Admittedly, this one doesn’t carry the same degree of DEEP HURTING as the Jerry Sloan ad, but here’s another PSA belonging to the 70s-Sports-Figure-Meets-The-Man-Of-Steel-And-Encourages-Him-To-Join-The-Air-Force genre.
Note that Denny Miller — the actor under all that shoe polish — knocked around TV a lot in the 60s and 70s, playing a series of entitled jocks (his IMDB page is rife with names like “Moose,” “Tank,” “Butch,” and “Duke.”) Perhaps his most memorable role, however, was “Tongo the Ape Man” on an episode of Gilligan’s Island.
He’s arguably a bit more at-ease with the role than Lupus was, though the whole thing still plays like a wacky skit the boys in Marketing whipped up to kick off the annual sales meeting in Tulsa, if you know what I mean.
Muhammad Ali, Hulk Hogan, Cyndi Lauper, Liberace And Wendi Richter
Your first look at @JossActual ‘s new prequel series “Avengers: 1984”
In which I discuss a possible Man of Steel spoiler
It really depends on your definition of a spoiler. Plus it’s in magazines and stuff? But still, if you want to be 100% surprised, maybe you shouldn’t
Noel Neill - ‘Superman’ - 1948
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In his later years, Zack Morris would often silence his demons by slipping back into the comforting embrace of his Season 1 drag persona, Bambi.
Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, 1967.
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WHERE AM I?
In the Village.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Information.
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
That would be telling.
MY EYEBROWS - YOU SEEN ‘EM? ANYWHERE? AROUND?
Do we really want an incorruptible, nice guy superhero?
Go, read. I’ll be here when you get back.
Let me start off by making it clear that I agree with this guy’s basic premise.
It is resolutely true that for many people — including about 85% of those who approach you when they find out you’re writing a book called SUPERMAN: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY — the character is “boring,” “a stiff,” “too perfect,” “not relatable,” etc.
And what I’ve been saying to those people is pretty much Bowie’s thesis — which let’s note is a bit more nuanced than “SUPERMAN IS BORING LOLZ.” No, what he’s actually saying is: Superman is difficult to write stories about. And he’s right.
I don’t think, however, that the point he makes in “Reason 1” — that Superman in isolation is not interesting, because he’s too perfect — carries much weight. For the simple reason that no one writes about Superman in isolation. No one writes about Batman, Spider-Man, Achilles, Gatsby, Dracula, or Pippi Longstocking in isolation, either. Fiction, even superhero comics, is always about relationships — relationships that exist to delineate your main character.
His “Reason 2” — that Superman without his powers isn’t Superman — is, I’d humbly suggest, wildly, egregiously, astonishingly, incandescently and provably wrong. Superman’s powers do not define him — they aren’t what make him a hero, any more than a firefighter’s fire-retardant gear make him or her a hero. Over and over and over again, in every media that delivers Superman to us, we have seen that his selflessness and determination — not the powers, the costume, the spit curl, the secret identity, the flying dog — are what make him Superman.
Bowie gets closest to why it’s so difficult to make Superman compelling in what he calls “Reason 3” — though I’d state it slightly differently: In writing fiction, you add tension and interest by keeping your characters from getting what they want in a variety of ways.
But surely it’s tough to keep Superman from getting what he wants, right? With the super-strength and the super-ventriloquism and whatnot?
Wrong. It’s very easy to keep Superman from getting what he wants, and tell exciting, gripping stories about him. A writer just needs to have a good feeling for what drives him, what he wants more than anything else. And here’s what Superman wants:
He wants to save everybody.
He wants no one to die or suffer, no matter the cost to himself.
Which is impossible. Unattainable. Even for him, even with all his abilities. THIS, we can maybe understand? THIS, we can maybe relate to? This inability to achieve what we most want, and the resulting desire to keep chasing it? This is why the best Superman stories deal not with him being robbed of his powers, but with him dealing with their very real limitations.
Because, as Bowie states, there IS a character from Greek myth that corresponds to Superman. He just got the wrong one. It’s not Diomedes. It’s not Achilles.
It’s Sisyphus.
(Source: cracked.com)
This is Krypto. He is Awesome. These are Facts.
Over on Slate, I wrote a semi-fictionalized account of a conversation I had with my editor during the writing of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, in which I lose my valiant fight to devote several pages of the book to the arrant awesomeness that is Krypto.
I can understand Normals not getting Krypto. I mean I pity them, but I understand them.
What I don’t understand — what I will never understand — is how people who love comics could find the notion of a flying, super-strong, heat-visioned dog in a cape anything but awesome.
It’s the kind of idea a kid would have — wildly impractical, silly, nonsensical, an idea that implicitly asks the reader to stop taking superheroes so damn seriously. To lighten up, Francis.
In a very basic way, Krypto is comics. He — and they — are awesome.
