Is this the Captain America movie we really want to see?

Is the above the Captain America movie I really want to see?!!!

NO!

Below is the Captain America movie I want to see! Notice he is not wearing Reb Brown's motorcycle helmet!!!!

Crazies Hit Greenleaf Ave. After Dark...or..."The 2nd Annual Ghettomation Cartoon Fest!"

Once again, Sal at Geeks in Uptown Whittier (on Greenleaf Ave. and NOT on Philadelphia Street, stupid Google!!!!) opened up his doors to another terrific cartoonist event. And Jim Lujan, creator of cartoons such as his latest, THE LEGEND OF BOBBY CHURRO, proved the perfect host for this Cartoonistas event. It was quite the spectacle as Lujan, Ted Seko, Jose Cabrero, and other men of the pen took it to another level: animated cartoons!

Raul Aguirre, Jr. laughed himself sideways as the emcee of the event.
Grasiella, who always has some funny shit in the show, outdid herself with a ridiculous short that starred two Barbies working on a tech service hotline.
This shot is quite surreal, ain't it? Dali, eat your eye out!
Raul Aguirre, Jr. made a hasty exit and out came Sergio Aragones' slightly more Mexican brother!
This sombrero-sporter laughed himself sideways hosting the cartoon show. He was a real Revolutionary...as were the independent cartoonists in the room!
Here's the room (above).
Cartoonist Bernyce Talley, the sensei Ted Seko, and Javier Hernandez the Great keep their cool, even as the paparazzi pesters them!
Midway through this shot, Seko fell asleep on Hernandez, and Jav tried to be polite about it. He's used to this kind of shit on airplane rides...except that the strangers usually don't drool (sorry, Ted.)
Ted Seko and Jose Cabrera take in the animated features. Whenever these guys get together, the conversation inevitably turns to this topic:

Here's Laurel & Hardy...THE GOOD VERSION!

Bernyce is trying to ignore Javier as he does his Abraham Lincoln/Gettysburg Address routine. JAV, IT'S GETTING OLD! FOUR SCORE AND TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY! OK, WE GET IT, WE GET IT!!!!!!

Congratulations to all of the great filmmakers who conjured up some fun-assed shorts! (And speaking of fun-assed shorts, I'm wearing Hello Kitty bermudas as I write this!!!!)
The few...the proud...the maroons! (Sorry, that joke was like from a bad issue of CRACKED!)
Rich Carradine decides he has had enough damn cartoons and books.

Uh, de-de-uh-de-de-uh-de-de-d-d-dat's all, folks!

A Movie So Lame, I Thought It Was THE OTHER SISTER....

Close! Gary Marshall also directed it, too. It's that VALENTINE'S DAY movie....an all star cast of famous people slumming it. Jennifer Garner is the worst actress since Jessica Alba, who is also in this shit. So is the annoying Anne Hathaway. Ashton Kutcher, George Lopez, Taylors Swift and Lautner! Even Shirley MacLaine reincarnated herself to appear in this shit!

Remember that movie? It actually made money! I will spare you a visual on this post. Just close your eyes, imagine the most annoying cast of borderline stars ever assembled, and then multiply the cloying factor by 12. Actually, are your eyes still closed? Whatever you're imagining is going to be better than this lousy flick.

Have you seen this mess? Gary Marshall is like some kind of Blake Edwards......with the stick-shift stuck in reverse and his leadfoot on the accelerator. He's going to Hell for this one! I only hope Satan makes him watch his own movies in an endless loop, he's really the schmalztiest!

Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles devoted their genius and countless hours to a medium that includes this waste of time?

It's not like I was expecting quality when I took this from the library (for free, thank the Lord!) but this somehow limbos way below my lowest expectations. No wonder foreign countries hate us when we're exporting movies such as this stinker! What a piece of crap!

Reactions to Latest Superhero Movie Offerings....

It's unfair to judge a movie before you see it, but I do this routinely based on gut instinct. I haven't seen THE SPIRIT but it looked godawful (and far from "the spirit" of Will Eisner's comics).

Similarly, I kept calling THE GREEN HORNET "THE SPIRIT 2" and that one has been trashed by the critics and now it looks like its underperforming at the box office. I don't know, call me crazy, but I think the director (an arthouse specialist) and star (a mildly funny, overweight, Semitic-looking comic actor) were wildly miscast on this project, given the blockbuster action scale and WASPy source character.

It's kind of like Vince Chase on ENTOURAGE who is constantly dropping in and out of the AQUAMAN movie. I'm sure half the joke is that he looks nothing remotely like Aquaman (sorry, nerds, "Arthur Curry").

So what of the upcoming stuff like THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, the SPIDEY reboot?

THOR

Well, here are my gut reactions. THOR looks miserable. They've got Anthony Hopkins playing his rote patriarch character for the umpteenth time to the point where they're starting to blur (see BEOWULFMAN for others). They ditched the entire Dr. Don Blake in Manhattan stuff from the comics and shoehorned a big blond guy into a HULK style movie with New Mexico, government and military people trying to stop him, that doesn't feel like a Norse THOR yarn (a friend pointed out that they've got some kind of multicultural, politically correct casting going on in land of the Norse gods Asgard). Even the posters look weak. So do the computer-ish effects in the trailer. As far as I'm concerned, there's no way I want to pay to see that on the big screen. They moved too far away from the Lee/Kirby concepts. I don't like the Thor character that much to begin with so this really clinches it. It's no coincidence, I'll bet, that they dropped THE MIGHTY from the title.

CAPTAIN AMERICA

Here's the first look of Chris Evans in costume. HEY, COOL! THEY GOT THE SHIELD RIGHT! Actually, I'm on the fence about how I feel about this movie. I love the character and comics and just about every major artist who ever worked on the CAPTAIN AMERICA comic. I really WANT to love this film. I guess they have to try to ground the costume in reality (they always feel compelled to in Hollywood...at least the SPIDER-MAN movies got the costume right). This costume is not bad and not great. It borders a little on the Reb Brown CBS TV specials but I think I can live with it. Chris Evans and the Silver Surfer were the only things I enjoyed about those awful FANTASTIC FOUR movies, and I like director Joe Johnston's ROCKETEER and even WOLF-MAN so I guess I'll see this one in the theaters.

The new (and improved?) SPIDER-MAN with Andrew Garfield

They're already messin' with success by altering the Spider-Man costume with those little slashes on the sleeves. Even though the first trilogy was flawed, I love Sam Raimi as a director and I thought Tobey Maguire was pretty close to perfect in capturing that mix of teen vulnerability, angst and heroism. Andrew Garfield, a British actor, won me over as an actor with his performance in SOCIAL NETWORK. He can definitely act. But there's something about his (ethnic?) look and features that he just doesn't look like Peter Parker to me. And this Spider-Man costume looks like SPIDER-MAN BEYOND or something. It's also frustrating taht they're going back to the start and high school instead of continuing with more villains like The Lizard and Mysterio. I was originally bent on not seeing this one and I'm still on the fence about whether I want to see this one. It may actually depend on the buzz. If the buzz is bad, I'll wait till DVD. It's not a film that I want to run out and see opening weekend.

THE VERDICT: So far...I really want to see this one the most!

Stan Lee Fever: 88 on Dec. 28, Followed by a Star this week on Hollywood's Walk of Fame

The most tired argument in superhero comics is who did what. Usually, it's waged to convey that Stan Lee was the Great Exploiter on the backs of geniuses such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, with whom he created the Marvel Universe, the Silver Age of Comics, and the most enduring characters in comicdom all simultaneously.

Well, guess what, haters? Lee is a genius, too, right up there with Kirby and Ditko. It took all of them (and several other talented types, such as Don Heck, Gene Colan, Joe Sinott, Bill Everett and Wally Wood) to create the brilliant Marvel Universe in the 1960s. Whatever percentile from whom did what is really irrelevant in the bigger picture, as they were parts of the bigger whole. Whatever personal politics went on between them is between them! The characters they created will outlive all of that, and I personally have respect for all of them for their contributions to some classic characters (and my terrific childhood!)

My pal Javier Hernandez posted lots of classic Lee/Kirby/Ditko covers over at his blog. In addition, here are some pics from the time we met Stan Lee at the CAPS banquet a few years ago, when Lee was honored. A fellow southpaw, Lee graciously let loose his left hand to sign up dozens of books for a bunch of professional cartoonists who were reduced to slavish fanboys in his presence.

That's me, the stunned looking guy holding the first comic book I ever received at age 6: MARVEL DOUBLE FEATURE #10. That copy I'm holding was signed by Jack Kirby when I met him in 1992 at the first San Diego Comic-Con I ever attended, and here I am just minutes away from getting it signed by Kirby's collaborator on all those wonderful books.

Thanks to Javier Hernandez for the great photos and the great memories.....