Before you watch The Avengers (the Whedon/Marvel one, not the one with the black-leather-clad female martial-arts expert – oh wait …), watch these:
Tag Archives | Science Fiction
Another Mechanism Is Possible
Oh jeepers! Without the use of IP protection, wouldn’t recording artists be unable to meet the high costs of producing an album?
Gosh.
Atlas Shrunk, Part 11: Another Update
Brian Doherty visits the set.
Secret Origin of the Hulk
That Stan Lee and Jack Kirby have offered conflicting testimony as to which of them came up with the idea for the Hulk is not exactly news. But what I didn’t know before was the specific incident that Kirby claimed gave him the inspiration for the Hulk – namely, seeing a mother demonstrate extraordinary strength by lifting a car to free her trapped child.
What’s striking about that example is that in the (surprisingly good) 1970s-80s tv series – though not in the comics – the experiment that originally turns Banner into the Hulk is part of his research into cases of ordinary people demonstrating extraordinary strength in emergency situations – with the case of a mother lifting a car to free her trapped child being the main case study focused on.
Assuming this isn’t a coincidence, then either Kenneth Johnson (who wrote and directed the first Hulk episode, as well as being responsible for a few other shows you may recognise) got the idea through conversation with Kirby, or else Kirby’s memory is mistaken and inadvertently drawing on the tv show.
Between Lee and Kirby I’m ordinarily more inclined to trust Kirby. But this mother-saving-her-child-by-lifting-a-car idea is so central to the tv show and (as far as I recall) so non-evident in the original comic that I’m left scratching my head.
You and the Moon
So, Lockout is what you get if you cross Escape From New York with It Happened One Night. (Well, sort of.)
Milestone Icon
I’ve blogged before about the late Dwayne McDuffie, a leading voice for African-American writers, artists, and characters in contemporary comics. Go read it, then come back.
What is evidently McDuffie’s final work, the direct-to-dvd animated film Justice League: Doom, has just been released (a follow-up to his earlier, likewise excellent Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths). It’s terrific, of course; but the 2-disc version comes with a great bonus: a fascinating documentary on McDuffie’s life.
You don’t have to buy the dvd to watch the documentary, though; here it is in three parts: