There's Sometimes a Buggy

This week on the podcast, Peter Parker’s every effort to track down his Aunt May lands him smack back in the middle of a gang war. It’s Doc Ock vs. Hammerhead (who makes his debut in these pages) for control of the New York City rackets. Also: Peter’s roiling regrets finally rear up an ulcer!

Meanwhile, in the paratext… The Bullpen Bulletins burgeon with ballyhoo for a wealth of woman-centered winners (The Cat, Shanna the She-Devil, and Night Nurse) – none of which got their due on the newsstands. And issue #114’s “Spider’s Web” lettercol spotlights a lengthy letter from Jeff Berlin of Bayville, New York which superbly synopsizes the title’s status quo ante-Conway.

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Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

This week, Elise and Dave embark upon a new adventure in seriality with the first of 20 episodes or so on Gerry Conway’s increasingly beloved run on Amazing Spider-Man! Marvel majordomo Stan Lee’s ascent to the executive ranks in 1972 left a gaping hole on the scribe side of the company’s most prestigious splash page credit marquee. Enter one 20-year old fabulist, fresh from his trials on Daredevil, Thor, and Sub-Mariner, and eager to make his mark on a title chronicling the life and loves of a protagonist similarly situated at the dawn of his first post-teen decade. Issues #111 and #112 bear the distinguished imprimatur of artist/storyteller “Jazzy” Johnny Romita, with Conway merely kibitzing in the balloons and the boxes; but that apprenticeship would come to a heart-stopping close with #121.  

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Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

Dave and Elise bid adieu to the Wolfman/Perez Titans, going out on a pair of unconventional crescendos. In the epic wind-up to the Baxter series’ opening pentalogy, the team is pushed to the sidelines by an Azar/Trigon clash that’s been brewing since the beginning of time, give or take an eon. Then, over at your friendly neighbourhood newsstand, the group pulls together for that rarest of miracles, an event where everything goes not merely as planned, but “right” in the most comprehensive meaning of the term (unless you have misgivings about John Denver’s “Annie’s Song”).   

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Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

Wolfman and Perez put their protagonists through a diabolically dialectical doppelganger wringer this time. First Raven turns against the team. Then she turns each of the Titans against their own sneering doubles, whom they kill. Then they all turn against Raven. And kill her. Or do they? Or is she Raven? Anyway, a ‘roided up Trigon seems to think so. Pretty rough way to wind up this superheroic struggle session.  

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Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

Trigon Warning!

After several years of brooding behind the scenes and occasionally popping out of her room to assault her closest friends, Raven returns to the centre of the Titans narrative, unwittingly egged on toward full demon/dad possession by new teammate Jericho. Boasting full pencils and inks by George Perez, these issues got the new format series off to a rollicking (if off-schedule) start. 

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Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

After a long winter’s recording layoff, the Red Time For Bonzo crew reassembles to discuss Hell’s Kitchen, a Warner Dead End Kids programmer powered by the studio’s characteristic Late New Deal fervor. The Gipper doesn’t have a whole lot to do in this remake of 1933’s The Mayor of Hell, but he once again finds himself playing a mediating role as the collegiate consiglieri to gangster-cum-reformer Stanley Fields.

Scripted by correctional connoisseur Crane Wilbur, the film traces folk hero gangster throwback Buck Caesar’s efforts to bring the light of democracy and economic justice to the benighted boy-residents of a fascistic Father Flanagan-style charity workhouse.  Along the way, we get some bravura mugging from daemonic delinquents Leo Gorcey, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan (et al); a little perfunctory romance between Reagan and Margaret Lindsay; some stirring speeches about the country’s destiny now that Republican nihilism has been thoroughly overcome; and some Simon Legree level villainy from stuffed shirted white collar criminal Grant Mitchell (whose agonizing pup poaching scene will leave lesions on your heart).

Novel suggestion:

Peter Delacorte's Time on My Hands

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We bring down the curtain on The Judas Contract and on the vertiginously villainous career of Terra, who goes out screaming “NO” in thunder at the canons of psychologically realistic characterization (her shrill self-analysis echoed by Wolfman’s perverse narrator). We spend much of the episode fumbling toward the meaning of this interloper’s unique anti-appeal (to us, to 1980s Titans readers, and to the creators). In the final analysis, much like Lynch’s characters in Mulholland Drive’s “Silencio” stage show, there’s absolutely nothing going on with Tara Markov – and that only makes our collective jaws gape further at the spectacle of her demise.

On a related note! Check out Elise’s essay on Time and Romance in Twin Peaks: The Return in the latest issue of Bright/Wall Dark Room

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Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

It’s the middle episode of our 3-part examination of The Judas Contract! We discuss Wolfman/Perez’s penchant for framed tales, consider the Deathstroke’s trajectory, argue quite earnestly that Gar Logan ought to be canceled for his vile workplace harassment tactics, and try to remember exactly what the hell happens with Jericho much later in the decade.

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Debbie Harry - "Comic Books"

In the second half of our Dorothy Arzner marathon, we cover the remaining entries in the recent TIFF retrospective (Christopher Strong, Merrily We Go To Hell, and Dance, Girl, Dance), along with a pair of items we scrounged up on our own (Nana and Craig's Wife).

Dance, Girl, Dance is justifiably considered the director's summative work, gathering all of Arzner's countervailing preoccupations and themes into its sui generis structure like a bull in the narrative shop. The other four films form quite an interesting group, collectively emphasizing a more fatalistic side to the auteur only hinted at in the darker moments of The Bride Wore Red.

Also: this is Dave's first chance to wax rhapsodic about the great Helen Chandler (who got her last decent film role in Christopher Strong).

Arzner Gratia Artis!

Inspired by TIFF Lightbox's Winter 2019 Dorothy Arzner retrospective, Elise and Dave dive into a lengthy discussion of this absurdly neglected auteur's career and context.

On leg one of the journey, we examine WORKING GIRLS (1931), THE WILD PARTY (1929) and THE BRIDE WORE RED (1937), zeroing in on the director's penchant for dichotomously paired protagonists (Judith Wood/Dorothy Hall; Clara Bow/Shirley O'Hara; Joan Crawford/Joan Crawford - with MVP kibitzing from Mary Phillips), her unflinching analysis of patriarchal gender codes, and her Transcendental poetics of the Will-To-Efflorescence.