Check me out! I recently did a guest voice on my friend’s stop motion animation show ]]> http://feedmeakitten.wizarduniverse.com/2009/09/22/i-am-aquaman/feed/ 0 http://feedmeakitten.wizarduniverse.com/2009/06/15/ive-been-had/ http://feedmeakitten.wizarduniverse.com/2009/06/15/ive-been-had/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:04:03 +0000 Ethan Kaye http://feedmeakitten.wizarduniverse.com/2009/06/15/ive-been-had/ Years ago, I fancied myself a lover of classic rock. It was in the mid-90’s, when Woodstock ‘94 was happening and everyone was getting into ’60s groups all over again (Country Joe and the Fish. Seriously). I was all into the Doors and the Beatles and Tull and the Mamas and the Papas and (especially) the Who, but I also had this crazy need to collect things, which explains the state of my apartment today.

An antique store had opened in downtown Easton and it was full of all kinds of glorious mysteries, like ’50s men’s magazines and signs that said “whites only” and other fun stuff that a kid can enjoy when he has an afternoon off and he can get a ride to downtown. And since I liked the Beatles, I asked the owner if he had any Beatles stuff. No, he said. Well, if you get any, can you give me a call? Sure. Oh wait, we do have something. Here, this doll is George Harrison.

Notice that the box says “New Kids on the Block.”

Also, consider that “George” was out of the box. No box in sight. So I paid $20 for “George Harrison”. He kind of looks like later George Harrison. Except he’s really Jordan Knight from NKOTB.

So flash forward to today, 2009. I STILL have “George Harrison” on my bookshelf. I know full well it’s Jordan Knight, but I always have a laugh explaining that it’s George Harrison to people, most of whom realize it’s Jordan Knight.

The antique store closed. Pretty soon after I went away to college. I guess the $20 they ripped off of me couldn’t save them from going under. I hope their children hate them.

The moral of the story? ALWAYS KNOW YOUR DEALER.

There is an actual point where you will run out of good ideas. It’s inevitable, everyone comes to the end of the road, creatively. Sometimes this is permanent, other times this is a temporary thing that signifies you need to take a few years off to farm or consult or do whatever retired people do.

But how do you know when your time is up?

Well, for starters, when you put this out as a serious toy:

Now is the point when you stop.

I LOVE this movie! It’s a rock n’ roll musical horror film disasterpiece that MST3K rocked hard.

But there’s something missing. Here’s a screenshot:

Notice anything?

WHERE IS THE HOT DOG MOUTH???? That’s the most striking feature of the original monster! WTF! I like the statue a lot (hint hint Hanukkah hint hint), but where’s the hot dog mouth?!?!?! Bah!

This Donald Duck toy is from an earlier, simpler time, when we didn’t worry about throwing a stuffed vinyl duck in with your sleeping toddler, and especially didn’t care much for junior’s mental health or scarring him for years to come. Even though he doesn’t have teeth, he can still manage to bite you in your nightmares.

Cat not convenient enough? Stuffed animal not angular enough? Have OCD but love whimsical toys? Square cat here is for you. It doesn’t move, it just smiles and sits on one of its 6 sides or 12 edges! Not cuddly, unless you have bone density problems.

Can’t say anything bad about squishy duck! He and I and William Katt are friends! (WARNING: William Katt has not, to my knowledge, met squishy duck)

Then there’s these…Christ, what are these things? My guess is something made during art therapy at an insane asylum.

These individualized teddys were being handed out to creators by a fan. Here we have Blue Beetle, Ambush Bug, Manhattan Guardian, and Green Lantern.

Here’s Magnus Robot Fighter, Booster Gold, a Blue Lantern, and Power Girl.

And here’s a Guardian, a Red Lantern, a Yellow Lantern, and a Green Lantern.

Finally, comics superstar Amanda Conner poses with her Power Girl teddy bear. Amanda was a big hit today, getting in around 11:30 and not having a chance to start on sketches until like 4PM! Busy! So busy!

On an unrelated note, here is the essence of Japanese culture, boiled down into an angry, bucktoothed cop and a happy bucktoothed monk. Japan: STOP IT. Clean up your act.

The story was a surprised. I had no idea about the Island of Misfit Toys, or the purpose of Yukon Cornelius. I knew there was an elf that looked my friend Austin, that’s about it.

Hermie

Austin

So anyway, it’s a fleshing out of the Christmas carol with some detours to places like the Abominable Snowman’s cave and an island full of toys made by the terminally stupid. Rudolph has a red nose which his parents try to cover with a little black nose cover. It doesn’t work, he gets weirded out, everyone says that because of his nose he should be ostracized, and he runs away. There’s also a romantic interest in a deer who wears a bow in her hair. Don’t ask how cloven hooves can tie a bow.

I don’t know what I was expecting. I wasn’t expecting a big prospector firing a gun around, or a snowman played by Burl Ives. Most kids don’t know who Burl Ives was, but I tell you, he was a big deal in the field of puppetry voiceover (and a 33° Mason to boot).

I definitely wasn’t expecting the Island of Misfit Toys to be so depressing.

Sure, it’s a haven for unloved toys, or toys that have defects, but they can’t do anything to spice up the place? You’ve built your own alternative society! Put up some houses! Give local commerce a go! Don’t just sit around the fire feeling depressed for yourselves. All the toys have major errors in production, including a train with square wheels and a “Charlie-in-the-box” who suffers from identity issues. To answer his question, most people would be very happy with a Charlie-in-the-box. Some kids don’t get any gift at all, so they’d be happy with a Charlie-in-the-box, a Maureen-in-the-box, or a Lando-Shabazz-in-the-box. Hell, they’d be happy with a box of dry spaghetti.

Also on the island is Sue, the misfit dolly.

Sue has no visible or stated defects, which makes me think she’s one of those rich chicks who slums it with the goth kids in high school.

As assumed, Rudolph comes back to town just in time to save Christmas, everyone forgets that they treated him like an outcast, and Hermie goes into dental practice, which is mostly just extracting teeth. We’re treated to songs like “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas” (a huge hit, still sung today) and “SIlver and Gold” (not a huge hit, largely forgotten). The reindeer are not chastised for their behavior, which included having one of the adult reindeer order the little ones not to play with Rudolph. The love thing also happened with the title character and the bow-headed deer.

This special appears on numerous DVD collections, along with How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Year Without A Santa Claus, A Night Before Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman. I suspect that Rankin-Bass wants to make as much cash off these puppet shows as possible, since there are about 90 different packagings for each one. It’s a very good special, despite my snarkiness, and it’s a triumph in stop motion animation (for the time). And besides, it’s got an elf who wants to be a dentist. Come on! A dentist!

But then there’s stuff that makes you wonder, “what the hell were we thinking?” And that’s what this blog is about today. The ten things at this weekend’s Big Apple Comic Con in NYC that were just plain…odd.

10. Lil’ Marilyn Manson
For starters, I like Marilyn Manson, and the album that this came from, Golden Age of Grotesque, is probably his best. However, it’s Marilyn Manson. The man who Christian groups have protested since the early 90’s. The man who even Trent Reznor stopped hanging out with because he was too weird. And yet, he’s a cute little walking toy. Please do not leave this toy with children.

9. Pink Panther Keys and Cash
Say nothing of the strangeness inherent in paying real money to get fake money, this little darling is one of the few examples of a moderately successful cartoon becoming a completely useless toy: a pink wallet. Any boy who bought this toy (or whose confused parents bought it for him) was instantly ridiculed and kicked off the football team. Plus it’s made of remarkably flimsy plastic so the whole thing would crack and fall apart after about a day. This is truly, teh suk.

8. Hulk toy
Among all of the unlicensed stuff being sold, this unlabeled Hulk toy (no poseable limbs and feet somehow stuck into a pitcher’s mound) stood out to me. Mostly because it looks like Ernest Borgnine. MCHALE SMASH!

7. Boyfriend 64
Despite the title, it’s not a catalog of boyfriends you could purchase in 1964. Yet, since it was located on a table with porn magazines, it had other connotations. Imagine my disappointment when I opened the book (it’s a hardcover book, not a magazine) and found pictures of all your favorite flashes in the pan from 1964, badly colored with watercolor! No exposed genitals at all! I can’t imagine this lasting longer than one year thought, and not because of the deceptive title that probably ruined the evening of many pervy purchasers. Who was going to wait for another year to buy a hardcover book of pop stars?

6. Random Pay Phone
Sure, you can put down $20K on a single comic book (Detective Comics 31 as one booth was selling) or $15K on a page of Frank Miller art, but why spend cash on things that make sense when there’s perfectly bizarre stuff that has nothing to do with comics to buy? Like this broken payphone that someone was selling.

5. Seinfeld Bloopers
Make no mistake, kids. This is a DVD of Seinfeld bloopers. The same things you can find as special features on any regular Seinfeld DVD. Just compiled onto one DVD. Save yourself the expense of purchasing three seasons of Seinfeld just for the bonus material and just purchase some grainy second/third-generation bootleg!

4. Stuffed Riddler
When you think of “cuddly”, I’m sure that “Batman villain” is not one of the first thousand things that comes to mind. Yet for some licensor, this made perfect sense. “Kids love the Riddler, so they must want to sleep with him too!” And isn’t that was kids really would prefer over bears and puppies and raccoons? (I had a stuffed raccoon) A man in a suit with no pupils? Yep, hook my child up with a stuffed man in a suit and have him start off down that long road to a soulless corporate job early! Or clue-based crime.

3. Sting foam things
For the foam finger on the left, he looks like an Archie character. On the right…let’s just say that there’s one pro wrestler in this picture who might be a little hopped up on goofballs. I’m sure he was overjoyed when he looked out from the ring and saw these staring back at him, with his (apparent) trademark “lazy eye yet still ramped on crack cocaine” look. This is one of those things you sign off on BEFORE it’s produced.

2. Spider-Man Gumball Machine
This just screams “WE DIDN’T TRY!” It’s a gumball machine, straight out of any candy store, with a Spider-Man figure stuck to the top of it. And that’s IT. The designs on the machine itself have nothing to do with Spider-Man, they’re the same abstract, art deco antique designs you’d find on any gumball machine. There’s no effort to match the colors or designs of the character. It’s just a figure stuck to a gumball machine. For $15. Perfect for your friends who have an enormous love of gum and a passing fancy for Spider-Man.

1. The Twins of Dracula lobby card
The joke is obvious. The TWINS of Dracula! And she’s topless! Twins!
To hammer this joke even farther, the ace salesman who was peddling this merchandise told me that “for $5, you can see the titties.” I told him that I didn’t need $5 to see titties, as this was New York, and he shrugged. But get it? TWINS of Dracula! Ho ho!

And, as a bonus, I took a creative picture of a comic called “The Man In Black Called Fate”.

I like to think of it as “Johnny Cash, the later years.”

GI Joe may be returning big time.

“But Ethan!” you cry, “GI Joe’s been around for a long time and they keep making hit toys and comics and there’s this movie and everything! And we really like whining!” And you’re right on all counts. But now IDW publishing is doing something that I think has been overdue for a while: they’re restarting the GI Joe franchise.

GI Joe #0 came out yesterday and costs only $1, so you don’t have much of an excuse to not buying it (unless you live somewhere where literacy is outlawed – I’M LOOKING AT YOU, KANSAS). It’s three short tales to set up the three new Joe series, GI Joe proper, GI Joe: Origins, and GI Joe: COBRA, each done by the artists and writers of their respective series. The goal is to reboot the franchise, starting at the early days when the Joes and COBRA were still unaware of each other, leading into how the Joes were recruited, and possibly the same with COBRA (the short COBRA story in #0 has Chuckles infiltrating the organization).

And normally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about GI Joe. I adored the show as a kid but lost track of it right before the animated movie. Now there’s been so many changes to the teams and the storylines and whatnot that I couldn’t be bother with it. Especially when everything from the 1980’s until now was all considered part of the same story. And because they released figures that looked like this:

But this new start looks very, very promising. All three stories had great writing and amazing art and after each teaser I found myself saying, “I want to read more of this! This will make me happy!” I haven’t kept up with any Joe continuity, but at this point I don’t have to! It’s all new! It’s perfect for me, despite breaking some of my major rules:

1) I don’t like war comics/movies/stories/shadowplays/flipbooks, etc.
2) I don’t like series that start out with an enormous cast of characters
3) I don’t like jumping onto a series that has an extremely rabid fanbase stretching back two decades
4) I generally stay away from books based on toy lines (see also “Centurions”. Dear God, why do I even have that issue bagged and boarded? I got it in a sampler pack.)

But for the first time since little 7-year old Ethan purchased his first GI Joe figure, I’m excited about picking up more GI Joe stuff. The issue #0 was that good. And I recommend it highly to anyone who’s intrigued by GI Joe but has been on the fence about learning more at you local library.

Now don’t drop the ball on this one, IDW. I’m trusting you.

Buuuuuut, here’s more fun and enjoyment. You see, Halloween is right around the corner, and that means costumes. I haven’t chosen mine yet, or even if I’ll have an occasion to wear one, but it doesn’t stop me from looking. How can I not, with pop-up ads launching at every comic-themed webpage I visit? Here are a few I found this morning.

I don’t see this Joker as being that scary. In fact, I think of him more as a talk show host giving a monologue. Sure, his face is a little bobble-headed, and his mouth is a little tiny, but he’s more or less Leno. They’ve taken a truly horrifying character and turned it into…well, they cleaned him up. Purple lab jacket and green vest do not a Joker make.

The Scarecrow costume from the Warner Brothers store doesn’t fare much better. The smock is a little too nice, although they did a good job with the asylum straps. But the face? Is he Booger Head Scarecrow? Is it a leftover Star Wars mask? How do you get Scarecrow out of that? Maybe they had to clear out their stock of “Last Starfighter” masks and figured they could unload them on Bat-fans.

That’s the Last Starfighter dude. Not 100%, but way more accurate than the Scarecrow mask that, if memory serves, is supposed to be made of fabric.

Wanna know where you’ve seen Sonic Troopers before? 4th-rate costume catalogues. They are the generic versions of Power Rangers for kids who aren’t that into details. Any kid would look at these and say, “Dear God, this is a pile of rip-off s***.” I did an internet search for Sonic Troopers and the only things that came up were more costume sites offering the same knock-off crap. The scary part is that these would be perfectly acceptable costumes for a Japanese TV show. I wouldn’t be shocked if I saw these on japanese TV as some new superhero squad. As an aside, I’d like a street gang to name themselves the Sonic Troopers, kill and rape a few dozen people, then destroy a building. Then, out-of-touch grandmothers could buy their grandkids these costumes and say “oh, it’s a Sonic Trooper costume, honey,” and cause controversy.

Hey kids! Love that great movie Jurassic Park? Sure, it came out before your parents were married and you may have been absolutely frightened while watching it, but didn’t you love the triceratops? You remember, it was the dinosaur that was sick and didn’t get up and move or anything. You remember that, right? Well, here’s a costume that’s tangentially related to that movie! It’s…well, it’s a nifty triceratops mask! And pajamas with a triceratops on it! Mostly blue, not much triceratops, but it still qualifies as a costume! Mostly just the mask part. An absolute must for out-of-touch grandparents.

There’s little to be said about this Batman costume, other than he looks sad. His ears are shrunken, his nose is awkwardly pointy, and his face isn’t angry or menacing, it’s more of a “poor me” expression. Poor Batman. You look like a damn fool.

And there’s Muppet costumes too! Here’s Animal! Yes, the out-of-control drummer for the Electric Mayhem is faithfully rendered into a costume for your child by someone who has not seen an episode of the Muppets in their lives and designed the costume based on someone’s description over the phone. More or less looks like Elmo with squinty eyes, an underbite, and a unibrow. Any kid would love to wear this costume, especially if they love being stuffed in lockers and forced to eat dog poop.

But there’s not much that’s going to beat Fozzie Bear, who looks like he’s been drunk for the better part of the week. The nose is huge and red, the eyes are shifty and the wrong shade of purple, and your child will be emerging from Fozzie’s larynx. Here’s a photo of the real Fozzie for comparison:

Notice that his mouth isn’t a small red line, and that his fingers aren’t black. This costume is probably unlicensed, since the Henson company actually have some pride in their creations. Drunk Fozzie would not have passed muster.

This sign was all over the parks. It translates to “please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times,” but I felt that it was more like, “do not have a wild, awesome party inside the car. You and your kid. No party.”

The Muppets got bought up by Disney sometime in the early 90’s, so they have their own little corner of Disney World. Specifically, they have their own 3-D movie at Hollywood Studios (I did not have a fun time there, but that’s a story for another time). It’s kinda sad, the once-great Muppet empire reduced to half of a Disney gift shop, but they did get some of their own stuff for sale. Nothing unique, nothing that I picked up, but once you see what was for sale, you can understand why my wallet didn’t open.

When Kermit is decapitated, he doesn’t die. His head grows tentacles like some kind of Lovecraftian nightmare. He is evil in this form.

Kermit also suffers from an infectious gum disease, not helped by the fact that he has no teeth. It’s nasty and rotted in there. Beaker, on the other hand, is just bleeding from the mouth. It’s sad, the dental problems of Muppets these days.