Classics Illustrated

You may be familiar with the urban legend that Orson Welles had planned on making a Batman movie back in the 1940s. If not, learn all about it at Brian Cronin’s excellent Comic Book Legends Revealed site, a weekly must-read for yours truly. Yeah, the story is a hoax but it’s a good one that sets any movie and/or comic book fanboy’s imagination on hyperdrive. The story popped to mind recently as I was reflecting on the mind-boggling number of superhero movies that will be racing to a theatre near you over the next few years. Just ten years ago, the idea of Kenneth Branagh directing Thor would have been dismissed as ridiculous but it’s on its way.

The whole thing got me to thinking. What if some of the greatest directors of all time suddenly found themselves resurrected in Hollywood today? And what if the only thing they could get a studio to agree to finance was a superhero movie? What would they do? Nobody can say for sure, obviously, but I’ve come up with a few ideas that make a weird kind of sense. If nothing else, they’d make for good companions to Welles’ Batman.

The Defenders directed by Robert Altman

It stands to reason that Altman, director of such ensemble classics as MASH and Nashville, would be attracted to a team comic. But his contrarian nature would prevent him from warming up to titles like Justice League of America or The Avengers. Enter Marvel’s non-team from the 1970s, the mighty Defenders! The Defenders was a rotating group of heroes (and anti-heroes) who occasionally banded together to combat a common threat but more often were looking out for themselves. The “core” group, such as it was, consisted of Dr. Strange, the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk and the Silver Surfer, four guys generally known for not playing well with others. Altman most likely would have cast Elliot Gould as Dr. Strange, Donald Sutherland as the Silver Surfer, Keith Carradine as the Sub-Mariner and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Hulk. Altman’s Defenders would be alternately praised as a masterpiece and dismissed as unwatchable garbage, mainly because there would be virtually no action sequences and lengthy scenes featuring all of the heroes talking over each other.

Dr. Strange directed by Luis Bunuel

A Doc Strange solo flick, on the other hand, could only be directed by someone who understands the power of image over dialogue. Enter the master of surrealism, Luis Bunuel. The movie would be even better if Bunuel dragged his old partner-in-crime, Salvador Dali, back from the dead along with him. But even without Dali, Bunuel would come up with a mind-bending Dr. Strange flick like none other. I’ll bet he could even take such nonsensical terms as the Orb of Agamotto, the Dread Dormammu and the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak and turn them into a weird kind of poetic dialogue. Interestingly enough, back in the 80s Repo Man director Alex Cox was working on a Dr. Strange movie that obviously never came to pass. Now THAT would have been a superhero movie worth getting excited about!

Wonder Woman directed by Federico Fellini

Off-hand, I can’t think of another director who appreciated women in all their forms more than Fellini. Pick pretty much any random movie from his filmography and you’ll be treated to some of the strongest, most complex women portrayed on film. Fellini’s Wonder Woman would probably be the sexiest superhero movie of all time. The only difficulty would be convincing him that at least some of the movie should take place outside of the Amazons’ Paradise Island home.

Captain America directed by John Ford

One of the quintessentially American filmmakers tackling the quintessential American superhero? Kind of a no-brainer, don’t ya think? Ford made some great war movies like The Long Voyage Home and They Were Expendable in addition to countless classic westerns. I envision Ford’s Captain America as a cross between those war pictures and the Technicolor splendor of movies like The Searchers. Sure, John Wayne would probably want to play Cap but I’ll bet Ford would have had the good sense to go for Henry Fonda instead.

The Phantom Stranger directed by Alfred Hitchcock

It’s hard to come up with a superhero concept that would interest Hitchcock since he seemed to have little use for supernatural stories when he was alive. The farthest he ever veered from reality was The Birds and even then, he had absolutely no interest in explaining why the feathered little creeps went bonkers. So how about the Phantom Stranger? His origins and even his agenda are vague. He turns up wherever strange forces lurk, sometimes debunks them as hoaxes and sometimes has to call upon his mysterious powers to defeat a truly occult threat. But most likely, Hitchcock would realize that The Phantom Stranger already sounds like the title of one of his movies, keep that, ditch the rest and come up with something that has absolutely nothing to do with the original concept. Hey, Hitch did what he wanted. Who are you to argue?

Superman directed by Leni Riefenstahl

Why is everybody always so eager to turn Superman into an all-American, boy scout next door type? I say let’s bring him back to his Nietzschean ideal by recruiting the director of Triumph Of The Will and Olympia to craft his next screen adventure! In Riefenstahl’s hands, we’d see just how super Superman really is, with soaring flight sequences and statuesque images of his physique. Hell, if she could convince the German people that Hitler was basically a demigod, making us believe a man can fly should be a piece of cake.

Spider-Man directed by Francois Truffaut

One of the things that makes Spidey so unique and so beloved is that he’s matured a bit as the character has grown older. He’s gone from high school nerd to college geek to married man (and back again, thanks to Marvel), all the while wrestling with the great power and great responsibility of being Spider-Man. Sam Raimi’s done a pretty decent job with the character but imagine if Truffaut were around to apply some of his 400 Blows magic to the web-slinger. Picture a five-film cycle like The Adventures Of Antoine Doinel, following Peter Parker from high school to middle-age. Heady stuff for a superhero franchise perhaps, but Spider-Man at his best lent himself to this kind of treatment.

Man-Thing directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Best superhero movie ever. Think about it! Ed’s got experience with swamp creatures (see Lugosi vs. the octopus in Bride Of The Monster). He’d milk the screams of those who know fear (and therefore burn at the Man-Thing’s touch) for all they’re worth. He’d wrap it up on time and under budget. And we’d get dialogue like this, delivered without a trace of irony or double entendre:

“What was it? That scared you. There in the swamp.”

“It was…a giant-size man-thing! It was hideous!”

‘Nuff said!

Excelsior!

Jahnke

My Blog And Welcome To It!

I recently finished re-reading Peter Bagge’s remarkable 30-issue run on the comic book Hate, many of which I hadn’t read since they were first published over a decade ago (!). Hate was the first “underground” comic I ever picked up. Growing up in Montana, underground comix were buried so far underground you’d probably dig straight through to China before you found one. Consequently, my journey away from Marvel Comics was a slow one, marked by more adult but still genre-based fare like American Flagg! and Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. I stumbled across Hate #3 on a trip to Minneapolis to visit family. I don’t think I’d even heard of it before. But something about it called out to me. Hate led me to discover other titles like Eightball, American Splendor and Maus, all of which conspired to make me the twisted comix-hording freak I am today. Thanks, Pete!

As opposed to the fancy, square-bound collected editions of Hate that are readily available, I dug out all thirty of the original dog-eared pamphlets from one of the cardboard comic boxes that clutter my home. I still read and buy comic books but I’ve come to realize lately that the number of titles I buy in their serialized form has dwindled to less than a handful. Part of this is the changing nature of the form. Something like 100 Bullets for instance, which I started out reading as a monthly, is so intricate and dense that the story makes more sense when read as a whole. But a far bigger reason is that most publishers aren’t giving us a good reason to pick up the monthly anymore. While re-visiting Hate, I also re-read the editorials, letters columns and backup features. Letters are virtually non-existent in comics anymore and editorials are falling by the wayside themselves. The few titles I do follow on a month-to-month basis (or would if they were published that consistently), such as Criminal, Doktor Sleepless, Casanova, and Fell, all have additional text features that are at least as interesting as the stories themselves. I can’t imagine I’m the only one that misses these backups.

Interestingly (to me anyway), while I was a religious follower of letter columns, I never once submitted a letter to a comic. On a trip back to the ole Montana homestead a few years back, I discovered my one and only attempt at being a letterhack, a short missive in reference to an unremarkable issue of The Amazing Spider-Man written when I was about 11 years old. I remember thinking at the time that this would be my opening salvo in a concentrated letter-writing campaign to Marvel. I had my sights set on being the T.M. Maple of Montana (give yourself a No-Prize if you get that reference, Effendi!). However, I wisely decided that my observations on Aunt May were not especially profound and the letter remained unsent.

One of the most laudable elements of Petey O’Bagge’s Hate editorials was how he used his bully pulpit to recommend work by other cartoonists, especially self-published mini-comics and ‘zines. Reading these editorials again got me to thinking about the way the internet has forever altered the publishing world. Self-publishing is easier than ever. Once I hit “post” on this blog, I’m a self-publisher my ownself, pally! That’s all well and good but there’s something missing from all these blogs and websites. Producing your own ‘zine required ambition, persistence and skill (if not necessarily talent). Besides writing, you had to design it, lay it out, create a cover and at least put some effort into making it look like something a passerby would want to pick up. After that was done, you had to make copies, talk record stores and coffee shops into carrying it, send out copies to people like Peter Bagge in hopes of getting the word out about it…in short, it was a lot of work. I put out a ‘zine of my own when I was a kid, though I didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time. It was a fledgling attempt at writing stories and movie reviews, illustrated primarily with cartoons stolen from MAD Magazine. Its circulation was limited to theatre students and co-workers of my dad at Montana State University. I don’t have any copies of it anymore, for which I’m sure I am eternally grateful. I’m embarrassed enough by reviews I wrote two years ago, much less twenty.

These days, the ‘zine has essentially morphed into the blog which leads us to this one you’re reading right now (finally!). If you’ve read this far, odds are you either know me personally or through my work for The Digital Bits and/or Troma. I’m lucky enough to have a little cyber-corner at the Bits where I can spout off about movies and DVD (and, sigh…Blu-ray). Lately though, I’ve had ideas for articles, commentary or what-have-you that don’t fit the Bits. Thoughts about comics, books, the (gasp!) real world, etc. That’s why I’ve decided to start blogging here. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the way my stupid brain works, it’s that once it gets fixated on an idea, it has a helluva time switching to another one before that first one gets worked out. I figure that instead of just suffering from mental constipation, I’d work those other ideas out here.

I don’t have a clue who will be reading this, if anyone, especially since I won’t be able to count on the Pete Bagge Seal o’ Approval in the back pages of Hate. If you do choose to invest a few precious minutes of your life reading this thing, I will do my utmost to make it at least a wee bit entertaining for you. I have no clue when I’ll update it or how frequently, but I’ll announce new blogs on Facebook so if you want to keep up with it, you should find me there and count me amongst your close, personal friends.

Until next time, thanks for indulging me in this new experiment. See ya soon!

Your pal,

Jahnke