance at every turn, from her jackass judgmental boyfriend to her circle of gay friends whose reaction to her finding love with a man is obnoxious and insensitive.

Kevin Smith has said that Banky is "the idiot character" in the movie.  I don't disagree with that assessment, but he is not "the" idiot character, but the sidekick of the primary idiot character, which is Holden McNeil.  The final scene of the movie shows that Holden has had time to reflect and comes to the realization that he was an asshole.  His ego was bruised when he learned that his girlfriend had an active sex life that made him feel uncomfortable, and instead of working through these feelings in a healthy way, he attacked and shamed Alyssa.  Instead of backing down, Alyssa stood her ground and tried like hell to get Holden to see what an asshole he was being, but it didn't work.  Finally, Holden put the final nail in the coffin of his relationship to her when he made it all about him.  His suggestion to fix things between them was asinine and incredibly disrespectful to Alyssa.  If he had just shut the fuck up and listened to her that night in the rain, they probably would have been able to work through the problems caused by his initial blow up, but Holden was too arrogant and immature to see it at the time.

Chasing Amy is a good movie.  It has moments that will make you laugh.  It has moments that will make you cringe.  It has moments that will make you want to strangle Ben Affleck.  It may not have the same rewatchability factor as a movie like Clerks or Mallrats, but it's definitely worth watching at least once.

We Are Oxfords, Not Rogues

The King's Man
20th Century Studios (2021)

We saw the trailer for The King's Man before one of the other movies that we recently saw at the Regal (either Scream or Nightmare Alley - I can't remember which).  That trailer was my only exposure to this movie, so all I knew is that it was some sort of action/comedy flick, and that Rasputin and Lenin were two of the antagonists, so I went into this almost completely blind and with no expectations, which is one of my favorite ways to see a new movie in theaters.

Action comedies are a strange genre for me.  I almost always enjoy them when I see them, but the way they're promoted doesn't usually appeal to me, so it's rare that I go out of my way to see them.  Even now, when I look at the poster, I think "eh, I guess it could be ok".  There's nothing wrong with it.  In fact, it's a very nice poster, but it doesn't jump out at me as something that I need to see.  Truth be told, if I had seen the trailer more than once, I probably wouldn't have wanted to go see it.  Again, there's nothing wrong with the trailer, but the more often I see them, the less interested I am in actually seeing the movie.  As I write this, I'm reminded of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  It came out almost 20 years ago and I still haven't seen it despite the fact that I like Sean Connery.  The trailer was played heavily on television in the weeks leading up to it's premier, and by the time it was in theaters, I had zero interest in seeing it.  I'm not advocating against commercials and trailers because if people don't know anything about a movie, it's unlikely that they'll pay to go see it.  I'm just weird when it comes to repetition, I guess.

I don't see as many commercials since we got rid of cable, and my exposure to the previews at the theater have been limited since we started our Regal Unlimited subscription because we've learned to time our arrival to just a few minutes before showtime, so I'm more likely to give a movie like The King's Man a shot in 2022 than I would have been years ago.

 

There are quite a few things that I didn't realize about this film going into it.  First of all, I had no idea that it was part of a franchise.  On our way out of the theater, I talked with the manager and mentioned that I really enjoyed this movie, and only then did I learn that it was a prequel to the Kingsman movies.  I had a faint memory of hearing about something called Kingsman, but the previous movies in the series came out before the Regal Unlimited plan existed, so they flew completely under my radar.

Also, I didn't know that this movie is based on a Marvel Comics series until I started writing this post just a few minutes ago.  I'm just not a comic book guy.  I tried to be when I was a kid.  My Nana gave me a comic book collecting kit that she ordered out of the Sears Wishbook as a Christmas present when I was ten years old, but I always preferred things like Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts and The Far Side to Batman and Spider Man.  It's not like I didn't read them at all.  I did, and I liked the characters and the stories, but truth be told, I like the advertisements almost as much, if not more than the superhero stories.

Finally, I didn't realize that this movie was supposed to be released before the start of the pandemic.  It was originally slated for release in November 2019.  It got pushed back to February 2020 for some reason.  Then, it kept getting kicked down the road as a result of Covid-19, with at least six different release dates in 2020 and 2021 that came and went without the film ever being screened.  It finally premiered in December 2021 with a 45 day window in which it would be exclusive to theaters before heading to Hulu and HBO Max next month.

 

So, now that it's finally in theaters and I managed to find my way to seeing it without any prior knowledge of its existence, I'm happy to report that it's a hell of a lot of fun.  It's one of those movies that has a little bit of everything.  It has fun action scenes without being a balls-to-the-wall streetfight from beginning to end.  It has funny moments without turning into a slapstick comedy.  It has moments of drama without trying too hard to provoke a reaction.  It ties together actual historical events with a fictitious hidden story which reminded be a little bit of Inglourious Basterds.  I don't mean that had the style or tone of a Tarantino flick, because it did not, but I left the theater wondering if it was an inspiration to the writers.

I couldn't tell you how it ranks against the other Kingsman films because I haven't seen them, and I don't know how accurate it is to the source material because I've never read the comics.  However, I can tell you that if you're going into this with absolutely no knowledge of the Kingsman universe, it won't hinder your enjoyment of what is a very entertaining movie.  It has definitely inspired me to go back and watch the movies that I missed, and if they make another, I will be sure to see it on the big screen.

Same As It Ever Was...

1922 New Years Comic
Dorman H. Smith

One hundred years ago, this comic was published in newspapers across the country, including the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, PA.  It was drawn at the end of our previous global pandemic and it reflects on the fact that we weren't able to get back to normal in 1921, but with a hopeful thought that we'd get there in the new year.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Rocketship to Christmas

Christmas Eve In Space (1958)

Merry Christmas to you and your family and friends.  Thank you for visiting my blog.

Pac Man's Christmas

Pac Man's Christmas comic
Woman's Day Magazine (December 13, 1983)

A four page comic book sequel to Christmas Comes To Pac-Land was published in an issue of Woman's Day Magazine 38 years ago.  It was scanned and shared by Tanooki Joe of Video Game Art & Tidbits on Twitter.  Click the images below to enlarge the pages.

Tigers Will Do Anything For A Tuna Fish Sandwich

Calvin And Hobbes
Bill Watterson (1985)

Happy birthday to one of the greatest and most heartfelt works of comedy ever produced.  Calvin and Hobbes was first published in newspapers across the country on this date in 1985.  I don't think I've ever found a character in any work of fiction that I relate more closely to than Calvin, and my love for this comic and my respect for its creator, Mr. Bill Watterson, has only grown as I've gotten older.