Cool Stuff: More Superman Stuff!

I hope you're enjoying this 4th of July Weekend! Not that it has anything to do with Superman, necessarily... here's some cool Superman items to enjoy!



Here's another one of those wonderful Gulliver products from South America! This Marx-style plastic figurine is a nice representation of Clark Kent changing to Superman, isn't it?

If I thought I could get away with it, I'd suggest to my wife that the family needs to vacation in South America... and then make sure we hit pretty much every store that sells toys we came across to add this stuff to my own collection! But I'm sure the customs fees would be horrific...



I think I've showed you the Superman horseshoe set before, but not the packaging! Obviously, producing licensed items that had nothing to do with the character being licensed goes way, way back... but I suppose trying to pitch a "Comet the Super-Horse Horseshoe Set" would've been a challenge.



Here's one of those push-puppets I've mentioned before... this one was made by Koher. And if you've seen many push-puppets before, I'm sure the really sloppy paint job on this one comes as no surprise!



The seller of this item says it's a Superman Krypto-Ray gun... but I thought that showed slide scenes! Well, it's been a while since I looked at my Krypto-Ray Gun files...



And yeah, it looks like it is a Krypto-Ray Gun, just missing the front piece!



Here you see a complete one with the slide strips... try not to drool too much (I know I'm salivating over it)...

From the Golden Age to the Bronze Age now...



Remember when there was a whole boom in licensed Paint-By-Number products in the 1970s? Even Superman wasn't immune to this! I know I've previously posted lots of other stuff like this before.



These Super Friends pencil sharpeners show up all the time on a certain online auction site (I'm sure you know which one). It's not often you see all three varitations of one of them like this!

It's funny, though... I don't ever recall seeing these before; I almost wonder if all of the sets that got to market got bought up and stored by people so they could resell them years and years later?

Nah, silly thought.



Most pinball games featuring licensed characters tend to be... well... rather bland and kind of pointless. There's no scoring system, you just play it until you're bored or the spring breaks or wears out. This one, however, the Superman Spinball Pinball, looks to be completely awesome! I'd love to have one of these on my desk!



Superman Hand Puppet! You know it's Superman because they stuck the logo on it! I believe Ideal made these.



Here's a pair of interesting items... first, on the left, one of those many Silly Putty knock-offs, this one marketed as a Superman item (complete with comic strips to copy onto the putty)... but that color-a-deck card game is really what interests me! Given the card header says "Super Hero Color-A-Deck", I wonder how many other characters they did?



And I'll leave you for the day with this very nifty Superman ring!

Jon

Movie of the Week: Battle for the Planet of the Apes!

And we're at the final chapter in the Planet of the Apes movie series! Consider it a last-gasp addition to Planet of the Apes month if you wish... maybe I should've had POTA month on a month with five Saturdays?


Trailer

So, once again, I turn to the Wikipedia entry for a plot summary:

Set in flashback to the turn of the 21st century, and told by the Great Lawgiver, this sequel focuses on the ape leader, Caesar (Roddy McDowall), years after he led the ape revolution in the previous film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.



In this post-nuclear war society, Caesar tries to cultivate peace between his simian peers and the surviving remains of humanity. Gorilla leader Aldo (Claude Akins), however, wants nothing to do with this; therefore he plots Caesar's overthrow and doom.



Caesar is now married to Lisa, the female ape of the previous film, and they have a son, named Cornelius in honor of Caesar's father.





Caesar regrets having never known his parents, until his human assistant, MacDonald, informs him that through audiotapes, he can hear his parents speak. Caesar learns the archives are in the Forbidden City, once Central City, and is now nuclear ruins. Caesar travels to the Forbidden City and sneaks in to find the record archives.




Scholastic Magazine

However, there are others still living in the Forbidden City, many who were former slaveowners of the apes, now under the command of Governor Kolp.



Caesar and his party learns of the future of the world as well as see his parents, but barely have enough time wherein to study the tapes before they must escape or risk capture and death. Kolp considers this clandestine entrance by Caesar an act of espionage while his subordinate Méndez says that they did nothing wrong and should be allowed to go in peace.



Governor Kolp then declares war on Ape City, mustering the humans from the Forbidden City to destroy the ape society once and for all.



Meanwhile, Aldo is furious over the fact that Caesar wants to co-exist peacefully with humans, and plots a military coup in order to get himself installed as the leader of Ape City. Cornelius, while climbing a tree, overhears this, but is spotted by Aldo, who hacks at the branch, causing Cornelius to suffer serious injuries and remain bedridden.


French poster

Caesar is devastated by this news, and can only leave Cornelius' side when he learns Kolp is invading Ape City. Aldo breaks into the armory and steals its weapons and corrals all the humans into a pen, claiming that all humans are alike and should be locked away.



Towards the end of the movie, the mutants lose in their effort to conquer Ape City (a reversed plot similar to the failure of the apes to conquer the Forbidden Zone in the second film).



It is then revealed that Cornelius' injury was not due to an accident, but Aldo's malevolence.





An infuriated Caesar engages in a single combat with Aldo, which results in Aldo's death. Caesar then frees the humans, who claim that they will stay in the corral, because freedom is meaningless without respect by the apes.


Japan program


Pressbook

Caesar then realizes the apes are just as despicable as the slaveowners who once owned them if they treat the humans as second class citizens. The apes and humans then decide to coexist with one another and begin to make a new society.


This still seems to have been the basis for the Caesar model kit

Back in the Forbidden City, Méndez has succeeded Kolp as Governor. A mutant is about to fire the cobalt bomb, when Governor Méndez countermands Kolp's last order, saying that it will result in massive destruction and a Pyrrhic victory, whereas if they form a respect, even religion, based on the bomb, they will always have a sense of purpose in their lives.


8mm box art

Then the elderly ape set forth at the beginning of the film, (the Great Lawgiver, played by John Huston), finishes the narration begun in the prologue which is over 600 years later to a group of young humans and apes. Instead of humanity falling and apes rising to take their place, the two species have continued to coexist.



OK, it's me writing again. Yes, as many have noted before me, this movie had the lowest budget of any of the Apes saga... one suspects that the beancounters at 20th Century figured that, while it was worth it to make a fifth movie, the profits wouldn't be enough to spend much money on to make it!


Belgium poster

And it is lacking in many ways to the previous movies... while there are important plot points to be made, in some ways, it almost feels as if they were constrained to place elements in the movie to show that things shown in Beneath (for example) didn't just get pulled out of the writer's figurative lower orifice (to put it politely).


Italian poster

I still enjoy watching the movie, though, even with all its flaws. And I do sometimes wonder what would've happened if this had made enough money that, instead of it being the final chapter, someone decided to go for number six...

Perhaps it's all for the best. After all, the additions to the saga in the live-action and animated TV series cause confusion, and the lack of one person overseeing the entire Apes story (as Lucas has decided to do with all the Star Wars stuff since about, what, 15 years or so ago?), and maintaining a consistency throughout probably had something to do with that.

Jon

Give-A-Show Fridays: Ruff & Reddy and The Flintstones!

Wilma and Betty are being pretty snotty there, considering they're the ones who forced Fred and Barney to get out of bed and investigate the noise, eh?

Next week: Give-A-Show Fridays goes Multimedia, as I begin presenting the 1962 "Orange" Adventure Time Give-A-Show slides... with SOUND!

Jon

Slideshow: Captain America Collectibles!

Just in time for the 4th of July... it's Captain America collectibles!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Random Videos of Geekery: Teen Titans Filmation Video!

Cool Stuff: Original Comic Art!

Time to start on my Volume 2 collection of photos and scans of original comic art... Found somewhere!



And what better way to start this volume and post off than with a Kirby page? This would be page 9 from 1st Issue Special 5, featuring Manhunter!



And here's another Kirby page -- this one available in a much larger view with a click -- it's page 15 of 2001: A Space Odyssey #9, and it features Machine Man (as he would come to be called)!



And here's page 16, also avaialble in a super-size!



And here's page 26! Now to hope that someday someone offers the remaining pages for sale with a decent-sized scan...



And for something completely different, here's page 1 of an issue of Charlton's Abbott and Costello comic book! Art by (I believe) John D'Agostino.



From Action Comics 201, here's page 8, art by Al Plastino -- and note it's also signed by Noel Neill, one of the TV Lois Lanes! She signed this page because the story was used as the basis for one of the George Reeves episodes.



Here's an emotional Neal Adams cover... for Action Comics 358!



I hope you've already read the "Virus X" storyline from Action Comics, else this page will spoil the resolution for you... it's by Ross Andru, and it's page 3 of Action Comics 366!



Man, here's Superman being accused of murder... again! This Action Comics 423 cover is by Nick Cardy.



Here's another Cardy cover, this one for Action 436 -- Yes, Perry White gets powers here, thanks to smoking super-cigars! No, seriously!



Next up is this Kurt Schaffenberger page from Adventure 388... it's page 4, and features a nice Supergirl image, too!



Man, this page got a bit washed out, didn't it? It's another Schaffenberger Supergirl page, and also page 4... this one from Adventure 394!



How's this for a transition? It's page 18 of Adventure Comics 463 (a Dollar Comic issue, I believe), featuring Deadman, by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez!



And we wrap up this installment with the cover for Adventure 492, art by Keith Giffen... probably the most recent comic art page you'll ever see here (well, except for maybe an All-Star Squadron or Infinity, Inc. page!).

Next time, we'll start with... a page from Alarming Adventures!

Jon