Right! Here’s another new newsletter, just one day after the previous one. I told you I had many, many links to get through from when I wasn’t posting!
In the name of simplicity, I’ll do slightly more than 10 links, but keep them grouped within five topics. Already, I am confused by the rules I’ve set for myself, but keep moving forward!
TOPIC THE FIRST: CELEBRITY PROFILES
Again, going through some dank links I accumulated a few months ago. See, there was this Jeremy Strong profile where the SCUCESSION star came off a mite…obsessive in his method acting. It was published before the season finale, where he did a hell of a job and demonstrated that whatever he did, it got results. I still don’t feel like we could hang out tho.
That inspired me to accumluate links of Some of my favorite celebrity profiles. You know, the kind where people say things they shouldn’t, or bare their souls in startling ways. The above link has some good ones, including the profile that helped kick off that style of article, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”
Some others:
-Roger Ebert hangs with Lee Marvin in a harrowing yet hilarious home visit.
-VANITY FAIR does an absolutely bizarre piece on Margot Robbie whose intro is one of the most quizzical things I’ve ever read in journalism. The author claimed it was supposed to be a joke. I doubt that.
-Alec Baldwin talks to THE NEW YORKER and makes me feel much, much better about myself.
There are plenty more of these out there, but it’s late and honestly, I forgot I’d promised to write another newsletter last night until I was taking out the garbage a few minutes ago. I’m sure y’all have some recommendations!
But as a parting not-exactly-a-profile, there was a thing on Twitter a few months ago where people were sharing nightmare stories of encountering/working with Faye Dunaway, and that led me to this hilarious anecdote on YouTube:
TOPIC THE SECOND: THE ATARI 2600 AND OTHER ‘80s TECHNOLOGY
I saw the following linked on Twitter:
And that led me to some other things like:
-An ad about showing off one’s fly skillz at the keyboard:
-How people defined cyberpunk in 1993:
-And finally, a 1988 IBM ad that reunited some Korean War Veterans of a sort:
TOPIC THE THIRD: INTERMISSION
I know, it’s a total cop-out, but it’s fun.
TOPIC THE FOURTH: RARE SIMPSONS
In my YouTube wanderings, I came across a number of Simpsons shorts from their golden years in the 1990s. Compiled:
-A KFC commercial that only aired in Canada:
-Those Butterfinger Ads:
-A promo for the NFL on Fox:
-Behind the scenes:
-The Simpsons: Live And Uncut! (More behind the scenes, from the BBC):
-Somewhat unfortunate: A short that aired after the epsiode that aired against the finale episode of the show’s Thursday night time-slot rival THE COSBY SHOW, which also explains an awful lot:
-A short that ran during the line for a ride at an Australian theme park that awkwardly follows up the “Bart vs. Australia” episode:
-One of the music videos, “Deep Deep Trouble:”
-And finally, “Do the Bartman:”
AND FINALLY, TOPIC THE LAST: AN UPSETTING PUBLIC DOMAIN COMIC FROM THE 1940s
During the time while my place was getting fixed for black mold, I took refuge at an AirBnB without the benefit of my books and Blu-Rays. My brain, naturally, went to strange places and I Googled many things I half-remembered.
Among these Googles were some half-remembered comics I’d read about. These searches led me to Comic Book Plus, a large compilation of public domain comic books. I’d seen it in the past, but was suspicious of its legality. This time, I took note of how it had very high standards for acknowledging copyrights, and also I was depressed and cared much less anyway.
At any rate, I was delighted to discover many books I’d never been able to read en masse had expired copyrights or in some cases hadn’t bothered to publish books with them in the first place, and soon found myself acquiring several thousand files worth of Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, Boody Rogers, Dick Briefer, Mac Raboy, Will Eisner, and many other classic creators. There was enough material for a hundred newsletters, but I’ll just limit things to my discoveries along the way in future installments
There were some caveats, specifically that comics of the 1940s contain quite an extraordinary amount of…well, racism. Even before WWII, there were pidgin English and Yellow Peril Asians, to say nothing of African-Americans. It’s…cringe. “Product of its time,” yes, but that doesn’t make it okay. There’s also the sexism, but that’s a whole other matter.
So: I’ll try and tread lightly when I share these things, but TRIGGER WARNINGS, obviously. Particularly for tonight’s installment involving one of the most misguided villains ever.
1990s folk: Y’all ‘member this Rage Against the Machine album?
Well, the kid on that cover was based on Crimebuster, a boy superhero published by Lev Gleason (not to be confused with Lev Grossman) in the 1940s and 1950s. He wore a school hockey uniform to battle a metal-mouthed Nazi called “Iron Jaw,” helped by a monkey. What’s not to love?
Going through the run of the book, you can see it struggling post-WWII when it brings Iron Jaw back, then gradually turns the murderous mastermind into a comic relief backup feature. Because everyone wants to read funny stories about a Nazi, right? The last issues couldn’t even refer to Crimebuster directly, as books with “Crime” in the title had been banned by the new Comics Code Authority.
But back in those early days, the book’s creators toyed with other grotesqueries to join alongside Iron Jaw, and none was more bizarre than…He-She.
You can read the entire run of BOY COMICS with Crimebuster here, but our focus is on issue #9, featuring a one off villain….villainess?…that has aged even more poorly than all those racisms I mentioned above.
You can read the specific story here, along with some historical commentary.
Writer-artist Charles Biro was one of the few comics creatiors of the 1940s to really see the potential in the medium, and along with Gleason held a high standard for his “Illustories” as they called them. That said…sometimes they missed the mark.
The following tale of a hermaphorditic Bluebeard is…well, actually, it’s in line with many portrayals of hermaphordites as evil, such as the manga DEVILMAN, the 1986 John Stamos vehicle NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE, and the soap opera PASSIONS, and there are probably other examples but I’m embarassed I even remember those. Point is, not okay then, still not okay now. Rebus in Grant Morrison’s DOOM PATROL was a more positive character but still kind of “Other.”
But it FASCINATES me because it’s a natural extension of all the grotesques from comic strips such as DICK TRACY with Flattop, Pruneface, etc., and Batman with the Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, etc., just taken to a bizarre and oddly sexual extreme. There are like Freudian levels to this story I can’t even begin to parse.
And it’s also fascinating to me because…look, today we’re living in an age where LGBTQ+ rights are finally getting some open discussion, ideas like non-binary and such are getting acceptance, and people aren’t always cool with that.
But stories like this are a reminder of just how much ignorance has always been out there, and what you get when you treat what you don’t understand as something dark and sinister and nightmarish. You get…well, He-She.
A friend I showed this to recommended a reboot that rehabilitated the character with the tagline, “HE-SHE LIVES!!!” Uh, I’ll leave that to someone else. But He-She’s in the public domain if you’re interested.
Anyway — I feel caught up on my links I had in drafts. I’ll publish another newsletter…uh, let’s say by Friday. I still have plenty of material to share, and writing something helps my brain calm down before bedtime.
G’night, sleep tight, don’t let Iron Jaw bite!