In many of the negative reviews that I read of this summer's attempted blockbuster Superman movie, The Man of Steel, and I read many, quite a few of the reviewers expressed a quaint, faint hope that already scheduled sequel would be better.  However, I'm certain that with the latest casting news concerning said sequel, quite a few of them have abandoned even that small hope.

If you don't know what I'm referring to, I hope you're sitting down, because I'm about to break the news to you that Ben Affleck has been chosen to play Batman.

Now, to be fair, Affleck could end up defying the expectations of everyone  on Earth except Kevin Smith and NOT totally suck as Batman.  There are those out here in cyberspace who are quick remind of 1989.  Back then, fandom assembled was simply aghast over the revelation that Michael Keaton, an actor who, despite an acclaimed dramatic turn in Clean and Sober, was known primarily as a comedian, had  been chosen to play their beloved Dark Knight.  The detractors feared a return of the dreaded "camp" of the reviled 1960s TV show.  Most of these doubters soon changed their tune upon actually viewing the film.  Keaton aquitted himself quite well as the Caped Crusader.  Although, in my opinion, he did a better job out of costume as Bruce Wayne than as Batman. Of course, the fact that he could hardly move in that suit didn't help matters.  Likewise, I understand that their was some objection in the ranks of fandom to Heath Ledger playing the Joker in The Dark Knight, a performance that has gone on to be acknowledged as one of the highlights of the late actor's all too brief career.  And absolutely nobody thought David Hasselhoff was right to play Nick Fury, and...well, in that case they were right and the less said about that travesty, the better.

To those who take such a wait and see stance, the universal response, which I echo here, has been, "You have seen Daredevil, right?" Granted, the casting of Affleck was only one of that movies many flaws, but I think it proved that Ben should probably avoid attempting to play leather clad urban vigilantes in the future.  Ah, well, you know what they say about those who will not learn from the mistakes of the past.

After seeing Daredevil, I often remarked that the scenes of Affleck running in that film reminded me of Adam West as Batman.  Maybe that's the point in making Affleck Batman.  Perhaps his performance in MOS II will be a tribute to West's Caped Crusader.  Of course, he'll have to put on a few pounds to get that paunch West had that spilled over the top of his utility belt.  For an actor as dedicated to his craft as Affleck is, though, that should be no problem.

OK, well, I'm all snarked out for now on this subject.  I'd love to hear your opinions about the whole affair.

With the debut of a new ongoing comic and, of course, the release of a new movie, there's been a lot of buzz about a certain Man of Steel recently.  I haven't yet seen the new film, and based on the evidence of  the reviews I've read and the reactions of my friends who've seen it, I'll probably be defering that singular pleasure for some time yet.  No, I'm here today to discuss an earlier Superman movie, though not the one that probably leapt to your mind when you read that last clause.  The film under consideration in this post is one you probably didn't even know existed, even though its likely that you may have seen it.  If so, it probably wasn't in its original form as a movie, but re-edited into the two part episode of The Adventures of Superman that closed out that series' inaugural season.

Superman and the Mole Men (or "The Unknown People" as it was retitled for its television debut), released to theaters in November of 1951, effectively served as the pilot for that long running show, introducing the world to George Reeves, the man who be intrextricably identified in the eyes of the world with the character of Superman for the rest of his life and for another two decades thereafter until Christopher Reeve donned the cape and tights in the late 1970s.  Reeves, an amateur boxer in his youth, had, by the time Superman and the Mole Men began filming in the summer of 1951, been a working actor for a decade and change, even landing, as his film debut, a blink and you'll miss it role in an obscure, low budget B-movie called Gone With The Wind in 1939.   Among his other film credits, and I single this one out only because it happens to be one I've actually seen, is the Charlie Chan mystery Dead Men Tell.  However, it was, of course, The Adventures of Superman that would make him a household name.
Mole Men also introduced moviegoers to the new Lois Lane, Phyllis Coates.  Coates never became associated in the public consciousness with Lois in the way that Reeves did with Superman, as she played the part for only the first of Adventures' six seasons.  There was a two year delay between the filming of the first and second seasons, and when time came for the cameras to roll on the second set of twenty-six episodes, Coates had already committed to another project and was thus unavailable.  She was replaced by Noel Neill, who had played the part opposite Kirk Alyn in the serials Superman and  Atom Man vs.Superman.
Billed on its promotional poster as Superman's "FIRST Full-Length Adventure," "full length" obviously not meaning the same thing in 1951 as it does in today's era of three hour epics, Superman and the Mole Men clocks in at a mere fifty-eight minutes. The film was written by co-producer Robert Maxwell, under the nom de plume of Richard Fielding.  The director was Lee Sholem.  Sholem would go on to split the directing duties on the remaining twenty-four episodes of The Adventures of Superman's first season with Tommy Carr, who had done similar duty on the Kirk Alyn serials. 
Perhaps because it had been told a mere three years earlier in the first serial and thus was fresh in viewers' minds, Fielding/Maxwell's script glosses over Superman's origin in a short opening narration and gets straight to the story.  That's not to say that The Adventures of Superman didn't produce its own version of the origin, but it would be early 1953 before "Superman On Earth" aired, kicking off the series' run.
Curiously, aside from Lois Lane, most of the familiar trappings of the Superman mythos, from the majority of his supporting cast, to his Achilles heel, Kryptonite, to the city of Metropolis itself, are noticeably absent from Superman and the Mole Men. The story is set in the small Texas oil town of Silsby, which, as a sign that is the first image we see following the introductory narration informs us, is the home of the world's deepest oil well.  Big city reporters Kent and Lane have travelled all the way from Metropolis to do a story on the well, only to find upon their arrival that the well is being shut down for reasons that foreman Bill Corrigan tersely refuses to elaborate on.
The mystery deepens when "Pop" Shannon, the aged night watchman at the well site, is found dead of a heart attack later that evening.  The tragedy is enough to loosen Corrigan's tongue, and he tells Kent the story behind the well's closing.
As the drill bored deeper, soil samples began coming back with a strange, possibly radioactive glow.  At approximately six miles deep, the drill bit seemed to be hanging in mid-air, as if it had broken through to the center of the earth.  Strange microbes were found on the drill bit, leading Corrigan to speculate that more complex life forms may be living down there.
He's right, of  course, and now a pair of diminutive, hairy creatures with big bald heads and exhibiting the same mysterious glow found in the soil samples have come up to explore this strange new world that has invaded there own.  Unfortunately, the first person they encounter is poor old "Pop", who is so frightened by their appearance that his ticker gives out.
The death of "Pop" and other sightings of the creatures get the townsfolk of Silsby worked into a lather.  Kent tries to calm the populace, but his entreaties of understanding fall on deaf ears.  Worked into a murderous frenzy by a nasty character by the name of Luke Benson, the frightened citizens form a mob to hunt down the invaders. 
It is only then, twenty-eight minutes into this less than hour long film, that Kent ducks into an alley and changes to his super-heroic alter-ego in order to protect the aliens from the lynch mob, as well as protect the people of Silsby from the creature's possibly radioactive glow.  This is fairly typical of the pattern that The Adventures of Superman would fall into.  Like the later TV adaptation of The Incredible Hulk, due mostly to the limitations of a TV special effects budget, Superman usually only showed up near the end of each episode as a sort of deus ex machina to clean up whatever mess Lois and Jimmy Olsen had gotten themselves into that week.
Benson and his mob succeed in critically wounding one of the aliens with a shotgun and trapping the other in a burning shack.  Superman rescues the alien who gets shot and takes him to the local hospital.  His compatriot escapes from the fire and heads back down the well, re-emerging with reinforcements and a big sci-fi ray gun in order to rescue his wounded friend.
Superman and the Mole Men has more in common with The Day the Earth Stood Still than with your typical Superman tale.  Even moreso than in that Robert Wise genre classic, the aliens here are presented as peaceful and sympathetic.  They are shown as innocent and childlike.  In fact, the only person in Silsby who befriends them is a little girl.  She is frightened not by the creatures, but by her mother's hysterical reaction to them.  The real monsters in Mole Men are Luke Benson and his cronies.  Though their fear of the unknown is understandable, they let it get the best of them, blinding them to reason.
The comparison to The Day the Earth Stood Still is apt, as Superman and the Mole Men is truly representative of the best of 1950s science fiction films.  It also represents the best The Adventures of Superman. Based on the color episodes, after producer Whitney Ellsworth, who replaced Bob Maxwell in the second season, decreed that the show should be essentially dumbed down to make it more "kid-friendly", its easy to dismiss the entire series as insipid pablum.  However, the black and white episodes, especially Maxwell's first season, are among the finest examples of 50s TV.

In order to discuss DC's second volume of Star Trek comics, I am afraid that I will have to touch on, at least briefly, a rather unpleasant topic: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.  Around the time of "that film's" release, Paramount took it upon itself to renegotiate all of it Trek related licensing deals.  As a result, DC's first Star Trek series came to an end with #56.  Ultimately, DC retained the rights to produce Trek comics.  Thus, one year after the conclusion of the first volume, a new Star Trek series began, preceded by an adaptation of "that film." 
The new comic was published in what DC referred to as their "New Format."  This was sort of a middle ground between the traditional newsprint of the so-called "Standard Format" titles and the higher quality and price tag of the "Deluxe Format."  Besides the quality of the paper stock, one other thing that distinguished the "New Format" from "Deluxe Format" comics was that select "New Format" titles, Star Trek among them, were made available outside comics shops alongside "Standard Format" books.
Although Peter David, who had come onto the previous volume as writer with #48, continued on in that capacity for the first year and a half of the revived comic, the second series otherwise shared no continuity with its predecessor.  The events of that series, along with the new Enterprise crew members created by its initial writer Mike W. Barr, were relegated to a footnote to Trek history.  Paramount, as a matter of fact, forbid the addition of new characters to the cast of the second volume, insisting that the stories focus on the already established main characters.  This decree forced the abrupt disappearance of the David created character R. J. Blaise following the twelfth issue.  Blaise was introduced as the Enterprise's "protocol officer," however her true purpose on board the ship was to keep an eye on the controversial Captain Kirk on behalf of the Federation council.  She figured prominently in David's early storylines, yet David was given no chance by Paramount to properly write her out of the book and wrap up her plotlines.
"Not...Sweeney!" in #7 kicks off a three part story that begins with the Enterprise being assigned to evacuate the inhabitants of a doomed planet who don't want to be rescued by them.  When I phrase it that way, it kind of sounds like a replay of Marvel's seventh issue of Star Trek.  However, Peter David took that basic idea in a whole different direction than Tom DeFalco had.
The residents of the Federation colony on Tau Gamma II desperately want to get off their rapidly disintegrating planet, they just don't want to ride with Jim Kirk.  It would seem that their fears are well-founded.  Captain Kirk has become a lightning rod for the Federation's enemies.  The Klingons are still pissed at him over the events of Star Trek III.  In David's first storyline for this series, the captain managed to incur the wrath of a new, and very nasty, race of yellow-skinned aliens who call themselves the Nasgul.  Further complicating matters for Kirk and the colonists of Tau Gamma II is the fact that Sweeney, a semi-legendary figure widely feared as "the galaxy's most dangerous bounty hunter," has set his sights on the captain.
Sweeney's fleet surrounds the Enterprise in orbit around the planet, forcing the ship to retreat and seek reinforcements, thus stranding Kirk, Spock and Blaise on the surface.  Sweeney, meanwhile, goes in his personal ship down to the planet to capture his quarry personally.
Up until the final page of "Not...Sweeney!" the enigmatic bounty hunter is seen only as a menacing shadow.  Once his true form is revealed, he is most definitely not what the reader expects.  Rather than Lobo, he more closely resembles a young David Niven, complete with neatly trimmed moustache, striped tie, tweed jacket and dialogue suggesting a British accent.
The story continues in the next two issues, as Sweeney announces his plans to sell his captive to the highest bidder.  This leads to a four way confrontation between Sweeney, a fleet of Federation vessels led by Enterprise, and representatives of the Klingons and Nasgul.  Needless to  say,  Kirk escapes and triumphs over Sweeney, as well as the Klingons and the Nasgul.  Nevertheless, the ordeal convinces him that the best thing for all concerned would be for him to turn himself in to face the charges leveled against him by the two alien empires.  This sets up the three part storyline "The Trial of James T. Kirk" in issues #10-12.
Paramount having learned exactly the wrong lessons from the success of Star Trek IV, subsequent films took an ill-advised and poorly executed turn toward interspersing scenes of broad comedy amidst the "serious" moments. (I use quotes because it is impossible for me to take "that film" seriously.)  The comic reflected this trend.  However, with Peter David writing it, its certain that the comics would have taken on a more lighthearted tone even if the films had remained as grim as The Search For Spock.  One of David's trademarks as a writer is his mixing of humor and straightforward action/adventure.  Fortunately, David pulled it off much better than the writers of the last two films with the original cast.
This issue is a good example of that.  Kirk's rocky, to say the least, relationship with R. J. Blaise provides the comedy, while the action springs from Kirk's attempts to  outwit Sweeney and two alien races while racing against time to save the colonists from a planet that could explode at any time.
The art in the early issues of this series, including #7, was provided by James Fry and Arne Starr.  Fry gets the likenesses of the actors down pretty well.  It's on the characters original to this story that his depictions are inconsistent from panel to panel.
This is the last of the Star Trek #7's in my collection, but probably not the end of this series.  I also happen to have copies of the seventh issues DC's Star Trek: The Next Generation, Malibu's Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Marvel's Star Trek Unlimited.  Also, Marvel published its own DS9 series as well as a Voyager series and comics chronicling the adventures of Captain Pike and his Enterprise crew and a series set during the second five year mission following the first movie.  I don't have copies of those seventh issue, but I'm always on the lookout for them.  So expect further posts in the not so distant future.

"You belong at your captain's side, Mr. Spock...as if you've always been there and always will."

Edith Keeler said that in "City On The Edge of Forever."  To Star Trek fans, as well, the idea of the adventures of James Tiberius Kirk without his Vulcan science officer, and closest friend, seems almost unthinkable.  Yet Trek fandom has faced that possibility a couple of times.

Before Paramount executives; casting about for a science fiction franchise to compete with Star Wars in theaters and realizing, ultimately, that  they already had one; upped the budget and hired a big name director the story that became Star Trek: The Motion Picture began life as  a teleplay entitled "In Thy Image."  It was to be the pilot of a second Trek series known as Star Trek: Phase II, which was envisioned as the cornerstone of a Paramount owned and run fourth TV network.   The original cast was on board for the new series with the sole exception of Leonard Nimoy.  Spock was to replaced at the science station by a full Vulcan named Xon and as first officer by Will Decker.  However, when plans for the Paramount network were scrapped and the project morphed into a feature film, Nimoy was persuaded to return to his most famous role. 

By the time of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Nimoy was once again ready to leave Spock behind him. This set the stage for the character's dramatic sacrifice at the end of that film.  Ultimately, Nimoy changed his mind yet again.  He continued on as Spock through the final original cast film and beyond, appearing in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and J.J. Abram's 2009 re-imagining of the original series.

Yet there is one set of ongoing Star Trek adventures that provides a glimpse of a Spock-less Trek.  DC Comics' first Star Trek series debuted in late 1983, more than a year after the release of The Wrath of Khan and several months before the debut of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, picking up the story of Kirk and crew immediately following the end of the former film.
With Spock gone, his duties were divided up between Saavik, the new science officer, and Sulu, who was elevated to second in command.  At least  one letter writer wondered why Scotty, who was shown in the TV series to be third in line after the captain and Spock, wasn't made first officer.  Based on my understanding of the character, however, it isn't hard for me to speculate  that were he offered the post at all, he would have turned it down, preferring instead to remain in engineering overseeing his precious warp engines.

While Marvel's licensing deal with Paramount ostensibly allowed them use of only the characters and concepts seen in the first movie, DC was free to draw on the entire Trek canon.  Initial writer Mike W. Barr made ample use of this freedom. His debut storyline worked in elements from "Errand of Mercy," "The Savage Curtain," and even "The Trouble With The Tribbles."  A later storyline would pay a lengthy return visit to the alternate reality of "Mirror, Mirror."
The two part tale begun in #7 contains echoes of "Amok Time" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and even throws in a sly nod to the aborted Phase II project while at the same time setting the stage for assimilating The Search For Spock into the comic's continuity. That seems like a lot to cram into two issues and still tell a coherent story, but Barr, along with guest penciller Eduardo Barreto, filling in on #7 to give regular artist Tom Sutton time to work on the double sized adaptation of the third film which took the regular comics place on DC's schedule the following month, and inker Ricardo Villagran, manage to pull it off fairly decently.
The story begins in #7 with Saavik in her quarters and obviously in great agony.  Naturally enough, as this comic was published prior to the release of Star Trek III, she is drawn as Kirstie Alley, the actress who originated the role in The Wrath of Khan.  Interestingly, however, aside from the movie adaptations, where she is quite properly drawn as replacement actress Robin Curtis, Sutton would continue to draw Saavik to resemble Alley until the character exited the series in the wake of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Meanwhile, Admiral Kirk's son David Marcus has come on board the Enterprise to be transported to a rendezvous with the ill-fated U.S.S. Grissom to conduct a survey of the Genesis planet.  At a banquet in David's honor, Saavik makes an uncharacteristic emotional scene and storms off to her quarters.  She is followed by a concerned Kirk and Dr. McCoy.  The ship's surgeon quickly surmises that Saavik is in the grip of the Vulcan mating urge known as Pon Farr, which, by the way, is mistakenly spelled in the story title and throughout the issue with only one "r".
The readership of this comic, at least the ones who troubled themselves to write to the letters column, seemed to consist in large part of hardcore Trekkers who had followed Kirk and company since the debut episode, "The Man Trap," first aired on September 8, 1966.  Apparently, many of them wrote in questioning Barr's basic premise that Vulcan women as well as men experience Pon Farr.   There is some evidence to the contrary.  T'Pring certainly acted purely out of cold, rational logic as she hatched her scheme to screw over Spock and have the man she truly wanted in "Amok Time."  Nonetheless, the question has, to my knowledge, never been addressed in any Star Trek movie or TV episode.  Thus there is no "official" answer, so Barr was not out of line in suggesting that Vulcan females also feel the call to return home to mate.
Which is precisely what Saavik does, as Kirk, just as he had done all those years ago for Spock, puts his current mission on hold and diverts to Vulcan.  First, however, Saavik relates for Kirk and McCoy the tale of her early years as one of the few hearty survivors of an abandoned Romulan colony, a story that tracks quite closely with the version of Saavik's past related by Vonda N. McIntyre in her novelization of the second movie.  The young Romulan-Vulcan half-breed is discovered by a Vulcan expedition led by Spock.  He takes the girl in and leaves her on Vulcan to be raised by his parents while he goes back to the Enterprise.  There she is betrothed to a young man named Xon.
Now, because Saavik was Xon's second future wife, his first having been killed by a wild sehlat (the Vulcan "teddy bear with six inch fangs" first mentioned in "Journey to Babel" and later shown in the animated episode "Yesteryear"), apparently the bonding didn't quite take for him.  Thus, when Saavik arrives on Vulcan, she discovers that Xon has not felt a similar call home and is nowhere to be found.  Spock's father Sarek reveals that Xon is away on a top secret mission and Sarek may not reveal his whereabouts.
Saavik engages in a bit of computer hacking to learn where Xon is, then steals a spaceship and lights out for the rim of the galaxy.  Sarek, meanwhile, wants to chat with Kirk about Spock's katra.  Kirk begs off, saying that finding Saavik must take priority at the moment.  However, the admiral promises that he and Sarek will speak of the matter in the future. 
Trailing Saavik to the energy barrier that surrounds the galaxy, as shown in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the Enterprise finds itself unexpectedly under attack.  The final panel of #7 reveals the attacker to be none other than Saavik herself, in the grips of the Plak Tow, or "blood fever", that comes in the later stages of Pon Farr. 
The story wraps up two months later in #8, as Sutton returns to the pencilling chores.  After her fevered attempts to destroy her own ship are thwarted, Saavik eventually is reunited with Xon, who has infiltrated a top secret Romulan scientific outpost near the galactic barrier.  The Romulans are attempting to use the energies of the barrier, the same ones that elevated Gary Mitchell to near godhood in "Where No Man Has Before," to create an army of invincible super  warriors with which to challenge the Federation.
These two issues, even with the spelling errors and continuity issues, comprise a fairly decent Star Trek tale that provides a neat, though not entirely seamless, segue into The Search For Spock.  After all, in the movie continuity the events of the third film follow those of it predecessor almost immediately.  The comic book, however, had the task of working in several months of stories in between them, and some dissonance between the two continuities is to be expected. 

You might have heard this already, but it seems that the Walt Disney Company has purchased Lucasfilm.  You know, when I first saw links to this start popping up on my Facebook wall, I initially thought it was some sort of Halloween prank.  But when trusted old media news outlets like The Washington Post (via The Associated Press) are reporting it, then I suppose its got to be true.  Even better, or worse, depending on your point of view, the House of Mouse is promising that there will be a new Star Wars film coming to a theater near you in 2015, with further adventures to follow every couple of years thereafter.  

Except for the first movie (that's the first first movie, not the second first movie), I'm not that big of a fan of the Star Wars franchise.  Thus, I'm neither thrilled nor overly chagrined by this news.  However, I can't help but wonder, being a comics blogger, how this is going to affect the industry I'm unhealthily obsessed with, specifically Dark Horse Comics, current publisher of Star Wars adventures in sequential form.  After all, it seems only logical that as proud owner of its own comics company, Disney would want to produce Star Wars comics in-house, and thus bring the license back to original home at Marvel Comics.  

I just now as I type this heard some economic expert on the International Public Radio program Marketplace say that Disney is "pursuing a strategy of buying big entertainment companies and monetizing that content across all divisions of the company."  That little bit of financial double speak would seem to argue for the Star Wars franchise returning to Marvel once Dark Horse's license expires.

As with all things, only time will tell and when there are any more newsworthy developments, I'll let you know.

So, I arrived home Sunday from the monthly gathering of the Sunday Comix cartoonists group in time to catch the last forty-five minutes of Voyage To The Bottom Of Sea, the 1961 feature film by Irwin Allen upon which he later based the 1964-68 TV series of the same name, and I kind of feel like writing about it here.  Sure, this is supposed to be a blog about comics, but when it comes down to it, its my damn blog and I'll write about what I damn well want to write about and you don't have to read it if you don't want.  I haven't written anything for quite a while, so maybe I need to write about something other than comics just to shake loose the mental cobwebs, break down the mental blocks that are keeping me from writing, and get my fingers used to the feel of the keys again.  I do try to tie my tangents on this blog to comics in some way, however, and in this case its not really a stretch, as there were comic books based both on this movie and on the TV show inspired by it.

Anyway, even though I missed over half the movie, I had seen it before, though its been many years, so I knew the basic plot.  Besides, it appears that I didn't miss much.  It seemed as if not much had really happened up to the point I started watching.  At least not compared to the final twenty minutes or so, in which everything comes to a head and events seem to be happening all at once.
The basic premise of the film is that something has caused the Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the Earth to catch fire, heating the planet and threatening all life.   Admiral Harriman Nelson, in defiance of the United Nations and all world governments, takes his experimental sub, the Seaview, on a quest to save the world by firing a missile which, he believes, will extinguish the fire in the sky.  This is the movies, after all, where just about any problem can be solved by shooting it.

So, at the point that I joined the film, the Admiral is convinced that there's a traitor on board attempting to sabotage the mission, especially after an attempt is made on his life.  The Seaview's captain, Lee Crane, however, is beginning to think that the Admiral is mentally unstable.  Thus he also begins to doubt whether Nelson's plan will actually work.  To make matters worse, approximately half of the Seaview's crew, believing the end of the world to be at hand, desert to spend their last days with their loved ones.  At the same time, the crew learns that the United States has dispatched its entire submarine fleet to find and stop the Seaview.
Finally, all the various plot threads converge as the films barrels toward its conclusion.  The ship reaches its destination, arriving at the exact position and time at which the missile must be fired.  Convinced now that Nelson is nuts, Captain Crane moves to relieve him of command and stop the missile from being fired.  Meanwhile, one of the pursuing subs catches up to the Seaview and begins firing torpedoes at them just as the traitor reveals herself by sabotaging the ships nuclear reactor, taking a fatal dose of radiation in the process.  After eluding the attacking sub, the Seaview is then attacked by a giant squid. (After all, you just can't have a submarine based science fiction film without a giant squid.  It's like a law or something.)  Then, as if all that weren't enough, a religious zealot, believing the sky fire to be "God's will", holds the control room hostage with a bomb to stop the missile firing.  In the end, of course, the missile is fired, the flames are extinguished and the Seaview heads triumphantly home.

What really makes this film work despite its frankly ridiculous premise is that the actors portraying the Seaview's crew totally commit to the premise.  They seem to really believe in it and thus effectively sell it to the viewer.  Because of this, what could have turned into high camp becomes a tense and involving science fiction thriller.
Even with the scientifically questionable idea of the atmosphere catching fire, the most unrealistic part of the film, and the subsequent TV series, is the Seaview itself.  Anyone who's ever seen any other movies or TV shows set on a sub will be immediately struck by just how roomy the Seaview is, with its wide corridors, spacious living quarters and huge control rooms.  Even the crew dining area is gigantic.  This ship must be just crazy big, though the exterior shots don't really give a feeling for that scale. Its kind of like an underwater version of Doctor Who's TARDIS, bigger on the inside than on the outside.

This movie can be seen as foreshadowing the remainder of Irwin Allen's career.  As I've already mentioned, it inspired his first, and longest running, TV series.  The success of the TV version of Voyage would lead to the creation of the far campier Lost In Space, and the less successful The Time Tunnel and Land of Giants.  Furthermore, the dubious, and, for the most part, totally made up, science upon which the film is predicated would become a hallmark of Allen's TV output in the 1960s. You could also say that with its all-star cast, which includes Walter Pidgeon, Barbara Eden, Peter Lorre, Joan Fontaine, Michael Ansara and Frankie Avalon, facing impossible odds while trapped together in a confined space, Voyage set the template for Allen's string of blockbuster disaster films in the 1970s, especially The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. 
 For me, watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, especially the series, carries with it a certain nostalgic resonance.  Voyage was a favorite show of my father's and I sort of feel a little bit of a connection to him whenever I watch it, or Mission: Impossible, which was another show he watched whenever it was on, mostly Saturday afternoons as I recall. Though, even without that extra layer of meaning, I'd still enjoy this movie, and if you have a chance to see it I'd definitely recommend that you do so.

(Note: I composed this post before hearing the news of the shootings during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado.  I gave some thought to not posting this, as perhaps some people might find a somewhat snarky post about DKR to be inappropriate at this point in time.  Of course, this piece has nothing to do with that tragedy,  just as it is likely that  the tragedy had nothing to do  with DKR.  The shooter was obviously a very deeply troubled individual and the film that happened to be on the screen when he chose to launch his assault was probably completely immaterial.  Nonetheless, I sincerely apologize to any who might find fault with the timing of this post.)
One of the most astounding traits of the American people is our nearly limitless capacity for outrage.  We are able at the drop of a hat to get ourselves all bent out of shape at the most trivial of provocations.   This quality is not limited to the pundits of the extreme right, though they tend to be the most vocal about and thus garner the most mainstream media attention for their lunatic rantings.  The latest case in point concerns our old friend Rush Limbaugh, who worked himself into a lather on his show a couple of days ago over the fact that the villain in The Dark Knight Rises is Bane, whose name just happens to sound like Bain, as in Bain Capital, the suddenly controversial firm headed by Republican Presidential nominee-to-be Mitt Romney back in the 80's and 90's.

"Do you think that it is accidental," Rush bloviated, "that the name of the really vicious fire breathing four eyed whatever it is villain in this movie is named Bane?"  

(I know that films based on comics often take a lot of liberties with the source material, but does DKR's Bane really have four eyes and breathe fire?  If so, I have got to see this movie!)

While I am familiar with the concept of rhetorical questions, this one deserves an answer.  It is not "accidental" that the film's villain is named Bane.  Few screenplays are written by accident.  It is, however, completely coincidental that the villain's name sounds like the name of Romney's former employer.  

It has, of course, been repeatedly pointed out elsewhere in cyber-land that the character of Bane was created in 1993, long before Mitt Romney even got into politics, much less thought of running for  President.  More germane to to this so-called controversy, however, is that DKR director Christopher Nolan apparently conceived of his Batman films as a trilogy right from the start.  Therefore, it is likely that he had the whole series, including Bane's appearance in the final installment, mapped out before the cameras even rolled on Batman Begins.  That film hit theaters in 2005, three years before Romney's first, unsuccessful quest for the GOP nomination.
Anyway, Rush seems to think that people are going to see this film and come to associate Mitt Romney with a comic book super-villain.  Maybe he's got a point.  After all, I believe it was legendary showman P.T. Barnum who said that no one ever went  broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American people.  (...which sort of sounds like it could be Rush's motto, come to think of it.)  And aren't the voters of this nation so easily misled that four years ago they were tricked into electing a Kenyan-born Muslim Socialist to be their leader?

Because of Rush's comments, Chuck Dixon, writer of Vengeance of Bane, the character's debut appearance, has felt the need to defend himself by asserting that he and VoB artist Graham Nolan are two of the comics industry's staunchest conservatives.

That got me to wondering about something.  If Nolan really is the rock-ribbed Republican that Dixon says he is, how did he feel about drawing Hawkworld, a comic with a unabashedly liberal point of view?   He probably, I suppose, viewed it as just another job.  There's certainly no indication in the issues he drew that he was giving the assignment any less than his best effort. 

I've noted before that there seems to be something almost inherently right wing in the very concept of the super-hero.  This sort of makes me wonder why I remain a fan of the genre.  According to a quiz that I recently took on Facebook, my own political views would appear to be more in line with those of the Presidential candidate of the Green Party.

Just because I feel like playing Devil's Advocate this afternoon, I want to address one other aspect of the advanced criticism of "Before Watchmen" that showed up again and again across the Wild, Wild Web.  That is the notion that prequels to Watchmen were going to automatically suck because Alan Moore wasn't writing them, which seems to carry with it the assumption that any follow-up to Watchmen that was done by Moore would have been brilliant.

That  ain't necessarily so.

It is entirely possible that a Watchmen sequel by Moore and Dave Gibbons could have been awful, and a bad sequel by the original creators would have done more to damage the reputation of the original than anything done by a bunch of hired guns.

I can, just off the top of my head, come up with a long list of sequels  to classic works by the original creators that didn't even come close to matching the brilliance of the originals.

Need I mention the Star Wars prequels?  I'm sure that even a lot of hardcore Star Wars fans would prefer that I didn't.

Then there's The Dark Knight Strikes Again, which, while it may have charms of its own for certain readers, comes nowhere near matching the sheer visceral gut-level impact of The Dark Knight Returns.

While I've never read them, I've heard that the sequels to the novel MASH, and there are quite a few, are fairly awful, and all of them are written by Richard Hooker, the author of the original.

One of my favorite Superman stories is "The Super-Cigars of Perry White" from Action Comics #436.  The story was written by Elliot S! Maggin and drawn by Curt Swan.  A couple of issues earlier, in a story I've never read, Daily Planet editor Perry White had apparently aided Superman in overthrowing a dictator on an alien world.   In gratitude, a pair of teenagers from that planet are dispatched to Earth to bring a gift to Perry.  Without telling White, they substitute his normal cigars for stogies that will give him any super-power that he can think of while he is smoking them.  On a trip to New York City, accompanied by Clark Kent, to accept his latest Pulitzer Prize, awarded, I believe, for reporting on that same extraterrestrial civil war that he and Superman had intervened in, Perry uses his newfound powers to aid the Man of Steel in rescuing the very plane he and Clark are traveling on and defeating a nameless criminal driving a nuclear powered super-tank.  Only after deducing that he was gaining any super-power that he asked for and asking for the power to know where his powers come from does Perry learn the source of his mysterious new abilities. Realizing that he has only one super-cigar remaining, Perry locks it a wall safe concealed behind his framed Pulitzer Prize certificate in case of a later emergency.

One thing that I love about this story, aside from its sheer brilliant silliness, is how absolutely politically incorrect the very concept is.  You just know that "The Super-Cigars of Perry White" would never get printed today.  Given the political and social climate of the last couple of decades, no comics publisher would dare to present a story that even hinted at any positive effects of smoking.  Hell, I'm a little surprised that it got past editor Julius Schwartz's desk even back in 1974.

Anyway, to get back to my point in even mentioning this story, in 1982, after a few years away from the Superman titles, Maggin returned as of Superman #376 with a story entitled " The Ozone-Master Comes Calling!" which was a direct sequel to "The Super-Cigars of Perry White."  Perry White is attacked in his home by the eponymous Ozone-Master in order to prevent Perry from publishing incriminating photos in the Planet.  From his hospital bed, he directs Superman to bring him his last super-cigar from the wall safe in his office.  Perry uses the powers granted by the alien stogie to temporarily restore himself to full health and aid Superman in bringing the Ozone-Master to justice.  

While just as politically incorrect as its predecessor, Superman #376 possesses none of the original's goofy charms.  Instead, it is a fairly bland Superman tale, pretty typical of the stuff that DC was cranking out in the half decade prior to John Byrne's 1986 revamp of the character in The Man of Steel.
Well, I think I've managed to make my point and I got to talk about one of my favorite comic book stories.  All in all, a good day at the keyboard.

We are not here today to debate the wisdom of DC Comics attempting to produce prequels to the most revered graphic novel of all time.  That debate continues on a host of other sites all throughout cyber-land.  No, I wish to dispel, instead, the notion that the mere existence of  "Before Watchmen," no matter its quality, will somehow diminish Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' original.   The truth, most likely, is that in a year's time, Watchmen will continue to be a bestseller and "Before Watchmen" will be all but forgotten.  

After all, who remembers As Time Goes By?

See.  I didn't think so.

I loved Casablanca the very first time I saw it on television.  Of course, I was high at the time, so I didn't quite trust my judgment.  Therefore, I went out and  rented it on VHS a few days later and found myself loving it even more.  I've enjoyed it just as much each of the countless subsequent times I've seen it.  The most recent was just a couple of weeks ago, when Casablanca kicked off this year's CAPA Summer Movie Series at the Ohio Theater in downtown Columbus, Ohio. 

Anyway, back in the 1990's, there was a minor trend of producing novels that were sequels to classic motion pictures.  This was around the time that Scarlett, the follow up to Gone With The Wind, showed up in bookstores.  As Time Goes By by Michael Walsh serves as both prequel and sequel to Casablanca.  It seeks to answer all the questions that fans of the film were supposedly dying to have answered.  The novel begins by detailing the exact events that made it impossible for Rick Blaine to return to America, then picks up after the movie, reuniting Rick and Louis Renault with Ilsa Lund and Victor Lazlo.

The problem with the book is not that its bad, because it really isn't.  It's just completely unnecessary.  Like Watchmen, Casablanca is a whole unto itself.  While there may be some questions raised as to Rick's past, the film leaves the answers up to the viewer's imagination, rather than  spelling everything out in dreary detail.

Another problem is that the book's revelations are so painfully obvious. 

In spinning his tale of Rick's past, Walsh draws inspiration from the moment in the film where Renault ventures to guess the circumstances that brought Rick to Casablanca.  Louis wonders, "Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me."  Rick replies that it was a combination of all three.  Well, Walsh strained his somewhat limited imagination to come up with a scenario that truly is a combination of all those elements.  

Of course, its really no spoiler for me to reveal that this festival of fan wish fulfillment culminates with Rick and Ilsa ending up together, and Lazlo dead for good measure. 

For me, As Time Goes By adds absolutely nothing to my appreciation of Casablanca.  More importantly, and more to the point of this post, it takes nothing away from it, either.

The same is true of "Before Watchmen."  I broke down and bought a copy of the first issue of  Minutemen last week.  I'll have a full review of it coming up. However, whether I liked it or not, just the fact that DC published it in no way affects how I will view Watchmen in the future.

I shall assume, and I believe I'm on fairly firm ground in making this assumption, that the majority of my readers most likely missed, due to its being broadcast here in Columbus, OH on WOSU radio yesterday morning at the inhospitable, some might say ungodly, of four a.m., the recent interview with Alan Moore on the BBC World Service radio program HARDtalk, as I'm sure very few of you are either insomniacs or vampires.

If you're interested in hearing Moore's thoughts on the Occupy protests, the films based on his work, the upcoming Watchmen prequels, the "gangster ethics" of the comics industry and pornography in his own voice, you can download the podcast of the episode here and listen to it in the full light of day while fully awake and alert.

My friend Jonathon Riddle has told me several times of a former roommate of his, a huge Star Trek fan, who objected to the very premise of the last Trek TV series, Enterprise, which chronicled the early days of Starfleet, because to him Star Trek was supposed to be about moving forward, not looking back.  (Never mind that the series was still set 150 years in the future.)  I'm sure this fellow would also have turned up his nose upon hearing the premise of IDW's monthly Trek comic, which adapts episodes of the original series into the alternate timeline continuity of the new movie.
To tell the truth, I thought the idea was kind of pointless myself.  After all, the movie gave us an entirely new Trek universe.   Why not explore it instead of wasting time on what would inevitably be greatly inferior retellings of forty-five year old stories?
The first issue pretty much proved my doubts correct.  I only bought it because the episode it adapted, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", just happened to be airing on MeTV the same week as the book's release, and I wanted to compare the adaptation to the original.  Needless to say, I found it somewhat lacking. The necessary compression of the plot for space, and the substitution of the likenesses of Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and company for William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the old crew, combined with some odd, seemingly arbitrary changes, such as the exclusion of Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, a major character in the old episode, made the comic seem even more of a pale imitation of the original than most comics adaptations usually do.  Also, it was kind of weird to see Gary Mitchell drawn as Gary Lockwood, the actor who played the character on TV, and standing alongside the movie crew.
With the series' seventh issue, writer Mike Johnson gets to try his hand at an original Trek story, and acquits himself quite well.  "Vulcan's Vengeance" is a direct sequel to the events of the film and has the Enterprise preparing to enter the Neutral Zone in pursuit of a Vulcan ship stolen by what appear to be the last survivors of Nero's crew who have stolen the only remaining sample of red matter, the substance that destroyed the planet Vulcan. 
What I really like about this issue is that it feels much more like a classic Trek adventure than the movie or even the first issue did.  Though they are drawn as Pine and Quinto, the Kirk and Spock of this story talk and act more like the Kirk and Spock I know from the TV series and earlier movies than their counterparts from the new movie.  The only problem I have with the story is that Johnson gets Chekov's accent wrong. 
Unfortunately, "Vulcan's Vengeance" does not herald a new direction for IDW's Trek.  After this tale wraps up next issue, it's back to strip mining the past with an adaptation of "Return of the Archons."  That's too bad, because based on this issue, I'd like to see more original Trek sagas written by Johnson.

I was saddened to learn today that William Campbell, the actor best known, at least, I would wager, to readers of this blog, for roles in the original series Star Trek episodes "The Squire of Gothos" and "The Trouble With The Tribbles", died on Thursday.  He was 87 years old.

In "The Squire of Gothos," Campbell was Trelane, the titular Squire of the planet Gothos, a seemingly omnipotent being ultimately revealed to be just a petulant child.  In "Tribbles," he was flamboyant Klingon commander Koloth, a role he would reprise three decades later on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  

In addition to Trek, Campbell appeared in numerous movies and TV shows during his nearly fifty year career, including co-starring with Elvis Presley in the King's motion picture debut, Love Me Tender.  

According to his obit in the LA Times, Campbell was also briefly married to Judith Exner, a woman who would go on to have an affair with JFK.

Voting closed yesterday on the latest Gutter Talk poll which asked readers to pick their favorite from among the various actors who've portrayed Superman in movies and TV shows over the past six decades.  I'd like to thank everyone who participated and especially those who shared their opinions in the comments.  A few more people took part this time than in my previous poll, which asked for readers' favorite comic by Mike Grell.  Since my readership numbers have been pretty constant for the past few months, I'm guessing the increase is due to people being more familiar with Superman, at least in movies and television, than they are with Grell's work.  I did have one person tell me, while the previous poll was in progress, that his favorite Grell comic was one Grell didn't do, meaning that he obviously wasn't a fan.  

Among comments on the current poll was this one:

On a purely objective level, I would concede that Christopher Reeve was the best at portraying the dual role of Clark Kent/Superman.   Still, perhaps due to his version being the one I was exposed to first, my vote went to George Reeves.  I just love the exasperated expression on his face whenever crooks would shoot at him, as if he were thinking, "Don't they ever learn?"  Plus, I actually like the way he played Clark Kent, which, due to budget constraints, he did a lot more than he played Superman.  Rather than an inept bumbler, Reeves portrayed Kent as a smart, competent and even tough reporter who was more than able to hold his own in the constant verbal jousting with Lois Lane.

Michael N. left this comment:

I certainly agree with you there, Michael.  Although the first two seasons, especially the first year under producer Robert Maxwell, were much better than the last four.  Two things happened with the third season that effected the quality of the series.  Whitney Ellsworth, who took over from Robert Maxwell in the second year, and the powers that be at DC, decided that the show should be more of a kiddie show, so the violence and darker tone of Maxwell's episodes was abandoned in favor of a more comedic flavor.  Secondly, in order to ensure the show's future success in syndication, the producers decided to shoot in color.  This was an expensive proposition back in the early days of TV and ate up most of the budget, leaving little for special effects or better writers. 
I might add that Christopher Reeve could have benefited from better scripts in his last two outings as the Man of Steel, and they didn't have those excuses.  After all, they could afford to hire Richard Pryor.

Now for the results.  The winner isn't much of a surprise.  As I predicted at the beginning, it was for the most part a two man race between George Reeves of the 1950's Adventures of Superman TV show and Christopher Reeve of the 1970's and 80's film franchise.  Between them they garnered nearly 80% of the total votes.  In the end, Christopher Reeve came out on top with a plurality of 46%.

It was nice to see that at least one person remembered Kirk Alyn, the first screen Superman.  Alyn set a standard for all who've followed him to live up to.  I was a little surprised at the complete lack of love, and votes, for Dean Cain of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.   In my opinion, he was a pretty good Superman, and the series, especially in the first couple of seasons, wasn't bad, either.  Being of a somewhat paranoid nature, I'm convinced that at least one of the two people who voted for Superman Returns' Brandon Routh did so to make me look bad, since I wrote that I didn't expect him to get any votes.

That wraps up the latest Gutter Talk poll.  I'll be back with another one before too long.  If you've got a burning question you'd like my readers to answer, let me know.

Speaking of Superman, as I was in yesterday's post, I have decided that it's about time for another Gutter Talk Poll.  This one was inspired by the recent announcement that Zach Snyder, director of the upcoming film Superman: Man of Steel,  has found his leading man.  The lucky, or perhaps unlucky, if you believe in the so-called "Superman Curse", winner of the role is Henry Cavill, a 26 year old British actor apparently best known to some for something called The Tudors, whatever the heck that is.  It seems that Cavill had actually been cast to play Superman in 2006's Superman Returns, until Brian Singer came on board as director and booted him in favor of Brandon Routh.

So, over to your right, at the top of the page, you'll notice a list of previous actors who have assayed the role of the Last Son of Krypton.  Your task, should you chose to accept, is to pick your favorite from among those listed.

Note that the choices are limited to those actors who have portrayed Superman, as opposed to Superboy or simply Clark Kent, in live action movies or television series.  Therefore, Bud Collyer of the 1940's radio show, Tim Daly from the 1990's animated series, Gerard Christopher of the 1980's Adventures of Superboy syndicated series, and Smallville's Tom Welling, among others, were excluded from consideration.

I actually thought about leaving Brandon Routh off the list as well.  I can't  think of anybody who really liked Superman Returns all that much and I honestly don't expect anyone to vote for him.

In truth, I expect this poll to come down to a two man race between George Reeves and Christopher Reeve. Still, I could end up being surprised.  Just maybe there are a lot of Kirk Alyn fans among my readers.

The poll will be open for the next seven days, and I'll discuss and analyze the results here sometime next week.

By the way, if you are reading this on my Open Salon site, click here to participate in the poll.

You are probably never going to find a bigger fan of cartoonist and author Berkely Breathed than the author of this very blog.  About six feet behind me as I sit at my computer desk typing this, the top shelf of my book case sags under the weight of every Bloom County/Outland/Opus book, from Loose Tails to the latest volume of the Bloom County Library, including the three children's picture books-- A Wish For Wings That Work, Goodnight, Opus, and The Last Basselope--that Breathed wrote featuring Mr. P. Opus. Next to all of these sits a copy of his non-Opus children's book Mars Needs Moms.  So, when I first heard about the forthcoming movie based on the latter, I was looking forward to seeing it.  Then I started to read more about it, and watched the trailer, and now I'm not all that excited about it all of a sudden.

If the filmmakers had done what they really should have, which is simply bring to life the wonderful paintings with which Breathed illustrated his book, they might have at least produced a good looking film.  Instead, we are treated to another disturbing journey into the uncanny valley courtesy of the same folks who creeped out little kids with The Polar Express a couple of years back. 

Storywise, it appears that the film suffers from a common problem that comes from attempting to turn a fifty page picture book into a two hour feature film. That is, it appears overly padded and weighed down with a lot of unneccessary business simply to fill out the running time.

Of course, these are just my first impressions based on the trailer and they may change after I see the film.  Yes, I do still plan on seeing it, but it's definitely a wait-'til-it-hits-the-dollar-theater kind of deal.

Happy Thanksgiving!

And happy birthday to Noel Neill!

According to her profile at the Internet Movie Data Base, Noel Neill grew up wanting to become a journalist.  Instead, she ended up an actress beloved by baby boomers and comics geeks alike for playing one of the best known fictional journalists of all time in movie serials and on TV.  Neill first assumed the role of "Superman's Girlfriend" Lois Lane in the serials Superman and Superman vs. Atom Man, then came back to the role several years later, replacing Phyllis Coates in the second season of The Adventures of Superman. 

Noel Neill is 90 years old today (and probably not too worried about the dreaded "Superman Curse" catching up to her after all this time.)

(Another post from the Sunday Comix blog.  This one was posted around the time the movie Watchmen hit theaters and addresses an aspect of the comic that few other analyses of it have.) 

One of the most common comments I've read about the Watchmen movie from people who didn't read the book is “Why is Nixon still president?” and now that I think about it, I'm wondering that myself. To be honest, upon close examination, writer Alan Moore's alternate version of American political history seems poorly thought out and doesn't quite make sense.

In Moore's telling, Nixon sent the super powered Dr. Manhattan in to Southeast Asia and won the Vietnam War, and kept Watergate from coming to light by having Woodward and Bernstein arrested. He then got the Constitution's term limits on the presidency repealed, allowing him to still be in office as Watchmen's story opens in 1985.

Watchmen is one of two comics published by DC in 1986—the other being The Dark Knight Returns-- that perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the 1980's, and while the name and face of the president of Watchmen's United States are Nixon's, the foreign policy that Moore is reacting to is Ronald Reagan's.

Therein lies my major problem with Moore's alternate history. Quite frankly, I cannot see Richard Nixon, a president who prided himself on his statesmanship and foreign policy expertise, allowing U.S.-Soviet relations to decay to the point, as is the case in Watchmen, where the bombs are just moments from flying, especially with Henry Kissinger at his side as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. Under Reagan, however, this scenario was frighteningly plausible.

If Nixon is merely a stand in for Reagan, why not use Reagan? In the early stages of Watchmen's development, DC nixed the use of the characters from Charlton Comics defunct “Action Heroes” line of comics, which DC had recently acquired the rights to. Moore was forced to create new characters that roughly parallel the Charlton heroes. Dr. Manhattan stands in for Captain Atom, Nite Owl II is Blue Beetle, Rorschach is the Question and so forth. Did DC also put the kibosh on Reagan as president, perhaps afraid of portraying the sitting chief executive in a negative light? Well, I've never heard or read anyone else even speculating about this possibility, and DC's publication of The Dark Knight Returns that same year, which does depict Reagan and not flatteringly, seems to argue against it.

Having Nixon still in office in 1985 does serve to establish that Watchmen is set in an alternate universe. Of course, the presence of a blue, glowing, naked man who can see into the future is enough to do that.

I'll just say that I honestly have no idea why Nixon is still president, especially as it seems to serve no real purpose storywise.

Another thing that bugs me is the business of Dr. Manhattan winning the Vietnam War. If he could do that, why didn't LBJ send him in years earlier?

So, I've worked out an alternate alternate history for the world of Watchmen that makes a little more sense to me, and still makes the story's events of 1985 possible.

In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, with the war going badly and public opinion turning against him at home, president Lyndon Johnson reluctantly orders Dr. Manhattan to 'Nam to end the war. It is precisely this victory, perceived as a grossly unequal use of force and a display of American arrogance, that inflames the left wing of the Democratic party against him and drives Johnson to withdraw his name from consideration for his party's presidential nomination.

As in real life, Nixon defeats Democrat Hubert Horatio Humphrey and independent candidate George Wallace to become the 37th president of the United States. His dirty tricks never come to light and his opening of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China makes him quite a popular president. Despite Nixon's disdain for domestic affairs, Dr. Manhattan has made electric cars possible, so the US is not dependent on Arab oil, and other innovations and new industries made possible by the good doctor help to keep the economy on track. Nixon serves out his Constitutionally allotted two terms and is still quite popular when he leaves office.

With that popularity, you would think that his vice president would be a shoo-in to succeed him. However, while Watergate never blew up in Nixon's face in this reality, apparently the entirely separate scandal that drove Nixon's first veep, Spiro Agnew, from office did, and Jerry Ford replaced Agnew. I only recently learned that Ford made a promise to the Senate during his vice presidential confirmation hearings that he would not be a candidate for president in 1976. Of course, in our world, by the time '76 rolled around, circumstances had changed. Ford was now president, and he reasoned at the start of his truncated presidency that to announce he wasn't going to run in the next election would make him a lame duck from day one and even more politically ineffective than he ultimately proved to be. In my alternate alternate world of Watchmen, however, Ford, being an honorable man, honors his pledge and sits out the campaign. The public is still in the mood to elect a Republican, however, and former California governor Ronald Reagan's political star had been rising throughout the sixties. With no incumbent in the race, he sails to the nomination and easily defeats Jimmy Carter.

Reagan proves to be as popular with the American people as he was in real life, and his handling of the Iran hostage situation by sending in Doc Manhattan, ending the crisis in about six hours and restoring the Shah to power, makes him even more popular. At the beginning of his second term, it is Reagan who uses his immense popularity to ram through the necessary Constitutional changes to keep him in office as long as the American people will have him. Thus, we find him in 1985, as the story of Watchmen commences, at the beginning of his third term and engaged in a deadly game of nuclear brinkmanship with the Soviet Union.

I haven't seen the film yet, but from what I've heard, Moore's alternate history of the American comics industry did not make it into the movie. This aspect of Moore's alternate history seems a little better thought out , which is only natural, since he worked in the industry, but still doesn't quite ring true. In Moore's version of events, the emergence of real live costumed crime fighters nips the nascent superhero genre in the bud, as no one wants to read about fictional super heroes when they can read about real ones in the newspapers. Thus by the 1950's the dominant genre is pirate comics. As it serves the story, this does make sense, as it sets up the parallel story from the “Tales of the Black Freighter” reprint comic, which also was left out of the film. However, logically, it seems backwards. After all, the existence of real life cops and doctors and lawyers has never dulled the public appetite for books, television shows, movies, and even comics about them. Going to the moon didn't kill science fiction. In fact, it seems to me that the emergence of real super heroes would only increase demand for fictional accounts of super heroic adventure.

None of these petty quibbles detract from the brilliance of what Moore accomplished in Watchmen. After all, when people talk about what makes the book great, they speak of its intricate structure, its deconstruction of the super hero genre, and its realistic portrayal of its characters. The alternate history is merely background detail.