Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 174 of 581)

The PopCulteer
August 10, 2018

This week’s PopCulteer is an example of the concept of mixed feelings. I finally got the chance to read a series of comic book stories that I’ve wanted to experience for over four decades…and they have major moral and ethical issues.

I have made no secret of the fact that my all-time favorite super hero is Captain Marvel. I’m talking about the original Captain Marvel, the one known as “Shazam” by the uneducated masses. Created for Fawcett Comics in 1940 by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck, Captain Marvel quickly surpassed Superman and Batman to become the best-selling superhero of the 1940s.

This did not go unnoticed by the folks at Detective Comics Inc. (then the name of what is now DC Entertainment), so they started filing lawsuits against Fawcett just a year or two after he debuted. In the early 1950s, with the entire comic book industry in decline, and Fawcett an established publishing house that only dabbled in comics, they decided to cut their losses and get out of the comics business, settling their lawsuit with DC and agreeing never to publish the character again without DC’s permission. With no book being published, the trademark on the name “Captain Marvel” expired, and it was eventually picked up by Marvel Comics.

That’s the Cliff Notes version, which sort of has to precede any discussion of Captain Marvel, and explain why the first superhero on film, who was a merchandising juggernaut and the most popular superhero in the world in the 1940s, had disappeared from view by the middle of the next decade, and now doesn’t even get to use his real name.

DC leased the rights to Captain Marvel from Fawcett in 1972, and purchased them outright sometime later from CBS (after CBS acquired Fawcett Publications). While they had a lot of success with TV and merchandising in the 1970s, DC struggled to find a way to do Captain Marvel comics in more modern times. There were a few times they got it right, like when the characters were handled by creators who understood them like Jerry Ordway, E. Nelson Bridwell, or Jeff Smith, but there were also some disastrous attempts at modernizing the Captain and his crew, and among the worst of those is the current incarnation, which sees Captain Marvel renamed as “Shazam,” and really screws up the entire mythos for us long-time fans.

It’s telling that, since DC made those major changes to Captain Marvel in 2011 and told an initial set of stories, the only two major appearances by the character have been out-of-canon reversions back to the classic character and name during DC’s Multiversity and Convergence events.

That’s all going to change with the release of the Shazam movie next year, which is based on the “New Coke” version of the character that Geoff Johns is responsible for. Johns will be writing a new mini-series to coincide with the movie, and DC is going to be looking for all sorts of good publishing tie-ins to cash in on the increased visibility of the character.

The first of those was going to be a deluxe hardback collection to be called Shazam vs. The Monster Society of Evil. This collection of stories has been a holy grail of mine for years. The very first long-form superhero story (well over two hundred pages), this tale was serialized in Captain Marvel Adventures over the course of two years, from 1943 to 1945. It’s not considered the best of Captain Marvel’s adventures, but it is historically important as the introduction of a major villain (Mr. Mind) and as the longest superhero story from the Golden Age of comics. Plus, even an average Captain Marvel story from the Golden age is head and shoulders above most superhero comics of the day.

However, there are major issues with these stories. Mainly the racist depictions of African-Americans and Japanese characters. It was thought that DC was going to address this like their sister company, Warner Brothers, did when they collected Tom and Jerry cartoons with racist content on DVD, by tackling the issue head-on. What apparently happened was, the book was put on the schedule and solicited, and then, when the racist content was pointed out to someone in charge, they panicked and cancelled the book because they did not want to engender any bad publicity right before the movie was due to be released.

Cancelling the book was the right business move. The fact that they even solicited it shows how little thought DC puts into how they handle the Marvel Family characters. It was like someobdy knew that they had a book ready to go to press, but had no idea what was in it.  For me this was yet another Lucy Van Pelt football moment. I’d already ordered and paid for the book (it’s been refunded) and this was not the first time I missed out on my chance to read this comic (it’s been online for free for years, but I hate to read comics online). DC comics had announced plans to reprint it at least twice before, reversing themselves before the book was printed.

A French publisher released a high-end limited-edition slipcased hardcover of this book back in 1989 (seen right). At the time I was working in radio, making radio money, and the high price tag of $125 meant I could never afford it. That edition now sells for six hundred bucks or more.

I understood the business decision, and the moral decision not to reprint the racist elements of the story, but it still stung to miss out on being able to read it myself.

Then I found out that, since the original chapters of the story are in the public domain, there are publishers who had made it available on Amazon via print-on-demand. It wasn’t cheap– I paid more for the paperback than I would have for the new hardcover edition, but I could finally get to see the story for myself.

I ordered the version offered by GwandanaLand, who specialize in reprinting public domain comics, because it was complete (other versions on Amazon are missing chapters), and spent a weekend immersing myself in this story that I’ve been wanting to read since I found out it existed over forty years ago.

I have to admit, I had more fun reading this than I have since I first discovered the joys of Golden Age Captain Marvel comics forty-five years ago. I also have to admit that the racist elements are extremely troubling. I don’t want this to seem like i’m endorsing or apologizing for them, but they do make up only a small part of this story, and this long story really takes off once you get past them.

Most troubling is the character, Steamboat. I’m not going to post an image of Steamboat here. It is a typical, racist, cartoon stereotype of a Stepin Fetchit like character who was around as a comic relief sidekick for a while in Captain Marvel stories. In 1945 a group called Youth Builders presented Fawcett Comics editor Will Lieberson with a petition signed by 11,000 school kids asking that the character be removed because he was so racially offensive. To his credit, Lieberson agreed, and the character was not seen in Fawcett comics again.

The problem is that there were dozens of stories featuring Steamboat, and they were mostly drawn by C.C. Beck, one of the most talented cartoonists of the era. It is disturbing to see such talent applied to such racist stereotypes, and it’s understandable why DC comics has gone out of their way to avoid reprinting those, or trying to profit off of them in any way.

Steamboat only appears in two chapters of the 25-part Monster Society of Evil storyline, but he is key to the plot and the unveiling of the true nature of Mr. Mind, so simply elminating those chapters would punch huge holes in the story.

Also, Steamboat is not the only racist element in these comics. In two very early chapters Captain Marvel encounters African cannibals, who are drawn in the same, thick-lipped racist cartooning style. Then, when the story moves to Asia (remember this is set during WWII, so war propaganda is in full force), the Japanese are depicted as slant-eyed, buck-toothed, fanged monsters with pop-bottle glasses. Interestingly enough, the Chinese, who were our allies at the time, are drawn in a dignified, non-racist manner, as seen to the left, showing that Beck was capable of rising above the stereotypes when he wanted to.

The cannibals are in chapters two and three. Steamboat is in chapter six, and one panel of chapter seven, and the Japanese characters are in chapter nine. Every panel that includes the racist caricatures is cringe-worthy, and impossible to defend.

You can say that it was of its time, and that is true, but that’s stuff that has been left in the past for a reason. When something wrong is being done, the first thing you have to do is to stop doing it. That’s why I’m not posting any images of the offending characters along with this piece. They should only be seen when set in a proper historical context, and posting them here would just circulate them further.

The racism does present a real problem because the rest of this story is so much fun. It’s an attempt to recreate the experience of a weekly movie serial, with each chapter ending in a cliffhanger, and enough action and intrigue to keep you on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next installment.

We get to see Captain Marvel at his best, battling larger-than-life challenges, like a reanimated Wooly Mammoth (seen right). He also battles Dr. Sivana, Ibac, Captain Nazi and Hitler, among other members of his rogues gallery.  It would easy to dismiss the entire series if it were sub-par work with no value, but this is really well-crafted, but seriously-flawed work.

I’m glad that I finally got to read this in full because it not only scratched that itch that I’ve had to read this since I first found out about it, but also because it demonstrated to me why it probably should not be presented as-is to a mass audience as simple entertainment. The racist elements are too toxic, especially in today’s environment.

There are ways around this. DC could commission a new creative team to adapt the story, eliminating the politically incorrect elements along the way. The trouble with that approach is that it’s hard to top the work that Otto Binder and C.C. Beck did on the original stories, and DC would probably update the character to the current, awful, version.

I think a better way to present this to a modern audience would be to find an artist who can imitate Beck (there are several out there) and hire a writer/editor to fix the stereotypical dialogue, and simply re-write and re-draw the offensive panels. Steamboat could be drawn in a realistic and non-offensive manner, and he could speak like a normal adult, instead of a cartoon. Likewise, the Japanese scientists and the cannibals could be redrawn and the dialogue tweaked to tone down the then-acceptable anti-Japanese hatred other cultural ignorance. This has been standard practice in Tin Tin albums in Europe, which have been consistently altered to adhere to more evolved cultural standards over the years.

One thing to note about Steamboat is that, while the character is a completely offensive racial stereotype in the Stepin Fetchit mold, he was never treated in an oppressive or abusive manner by Billy Batson. Billy saw him as a friend, and no reference to color was made (that I am aware of–remember the stories with Steamboat are rarely reprinted). It was one baby step forward in conception to have Billy have a black friend that he treated as an equal, and about a hundred steps back in execution.

Re-drawing him and fixing his dialogue would allow Billy’s African-American friend to retain his brief, but important role in the story without offending so many people. Publishing it unaltered in today’s climate, where the alt-right looks for any excuse to justify and celebrate white supremecy, would be irresponsible. The offending elements have to be altered in order for this to be acceptable as entertainment.

That’s the only way I can see DC Comics ever reprinting Captain Marvel vs. The Monster Society of Evil. They wouldn’t be doing this to preserve an important historical event. They’d be doing this to make money off of a big Hollywood movie tie-in. It is a great story that sees Mr. Mind, originally just a disembodied voice, gathering together all of Captain Marvel’s greatest enemies, to wreak havoc on the Earth. After he’s revealed to be an actual worm, the story kicks into high gear. The action takes place all over the globe in into outer space, and there are elements of pathos and comedy mixed in to create a wondefully-balanced story (with some absolutely reprehensible segments).

I’m glad this entire serial is available, but I can’t recommend it to anyone who is offended by outright racism. I will recommend other collections by Gwandanaland, available from Amazon, which collect thousands of great Golden Age comics, including a ton of Captain Marvel and Marvel Family stories, along with great stuff from Quality Comics and other cream of the crop publishers.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Remember to check back for our regular features.

The PopCult Toybox

The much-ballyhooed revival of MEGO action figures was supposed to hit Target stores nationwide on July 29, but thus far (as I write this) it has not yet arrived in all Target locations (including Charleston). However, some of them did show up on Target’s online store (and eventually all of them did), so I ordered a few, just in case they somehow managed to bypass our local area (or wind up intercepted by local scalpers).

Today we’re going to look at Action Jackson (right), a reissue of the very first MEGO 8″ Action Figure. This is a callback to the original figure, and it’s cool to have it included in “Marty Abrams Presents MEGO,” which is officially the new company’s name. Marty being the man who ran MEGO during its heyday.

Before we jump into the review, we have to be brutally honest about the vintage MEGO figures. The main appeal of them was that they were inexpensive and included a lot of cool superhero figures that had never been made into toys before. It was the DC and Marvel superheroes that put them on the map, and along with their excellent Star Trek and Planet of the Apes series, that is what built their legacy.

But they were never “perfect” toys. The first generation of bodies broke easily, which is why they refined the design over the years. Tailoring for such a small scale figure intended for mass production presented a series of challenges with choosing fabrics that were durable enough to work on toys while accurately reflecting the costumes of the characters they represented.

A lot of MEGO figures cut corners when it came to accuracy. My favorite MEGO figure from my childhood, Captain (don’t call him “Shazam”) Marvel didn’t have the right boots or cape, and his headsculpt didn’t look anything like the comic book character. In fact, I believe they just re-used the headsculpt they’d produced for a Peter Parker/Spider-man secret identity set. Either way, it didn’t look much like Peter Parker, either.

Much of the nostalgic charm of vintage MEGO figures was the high cheesiness factor. Tarzan’s flesh-colored bodysuit was one example. Over the years, as collectors grew up and acquired skills, customizers poured into the hobby and showed just how detailed and elaborate they could make figures in the MEGO scale. This really raised the bar on what the new MEGO had to do.

You can see some of the amazing Star Trek work of local customizer, Tony DiTrapino, at the left.

But back in the 1970s these were toys for kids that had to be produced cheaply in order to get them into stores to compete against higher-priced products. So with the vintage MEGO figures, a lot of the clothes look clunky, the face sculpts range from pretty good to pretty bad, and figures with rooted hair (most of the female figures) get tangled and messy-looking as soon as they’re removed from the package.

There’s also the matter of licenses. Back then it was fairly easy for MEGO to corner the market on superheroes, with deals in place with DC and Marvel. However, as the line progressed, MEGO took a bit of a “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” attitude, and created figures based on The Waltons, Happy Days, CHiPs, Wizard of Oz, and others as well as a whole host of non-licensed “World’s Greatest” figures based on cowboys, knights, pirates and monsters.

The big challenge facing MEGO today is the fact that Marvel and DC, which were MEGO’s bread-and-butter during their original run, are tied up with other toy companies (with the exception of the DC figures that MEGO is producing in the unusual 14″ size). Faced with that, and with a wish list from Target, MEGO has had to rely largely on “Television Favorites” for the first wave of new product. With Dr. MEGO, Paul Clarke, helming a talented team of sculptors and seamstresses (who are credited on the package, which is a wonderful development), the quality is vastly improved from the vintage days.

The question is, “how are the figures?”

I cracked open Action Jackson for a quick look. I will address the packaging later, but I will point out that it was easy to open with a hobby knife. If you don’t care about keeping the backing card, you can just rip into it. If you do keep those things, be prepared to cut the gold foil sticker off the blister bubble, if you want to store it flat.

The figure is tight and well-made. He’s more solid than any vintage MEGO figures I’ve encountered. The headsculpt is a perfect recreation of the vintage Action Jackson, which looks suspiciously like a young Marty Abrams. The shoes are removable (one gripe I had about the vintage Star Trek figures was that they’d molded the boots onto the feet in a cost-cutting move).

The body itself is a slightly-improved recreation of a later-generation MEGO body, and poses very well. The joints are tight. The hands are molded in a position that makes it a little tricky to get them to hold the gun that comes with the set, but once it’s in position, it’ll stay there.

The jumpsuit is well-stitched, with velcro closures rather than the snaps that the vintage figures had. The belt looks good on the figure, and the “AJ” emblem is a good reproduction, but is a bit smaller than the original, which both looks better, and makes it easy to distinguish from the original.

Which is not to suggest that people will try to pass these off as vintage figures. I’ve bought vintage 45-year-old Action Jackson figures still in the package just recently for what I paid for this guy.

Action Jackson was originally released as a lower-priced alternative to the 12″ GI Joe, and despite having a robust advertising campaign, he didn’t catch on. It was because MEGO was stuck with a warehouse full of Action Jackson bodies that the deals were struck with DC and Marvel to use them for the first wave of “World’s Greatest Superhereos” figures.

So it’s cool that they went back to their origins for this figure. It’ll be interesting to see if he manages to sell out of his initial production run of 10,000 figures. Vintage figures and uniform sets are still floating around at ridiculously-low prices. These could wind up as peg-warmers, or they might be heavily-sought-after by customizers and folks looking to refurbish other vintage MEGOs. The body is compatible with vintage MEGO heads (correction: it’s not entirely compatible. See the comments).

The packaging for the new 8″ MEGO single figures is pretty nifty. The card fronts have diagonal stripes, which makes for an eye-catching display when these are on the pegs in the stores (I’ve seen photos). The bubble on this blister pack has a distinctive shape, which allows the figures to be stacked face-to-face in the package without any slippage. The bubble is also where the gold sticker with the limited edition number is (each figure is numbered from one to ten-thousand). This card features the original Action Jackson logo, artwork from the vintage package and word bubbles coming from the character. The latter being a cute touch.

The card back (seen left) shows a photo of a vintage figure, along with some hype copy, a MEGO trivia question, an explanation of what MEGO was and who Marty Abrams is, along with a small photo of Mr. Abrams, and coolest of all, credits for Dr. MEGO as “Consultant,” along with Sean Samson, Cynthia Woodie and Andy Covalt as “Sculptors” and Nicole Wilson as “Seamstress.”

This is the first time I can recall seeing sculptor and seamstress credits on a mass-market toy, and it’s a welcome and long-overdue development.

As a reproduction of a classic toy, you have to give Action Jackson an A-plus. He looks like the original, is more sturdy and posable, but the improvements do not detract from the nostalgia. He is the only figure in this line that is not a well-known licensed character (although they did have to license the name from David Lee, who had picked up the trademark for his Cast-A-Way toy line a while back).

As for the MEGO line as a whole, there is a very good chance that these could catch on with casual collectors and take over where Funko left off with their Pops line, which has been losing steam recently at retail. With the ablility to do more recognizable representations of the characters they depict, MEGO has a real chance to take off.

One of my gripes about Funko Pops is that, much of the time, I don’t know what the hell they’re supposed to be. A guy in a suit with that weird generic big head/blank pupil look could be Agent Mulder, Don Draper, Agent Dale Cooper, Saul Goodman or any of dozens of other characters. MEGO has a much greater capability of capturing a reconizable likeness, which should appeal to fans who have burned out on Pops.

It’s great to have MEGO back, and exciting to see where they go from here.

Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle and Curtain Call are all-new Wednesday on The AIR! Tune in to the website, or on the embedded player below for this week’s slate of stimulating programs.

Our new morning line-up on Wednesday continues with The Swing Shift at 7 AM, followed by Prognosis at 9 AM, Psychedelic Shack at 11 AM and an encore of a classic Curtain Call at Noon.  We are re-presenting classic episodes of On The Road with Mel at 1 PM. However, we’re going to mix that up a bit next week. Details are below.

At 1;30 PM, Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle presents Michele’s interview with cult cable-access TV personality, Mr. Phil. A few weeks ago we brought you Michele’s appearance on Mr. Phil’s show, and this week the tables turn as Michele interviews Mr. Phil and finds out what propelled him to his cult status and how he began his long-running New York-area show.

This also mark’s Michele’s last show for a while. With a new book coming out soon, her first book being adapted into a movie, and her recent move, Michele will be stepping away from the weekly grind and concentrating on her other endeavors, which you can keep up with at her website. Next week The AIR will begin airing remastered encores of her show, beginning with the first episode (which hasn’t been heard on The AIR for nearly two years), at her new timeslot, Wednesday at Noon. We will be shuffling the schedule around, so tune in and see the new line-up.  Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle will return on a sporadic basis, as she has time to create new episodes.

Life Speaks to Michele Zirkle can be heard this Wednesday at 1:30 PM and 7 PM, with replays on The AIR Friday at 9:30 AM and Sunday at 7 PM.

At 2 PM Beatles Blast presents one-hour audio blast of music by and about the lads from Liverpool. Beatles Blast can be heard Wednesday at 2 PM, Thursday at 11 AM and 9 PM, Friday at 5 PM, and Tuesday at 9 AM.

At 3 PM Wednesday on Curtain Call, we bring you a very special brand-new episode celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Broadway musical, Eubie!  This was the show that put Gregory and Maurice Hines on the map, and reintroduced the world to one of the most prolific songwriters of all time. Mel Larch introduces the original cast recordings, and we also hear performances by Eubie Blake himself, recorded in 1981, when he was 98 years old.

Curtain Call can be heard Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 7 AM and 8 PM and Saturday at 6 PM. An all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

At 7:30 PM, we have gone into the AIR Archives and unearthed the missing seven episodes of Word Association with Lee and Rudy. These shows were misplaced on a stray hard drive and have not been heard in more than two years. We’ll bring them to you over the next seven weeks, and hopefully follow these with some new shows.

This week you can hear Lee Harrah and Rudy Panucci fumble about wildly as they try to discuss the old days of Charleston Radio, even though their age difference means that they are talking about two different eras.

Stay tuned all day, every day, for incredible music, thought-provoking talk and gut-busting comedy exclusively on The AIR. And check out the full schedule below, including our full day of fine programming…

With Tuesday being our most-listened-to day on The AIR we try to load it up with new episodes of our most popular shows, and that’s exactly what we did this week as we bring you more great local music and other goodies like Swing and Psychedelica. This week all three of our music programs feature new episodes, and they’re all pretty darned nifty.  You can tune in at The AIR website, or listen in on this sweet little embedded radio player…

Today at 10 AM we are bringing a terrific new episode of Radio Free Charleston, opening with brand new music from Jay Parade, and continuing with a great mix of new music and stuff from our archives, including Holly and the Guy, Jeff Ellis, Half Batch, Erik Woods, Mark Beckner and more. We’ll post the playlists at the bottom of this post, after the jump.

Radio Free Charleston can be heard Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM, with replays Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 8 PM and Saturday at 11 AM and Midnight, exclusively on The AIR.

At 2 PM it’s time for Nigel Pye and his psychedelic mixtape program, Psychedelic Shack. This week we get yet another new episode of Psychedelic Shack in its new one-hour format, bringing you Nigel and his weekly hour-long mix of mind-blowing psychedelic music. In this week’s show you’ll hear Chocolate Watchband and more classic acid-trippy music, but this week Nigel didn’t send us a playlist this week, so you’ll have to tune in to find out what he has up his Nehru-jacketed sleeve for you.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard Tuesday’s at 2 PM, with replays Wednesday at 11 AM, Thursday at 5 PM and Saturday at 7 AM.

At 3 PM The Swing Shift brings you another brand-new one-hour blast of yours truly trying to revive the jive with a reet beat and a swing ans sway that’s here to stay. This week the show kicks off with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and never lets up, with Duke Ellington, New Morty Show, Postmodern Jukebox, Wolfgang Parker and more. You’ll find the playlist after the jump.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM, Thursday at 7 PM and Saturday at 9 AM, only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Remember, you can tune in to The AIR at all hours of the day and night for a variety and quality of programming that you will not find anywhere else.

Continue reading

If you’ve poked your head outside of the safety of air conditioning anytime in the the past three or five months, you may have noticed that it’s been hot, painfully hot, some would even say “gosh-damned heckishly hot.” In fact, we just wrapped up the hottest July in recorded history, and that’s not just on Earth, but also includes all the other planets and the sun. To capture this environment of extreme hottery, today’s art is a digital painting of a scene from Summers Street in Charleston, seconds before things reach a critical temperature and burst into flames. Click the image to see a bigger version.

Meanwhile, Monday on our sister internet radio station, The AIR, the Monday Marathon keeps you cool as a cucumber with 24 hours of The Swing Shift  You can listen to a full day of yours truly spinning the best Swing music of the last century, beginning at 7 AM and running through Tuesday morning.  In fact, if you are one of our loyal international listeners, you may know that this marathon immediately follows the regular Midnight Sunday marathon of The Swing Shift, so if you tune in early enough, you can hear 31 hours of The Swing Shift, with no repeats among them. Tune in at the website, or listen on this handy embedded player…

This week we are once again bringing you the original Adventures of Captain Marvel movie serial from 1942. I posted this here a couple of years ago, but that video has been yanked from YouTube, so this week we’re going to present a new and improved print that also edits out all the redundant openings and closings from each serial, and gets the running time down to under three hours.  With the much-hyped “Shazam” movie coming out next year, which is based on the awful “New 52” bastardized version of Captain Marvel that Geoff Johns foisted on us, I thought it might be good to show how cool this superhero could be when he’s not played as a comedic super-powered version of the movie Big.

I have made no secret of the fact that my all-time favorite superhero is Captain Marvel. Though known primarily as “Shazam” by less-cultured folks, Captain Marvel debuted from Fawcett Comics in 1940 and was pretty much the top-selling superhero in comics until 1953, when his publisher decided to cut their losses after years of a nagging copyright infringement suit filed by National Periodical Publications, now known as DC Comics, the publishers of Superman.

The suit had little merit, but questionable rulings in appeals courts, coupled with a massive decline in comic book sales industry-wide, convinced Fawcett Publications to give up. Fawcett decided to quit the comic book business and paid off DC, agreeing never to publish Captain Marvel again without DC’s permission.

Mired in another comic book sales slump in 1972, DC made an agreement to lease (and later purchase outright) Captain Marvel so they could publish him themselves. Unfortunately, during the time Captain Marvel was out of the public eye, Marvel Comics trademarked the name for their own character (they didn’t want anyone else publishing a book with “Marvel” in the title after Myron Fass had released his own legendarily-awful character with that name) so DC had to go with “Shazam” as the title of their book (actually the full title was “With One Magic Word, Shazam”).

The character went on to star in his own live-action Saturday morning program and during the 1970s was one of DC’s four most-merchandisable heroes. Kids in the 1940s and the 1970s fell in love with Billy Batson, who could turn into the super-powered Captain Marvel just by saying “Shazam.” DC had mixed results with the character in terms of sales, though, and the original Captain Marvel has been rebooted, with great versions and not-so-great versions many times over the years.

But tonight we go back to the original incarnation of the hero at the height of his popularity for the entire 12-chapter serial, The Adventures of Captain Marvel. from 1941. This is widely considered to be the greatest superhero movie serial from the golden age of Hollywood, and while it’s not entirely faithful to the comic book, it’s a great adaptation and a lot of fun.

So set aside just under three hours and enjoy the show, or order the DVD, which has just been released, so you can watch one chapter at a time. Either way, this is the REAL Captain Marvel, not a lady using the name, or a big dumb guy calling himself “Shazam.”

The current comic book version is pretty bad, demonstrating a complete misunderstanding of what made the character work so well on the part of Johns. The upcoming movie looks like a fun parody of the original concept, with the goofy twist of Captain Marvel being just a kid in an adult body (in the original comics he has the wisdom of Solomon, which sort of blows that crappy idea out of the water).

It’s a double-edged sword for fans of the original Captain Marvel:  If the movie fails, then DC will never try to make another movie with him, and will probably abandon the idea of publishing any comics beyond what Geoff Johns wants to do.  If the movie is a success, then generations of kids will grow up with this lousy parody of the original concept, and won’t know just how good the original comics were.

From October, 2011, we bring you Radio Free Charleston 146, Pepper Fandango Shirt. This episode found us driving around the state looking at the fall colors. We had great music this week with songs from Born of Conviction, John Lancaster, Gabriel, and the cast of Jack The Ripper, plus we have animation from Frank Panucci and an art film by yours truly.

Our host segments were filmed all over West Virginia as Melanie Larch and I made the Charleston-to-Clarksburg-to-Parkersburg-to-Charleston loop so we could check out the changing foilage and basically just take a day away from everything.

This was a fun show, loaded with music and cool stuff, and you can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
August 3, 2018

Welcome to part two of the epic Tennessee Travelogue. At the end of part one, after checking out of the second hotel on our trip, we had just spent a couple of hours taking in the wonders of McKay’s Bookstore in Knoxville, and then spent about another hour visiting Nostalgia, a really cool vintage store with a pop culture bent. Having performed our morning retail therapy, we then made our way South to Chattanooga.

Right before we reached our destination we made a little side trip. Just North of Chattanooga, from Interstate 75 you can see what looks like a huge Knife outlet store. It is actually The Knife Shoppe at Frost Cutlery, and it’s a pretty cool place to check out.

Let me explain that Mel and I have an appreciation for well-made knives. One year for Christmas I got Mel a reproduction of Michonne’s Katana from The Walking Dead, and I somehow wound up on the Bud K mailing list and started getting their catalogs. It was filled with cool stuff, but when I ordered from them I discovered that much of what they sold was made in China, and I was also turned off by the far-right-wing poltical novelties and confederate flag stuff that pollutes their catalog and website, so I chose to stop doing business with them.

We didn’t know what to expect from The Knife Shoppe, and expected pretty much the same as Bud K, but we were very pleasantly surprised. The confederate stuff was minimal for a store in Tennessee, and all of their knives were not only made in the USA…they were made right next door at the factory!

We were in there for quite some time. I wound up buying a cool Bowie Knife, Mel got a pretty folding knife and we grabbed a surprise box of knives because I’m a sucker for surprise boxes, so our friends can probably expect some sharp gifts for the holidays this year. If you’re heading down I 75 and have some time to spare, The Knife Shoppe is a fun place to visit.

Here’s a wide-angle shot of the friendly store filled with all sorts of sharp, pointy weapons.

Of particular note is the nearly twelve-and-one-half-foot-long, 900 pound Bowie Knife.

After leaving The Knife Shoppe it was a short drive to hotel number three on this trip, which was the Hilton Garden Inn in Chattanooga where we’ve been stopping on our way to ToyLanta for a few years now. We checked in and then ran out for dinner and a quick visit to Toys R Us during their final week in business.

That visit was pretty depressing. It had started raining hard as we pulled up and Mel stayed in the car while I went in to the mostly-deserted and depleted store. I made a token purchase, and to be honest I don’t remember exactly what I bought, but it was cheap and did not turn out to be the last thing I ever bought at TRU.That’s a scene from the store at the right.

Following that, and still in the downpour, Mel and I decided to hit the nearby Guitar Center, just out of curiosity. We don’t have one of these locally, and the chain is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, so we decided to see what all the fuss was about while we had the chance.

What we found was a store with a decent selection and okay prices. We also found that it played host to a large group of either musicians or employees who were heavily involved with expressing themselves loudly on some of the instruments, oblivious to the fact that they had little, if any, talent. Mel could not try out any of the keyboards because some guy was pounding out the worst dreck imaginable on a synth cranked up to eleven. I couldn’t get close enough to some of the guitars to examine the prices because of someone who appeared to be auditioning for the lead guitar chair in the Portsmouth Sinfonia. We were going to try to retreat to safety in the percussion room, but backed out quick when we heard what sounded like a completely arhythmic attempt to rape a set of bongos.

We found a safe, quiet place to eat dinner and wound up back at the hotel to rest up for the next day, when I would finally go to my first (and last ever) Official GI Joe Convention.

Last week I explained how I used to work for the GI Joe Club years ago, and would have been comped to go to the conventions then, but was unable to travel because I was the full-time caregiver for my disabled mother. I’d worked for Brian Savage for a few years, almost twenty years ago, and had never met him in person. This was a bittersweet big deal for me.

I should also point out that, being a recent convert to the ways of the smartphone, on this trip I used the navigation function, much like normal adults do in this century, and it made life much easier.

We woke up the next morning, checked out of the hotel, had breakfast and found our way (rather easily) to the huge Chattanooga Convention Center. Of course, we got there before we could get in to the show. Your PopCulteer is nothing if not habitually early. Luckily we ran into out buddies from ToyLanta, and hung out with Mike Gardner (with yours truly, at left), Scott and Charlotte Beckmann, Buddy Finethy, Brian Becker, Steve Bugg, Jack Hall and many other good friends that I didn’t get photos of and won’t mention because I don’t remember whether I saw them in Chattanooga, or last week in Louisville (this is what happens when you wait more than a month to write about a toy convention).

After spending just a bit too much time hanging out, we discovered that there was a very long line to get in before we could make our way inside. The better part of an hour later, we were able to pay to get in. That hour flew by because we got to hang out with fellow Joe fans and cosplayers and everybody seemed to be in a really good mood.

The line, wrapping around a hall, and then going on for a bit after that before we got in.

Once inside, I made a beeline for the GI Joe Club booth, where I plunked down my money for a complete set of “As Seen On TV” black and white GI Joes, plus a couple of extra acccessory sets I needed. Eventually I’ll get around to posting reviews of this cool stuff.  I decided to pass on this year’s convention set because it just didn’t connect with me.  It’s a great set, but I’m cutting down on collecting military sets, prefering the Adventure Team stuff.

Once I loaded myself down with stuff from the club, I began to make my way through the dealer’s area. About three minutes in I ran into Mark Otnes, of Patches of Pride and The Joe Report fame, who proceeded to interview me, unaware that I’d basically just gotten there. You can read that interview HERE, and I swiped Mark’s photo of me for the head of this post. Mark does an incredible job of covering the Joe scene, and his blog is a must-read for action figure devotees.

Mel and I made our way around the vendor floor, buying a few things and running into more friends from ToyLanta. We decided to deposit what I’d bought so far in the car, so we made a quick trip to the parking garage and then went back in.

Charlotte Beckmann and Brian Becker, wisely taking a break.

Scott Beckmann and Steve Bugg, happy to be there.

I’d been told by my buddies at ToyLanta that if I didn’t want to mess with the after-hours events, I could probably see everything I wanted to see in four hours. They were right. This is no knock on the club on the convention. This was the most professionally-run toy convention I’ve ever attended. The only hitch was that it was devoted to all permutations of GI Joe, and that meant that probably 80% of the vendors and guests were dedicated to the Real American Hero Joes, which I respect, but do not collect. They just came out too late to be a part of my childhood.

After making another pass around the dealers room, Mel and I settled in one of the many comfortable couches in the convention center to wait for the other big event I wanted to be part of, the “Name Your Price” sale, where the Club dumps out copious amounts of oddities and leftovers from their warehouse and you cram what you want in a bag and haggle over the price.

While waiting for the sale, I noticed that, sitting across the hall from me, was Jim Beard, whose Captain Action pulp novel I’d reviewed here in PopCult, and who had just published a new book that was a collection of essays about GI Joe, written by some of the top experts on Joe, and edited by Jim. I walked over and introduced myself and bought a copy of the book, and it’s on my long list of things to review here in the blog.

I was first in line for the sale, which involved standing in line for half an hour or so, and I got a small, but swell bag of goodies, including some super-articulated Joes with unpainted heads and a nude Counter Culture Adventurer figure who needs some hair repairs, and with that, I was pretty much spent.

Waiting in line for the big sale, I did get to meet Brian Savage and Lanny Latham, from the Official GI Joe Club, albiet briefly, and I didn’t really get to socialize any with them. Still, it was cool to finally get to shake their hands. It was wild attending this convention as a complete civilian, too. I did not take many photos or shoot any video. I just wanted to soak in the experience.

I did grab just a few photos of the floor of the convention, so let’s take a look at those…

The cosplayers were not all deadly serious.

These guys were pretty much like the Ghostbusters WV crew, only they dress like GI Joe: RAH guys. All for a good cause.

The vendor’s room occasionally got crowded.

Master artist, Larry Selman, and some of the work he’s had printed on GI Joe Classic Collection boxes.

More wheeling and dealing went on in every corner of the hall.

I haven’t mentioned before how this trip was undertaken with my newfound knowledge of how Myasthenia Gravis gets worse in extreme heat. Most of this trip took place during an extreme heatwave. I was able to pace myself and have a wonderful time, but the convention marked day four of the trip, and standing in line to get in to the convention, plus standing in line for the sale, did a number on me, and by 3 PM I was ready to head out. We said our goodbyes and jumped in the car for the drive back home.

Along the way, we stopped in Richmond, Kentucky for one last hotel stay. This town was chosen so that we could stick our heads into a Meijers store and a Peddler’s Mall before heading home the next morning, and we did, and it was fun. I even found a Marx Comanche horse for cheap at the Peddler’s Mall right before we headed out on the final leg of our journey.

We made our usualy stop at Big Boy in Winchester, KY for lunch, and made a final stop at the Barboursville Toys R Us, and we were home in the afternoon. It was a great trip. I was happy to be part of the final Official GI Joe Convention, and I’m wondering what the future holds for Fun Publications, Brian’s company that’s run the GI Joe Club and put on the conventions for so many years. There are few organizations in this country who can put on a toy show this well (Fun Publication also ran the Transformers club and BotCon until recently), and it’ll be interesting to see what they decide to do after the Official GI Joe Collector’s Club winds down at the end of the year.

GI Joe Collectors won’t have to go without a convention, though. There’s still ToyLanta, which began life as “JoeLanta” and is still very GI Joe-oriented, plus the Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo is picking up steam after its recently-concluded fifth show, and the Dallas-Fort Worth GI Joe club puts on an annual show that people rave about. Fans of the small-scale GI Joes have CoilCon coming up to look forward to. There’s a new show in Harrisburg, PA next month that fans are really excited about, and new regional shows are popping up all over. Even with Hasbro leaving GI Joe on the backburner the hobby seems to be growing by leaps and bounds.

Anyway, that is the long-delayed tale of our big trip to Chattanooga for the final Official GI Joe Convention. Please check PopCult for more fresh content every day, and visit our internet radio station, The AIR, which brings you the coolest music and talk on the face of the planet…at least we think so.

Here in PopCult I’ve been writing about the plight of The Bakery since last year, before it had even organized into the all-ages venue that bears that name. Last week The Bakery was shut down by the Fire Inspectors for the City of Charleston, and I decided to wait until the dust settled before I weighed in on what happened.

Coincidentally, Bill Lynch offers up a really good summary in Thursday’s Gazette-Mail. It’s a great way to get up to speed, quick.

Despite much of what has been spouted out on social media, nobody involved in shutting down The Bakery did anything wrong. The folks who operate The Bakery, The Charleston Music and Arts Collective, asked the city to inspect their facility to make sure it was up to code, and the Fire Marshall was very helpful and clear in telling them what improvements needed to be made. The timing was less than ideal, happening as The Bakery was poised to host their biggest show ever, with Florida metal band, Trivium, already set up in the hall, but the board of The Bakery knew full well that this could be the result of the inspection.

They asked for the inspection because they want their venue to be safe.

The city offered the use of the Municipal Auditorium, but the band’s management decided that moving the show just a couple of hours before it was scheduled to begin, without the time to tear down their equipment they’d already set up at The Bakery and move the whole production downtown, was not possible.

There was no grand conspiracy to shut down The Bakery because they were hosting a metal band. The timing couldn’t have sucked more, but it was neccessary in order for The Bakery to operate by the rules. The city was not singling out The Bakery. The inspectors were doing their job.

The only misstep in the process was the public statement issued by the Fire Marshall’s office, which was apparently written by someone with little first-hand knowledge of what exactly had happened.

There were actually calls from the board members of The Charleston Music and Arts Collective themselves, asking the Fire Marshall to please inspect the building so that they could be up to code in time for their biggest show. The inspectors were reportedly very respectful and supportive, and are doing what they can to help The Bakery sort out their issues. The only sin of the Fire Marshall’s department was a little miscommunication after the fact.

The cancellation of the Trivium show was a huge financial blow to the promoters, and I hope they can survive this and continue to bring quality shows to town. The hope is that The Bakery can be approved to host a show in time for the GWAR concert scheduled for the middle of next month. If not, at least they’ll have enough advance notice to find an alternate venue.

The board of The Charleston Music and Arts Collective has been commendably transparent in all this, shooting down the crazy conspiracy theories and being open and honest about what happened. They accept responsiblity for not having the building ready, admit that they’ve been running shows in a grey area for most of the last year, and were very frank and honest about their finances and how they had to prioritize paying their rent over finishing the remodeling needed to get The Bakery ready to host shows again.

The Charleston Music and Arts Collective is a start-up non-profit, and as such they face major challenges in funding and recruiting volunteers. At the moment the board feels that if they could raise around twelve-thousand dollars, they could purchase the materials needed to finish the remodeling and bring the venue up to the Fire Marshall’s standards. You can donate to them HERE, or make a monthly donation via Patreon HERE. Donations are tax-deductible.

If you are willing and able to volunteer your time, please contact The Charleston Music and Arts Collective at cmacbakery@gmail.com, or visit their Facebook page for more details. Corporate sponsors can find more information HERE.

The success of The Bakery will be a major boost to Charleston’s music scene. It’s been well over a decade since we’ve had a stable, long-running, all-ages venue in this town. Given Charleston’s live music scene and its bizarre late-night quirks, not having an all-ages venue has played a huge part in the shrinking audiences that live musicians in this town face today.

Generations of kids have grown up in a town where they never pick up the habit of going to hear live music. They don’t get to go out to their own clubs and discover their own bands, and they don’t grow up to be adults who love live music and continue to support it. Our audiences have declined to the point where most of our supporters of live music are service industry workers who don’t get off work until after ten or eleven o’clock at night, and that fact has most shows in local bars starting after eleven PM.

People who have to work the next day simply can’t go out that late. This has been the norm for a long, long time, and it’s at a point where the bars that try to start shows earlier than that quickly discover that they’re paying bands to play to empty venues. You can’t blame the bars for adusting the band’s start times to when they actually have paying customers, and you can’t blame people for staying home until they know the music will start. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle.

People also age out of staying out late to hear live music, and without an all-ages venue to supply younger fans, there’s nobody new coming in to take their place. That’s why we have world-class bands in this town playing to a dozen people some nights.

Charlestonians have demonstrated that they will turn out to support live music at earlier times. Just last month US Floyd nearly sold out The Clay Center with an 8 PM show. Every week (weather permitting) thousands of people come to hear the free music at Live on the Levee, and that starts at 6:30 PM (it’s also usually filled with kids and teens, which is a good sign that there’s demand for an all-ages venue).

The key to making this happen on a regular basis is to have an all-ages venue (or several) where teens can go hear music that belongs to them, and fall in love with the idea of listening to real musicians play live music in a cozy setting. It’s too easy for kids to sit at home and play videogames or watch Netflix. They need a reason to go out.

The Bakery has the potential to be that reason. When they bring the venue up to code it’d be great for them to have regular weekend matinees, where local bands can come in and play for a younger audience, then take a break and set up somewhere else in town for a late-night show. The bands can expand their fanbase and get in some extra playing time. Kids can have a safe place to go, fall in love with music, and pick up a habit that can stick with them for a lifetime.

This won’t happen if The Bakery can’t bring in some money and get some additional volunteers to make the improvements that they need to make to get up to code.

If you can spare a few bucks or a few hours, please reach out and pitch in.

The Aquabats Super Show, which originally aired on The HUB from 2012 to 2014, was the greatest show in television history. I said as much HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE, right in this blog, so you know it’s true.

I even jumped the gun and wrote about how cool it would be when their show debuted in 2008, which it didn’t, but that just made me look more like I was ahead of the time when it finally showed up four years later. I guess you could say I’m a really eager fan.

Now this epic adventure series has a chance to continue.

The Aquabats have started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to produce a new album and at least one new episode of The Aquabats Super Show. Their goal for that is to raise 1.1 million dollars, and stretch goals of multiples of that can reach as high as producing four albums and a whole season of 12 new episodes.

Why are you not already drowning these guys with money?

The rewards are plentiful, if primarily digital. There are downloads galore, and you could have all of the Aquabats follow you on Twitter or Instagram, or record an outgoing voicemail message, or a private video. You have to kick in more than a hundred bucks to get to the physical objects, like posters, DVD/Blu Ray sets and Paul Frank items, which sort of sucks for those of us who prefer real things to downloads, but it does insure that as much money as possible will go to produce new Aquabats music and Super Shows. The real prize will be more great Aquabats adventures.

At higher levels donors can be extras, actors or executive producers. As we write this, less than one day, the campaign is more than 10 percent funded.

Check out this video, featuring Jack Black and a cast of thousands, some of whom are even recgonizable…

Now, take the time to pledge some money to make the world safe for Aqua-Cadets everywhere and help bring back The Aquabats Super Show!