Comic books and Manga Thread

[Ricky Jackson]

Captain Marvel and a super cool live unboxing on the latest FM!

 

[TheDuke]

Thank you guys for continuing this podcast.  This episode had some great laughs.

I liked the Simpson reference to "Pyle! Shazam!". I never got into Gomer Pyle USMC but used to watch Andy Griffith reruns on the old TBS along with Beverly Hillbillies. They still show Andy Griffith and Beverly Hillbilly reruns on TV here on Deja View in Canada, but not Gomer Pyle for some reason.

II appreciated all the classic Hollywood talk from Johnny on this episode, as I find the old days of tinsel town fascinating.  Please keep it up. Sometimes I watch the intros on TCM for movies I don't even plan to watch just to hear the interesting stories that Ben Manckiewicz and the others talk about old Hollywood stars.

I would also like to hear more about the cons Johnny went to in the early 80s. Conventions in those days sound like they were more about passionate fans then the overly commercial cons they put on today. I imagine it was similar to going to local indy wrestling shows today, where the people who attend and the people putting it on both just really love and are enthusiastic for wresting. 

I don't think I have seen the Captain Marvel serials, but have watched the old Batman and Flash Gordon ones on TCM which were fun. I can see that the 60s Batman was probably inspired by the old serials with their cliffhanger endings.

They didn't show reruns of the cartoon Shazam where I lived growing up, but I remember on vacation once catching one episode on the TV at the hotel and enjoying it and wishing I could have seen more episodes.  I loved Filmation cartoons as a kid because of my love of He-Man, which led me to also watching She-Ra, Filmation Ghostbusters, Fat Albert, Braveheart, and The Lone Ranger. I could tell as a kid though that the animation looked like it was from the 70s as they would recycle a lot of frames (you would always see the same few seconds of characters running but with different backgrounds) or they would have still frames of the characters with only the mouths and maybe their eyes moving while talking).

I realized when Johnny was telling us about the issue of DC Comics Presents with Superman teaming up with Earth 2 Superman to take on Luthor and Earth 2 Luthor that the Sonic The Hedgehog 3 movie ripped it off. My daughter is a huge Sonic fan and so I took her to see it twice. In the plot of that movie, Dr Robotnik teams up with his grandfather who are both played by Jim Carrey. Anyway, the part that rips off the comic is that the grandfather says he is going to destroy the world and so his grandson turns on him and helps the good guys save the earth, which sounds like is just what happened with the Luthors in that comic. 

I did pick up the Mighty Marvel Masterworks volume 1 of the Marvel Comics version of Captain Marvel 2 years ago. Mighty Marvel Masterworks were the cheaper $15-20 volumes that reprinted silver age Marvel stories. I realized I didn't know anything about the Marvel comics Captain Marvel, but it wasn't as exciting as I expected. As Johnny pointed out, he has that weird costume, and he seemed weirdly interested in trying to live in his secret identity as a human on earth instead of having the outer space Adventures I was expecting. I should re-read it though. I can sometimes get more out of a comic the second time I read it.

Anyway good job and excited for Lil Abner part 2. You should wear Halloween costumes and dress as Lil Abner characters. 

[Ricky Jackson]

Thanks as always Duke! Just yesterday I had the idea to save the 2nd Abner ep for November 14 since that is almost Sadie Hawkins Day (Nov 13). Not sure what we will do for Halloween, but i think there is a good chance it could involve a ghost...

Yeah, the initial Captain Marvel run in the late 60s/early 70s is definitely nothing special. If you can track down the later Starlin run I talked about I highly recommend it