Superman Meets Mr Atoz

(That's a STAR TREK joke. Mr Atoz, get it? From "All Our Yesterdays"?)

This juicy compendium is from the July 6, 2025 Tulsa World.  (I don't know a finer newspaper in Oklahoma.)

See you Thursday, fellow fans!

  

In Other News ...

Of course, we're going to see the new Superman movie on opening night.  But cast your memories back a couple of decades ... 

Back in 2006, Superman Returns was the "new" Superman movie.  While there was a lot of good in it, there was just too much creepy x-ray spying and other stuff going on.  However ...

Somehow our local rag heard about my status as a big Superman fan.  I took a reporter and a photog on a tour of the Fortress of Markitude and ended up on the front page!

Above is the article as scanned from the June 28, 2006 Oklahoman.  Following are pix taken for the article.

Here I am showing off some issues in the Comics Closet.

This is a copy of Superman #158, which introduced (among other things) Nightwing and Flame Bird.

The above photo WAS NOT in the article, but it's me in 1963 with the same issue of Superman #158, when it was new.

Here I am with an (empty) box of wonderful Superman processed cheese food!

Here's a separate photo of the box, which can be studied in depth here.

See you at the movies!

  

The Trek -- or Pants -- of Theseus

That’s the title of my discussion-panel suggestion, used at 2024’s Soonercon 32. The panel summary:

Philosophical thought experiment: Does an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object? Apply the “ship of Theseus” concept to Trek or other franchises. How much can be changed before it's not Star Trek, Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, or another cherished nerd franchise?

A lot of fun was had by all. And just last week I had fun when coming across this treatment of the “ship of Theseus” idea again!

I guess you could call this “the pants of Theseus,” huh? See you next time.

  

We'll See About This One

Here's a little note from the June 28, 2025 Tulsa World:

Note that in this article does NOT promise the end of sudden shutdowns.  The screen just won't be blue.  Progress marches on!

See ya Monday, fellow tech nerds.

  

Well, SOME of the Truth

Here's a clipping from the March 21, 1994 Tulsa World about the forming of what became known as the ARRB -- the Assassination Records Review Board.

If you wish to know more about the ARRB and its (lack of) findings, I encourage you to read the five-volume Inside the ARRB by Douglas Horne, one of the staff members.  Horne chronicles the cowardice and insight of several board members of higher rank than he was, and the attempts of some to make sure that no boats were rocked.

However, Horne explicates several important aspects of evidence that make the government's view (one or two shooters, no conspiracy, no government involvement) impossible to justify.  For one thing, the supposed autopsy photos and autopsy X-rays don't match each other, nor the recollections of either the autopsy doctors or Dallas doctors.

Read for yourself!  See you on Thursday.

  

Cards from the Past

Yup, these pieces of correspondence were part of the commercial lifeblood of both the periodical world and the post office.

This is a 1978 sweepstakes come-on from RD.  No, we never won anything from them.

We were with Cox from when they first hung cable in OKC (around 1979????) until around 2000, when their incessant rate hikes chased us away.  We were NEVER late in our payments, however inflated.

I have several of these puppies.  This one is addressed to "contest entrant," but I pestered those poor folks at The Twilight Zone Magazine at least half-a-dozen times.

Have you ever read a nicer rejection letter?

An aside to my snide friends:  I don't keep EVERYTHING.  I used all of these as bookmarks.

See ya Monday!

  

Worlds of Tomorrow!

As a longtime member of the defunct STAR OKC, the alive-and-well Soonercon and the Future Society of Oklahoma, as you might imagine I'm a sci-fi fan. Here's a VERY top-of-the-pile survey of a few concepts of some might-come-to-pass Worlds of Tomorrow.

Worlds of Tomorrow

            After the end of Star Trek’s run, Gene Roddenberry pitched several projects to the TV networks—to be honest, it was one idea, continually redressed. All were set on a future Earth, in the aftermath of a planetwide war. The TV-movie Genesis II aired in 1973, and starred a 20^th-Century man awakening in 2133 in an Earth populated by splintered outposts of mankind. A reworked version, Planet Earth, aired in 1974. A third telefilm based on the concept was broadcast in 1975. Its title—Brave New World.

            Miranda is the daughter of the sorcerer Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. When some mariners are shipwrecked on their barren island, she begs her father to save them. She eventually marries one of the refugees, the prince of Naples. In the play’s final scene, she addresses the crowd who is celebrating the nuptials:

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't.

            Some pop groups have given the phrase “Brave New World” a sarcastic spin. Jimmy and the Boys’ 1981 “Brave New World” narrates a society populated by genderless workers whose mindless activity feeds the machines of progress. “Brave New World” by the Tender Violent Chords, from 1982, looks forward to spaceships and satellite eyes that watch the world without emotion.

            Some “new worlds” aren’t that great. Aldous Huxley’s dystopian look at a fascist future, the 1932 novel Brave New World, was a satirical riposte against the utopian dreams of H.G. Wells. In the future of Huxley’s tale, bottle babies and strict social castes are the norm. Technology’s sole aim is to keep the lower classes occupied so that the upper castes may indulge their government-sanctioned fancies. Huxley’s satirical title was a direct reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

 Among the music groups or artists with releases titled Brave New World:

• Iron Maiden (heavy metal, 2000)
• Toyah (new wave, 1982)
• Styx (rock, 1999)
• Moskwa TV (synth-pop, 1987)
• Fuzzy Logic (jazz-funk, 1995)
• New Model Army (punk, 1985)
• Hawklords (space rock, 2018)
• David Essex (pop, 1978)
• The Bongos (new wave, 1985)
• Genetic Control (2005, punk)
• DDT (alternative, 1983)
• Ana Christensen (alternative. 1990)
• Steve Miller Band (rock, 1969)

       Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 foresaw a future in which independent thought is stifled through the suppression of books and learning. Bradbury originally said that the book was conceived in reaction to the McCarthy hearings’ chilling effect on free speech. In 2007, he revised his opinion to say that the book’s allegory also applies to mass media’s effect in reducing consumers’ interest in reading and literature.

            Perhaps the best-known tale of a future fascist state is George Orwell’s 1984, the tale of a metaphorical boot crushing a human face—forever. It’s a world full of surveillance and government-run everything. Who would want a world in which your TV watches you? Hello, Alexa!

            Some of the current organizations that claim to be working on a wonderful future world are the World Future Society; the World Future Council (offices in Hamburg, London, and Geneva); and the Future Worlds Center (based in Cyprus). Don’t forget the Association of Professional Futurists, or the World Futures Studies Federation, founded in 1973. Or our own Future Society of Oklahoma!

             Plenty of pop songs look ahead in time. Here are only a few: “Song for a Future Generation” by the B-52’s; “This Used to Be the Future” by the Pet Shop Boys; “The Future that Never Was” by Powerman 5000; “A Better Future” by David Bowie; and two songs called “Children of the Future.” One’s from the Steve Miller Band; the other is by Bloc Party.

See you on Thursday!

  

Time to Get Stoned

With the world's oldest runestone!

This rock was scratched long before Poe described "The Bells" as having a sort of runic rhyme, yup!

It's from the January 26, 2023 Tulsa World.  Let me know when you decipher it, and come back ONE WEEK FROM NOW, on June 23rd.  Takin's off time for SOONERCON!

  

WATCHPANELS, Part the Eleventh

WATCHPANELS

One compulsive reader’s observations ...

after gazing into Watchmen for the umpteenth time

Yup my friends, it's hard to believe that it's been a year since we discussed Chapter Ten of Watchmen.

Part the Eleventh

All right, I’ve got photons in my teeth and my wrist brace on ...

In another of Alan Moore's occasional Briticisms, we have Adrian Veidt say “disorientating” instead of “disorienting.”

Veidt isn’t out to carve “a headstone for humanity,” he’s just out to bury anyone who would oppose him. Sounds suspiciously like Khrushchev’s 1959 boast that the USSR would “bury” the West.

*hurm* Maybe Veidt is a pinko sympathizer!

Much has been made of Veidt’s looking right at the reader, as if he’s thinking it over. No, he’s not. This self-absorbed, arrogant so-and-so is probably just laughing at us! The smug jerk!

On the other hand, either Veidt or Moore have a pretty wicked sense of ironic punnery. Read the last two words, all by themselves in their own speech balloon. After all, what better phrase could describe the weather outside Veidt’s dome ... the weather which he hopes will kill Rorschach and Nite Owl ... the weather which will now kill his three faithful servants? (Hint ... it’s how his German parents might have pronounced it.)

Why, it’s a VEIDT-OUT!

I agree with those who wonder how Veidt could have given all his money away, yet have been able to travel the world over. I imagine Veidt is lying about the giveaway.

As a younger child of the ’60s, I’ve always felt disgust at the concept of using mind-altering substances. The older “kids” might do it, but all I saw of it was heartbreak, theft, and stupid behavior. Intended by Alan Moore or not, the fact that Veidt’s “revelation” was sparked by a psychotropic trip brings his purported intelligence down another notch – in my opinion.

Perhaps you can tell that for me, Ozzy’s shine is long gone. I don’t think he is ashamed at all about killing his three servants. It’s not like he hasn’t already numbered his victims in the millions.

The Black Freighter has “reaped the wealth of the Sargasso” which is east of US East Coast. In my heretical opinion, this is 1) an implication by Alan Moore that the ship swept the entire globe; or, 2) Moore simply threw the phrase in for its sound, without thinking that the Sargasso Sea is nearly antipodal from the East Indies.

Here’s a full view of Veidt’s Alexander the Great painting. Was Gibbons paraphrasing a particular painting? Here are a few of the approximately umpty-zillion images of the tableaux. But knot one of them (get it? knot one!) looks like the specific inspiration for Gibbons’s image.

... Which makes perfect sense, in one way! Because I can easily imagine that Adrian Veidt, the supreme egoist, commissioned the painting as a portrait in his own likeness!

I’m not too impressed with Veidt’s self-serving explanation. It’s a chronicle of his megalomania and his rationalization for deliberately abrogating the individual rights of not only the ones he murdered, but of the survivors.

The black spot on Dan’s left hand is some kind of missed blooper, according to Gibbons, as quoted in the Annotated edition.

And I’m sure you’ll agree with me that, despite his other shortcomings, in this sequence Malcolm Long, Bernard the newsvendor, and Detective Steve Fine act like true heroes, putting themselves into harm’s way for another, even though it’s dangerous.

Even if there’s no hope of succeeding.

But, back to Karnak ...

What is that design on the armor in the display case, left foreground? The breastplate looks like it’s depicting a man being swallowed by a tentacled plant!

Kind of like this man-eating plant!  http://tatintsian.com/ru/exhibitions/alexis-rockman-fresh-kills/works/?img=1

Or this one, from the 1957 schlockfest The Land Unknown.

Here is a mosaic of Alexander from Pompeii, supposedly copied from a painting from Alexander’s lifetime. it shows perhaps a more believable breastplate design.

The epigraph is in quotation marks in the comic, but not in bound editions.

Further, there is a comma after “Ozymandias” in the comic, but not in bound editions.

For a supposed scholar, Leslie Klinger makes a stupid error in his commentary on this page, in Annotated Watchmen. He gives the wrong acronym for U.N.C.L.E.! He’s not the first person to make the mistake of thinking that U.N.C.L.E. was part of the “United Nations.” Still, you’d think that such a “scholarly” work would have some factcheckers! As any Baby Boomer, or anybody with internet skills can tell you, it’s the “United Network Command for Law and Enforcement,” not the “United Nations Command”!

Thanks for stopping by. Only one chapter left!

  

Superman Is Back!

...And I've got him!

Yup, the door leading into the Fortress of Markitude bears a couple of posters.  The bottom one:

Here's a closer view.  The Interwebs tell me this promo poster is from 1993.  It's been on this here door since the Fortress of Markitude was established in 2004.

Tell me some of YOUR old comics-poster tales!