Sunday, July 31, 2011

Comics Relief, Part 5: The Thrilling Anti-Climax

In the shocking climax of our legendary last episode, Jaybee revealed that perhaps, after four long drawn out posts about his comic obsession, he may not be crazy after all. We've been eavesdropping outside his "doctor's" office just for fun, and hoping to find out something even more embarrassing.


Alas, it's been an exercise of diminishing returns, as Jaybee seems only slightly more pathetic that he did three posts ago.


We are now contemplating reasons why we shouldn't kick the shit out of him for wasting our time. But there are still some Tostito's left, so we'll finish them first.


Oh, yeah. Stay tuned for…oh, who gives a rat's ass, anyway?


Jaybee: So I’ve come full circle.

Doctor: Christ I hate it when patients say that. All it means is that they’ve just figured out that they’re going in circles. I could have told them that!

Jaybee: What I’m trying to say, doctor, is that with “Marvel Civil War”, I read a whole bunch of comics, felt like I got about half the story, and ran out of time and energy before pursuing it any further. And I’m certain I’ve missed some absolutely legendary issues. Kind of like 45 years ago.

I’d like to say that I’m done - that I’m past all these foolish things. But I’d be lying. Because if they provide joy in any form – be it an old TV show or a comic book - they’re not foolish at all.

Comics were great in the sixties, and then slowly began to suck again. That’s okay. It’s just entropy. But then comics took a giant step forward in the eighties with “The Dark Knight”, “Watchmen” and many, many others that someone smarter than me could name. The stories are darker and considerably more violent. All in all, they’re as good as they ever were. If anything, it’s too big an ocean for me to swim in. I’ve already got too many books still to read. So I’ve got to be particular about my time.

One of the great strides comics have made since I was a kid, is the far greater number of female super heroes. Isn’t it wonderful that young girls had heroes in a formerly male dominated genre blah, blah, blah? (The tight fitting costumes and incredible bodies don’t hurt, either.)

So doctor, to quote the Elephant Man (No, not a super hero in the traditional sense) I say to you, I am not an animal!!! I am a man? Okay, forget that. I’ll settle for not an animal.

And besides, what are those millions of adults in movie theaters doing watching “Captain America”, “The Green Lantern” and “Thor” doing if not reading comic books, except without the actual reading? It’s one thing for a grown man, if there is such a thing, to say the words “Doc Oc” and “Silver Surfer”, but grown women? Come on. How nuts can I be?

I supposed I can take one alleged step up on the popular culture evolutionary scale and rent “Land of the Giants” DVDs, if for nothing else, to see if Deanna Lund could possibly have been as good looking as I remember.

And to see if they make it back to Earth.

Doctor: Well our time is just about up… As you said, I’m SURE you’re completely cured. But if you think of any other…enthusiasms, like Tonka Toys or Martchbox Cars, and would like to schedule a follow up appointment…

John: Well, we just saw the Monkees in concert…

Doctor: Don’t worry. Everybody likes the Monkees. I was there, too.

Jaybee leaves the doctor’s office, passing several patients, asleep by the door, and heads for the boat off of Shutter Island.



Next time: Jaybee revisits an old nemesis – trying to understand music – and, as usual, fails.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Comics Relief, Part Four: Civil War!

Well, we’re still sitting outside Jaybee’s “doctor’s” office and, well I don’t care anymore. I’m just too tired to get up. Oh, no! Voices!

Jaybee: So I fell off the wagon again, doctor, and I blame the lists. You know, top ten albums, top ten movies, etc. Show me a top ten list of farts, and I’ll start sniffing around.

That's how my wife gets me to go to the grocery store. She says that she found an article on top ten grocery items. Before you know it, I've done the week’s food shopping, and find myself raving at her “You've interfered with my plans for the last time!”

The list I’m referring to now, though, is the book “1000 Comics You Must Read” by Tony Isabella . Is he one of your patients? He should be.

Going through it, I found a disturbing number of comics I'd already read, and worse, a whole bunch more I wanted to read. It was like “1000 Beers You Must Drink”  for alcoholics.

And of course, being a true Marvel addict a simple story taking place within the confines of a single issue is not good enough. I go for the sagas, the epics, the same, age old device to get suckers to buy more comics. And of all the comics listed in “1000 …” the one that caught my interest was Marvel’s “Civil War”, a story involving every superhero Marvel has, which takes up several issues of each franchise, thus spanning, depending on who's doing the spanning, anywhere from 80 to 150 issues.

This seemed long, complicated and frustrating, so naturally I was intrigued.

Now even I'm smart enough at least to try the library before spending money unnecessarily. My wife believes I would check out hell first if heaven had a cover charge.

And you don’t have to even check the stacks anymore, either. You can go on line and place a hold on any book you want, so why not comics? I’ve more or less used up the branch that’s closest to my house, and now go to another one, where I would have the comics sent. It has the added advantage that I’m not as well known there. So the whole sorry enterprise would go unnoticed.

So, sure enough, within a few days, I start getting notices that X Men this or Iron Man that had arrived.

When I get there it turns out that comics are not placed in the usual area for pick up. Like condoms, they're behind the counter and you have to ask for them.

So I get on line, feeling nice and anonymous, when I look up to see the old Italian lady from my local branch sitting behind the counter. She knows me pretty well, and even thinks I’m respectable. This will ruin all that, I’m sure. Unless I can count on that total freeze out I’ve come to occasionally expect from the old (and young, come to think of it) ladies in my neighborhood.

But no such luck. She looks up and smiles at me.

"Oh, Hi, what are you doing here?" I say, acting pleasantly surprised and happy to see her.

"Our regular branch is now closed on Saturday, so they moved me here."

"Oh, that's great…” I try some distracting chit chat, but I can hear muttering and pages being violently turned, which means that the book nerds behind me are getting restless.

“Okay, bye! Oh! I almost forgot! I've got something waiting for me on the shelf behind you." I couldn't bring myself to say the word "comic".

She turned around to look.

"Oh. A GRAPHIC NOVEL" she said..

What? Not “COMIC”? Graphic Novel actually sounds pretty classy. But who's kidding whom? I was afraid she wouldn’t find it, and resort to one of those drug store overhead microphones:

"Manager, please. I've got a fifty three year old man who wants a COMIC BOOK. That's right, a COMIC BOOK!" And a room full of homeless people laugh in unison.

Luckily she found them, and no such announcement was required. I scooted out of there quick, covering the “graphic novels” with a large print edition of “Everything’s Illuminated”.



The library doesn’t carry individual issues, but rather bound collections of more of less self contained stories, running about eight issues long. Well, I had a foot high stack of them on my dresser. And with the help of a couple of internet sites manned by some people with too much time on their hands (links?) – I began reading the saga, taking care to not read Spider Man 531 before Fantastic four 565, etc…

All in all, I read about seventy five of the comics that make up the “core” of the story, and I know of at least another fifty that were at least peripherally related. But since not everything was available at the library, and my obsession didn’t extend to actually paying for anything, I settled.

Doctor: So how was it?

Jaybee: It was…pretty good. Not great. Pretty good.

Doctor: I’m not surprised. The reality is usually worse than the anticipation. I suppose you think because of this, you’ve somehow grown up and are cured.

Jaybee: No, as you said (see the legendary previous posts!) one is never curred.

Doctor: True, true.

Jaybee: And besides, I’ve decided that I’m sick in the first place!

Doctor: Oh, rest assured, you’re quite mad.  But go on!

Hang on for the thrilling (eh) conclusion!!!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Comics Relief, Part Three: On and Off the Wagon

Well, we’re still crouched by the door, listening in. Jaybee does go on, doesn’t he? So someone’s gone for folding chairs and snacks. Honestly, most people could admit to murder, or worse, impotence, sooner than Jaybee can explain his fixation with comic books.
Well it sounds like he’s stopped crying like a little girl, so let's tune back in. Nachos, anyone?


Jaybee: So true, doctor, so true. One is never quite cured. I was doing fine for a long while. I passed for an adult for years, only rarely being detected.

But in my thirties, I noticed that Marvel had begun reissuing its classic comics in hardcover, and in color like the original issues. They ran at least twenty bucks a shot with just a handful of issues in them, so the cheapskate in me was always able to resist.

But then Marvel began releasing cheaper soft-cover volumes. Sure, they were in black and white, but they were packed with at least twenty issues in each. They were entitled “The Essential (fill in the name of your favorite super hero)”, but by “essential” they seemed to mean all of the very oldest issues. Kind of like those “Greatest Hits” albums of very mediocre artists. But what sucks for music is perfect for comics, because these volumes solved the old Continuity problem.  They were almost irresistible.

And then, finally, I found them – “The Essential Spider Man”, Volumes 1 and 2. In other words, a huge, previously missing chunk of my childhood, bound into two handy volumes. And well, doctor, it was getting near my birthday, and my wife was asking what I’d like… and wouldn’t these two volumes make a neat gift for a normal forty year old man? Well, of course not. But they were perfect for me.

And like the first drag of a cigarette after not smoking for a while, and unlike the “Man from UNCLE”, “Time Tunnel” or “Lost in Space” DVDs, they were freaking awesome! They were everything I hoped they would be.  And what a delight it was reading them from issue number one all the way to forty, right up to where my brother started it all forty five years ago. 
So, for a time, I achieved Continuity. But since I can’t leave well enough alone, I decided that I wanted Closure, too, and thus stepped out onto a slippery slope.

After all, when you’ve just finished reading those first forty issues, isn’t the next logical thing to continue and reread the issues my brother and I read as kids? We’re talking issues 41 all the way up to #100, with the stupid shock ending and lousy art that eventually put me off Spidey. This would mean getting the “Essential Spider Man” Volumes 3, 4 and 5. But that would be the end of it, because I can stop whenever I want, right?

But with the subsequent new golden age of comics and the advent of the Marvel movies, I got curious again.

The Spiderman franchise was by then hovering somewhere in the mid 600s. Wasn’t it time for me to find out what I was missing? So I decided to fill in the gap that comprised those forty or so years. So, what was that? About 500 issues or so? No problem. In for a penny, in for a pound, I said. I was convinced that each issue would be a unique and satisfying experience.

But doctor, I’m proud to say that I got up to about #200 when I gave up.

By the way, they’re up to at least volume 9 - Marvel still finding every single issue “essential”, apparently. The quality had sagged, and there were too many other interesting things to do, like rent the entire DVD set of “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”...

Doctor’s Voice: Oh, are you still talking? What year are you up to, anyway?

Jaybee: In Marvel time? 1979. Real life? 2007 or so.

Doctor: So that would make you how old?

Jaybee: I was born later in the year, so I was still technically 49.

Doctor: So you were a fifty year old man still reading comic books!

Jaybee: You make it sound so sordid. In fact I had a very good reason to continue reading them. It was a matter of War and Peace.

Doctor: Tolstoy?

Jaybee: No, Stan Lee. I meant “Marvel Civil War”...

Doctor: Jesus F-ing Christ!

Jaybee: What was that doctor?

Doctor: Oh, nothing.

To be, you guessed it, continued…

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Comics Relief: Part Two - The Early Childhood Trauma Defense

When we last left off, we were all having a good laugh at Jaybee’s expense, trying to eavesdrop on his visit to the “doctor” who we can’t quite hear, but we somehow know has an Austrian accent.

Doctor, I was only trying to give you some insight into my motivation for reading comic books. There were some traumas I experienced…

Some muffled words and laughter.

Well, I guess I do sound funny using those big words. Yes, I’ll leave them for adults like you and I’ll just keep to the comics. Thank you.

As I was saying, I was trying to explain why I still read comics. But it’s a little like explaining why I still can’t dance. What’s that? Yes, I’m sure there’s no connection.

Anyway, back when I was a kid in the sixties, aside from the vast netherworld of gory horror, Classics Illustrated and Archie, there stood the two comic titans, DC and Marvel. You were either into one or the other, not both. There were actual factions (along with the Yankee/Met and Keds/PF Flyer factions. The neighborhood was pretty united on Coke against Pepsi , though.)

My brother and I started out with DC. That’s where Superman was, so where else would we go? One of the great things about DC was that they didn’t go in for that “To be continued…” crap. You bought a comic and you got a story. It was rare indeed for Superman to not kick Lex Luthor’s ass within twenty pages. We thought Marvel was just a rip off, with their multi-part stories, which were clearly just a gimmick to get you to buy more comics. The kids who bought them were suckers. But for some reason, they made fun of us.

What’s that, doctor? You’re not surprised?

Anyway, this was during the Marvel “golden age”, with Fantastic Four, Thor and, of course, Spiderman. So how long could we resist? I think it was my brother who eventually broke down and got Spiderman #40. From that point on, we were completely hooked.

But now we would have to face the Continuity Issue. In the Marvel Universe (there were several, actually) it was impossible to know the whole story, unless you bought every single issue, starting with #1. It was where last month’s issue – the one I didn’t get, of course - is already being referred to as “legendary” this month. I’d be haunted by this, which was, of course, what Marvel was counting on. And I responded by loyally buying the next twenty issues of Fantastic Four, etc. I’d become one of the suckers, except without the making fun of other people part.

So the comics would pile up. My brother and I had a system, but it was somewhat ethereal to the uninitiated, with some comics laying on the back of the couch, others on the kitchen table, still others in the bathroom. Mom and dad would complain, not so much about the mess, but about how we were being distracted from our studies.

With a vague feeling of unease, my brother and I eventually threw all of the comics into a box, and kept them in our room. Again, not so much for the mess, but for protection. We must have thought that the box/room combination would act as a force field a la Sue Storm, protecting our precious collection from harm. But we were wrong. We didn’t realize that we were up against a greater foe than any we had ever encountered in the Marvel universe.

Mom. (Yeah, her again.)

Our super heroes could usually count on a speech ahead of time from the super villain which would give them a heads up that they were in danger. And mom would probably say that she had given us such a speech on several occasions, but we didn’t remember.

Anyway, one day, we came home from school and the comics were all gone. When we asked her where they were, she announced with relish that she had thrown the out (“Every single one!”). It would go down in family lore as the Great Purge.

So you see, doctor, the root of the problem, as I prefer to see it, is when my mom threw away the box. Although my brother and I felt we had it under control, mom and dad could see the steady progression from Superman to Spiderman, Daredevil, etc. Clearly, heroin was next. So she tossed them. I’d like to think that they are now worth the GDP of a small country. And I take pains to remind her of this whenever I can.

A muffled remark.
What do you mean, is that all? Of course not.

There was also that time during our trip to Ireland in 1971. My brother and I were rebuilding the collection, indeed peaking, at the time, and brought several of our favorites for the trip. Comics were in short supply in Ireland. So short, in fact, that while stopped at a light, the driver in the car behind us noticed all of ours stacked up blocking the rear window (it was the new system). The guy walked up to us and asked for some for his own kids. We were still in our pre-rebellious stage, and for some reason, gave them all to him! The best of the best. We’re still smarting over that one.

Then there was the extended family squabble regarding the comparative merits of Spiderman vs. Daredevil, who, according to my cousin, could leap “one eighth of a block!” Said cousin is now a major contributor to Wikipedia.

So that’s it, doctor – traumatic and unresolved issues from childhood. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Doctor: That’s your trauma? From the way you express yourself, I was sure the trauma had been from a blunt instrument.

You’ve clearly not met my mother.

So I guess I’m cured, right?

Doctor’s Voice: Mr. Jaybee, one is never actually cured. One is merely in recovery. But go on. I’m anxious to hear about the blunt trauma.

What?

Doctor: Never mind. Go on.

To be continued…

Monday, July 4, 2011

Comics Relief, Part One: A Case of ADD-DVD

Sorry to interrupt what is usually an unending flow of brilliant musical insight, but Jaybee’s feeling a bit under the weather lately. Today he’s at his “doctor’s” office.
So what’s in it for you, you ask? Well, perhaps we can pass the time by eavesdropping on him as he describes his symptoms, thus adding to what would merely be private humiliation.
So let’s put our ears up against the door and listen. It’s hard to make out the doctor, but Jaybee can be heard loud and clear from the couch – I mean, the examining table:


Well, doctor, it’s like this. I still read comics.

Yes, I’m 53 years. No, not dog years.

How do I explain?

Well, I thought it was all behind me - a faint childhood memory at best. But it all came back to haunt me…

No, you’re right. I lied. I did it all myself.

I wanted to do it, and I did it. And I (mostly) liked doing it.  And I’d do it again, except not around other adults. Sounds a lot like mortal sin, but a closer analogy may be masturbation.

Let me explain:

When I’m not following my “new at any cost” aesthetic, I get nostalgic for things I experienced as a kid. Movies, TV Shows, and yes, comics. I also do this out of curiosity. I want to see if these things are really as great as they seemed at the time. So far, with one glaring exception, it’s not been working out. My experience renting DVDs of old favorite TV shows, like “The Man from UNCLE” and “Time Tunnel” has been pretty dismal. In each case I barely got through disc one. It seems that the memories are way better than the reality.

Another reason I do this is to fill in the gaps in the stories – the stuff I missed. Growing up in the sixties and seventies - before the internet, or even the VCR - the experience of pop culture could be very hit or miss. Be it a movie in a theater or a favorite show on TV, something was either available right now or it was gone, and you only had yourself – or siblings who wanted to watch something else - to blame for missing it. This made following anything with a degree of continuity very challenging. And continuity would be my Achilles Heel. At least it would be if I manage to read “The Odyssey” all the way through.

I had a habit of missing the beginnings and the endings of everything. I was kind of weak on the pivotal middle episodes, too. I caught all the other ones. But without fail, I’d either miss the legendary origin, the pivotal middle or the climactic ending. I never saw anything in its entirety.

I recall a third grade classmate swearing that I missed the greatest ever episode of “Lost in Space”. There he was, sitting three rows back, trying to act out the plot for me, in the middle of math class. And for years - decades, really - I’d imagine what that episode must have been like. Surely, it would have made more of a cultural impact on my life than anything up to that point. So even after the "Time Tunnel" and "UNCLE" debacles, when the “Lost In Space” DVDs became available, I rented them.

Deep down, I already knew that they were going to suck, but I’d finally get to see how they got lost in the first episode, my classmate’s legendary episode, and even how/if they ever got back to Earth, where I assumed they’d run into Charlton Heston having a relaxing day at the beach by the Statue of Liberty.

Alas, it didn’t suck exactly. Rather, it was totally unmagical in any way, shape or form. Just a typical TV show – so much so that now I hope they never get back.

Doctor’s Voice: But I thought your problem was confined to comic books. You’re clearly far more disturbed than you had let on!

To be continued...