COMICS SUCK! - Adventure Comics #439 (June 1975)

40 YEARS AGO - April 1975

ADVENTURE COMICS #439 (DC Comics)

"The Voice That Doomed ... The Spectre"

By Michael Fleisher (w); Jim Aparo (a, l) & Joe Orlando (e)

The Spectre was one of the original superstars of the Golden Age of funny book adventurers in the late 1930's and early 1940's. Darker in tone than even Batman, The Spectre was the nearly omnipotent spirit of vengeance, who could manipulate reality to ironically punish and ultimately dispatch criminals. He, alongside such stalwart heroes as The Flash, Green Lantern, The Atom and Hawkman were all-star members of the Justice Society of America team. When DC revived the above-listed characters (in their own solo adventures), The Spectre was something of an afterthought, appearing in the company's tryout title Showcase, but only after the others were successfully re-imagined and sales re-invigored, After the brief run on Showcase, the god-like Spectre was given his own title which boasted the talents of future industry super-stars like Neal Adams, Dennis O'Neil and Bernie Wrightson. It wasn't enough and the book was cancelled after 10 issues.

The character was all but forgotten for five years until editor Joe Orlando was mugged and decided the world was ready for another revival of the vengeful Spectre.

Orlando, DC's horror line editor tapped his assistant Michael Fleisher and artist Jim Aparo (whom we've talked about here previously) for the Spectre series to appear in the pages of long-running anthology Adventure Comics. Though he'd been a writer and DC staffer for a couple years up to that point, Fleisher was something of an unknown quantity at the time. He was paired with Russell Carley who was given the unique role of "Script Continuity", providing art breakdowns for Fleisher's raw plots. Interestingly, once Fleisher did finally earn the trust of industry editors one of his more famous jobs was writing for competitor Marvel's original Ghost Rider series for roughly half of its span (Ghost Rider was Marvel's spirit of vengeance).

The Spectre feature in Adventure Comics started with #431 of that title and ran for 10 issues or a year and a half long. Taken in context, the series was shocking in its depiction of violence and gruesome death. Though those deaths were usually bloodless they were disturbing nonetheless: criminals were dissolved or turned into inanimate objects which were then destroyed, innocents were shot, bludgeoned or otherwise murdered onscreen, things that hadn't often been depicted in Comics Code Authority approved books since Orlando was working as an artist at revenge-obsessed E.C. Comics 20 years earlier.

By #439 the series was nearing its completion, and Fleisher no longer needed the help of Carley. The story opens with an obvious Patty Hearst reference as a terrorist "liberation army" breaks into a bank, kills the manager and leaves with Spectre's girlfriend. The Spectre's alter ego is the hard-boiled Jim Corrigan, the ghost of a police detective who is still gainfully employed by Gotham PD despite not having had a pulse since the 1930's. This issue toys around with the subplots of Spectre's love-life and immortality.

The series wrapped up with the very next issue and The Spectre didn't star in his own series again until volume 2 of his own title appeared in 1987 written by the grim and gritty Doug Moench with art by the wispy and ethereal Gene Colan, and a more fitting creative team for the character couldn't possibly be imagined.

***

MUSIC SUCKS!
HAWKWIND
'Warrior on the Edge of Time'

Hawkwind's fifth studio album found the Space Rock innovators at their demented hippie best, so of course 'Warrior on the Edge of Time' has its tough critics. By this point the permissive hippie ethic that had followed the band like a dozenth member was beginning to catch up to their own artistic aspirations. The music holds up with the rest of the band's earlier discography, but tensions within the touring entourage were beginning to tip the scales.

By this point the band was a hedonistic commune on wheels. With each release Hawkwind music had become more and more far-out, the vocals were effected, the vibe manic and the lyrics were mostly written by beloved fantasy novelist (and songwriter) Michael Moorcock. Hawkwind founder Dave Brock considers this to be the period during which the band peaked. By the end of it, bassist Lemmy Kilmister was kicked out of the band for partying too hard. It's all fun and games to live that permissive hippie lifestyle until it starts to interfere with business, something which is all but certain to happen.

It's interesting that this, the most trippiest of hippie albums of them all, came out right in the dead middle of the 1970's (May 9, '75). It wasn't long before the hippie flame was reduced to off-campus embers and a new ethos had taken shape: punk rock, individuality, the "me" generation's hippies turned to yippies. The dream of a better world died while the dream of a better "self" seemed attainable. As for Lemmy? He did alright for himself after his ouster from the hippie band.

***

MOVIES SUCK!

POOR PRETTY EDDIE 

Directed by Richard Robinson
Cast - Leslie Uggams, Shelley Winters & Michael Christian

COMICS SUCK! - The Brave & The Bold #118 (April 1975)

40 YEARS AGO - April 1975

THE BRAVE & THE BOLD #118 (DC Comics)

"May the Best Man Win Die!"

By Bob Haney (w); Jim Aparo (a, l) & Murray Boltinoff (e)

Like Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up (which was discussed at this location), Batman became the featured character in DC's team-up book The Brave & the Bold with issue #67 in summer 1966. The title became a team-up book with issue #50 which featured a one-off teaming of Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter, two of the lesser lights of the Justice League of America. Before that, the title was a "showcase" book for potential new series, starting with issue #25 (September 1959) starring The Suicide Squad. The Justice League itself was first introduced in the pages of The Brave & the Bold (#28) as was Cave Carson (#31), a newly re-introduced Hawkman with a new origin (#34) and a bizarre concept later picked up on by Warren Publishing's Creepy and Eerie magazines called Strange Sports Stories (#45). The series started as an entirely different thing, however. It was first published in (cover dated) August 1955 featuring stories of gallant knights in gleaming armor, from ancient Rome to medieval England, in the same vein as EC Comics's title Valor, introducing three characters with basically self-explanatory names: The Golden Gladiator, The Viking Prince and The Silent Knight. I plan to feature both Valor and Brave & the Bold #1 in future editions of Comics Suck! later in the year (Fingers crossed!).

Jim Aparo's Batman is gritty and is close to being the
definitive take on the character.

So after all it's iterations, by the time issue #118 rolled around, Brave & the Bold was a Batman book, and writer Bob Haney (a mainstay on the book since issue #50) has established certain traditions within its pages. One of those was the regular team-ups with Golden Age star, Wildcat. This was the fifth such teaming, the previous one had only taken place in issue #110 from January 1974. It seemed readers couldn't get enough of the scrappy, avuncular old fighting man ... err, cat. The very next issue (#111, March '74) saw the first ever Batman / Joker pairing as the caped crusader's iconic nemesis was becoming an increasingly big draw in his own right. Issue #118 was billed as a two-way team-up but isn't even close to playing out as advertised. Batman and Wildcat team-up and Joker is the villain of the piece. It's all very black and white. Putting Joker's name on the cover, however was a way to build just a little more "brand recognition" for the character as he would star in his very own title the next month. Barring Eclipso (who never actually starred in his own title, but was the featured character in House of Secrets for a couple years), Joker was to become the first ever comics villain to receive his own title (I also hope to feature an issue of that title as well, but that won't be for awhile).

Much as the cover depicts, Batman and Wildcat are forced to slug it out in a no-holds-barred boxing match while wearing the Roman spiked cestus gloves. All while a cute little poochie has a gun to its head. The common practice at DC in those days was for a cover artist, be it Jim Aparo, Carmine Infantino or Bernie Wrightson on the horror mags to do up an interesting cover, then give it to the writer to craft a story around it. It's kind of an ass-backwards approach to storytelling but it was DC's editorial policy at the time. Luckily, Brave & the Bold had one of the finest creative teams in the business.

Haney was a cagey veteran storyteller who could adapt his style to suit his artist, his Batman stories were mostly fun, establishing the light, humorous tone for the future animated series Batman: Brave and the Bold, but he could also do gritty like nobody else. Classic Batman artist Neal Adams cut his bat-teeth on the title before moving on to do spot work with classic Batman scribe Dennis O'Neil on various issues of Batman and Detective Comics. While each of those issues is now considered legendary and are highly sought-after, Adams's run on B&B is largely overlooked but needn't be, Haney was a fine writer, equally undervalued if not totally forgotten by today's comics audience. But if you ever pondered the strange and hilarious tone on the B&B cartoon, it came from Haney, who could throw equal parts camp, humor and suspense at the reader in a single issue.

Jim Aparo was another of those artists who could bring out the grittiness in Haney's scripts. Aparo would remain the regular artist on the title all the way up until its ultimate demise with issue #200 in 1983 when it gave way to a new Batman-centric title, Batman & the Outsiders which was basically a team-up book with a regular cast rather than a different character or team for Batman to battle alongside each issue. Aparo would draw the bulk of those issues as well. He remained a regular Batman artist until the early 1990's when he was finally crowbarred off the title by newer, younger rising stars like Mike Manley and Tom Lyle (who are, sadly both largely forgotten today also, but are both still working illustrators). But Aparo's final issue of Batman was cover dated February 1999 (#562). He died in 2005 at the age of 73. While not as dark or striking as Adams's Batman art, Aparo's linework was never-the-less on par with his more celebrated contemporary and because he was the main Batman artist for a period spanning three full decades, his Batman comes very close to being the "definitive" take on the character.

If this title says nothing else to us, it shows that Marvel Comics wasn't the only "house of ideas", DC took a ridiculous amount of chances in the 1960's and 70's, pumping out bizarre comics like Prez, Deadman, The Haunted Tank, Eclipso and Creeper while also creating concepts like the super-hero team-up book and the villain-lead title at a time when their rivals were mostly hamstrung by a bad distribution deal brokered by DC. Many of these ideas failed and most of them were more interesting in concept than in execution, but at least they tried them. Over the years, DC has garnered a reputation for continuing to publish good titles whose sales figures aren't great, as a company, they certainly aren't perfect, but at least they ain't Marvel.

And now, here to discuss ...
WHAT ELSE THE KIDS WERE UP TO BACK THEN
is my good friend Tony Maim! Take it to the stage, Tony ...



FUNKADELIC - 'CHOCOLATE CITY'

James Brown was riding high after “The Payback” and “Hell”, two double albums that showed his now legendary use of fixing a groove and playing the fuck out of it, using just bass, guitar and some horns along with hard hitting lyrics about drugs addiction, poverty and racism. On the other side of the block, Funkadelic were chasing funk, groove and party times with the gleeful abandon of kids let loose in a toy store. This album has the feel of joyful playing for the sake of just putting down vibes that wanna make you dance. Band leader George Clinton mixed funk, disco. soul, heavy rock with no regard for traditional arrangements. Electric organs carrying riffs, squelching synch lines, female backing vocals, raps, singing, chanting and the wild fuzz attack of Eddie Hazel spraying Jimi Hendrix type solos all over the place made this an infectious riot of modern music. Combined with the stage look of alien-playing funk invaders this was an un-earthly slice of grooviness – all together now …..

“Shit, Goddamn, Get Off Your Ass and Jam.”

So after braving the gritty impact of the cestus fight between Batman & Wildcat in the pages of Brave & the Bold, then subsequently getting off their asses and jamming, it was time for the young people of the middle-70's to catch a movie and The Night Train Murders would have fit the bill nicely.

Essentially, this is the movie Last House on the Left could have been. It was actually re-titled New House on the Left, Last House Part II and Second House on the Left in different territories. It deals with the same themes and plays out in similar fashion (basically, it's a rip-off, pure and simple), albeit in a slightly more tasteful fashion. But when dealing with a subject as disgusting as rape, tastefulness isn't really on the menu. The Night Train Murders fall into some of the pitfalls as Wes Craven's early piece de resistance including several explicit depictions of rape. It's hard to say what director Aldo Lado's and writers Roberto Infascelli, Renato Izzo and Ettore Sanzo's intentions were in showing it on screen. It's true horror that's for sure, and maybe one of the better things horror stories can do is lock us in a room with our tormentors and force us to face them for better or worse. What the intention, it landed the film the infamous "video nasty" label in the UK.

This Italian production featured the acting talents of Flavio Bucci, Marina Berti, Irene Miracle, Gianfranco De Grassi, Laura D'Angelo and Macha Meril as the unforgettable yet unnamed villain, "converted" from passive train passenger to active participant in the destruction of two young women's lives and the subsequent cover-up. She is one of the most evil and hateful characters I've ever encountered anywhere.

You can watch the full movie at this location. Trailer below:

COMICS SUCK! - Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm & Such #1 (March 1995)

20 YEARS AGO - March 1995

Cover artwork by Tim Truman.

JONAH HEX - RIDERS OF THE WORM & SUCH #1 (Vertigo - DC Comics)
"No Rest for the Wicked and the Good Don't Need Any"
By Joe R. Lansdale (w); Tim Truman (p); Sam Glanzman (i); Sam Parsons (c); Todd Klein (l) & Stuart Moore (e)

Riders of the Worm and Such was a five issue limited series from Vertigo comics, it was the second Joe Lansdale / Tim Truman Jonah Hex mini-series after the award winning Two-Gun Mojo from 1993. That series proved that the team could handle Hex's world and stay true to it, although one could argue that the characterization and setting is a little stiff at times. Riders of the Worm is where the creative team let loose and had fun.

And it IS fun. Lansdale is a rare writer, Riders of the Worm, like many of his stories is equal parts horror and humor. He has discovered a balance that I haven't read any other writer find as successfully. Many can handle one but not the other, some dilute the effect of both with the presence of the other. Stephen King does it quite successfully, as does his son Joe Hill at times. Lansdale turns the horror and humor knobs up to 11 without blowing the speakers. It's a thing to watch, the humor is truly funny and the horrors are truly ghastly.

The story revolves around Hex coming upon a strange ranch with a young sidekick after being attacked by giant half-man, half-worms. The ranch is run by Mr. Graves, an Englishman, inspired by a bar brawl he shared with Oscar Wilde to spread art and culture to the cowboys of Texas. Hex encounters Hildy at the ranch and the two strike a romance of convenience. He also runs into the Autumn brothers, Edgar and Johnny who strike romances of convenience of their own with pigs. There are loads of gross-out moments in these five issues and the Autumn brothers are principally involved in most of them.

And, like most, if not all of Lansdale's writing, there's wit. In issue 3, Mr. Graves refers to the worms as "denizens of the netherworld."

"What's a denizen?" the kid says.

"Kinda like a Yankee," Hildy says.

In this first issue, Hex's newfound travel partner, Rudy is pulled halfway outside the window of their shelter by the titular worms. Hex and the kid manage to pull him back in, but he's been bitten in half and only his legs return.

"One thing's sure," Hex says, "he didn't get caught on a nail." (See image at left)

It's obvious that Lansdale is fascinated by pre-Columbian America. Because it's history is mostly unrecorded and undeveloped, it provides him a sprawling canvas upon which to draw and he always delivers with the goods when drawing on it. It was said this story was based on local folklore, but I'm sure Lansdale colored in some of the background. Of course, when he does bring out his box of crayolas, he uses buckets of blood red.

Many of his most colorful moments, however are reserved for the Autumn brothers. The cross-eyed, pig diddling simpletons were based on Johnny and Edgar Winter and the company was sued for their efforts by the famous duo but won (read all about it at this location).


WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?

Joe R. Lansdale carried on the Weird Tales pulp tradition throughout the 1980's and 90's, continuing to this day, so it's only right that another underrated weird tale scribe was also represented with a major release in March 1995:



MONSTER MAGNET - DOPES TO INFINITY
Dave Wyndorf, leader of Monster Magnet is arguably the weirdest poet of the post-beat, post-hippie era. His lyrics seem like stream-of-consciousness rambling on first listen, but contain a penetrable internal logic, unlike some of the other well-known lyricists of the 90's. For example, "All Friends and Kingdom Come" is a threatening romantic ultimatum, but the casual listener might not catch that among all the talk of "mushroom boy" and "mushroom clouds in my hands". I think it's time to re-evaluate Wyndorf's lyrics and place him among the great weird authors of the 20th century. He certainly comes out of the pulp tradition, having been weened on a steady diet of fuzz guitars and Jack Kirby Marvel comics.

Aside from the lyrics, 'Dopes to Infinity' contained some of the best music of the decade, smack dab in the middle of it. The album did quite well overseas but was virtually ignored on their home soil. It's been the story of the band's career. The problem wasn't one of quality, but how to qualify the band. They're too heavy to be a rock band, but not heavy enough to be a metal band. Who would buy these wonderful evils? The answer: Europeans!

To this day Wyndorf prefers the European audience and it's hard to blame him. He talks about it endlessly in interviews, but this recent quote takes the cake: "do you want to live your life playing in some shitty bar where some guy with a bald head and ponytail is looking at you going Do Freebird!! Or do you want to go play in front of 26-year-old girls with big tits in Finland? That’s where you

want to go. And that’s where I go!" (read the full interview at this location)

'Dopes To Infinity' is one of my favorite albums of all-time. It along with Alice in Chains's 'Music Bank' box set and the first six Black Sabbath albums have been mainstays in my listening rotation since high school. It's not necessarily diverse, it's not necessarily an "important" record historically, it's just good ... real good. Every song is exciting in its own way but I think what ultimately won my heart in those early days was the instrumental "Ego the Living Planet", named after one of the most fascinating characters to spring from the mind of Kirby and one of my personal favorites. The way to my heart isn't through food it's through early Marvel references.

Dave Wyndorf knows the way.

Well, now you've sampled Wyndorf and Lansdale, but have you read Sutter Cane?

Far as I'm concerned In the Mouth of Madness is director John Carpenter's last classic film and in some ways is his masterpiece. Combining the on-page and off-page lore of writers H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King into a single character, Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), Carpenter and screenwriter Michael De Luca had free reign here to explore every avenue of horror. The story is about fictional worlds bleeding into reality through the diabolical work of Cane. His books are turning people into maniacal killers, Sam Neil plays an insurance investigator sent on behalf of a publishing house (Arcane House run by Charlton Heston) to find him. Along the way he falls deeply into the mouth of madness.

In many ways the film is a love letter to two of the most popular masters of literary horror of the 20th century, but mostly it's a gallery of wonderful images. It's like an exhibition of deleted scenes from the minds of the masters put together into a running narrative. Now, that may not sound like the greatest of endorsements, and not every Carpenter fan loves this movie, but I think it's fantastic. But that's also why it may be Carpenter's masterpiece. Many of his most lasting images are in this film, without any one totally dominating. Who can forget the guy on the bike? Or the Cathedral of Transfiguration which doubled as Cane's castle and the mob that guarded it? Or Seinfeld's Nanna, Frances Bay as the murderous and deviant innkeeper? Or Julie Carmen's transformation.

The first time I watched this movie, I hated it. The premise didn't grab me and the look of the picture felt cheap and uninspired. But after I gave it another chance, it was revelatory and plays as the best "Lovecraft adaptation" not directed by Stuart Gordon.

COMICS SUCK! - Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (February 2005)

10 YEARS AGO - February 2005

Cover artwork by Barry Kitson.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #1 (DC Comics)
"And We Are Legion"
By Mark Waid (w); Barry Kitson (p); Mick Gray (i); Chris Blythe (c); Phil Balsman (l) & Stephen Wacker (e)
There was a time when the Legion of Super-Heroes was the Doom Metal of comic books. An outsider's niche within an outsider's world. At a time when any comic fan might be ostracized by the popular kids in high school, the comic fans would ostracize Legion fans. The series was just too weird, too different, there were too many characters and it was all a little too insular. It was also the first DC comic to feature a consistent chronology where the events of one issue spilled over to the next, a storytelling technique that would be capitalized on to much critical acclaim by competitors Marvel Comics. Legion stories were hard sci-fi at a time when the explanation for Superman's powers was that his body reacted differently to Earth's yellow sun than it does near Krypton's own red sun. Yet Legion fandom thrived for decades and across generations, as isolated within their own niche as the Super-Heroes of their beloved Legion were isolated from the rest of the DC universe of characters within their own sliding timeline of 1000 years into its future.

By the late 1980's however, sale were stagnant. The title had been reduced to selling in comic specialty shops alone, no longer sharing market spinner rack space with Batman and Action Comics. Editors devised a plan.

5 Years Later.

The glittering, happy-go-lucky milieu of the Legion of Super-Heroes would give way to a darker vision that  better reflected the mood of the '80's. A new story was developed with many important original elements written out of the team's history in 1989. Set in a gritty, post-apocalyptic "five years later", this new Legion is almost universally despised by Legion fans, to whom the names Tom & Mary Bierbaum (the writers of the series) unfairly bring naught but scorn and evil-eyed mean mugging, if not outright sugar-in-the-gas-tank levels of hatred.

Flash forward to "five years later" in real time, the series was rebooted with issue #62 in late 1994 with the sense of wonder at a hopeful, bright shiny future restored. Although the reboot series was quite good overall and faithful to the original vision of the series, this Legion didn't last, cancelled by issue #125. It was revived in 2001 for 38 issues by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (the writer of the series that inspired the movie Guardians of the Galaxy), which is still my personal favorite "post-5 years later" Legion series, but again failed to find an audience. The niche was growing smaller, there wasn't as much pie to go around to begin with as sales continued to slump across the board, but that didn't mean that the comics publishing giant was willing to give up on this beloved franchise.

Unfortunately, the editors decided to wipe away the entire reboot continuity as well as the original continuity and start all over again from scratch. Fans call it the "threeboot". As a measure of its effectiveness on readers, all you need to know is the five years later story inspires hatred while the threeboot inspires only mockery. There's nothing that can be said about this issue to redeem it for Legion fans. It features some good writing from one of the great masters of the form, Mark Waid who adroitly plays with Legion lore.

Waid does something very interesting in this issue. He makes a comment about how our technology, that which facilitates conversation across distances is encroaching on more intimate interactions, and he does it in an interesting way. We see a conversation taking place, two characters taking to each other's floating head on a glowing screen. As the "camera" zooms out, we start to see word balloons cut off by the page's edge, repeated from elsewhere on the page. First, you think it's some kind of mistake of the printing process. Then we flip the page for the big reveal that both participants are actually speaking to each other through devices while standing back to back in the same room. The scene works on a ridiculous amount of levels.

But no matter how interesting the storytelling was, there was no way fans were going to embrace the second hard reboot of their beloved series in just barely over 10 years. However it was intended to go, this series eventually went the way of all things Legion. It was, like all series that came before it, later wiped from continuity at the whim of editors.

WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After posting online memes about the latest George W. Bush assault on the English language and trying out the newly rebooted Legion of Super-Heroes comics, the increasingly disaffected youth of the '00's pirated digital copies of this album:

HIGH ON FIRE - Blessed Black Wings
To flashback to 2005, we're going to have to flash forward to 2012. High on Fire was my gateway drug. In early 2012 I started thinking about my old heavy metal favorites from back when I was in high school: Metallica, Pantera, nothing fancy. I wanted to hear them again but I'd pawned off my CD's a decade earlier. So I started watching youtube videos for "Am I Evil?" and "Walk" among others. On the sidebar were a list of suggested videos. High on Fire's "Rumors of War" came up.

High on Fire circa 2005 [Image source]

But let us flashback even further than 2005. I didn't stay with metal after high school because it was becoming increasingly homogeneous. Black metal and death metal is not my thing and never has been, and since that stuff dominated, and because I didn't have access to a resource like the internet to find hidden gems and underground bands, I just stuck with my old favorites and left the new stuff alone. Eventually, my tastes changed, I always preferred heavy music, but 60's and 70's psychedelic rock caught the attentions of my wandering ear and I had moved on.

The "Rumors of War" video came up on youtube and I clicked. I braced myself for phony vocals and blast beats ... but what I heard was a riff. A good, heavy riff, then some intense, but not showy drumming. Add in a crooked tooth and I was blown away.

So, I looked into the band. It turns out they were considered to be part of a heavy metal subgenre called "doom metal", which sounded both ridiculous and awesome at the same time. I read about this so-called "doom metal" and I liked what I was seeing. "A whole genre of music dedicated to sounding like Black Sabbath?" I was ready to dive in.

But I hit a snag. The bands I tried first, Solitude Aeternus, Candlemass and My Dying Bride, just didn't make it for me. I didn't like the vocals. At least I'd found High on Fire. It wouldn't be until I saw a video interview with Phil Anselmo where he talked about Witchfinder General, Trouble and Saint Vitus and I went to the trouble to check those bands out that I had found for my ears the love of their life. It was from that point on that I dedicated myself to finding more of these kinds of bands, both old and brand new.

'Blessed Black Wings' was High on Fire's third album. Though Matt Pike (guitar, vocals, ex-Sleep) and Des Kensel (drums) had still yet to find a solid bass player, this album has that identifiable take-no-prisoners, keep-your-foot-planted-on-their-throats sound that the band is known for. 'Blessed Black Wings' is a particularly raging album even for this band whose music is often compared to something a caveman would make.

Also out this same month was an album from another new band of former members of underground legends, Sleep. Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius's new band OM released their first album, called 'Variations on a Theme' on February 15, 2005. It doesn't get much more opposite to caveman music than this as OM picked up where Sleep left off with three long songs and a cemented-to-the-couch vibe. Both albums are excellent, but each occupies its own respective niche, on opposite sides of the heavy planet (just a subtle plug for you).

But after sassing Dubyuh online, reading DC's attempt at a Legion of Super-Heroes threeboot and illegally downloading 'Blessed Black Wings' it was time for a night out. It was time to hit the multiplex theater and catch Saw .,,

But, I don't want to talk about Saw because also out in the world 10 years ago today was another film, the first in producer Takashige Ichise's J-Horror Theater series, Infection, directed by Masayuki Ochiai. With the success of The Ring and Dark Water, Japanese filmmakers were encouraged to keep a steady buzz going to showcase their weird iconoclasm.

The film is in Japanese with English subtitles and the basically silent trailer that was made for English speaking audiences shows the difficulty of conveying a story with just images. There isn't a comics storyteller alive who can't identify with this struggle. You can watch it here.

COMICS SUCK! - Azrael #1 (February 1995)

20 YEARS AGO - February 1995

Cover artwork by Barry Kitson

AZRAEL #1 (DC Comics)
"Some Say in Fire ..."
By Dennis O'Neil (w, e); Barry Kitson (p); James Pascoe (i); Demetrias Bassoukos (c) & Ken Bruzenak (l)

It's the series no one demanded and was destined to failure, but somehow eked out a respectable existence. You remember how it all started, it was big news that transcended the comics world. Not two years after killing off Superman, DC Comics had literally crippled the Bruce Wayne. But a little thing like a broken back wouldn't stop the Batman. In Bruce Wayne's absence, a new character, John Paul Valley was drafted to take the mantle of the bat. Before long, JPV Batman established that he had a longer-term solution to crime, namely, killing the bad guys. This all took place in the now legendary Knightfall storyline. I was in Grade 7 at the time and was fully against the whole idea, knowing it was a crass marketing scam and that the company would bring back Bruce Wayne eventually. Even as a 12 year old, I wasn't fooled. But I've since read the entire Knightfall story and I've got to say it's excellent. This is one of the few instances where my 12 year old self was wrong.

If it does nothing else, Knightfall answers the question "why doesn't Batman simply kill his villains since they keep coming back?" I love that the editors addressed this "elephant in the room" head-on and showed that the answer to this question is not only obvious, but essential to one of the most enduring fictional characters of the 20th century.

In the aftermath of the story, John Paul Valley was despised by fans. He needed to be, he was designed that way. Ultimately, he was a patsy.

It wasn't long however, before the editors of the Batman family of books realized they had an intriguing character on their hands and gave him a title of his own. Though murderous, he had a disturbing innocent quality and was at heart, a demon-haunted "good guy" fighting the good fight, albeit in a misguided way.

Because DC tapped Dennis O'Neil, one of the greatest writers in the history of the medium, to pen the character's solo tales, the book slowly, grudgingly found a minority audience and survived for a surprising 100 issues. By this time, JPV was once again going by his original name of Azrael, after losing the mantle of the bat in combat with a recovered Bruce Wayne. Azrael was an agent of the Order of St. Dumas, a shadowy organization with ties to both Catholicism and the occult. JPV had been raised as a regular kid in America but had been the victim of psychic driving to implant in his mind the combat techniques that would make him nearly the equal of Batman. The process had also driven him mad.

The first issue re-established O'Neil's methodology of continuous 5-issue story arcs that he had introduced six years earlier on Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. The story begins with JPV as a drifter fantasizing that he is still a costumed vigilante. When he protects a newfound friend from a random attack, he mentally dons the red and gold garb of Azrael and refrains from killing the assailants. But he can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality and when the thugs return to set fire to the homeless shelter he is staying at, he convinces himself to ignore the flames, thinking them another hallucination.

By issue 5, the final chapter in the opening "Fallen Angel" storyline, he is slowly learning to adjust, motivated by protective feelings towards another newfound ally, Sister Lilhy who he helps escape the manipulative clutches of the Order of St. Dumas. Although incredibly emotionally immature, Azrael must help look after Lilhy, who is even worse off than he is. Neither are equipped to deal with society.

With issue 47, in an attempt to boost sales and tie Azrael more closely to the larger Batman universe, the series was re-titled Azrael - Agent of the Bat. It's a testament to the strength of O'Neil's writing that this hated character even found an audience to begin with. He wrote all 100 regular issues of the title and the issue #1,000,000 special.

WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After taking a chance on a new title for a hated character, the surly youth of 1995 undoubtedly marched into their local CD shop to sample the weird and riffy sounds from a new and angry band:



ELECTRIC WIZARD - Self-Titled

I wasn't around for this. I wish I had been, this album would have blown my little mind sky high-ee-igh and six feet under. Though Electric Wizard's debut can tend to sound slight and polite when compared to later albums 'Dopethrone' and 'Come My Fanatics', in February 1995 this must have been the heaviest thing those lucky few who found it had ever heard.

The trademark riff-laden sound of the band was already firmly in place, but the production is cleaner than what fans may have later come to expect. This is written in the perspective of one who found them much later, of course. But that cleanliness focuses the spotlight on Jus Oborne and co.'s Black Sabbath worship. A song like "Behemoth" makes that crystal clear. Few have managed to play in Tony Iommi's sandbox and come out as filthy.

The highlights don't end there of course. "Stone Magnet", "Mourning Prayer" and my personal favorite "Devil's Bride" (see video above) also showcase Oborne's Hammer Films, and exploitation cinema sensibilities. Later on, the use of film clips would become a staple of the band's atmosphere. They are absent here.

And while they are inarguably one of the bigger names in Doom Metal, and helped to define the style, they are a divisive band. Some of those who don't like the band today, stay loyal to the early records, including this one. But that's what happens when a true visionary artist does what he wants, those who can't keep up get left behind. It wasn't long before Electric Wizard outgrew this album, but for early '95, this is world-melting stuff.

Right. So after fixing their undercuts, inhaling an obscene amount of intoxicants, sampling the latest title from DC Comics and getting ear raped by the first coming of the next generation of heavy, the surly youth of the mid-90's headed to the theater in the local shopping mall to check out the new HBO's Tales from the Crypt movie, Demon Knight. Psh, obviously.

"Come on out everybody, time to play!"

Much like the comic book the show was inspired by, years of gory storytelling were hollowing out the soul of the series. When Demon Knight came out the show was on the verge of being cancelled and the plan moving forward was for the producers to concentrate on a (hopefully) never-ending series of full-length movies of originally stories in the EC Comics spirit, rather than the 20 minute television episodes based on the actual EC Comics stories. Demon Knight was the first of these.

The film was directed by Ernest Dickerson and starred Billy Zane, Jada Pinkett, William Sadler, Brenda Bakke, CCH Pounder, Dick Miller and Thomas Haden Church. It was successful enough to spawn a second film, Bordello of Blood but that spelled the end of things for the Tales from the Crypt crew. But Demon Knight was successful enough with 13-year old me. It was my favorite horror movie of that year and gave everything a little Grade 8 turd like me could handle: demons, possession, tits, explosions, ultraviolence, Jesus blood and some memorably gory deaths.

Those deaths in particular stand out. Some of them were tongue-in-the-heart outrageous, blood spraying like a-teamster-with-his-thumb-on-the-end-of-a-garden-hose gory. This was at the very peak of practical effects. CGI was in its infancy and no one outside of James Cameron could find the budget for it, while practical effects had reached all new levels of sophistication. Which was all too the good. I remember times in particular about sneaking cigarettes, reading Fangoria magazine, my Tales from the Crypt reprints while watching Demon Knight on VHS and just marveling at the magic of special effects wizards like Tom Savini, while thinking of my own possibilities, drawing melting men and skulls, skulls everywhere.

The script was originally written in 1987 and intended to be director Tom Holland's follow-up to Child's Play. After a marathon round through production hell it eventually landed on the desk of producer Joel Silver where it was intended to be the second of a trilogy of Tales from the Crypt spin-off films. Cooler heads decided Demon Knight was the better of the three and so it was put into production ahead of schedule and Grade 8 history was made.

And though Electric Wizard's debut had just been released I wasn't hip enough to catch on to it, but the Demon Knight soundtrack was more than adequate at the time. The standout song from the film was from a brand new band called Filter. As I recall, this was the first anybody had ever heard of the band and how they get their first single into a major motion picture was any teenager's guess at the time. It turns out Richard Patrick is the brother of Robert Patrick who you might remember from Terminator 2 and I'm sure that had more than a little to do with it. The song was "Hey Man Nice Shot" and at the time I loved it. Filter had spun off from Nine Inch Nails and had a bit of that heavy industrial sound to them but with a little more rock n roll to it. On later albums they shit the bed creatively which it turns out is just the thing to propel a band into new heights of popularity. Ahem.

The rest of the soundtrack were no slouches either. "Cemetery Gates" by Pantera, and good tracks from Sepultura, Ministry, Machine Head, Rollins Band and that weird band I'd seen on Much Music with the guy with the weird hair, The Melvins. Yeah, that soundtrack was pretty bad ass for its time, although it did thin out in places as various artists soundtracks often do.

Take my word on it, this film loses its power to thrill on subsequent viddies but 20 years ago, I couldn't get enough of it.