Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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On this day in 1981, we were, presumably, stirred but not shaken, as the latest 007 epic hit the big screen.
That epic was For Your Eyes Only which Wikipedia tells me was the fifth of Roger Moore's seven Bond films and the final one to be distributed solely by United Artists. I think it was also the first Bond film to feature the theme tune's singer in the opening titles.
An event that would, I'm sure, be of interest to Bond, that week, was the launching of the new HMS Ark Royal. I have total certainty that, even as he heard of it, 007 was planning to sail it into some far-flung corner of the world and make full use of its plane-launching capabilities, in order to bring justice to some megalomaniac or other.
But if aircraft carriers were on James Bond's mind, meat was very much on the minds of the nation's sports lovers, as BBC One broadcast the British Meat Games from Crystal Palace, an event which pitted Great Britain, West Germany and Poland against each other. You just don't get sporting events with names like, "The British Meat Games," anymore.
You do, of course, still get music charts and, on the UK singles chart, that week, Michael Jackson was reigning supreme with One Day in Your Life which I have the notion was a re-release from the early 1970s.
Over on the album listings, far less gentle fare ruled, as Motorhead's No Sleep Til Hammersmith smashed its way onto the chart, at Number One.
Daredevil's not happy about Starr Saxon knowing his secret identity.
And that leads to a round of horn-headed soul-searching, mostly based around him sitting about, recounting, to himself, the story of his origin, thanks to Roy Thomas and Gene Colan.
Elsewhere, it looks like the Panther's still having trouble with King Solomon's pesky Frog.
ROM, Captain Marvel and the Micronauts are also in this issue but I cannot say just what activities it is that they're engaged in.
He may, once more, be denied the cover of his own book but Cap does, at least, manage to bump off Baron Blood, thanks to a quick dose of decapitation.
Unfortunately, the Baron's not the only one popping his clogs in this tale. So does Union Jack, although, in his case, it's from natural causes.
Elsewhere, Tony Stark's in Asia, investigating a string of murders at his Hong Kong facility, only to have a great big dragon show up and get homicidal on everyone's asses. This sounds like a job for Iron Man if anything does.
But doesn't it involve demonic possession of a computer, or something?
Back in New York, the Dazzler's activities are a mystery to me.
The Blue Shield's up to something or other.
Didn't the Unnameable feature in an HP Lovecraft story?
If so, is it the same Unnameable?
Or just someone with the same... ...erm... name?
And that means he's still up against Toy.
And that can only mean it's time for Toy to get his comeuppance.
Which means the Tinkerer's about to lose his best friend and finest creation.
In what I think is her second adventure, the Cat finds herself battling the Owl in a tale I'm certain has only come about as a nod to The Owl and the Pussycat.
But let's fling ourselves into space because it seems Spidey and Adam Warlock must overcome the power of the Stranger.
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23 comments:
Seeing as recent issues of Marvel Action reprinted FF #232 I'm going to hazard a guess that the sensational solo Torch action this week was from #233, Steve.
A low key solo Torch story was quite an surprising approach for John Byrne to take for his second outing as writer/artist of the world's greatest comic magazine so I can only assume he had some sort of nostalgic affection for the old Strange Tales series.
The Unnameable was a novel by Samuel Beckett.
-sean
Missed the horror comics discussion here recently, as my understanding is they're still illegal in the UK under the 1955 Child And Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act and I wouldn't want to incriminate myself.
But still - where was the love for Grimly Feendish, and Frankie Stein?
Forget EC, was no one here into Shiver & Shake? Or Monster Fun?
-sean
Steve, I have never heard of the "Citadel of Xhoohx", but if the Defenders went in there, they should have expected something weird.
Palindromes are never a good sign.
I had to google "The Unnameable", even a Lovecraft nut like me. One of his more obscure stories, featuring his fictional alter-ego, Randolph Carter.
That character got himself into all kinds of trouble! And not good trouble either.
Fellas, I just snagged a copy of a book called Lovecraft's Monsters, an anthology of short stories where modern writers take up the themes of Lovecraft, or if not actually elements of his work then at least a modern approach to Cosmic Horror. I think it came out in 2014.
I've only just started it, but it's pretty good so far.
Ever wonder what the government did with the horrific, diabolical denizens of Innsmouth?
The government has had them all imprisoned on a secret military base for eighty years, on an island off the Pacific Coast.
Guess who shows up.
There's even a Laird Barron story in there, but that guy, he makes up his own monsters. just as horrific.
I really need to stop reading that stuff in bed before I go to sleep.
M.P.
Good grief... for a nation that sold Sten guns in their comics, I can't believe they'd be sensitive to horror comics. Ah well...
Steve! I really dug your comment yesterday (I forget how you termed it) about the mysterious types like The Shadow, Spectre, Phanthom Stranger who seemed to be on the outside of things. I'm almost wondering if that's why I dug the DC 100-pagers which featured so many reprints from the 1940s? So many of the 2nd banana golden age types DC reprinted really had such minimal character development e.g. Starman, Hourman, Atom, Dr. Fate, Hawkman, Wildcat, et al. that there was something quite curious and intriguing about them.
Meat Games... that is weird. Really weird.
FWIW for you soccer buffs, on this side of the planet we are getting a two-fer because we are awake during both your Euro Cup and the Copa America in South America.
Yesterday's match between Columbia and Brazil might have qualified as a Meat Game given Neymar looked like raw hamburger by half time, lol. IIRC he was bloodied up a fair bit.
Charlie, I remember those D.C. 100 pagers! They were great fun!
M.P.
Thanks for the Torch info, Sean.
I must confess I always get HP Lovecraft and Samuel Beckett mixed up. But, hold on, what if Godot is Cthulhu and that's who they're waiting for? It adds a whole new vibe to the thing.
MP, thanks for the Randolph Carter confirmation. It's nice to know I wasn't being delusional.
Charlie, they should definitely bring back the Meat Games. It's just the kind of promotional push the sport needs.
MP, the 100 pagers were indeed great.
I've just Googled, "is godot cthulhu?" Amazingly, the internet produced no matching results.
I can only assume there's a conspiracy of silence afoot.
Sean - You read my mind, as regards b.t.'s horror topic. I was going to mention 'Monster Fun' & 'Shiver & Shake', but thought there'd only be me young enough to have read them - so I made an alternative point! 'Monster Fun' annual was in the great British tradition of producing annuals long after the comic had been discontinued.
Phillip
You and your monsters MP! I dug all the Kirby monsters for sure like Fin, Fang, and Foom. But it never occurred to me there were novels.
Steve, Godot might not be Cthulhu but in that vein you may be interested to know that William Burroughs' Nova Mob and the Old Ones are one and the same in the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (according to the PG Wodehouse/HP Lovecraft "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss" mash-up part of The Black Bossier).
Actually, having thought about it, I'll suggest Alan Moore's other Lovecraft riffs, Neonomicon and Providence, as the most impressive horror comics.
More so even than Shiver & Shake.
-sean
Oh, before I forget, to all my British chums - Happy One Britain day!
Have you all been singing along to the One Britain One Nation song?
Its awful, isn't it? No offence intended...
-sean
The paradox of a comic called 'Future Tense' with Conan on the cover...
BBC Radio 4 recently made three serials based on stories by HP Lovecraft - The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, The Whisperer In Darkness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth were all produced in the style of "true-crime podcasts" which took many liberties with Lovecraft's original stories but I still enjoyed all three of them :D
Sean, I'd never heard of the One Britain, One Nation song so I've just listened to it on YouTube. It's sure to become a classic...
But if we're "all one team" why have England, Scotland and Wales got separate teams in the Euros? Britain is the ONLY country in the world that has different football teams IN THE SAME COUNTRY. Why don't Catalonia, Bavaria or Sicily have their own football teams to compete in the Euros?
Here's my suggestion for a song to represent modern Britain:
Oh, Brexitland, Brexitland show us the sign
Your children are waiting to see
The morning will come
When a trade-deal is mine
Yesterday belongs
Yesterday belongs
Yesterday belongs to me...
:D
The Education department were recommending it be sung in schools today to celebrate One Britain, Colin... forgetting that kids in Scotland are already on holiday. You've got to laugh.
-sean
I have no idea what “Monster Fun” and “Shiver and Shake” and “Grimly Feendish” are. If only there was some kind of super-science-fictiony device that I could just type a question into, and it would instantly give me the answer. And maybe it could even provide illustrations so I could actually see what these mysterious things look like, that would be AMAZING. Pffft! Dream on, b.t. ….
When I was a kid, Lovecraft and his pen-pals were still relatively obscure, which, honestly just added to the allure of the Cthulhu Mythos mystique for me. It’s very “meta” — that whole “rare, forbidden book” angle seemed especially resonant when reading about it in a rare, unpleasant-looking book by an author few people seemed to have heard of. The paperbacks that were in print at the time had those really odd John Holmes illustrations on the covers — oh, the looks my classmates would give me when I’d read one on campus…. (The FOOLS!)
I never imagined that Cthulhu and Co. would one day be so popular — nigh ubiquitous — with movies, toys, t-shirts, games and thousands upon thousands of Sequels By Other Hands devoted to tales of their squamous ilk. Charlie name-dropping Fin Fang Foom makes me wonder if anyone has ever written a mash-up of Mythos and Marvel Monster tropes. “The Call of Rommbu ”…“The Goom That Came to Sarnath”….”The Glop on the Doorstep”…”The Statement of Tim Boo Ba”….
b.t.
https://britishcomics.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/monster-fun/
http://kazoop.blogspot.com/2013/10/1979-shiver-shake-annual.html
b.t. - Here are some links!
Phillip
Perhaps the most curious thought I've seen the past few days was, "Who the hell made the underwear for Fin, Fang, Foom and Tim Boo Ba and the rest of the lot?"
And why just underwear and not fancy-schmancy outfits like Adam Warlock or Thanos or The Watcher or The Stranger had???
I mean, it's really discriminatory. (Where are our SJW when we need them!!!) I guess if you are butt ugly, you just get a pair of underwear but if you take a human form then you get a fancy-schmancy outfit???
Just one more example of how Lee and Kirby really had some "old school" habits.
The Comics Code Authority made them underpants for Fin Fang Foom and the rest, Charlie, just like they kept the Hulk's pants from disintegrating.
Wasn't that's Stan's explanation for those indestructible purple pants?
I seem to remember even the Silver Surfer flying around in little silver rompers.
He could fly through the hearts of stars and asteroid fields, and them trunks would stay on.
I wish I was as confident in my trousers. Ever since I hit middle age they seem to wanna fall down, for some reason. I am constantly on alert for slippage. You see a lotta guys my age with a crack problem.
I think at some point I may just have to give up and start wearing suspenders.
Good Lord, we all know where that leads.
M.P.
Too much information M.P. - you should probably have stopped at the bit about the Surfer flying through asteroid fields.
-sean
MP -
You know, cause I didn't until a few weeks ago, that the asteroids in that asteroid belt in our solar system are like millions of miles apart from each other? I about lost it... the immensity of space.
Regarding Surfer and his trunks... in general I would say he does not need them. BUT! What if he is like us dudes? Remember playing on the monkey bars, hopping a chain link fence, riding your bike as a kid and "fatally" slipping such that you come crashing down on your jewels? Well, let's suppose it's the same for the Surfer or the Thing in a way. Obviously they can fall down on a chain link fence and not get hurt. BUT! Suppose the jewels were to bounce off the rest of their super-hardened skin... like swinging from left to right? Maybe that could cause some damage? (Work with me here MP - I'm in your corner!)
Then you have to ponder the whole Watcher or Galactus toga / kilt costume. Maybe it's only once you got that high up the super-power chain you didn't need trunks to protect the jewels because you really aren't moving all that much?
(Granted when Galactus got eaten by the rest of the Marvel zombies he did take a hard fall but he was already toast by then.)
Gentlemen - Need your help ASAP!
My son and I want to see the 3 beaches at Normandy (Juno, Gold, Sword) taken by the French, British, and Canadian.
Can you guys recommend any youtube videos, movies, etc. that tell the story? (Saving Private Ryan set the mood for Omaha, that's for sure.)
Is The Longest Day the only movie out there that is reasonably factual?
Thanks Gents.
Steve, I am intrigued by your comparison between waiting for Godot and Lovecraft.
I think that could actually work in a book or a movie.
It seems to me there is the element of existential dread in that play. You get a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Godot might be delivering pizza or flowers or he might be the Antichrist.
Or, if he's delivering Domino's pizza, he might still be the Antichrist.
It's an evil pizza.
Remember, Steve, THE OLD ONES ARE, THE OLD ONES HAVE BEEN, THE OLD ONES WILL BE.
Perhaps the best ending to Beckett's play would have the two protagonists hoovered up by a tentacled monster.
Charlie, the opening sequence to Saving Private Ryan struck me as probably as realistic as one could ask for, if your talking about depicting D-Day.
Who knows. I don't. But I never liked John Wayne. He was completely fulla shit. Although maybe The Longest Day was a good film in spite of him. I've never watched the whole thing.
That trip you and your son are contemplating sounds worthwhile. I always thought it would be interesting to visit the W.W. I battlefields in France. Maybe you could do both.
At the very least it's lovely country, or so I've heard.
I've long had a yearning to visit my ancestral homeland, the Netherlands. See the canals, the windmills, the tulips, the prostitutes, and maybe smoke a fattie or two.
The land of my forbears calls to me in fevered dreams.
M.P.
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