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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2019 7:33:22 GMT -5
I picked up the latest issue of UK sci-fi magazine Infinity, a publication that is almost all retro. It has a feature on the 60s Batman series, written by Pat Janckiewicz. The article is nine pages long, so I hope it's alright to share one small paragraph:
Now, that is interesting. I wasn't aware of that until I read the article.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 29, 2019 13:28:28 GMT -5
Something doesn't sound right there, since Die Hard came out in 1988 and Batman in 1989. Batman had been in development for nearly 10 years and Die Hard had only been in development for a couple of years, before release, even though the novel dates back to 1979 (a sequel to the author's previous novel, which was filmed in 1968, with Frank Sinatra). Not so sure that any film rights that Fox had would still be in play, that much later. Who knows, with Hollywood? It still sounds like the author of the article has some things out of whack. Michael Uslan bought the rights to do a Batman movie, from DC, in late 1979 and shopped it around for years, to multiple studios. Warner had declined to do the film until the success of Dark Knight convinced them that a serious film, matching the tone (which had been Uslan's pitch, since '79) could work and brought it in house. Incidentally, the Wikipedia article on the production of Batman is a chuckler. It says they based the script on the "limited series," Batman Strange Apparitions. There was no limited series (DC didn't produce their first named mini-series until World of Krypton, in 1979). They are mistaking the trade collection title, Strange Apparitions as having been a mini-series. The storyline appeared in the pages of the regular Detective Comics, in 1977. It was later collected in the mid=80s as a Baxter format reprint, as Shadow of the Bat (along with another non-Batman Marshal Rogers story). This is why you never take anything in wikipedia at face value, as people can get it completely wrong and still cite sources (dubious or otherwise).
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2019 14:29:50 GMT -5
Gotta be honest, after reading the article, I did Google it. And I can find nothing. It is hard to tell when rights issues come into play.
I'm no expert, but a summer issue of Back Issue did comprehensive articles about the first Tim Burton movie. As did a lot of movie magazines years ago. Can't say I've read it previously.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 29, 2019 16:28:27 GMT -5
Gotta be honest, after reading the article, I did Google it. And I can find nothing. It is hard to tell when rights issues come into play. I'm no expert, but a summer issue of Back Issue did comprehensive articles about the first Tim Burton movie. As did a lot of movie magazines years ago. Can't say I've read it previously. I've never come across that story and I read everything being written when Batman was in pre-release and then in theaters. No story like that popped up in anything I read or saw after and there is no mention in wikipedia and those articles tend to get fed those kinds of things. There was a film in 1984, called Nothing Lasts Forever; but, it was from MGM, not Time Warner. So, Warner wouldn't have any rights to it (as that was MGM/United Artists, at that point). DC owns the name Batman and Warner owned DC since the 70s (well, Kinney Corporation, which bought Warner-Seven Arts and renamed the company Warner Communications). I think the author is mixing up the issue of the video rights to the Batman tv series. Fox couldn't release the series on home video without cutting in Warner, as owners of DC and the Batman trademarks and copyrights. Warner didn't own the footage. A search of IMDB only shows a later 1995 tv movie, with that title, and some episode titles for different tv series, in the 2000s. So, I don't see where they are coming up with the idea that Warner owned any film rights to that name. The novel, by Roderick Thorp, was a sequel to his 1966 novel, The Detective, which was adapted into a 1968 film, with Frank Sinatra in the role. That was released by Fox, so you don't have a conflict with any movie rights for the character. I tried to access the home site for the magazine and got an alert from my anti-virus protection; so, I couldn't check them out. I know the big sci-fi media magazines in the UK are SFX and Starbusrt, and Total Film is one of the leading entertainment magazines. I'd give the story more credence if it came out of one of those.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2019 16:52:05 GMT -5
Yes, I can't find any mention of it anywhere.
Regarding Infinity, their magazine has a Facebook page. I have been on their site in the past. But when I tried to check out their website earlier, like you, I had issues (it went to one of those "You've won an iPhone pages; a second try had something about a £1,000 Amazon giftcard survey).
Looks like their domain name has expired. But a search for Infinity Magazine via Facebook search will show their publication.
Incidentally, I have bought many TwoMorrows publications, I thought the above 'fact' might have been mentioned there at some point. And at least TwoMorrows' website doesn't let its domain expire.
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Post by badwolf on Dec 29, 2019 20:51:16 GMT -5
On a related note to disguises, I just watched a 1970s Doctor Who story called "The Leisure Hive," in which a 100% human-looking individual removes a mask to reveal a lizard alien with a completely differently-shaped head. (Not only that but his entire disguise also disappear at the same time, clothing and all.) Kind of hilarious but I think stuff like that happened all the time back then...
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Post by badwolf on Dec 29, 2019 20:54:46 GMT -5
Kitty was fooling around with a Shi'ar clothing fabricator in issue #155 and used it to create a space suit and a Phoenix cosplay in issue #157. I've kind of blocked out that era of X-Men following #152. I really wanted to love the return of Dave Cockrum but there was too much attempted humor that fell flat for me if it didn't simply undermine the drama, like putting on the costume of a dead member at all, and there ^ she's done it entirely frivolously! They also brought Mastermind back who Phoenix seemed to have severely punished, but he's back quickly doing the exact same thing with another red-head. Oh yeah, I forgot Kitty was also a tech wiz suddenly alongside budding ninja and all around genius level IQ (but at least she didn't have some dialect speech, that area was already crowded enough before Rogue and Gambit). Oops, I said it again... on Claremont's starting to pass his sell-by date circa the early '80s. I loved the slowly-unfolding (was there any other kind?) mystery of Mastermind and "Phoenix" and was fully carried along with it at the time. Was Maddy Phoenix somehow?? It was fascinating. I guess it's the "exact same thing" (but not really) but what else can a master of illusion do? At least it isn't some kind of nursing home scam.
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Post by impulse on Dec 30, 2019 11:56:44 GMT -5
Regarding Claremont, I agree that his contributions to the X-Books is impossible to overstate, and his work was a huge part of my childhood. That said, good lord, it is hard to go back and read his stuff now. It is SO overwrought.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 30, 2019 12:35:42 GMT -5
Regarding Claremont, I agree that his contributions to the X-Books is impossible to overstate, and his work was a huge part of my childhood. That said, good lord, it is hard to go back and read his stuff now. It is SO overwrought. I haven't tried to re-read X-Men in a long time so I can't speak to that, but his run on Iron Fist is absolutely unreadable.
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Post by rberman on Dec 30, 2019 12:52:36 GMT -5
Regarding Claremont, I agree that his contributions to the X-Books is impossible to overstate, and his work was a huge part of my childhood. That said, good lord, it is hard to go back and read his stuff now. It is SO overwrought. And yet, all the best ideas in the (non-Deadpool) X-Men movies have been his, and all the worst moments involved deviations from him. He could be melodramatic, and he had certain tropes that were eventually beaten to death, but there's a reason X-Men were the goose laying the golden egg for 80s Marvel.
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Post by impulse on Dec 30, 2019 14:02:44 GMT -5
Regarding Claremont, I agree that his contributions to the X-Books is impossible to overstate, and his work was a huge part of my childhood. That said, good lord, it is hard to go back and read his stuff now. It is SO overwrought. And yet, all the best ideas in the (non-Deadpool) X-Men movies have been his, and all the worst moments involved deviations from him. He could be melodramatic, and he had certain tropes that were eventually beaten to death, but there's a reason X-Men were the goose laying the golden egg for 80s Marvel. True, but most of those ideas are decades old at this point. I wouldn't say he was never good, but his best work is years behind him.
I seem him similarly to George Lucas in that he is a great big ideas guy whose prime is behind him but really shines with an editor and a filter. His style was far more fitting at the time, I think. It's just really hard to read in 2019. I liked a lot of his classic run, and frankly even his returns to X-Men were more often better than not. They just felt increasingly cringey and antiquated as the years past. His work includes way too much verbose exposition and dialogue, and not only did he not get leaner at the time, but he's not doing his own schtick as good as he used to. Some of his signature quirks are now ham-fisted and clunky. Even so, I enjoy when he gets a miniseries to get into the head of one of the classic X characters. No one since him quite seems to just innately get them the way he did. I'd love to see him with a strong cowriter with a more modern take he gels with. I'm still annoyed at what he did to the Exiles though. All of that said, while I recently sold 99.9% of my collection, two of the dozen or so comics I kept are Uncanny X-Men issues he signed, so I'll let that speak for itself.
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Post by rberman on Dec 30, 2019 14:40:05 GMT -5
And yet, all the best ideas in the (non-Deadpool) X-Men movies have been his, and all the worst moments involved deviations from him. He could be melodramatic, and he had certain tropes that were eventually beaten to death, but there's a reason X-Men were the goose laying the golden egg for 80s Marvel. True, but most of those ideas are decades old at this point. I wouldn't say he was never good, but his best work is years behind him.
I seem him similarly to George Lucas in that he is a great big ideas guy whose prime is behind him but really shines with an editor and a filter. His style was far more fitting at the time, I think. It's just really hard to read in 2019. I liked a lot of his classic run, and frankly even his returns to X-Men were more often better than not. They just felt increasingly cringey and antiquated as the years past. His work includes way too much verbose exposition and dialogue, and not only did he not get leaner at the time, but he's not doing his own schtick as good as he used to. Some of his signature quirks are now ham-fisted and clunky. Even so, I enjoy when he gets a miniseries to get into the head of one of the classic X characters. No one since him quite seems to just innately get them the way he did. I'd love to see him with a strong cowriter with a more modern take he gels with. I'm still annoyed at what he did to the Exiles though. Certainly his post-80s work has not set the world on fire. I did enjoy X-Men: The End as one last hurrah. As you say, he has lived with those characters and understands them.
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 30, 2019 14:47:33 GMT -5
I hate to pick on Claremont because I rate his early '80s Spider-Woman and X-Men pretty highly. I think maybe fan acclaim went to his head a bit and he started to give people more of what they responded to, and more cross-over continuity and seeming subplots that probably needed a full-time assistant to actually keep track of. He repeated himself louder and louder in a way to me. The tricks that once seemed subtle and new to comics were now shinier but more obvious window-dressing. The things like dialect and alternate future children time-travelling back which one put up with for the sake of the story became too much of the story. And vampires/demons corrupting women doesn't turn my crank... all the dark this and that became a gag so fast from what had been a memorable storyline for Phoenix. Kitty telling a fairy tale to Ilyana about it, putting on the costume, all the ninjas junk, and rerun after rerun... Kitty supposed to be a genius IQ after a set up of being a normal kid, but she still has the normal kid dialogue and can't put together a costume or name to save her ass other than briefly stealing Phoenixs. The New Mutants was good for quite awhile, and the better the artist or more involved they were the better things went too. I read the two Art Adams drawn specials/annuals, and the Bill Sienkiwicz New Mutants for almost a year. The baggage of various mini-series and cross-overs and old stories just built like an episode of Hoarders maybe? The Rachel/Phoenix thing started like he had a direction and then lost it and never really found it again, she became just another layer of X debris really, and then Cable, Bishop, X-Man, all reruns of her to some degree. More accumulated 'stuff'. More dialect speech accumulating to the point of all the 'sugahs' and 'tovariches' and 'cheres' and 'mein freunds' and 'boyos'... bleh! Yet people hailed him as the only one who could handle the X titles properly and he stayed and came back etc. I don't know Iron Fist much, but I like the '70s #14 & 15, which is all I have of the self-titled series. The Marvel Team-Ups were all okay. Well anyway, I would read something else by him if he packs up the X tropes (I'm thinking the new Marvel Girl daughter of Susan and Dr. Doom from the alternate future he put into Fantastic Four) and told a story with subplots that actually resolve. I will not read any X anything with his name on again though. Shooter went back to the Legion and did a great job, but with Claremont it's more like he never left the X-mansion and wearing the total mutant-centric goggles for the Marvel universe. Whatever he does seems determined to have women with a hunger-song of power in them who get corrupted by baddies and made 'dark', while future alternate world children pop up, friends say 'och m'lady' and reminisce about their childhood of the veldt/slums/circus, and the safe guys angst over them... it's too easy to parody because it became one. A juggler who went from five or six balls in the air on one stage to a juggler with eighteen balls in the air on three stages at once? Did I say I hate to pick on Claremont? This is one of my tropes.
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Post by impulse on Dec 30, 2019 15:22:39 GMT -5
I hate to pick on Claremont because I rate his early '80s Spider-Woman and X-Men pretty highly. I think maybe fan acclaim went to his head a bit and he started to give people more of what they responded to, and more cross-over continuity and seeming subplots that probably needed a full-time assistant to actually keep track of. He repeated himself louder and louder in a way to me. The tricks that once seemed subtle and new to comics were now shinier but more obvious window-dressing. The things like dialect and alternate future children time-travelling back which one put up with for the sake of the story became too much of the story. And vampires/demons corrupting women doesn't turn my crank... all the dark this and that became a gag so fast from what had been a memorable storyline for Phoenix. Kitty telling a fairy tale to Ilyana about it, putting on the costume, all the ninjas junk, and rerun after rerun... Kitty supposed to be a genius IQ after a set up of being a normal kid, but she still has the normal kid dialogue and can't put together a costume or name to save her ass other than briefly stealing Phoenixs. The New Mutants was good for quite awhile, and the better the artist or more involved they were the better things went too. I read the two Art Adams drawn specials/annuals, and the Bill Sienkiwicz New Mutants for almost a year. The baggage of various mini-series and cross-overs and old stories just built like an episode of Hoarders maybe? The Rachel/Phoenix thing started like he had a direction and then lost it and never really found it again, she became just another layer of X debris really, and then Cable, Bishop, X-Man, all reruns of her to some degree. More accumulated 'stuff'. More dialect speech accumulating to the point of all the 'sugahs' and 'tovariches' and 'cheres' and 'mein freunds' and 'boyos'... bleh! Yet people hailed him as the only one who could handle the X titles properly and he stayed and came back etc. I don't know Iron Fist much, but I like the '70s #14 & 15, which is all I have of the self-titled series. The Marvel Team-Ups were all okay. Well anyway, I would read something else by him if he packs up the X tropes (I'm thinking the new Marvel Girl daughter of Susan and Dr. Doom from the alternate future he put into Fantastic Four) and told a story with subplots that actually resolve. I will not read any X anything with his name on again though. Shooter went back to the Legion and did a great job, but with Claremont it's more like he never left the X-mansion and wearing the total mutant-centric goggles for the Marvel universe. Whatever he does seems determined to have women with a hunger-song of power in them who get corrupted by baddies and made 'dark', while future alternate world children pop up, friends say 'och m'lady' and reminisce about their childhood of the veldt/slums/circus, and the safe guys angst over them... it's too easy to parody because it became one. A juggler who went from five or six balls in the air on one stage to a juggler with eighteen balls in the air on three stages at once? Did I say I hate to pick on Claremont? This is one of my tropes. At risk of stretching the family-friendliness of the board a little too much, I will try to be as subtle as possible, but if you really look back at his classic work through more current, he really seems to enjoy certain themes of people being dominated and bound and out of their control. You could almost call it a sort of bondage type thing, and it got more egregious in his later work. It peaked IMO during the Storm: The Arena arc of his X-treme X-Men run. Like egads, tight leather and chains and such. I am not kidding..
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2019 15:32:01 GMT -5
I am not old enough to have followed Claremont's X-Men at the time, but when I did read the pocketbooks years later, I found it impenetrable, to be honest. And very wordy.
I do not have a problem with wordy. Hell, I'm a Slaine fan, and that's so wordy you sit down with a packed lunch if you're gonna read those volumes. I like Watchmen. But there's wordy - and then there's wordy.
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