Once upon a time…

…Eddie Murphy could promote a movie without resorting to looking either shocked and/or upset.

Nobody’s Hero

Taking a break from Disney love, here is a cap that you can buy for only $10 on the streets of Brooklyn. Spidek-Man might be a big hero where you come from, hat, but around here he ain’t worth $10.

Ass-End of Disney Part 2

Enjoy the first five entries into the Disney Hall of “Wha?” Nothing odder than a large, bearded Italian man who wants to hug your kids. But did you think that those 5 were the weirdest of the costumes? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

Clara Cluck
Various Disney Projects
If you don’t recognize Clara Cluck, don’t be alarmed. It only means one thing: You’re not 80 years old. Clara is old school Disney, ie before your parents’ time. She’s presented as an opera diva most of the time, something that even fewer kids nowadays comprehend. Opera ain’t that popular with the younger set. But hey, why not have her walk around Toon Town and sign autographs? Like those has-beens who show up with their tables and headshots at comic conventions, Clara Cluck hustles for whatever attention she can get from park attendees. Guarantee you that no child has any inkling of Clara’s history, so get ready to say, “Whoah, when did I get my picture taken next to this big chicken?” when you go through the scrapbooks.

Horace Horsecollar
Various Disney Projects
I’m partial to Horace Horsecollar, mostly because I had some old books when I was a kid and he was in them. That makes me possibly one of his biggest fans, as I satisfy their only criterion, “remembering him without malice.” Unless you have a really savvy 8-year old, and I’m talking “reads the New Yorker, listens (and understands) Firesign Theater, enjoys art galleries instead of making things out of earth and dirt” savvy, your kid is going to be frightened of Horace. It’s telling though that Disney has these properties that they fully own to exploit and yet they do nothing with them. Sure, there were those two Mickey Mouse TV shows, but why not really beef up the old characters? Why not put them into a movie together? Kids learn everything form movies these days, so what do they have to lose in making a film with the old characters? And why do I sound like an old man? “Build more houses by the golf course? Psh, my taxes will go up!”

Clarice
Chip and Dale Cartoons
“Are the lambs still screaming, Clarice?” If they’re screaming, “WHO ARE YOU? ANSWER ME!” then yes, they are still screaming. Chip and Dale were pretty popular characters, but their “girlfriend” Clarice didn’t have the staying power to make it into the Rescue Rangers. I pity the poor girl (or fragile, skinny guy) who has to put this thing on and try to exude sexuality in the Florida heat, standing next to a puddle of pee. Kids will inevitably go home and question their sexual mores, when they are approached by a vivacious, hairy, former quadraped in a a cocktail dress. In fact, I’m not sure how many know this isn’t Chip in women’s clothing.

Friar Tuck
Robin Hood
Friar Tuck is one of those costumes that Disney cast members put on when all the good costumes are taken. Really hot out? Take the Smee costume, it’s lightweight and breathes well. Feel like mixing it up with kids? Mickey Mouse is a surefire draw. Want to get pawed at by dads who think they’re just being “goofy?” Get the Clarice out of mothballs. None of these options are viable? Wellllllll….we have this old war horse from 1973. Friar Tuck was never anyone’s favorite character, unless they were really into Andy Devine, the cowboy star who did his voice in the film. Fact is, he’s not memorable, much like the Robin Hood movie itself. My apologies to anyone who’s had to wear this sweat box, but next time put that “reserved” sticker on Chicken Little.

Stanley
Disney Playhouse’s Stanley
I know nothing about this character or show, so I don’t know how popular he is. The only reason I included it was because as I was searching through websites tracking down pictures, Stanley was the only one with a hyperlink on his name. When I clicked on it, it took me to a carpet dealer (and installer!) out of Utah.

B.E.N.
Treasure Planet
I think more kids have seen cartoons with Horace Horsecollar than saw Treasure Planet. It’s a pretty standard C-list Disney picture, nothing to write home about. In fact, I forgot it existed until I had to look up what the hell movie B.E.N. was from. He’s a perfect example of an optimistic Disney marketing team putting a costume together for an upcoming movie, then realizing that no one saw the movie and no one knows who the character is. The train of thought probably went something like, “Oh, kids will totally love B.E.N., the wacky, lovable, robot sidekick with no eyes” to “Kids aren’t getting B.E.N. at all” to “Let’s see if we can salvage some of that fabric for another project.”

More to come!

Ass-End of Disney Part 1

Folks, I’m gonna level with you. I love Disney. I love the theme parks, I love the cartoons, I love the mythology, I love the fact that it wants to dominate all culture by the next century. I’m fine with that. Disney = teh good.

Now, if you go to the theme parks, you’ll see the characters, the folks dressed up in the large headed-costumes sweating in the Florida heat. They’re a major part of it, kids really get a thrill out of it and I enjoy knowing that they’re college interns who probably aren’t smiling under there. If you check out my facebook page, there are some pics of me posing with a few of them (Facebook me! OMG! Ethan Kaye!).

So you’ve got your Mickeys, your Minnies, your Donalds, your Goofys, and your Toy Story heroes. They’re all over the place (except for the first two times I went to the park, I was lucky to see one Smee). They’re the popular heroes and villains that have proved time and again to be major draws for the Disney corp. But what about the…others?

Yes, believe or not, not all the costumed characters have been successes. A movie flops and the expensive suit (they can run up to $6K an outfit) gets tossed into a closet. Or sometimes the nostalgia of the character is overestimated. Remember the Walrus from the “Walrus and the Carpenter” scene in Alice in Wonderland? He’s in the movie for less than 5 minutes. They made a costume of him. Approximately 95% of guests have no clue who he is, but they made a costume of him and he walks around signing autographs.

So, I present to you a multi-part examination of some of the “other” Disney costumed characters. Not your Mickeys, not your Minnies, but your bottom of the barrel Disney leftovers. Enjoy!

Stromboli
Pinocchio
OK, Stromboli is generally not the first character who springs to mind when you think of “fun memories for kids about Pinocchio.” He’s the exploitative showman who forces Pinocchio to dance. Remember the “got no strings” song? It’s peppy, catchy, and about how Pinocchio is a slave to the forces of entertainment. If the Disney World Stromboli doesn’t have to face his inner demons every time he encounters kids, then the costume is only half done. Stromboli must be thinking about how he can exploit the tourist children at every opportunity! He should be drinking their beverages from their collectible mugs and molesting their moms! He’s not just a cuddly showman, he’s a larger-than-life machine! He’s Michael Douglas in Wall Street, he’s Al Pacino in Scarface, he’s Christopher Walken in King of New York. This guy’s got an angle, and he’s not afraid to kidnap a kid to make it happen. But hey, signing autographs is a steady side gig. Watch your cash around this one.

Mademoiselle Upanova
Fantasia
I like Fantasia. It was great to make out to in high school, since you can’t lose any plot by looking away, it’s all audio. So this ostrich was the “lead” in the segment “Dance of the Hours.” She was identified in no way, shape, or form in the film as “Mademoiselle Upanova” (I just got the pun, ha ha), but take our word for it, that’s who she is. Wizard Magazine doesn’t lie about anthropomorphic ostriches. The interesting part is that Fantasia, although it is one of Disney’s greatest films, is not a huge hit with kids. Sure, it’ll keep their attention with the Sorcerer’s Apprentice part, but everything else is like watching a ballet, and kids don’t have that kind of patience. So getting them to remember the dancing ostrich…that’s assuming a lot. How many parents said, “Oh honey, get your picture next to the bird!” and “It’s like Big Bird!”? More than you think.

Hyacinth Hippo
Fantasia
Another minor Fantasia character. It’s pretty obvious who got chosen and who didn’t: goofy animals = awesome, topless centaurs, demons on mountains, sorcerers, and dying dinosaurs = no costume for you. If I did drugs, I suspect I’d have bought the DVD by now, but as I don’t I still haven’t found a reason to purchase it. Hyacinth, sadly, does not bear the same mark of quality of most of the Disney World costumes. She doesn’t have that star quality of the Hyacinth of the cartoon and looks more or less like an off-the-shelf, run-of-the-mill pink hippo costume. Is it any wonder she doesn’t sign autographs?

Abby Mallard
Chicken Little

Kids, why don’t you want to go back to Disney World? Oh right, that duck thing that scared you so much you peed on your shoes. This costume could have done with about 40% less eyes. In fact, if I hadn’t seen it was a duck, I would have assumed it was some sort of deep sea tubeworm with features. And DON’T tell me you don’t see that now when you look at it. Tubeworm with a face. I haven’t seen Chicken Little, but I can safely assume that Abby Mallard doesn’t go through the film being surprised by every little thing she comes across. I cannot safely say that she sleeps at all through the film, so a lack of sleep might be a cause of this.

Marie
The Aristocats
So there’s a mother, a father, two kids, a grandmother, and a cat named Marie. They walk into a talent agency and the dad says to the agent, “We have an awesome act for you!” and the agent says, “Well, we don’t usually do family acts.” and the dad says, “Well, just wait ’till you see this!” And then he STOP. AWFUL THINGS HAPPEN. DISGUSTING THINGS HAPPEN. DO NOT IMAGINE THEM. THEY INVOLVE BODY FLUIDS AND THINGS THAT ARE ILLEGAL. TO FAMILY MEMBERS. Then the astonished agent wipes off his face and says, shakily, “What the hell…do you call…that…” and the dad proudly says, “THE ARISTOCATS!” Anyhoodles, Marie is the only character I’ve seen from the film The Aristocats out and about at the park. She is hopelessly alone in her wanderings, removed from context and transformed into a target for furries. She’s a woman in a slinky cat costume. You think she’s not giving the guy who dressed up as a sheep in his spare time a sweating fit? Bad idea all-around.

More to come!

Win: MAD, Loss: CNN

While sitting in the airport today, on my way to Chicago, I couldn’t help but hear the CNN they have blaring through the terminal. They were doing a story on MAD Magazine’s 500th issue, which is awesome. I have a collection of MAD Magazines that’s taller than I was when I first started buying it in 1988 (I have since dropped the title when it went color and quarterly), so I’m a fan of the work.

CNN, must not be familiar with the book, as the news anchor, a ditzy, ditzy woman, started off the report by saying, “As Alfred E. Newman would say, ‘What? MAD? Why worry?’”

Ugh. A few minutes later the weatherman made a joke about “putting the lotion in the basket” and this wonderful anchorwoman didn’t know what he was talking about.

Another comic book anatomy lesson

Captain America, as you may have read, is a shining symbol of American patriotism, liberty, and can-do fighting spirit. Except in the 90’s, when he was a hulking mass of badly-drawn muscles and bright, circus-y colors. I give you, Captain America #431.

Oh, oh, oh, there is so much wrong with this cover, it hurts.

Ignoring the elephant in the room of anatomy for a second, I turn your attention to the coloring. A red, white, and blue character on top of a red, white, and blue background. You could have used different intensities to show contrast but no, both the Free Spirit and the flag come out looking like they’ve gone one too many rounds in the washing machine. Additionally, there is a ncie color error (right on the cover!) next to Free Spirit’s right boot. Yup, the sky is blue, but just for that one sliver.

The US flag doesn’t have enough stars on it. Look it again. Now look at an actual US flag:

How many stars does it have going up the left side? Yup. Someone just threw some stars on a flag without caring. To make matters worse, it doesn’t even have the right number of stripes (5 below the blue field as opposed to the correct number, 6). As we can see by the right side of the flag, there are only 9 stripes. We’re missing some stars and bars here.

Then we get to the meat n’ potatoes of the cover, Free Spirit herself.

Take a look at the part of her hair.

Real hair doesn’t part like that, mainly because most people’s scalps flatten off at the top of the skull, rather than extending up and to the right. If the back of her head was being blown off with a bullet or something, that might explain the weird rising on the back of her head, but I don’t think that’s the case. Hair doesn’t work that way.

For that matter, neither do breasts. Without the aid of a bra, those gentlemen should not be positioned the way that they are. One seems to be ascending, the other descending. Neither looks natural for a woman standing still on a chimney.

“Standing,” being the operative word there. There really is very little of this oddly-shaped woman actually touching the chimney. She’s on there by a tip of a toe and (presumably) some fingers. You have to wonder what the hell happened to her spine? because she seems to have an extra-flexible vertebra that allows her to actual bend 90 degrees apart from her hips. For her to be in this position, she would have to have a completely hourglass figure, and I mean a waist as skinny as the middle of an hourglass with shoulders and hips as wide as the ends of an hourglass. You can imagine it once you see her butt. Her hips are just too tall to be human hips. Whereas normal human beings have hips in a general oblong, rectangular shape, Free Spirit has hers in sort of a square.

Now the legs. NO NO NO. BAD. NO. DO NOT TOUCH. Each leg is an alphabet of woe. Her right leg (on our left), extends from the groin (the lower groin, without getting into female anatomy parts), and not from the hip socket. In fact, the hip socket is a good three inches above where the leg extends from. Her left leg (on our right), WTF? This girl is shown head-on and we suddenly get a leg in full profile. What this means is: SOMEONE BROKE HER LEG OFF AT THE HIP AND IT’S JUST HANGING THERE, A VICTIM OF GRAVITY. It even looks like the foot is turning inwards, which means that this superheroine is 100% pigeon-toed.

On second look, Free Spirit seems to have an extra joint in her hips. Bear with me now. In humans, the hips begin to get wider because there is a ball joint protruding from the pelvis. In illustration:

The femur in the cover does seem to have that ball joint, and you can see the beginning of the slope forming where the lower scarf-thing begins. Then the femur is rudely broken a few inches down at an almost 90 degree angle. To add insult to injury, the left calf is longer than the femur. BAD. NO. FAIL.

And this was the COVER to the issue! This is the thing that would have gone through the most quality control since this was what was being used to sell the book! Printing errors, anatomical errors, and a flag that is obviously not of our country…was editorial having a sick day when this went through? Sadly, yes, I could do a whole series of these anatomy lessons with the output of the later Captain America series.

Is this the next sentinel of liberty? God, I hope not. (She wasn’t)

I talk about video games, and my girlfriend

Just as I’m working on one blog post, I find out that something else I wrote has been put up on another website! Thank God Wizard doesn’t have a non-compete going for me (if they did, I’d be demanding a salary).

This article I wrote is up on Co-Optimus Prime, a gaming website run by my friend Nick Puleo (who just welcomed a baby into his family! Congrats!). Normally, I don’t play many video games, but I absolutely love co-op games and absolutely love writing about geeky things I do (want me to tell you about my collection of books on conspiracies?). So I wrote an article for Nick’s magazine.

(Lots of parentheses in this)

The article is about how my girlfriend Katie and I have been playing through some games recently and how much fun it can be. For those of you who don’t know, playing video games with a spouse is a lot of fun, and makes the time you’d normally spend alone, glued to a screen, more talkative and social. It’s a good thing.

Dear Hollywood

Please stop basing an entire movie about how funny it is that a black man is dressed like a fat woman.

It may have been funny once, but now it’s turning into an odd genre thing, and honestly? It’s just kinda weird at this point. I’m not pointing out films where an actor just wears a fat suit (Austin Powers, Get Smart), because the movie is not dependent on “oh lord, they are so a man as a woman!” for it to work. Mrs. Doubtfire is also part of the offending genre.

Friday’s Great Irony

I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but for a limited time this site is showing off a great irony. Remember last week how I put up the pictures of superboobie fan art? Well, those pictures are still up on my site (thanks, Flickr!), and if you scroll down you can see them.

Now, Wizard Universe hosts more than a few banner ads around my blog, and that’s fine, it pays the bills. There’s an ad right now for a Freshmen T-shirt offer from Top Cow. If you haven’t read Freshmen, do so, it’s a fantastic book. So what do I see when I read through my blog today? One of the chesty girls I posted last week next to the Top Cow model.

Wow. Life just got weird again. Sadly, just by posting this fact, I’ve screwed up the chance of you seeing this phenomenon for yourself on my site. But that’s progress for ya.

Mad Spanish

I was doing an eBay search today for, what else, The Mad Hatter, and I came across this gem from South of the Border:

Now, I already have two copies of this issue, so I don’t think I’ll buy the third, but what caught my eye was that it was in Spanish. And that “The Mad Hatter” in Spanish is simply, “El Sombrerero Loco.” That’s…pretty much what I would have come up with on my own if you had told me, “YOU! Using your limited knowledge of Spanish, gleaned from one semester of Spanish 1 in high school, Speedy Gonzales cartoons, and Spanish ads on the subway, WHAT IS THE MAD HATTER’S NAME IN SPANISH!?!”

El Sombrerero Loco. It still has a little flavor to it, but just doesn’t do it for me.