HEY, YOU GOT YOUR VERTIGO CHOCOLATE IN MY HBO PEANUT BUTTER!!


I was estatic to hear about DC/Vertigo's press release concerning the publication of Harvey Pekar's next graphic novel 'The Quitter' illustrated by Dean Haspiel. I fondly remember Dean was at a table promoting a few of his self published series , Billy Dogma and Keyhole back when I was working the Small Press department for the San Diego Comic Con in the summer of 1997- or was it '98? I forget. Anyway, Dean has gone on to the big time- or the big two- as they are prone to say, while I labor away on my Deposit Man series for it's fifth year with hardly a ripple of a movie deal or a pitch for a animated series which would only look good on Spike TV.

I feel it's a natural progression for Harv- seeing that the film based on his American Splendor graphic novels was distributed through HBO Films which sent independent film art house boffo soaring to the atmosphere. It's only feasible that Harvey continues the relationship with Vertigo.

Which got me thinking- (which doesn't happen too often)

Like I was saying a few entries ago- I have become a DVD alcoholic. Every night I can't wait to wind down without having a few under the belt and watching a few dvds to whisk me off to Ashley Scott wet t-shirt dreamland. On weekdays I usually nurse a nightly Farscape fetish, now that I have bought the entire complete series on disc and I try to finish out the homestretch with a HBO series. Watching a television show uninterrupted, without commercials, is like a fucking rapture to me. Profanity, naked flesh, and the anticipation of unexpected wanton violence soothes me down like no other cup of herbal tea could accomplish. So, it's no surprise that I bury myself in a litany of Emmy winning and Emmy nominated series such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Band of Brothers, or The Wire - not because they're so goddamn good, but they're so goddamn cheap since I'm a employee of Time Warner. While most people are dropping down 100 dollar wads of cash and credit cards on these box sets, I'm swooping in with my employee store like a invertebrated bird of prey and snapping them up for $ 50.00 or less. At this price, it's probably cheaper than one would subscribe to HBO per month just to watch the entire season on the tube.

Which got me thinking again. A thought popped in my head while I was watching Angels in America a couple of weeks ago.

This is totally straight out of a Neil Gaiman bowel movement. I mean, putting the stroy elements together like a jigsaw puzzle- angels, the complexities of living and dying with HIV and AIDS, strange occurring phenomena based on fantasy fever dreams , the discussion of legends and mythologies through extended dialogue scenes- this is exactly the kind of stuff that Neil Gaiman would shit out in a issue of Sandman or The Dreaming on a day to day basis.

And then it just hit me why I love HBO shows - even though I don't subscribe to the channel-

HBO is like the Vertigo Comics of television!

Why did it take me so long to realize that?

So- why isn't HBO trying to tap in the vast wealth of Vertigo comic book properties? One of HBO's first series was based on a comic book property- which was a anthology based on Tales of The Crypt - which also in turn spawned two movie sequels (and where are those DVD box sets, BTW?) But since HBO and DC/Vertigo comics are run by the same company- it would only make sense to at least develop a couple of shows based on comic book series. The channel's preminum pay competitor, Showtime already produced a cult series loosely based on a french comic book called Jeremiah (it's on my someday must watch list) which ran for two seasons, I don't see why HBO can't do the same, since it currently has a ongoing series that delves into the macabe called Carnivale. There's a unlimited untapped potential when you pick up something like Y: The Last Man or 100 Bullets and wonder to yourself- jeez, they could easily smack together a budget and get this rolled as a thirteen episode season on HBO on a very modest budget. And the good thing about doing these shows is that there's a bridge of a gap time in between seasons of up to a year or two. I mean, take the Sopranos for instance- it takes approximately a year and a half between one season to the next- and they reflect that gap in the scripts themselves. And the best thing about recurring HBO series is that they promote the shit out of it with billboards and bus cards no matter what time of the year it is.

Look at these comparsions:

If HBO pull something off like Carnivale - then it should be no problem doing a series based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman supporting cast spin-off series, The Dreaming or House of Secrets- or better yet- Fables. Fables, holy shit, that would be bitchin' as a tv series and the pitch itself would probably be a throat grabber.

If HBO could pull something off like the Sopranos - then there should be no problem putting in place a production based on The Losers, 100 Bullets, Johnny Double, or the Human Target (although the latter, was already done as a summer series in 1992 on ABC with Rick Springfield in the title role- but it wasn't a Vertigo book back then)

Deadwood- jeez, Jonah Hex for cripessakes.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - Well, that category would fall under anything that Grant Morrison comes out with The Filth would be the perfect vehicle for Larry David if he ever wanted to do superheroes.

Just think - the possiblities are limitless, Preacher, Books of Magic, Shade the Changing Man, Beware the Creeper, Proposition Player, or Hellblaz -

Um, never mind that last one-

That's already being brutalized by Warner Bros Pictures for Febuary of next year.

Today, Harvey & Vertigo, tomorrow the edge of comic book made for cable series options.

~

Coat

GWEN STACY, YOU IGNORANT SLUT!

(aka GREEN TEABAGGING THE GOBLIN GONADS)

I was setting my alarm clock for 4:30 the next morning. I had just finished watching my prerequisite weekend DVD episodes of Starsky & Hutch (second season) and Keen Eddie (file in brilliant, but cancelled category) and I was about to pack it in early- but on some nights I have trouble falling asleep if I don't have a newsradio station on the radio to serve as my lullaby. Sort of like keeping a pulse on the world after shredding off the burden of the day- which was a Sunday spent all day watching crime shows, but I did manage to get two pages of The Deposit Man scripted in the early evening hours. So at approximately 10:22 PM PST as I was just about to shut my eyes to drift off to a magical lethargic stupor of a Ashley Scott Wet T-shirt contest dreamland, the muscles in my eyelids refused to shut themselves when the announcement came through my tinny clock radio speaker, although not firmly confirmed: Christopher Reeve has just died at the age of 52.

Ya got be shittin' me- but, future president John F. Kerry was just talking about him and Michael J. Fox just the other day in order to raise those 'undecided voters out in St. Louis ' hopes that stem cell research shouldn't just cease to exist just because some squinty-eyed coke addict selected president saids it's not morally right to fuck around with nature.

This is really hard to absorb right now.

Because of Reeve's 1979 movie portrayal, Superman actually began to rub off on me.

I wasn't a giant fan of Superman while growing up. Spider-Man was the one I really identified with. I had maybe two hundred plus issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, and the reprints of early Amazing Spider-Man in Marvel Tales-

but Superman? Maybe a few issues of Action Comics and Superman scattered here and there. Superman never really did much for me. The Cartoons bored me. The old fifties series didn't stretch too far beyond the imagination- because Superman was always chasing down petty crooks and not world threatening menaces like he should of (I assume the budget didn't allow it back then), and Superman was just too wishy-washy for me in Superfriends. The only version of Superman I could hold any appreciation for was the Bud Collyer voiced forties-radio show (and animated theaterical shorts)that Batman & Robin used to guest star on sometimes. I had a few lp records of the show that I got with some Kellogg's cereal boxtops and a dollar or two. I got into collecting all four volumes and I was immediately hooked on the more mature themes that were explored on each fifteen minute episode. I discovered that the characters Jimmy Olson and Daily Planet editor Perry White were first introduced on the radio show as well as the first pair ups with Batman and Robin and the misuse of Kryptonite that served as Superman's Archilles Heel. The scripts on those shows which ran for a total of 12 years had never depicted the man of steel in a more rougher and edgier demeanor other than was transcribed in the radio show and in some of the early Siegal and Shuster scripted comics (even though Supes was a hard-ass in the forties throwing thugs and man-servants around like they were pillows, but at least he was a hard-ass with a heart). Those elements could never translate well to the small screen- until they were integrated successfully into the first two Superman movies which starred Reeve and was directed by the two Richards (Donnor and Lester) until the series's popularity waned by the disappointing slide whistle of box offices receipts for the third and fourth one. Christopher Reeve kicked goddamn ass as Superman, epecially when it came to General Zod in II, whereas I have a very fond memory of sneaking in a bottle of blackberry brandy in the theater on opening weekend on the eve of my last day as a high school sophomore just as summer vacation was kicking in. Realistic looking super-hero battles captured on celluloid instantly made Reeve the idol to millions. In the late seventies, I discovered that it was fashionable to be into everything Superman again. The turnaround in popularity with everything Superman in was considered vogue in my book. He was even getting better respect in Superfriends where he would get to kick Lex Luthor booty every week in the Challenge of the Superfriends season and then went chasing after a Darkseid a few times during the Legendary Powers seasons. And I started to reading more of the comic book again- I even cite The Parasite (big purple people eater) as one of my old time favorite Super-villains. Much of Reeve's persona even made it's way to the mid-ninties animated series.

There were days I had actually believed that Reeve would live up to his word that he would actually stand up and walk again without any assistance through his perservance and advocacy of stem cell research. I had that gut feeling that he one day would - it didn't seem that difficult of a concept to wrap your brain around. You simply get up after lying on your lazy ass in a wheelchair for nine years after getting thrown off a horse with nary an effort. Except Chris's ass wasn't so lazy - he tried to make a difference despite his handicaps- going around to charities talking up the good fight of stem cell research, and being a virtual acting and directing dynamo in the Hollywood killing field all from the confinement of his wheelchair. That took a tremendous amount of balls to bop until you drop- and that's what made him a real-life Superman for the past nine years since that painful day, not realizing that it was the internal injuries that substituted as his personal kryptonite. And now, with a better appreciation of the Superman comics that were around during my hormonal growth years, it's just a tragic shame that we had to lose him in the same year that we lost former DC/Superman editor of the comics I once despised, Julius Schwartz.

Okay- the night before being shocked into the landing light of Reeve's passing, I was kinda even disappointed by the latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man that is now playing at a local comic book shop near you. The current storyline for those who haven't read my previous entries, I touched briefly on this absurd storyline of filling in Gwen Stacy's missing moments before she was whisked off this mortal coil that is currently being concocted by former Babylon 5 maestro J. Michael Straczynski. For the last four or five issues, Spidey has been attacked by a super powered brother and sister tag team who are believed to be the offspring of both Gwen Stacy and the webhead. For those too young to remember, Gwen had been bitchslapped off the Brooklyn Bridge by the Green Goblin wayyyy back in 1973 - by writer Gerry Conway, who I swear is still getting hate mail for his little atrocious misanthropic mistake and will probably still be receiving it up to his very dying day now out that he is hiding out in the sanctuary of the Universal Studios backlot posing as a co-producer on the NBC show Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Upon hearing this startling revelation, Peter tactfully tells his current wife, Mary-Jane Watson- that it's impossible that they are his offspring because Spidey has a policy of never going around shooting his web fluid inappropiately in any moist wet spots that he is unaware of, plus he painfully confesses that Gwen and he never got around to doing the horizonal bop while stuck to the ceiling or jumping off the Empire State Building Mile High Club. Sadly, Peter never got around to going beyond first base with Gwen Stacy period.

It's time to have a guy heart to heart, here:

Peter, you stupid shy insensitive naive fool..... how could you not bust a move on that fine piece of Gwen Stacy trim? That booty was just fucking ripe for it and you stood there with that web shooter up your spider scrotum and did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zippo.

Instead, you got cockblocked by Norman Osborn. Holy shit! You poor, poor, pitiful Romantic fool!!!

But I feel your pain, dude. Really I do. Because I have a confession to make also - I didn't go all the way with Linda Freeman, my high school sweetheart in my junior year of high school either. But then, neither was Linda a 16 or 17 year old piece of jailbait like Gwen for Norman Osborn to drool over.

But Peter- you failed to realize something: you're not normal like other teen-agers. Goddamn it, you're supposed to have radioactive blood for cripessakes! And that means those radioactive hormones should have kicked into spider-speed overdrive. You could have taken her and ravished her with a hump that she would never would have forget- you could have eaten her out like a friggin' black widow, but instead - she spreads her legs for that brillo-pad mat headed schizophrenic sadist, Norman Osborn, who, in your pathetic demented world is secretly the Green Goblin. And you went to great painstaking lengths to conceal his true identity from the rest of the unseeing world- AND FOR WHAT? Just for him to get some nookie off your woman? Dude, you should have gotten your priorities straight before you started whining like a baby about not being the first guy to shoot any web-blanks into her pouch.

So what, if your buddy, Harry Osborn, Norman's pariah son was chewing on some plastic flashbulbs for all the world to see? You should have recognized the signs, Peter! Gwen's extended stays in Europe? Norman Osborn's plane tickets matching the same itinerary? Even breathing the same stale air in the same goddamn room with a powerful business man and your scantilizing blonde d-cupped barbie doll should have sent your Spider-senses waffing with some strange mixed signaled pheromones!!

Jeez, Peter imagine all the fun stuff you could have done with Gwen Stacy. And because of your pure puny moral thoughts on abstinence - your wayward dreams of a house, a career, a college education, and a two car garage has now evaporated in less of a time it takes for your webbing to wear off on a common street thug hanging off of a lamp post.

You disappoint me, Peter.

Gwen went down on Norman Osborn and you did nothing to stop it and now you expect us to sympatheize with your suffuring. Oh, go fucking cry yourself a river already, grad boy!!

Can you imagine what the hell is waiting to be discovered in Doctor Octopus's medical journals about how he done Aunt May on all fours? Er, or all eights?

And Gwen? You're a fucking filthy slut, you know that? I fucking idolized you. I made it a personal quest to date a girl in high school that even looked like you. How could you---?

You fragmented away my entire innocence- you stupid blond bi-polarized bitch!!!

Sniff.

Tomorrow: Why Vertigo comics and HBO should combine forces.

~

Coat