Comics
Friday, March 9, 2012
The swashbuckling pulp hero first appeared in print in 1912, several years before Burroughs' other invention —Tarzan of the Apes—who, thanks to cheaply produced movie serials and TV shows over the decades, is still a household name. While Hollywood has struggled to bring John Carter's adventures to the screen since 1936, it probably didn't help they were set on Mars, with a main character who could leap over tall buildings in a single bound, who fought side-by-side with 15-foot-tall four-armed green men as fleets of giant airships sailed over mile-high cities—or that everyone strode about the strange Martian landscape utterly naked except for their weapons.
It was this fantastic vista that helped fire up the young imaginations of science-fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke. Carl Sagan specifically mentioned Barsoom—Burrough's name for Mars—as one of his prime inspirations for eventually pursuing astronomy as a career. Other words from Barsoom's imaginary language will seem familiar to modern ears: Jed (king) and banth are only one letter removed from George Lucas' Jedi and bantha, and he cribbed "Sith" in its entirety.
No coincidence: The tales, originally cliff-hanging short stories in early pulp magazines, had been collected into 11 novels in the 1950s and 1960s when Lucas was growing up. (Princess Leia had nothing on Burroughs' heroine Dejah Thoris, the original pistol-packing princess, and the many fantasy artist depictions of Dejah, clad only in elaborate jewelry, is the direct inspiration for the Leia's infamous metal bikini in Return of the Jedi.)
Propelled along by iconic covers from a young Frank Frazetta, the paperbacks sold millions over the next few decades as part of the exploding genre of "Sword & Sorcery" that included the repackaged collections of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
When Gary Gygax created Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson in the early '70s, he lifted so many elements from the Barsoom books for his game that the Burroughs estate successfully sued the fledgling publisher. While Gygax agreed to remove all of the trademarked material, such as character and creature names, the swashbuckling, princess-rescuing, high-adventure conceits remained. D&D has been played by millions over the past 40 years, and is widely cited as the strata on which modern video games are built.
Marvel Comics published a popular comic book adaptation in the late '70s that introduced another generation to the world Burroughs imagined. Thrice since then have comic book publishers tackled Barsoom, including, most recently, a small imprint that is currently showing John Carter and Dejah Thoris as Edgar Rice Burroughs intended—naked—and is involved in yet another lawsuit with the ERB estate.
In an odd twist that has become an object lesson in copyright, Burroughs' family controls a few trademarks related to the property, but not the early novels themselves, which are now in the public domain. While a conundrum for the courts, it is a boon for readers: you can currently read the first volume, "Princess of Mars," on the Library of Congress site for free.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
On Saturday, Feb. 18, fans will head to Chapel Hill Comics to pay $15 for a comic book with a locally drawn cover depicting a princess made of bubblegum and a vampire rocker who drinks the color red instead of blood, and was traumatized by her father eating her fries as a child. And I will be among them.
From the Adventure Time episode "It Came From the Nightosphere": Marceline the Vampire Queen sings of the traumatic childhood incident where her father ate her fries.
The comic book, Adventure Time, is based on an Emmy-nominated animated series on Cartoon Network (Mondays, 7:30 p.m.) that, since its premiere in April 2010, has become a strange sensation among children and adults alike. Kids enjoy the bright colors and wacky characters such as Lumpy Space Princess and Lady Rainicorn.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
An older and mellower Tom Green: a conversation with the creator of Freddy Got Fingered
- Courtesy of Marleah Leslie & Associates
But these days, the one-time MTV sensation who famously broadcast his testicular cancer surgery on the air has embraced a perspective he calls “conservative.”
“I just talk about things that make me laugh, and that the mainstream doesn’t necessarily talk about,” says Green in a call from Los Angeles. He plays Goodnight’s Comedy Club March 18 and 19.
“You don’t necessarily hear people talk about how Facebook isn’t good and we need to get off it. I like to take on the status quo a little bit. If you see my show, you’ll see it’s very R-rated, I’m swearing and going on about things in a very graphic way, but in some ways it’s very conservative.”
Age has apparently mellowed Green … somewhat.
“I’m starting to feel like an adult, and looking back at life as I turn 40, this changing world,” Green says of his stand-up set.
“I talk about gadgets, and pornography, and I think it surprises a lot of people because I approach it from kind of conservative point of view.”
Though he’s long been a visible figure in the world of comedy, Green’s only been doing stand-up comedy full time in the last year and a half.
Friday, October 2, 2009
PERKINS LIBRARY, DUKE UNIVERSITY—Those who maintain that comic books are merely for children would have encountered powerful arguments to the contrary at Duke's Perkins Library on Tuesday, where a trio of young creators discussed comics covering such topics as teen homosexuality, living with herpes and hooking up with a way-too-young waitress on a business trip.
The library played home to the Punchbuggy Tour, a two-week junket promoting the work of M.K. Reed, Liz Baillie and Ken Dahl.
Each cartoonist read from their work, which amounted to narrating panels projected onto a screen via computer. Reed's deadpan Cross Country chronicles two guys touring a series of big box stores for work; her illustrations capture the washed-out landscapes of these characters and painfully real observational dialogue (the first chapter is available as a PDF and the complete work can be ordered here).
Baillie read from two of her works. My Brain Hurts is a teenager-queer-punks-in-New York City saga, while Freewheel is the tale of an orphan on a quest to find her brother; though vastly different, both works show an assured visual tone that represents everything from graffiti-riddled streets to a forest refuge for drifters, and an ear for realistic dialogue. Both works can be ordered from her Web site.
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