Pop Artifact: Star Wars movie program



Coming Up: Flamin' Groovies "Gonna Rock Tonight: Complete Recordings 1969-1971"


Out March 1 from Grapefruit.

Details:

Irrespective of musical direction, sales figures or personnel changes, The Flamin' Groovies have always had greatness attached to their name. Cyril Jordan's mid-Seventies revamp of the band was certainly a huge influence on entire generations of skinny-tied power poppers, but the Groovies took their first tentative steps on the long and winding road to cult stardom back in the late Sixties, when lead singer, original band leader and rock'n'roll aficionado Roy Loney battled for the upper hand with young pup and Beatles obsessive Jordan. After the tentative, privately-issued 10" mini-album debut Sneakers, the Groovies made the transition from San Francisco also-rans to genuine contenders with a trio of peerless albums - Supersnazz, Flamingo and the particularly magnificent Teenage Head - for major labels (Columbia's Epic imprint and Buddah subsidiary Kama Sutra). Bolstered by sundry outtakes, alternative versions and single mixes, those three albums now appear under one roof for the first time with Gonna Rock Tonite!, a complete anthology of the band's studio work during the pivotal 1969-71 timeframe: halcyon days that ended in late 1971 when Loney abruptly quit the group he'd formed just a few short years earlier. Bursting with creative tension, wilful diversity and absurdist wit, Gonna Rock Tonite! Climaxes with the classic album Teenage Head, a brazen attempt to out-Stone the Stones that saw one critic describe it at the time of it's mid-1971 appearance as "close to being the best hard rock album ever released by an American group". The definitive issue of these definitive recordings, Gonna Rock Tonite! #is a 3-CD set taken from the masters and housed in a striking clamshell box. It includes a 20-page booklet that features a new 7,500 word essay on the band.


Disc: 1

  1. Love Have Mercy
  2. The Girl Can't Help It
  3. Laurie Did It
  4. A Part from That
  5. Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
  6. The First One's Free
  7. Pagan Rachel
  8. Somethin' Else/Pistol Packin' Mama
  9. Brushfire
  10. Bam Balam
  11. Around the Corner
  12. Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (Single Version)
  13. The First One's Free (Single Version)
  14. Somethin' Else (Single Version)
  15. Laurie Did It (Single Version)

Disc: 2

  1. Gonna Rock Tonite
  2. Comin' After You
  3. Headin' for the Texas Border
  4. Sweet Roll Me on Down
  5. Keep a Knockin'
  6. Second Cousin
  7. Childhood's End
  8. Jailbait
  9. She's Falling Apart
  10. Road House
  11. Shakin' All Over
  12. That'll Be the Day
  13. Louie Louie
  14. My Girl Josephine
  15. Around and Around
  16. Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
  17. Going Out

Disc: 3

  1. High Flyin' Baby
  2. City Lights
  3. Have You Seen My Baby?
  4. Yesterday's Numbers
  5. Teenage Head
  6. 32-20
  7. Evil Hearted Ada
  8. Doctor Boogie
  9. Whisky Woman
  10. Scratch My Back
  11. Carol
  12. Rumble
  13. Somethin' Else
  14. Walking the Dog
  15. Going Out (Version 2)

Pop Pic: Orson Wells


See three new "Captain Marvel" movie posters

Best Comics Covers of the Week

Review: "American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1990s"


Leafing through the pages of this latest hardcover entry in Tomorrow Publishing's comprehensive history of American comics, I kept thinking, "Man, I bought a lot of crappy comics in the 1990s."

Being mainly a reader of superhero titles, though, so, apparently, did everyone during that decade. The covers on display here made me wince at recollections of vacuous storylines; dumb characters;  exploitative crossovers; chromium-"enhanced" covers, and ugly, stiff, over-rendered artwork full of improbably grotesque and/or sexist anatomy. This stuff is so tacky it's a wonder we don't refer to this as the Spencer's Gifts Era of comics. Co-authors Jason Sacks and Keith Dallas deserve hazard pay for taking on this era, which they do with admirable objectivity.

Reading through the book, one sees that the 90s, comic book-wise, weren't all bad. Just mostly so. There was some good, interesting stuff going on -  "Batman: The Animated Series," "Bone" by Jeff Smith; "Madman," by Michael Allred; "Astro City" by Kurt Busiek; "Sandman Mystery Theater" by Matt Wagner; "Death" by Neil Gaiman; "Big Numbers" by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz - but also so much bad. The early Image Comics, Wizard magazine, the Spider-Man clone "saga," "Heroes Reborn," and stunt storytelling such as the death of Superman and Batman's broken back are all recounted here in cringe-inducing detail, with pictures that make it all even more embarrassingly painful.

Reading along, I realized that the business travails of the comics industry during this time stand out as far more interesting in my memory than any of the dreck I read from Image or the Big Two. This was the time of Marvel's bankruptcy, rampant speculation and manufactured "collectables." We see how the outsize egos and immaturity of people in the business, such as Image's cocksure founders, led to irresponsible practices that actually put comic book shops out of business.

I believe, and hope, that comics publishers and creators learned a lot during the 1990s. As a reader and fan, I learned quite a bit about what I value in comics (character, storytelling and imagination as opposed to "collectability," gloss and hype) that's me a brighter consumer more adept at seeking out and finding work of high quality. And, lest we forget, this excellent but painful history of American comics' ugliest era is recounted here to help us all remember.

Pop Pic: P.P. Arnold

Comic art: Milt Caniff "Miss Lace" signed print


Time Capsule: Cream Farewell Concert, broadcast Jan. 5, 1969



New "Captain Marvel" character posters

The next Marvel film is out March 8. 

The cast includes Brie Larson in the lead, along with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury; Ben Mendelsohn as Taros; Djimon Hounsou as Korath; Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser; Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau; Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva; Annette Bening as a Kree scientist; Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, and Jude Law as Mar-Vell.









Time Capsule: The Move on "Colour Me Pop," Jan. 4, 1969



Pop Culture Roundup: Daleks; Studio Ghibli; Joe Kubert; Frank Frazetta; Ray Harryhausen; Johnny Cash

The terrifying Daleks on "Doctor Who" have always been operated with humans inside. But for their latest reappearance on the show, a fully automated model was created.

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Here's how a Studio Ghibli theme park set to open in Japan in 2022 will look.


Rip Jaggar takes a look at Joe Kubert's sadly short-lived 1970s comics anthology mag, Sojourn.


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Davy Crockett offers a selection of Frank Frazetta funny animal art.


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It Came From... celebrates Ray Harryhausen's classic "Seventh Journey of Sinbad."


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If you're hoping to lose weight in the new year, you should probably steer clear of the new Johnny Cash-Carter Family cook book. Mmmm... baloney and eggs.

They made this: Thor's hammer meat tenderizer



Video Find: Carlene Carter and Dave Edmunds "Baby Ride Easy"

Comic art: Vintage Milton Caniff "Dragon Lady" signed print


Review: "The Best of Don Winslow of the Navy"


I was a bit alarmed a while back to get a package in the mail from the U.S. Naval Institute. Not the type of thing that usually shows up at my house. I thought maybe I'd been drafted and the box contained a summer white service uniform. I was relieved, instead, to find a hardcover comic book collection inside.

It turns out the Naval Institute, a non-profit that works in support of the U.S. Navy, has a publishing arm and, in partnership with comics archivist Craig Yoe, released this spiffy compilation of "Don Winslow of the Navy" comic book stories.

I'd seen the name before, but Winslow wasn't a character I was familiar with. I learned, reading Yoe's excellent and picture-packed introduction, however, that Don was quite the pop cultural phenom in his day, which stretched from 1934, with the launch of a daily comic strip, through the mid 1950s. During the war years, there was a Don Winslow radio series with associated premium toys, a number of Big Little books, novelizations, a movie serial and, of course, the comic book series.

Published by Fawcett, the first issue of Don Winslow of Navy, published in 1943, featured a cover on which Don is introduced to readers by Captain Marvel, the biggest comic book character of the day. The stories collected here, as might be expected from Fawcett, are better-than-average Golden Age fare. There are some imaginative twists and turns to the plots and the visual storytelling is solid, if not  very distinctive. These stories appeared in a time when most comic book stories lacked credits, but we know from Yoe's intro that writers on the series included Otto Binder and Bill Woolfolk, while artists included Carl Pfeufer and Leonard Starr.

Winslow's creator, a colorful former Navy and FBI man named Frank V. Martinek, evidently did little work on the character outside of coming up with the initial idea of an adventure comic strip as a good PR vehicle for America's naval forces.

Along with the expected Nazis and Japanese troops, Winslow's antagonists include colorful recurring villains such as the criminal mastermind the Scorpion; the stretchy, sewer-pipe slithering Snake, and sultry gal pirate Singapore Sal.

I found the history of the Winslow character more interesting than the stories reprinted here, which are mildly diverting but by no means classic. But if you're a Golden Age and/or Fawcett buff, you may find this book a worthwhile addition to your library. The quality of scholarship (shout out to fellow blogger BookSteve, who contributed research) and printing on display here are top notch.





Time Capsule: Comic book covers from January 1969

Superman is a freak-out, man!