By Ryan Brlecic

Howard the Duck is a true “game changer” of a comic from the 1970’s. It lasted for longer than anyone would have guessed and was simply phenomenal. Steve Gerber was a true pioneer of modern comic books. Unfortunately Howard the Duck was canceled when Stan Lee finally read an issue and realized Marvel was publishing something he didn’t steal from Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko (I chide). For a brief period Gerber worked on Howard with original artist Val Mayerik as a newspaper strip. What follows is the time in which Howard fought an elf with a gun and did anything but save Christmas.

Enjoy!

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By Ryan Brlecic

Given the time period in Jack Kirby’s career, one might expect his adaptation to lack any real passion – but his Prisoner is a fervid, ardent sequential take on the material and an odd fit with Kirby’s 70’s output.

Kirby’s own appeal to the proposed series which was rife with the concept of “an individuals stubborn attempts to gain freedom from a faceless despotic ruling body” makes perfect sense within Kirby’s canon (and his feelings for Marvel). Its paranoiac premise reflected shades of OMAC, his later run on Captain America, Fourth World, and of course his creation Mr. Miracle.

Kirby’s fascination with The Prisoner in fact dates back at least as far as Fantastic Four #84-87, which would have been produced in 1968, the very year The Prisoner was first broadcast in the US. That story focuses on a Latverian village constructed by Dr. Doom to entrap the Fantastic Four, a village in which the falsely-smiling peasants seem just as cowed and evasive as the inhabitants of McGoohan’s village. Stan Lee later (October ‘69) acknowledged this story as an homage to/parody of The Prisoner – clearly, the concept lodged itself in Kirby’s brain soon after, or even during, the TV show’s original run.

Jack Kirby shared with McGoohan a similar career thematic disregard for control and oppression in society over the individual. Best embodied by Kirby in his creation Darkseid and his ongoing quest for Anti-Life; dramatizing the struggle between individual freedom versus tyrannical control. As McGoohan used the spy genre to make his similar point, It was Kirby who used comics  to show the ideal version of ourselves. Ones strong enough to stand up to the forces that try to hold us in submission. McGoohan used television as an intellectual vehicle, as Kirby was determined to make the superhero comic a platform for ideas.

You can read into Jack Kirby’s Prisoner as an allegory for his own professional status in the mid-’70s. It is a story about a man who resigns his position “on matter of principle,” only to find that he is once again is in the grip of an indecent power. He left Marvel, then felt frustrated with his ambitions at DC, and then his ultimate return to Marvel which saw him no better. Jack Kirby has been nicknamed “The King”, but I believe secretly he was “The Prisoner”.

Scroll below to view pages from Kirby’s adaptation.

Further reading via Twomorrows Publishing

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By Ryan Brlecic

“But a big budget always was an obstacle and, Inglourious Basterds notwithstanding, period war movies have not been en vogue in Hollywood for years, unless it was a more serious contemplation of the subject like Saving Private Ryan (Editor’s Note: Which was almost twelve years ago). Also, American jingoism went out of style after 9/11; even this summer’s G.I. Joe movie dropped the toy’s “A Real American Hero” tagline and made the action team internationally focused.

The studio hopes moving the time period to the future solves the dilemma.”

Let’s take the above from the standpoint that it seems unprofitable and problematic to be an American. Why then, I ask, would you choose to even consider using the character of Sgt. Frank Rock and Easy Company? (Side Note: I will enjoy the horror that results from Marvel Studios trying to hide the “America” in Captain America) Rather then turn a character/property enjoyed by many into a farce of itself, why not just create a new property? But there in lies the answer. It would effectively take Hollywood to create something new and untested to solve this presented dilemma.

Had those involved currently with the project actually read the source material they would have realized the message was always, War is Hell. “American Jingoism” is not at all how one would describe Sgt. Rock once they got past the surface. This was a war comic written by men who had lived the exploits, fallen asleep to mortar shells, and seen their friends die. It was pro-military, it was pro-American, and it was unashamed of both. The difference however existed in the presentation. Sgt. Rock and Easy Company did not want to kill or be at war, but they understood duty.

“The Rock stories dealt with their subject matter deftly and with compassion, highlighting their battles in the European theater and the personal strains that infantry members endure in wartime. As a result of this, these aren’t always easy stories to read. But they should be read.”

The comic represented a breed of man we no longer produce and a time period we no longer understand. Today we deride our own country out of foolish global acceptance, and we live in age of entitlement. The comic was a lesson of having to do something you didn’t necessarily want to do for merely the hope of a greater good. Sgt. Rock and easy company fought for a better tomorrow. The comic was not pretty, but neither is war.

So to Silver Pictures, THRILL ME. Not to borrow from another country’s example of Jingoism, but right now your approach represents a kamikaze strategy (see Highlander 2, Constantine, I Am Legend). Besides, Sgt. Rock was already made into a movie. For the closest cinematic portrayal of Sgt. Rock one can find, seek out Sam Fuller’s underratedThe Big Red One. What Silver Pictures is missing in their planned adaption is written on Lee Marvin’s face in the final scene.

Sgt. Rock, A Brief History:

Writer-editor Robert Kanigher created Sgt. Rock as the first recurring feature in DC’s line of war comics, beginning in Our Army At War in 1959. Kanigher designed Rock to be largely a composite of several other lead characters he had used to that point in various previous stories. Originally named “Sgt. Rocky”, with the nickname “The Rock of Easy Company”, Kanigher revised his lead’s name within a few issues and positioned him as the platoon leader at the same time that renowned artist Joe Kubert came on board to take on art responsibilities.

Rock was joined in Easy Company by a wide variety of other G.I.s, including: Wildman, Four-Eyes, and Ice Cream Soldier. According to Maurice Horn in his ‘World Encyclopedia of Comics’, the Sgt. Rock feature was also notable for introducing one of comics’ first non-stereotyped black characters, Jackie Johnson.

And I cannot stress reading the original stories enough. You can find them here.

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“I think when you get to the last page of the story, it was kind of a mission statement for where I wanted to go from here,” Vaughan explained, “which is that it’s perfectly fine to love the characters that we grow up with, and that there’s nothing wrong with keeping them alive and breathing new life into them but the real adventure for any creator is to sort of let go of the past and force yourself to create something new. So in a weird way, it would almost feel like a betrayal of the story and of the characters to go back to that rather than sort of letting their story being their story and for me to I think press on and hopefully keep creating more new things.”

-Brian K. Vaughan quoted at Blog@Newsarama.

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Writer-editor Robert Kanigher created Sgt. Rock as the first recurring feature in DC’s line of war comics, beginning in Our Army At War in 1959. Kanigher designed Rock to be largely a composite of several other lead characters he had used to that point in various previous stories. Originally named “Sgt. Rocky”, with the nickname “The Rock of Easy Company”, Kanigher revised his lead’s name within a few issues and positioned him as the platoon leader at the same time that reknowned artist Joe Kubert came onboard to take on art responsibilities.

Kanigher gave Rock an origin in 1963, within the pages of Showcase, saying that Rock had enlisted as a private during the early days of World War II. Rock later rose to the rank of sergeant after he held Easy Company’s position on a hill despite a German onslaught that killed the other men in his unit. In subsequent years, Rock would routinely turn down offers of promotion, choosing instead to remain on the battlefield with the other “Combat Happy Joes of Easy”, as they were commonly referred to due to their propensity of finding their way to the thick of the battlefield.

Rock was joined in Easy Company by a wide variety of other G.I.s, including the three named in the above strip: Wildman, Four-Eyes, and Ice Cream Soldier. According to Maurice Horn in his ‘World Encyclopedia of Comics’, the Sgt. Rock feature was also notable for introducing one of comics’ first non-stereotyped black characters, Jackie Johnson.

Why these nicknames in particular? They came from the characterizations that Kanigher and Kubert created for the Joes of Easy. As stated in DC’s Who’s Who series, “Private Phil Mason hated the heat, but turned out to be a perfect “Ice Cream Soldier” when it came to combat in freezing weather. A soft-spoken history teacher became a “Wildman” when pushed too far…”Four-Eyes” was Easy’s bespectacled sharpshooter…” and so on. The list is long; Kanigher and Kubert knew that sacrifices are made during war, and the ever-changing line-up in Easy Company reflected that awful reality.

The Rock stories dealt with their subject matter deftly and with compassion, highlighting their battles in the European theatre and the personal strains that infantry members endure in wartime. These aren’t always easy stories to read, as a result of this, but still, they should be read.

Via Source

Sgt. Rock Cover Gallery

Find the above plus more HERE

And check back later this week to see how Silver Pictures is going to kill this great character on film.

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Today is November the fifth, the day Britain celebrates the foiling of a plot by Catholic terrorists in the seventeenth century to blow up the Houses of Parliament with Dynamite. Guy Fawkes was tried, found guilty and hung, drawn and quartered before his body was burnt. This is celebrated across the country with bonfires and fireworks, some with a Guy Fawkes effigy, some with whatever figure or group of people the crowd would like to see burnt today.

So what comics celebrate this attitude towards government, the state and society as a whole? CLICK HERE to find out!

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One man who personified cinematic “cool” was working alongside a graphic storytelling legend.  And yet, somehow, the finished product is a cinematic non-entity. It Frankly (and Robertly) fails as a film. And I am about to tell you why.

Adaptation is a tricky thing. It’s not just the retelling of a story. You have to translate the storytelling experience, as well. Film has a way of telling those stories that is completely different than traditional mediums like books, music, or comics. For one, film has a director. His job is exactly that – he directs the viewing experience. He controls how his audience perceives his characters. He controls what information is withheld, and what information is divulged to the viewer through both performance and composition. A comics author (in close conjunction with a comics artist – very rarely are the two jobs done by one person) also has similar duties, but a lot of his work’s theme is still left to the whims of his readers.

When adapting any non-filmic story to the film media, changes must be made. As noble as “feeding pages through the camera” seems as a concept, it never results in a satisfying movie experience. A simple way to argue this point is to look at the first two Harry Potter films versus the third one. The first rigidly adhere to every literary convention and plot point of the novels. While, perhaps, the most accurate films in the series, they are also the most boring.

We’ve been there before. It’s the difference between being read to and being told a story. Film does not work as a “shot by shot” adaptation. One simply just needs to look at JAWS for this convention in practice. The genius of Steven Spielberg was to take a blockbuster novel and translate it into a blockbuster movie. It seems so simple. But, in the novel, Quint doesn’t get eaten, and the shark dies of exhaustion seconds before devouring Chief Brody, who has all but given up. The movie takes the same endgame – the shark dies – and turns it into an explosive, rousing ending that is not only visually stimulating, but thematically fulfilling. Chief Brody, long terrified of the water, is stuck directly in it with the physical embodiment of his fear. And he destroys the hell out of it. JAWS is heavily inaccurate as a word-for-word translation. It’s also one of the best films ever made.

Film has something that no other medium has. It uses the edit to tell a story. Unlike a comic book that has panels all line up in a row and a visual layout to move the viewer’s eye around the page in a general order, film is uniquely controlled. Imagine flipping through a story with one panel at a time, and a light that blinks to tell you when to turn the page. Comics and books are at the mercy of their readers. Readers are capable of taking as much time as they want to soak in all the detail of a comic panel. They will interpret a character’s demeanor and line delivery based on visual cues. The filmmaker, on the other hand, has complete control over his audience. A shot will end when he wants. A character will say a line of dialogue how he wants.  The edit itself is how the story reveals itself. You get a series of shots, that, if taken one at a time and free of context, would make little sense. But when these images are projected in a row, even without words, a story is told. The best adaptations take the heart of a movie and explore it in a uniquely cinematic way.

The best example I can think of is Chan-Wook Park’s Oldboy. If you were to take the comics of this and Sin City – both black and white, and both dealing with the morality of the scumbag – and compare their filmic counterparts, the difference would be amazing. Park takes Oldboy’s understated sketches about a man imprisoned in a hotel room for fifteen years, and drastically changes the visual look and the character’s motivations. It is, almost perfectly, taking a story and telling it as cinema. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller take a heavily stylized graphic novel about murderers and made it into a highly stylized movie about murderers. You can see the disconnect. Why was this film even made? The film is just the comic book, only moving. It adds nothing to the existing story, and it adds nothing to the experience that only film can provide. It’s the difference of being read to versus being told a story.

And this isn’t simply to point out that the Shot-For-Shot ethos of Sin City (see Bill’s argument for visual aids) yields no positive results. There are some absolutely brilliant performances – Mickey Rourke and a very, very loose Benicio Del Toro certainly come to mind – and it was pretty imaginative visually. The scenes themselves were certainly striking in the strong uses of deep blacks and blown out whites. But cool and good are sometimes in opposite street gangs. Sin City’s insistence at using the comic’s panels for storyboards is pretty, but pointless.

Sin City is, at its heart, a violent noir story. In a perfect world, that film would have been adapted without the glitter and gloss. It could have been pared down to a series of characters that felt real beneath their stylistic appearance. These are people with problems. They are interesting characters whose story is told to the viewer via  sequences of “cool shit.”  Paring down the visuals and integrating a deeper look at the horrible (yet poignant) lives of Dwight,  Marv and the Old Town Girls could have been a real tour de force entry in bringing noir back to the big screens. Instead of the rebirth of Daschiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler-esque stories, we got The Spirit. Can I be any more clear?

I once called Robert Rodriguez a “Movie-God.” I imagine I spoke too soon.

Flip Sides to hear Bill Zilla’s alternate take right here.

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Whenever you make a statement like that, you always find yourself looking over your shoulder, trying to make sure you didn’t forget to include some masterpiece that someone’s going to nail you for. When you’re prone to making bold statements like I am, people are always looking to nail you on the things you say. With the recent nice crop of comic book movies, I knew this comment (which was made as a part of a larger discussion on Zach Snyder’s Watchmen), wouldn’t be allowed to stand even for a few seconds.

But damn it, I was right. I wasn’t even basing it on the fact that it brought the amazing Mickey Rourke out of obscurity (yeah, it was Sin City, not The Wrestler ya jerks) It was simply not possible, in my estimation, to make a film that more closely resembled the original author’s intent. Frank Miller – already known the world over by guys of the more overweight and pimply persuasion as a Comic Book God – was not only included, but reportedly given free reign over nearly every aspect of the film. The film’s actual director, Robert Rodriguez seemed to exist only to lend the film credibility in the entertainment circles that had not yet heard of Mr. Miller and to instruct Frank of the finer points of filmmaking. Rodriguez refused to do the film without Miller’s involvement and when the Director’s Guild of America refused to allow Miller (not a DGA member) to be credited alongside a DGA Member, Rodriguez quit the Director’s Guild to allow the credit to stand.

When an already great comic book made by a single artist/writer is given film treatment using that comic book as the film’s storyboards and uses that same artist/writer to direct that film, you can be darn sure that that film pretty closely resembles that comic book. But you don’t have to take my word for it:

Sure enough, the comment wasn’t allowed to stand. My old friend and The Red Circle founder Tom Nix would be quick to point out: Sin City adds nothing to its existing mythos. It is, he says, too close to the original material. If you have read the comic books, you have seen the film and vice-versa. You will gain no new knowledge, there is no added story, and the only insight about the characters you will receive is found in the nuances of the incredible actors Miller and Rodriguez brought along for the ride (Standout in this area Benicio Del Toro as Jackie Boy seems to be having quite a good time on his ride, indeed). It is simply a faithful retelling of three of the graphic novels already in the Sin City canon with elements of a fourth. It did not, as as with the mighty fine Iron Man for instance, retell and update an old story for a new audience or tell a new story with old characters as in the case of the most recent Batman film. From this perspective, it’s easy to compare Sin City to the Star Wars re-releases from the late 90s: “Neat, but haven’t we been here before?”

The answer of course, though, is “No, we haven’t.” I’m a self-professed comic book geek, but even I hadn’t gotten around to reading every volume of Sin City graphic novels before the film’s release. Dark Horse comics aren’t exactly prominently displayed at your local newsstand. Plus, only a select few were aware of the comics existence to begin with. This was gong to be a new story to a lot of people. According to Robert Rodriguez, me, and everyone I know who’s taken the time to read the graphic novels- it’s an awesome story that didn’t need to be changed. It just needed a larger audience. We don’t need to spend a whole lot of screen time on Peter getting bitten by the radioactive spider because everyone knows that story. We just need to hurry up and get to the “twhip, twhip!” But we do need to spend a fair amount of time establishing Hartigan’s feelings for little Nancy Callahan. Fortunately Miller was forward-thinking enough to include a bunch of “bang, bang!” in that origin story so it never, ever drags.

But I do understand Mr. Nix’s point: it is, from a certain point of view, the worst comic book movie possible. A photocopied retelling of a story already told, just with frames filling in the spaces that comic books deem too boring to depict. Whatever Watchmen’s flaws, at least it was a new perspective. No matter how much Lord of the Rings resembled the source material, at least we were far enough removed from the original publication date that it was at introducing the material to a new generation (and the original story didn’t have many pictures). Even the most recent Sin City yarn first hit shelves less than a decade ago.

The difference, of course, is one used many times by my main man Denny Crane: “Name on the door.” This isn’t a retelling of some author’s work- this is the same author using a new medium- a medium he personally didn’t have the skills to use ten years ago, a medium that didn’t even exist in the same form ten years ago (I was in video school ten years ago, guess how much now-useless information about analog tape and celluloid film I paid for). In that way, it has even more in common with the Star Wars re-releases from the late 90s. You can cry all you want about Han shooting first, but if the author says “I’ve changed my mind, Greedo shot first,” well.. he’s the author. Discussion ends.

Fortunately, Miller resisted the temptation to make Greedo shoot first in his retelling. Everyone still shoots everyone quickly enough that it’s far too difficult and just not worth the effort to distinguish the order. The world looks just like the world would look if God had taken an art class taught by Frank Miller. As an artist, that’s the absolute best you can hope for, as a director, that’s what I’d be shooting for, but I suppose that’s a matter of philosophy.

But the main reason I love this movie: Every time – and I mean every time – Jackie Boy says “Nobody ever really quits. A smoker’s a smoker when the chips are down. And your chips are down.”

It just gets me, man.

Of course, that scene was directed as a favor to Robert Rodriguez by Quentin Tarantino, so maybe I need to rethink my entire argument.

Flip Sides to read Tom Nix’s alternate take right here.

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Learn more about Steve Ditko here.

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Follow to Today’s Inspiration for more!

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