Anorexic Jimmy

Again we foray into the Silver Age. This time it's 1955's "Jockey Olsen Rides Star Flash" from Jimmy Olsen #6.  If you thought that Lois had a rocky relationship with Superman, you haven't seen anything yet.  At least Lois had something to gain from her obsession with Superman (crazy, far-out alien sex), but Jimmy was just a pathetic fanboy, "Superman's Pal."  Supes couldn't resist screwing with the kid.  Here's just one of those many occasions:

"Nothing like a hearty lunch, I always say!"  Although this scene doesn't happen in the comic per se, it really sums up the story as a whole.  Superman seems to put all of his jobs on hold (time he could have spent saving people and stuff) to starve Jimmy.

Yeah, Jimmy.  You don't want to be a "hog," do you?  Seriously, look at that lunch!  I know he's supposed to slim down, but really, Superman?  Then again, his afternoon snack is kinda huge, so I can see where Supes is coming from in that case, but still.

Also, according to Perry White, there's no money involved, so what's Superman doing wasting his time on making Jimmy slimmy when he could, once again, be improving the lives of other citizens for real?  In the golden age, Superman exposed corrupt politicians and improved the lives of the impoverished, but here he's just dead-set on helping the Planet with a minor race.

I think that the ice cream guy, Chuck, is my favorite character in the story.  The way he stares at Jimmy in panel four is intense.  Yeah, you eat that ice cream, Jimmy.  You eat it and LIKE IT.  Meanwhile, the writers assure us that Superman is still taking time to save people (thank goodness), but his heart doesn't seem to be in it, as he refuses to make eye contact with the rescued mother and child, and instead uses his heat vision to melt the ice cream.  Woe to anyone who walked in the path between Superman's eyes and the ice cream bar.

But evil Chuck is not done!  When his ice cream plan fails, he tries to sabotage Jimmy yet again!  Oh, Chuck, what are we going to do with you?

Really, Superman?  Really?  Blinders?  Wouldn't it be easier to just eat somewhere privately?  And Jimmy totally goes along with it, too.  I guess he's been publicly humiliated so many times in the past, one more go at it wouldn't hurt.

"Superman, how could you?"  Yep, Supes actually makes him watch.  I know Chuck is supposed to be the villain here, but Superman is really pushing it.  Jimmy's not even safe in his dreams.  To make things worse, Superman was apparently right in starving Jimmy, as he ends up being three pounds overweight!

Sob!  Choke!  Sob-sob!  This looks like a job for Superman!

Yes, the training somehow even get more painful as Jimmy is forced to thrust himself into Superman's legs.  Actually, knowing Jimmy, he might kind of like it.

Yay-yyyyy!  So all ends well.  Chuck presumably gets fired (man, I liked you before, Chuck, but you're an idiot for telling your boss that.  Who in their right mind would make that kind of bet?) and Jimmy ends up looking like Luthor, but gets to pig out.

Also, why would that be their front page headline?  Must have been a really slow news day.

Who's Tricking Who?

I love the Silver Age of comics.  I love it to death.  It's just so much fun!  Seemingly no one has any common sense.  No one acts like a rational person.  In the Superman universe, it comes down to three basic components for the characters:

1. Jimmy Olsen is an idiot.
2. Lois Lane is crazy.
3. Superman is a dick.

Yes, I know, the wonderful Superdickery website has already made the joke, along with half of the Internet, but I just love these comics so much that I'd like to take a crack at it, too.  Heck, this whole blog may become devoted to old Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane comics.  Time will tell.

To start, we're going to look at the story from 1959's Lois Lane #6 -- "The Amazing Superman Junior."

Isn't Lois a wonderful role model for little girls?  If you can't get what you want, lie about it!

Luckily, Superman is there to bail her ass out of trouble, as always.  And Supes is lucky, too, as Lois apparently stays unconscious long enough for him to talk to Perry White and co. to devise a "clever" ruse, as Superman often did in the silver age in order to teach someone a lesson.  Y'know, instead of helping third-world countries.  With great power comes...wait, wrong comic.

I love all the trouble that Supes goes through to teach a lesson to Lois.  You'd think being blasted into space would be enough of a lesson for her, but this is Lois Lane we're talking about, so...

Superman has a BEARD!  How TERRIBLE!  I personally think it's actually a pretty nice look for the guy, but what do I know?  I also like how Robin disguises himself as "Fred Ashley, someone you've never met!"  It's just unnecessary of him to add the "someone you've never met" bit.  Lois knows she hasn't met him, why is he telling her this?  I know that it's to assure the reader that they haven't missed out on some major character in the chronicles, but it just comes off as sloppy.

One can't help feel sorry for Lois, but the thing is, she's learned the hard way that she shouldn't be so snoopy  tons of times, yet she can never seem to remember.  She's like Stan Smith on American Dad in some aspects.

Sa-ay, looks like a monkey wrench has been thrown into the mix...

He didn't just bake a cake, he SUPER-baked it!  Who's going to eat it all, though?  It's a nice spectacle, but it's far from practical.

Yep, that's right.  A super-serum.  Something that should have been used in an emergency only (like the events of Arkham Asylum or Arkham City, for instance) was used to punk Superman and Perry White.  Then again, people were getting superpowers left and right in the silver age, so I guess this wasn't such a big deal?  And how does Lois force Robin to do all this?

Yep, good ol' fashioned blackmail!  Lois is quite the card.  Why Robin didn't just tear up the paper and then knock her out, I don't know.  Anyway, Lois has a bit of saving grace what with the donation, but still.  I agree with Perry on this one.

Meanwhile, a polar bear teaches a lesson in gun safety.

Sugar Bear and Friends - Part One

Ah, Sugar Crisp/Super Sugar Crisp/Super Golden Crisp/Golden Crisp.  Good cereal, good times.

I love commercials.  Or at least, I love old commercials.  Technically, every commercial will eventually become an old commercial, but that's besides the point.  I guess part of it is nostalgia, and another factor is the fact that we are never satisfied with what we have until we lose it.  But whatever the reason is, I love the oldies.

As a child of the 90's, I missed out on a lot of stuff.  Thankfully, that's what Youtube is for.  I decided to do some research on various old cereals and created some playlists based around cereal commercials.  I figured, as long as I had those playlists, why not blog about them as well, right?

So that's the obligatory intro.  Today we're gonna talk about Sugar Bear.

What can't Sugar Bear do?  He can be either a hero or a villain, depending on how he feels in the morning.  He can do anything, including breathe in space.

But we didn't always have Sugar Bear.  Originally, there were three little bears:  Dandy, Handy, and Candy.  They had a hit single about them and apparently even had a comic strip as well.  Despite that, they didn't really have much personality.

After that, cartoon characters like Mighty Mouse and Bugs Bunny did the commercials.

In 1964, the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon gave us Sugar Bear.  I know this because of Wikipedia.  Around the same time (give or take a year), there were commercials with a kid named Christopher, or sometimes the "Big Kid" who would  use Sugar Crisp cereal to pirates or escaped gorillas or bank robbers or something like that.

Sometimes Sugar Bear would join in on the action.

But it was the Lionhearted cartoon that gave Sugar Bear his classic Bing Crosby-style voice and laid-back, stoneresque attitude.  And then there was the song:  He could not get enough of that Sugar Crisp.  It kept him going strong.

In those days, Sugar Bear was kind of a dick.  See, there was this nice old lady, Granny Goodwitch, who was a...well, a good witch.  She was the closest thing he had to an enemy back then.  In fact, he was actually her enemy!  He would waltz into her house, eat her cereal, and leave!  Granny Goodwitch would use spells to make things difficult for Sugar Bear (including turning her house into a tower or even GOING INTO SPACE), but Sugar Bear would always, always manage to steal a bowl or two.

Yes, he rode a bike into space.  Nothing phased him. Nothing.

Clearly, something was wrong.  Sugar Bear was essentially breaking and entering, and then essentially robbing an old lady.  Yes, it was only her cereal, but she was always so ticked about it that it had to really mean something to her.  Sugar Bear was kind of a bully.  A new character had to be added to balance things out.  That's when we got "The Blob."

The Blob a gangster who talked with a thick, Bostonian accent.  He wasn't the brightest villain, but then again, his victims weren't that bright, either.  In one commercial, he just flat-out announced that he was taking over New York and everyone sort of went along with it.  I think that Doofenshmirtz had a similar idea once in Phineas and Ferb.

In the end, old Blobby was always undone by Sugar Bear, who often challenged him to a race, saying he didn't believe in violence (complete BS, by the way), or sometimes Sugar Bear would just beat him up.  Good old-fashioned fisticuffs.

One old commercial revealed that the Blob and Sugar Bear were actually rivals since they were kids.  It also showed us that Sugar Bear wore a sailor suit, so you knew he was a kid or something.  The Blob actually beat him once, too.

One tragic commercial revealed that the Blob never went to the zoo as a child.  As a result, he decides to kick all the animals out.  Perhaps that's why he's such a jerk.  Other times, he just engaged in flat-out pollution for fun's sake.

Around the same time that the Blob went on the pollution-streak, we met Sugar Bear's girlfriend, Honey Bear.  Not much to say on her, except that she was in all of the environment-themed commercials.

We also found out that the Blob has a son.  Let that sink in.

It was around this time that we got a couple one-off villains.  There was Marvin the Mouth, who desperately wished his mouth was bigger and wanted to eat all the Sugar Crisp in the world.

He planned to accomplish this by...turning into a giant hand?

Then there was this weird live-action commercial with a villain named "Shaggy Dan" who looked like a porcupine and stole Sugar Crisp as well.

Gaze in terror at live-action Sugar Bear!

Then there's "Mean Mr. Winter", who was essentially a Snow Miser rip-off, and covered the world in snow, along with his unnamed accomplice.  Sugar Bear turned him "sweet as springtime" with a spoonful of Sugar Crisp.

Honestly, it made him creepier.

Then there was that idiot, Sugar Fox.  He was a high-pitched, southern-accented fox who craved Sugar Crisp as bad as Sugar Bear.  Naturally, he also liked to steal cereal.  His real problem was that he liked to essentially dangle it in front of Sugar Bear and say "ha ha, I've got your cereal!"  It was as if he wanted Sugar Bear to take it back, which he always did.

After that, there were more one-off villains like giant crabs...

...sharks who controlled other sharks...

...and giant spiders.

He would combat these by changing into a muscular, naked superhero persona, "Super Bear."  The cereal box in that picture is covering his furry, throbbing genitalia.

Continued soon in part 2!

A Boy Named Charlie Brown - Part One

Wow, this one brings me back. I used to watch this all the time as a kid. While I love the heck out of this movie, it's...it's...I'll come out and say it. It's not the greatest movie in the world. It's far from that. It's a nice film, it has some fantastic (and random) sequences, but it's a flawed film, much like Charlie Brown is a flawed person. And in a way, it's fitting.

But I might as well get to the recap and explain myself a little better.

The film opens with a cute little jingle (the "Champion Charlie Brown" song to be exact), and fades to Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy gazing at the clouds. In a scene taken directly from the comic strip, Lucy muses about all the things that one can see in the clouds. Linus describes grand, historical images that he sees.

Charlie Brown: Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsey, but I changed my mind.

That moment does a good job of summing up Charlie Brown--he's a well-meaning kid who just tries too darn hard. With that, we cut to the opening credits, accompanied by some great music by Vince Guaraldi (who wrote the film's fantastic score).

We are then presented with the gravelly-voiced Rod McKuen, singing the film's title song. It's a pleasant little song about how there's a little Charlie Brown inside of all of us. Charlie Brown sits inside, making a kite. He's satisfied with it and goes outside...

Until that happens.

Despite the setback, the kid just doesn't give up. He sits right back down and starts over. The film's done a good job of getting us on his side already.

Finally finished, Charlie Brown returns to the park, armed with his completed kite. But waiting for him is one of my favorite characters...THE KITE-EATING TREE!

"Would you like some candy, little boy?"

Undeterred, Charlie Brown continues through the park and tries to fly his kite.

Things get tense.

In the end, he just can't seem to do it. Delivering his lines in the classic Peanuts way (meaning he says everything as if he's reading off a cue card--which the voice actor very well might be), he leaves the crumpled kite with Lucy and demands that she take it away.

Lucy deposits the remains of the kite on a sleeping Snoopy.  A gust of wind picks the kite up and lo and behold...

Snoopy can fly the kite better in his sleep.

I don't know if they didn't remember to put the background in or what.

The next morning, Charlie Brown is out and about, heading off to the baseball field.  He is dismayed to find that the pitcher's mound is covered in dandelions, and the girls don't want him to cut them down. He looks kind of cute standing there.

Snoopy, meanwhile, is setting up a record player.  Okay, normal so far but then...

What the...?

What's happening?!

It's so patriotic, it hurts!

Dear lord!

Is that technically an adult?!

I feel proud to be an American all of a sudden!

The madness is suddenly over.  The others look on in voiceless confusion.

There's not much to say on the game.  It's essentially a montage of old Peanuts strips about how incompetent Charlie Brown's team is.  Of course, we have the classic "Charlie Brown is hit by a baseball and all of his clothes come off" bit.  Oh, and some bubble gum explodes in Frieda's face for some reason.

In the end, they lose, of course.

Take special note of those purple birds.  This is pre-Woodstock era here.

"Well, we lost the first game of the season again.  I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does.  We always seem to lose the first game of the season and the last game of the season...AND ALL THOSE STUPID GAMES IN-BETWEEN!"