Ring in the New Year like you're GREENBLATT THE GREAT!

A SPECIAL NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE FROM THE CARTOONIST

This just in....

Hello, everyone!

I'd like to wish all the best in 2010 to my family, friends, colleagues and heroes. You're all part of my world...and I am part of yours! Ain't that wild?

Okay, look, we're all in this together, so let's try to make the most of this, alright? If you're reading this, it's probably for free (at the library) so stop whining and make milkshake out of milk and get out there and make 2010 more than just a cheap sequel to "Space Odyssey."

In the spirit of the holidays, I hoist a nice flute of Shplotz ketchup your way! Guzzle up and enjoy!

Happy New Year,

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

Here's an extra dose of GREENBLATT THE GREAT! nonsense to ring in the New Year in style (click on image to enlarge):





P.S. -- F*ck you, Charles Dickens!

Horn-Tooters!

They say that "context is critical." Well, thanks to TWO AND A HALF MEN, I now understand how subversive, depraved, and criminal to children the new ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS movie is.



There's a TWO AND A HALF MEN commercial that runs in perpetuity in the Los Angeles market in which Jon Cryer's character brags, "I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm dating two women." To which Charlie Sheen's character says something like, "You're dating two women and you're still tooting your own horn?" Well, you don't need a Sexologist to explain the innuendo of this golden piece of writing.



This commercial has been running 4-EVER, like 90 times a day, on KTLA. Well, like a great running gag, the above TWO AND A HALF MEN TV promo ran again last week, and it was quickly followed by a short commercial for the new kiddie film, ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKQUEL, in which Alvin goes, "I'm tooting my own horn!," followed by the mimic of a trumpet blowing and a gesture with his hands in a way that I can now safely interpret as shady, suggestive and obscene.

Thank you, TWO AND A HALF MEN, unlikely morality police!

AVATAR afterthoughts: SPOILER ALERT! Read only AFTER seeing the movie (if you plan to)

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

I overall enjoyed AVATAR despite the fact that it was a pastiche of various tropes and it seemed to crib from a few sources: primarily, the DANCES WITH WOLVES/LAST SAMURAI/POCAHONTAS template (in which the outsider joins a tribe, is detested at first, and then must prove himself), a general LORD OF THE RINGS-type fantasy world, and the original STAR WARS (as a schematic structure).



I thought director James Cameron did a great job of creating that world and it was pretty thorough and convincing. But in the last section of the film, it really becomes subliminal "Star Wars" -you've got the Han Solo-type renegade (Michelle Rodriguez) coming to the aid of the male and female hero...






....the wise elder (Sigourney Weaver) dying a la Obi-Wan and rousing the hero to action...the big do-or-die mission at the end that must be pulled off....




...and the big baddie getting into the vehicle to finish the job himself (as Vader did in the original). He was even breathing heavily into that oxygen mask at the end, making Vader sounds. I thought that was a funny tribute.





So did the derivative aspects of AVATAR stop me from enjoying it? No!

The long running time almost did though. It gets a little soft in the middle between all hell breaks loose and the action kicks in.

At the same time, perhaps it's necessary to lull us viewers into this incredible world -- which again, is very convincing -- before laying the smackdown, and Cameron wanted to do it at his own pace, not Hollywood pace. Cameron also does a good job of articulating his geopolitical and pan environmental views. AVATAR is very much a metaphor for the state of the world, and perhaps that's part of why people are relating to this film.

And relating they are. I find it astounding that Cameron seems on the road to pulling this hat trick twice; as with TITANIC, which had a very unusual, slow-burn box office trend before becoming the highest-grossing movie ever made (at $1 Billion), AVATAR has already grossed $600 worldwide (in 10 days!) and only dropped 3 percent in its box office from the first weekend to the second, even swiping away the weekend crown from close second-runner SHERLOCK HOLMES. That suggests that AVATAR is being borne on great word of mouth, as usually there's a huge drop-off by week two after the hardcore fans have rushed to see a new film.

I didn't like the character designs from the clips I saw on AVATAR before I saw it, but once I saw the movie, I became immersed in it and kind of bought into it. So overall, it was enjoyable, if not exactly a classic.

MUNICH, WOLVERINE movie review haiku

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (2009)

Too much Wolverine
Make him then try to kill him
Not enough logic



MUNICH (2005)

Director mismatched
Too much talk not enough speed
Did Friedkin say no?

This week's comic: GREENBLATT THE GREAT!

Click on image to enlarge...

AVATAR movie review haiku

Sci-fi mash-up of
"Dances With Wolves" and "Star Wars"
Grows on you by end

Spotlight on artist GERRY TALAOC!

If the current issue of BACK ISSUE! # 37, on stands now through mid-January, is significant for one thing, it may be the return of artist GERRY TALAOC. True, I wrote the article, on one of his most significant comic book titles, The Unknown Soldier, which became my vehicle for interviewing Mr. Talaoc and giving him some long overdue attention. However, this statement is not as self-serving as it sounds (although I am certainly very proud to have a hand in finding Mr. Talaoc)...because my article, not intentionally at first, became the vehicle for arguably the first piece of new Talaoc art to be published since he quit the business in the early '90s after the work dried up.

And what a work of art it is: a 2007 painting of The Unknown Soldier, unmasked (Talaoc was the first artist to draw the character without his trademark bandages), cornered in a trench as a bunch of Nazis hurl potato mashers his way. He's armed with a machine gun and there's no question who is going to emerge from this fight victorious! Pity the poor stormtroopers!

Here is the first cover of the David Micheline/Gerry Talaoc run:



Had it not been for the fact that Joe Kubert had already been commissioned to do the Sgt. Rock cover, there was a good chance that Mr. Talaoc's surprise gift to BACK ISSUE! would've graced the cover. It did appear in a bubble on the cover, and BACK ISSUE! readers who download the digital issue will own the painting in all of its full-color glory.



Here is Mr. Talaoc back in the day (that him in black in the bottom left corner), probably in the early '70s, around the time when DC Comics enlisted the Filipino artists to draw scores of its horror, fantasy, futuristic and sword and sorcery features.



Ironically, it was only three or four years ago that Mr. Talaoc moved to America. During his heyday as a DC and Marvel artist, he worked from his native Phillipines - a country once known for its prodigious comics industry that produced Nestor Redondo, Tony DeZuniga, Alfredo Alcala, Alex Nino and scores of other excellent draftsman who became household names to diehard comic-book fans in the 1970s.



Here is a page of HOUSE OF SECRETS that Mr. Talaoc drew that my buddy and fellow BACK ISSUE! writer Jerry Boyd owns. Ain't it a beaut? Thanks, Jerry, for sharing the Gerry!



I guess what I love about Gerry Talaoc's style is his mix of the real and the cartoony - a style pioneered by the likes of master cartoonists Milton Caniff and Chester Gould. His pen has a real energetic flair, and even the issues which he merely inked by other artists (such as Kubert or Dick Ayers) came alive thanks to his hand.



For further reading, check out Gerry Talaoc's first few issues of "The Unknown Soldier" (deftly written by David Micheline) in this above Volume One of SHOWCASE UNKNOWN SOLDIER. It ends on a real cliffhanger, whetting our appetite for a long run of Talaoc-drawn "Unknown Soldiers" that followed...

......Let's hope DC one day releases a SHOWCASE UNKNOWN SOLDIER VOL. 2......