I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Archie Comics writer/artist Dan Parent on the ‘Net for a forthcoming project.Parent’s name has been in the news quite a bit recently for his controversial creation of the first openly gay character in Riverdale.Perhaps because of the substantial news coverage that Kevin Keller’s still upcoming debut received, Dan managed to sneak by with another potentially hot topic—Archie’s first inter-racial romance!

The recently released ARCHIE issues 608 and 609 featured this two-parter which turned out to be one of THE most surprisingly enjoyable and genuinely romantic stories I have read in a comic in a long time.Plotwise, the Archies agree to a small tour with the more professional band, Josie & the Pussycats, both, of course, occasional sources for plots in their respective red-headed leads’ individual series for 40 years now.

One day after rehearsal, Valerie, the once-token African American smart pussycat, stays behind to help Archie finish working on a song.They eat, they talk, they write, they banter…in short, they fall in love. It’s a beautifully done, fairly realistic scene told in quick cut cinematic-style shortcuts by Parent’s collaborator here, artist Bill Galvan. Yes, Archie falls for every pretty girl. It’s his nature. The way this is written and drawn, though, the reader knows something is different this time.

Deciding not to rock the boat of the successful tour, the pair reluctantly keep their relationship a secret, meaning that every night, poor Valerie has to listen to Josie share the heartfelt love song she had written with Archie.

Little by little, the secret gets out, though, as knowing glances and terms of endearment (She calls him “Freckles”) are notice by all…well, nearly all.

They make a truly sweet and fun couple. Perhaps the most important and telling aspect of their relationship is that NO ONE raises an eye over the race issue! There's one scene where it seems as though someone might do so but their complaint is actually completely unrelated. Parent actually manages to come up with an ending which, although bittersweet, allows all kinds of speculation as to the future of the whole relationship and its effect on Archie’s OTHER relationships, also.

All I all, in these days when I’m reluctant to pick up even the most basic superhero comic for fear of being assaulted immediately with visceral panels of entrails and gore, I found the Archie/Valerie coupling to be quite touching in many ways. For those of us who have always appreciated the untapped potential of mainstream comics, here’s someone tapping it. I can’t wait to meet Kevin Keller now!

Here's one for all of you who ever wondered what it would have been like if, as rumored at the time, Sylvester Stallone had been cast as Superman instead of Christopher Reeve.

One of my very favorite sixties gals, she was funny like Lucy but also clever, smart, fun and gorgeous. And successful! THAT GIRL was a huge hit and latterly became recognized as a pioneering, empowering show (although never really planned a s such) for women and girls of all ages. It's the only sixties TV series that I actually bought every single season of as they came out. My all-time favorite sitcom. Marlo went on to many more hits and misses but the legend of her sixties incarnation remains secure.

Here, from an early 1940's issue of TERRYTOONS, is a wonderful example of anti-Nazi propaganda as only the comic books could present it.

Like many folks my age, I have a kind of love/hate thing for Jerry Lewis movies. There was a time in my youth when I unquestionably cited them as my favorite comedies and yet now it’s rare when any one of them makes me laugh for the right reasons. I admire jerry as a filmmaker, for his work against muscular dystrophy, for his longevity in show business and for his moments of comedic genius. I also find him a boorish, elitist, insulting comedy snob with an annoying real-life personality and an ego the size of a not so small planet!

When it comes to his movies, though, it’s interesting to note that films that were once absolute favorites are now often nightmarishly hard to sit through. One case in point is WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT?.This picture is often cited as Jerry’s worst film (by those who have yet to see his later ones).

Released in 1970, I remember seeing WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? In theaters when it was new. I remember thinking how cool it was and how handsome and hilarious Jerry was in a slightly different role than his usual nebbish. I watched it again this morning and every step of the way, it was “What were they THINKING!!??”

The script, from a couple of guys best known for their TV sitcoms, is a soft parody of DIRTY DOZEN-style war films which were all the rage in those days. In this case, the world’s richest man (Jerry, of course) is declared 4-F in World War II but wants to serve his country so he takes 3 other 4-F recruits and decides to start his own army to go after Hitler. He adds his butler and his chauffeur (the latter oddly played by pro baseball player Willie Morris) and that’s it. That’s his entire “army.”

There are a bunch of one-off training scenes (including a couple with George Takai) that go straight for lame gags, then a drawn out plot in which Jerry’s character disguised as a Nazi officer meets Hitler (played for inane fun by director and former actor Sidney Miller).

The problem is there is no real plot…just a set-up, some set pieces and a finish. There’s no real character development, either, for Jerry or for his pointlessly annoyed and annoying sidekicks Jan Murray (was he ever funny?), Steve Franken and Dack Rambo.

The best part of the picture for film buffs is the presence of old-time stars who don’t have to do anything other than show up to make one smile…which is good because they have nothing whatsoever to do. Benny Rubin, Joe Besser, Neil Hamilton, Milton Frome, Robert Middleton, and even the great ventriloquist and voice actor Paul Winchell are present along with brief appearances by Kaye Ballard and Kathleen Freeman.

This was, I believe, the film Jerry famously claimed ( and that’s probably all it was) he saw double-billed with DEEP THROAT which made him turn his back on the film industry. In reality, however, he didn’t do that at all. It wasn’t long after this picture that Jerry went into production on what he felt would be his masterpiece, the legendary, unfinished, THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED. When that film’s production ground to a halt amidst financing and legal problems, he did take a few more years before coming back with HARDLY WORKING. HARDLY WORKING was huge box office throughout Europe but took years to pick up a distributor in the US. When it did, it was recognized not as a masterpiece but as a mess. Other films trickled out, most barely a blip on the radar. Then came Martin Scorcese’s KING OF COMEDY which gained Jerry Lewis a whole new respect in a serious role as a kidnapped celebrity host. Jerry followed that up with a couple of horrendously unfunny French vehicles (with nudity yet!! Thankfully, not Jerry) that really do seem the nadir of his career. As of this writing however, it looks as though the octogenarian actor has yet another independent release in pre-production.

See what I mean…love him or hate him ya just gotta admire a guy that’s been making pictures for more than six decades and just refuses to stop!

Been tough to do more substantial posts lately when I spend most of my day just sleeplessly sweating in 90+ heat and high humidity. Sorry. Hopefully it can get back to what passes for normal around here soon. In the meantime I'm taking a certain absurd amusement at just how many things can get thrown at us.

Every comics fan wants this to happen and apparently now it really has in spite of the increasing unlikelihood. A family facing foreclosure found a copy of ACTION #1 in their basement!

[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/FgHhy0UF5d0&hl=en_US&fs=1]

One of the latter-day Terrytoons characters supervised by Ralph Bakshi, James Hound was, of course, a 007 parody. The cartoons are surprisingly stylish-looking now but, at the time, were received as rather dull.

[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/B707Ava4wrY&hl=en_US&fs=1]

When I was first becoming interested in comics and movies, the big cross-over area was the movie serial! The serial, an art form we really don't have anymore (and don''t mention television as its replacement) was a slam-bang action fest with one chapter per week playing at your neighborhood theaters along with the main feature. Many of the serials were westerns or sci-fi or superhero related. One of the first I saw and still in my opinion one of the all-time best was 1936's FLASH GORDON, here with Buster Crabbe meeting Charles Middleton's dead perfect Ming the Merciless.

[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/dL_ZtriYYC8&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Here's a brief piece from ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT about TV's Batman and Robin, Adam West and Burt Ward, from 1987.

[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/4oMokuYOXCM&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Bookdave is a big fan of THRILLER and all of its various remakes. This morning he pointed out this version from a galaxy far, far away.

[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/TbfWs6Fb8gk&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Although her name wasn't mentioned in this TV appearance from 1950-something, Bettie Page was probably Ms. Yeager's most famous subject. Bunny Yeager, with her own model looks, took some of the most famous pics ever of Ms. Page but not only is that not referenced here (as no one really knew Bettie in those days) but Bunny is ultimately identified simply as a photographer. Still, fun to see her here on this great, classy series.

Skip the dialogue and even then it might take a sec for the naughty-looking pose by Iron Mike Grell to really catch your eye. With all the near nudity in every single ish of WARLORD, I'm surprised this sort of image didn't occur more often.

Most comics fans know that Stan Lee's first published work was a short text story published in an early issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA. What you may not realize is that the teenage Stan continued to produce the required text pages off and on for some time. Here's another from Timely's CAPTAIN AMERICA # 11.

Here's a nicely drawn image that nonetheless makes me guffaw! Andras, the owl-headed "Grand Marquis of Hell!" Drawn by Pablo Marcos for the inside cover of a 1972 issue of NIGHTMARE from Skywald Publications.

It used to be so much fun to read through the ads in the back of old Warren magazines of the 1960's and '70's. Here'a small selection of superhero LPs from the camp days of 1966. The only one of these I actually ever had was the SUNDAY MORNING WITH THE COMICS one but I didn't get it until around 1970. I still have it though!

Has there ever in the history of show business been a non-sports celebrity as associated with shoes as Pat Boone? Here's an ad for a style of his trademark buck shoes designed particularly for Pat (but YOU can wear them, too!) called BUCK-aneers! It was, as it tells you itself, "THE buy for hep guys!" And, hey! Who knew they had velcro back in the happy days?

REVISED
This one hits me harder as it was exactly a year ago this week that I first heard of Kip when my son and I watched the BATMAN episode on which he co-starred in a surprisingly well-rounded role as a Joker henchman opposite singer Donna Loren. I said to bookdave, "Hey, this guy's GOOD! Wonder whatever happened to him?" This being the Internet Age, I looked him up and a week later began a long series of telephone conversations with him. The photo above, with son Chris Kattan, was taken AFTER my interview and just prior to Kip's ten month hospital stay.

Via Derek Tague, word comes from actress Corinne Orr, friend and co-star, that actor Peter Fernandez, the voice of SPEED RACER in the American version of the classic, controversial cartoon, has died.

Received this press release from Yoe! earlier and thought I'd share it with all of my readers who will be hitting that venerable tradition that is Comi-Con this month whilst I vegetate here with my flooded Kentucky basement!

About a year ago, we reported this instance—http://booksteveslibrary.blogspot.com/2009/01/hawkman-swiped.html—of Golden Age comics swipes from National’s HAWKMAN. Seems the character’s helmet varied from issue to issue in the early days, often in direct proportion to how many swipes from earlier issues the current artist was using that month.

Recently I received a letter from reader Bruce Haley who notes an even bigger oddity in the images we chose at the time. Here’s what Bruce had to say:

For quite some time I've own

ed the original art to a "Tailspin Tommy" strip dated 3-6-40, and in the final panel is - you guessed it...! - that exact same panel of "Hawkman".. only in this case it is "The Black Hawk"... I've attached the two panels from your blog, along with an additional panel that shows another version of the swipe, and two scans from the Tommy daily (the entire strip and a detail shot)... now if the "queer blue light" panel that you posted is indeed from Flash Comics #1, that is cover dated January 1940 - which makes the Tailspin Tommy appearance a swipe, apparently... but this surprises me, because the artist at the time was Reynold Brown, who was extremely accomplished and would soon go on to a fabulous career doing movie posters... and as you can see, his version is by far superior to the others - it looks as if they were all swiped from Brown's panel in the Tommy daily... yet the dates seem to dictate otherwise......

It was, of course, not at all uncommon for the comic book artists of the day to lift from their comic strip “betters.” Many a whole comic book story had been paneled with tracings of FLASH GORDON characters (including the earliest BATMAN stories and even some HAWKMAN tales). The thing is…that panel really IS from FLASH # 1 which would have been on the stands late in 1939.Here’s Bruce again with what that means:

Dennis Neville did the first four Hawkman stories, followed by Shelly after that... If that "queer blue light" panel that you posted on your blog did indeed come from the second page of the debut story, then that would cover-date it at January 1940.. and if the cover dates were one month ahead back then, perhaps this had an actual street date of December 1939...??

Which leaves a gap of a few months before the appearance of the Tailspin Tommy in early March 1940... I'm not sure of the lag time on those daily strips, but I can't imagine that it was more than a month or so...? That would have given the artist plenty of time to have seen, and copied, the Neville panel from Flash Comics #1......

I realize that many artists worked together behind the scenes, knew each other, were friendly, etc. etc., so there could be some behind-the-scenes cross-pollination even before actual publication... I don't think this was the case here... Dennis Neville was a Shuster assistant, was doing work for DC, so (despite the lack of biographical info) I have to assume that he was in the metro NYC area... in the case of Tailspin Tommy, by 1940 its creator, Hal Forrest, was to my knowledge being completely ghosted - I don't think he was even doing layouts by then... Reynold Brown was doing the strip, and as I already said, Brown was an extremely accomplished artist and would soon leave the strip and go on to a great career in the movie industry... Hal Forrest was based in Los Angeles, and so was Reynold Brown - so the chances of any behind-the-scenes contact between Neville and Brown are almost nonexistent...

So, logic leads me to conclude that Brown swiped the Neville panel for Tailspin Tommy - which rather baffles me, given Brown's abilities (and the fact that his version of the panel blows the others away, andlooks as if it should be the original).... but based solely upon publication dates, and given that the "queer blue light" panel is indeed from Flash Comics #1, I don't see how it can be otherwise...

And it's funny that so many versions of that panel - by at least three artists (Neville, Brown, and Moldoff) - have appeared... it would be fun to see just how many there were...!

I hate to part with it but I need to sell my WALLY WOOD'S WEIRD SEX-FANTASY PORTFOLIO. It was put out in 1977 by Richard Pryor (not THAT Richard Pryor) and features a series of lovely plates that parody sci-fi trends and cliches, all with a naughty touch. There's a STAR WARS parody, EC parodies, FLASH GORDON. All in all, these were some of the best pieces Woody did in later years (with the able assistance of the young A.L. Sirois), all done up in an oversized portfolio, signed and numbered, with my copy being number 589 of a limited edition of 2000 copies printed. Much higher numbers have been going for upwards of 500 dollars on EBay and auction sites in recent years. If you're a serious Wally Wood collector and don't have this, contact me at booksteve@aol.com. Asking price is negotiable considering the economy but would rather not cheat myself as I reluctantly give up this treasure.

Longtime readers will remember that just a few years ago I discovered the British rock group the Pretty Things and enjoyed them immensely! I still do. In fact, since I first discovered them they've been in my top five groups of all time! Oddly enough, they've now led to my discovering someone else with whose work I was not previously familiar! I recently watched the film WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS GOOD FOR THE GANDER, a 1969 British sex farce highly reminiscent of Peter Sellers' I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS. The main reason I wanted to see it was that the Pretty Things appeared with their peak line-up in a scene similar to the Yardbirds' scene in BLOW-UP a couple of years earlier. The Pretties also did much of the incidental music of the picture in their alternate guise as The Electric Banana, a group that recorded several whole albums of originally unreleased stock music for the use in various productions!

Here's a Captain America record I always wanted but never had. Only 44 cents, too! Ah, well...the 1960's children's record couldn't possibly have lived up to this pitiful, weary and squeezed looking Cap!

[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/XARgEM4vf2E&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Here is one of the funniest things you'll ever hear if you like to hear folks just plain losing it. This is Long John Nebel, a radio talk show host from the mid fifties until his death in the late seventies. He was an interesting character himself, arriving late to radio and pioneering the long hours of talk radio one can't avoid these days. He frequently had sci-fi authors as guests and often discussed UFO's and other alleged phenomena. Jackie Gleason and James Randi also appeared on a fairly regular basis as skeptics. His late in life pin-up girl wife was allegedly a mind-controlled CIA victim and became co-host of his all-night show in its final years.

Mister Spock with...LEX LUTHOR??!! In a Gold Key comic no less??!! What in the name of the multiverse is goin' on there, I ask you? Is the Enterprise in orbit around Lexor? Surely it's Lex who's done something to Kirk and the shuttle. Watch out, Spock! Don't trust him!

An interesting all-star mingling of Atlas ladies including Millie, Chili, Sherry the Showgirl, Hazel and My Girl Pearl, all teamed in the catch-all SHOWGIRLS title for a truly pointless Stan Lee gag. Hey, at least some fun Dan DeCarlo work here.

From various sources including the LIFE archives, here are some old-time radio sponsor-related ads featuring shows and stars. Also thrown in is one OTR-related television ad from when AMOS 'N' ANDY made the switch and went from being one of the most popular shows of all time to one of the most controversial, in spite of showcasing the talents of Tim Moore, Spencer Williams and Alvin Childress!