MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[The Old Mixer]

Not strictly on-topic, but I just saw something mildly awesome on Me-TV and this seemed like the best place to post it without starting a new thread. In a 1962 episode of Naked City, the camera clearly shows a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 on display at a newsstand....

ETA: And in another scene later in the episode, Journey Into Mystery #83--I shit you not!

All of this spotted because I happened to have the show on low in the background while up in the wee hours of the morning. I have no idea what it was about, but the episode features Burgess Meredith and, more briefly, a young Alan Alda. 4x01, "Hold for Gloria Christmas."

Goddamn, but for the ability to reach into the TV screen and spend 24 cents....

 

[RJDiogenes]

So basically, DC's catering to Bob & June Baby Boom and their kids, Gertie and Gary Gex-X, instead of seeing if they can get more people of color to buy the New 52 books. Fascinating.

These subjects are completely unrelated.

I was thinking of that...but if we continued with that logic, Christopher's radio-based series would be blank panels with nothing but word balloons, captions, and sound effects...!

In early issues of Crazy magazine, Marv Wolfman had a recurring gag that satirized old radio shows-- it was a series of panels that were all the same picture of an old-fashioned radio with the word balloons coming from it.

Not strictly on-topic, but I just saw something mildly awesome on Me-TV and this seemed like the best place to post it without starting a new thread. In a 1962 episode of Naked City, the camera clearly shows a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 on display at a newsstand....

That's pretty cool. I've been meaning to watch that show, since I've never seen an episode and have heard so many good things about it, but I haven't had a chance.

(And it blows my mind to realize that we today are now farther away in time from that "modern" 1977 setting than the WWII-set first season was! Great Hera, I'm old.)

You're younger than me, so you can't possibly be old.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^If you didn't catch my ETA, check it out for another early Marvel cameo and an episode number and title.

And oh look, it's Bill Bixby on That Girl...and he's playing a character with the last name "Banner"...!

New ETA: Did a little Googling and found that I'm not the first person to make the Naked City discovery:

http://comiccoverage.typepad.com/comic_coverage/2007/01/spiderman_meets.html

There are screenshots in the above blog post....Hadn't noticed that JiM 83 was there all along...in a later scene not represented in the above blog, in the last 10 minutes of the episode, it's on more prominent display....There are 8 million stories in the naked city, and apparently one of them involved somebody making a very good investment between those two scenes!

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Not strictly on-topic, but I just saw something mildly awesome on Me-TV and this seemed like the best place to post it without starting a new thread. In a 1962 episode of Naked City, the camera clearly shows a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 on display at a newsstand....

ETA: And in another scene later in the episode, Journey Into Mystery #83--I shit you not!

Wow, that's amazing. I googled and found the scene in question, nice find.

http://boingboing.net/2007/01/10/122000-spider-man-co.html

 

[The Old Mixer]

Thank the fact that it was (I think) the first scene of the episode, and I was just then noticing Burgess Meredith...the only reason that my eyes lingered on the screen long enough to spot the comics!

And the fact that I randomly woke up at that hour to spot it at all....

 

[RJDiogenes]

That's really interesting, because I never knew that Amazing Fantasy #15 and Journey Into Mystery #83 were on the stands at the same time. Somehow I had the impression that all those origins were spread out a bit more.

 

[The Old Mixer]

If I had a hotline to The Man, I'd try to get Naked City some belated MMMS accolades. It's the sort of thing that would have merited a shout-out in Bullpen Bulletins a few years later...but the Marvel Age was still far too young for that at this point!

 

[RJDiogenes]

Marvel probably has a forum on their site. I'm pretty sure all the publishers use forums instead of letters pages now. Or maybe they have a Facebook page.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Ah, but is Stan there? I think he'd be the only one worthy to bestow an honor of this vintage.

 

[Christopher]

^Stan Lee has not actually worked at Marvel Comics for many decades.


Back to DC, the infamous "The Stolen Costume" was on Adventures of Superman last night. As near as I can recall, it played out pretty much exactly like the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" version of the story in the half-hour incarnation of the radio series. It's a weird story for the show, because the only regular in it is Clark, who spends the whole time interacting with private detective Candy Meyers, who was a recurring player on radio but made his one and only TV apperance here. Viewers in the original run, who were probably quite familiar with the radio show and saw the TV version as a continuation, probably took it in stride, but to people only familiar with the TV series, it must seem strange. And it was certainly silly seeing Clark going into action without his Superman costume, just running up the stairs while the heroic Superman theme played. Can't he fly in his street clothes? And why doesn't he have a spare costume? In the radio version, at least its original incarnation, the stolen costume was his backup and he was still able to operate as Superman without it.

It was followed by the bizarre "Mystery in Wax," featuring a wax-museum operator who, for nebulous reasons, fakes people's deaths and imprisons them in a "private museum" in her basement. The lack of clear motives on the villainess's part, along with her hammy evil laughter, made it a rather strange and off-putting story. It feels like the kind of story that may have been adapted from radio, but I don't think I heard it among the surviving radio episodes. The setup of someone predicting people's deaths sounds familiar, but the rest doesn't.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I'm well aware that Stan Lee doesn't work at Marvel. We're talking about an honorific here...or does Marvel actually have proprietary rights to the old MMMS titles? If so, the gesture would be meaningless anyway, in my book. The point was recognition from Stan, not the corporate entity.

 

[publiusr]

(And it blows my mind to realize that we today are now farther away in time from that "modern" 1977 setting than the WWII-set first season was! Great Hera, I'm old.)

The gap between The Thing from Another World and Carpenter's 1982 film is the same length of time as between the 1982 film and the prequel--and yet it seems less time has passed.

 

[Greg Cox]

(And it blows my mind to realize that we today are now farther away in time from that "modern" 1977 setting than the WWII-set first season was! Great Hera, I'm old.)

The gap between The Thing from Another World and Carpenter's 1982 film is the same length of time as between the 1982 film and the prequel--and yet it seems less time has passed.

Tell me about it.

A few years ago, a friend and I were grumbling about how young people these days don't watch classic old movies the way we did we were young. Then we realized that movies like STAR WARS or BACK TO THE FUTURE are about as old to today's young people as FORBIDDEN PLANET or THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN were to us . . .

 

[RJDiogenes]

When I first saw Forbidden Planet as an "old movie" on a local UHF station, it was only ten years old. Even the Flash Gordon serials were only about thirty years old-- about the equivalent of Empire Strikes Back now. I often think of my teenage days reading all the cool monster books that Marvel was putting out. We'd go to conventions and see the old EC comics in bags up on the wall, and they looked so cool and ancient-- they were only twenty years old! Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf By Night, et al, are now forty years old!

Ah, but is Stan there? I think he'd be the only one worthy to bestow an honor of this vintage.

Probably the only way to tell The Man would be to pin him down at a convention-- and then he'd forget five minutes later.

And why doesn't he have a spare costume? In the radio version, at least its original incarnation, the stolen costume was his backup and he was still able to operate as Superman without it.

Isn't his costume made from his Kryptonian swaddling clothes in the TV and radio shows?

 

[Silvercrest]

Ah, but is Stan there? I think he'd be the only one worthy to bestow an honor of this vintage.

Probably the only way to tell The Man would be to pin him down at a convention-- and then he'd forget five minutes later.

Introduce yourself with an alliterative name; it may help.

And why doesn't he have a spare costume? In the radio version, at least its original incarnation, the stolen costume was his backup and he was still able to operate as Superman without it.

Isn't his costume made from his Kryptonian swaddling clothes in the TV and radio shows?

Wonder if anyone ever asks, "Superman, why do you smell like spit-up?"

 

[Christopher]

And why doesn't he have a spare costume? In the radio version, at least its original incarnation, the stolen costume was his backup and he was still able to operate as Superman without it.

Isn't his costume made from his Kryptonian swaddling clothes in the TV and radio shows?

Yes, and in the pre-Crisis comics; its Kryptonian origin explained its great durability. But in the radio show, as I said, he definitely had a spare. So I guess Lara put a lot of blankets in the rocket with him.

 

[Greg Cox]

And why doesn't he have a spare costume? In the radio version, at least its original incarnation, the stolen costume was his backup and he was still able to operate as Superman without it.

Isn't his costume made from his Kryptonian swaddling clothes in the TV and radio shows?

Yes, and in the pre-Crisis comics; its Kryptonian origin explained its great durability. But in the radio show, as I said, he definitely had a spare. So I guess Lara put a lot of blankets in the rocket with him.

They even hint at this in the 1978 movie, where baby Kal-El's bright red and blue blankets are the only touch of color on icy white Krypton . . . .

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, come to think of it, that doesn't make sense. If everything on the whole dang planet was monochrome, why didn't Superman have a shiny white suit himself?

 

[JD]

^Stan Lee has not actually worked at Marvel Comics for many decades.


Back to DC, the infamous "The Stolen Costume" was on Adventures of Superman last night. As near as I can recall, it played out pretty much exactly like the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" version of the story in the half-hour incarnation of the radio series. It's a weird story for the show, because the only regular in it is Clark, who spends the whole time interacting with private detective Candy Meyers, who was a recurring player on radio but made his one and only TV apperance here. Viewers in the original run, who were probably quite familiar with the radio show and saw the TV version as a continuation, probably took it in stride, but to people only familiar with the TV series, it must seem strange. And it was certainly silly seeing Clark going into action without his Superman costume, just running up the stairs while the heroic Superman theme played. Can't he fly in his street clothes? And why doesn't he have a spare costume? In the radio version, at least its original incarnation, the stolen costume was his backup and he was still able to operate as Superman without it.

The Superman theme playing while he ran up the stairs cracked me up. I haven't seen the radio show, so the PI guy did come out of nowhere for me. I had just assumed he was one of those old friends who pops up for one episode and then is never heard from again that pop in alot of these kinds of old shows.
I was surprised he only had the one costume. I wonder if he hadn't gotten it back if he would has just stopped being Superman.

It was followed by the bizarre "Mystery in Wax," featuring a wax-museum operator who, for nebulous reasons, fakes people's deaths and imprisons them in a "private museum" in her basement. The lack of clear motives on the villainess's part, along with her hammy evil laughter, made it a rather strange and off-putting story. It feels like the kind of story that may have been adapted from radio, but I don't think I heard it among the surviving radio episodes. The setup of someone predicting people's deaths sounds familiar, but the rest doesn't.

The way she made her predictions was kind of weird too. They had her doing it like she was in some kind of trance or something, but never really said anything about it.
The lack of clear motives for her bugged me to. It would have been nice if they had given more of an explanation for why she was kidnapping them.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Yes, and in the pre-Crisis comics; its Kryptonian origin explained its great durability.

Which was the point of my question. Why would he need a spare costume?

I was surprised he only had the one costume. I wonder if he hadn't gotten it back if he would has just stopped being Superman.

If his costume wasn't super, he'd need a new one every day, considering how often he gets shot.