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Who Is Mysterio? The Early Days of the Spider-Man Villain with the Fishbowl on His Head

Who Is Mysterio? The Early Days of the Spider-Man Villain with the Fishbowl on His Head

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News dropped on Monday that actor Jake Gyllenhaal will likely play the part of Mysterio in the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, whatever it’s called. (Spider-Man: Back from the Ashes would work.) Gyllenhaal is an excellent choice to play a whole range of Spidey villains — the actor’s earned trust on that front thanks to his performance in Nightcrawler. But the real news for me is Mysterio, regardless of who’s putting on the mesh green outfit with eye-brooch accessories. He’s a Spider-Man villain overdue for the big screen treatment.

(Oh, and we now know for certain that Michael Keaton will return as the Vulture, probably to stoke the fires about the Sinister Six getting together. Bokeem Woodbine’s Shocker is still alive, and it looks like Scorpion is in play as well. Only two more slots to fill! Maybe Kraven the Hunter and … The Kangaroo? I hope it’s the Kangaroo.)

So who is this Mysterio bloke? Short version: he’s a special effects wizard who decided to go into a life of crime and put a fishbowl on his head. Because comic books. He doesn’t have superpowers, but he can put on a helluva light and illusion show and he specializes in reality-bending tricks and mind games, making him an ideal movie bad guy.

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The Poison Apple: What do The Watchmen, Sandman, Frankenstein, Dracula, H.P. Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes have in Common?

The Poison Apple: What do The Watchmen, Sandman, Frankenstein, Dracula, H.P. Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes have in Common?

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Leslie Klinger in Sherlock mode

Leslie Klinger in Sherlock mode

An Interview with Leslie S. Klinger

Crowens: What drew you to the Victorian era? That seems to be the common thread for most of your books except for your annotated graphic novels.

Klinger: When I was young, I was a big science fiction reader. In my second year of law school, my girlfriend bought me a copy of the William S. Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes. I was hooked. Like most people, I probably read one or two stories as a kid, paid little attention to them, and wasn’t really interested in mysteries. Then I started reading this, and I enjoyed the footnotes — the idea that there was this scholarship. One of my responses to the Baring-Gould edition was a weird one: Some day when I’m old and retired, maybe I’ll be the person who will update it. I became immersed and decided I was going to become a Sherlockian.

In 1976, there was a classified ad in the Baker Street Journal placed by somebody selling his collection of 300 books, a real collection, not like the junk I’d been buying. It was very expensive… like thirty-five hundred dollars. I talked it over with my wife. For that time that was a lot of money. She said, “You’re the kind of person who should be a collector. Go for it.”

Suddenly I had the core of a really good collection and became known in some small circles as a nut about Sherlock Holmes. I started giving talks about Sherlock Holmes, and I got invited to a dinner at the BSI back in 70s. It was one of those bucket list things where I never thought about it again. In 1995 a friend arranged for another invitation. I went to the dinner, and I haven’t missed one since then.

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Birthday Reviews: Gregory Frost’s “Farewell, My Rocketeer”

Birthday Reviews: Gregory Frost’s “Farewell, My Rocketeer”

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Cover by Jay Bone
Cover by Jay Bone

Gregory Frost was born on May 13, 1951.

Gregory Frost’s novelette “Madonna of the Maquiladora” was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Frost has also been nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and World Fantasy Award for his novel Fitcher’s Brides. His Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet jointly were nominated for the Tiptree, and “How Meersh the Bedeviler Lost His Toes” was nominated for the Sturgeon. He also received a Bram Stoker nomination for the story “No Others Are Genuine.” Several of his stories have been collected in Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories, published by Golden Gryphon in 2011.

Cliff Secord’s career as the Rocketeer, a 1930s style pulp hero who is a pilot in his daily life, but secretly has access to a jet pack, has been chronicled in a series of comics and one film. In 2014 several authors were invited to add to his legend with prose stories, one of whom, Gregory Frost, contributed “Farewell, My Rocketeer,” a lost treasure story set in the American Southwest. The shared world anthology The Rocketeer Jet-Pack Adventures was edited by Jeff Conner and Tom Waltz. “Farewell, My Rocketeer” story has not been reprinted.

Secord gets involved in the treasure hunt when he lands at a small airstrip and diner which has been taken over by a disparate group of villains who are seeking gold based on an old treasure map. To save himself and the staff of the diner, who have been taken hostage, Secord agrees to pilot the group’s plane to help them find the treasure after their pilot dies, even though he realizes his own usefulness to the villains will end as soon as he lands them back at the diner, theoretically with the gold.

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Tripping on the Void: An Interview with Plaid Klaus of Image’s Void Trip

Tripping on the Void: An Interview with Plaid Klaus of Image’s Void Trip

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Void Trip 1 alternate-small

This May, Image Comics will be collecting the five issues of Void Trip, by Ryan O’Sullivan and Plaid Klaus. I took advantage of the chance to interview Plaid. Here’s the description for Void Trip:

Meet Ana and Gabe — the last two humans left alive in the galaxy. They’re low on fuel, they’re low on food, and they’re low on psychedelic space froot, but they’re still determined to make it to the promised land: hippy-paradise super-planet Euphoria. VOID TRIP is the story of their journey, the friends and enemies they made along the way, and how the universe responded to those who dared to live freely within it. “VOID TRIP aims to answer the question: ‘how can we be free in a universe that will always course-correct to limit us?’” said O’Sullivan. “This isn’t your typical adventure comic, with violence as the solution to every conflict. It’s a road trip story. Its main concern is exploring the human condition. It’s Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson meets Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy. Expect laughter, tears, and existential dread in equal measure.”

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Last Chance to Win a Copy of Watchmen: The Annotated Edition from DC Comics

Last Chance to Win a Copy of Watchmen: The Annotated Edition from DC Comics

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The Annotated Watchmen Leslie S Klinger-small

Ack! Time is running out for you to win a copy of Watchmen: The Annotated Edition courtesy of DC Comics. And trust us, you really want this book.  It’s the definitive edition of the seminal graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, a retrospective edition of the story that landed on Time magazine’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

In Watchmen: The Annotated Edition, Leslie S. Klinger looks at each of the series’ twelve issues in detail, moving page by page and panel by panel, and drawing on critical and scholastic commentary, interviews with Dave Gibbons, and previously unseen original source material. Read Derek Kunsken’s review, and an interview with Leslie S. Klinger, here.

How do you enter? Simplicity itself. Just submit a one-sentence email explaining what you think is the most influential element of Moore and Gibbon’s Watchmen series. The most compelling entry — as selected by Derek Kunsken — will receive a free copy of Watchmen: The Annotated Edition, complements of DC Comics.

How hard is that? One submission per person, please. Winners will be contacted by e-mail, so use a real e-mail address maybe. All submissions must be sent to john@blackgate.com, with the subject line Watchmen: The Annotated Edition, or something obvious like that so I don’t randomly delete it.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. The judge’s decision (capricious as it may be) is final. Sorry, US only. Not valid where prohibited by law. Eat your vegetables.

Win a Copy of The Annotated Watchmen by DC Comics

Win a Copy of The Annotated Watchmen by DC Comics

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The Annotated Watchmen Leslie S Klinger-small

I don’t think DC’s 1985 Watchmen needs a whole bunch of introduction (or any). As both a reader and a writer, I’ve read, re-read, analyzed, watched other people analyze, and blogged about the seminal work by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

DC Comics has released a retrospective edition of the story that landed on Time magazine’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In Watchmen: The Annotated Edition, Leslie S. Klinger looks at each of the series’ twelve issues in detail, moving page by page and panel by panel. Klinger drew on critical and scholastic commentary, interviews with Dave Gibbons, and previously unseen original source material.

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The Secret Origin of Ultron

The Secret Origin of Ultron

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Avenges-67-August-1969-cover

With the entire world counting down to an imminent and inevitable event that may shake the entire world and light up Twitter like nothing previous – no, not a Trump impeachment, but the premiere of Avengers: Infinity War – an Avengers robot column may be the only thing to soothe and distract the hordes long enough for the rest of us to stock up on survival gear, water, and dark chocolate.

For that I need to go back one movie to Avengers: Age of Ultron. Every good comic historian knows the origin of Ultron. He’s introduced in the pulsating pages of Avengers #55 (August 1968) as Ultron-5 and his back story is laid out in delectable detail in Avengers #58 (November 1968). Some indefinite time in the past Hank Pym – Ant Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, pick one – was noodling around in his workshop tinkering with “a crude but workable robot .. A faltering step on the path to synthetic life!” For reasons never explained, the robot turns itself on and its brain evolves from infant to adult in a matter of magnificent moments, giving it more daddy issues than all the Miss Golden Globes titlests combined. He, now definitely a gendered he, blanks Hank’s memory while he spends time off-page continually upgrading his body so that when readers get their first glimpse he introduces himself as Ultron-5.

NOTE: This article was updated on September 21, 2018 for a vital correction. See the addition of the Ultimate Ultron below.

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2000AD’s The Complete Futureshocks, Volume 1

2000AD’s The Complete Futureshocks, Volume 1

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In my ongoing study of comic history and the craft of comic storytelling, I’ve looked at the history of 2000AD, Alan Moore’s Halo Jones, and the density of comic layouts, in part because as a novelist and short story writer, I’m trying to learn things from other story forms. And comics have a lot to teach me about pacing, conciseness and story density.

And in no place are stories more dense than in 2000AD‘s Futureshocks. These are stories that range in length from 1.5 pages to 4 pages (basically 6-20 panels). Luckily for me, 2000AD is issuing a collection of their first 5 years of Futureshocks in The Complete Futureshocks Volume 1, and they sent me a review copy.

The Complete Futureshocks Volume 1 is over 300 pages of comics, which by my rough count is about 80 individual stories ranging in length from 1.5 – 4 pages, with a few rare ones that stretched across two issues and totalled 6-8 pages.

What did I learn from all these very brief science fiction stories? A few things.

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Reading Alan Moore’s Halo Jones for the First Time

Reading Alan Moore’s Halo Jones for the First Time

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Halo Jones cover-small

Talk long enough with people about the British comic publisher 2000AD and you’ll eventually get into a conversation about where The Ballad of Halo Jones fits in the ranking of Alan Moore’s work. A few people have said that Halo Jones is Alan Moore’s greatest work, and it is frequently called Moore’s unknown classic.

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Will Eisner: Ahead of His Time

Will Eisner: Ahead of His Time

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Will Eisner

Will Eisner

We are all in the habit of communicating in shorthand (perhaps now more than ever, in this era of emojis and tweets and texting) and often toss out clichés and smooth-worn phrases without pausing to consider what they might actually mean. It can hardly be otherwise, seeing that we are all in such a damnable hurry. (To ask where, exactly, we are hurrying to can make people uncomfortable, so I won’t ask.)

For this reason it might be useful to take one of these everyday expressions and give it a precise definition. The common phrase I have in mind is “ahead of his time.” I picked an easy one, so easy I can define it in just two words: Will Eisner.

I know this is hardly a contentious judgment. In the comics field, to speak the name of Will Eisner is like calling on the Lord Jehovah in the Sinai Desert; there is no higher name to invoke. After all, this is the man the comics industry has named its most prestigious award after. But to call an artist “ahead of his time” (or “the greatest artist-writer ever” or “a revolutionary genius,” all terms regularly applied to Eisner) means nothing without some idea of just what the standards of that time were and exactly how the winner of such praise compares to the competition.

So to put some flesh on the bare bones of the accolade, let’s go back to 1950 and take a look at the doings of the two most iconic heroes of the time, or maybe of any time — Batman and Superman, and compare them with a story from 1951, featuring Eisner’s signature creation, the Spirit, from near the end of the character’s run. (There’s no need to ask what the great Marvel heroes were doing in those days — Captain America and the Sub-Mariner were in limbo, and the Lee/Kirby/Ditko characters that dominated the sixties hadn’t been created yet. Marvel wasn’t even Marvel — the company was still called Timely, and with the postwar contraction of the superhero market it had decided to drop costumed crusaders and focus on monster comics.)

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