We have bumped our originally-scheduled edition of Sunday Evening Video to run the above half-hour summary of the comics career of George Pérez, whose death was announced yesterday.

Geroge’s death was not a shock. He had announced late last year that he’d been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and chose not to undergo chemotherapy. He knew he only had a matter of months to live, and happily, he made the most of that time, enjoying tributes from all around the industry, messages from fans and resting as comfortably as possible while spending time with his wife and family.

For those who don’t follow comics, it’s a little hard to explain how widely beloved and admired Pérez was. He was the definitive superhero team artist from the mid-1970s well into the 1990s. He co-created characters that have been featured in several DC and Marvel movies and TV shows, and his reboot of Wonder Woman, as the writer and artist, in the late 1980s elevated the super-heroine to her rightful status as part of DC Comics’ “Trinity” alongside Superman and Batman.

His work as the artist on DC Comics’ Crisis On Infinite Earths remains a pinnacle of superhero comics, as it included virtually every major character published by DC Comics, and the characters they’d acquired from othe publishers like Charlton Comics, Fawcett and Quality. That book redefined the entire DC Universe for future generations and has remained in print since it was collected in 1986.

It’s a real blow to comics to lose Pérez just eight days after Neal Adams died. Pérez was part of the first generation of comics artists to grow up with Adams as an influence, and Pérez managed to be much more prolific. For a few months in 1980 he was illustrating The New Teen Titans and The Justice League of America for DC at the same time he was drawing The Avengers for Marvel.

Pérez excelled drawing the “team” comics, where most artists dreaded such assignments. Drawing all those different superheroes and cramming them into each panel is quite a challenge, but Pérez enjoyed it and threw himself into the job, asking for even more characters to be tossed into the mix.

Pérez developed an almost definitive approach to comic book anatomy, with a streamline sense of how the human body was constructed, but also a diversity of body types and body language that made him one of the premiere storytellers to ever work in the superhero and science fiction genre.

He was the only artist who could have ever drawn a team-up of The Avengers and The Justice League, and after a soul-crushing false start in the 80s, that was killed by office politics, he finally got his chance in 2003, and he lived to see a new collection of that mini-series rush-published before he passed away.

The fact that DC and Marvel set aside years of corporate hostility in order to get that book into print says a lot about how beloved Pérez was. I’ve never heard a negative word uttered about the man, and that’s quite a feat for someone who was at the top of the industry for over four decades. He was such a nice person that he was in very high demand at comic book conventions and he did his best to make time for every fan. Everybody loved the guy.

That’s almost a bigger accomplishment than the fact that he co-created The New Teen Titans and several characters who were in the MCU Avengers movies, or that he rebooted Wonder Woman, was part of the reboot of Superman, drew The Infinity Gauntlet, or spent years as the top-selling artist in comics.

I remember being familiar with his work on The Avengers in the 1970s, but the first book he drew that I collected was Logan’s Run, for Marvel, and I was impressed. In 1978 Marvel published an unauthorized biography of The Beatles, and he was the penciller of that, and I became a fan for life.

I never had a chance to meet him in person, but we did exchange a couple of emails many years ago. As will millions of other comic book fans, George Pérez will always rank among my favorite comic book creators.

He left the comics industry and the world a better place.

Even in a small panel depicting a funeral scene, Pérez managed to include fifteen members of two superhero teams, plus a priest.

Pérez, along with inker Klaus Jansen and writer David Anthon Kraft, manage to distill the story of The Beatles down to 38 pages and still hit all the high points.

From March, 2010 PopCult’s RFC Flashback brings you Episode 96 of Radio Free Charleston, “Storm In A Teacup Shirt.”

This edition of our local music, film and animation show includes music from one of the RFC favorite bands, WATT 4, and from the then-upcoming CYAC production,”Romeo and Juliet: A Rock Opera.” We also had a movie trailer from director Amy Trent, and the RFC debut of MURFMEEF.

This Flashback is a bittersweet one. You will see Mark Scarpelli, who just passed away in March, accompanying Austin Thomas, Micah Atkinson and Donnie Smith in the CYAC clip.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
May 6, 2022

A week ago today I was riding the Amtrak Cardinal to New York City for a quick trip to see a play (you can read about my trip HERE).

I try not to check social media too much when I’m traveling, but during a 13-hour train ride you get a little bored. Shortly after we crossed into Virginia, I saw on Twitter that the legendary comics creator Neal Adams had died at the age of 80.

It was a gut-punch. I seriously thought the guy might live forever. He was still producing high-quality work just a few months ago. Being on a trip, with PopCult written in advance for several days, there was no way I could post a fitting tribute in a timely manner.

By the time I got back in the office, the internet was filled with tributes, obituaries and loving memories of the man, and rightfully so. Neal Adams was as important to the medium of comics as The Beatles were to music. He changed the entire industry.

More than just an artist, Neal was a writer, editor, mentor and a tireless activist who helped drag the comics industry, kicking and screaming, to new levels of professionalism in terms of the way they treated talent.

Neal Adams also may be the most-imitated comic book artist of the last 50 years, even though nobody really came close to perfectly capturing his style.

Because there have already been so many great tributes written about the man, I’m going to focus on my personal experience with the work of Neal Adams and just wing this off the top of my head. The images accompanying this post, except for the photo of Neal, are just a sample of the amazing work the man did.

I learned to read from comic books. More specifically, I learned to read from my older brother’s comic books. Frank would read at the table, holding the comics directly in front of his face, folded back. So I had to read the pages out of order, but it helped me develop my non-linear communication skills. I was reading by the time I was five years old.

Anyway, sometime in the late 1960s, my brother became very excited about a new comic book artist who was drawing Batman in The Brave and Bold team-up comic. It was Neal Adams, who was then a rising star, just breaking into DC comics after they hadn’t really hired any new artists in more than a decade.

Adams’ style was outstanding. He brought a realism to his work, picked up from years of working at the legendary Johnstone & Cushing Ad Agency, and nobody else in comics was working like that at the time.

His layouts were innovating, building on the work of Kirby, Ditko, Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino, and expanding far beyond their storytelling choices.

His work was revelatory.

His talent was recognized and he soon moved to the main Batman title with Dennis O’Neil writing, and that team then took over the Green Lantern comic book, adding Green Arrow to the book and changing it from a space-opera sci-fi comic to one that dealt with gritty, “relevant” issues of the day. More than fifty years later these legendary comics can still make conservatives fly into a blind rage.

Adams was very much in demand, and was not content to stick with one publisher. He did quite a bit of work at Marvel on books like X-Men, Avengers and Conan, and he did some spectacular work for Warren publishing and The National Lampoon. His iconic covers for reissues of the Tarzan paperbacks in the mid-70s were another high point. He was so good that no publisher would dare to blacklist him for freelancing with the competition.

He was also highly sought-after as an advertising artist, and designed the iconic movie poster for Westworld, along with collaborating with Richard Corben on the poster for Phantom of The Paradise.

He also created his own company, with his good friend and DC Comics inker, Dick Giordano. Continuity Associates became a gathering place for young artists, a combination studio, clubhouse, art school and ad agency all under one roof. I could list the artists who spent time at Continuity, but it’d take all day and read like a “Who’s Who” of the comic book industry for the last five decades.

Adams was in such demand outside of comics that by the late 1970s his work appeared much less frequently in regular comics. He’d do covers for DC Comics because he was dating their publisher, but in 1978 he did take on one big assignment for DC–the Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali comic book.

In 2010 DC reprinted this book in a deluxe hardback edition, and I reviewed it here in PopCult.

Somehow my review got back to Neal and I woke up one morning to a Facebook friend request and a direct message from the man himself. I had never expected that. Neal was very gracious and thanked me for the glowing review, and he told me that he felt Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was the most important comic book he’d ever done.

I was dumbstruck and tried to convey how big a deal it was for me to have any contact with a man who is one of my personal creative heroes, and we traded a few more messages. I didn’t want to pester him, because he was such a busy man, even at a time when most people are happily retired.

As the 1980s rolled around, Adams tried working with some of the new direct-market comics publishers whose fiery independence was matched only by their cash-flow problems, then he decided to just start his own comic book company, Continuity Comics. Continuity Comics shut down during the comics bust of 1994, and Adams later returned to his old stomping grounds at DC and Marvel to do the occasional short story or extended mini-series.

Adam’s final work, a Fantastic Four mini-series written by Mark Waid, was published last year, and a Treasury-sized collection was just released three weeks ago.

I didn’t mention much about Neal’s work as an advocate for creator’s rights. He’s the reason Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are credited as the creators of Superman. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of how Neal Adams helped change comics for the better.

Now, I’m going to wrap this up. I did this off the top of my head without any research, so apologies for any mistakes, omissions, typos or misspelled names. I just felt I had to acknowledge the passing of a hero. It’s been a sad week here in PopCult land.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular features, with new content every day.

It’s a rare RFC premeire on a Thusday on The AIR  as we deliver unto you a brand-new episode of Radio Free Charleston, which really should have been ready two days ago for our normal timeslot, but wasn’t because of stuff.

But today at 2 PM you simply have to take your cursor over and point it at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column (If you’re reading PopCult on a desktop, that is. Phone readers have to go to the website) and you get three full hours of Radio Free Charleston loaded with cool new local music and cool new independent music and some really wild stuff from five decades ago, tossed in with a random flourish.

We have a  wild and eclectic new Radio Free Charleston at 2 PM Tuesday.  This week we open with a new song by The Settlement, and we also have new local tunes from Brian Diller, Foz Rotten, Aaron Fisher and Bane Star.

We also have some great tunes that come to us via our Chicago pipeline, as we debut tunes that are due for release later this week by Crandelion, Walcot, Red Spot Rhythm Section and Vincent Bruckert (of Crown Vic Royal fame).

In the course of our three hours we jump around many different musical genre and styles, because RFC is free-format radio, and we sorta do that by definition.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages)…

RFC V5 087

hour one
The Settlement “Revenge”
Crandelion “Don’t Mind The Merry Go Round”
Brian Diller “Loneliest Day”
Andy Prieboy “Here At My Day Job”
The Dollyrots “Dancing With Myself”
Red Spot Rhythm Section featuring Erthe St. James “Boys Don’t Cry”
Luna Park “Voices Carry”
Foz Rotten “Boom Bap”
Udo Dirkschneider “They Call It Nutbush”
Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs “Rock Me Baby”
Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne “Messin’ Round (With The Blues)”
Johnny Compton “Until We Meet Again”
Scott Helland “Best Western”
Aaron Fisher “What You Left Behind”

hour two
Walcot “It Feels Alright”
Bane Star “The World That I Knew”
Gary Numan “Warriors”
Enya “Never Forget (Remix)”
Rammstein “Zick Zack”
Falco “Vienna Calling”
Pink Floyd featuring Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox “Hey Hey Rise Up”
Vincent Bruckert “Secret Warnings”
Matt Berry featuring Emma Noble “Beatmaker”
Roger Glover “Love Is All”
The Lickerish Quartet “The Dream That Took Me Over”
Tom Kenny/Andy Paley “Best Day Ever”
Jordan Andrew Jefferson “Gravity”
Red Spot Rhythm Section featuring Claire Liparulo “Tainted Love”

hour three
The Settlement “Reason”
All Torches Lit “Occulation”
The Mads “Tumor Bossa”
Joe Satriani “Sailing The Seas of Ganymede”
Vivaldi Metal Project “Symphony of Death”
Byzantine “Salem, AR”
Disarm The Fallen “Cold Dead Night”
The Clash with Ranking Roger “Rock The Casbah”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Thursday at 2 PM on The AIR, with replays  Friday at 9 AM and 9 PM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, and  Monday at 11 AM. This episode will also air in the regular RFC timeslots next week so that yours truly can vote and get his car out of the shop and go to his doctor. It’s going to be a busy day.

Now you can also hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand. Whew! That’s a lot of stuff I just did here.

It’s the first full week of May, and it’s time for your guide to things you can do in and around Charleston and Huntington  this week in our latest edition of STUFF TO DO.

We are going to continue to try to get sort of back to normal here in the PopCult office and this week we’re again going to mention a few things that are happening that don’t have handy graphics for me to swipe. Links will take you to their Facebook events pages. Now, I do have a handy graphic for Free Comic Book Day, which is happening at several area comic book shops. So if you want free comics, go find one.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Sasha Collette. Saturday sees Jeremy Hatfield at Charleston’s Bookstore/coffeehouse/art gallery institution.

Note that, while I personally do not condone horse racing and consider it very cruel animal abuse, I’m plugging the Derby thing at The Red Carpet below because the music will be by The Velvet Brothers, and everyone should go see them every chance they get.  Go out, listen to the Velvets, and ignore the horrible cruelty on the big screens.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet, and now only the stupidest of people are going without vaccinations if they’re eligible. Despite some recent dubious legal rulings, many people are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out.

If you wanna hear something funny,  tune in to The AIR Wednesday night at 11 PM where we will offer up a new episode of The Comedy Vault, this time featuring an hour of classic Stand up by Robin Williams. .

In the meantime, if you’re up for going out, here are some suggestions from folks who were kind enough to provide graphics and make my job easier…

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Part of the reason that Radio Free Charleston was delayed until Thursday this week was that, last weekend, your PopCulteer and his lovely wife took a very quick trip to New York City to see the play “The Minutes” on Broadway.  That’s us at right in a fuzzy selfie, right before we went to the show.

We’d actually seen the play during its world premiere run at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago back in 2017, but Melanie really wanted to see it, and I was curious because when we saw it, while I really enjoyed it, I thought it could use a little work.

Happily, it got a little work and is now a wickedly hilarious look at a city council with a secret. I will be writing more about it later in the week, so today’s photo essay is mainly about our trip.

We hopped the Amtrak Cardinal in Charleston first thing Friday morning. It was our first train trip in 26 months, and there have been a few changes. Business class is gone. We really liked Business Class, but as that option had been discovered by more parents of screaming children, it became less pleasant for us, so we usually try to get a roomette when we’re heading toward NYC. The food was vastly improved from the last time we rode Amtrak, but there’s still some room for improvement on that front.

Anyway, late Friday night we arrived in New York, were directed to Penn Station rather than the fancy new Moynihan Train Hall, and stepped out on the street to look up and see The Empire State Building. One cab ride to our hotel later, we were checked in and soon were asleep.

The next morning we woke up, got ready and grabbed a cab to a matinee performance of the show, which is in the theater located at Studio 54, making this trip a double treat for Mel. Not only did we get to see her favorite playwright and actor, Tracy Letts, acting in one of his own plays for the first time, but we got to see it at Ground Zero for the Disco excess that Mel celebrates on her MIRRORBALL program on The AIR.

We saw the play, hopped a cab back to the hotel, shed our jackets and walked out exploring a little corner of NYC. It is pretty wild how now that marijauna is legal in New York, the predominant smell of the city is weed. Folks are selling it on the streets and pitching it to passers-by: “Hey, you want weed? Joints? Vapes? Edibles?”

I’m all for legalization, but I can’t stand the smell of that shit. I miss the smell of the exotic food carts. Anyway, we grabbed some cheap pizza and headed back to the hotel for dinner in our room. We’re still not ready for restaurants, even though we’d just been in a packed theater (wearing masks and showing proof of vaccination to get in). After we ate we ran back out, went to Times Square so Mel could hit some Broadway book stores, and we grabbed some Junior’s cheesecake to eat back at the hotel.

Back at the hotel we went to sleep. Woke up at 5 AM. Went the block and a half to Moynihan Train Hall, got settled on our train and we were back home Sunday night, before 10 PM.  The trip was a blast, and it was great to recapture some of our normal abnormality.

Here are some photos for you to enjoy…

One quick shot from the train on the way up. This might wind up inspiring one of my imitation Hopper paintings.

My beatuiful and camera-hating wife, so happy to be going on the trip that she didn’t scowl at the camera for once.

The reason for the trip.

Continue reading

Later today you will see a photo essay of a quick trip your PopCulteer took to New York City over the weekend. We got back very late Sunday, and yours truly had a lot to catch up on Monday, so there was no time to record a new Radio Free Charleston. However, I have Wednesday free, and a new RFC will debut Thursday afternoon at 2 PM, and then will be repeated in the regular timeslot next week so I can take care of some medical appointments and stuff.  Today we dug up a special treat for you in lieu of a new episode.

To listen to all of the fine programming on The AIR  you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player over at the top of the right column.

Tuesday at 2 PM and 10 PM you will hear the sixth episode of  RFC Volume 5, from February, 2020. The show has a few live tunes from The Swivel Rockers, as well as a spectuactular mix of music, both local and not. This is a pre-pandemic time capsule, for those who wish to relive the good old days.

Check out the playlist below, and then be sure to read PopCult on Thursday for all the notes on an all-new, three-hour episode of RFC, to help you slide into the weekend.

RFCV5006

hour one
The Swivel Rockers “She Said/Chicken Flop”
Maureen and the Mercury 5 “The Keepin’ Kind”
Paul McCartney “Nobody Knows”
Jerry Lee Lewis and Neil Young “Baby You Don’t Have To Go”
The Nanker Phelge “Mr. Creepy”
The Big Bad “Buried My Baby”
Sheldon Vance “Keep On Talking”
Mother Nang “Knee Deep In Wine”
Fletcher’s Grove “Mourning Mountaineer”
Junco Shakers “Sugar Coated”
Rel X “Believe The Lie”
Time And Distance “On My Own”
The Who “Detour”

hour two
The Swivel Rockers “Cinnamon Girl”
Transvision Vamp “I Want Your Love”
Hawthorne Heights “New Winter”
John Radcliff “Useless”
Peter Ivers “Eighteen and Dreaming”
Sparks “No More Mr. Nice Guy”
Scarlett Revolt “Bleed”
The Busters “Bust A Style”
Rasta Rafiki “Calypso Too”
Beggars Clan “Maiden Voyage”
Wolfgang Parker “The Heat”
69 Fingers “Pocket Full Of Change”
The Beat “Dangerous”
Madness “Idiot Child”

hour three
4 OHM MONO “Swandiver”
The Company Stores “So Good”
Stark Raven “Here Comes The Sun”
Elvis Costello & The Imposters “Unwanted Number”
Blue Million “Don’t Leave”
The Shoes “Stay The Same”
The Alarm “Brighter Than The Sun”
Strawfyssh “Netted Fish”
Dexy’s Midnight Runners “Incapable Of Love”
Crazy Jane “Echo Of A Season”
The Beautuful South “Blitzkrieg Bop”
Anthony Hoey “So So”
Mika “Tiny Love”
Hasil Adkins “Big Red Satellite”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with a replay Wednesday at 9 AM.

Thursday at 2 PM, we’ll bring you a brand-new show.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and Ska Madness at 2 PM. At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

Our art this week is an experiment in working with thick paint on a coarse canvas board using plastic eating utensils as brushes for part of the work. The paint is acrylic and the title of the piece is nicked from the song “Roundabout” by YES.

I am not usually an outdoorsy or nautical person, but this was inspired by some of the views you see while being driven along Lakeshore Drive in Chicago safely nestled in the back of a taxi. I didn’t use any photo reference, so this is basically a jumble of happy accidents and playing. I’ll be exploring this style a bit more in the future.

If you’d like to see it bigger, just click on the image.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

Tonight at 8 PM you can hear an hour of classic humorous songs by Tom Lehrer on The Comedy Vault. Wednesday evening at 10 PM, we’ll have another new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Then, at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat, providing you with five classic early episodes of our New Wave Music extravaganza, presented by Sydney Fileen and The Haversham Recording Institute.

This week we are revisiting a Sunday Evening Video from seven years ago. At the time, Charleston had a very promising Burlesque scene, and sadly, due to a myriad of reasons, the pandemic not being least among them, at the moment we don’t seem to have any Burlesque scene at all. I’m hoping this changes soon, and I know some fine folks have been planning so that our little town is once more blessed with the Burly-Q. When it happens I will tell you all about it here in PopCult.  In case you’re not familiar with Burlesque, tonight’s videos are a quick primer.

Burlesque is an art form. It doesn’t get the respect that it deserves because some people just can’t manage to see beyond the stripping-nekkid aspect of it, and miss the finer nuances of acting, story-telling, dance, costuming and performance art. Tonight we’re going to bring you a classic clip of Betty Page (above) so you can see a true legend in action.

Below we’re going to show you one of our own clips from 2014, with “Boylesque” dancer, Leo Tuxedo of Wayward BurlyQ, showing how Burlesque can be a form of political commentary. Both of these clips should be safe-ish for work, but maybe you’d better watch them at home, just to be sure.

Radio Free Charleston’s ninety-fifth episode, “Glen Brogan’s Visible Grimace Shirt,” is this week’s Flashback to March, 2010.

This episode of RFC showcases new music from Eva Elution and vintage music from Mother Nang. We also had our usual animation and mind-hurting weirdness. Plus we revisited the very first 60 Second Art Show, featuring the art of Felix Krasyk, on the occasion of his passing.

Of the contributors to this show, Eva Elution has disbanded, but their spirit lives on in Farnsworth, who seem to be gearing up for a return to the music scene. The members of Mother Nang: Spencer Elliott, Brian Young, Deron Sodaro and Jay Lukens are all still making new music in different bands. And the artist of our namesake shirt, Glen Brogan, has just seen the publication of the second edition of his book of art, which you can find HERE.

Read the original production notes HERE.