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Cinema!
What a magnificent art form it is!
And just how magnificent was it in August 1976?
It was this magnificent!
Come to think of it, I don't recall ever having seen even one of those films.
I shall, therefore, assume the best of them to be The Shootist, simply because it has a serious title and, as we all know, serious films must be better than other films or they wouldn't be allowed to make them.
An adaptation of Anna Sewell's classic novel?
By Marvel Comics?
I'd assumed Black Beauty was one of these things - like Follyfoot - that was only famous in Britain. How little I knew.
And it all happens when Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen reveal that a strange being, created by two scientists, so perturbs the local townsfolk that they break into the lab that spawned him and accidentally unleash an experimental nerve gas that wipes out the whole community!
But will Herman Melville's legendarily unreadable novel prove to be any more user-friendly in its comic book form?
I'm sure that Irwin Shapiro and Alex Niño will do their best to make it so.
Regardless, John Fago and E. R. Cruz perform the honours in this one, as Lemuel Gulliver has trouble knowing just what size he needs to be to fit in with the modern world.
Dauntless Don McGregor and fearless Frank Robbins lend us a tale that I'm struggling to recall in detail but I do, at least, recall reviewing it, right here.
From memory, I think my main complaint was that it doesn't contain enough words on every page to satisfy the true Don McGregor aficionado.
But just what are they going to do about the Celestial Arishem who, it's announced, will stand on a plinth for fifty years before deciding whether Earth lives or dies?
But, hold on. Right now, as I write this deathless prose, it's exactly fifty years later!
That means he's about to make his decision, Right now!
Good God, no. Not Keith!
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9 comments:
Thumbs up from me for The Shootist. Number 18 at Ranker in list of best ever Westerns, which feels about right.
Some famous former gunslinger has a couple of months to live and finds somewhere to lodge and spend his final days. Single mother who owns the place knows who he is and doesn't want her son idolising him and going down the same route. Neither does the gunslinger, who advises the kid to study hard and get a proper career. Kid still ends up idolising the gunslinger. Mother acts frosty to gunslinger, gunslinger always acts the perfect gentleman.
Film ends with a gunfight. Can't remember if it's just troublemakers passing through or bounty hunters looking for the gunslinger but a big gunfight in a saloon in which gunslinger is killed and the kid (unintentionally?) kills one of the bad guys and has presumably set off on a life journey that the mother feared and that neither the mother nor the gunslinger wanted.
Gunslinger = John Wayne !
Mother = Lauren Bacall !!
Impressionable kid = Ron Howard from Happy Days !!!
From this list of movies, I’ve only seen two . I loved THE SHOOTIST when it came out and think it’s actually gotten better with age. One of my favorite Westerns. I liked OBSESSION when I saw it on a cable in the early 80s; watched the first fifteen minutes of it a few years ago and couldn’t get into it for some reason . I might give it another try someday…
b.t.
I've watched the Shootist. However, I mix it up with another John Wayne Western, with Wayne being hired by that girl ( you know the one! ) who fancied Kirk, on Star Trek!
I've read Moby Dick at least 4 times!
Woodgod gets a vote, but the Champions is the one I'd put my pennies down for! You could never guess what might happen, in that title!
Phillip
You're on True Grit, Phillip. From 1969, seven years earlier. John Wayne spent a good few years playing retired former gunslingers.
In fact, as I'm writing this, I remember him playing someone having a retirement party in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. And that was (checks…) 1949! 27 years before The Shootist.
I've never been able to get into Obsession - I always last about 15 minutes or so before getting bored and annoyed. It seems dated way beyond its 50 years. Stodgy. Which is crazy given the talent involved.
Great soundtrack though.
Thanks, dangermash. Yes, 'True Grit' - that's the one! Clint was also a retired former gunslinger, in 'Unforgiven'. That was my local cinema's last ever film, before it folded. They were charging £1, I seem to remember, to get bums on seats. But, alas, the place still closed - only to become a snooker club!
Phillip
Charlie only saw GATOR. I don’t recall jack about it. However, doing a quick Google, I assume it benefited greatly from the corporate assets of Lauren Hutton?
Of these, I had MARVEL PREMIERE, POWER-MAN and THE ETERNALS. I know I’m in the minority on this, but I do dig Frank Robbins’ art on the Luke Cage series, especially with Frank Springer on the inks — and to be honest, I didn’t even mind the Colletta inks on the previous two issues all that much. I also liked McGregor’s writing on the series, though I do have to admit that it’s not in the same league as his work on Black Panther and Killraven.
ETERNALS #2 is one of my favorite issues of that title. I honestly don’t know if I can say Kirby ever quite figured out how to make a compelling continuing storyline out of his mash-up of kooky Von Daniken / Velikovsky / Shaver Mystery concepts, but in terms of sheer cosmic spectacle, this issue is a stunning visual treat. The double-page splash of an arriving Celestial Starship is quite literally awe-inspiring and there’s a full-page splash of Arishem just standing there, implacable and kinda terrifying. Good stuff!
I didn’t get any of these MARVEL CLASSICS COMICS at the time. Many years later I decided I needed to have all the ones illustrated by Alex Nino and Nestor Redondo, so I did get the MOBY DICK adaptation as a back issue. Think I got it from à Dollar Bin. I regret to say it’s not Nino’s best work. But hey, they can’t all be ‘Star Voyagers’.
b.t.
Matthew:
Yes, considering the talent involved (DePalma, Schrader, Herrmann, Zsigmond, Hitchcock’s Ghost, not to mention the lovely Genevieve Bujold in her prime) — the opening ten, fifteen minutes of OBSESSION were just astonishingly dull when I tried to re-watch it a few years ago. I think Cliff Robertson may have been part of the problem for me, I’ve honestly never been a fan, but still. I think even Huge DePalma Nerd Quentin Tarantino doesn’t like it much.
b.t.
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