65/2635. Best Served Cold: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2026)
Hallmark Mysteries have never recovered from the pandemic disruption, and maybe they never will. I'm sure many of the decisions behind the scenes about which actors are available and which aren't must significantly hamper development of this series, but at this point, with the films being reduced to completely formulaic exercises in exploitable familiarity, even Mom is losing enthusiasm for this series.

66/2636. International House (1933)
The frame story of this madcap comedy, in which a convention of international buyers assemble in China to compete for rights to an improbable television-like device, is only an excuse for a bunch of famous comedy vaudeville acts to do their thing. It's actually quite amusing.

67/2637. Gumshoe (1971)
Critical guides as a comedy, though it's neither really cynical enough to be a black comedy nor does it exactly match the Shakespearean sense of the word. Though it does begin as a case of mistaken identity, and Albert Finney lends it his usual world-weary humor, the film is executed as a serious neo noir, in a style typical of its era, about a novice hardboiled detective learning on the fly. I liked it a lot.

68/2638. The Last Voyage (1960)
This disaster picture, presented in an almost documentary matter-of-fact style, squeezes a lot of drama out of the real-time sinking of an ocean liner following a boiler accident. Very suspenseful.

69/2639. Target (1952)
Actor Tim Holt plays cowboy Tim Holt, the only competent man in a West populated by misogynists, racists, and murderers. I watched it because John Hamilton, television's Perry White, plays the rancher who hires — and fires — Holt. The best thing I can say about it is that its short run time keeps it from wearing out its welcome.

More to come.

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I interviewed Vince Sullivan at Comic-Con back in, I believe, 1993. I don't recall him saying he wanted a character that had unearthly powers. I think he just wanted one as colorful [as Superman] and able to do amazing things.

—Mark Evanier, newsfromme.com, July 6, 2026

If you don't know, Vince Sullivan was the first editor of National Allied Publications' Action Comics and Detective Comics when they both sold for 10¢. By all accounts (including Bob Kane's, right at the start of chapter 4, "A Vision Inspired by Da Vinci," in his notoriously inaccurate autobiography, Batman & Me), it was Sullivan who in early 1939 encouraged a young Kane to create a character that eventually became The Batman.

The point here is that by 1993, when Detective Comics cost $1.25, I had already been collecting Batman comic books for years. I eventually acquired most of the Batman comics that had been published during my lifetime, but I never seriously considered trying to own a complete run because the early issues seemed impossibly distant. Fifty-four years was a long time! No one could ever catch up on that many comics!

However, as the anecdote above about Batman's literary origin indicates, the man who ordered his creation was still very much alive and attending comic conventions at the time. (He died at age 87 in 1999 when Detective Comics cost $2.25.) Five decades probably didn't seem so long ago to someone who lived through them. And now that an additional 33 years have passed, I have to admit that 1939 is starting to feel closer than ever to me, too.

Which is not to say that I'm harboring any rekindled urge to collect 'em all. I quit collecting Batman when DC "killed" him off in 2009 when Detective Comics regularly cost $2.99 (though Batman's death was marked up to an opportunistic $3.99). Add that a copy of Batman's first Detective Comics appearance sold at auction in May for $1,525,000, and I think we can all agree that the best time to buy one has long passed me by. I wonder how long Sullivan held on to his?

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I had though I found a "news" item that fit perfectly within the Venn Diagram of several topics I like to blog about (video games, comic books, sex), but on further research, I decided that I didn't fully trust the sources and have chosen to refrain. I'm sure that in years prior — and past posts on this blog will bear this out — I would have posted it anyway, facts be damned. But I find I'm getting a little squeamish about engaging in such behavior as I grow smarter and wiser.

I'd like to drop the "-er"s and say that I'm growing smart [full stop] and wise [full stop], but, like perfection, I suspect that both of those absolute conditions are probably beyond my grasp. I strongly believe that one can never be smart or wise enough (especially as regards one's ass), and even though I like to think of myself as smarter than the average bear, I'm still plenty stupid in many respects. For example, after accidentally slicing open the tip of my ring finger on Independence Day (you celebrate your way, I'll celebrate mine) while replacing an air filter in the HVAC (I have a terrible track record with sheet metal), I put a Band-Aid® over it mostly to remind me to be careful with that finger as it heals. But today I hid that reminder inside a work glove while recycling aluminum cans (which are just sheet metal rolled into tubes for your mouth). Out of sight, out of mind. The uncomfortable sensation I felt as I used the finger to push a heavy bin into a dumpster painfully reminded me that I am definitely not as smart as I like to think I am.

Although, I suppose if I want to be pedantic, I should accuse myself not of being stupid but being unwise. Smart is a synonym for acquired knowledge or the ability to recall and process information quickly. Wise, on the other hand, is the practical understanding of how and when to apply that knowledge/processing. Knowing I should protect my finger is smart; failing to do so is not wise.

Or, in another example from earlier today, being smart is knowing that in case I die suddenly, I should leave nothing in my possessions that would embarrass me if my mother found it. Being wise would have been not to mention that to my mother. She responded with a giggle and the unembarrassed confession that one day I'm going to find a bunch of old vibrators in her room.

I'm smarter after that conversation. Wiser, too.

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William Daniels, the man who played John Adams in 1776 on Broadway in 1969 (and in the movies in 1972), was born in 1927, which means he's 99 years old as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. We think of 250 years as a very long time, but Daniels has personally witnessed nearly 40% of the United States' entire history. The actual Adams himself lived to 91, famously dying on the America's 50th birthday. Between the two men, there's only 101 years of American history that neither man saw. Maybe 250 years isn't as long as we think it is.

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60/2630. Undercurent (1946)
As much as I typically enjoy Katherine Hepburn, after years of establishing her public persona as an independent spirit, she's just not the right woman for this role of the sheltered ingenue who abruptly falls for and marries someone who from the very beginning is clearly the wrong man. This stunt casting was intentional as Robert Mitchum was also cast against type. Two wrongs don't make a right.

61/2631. The Steel Helmet (1951)
A contemporary anti-Korean War movie in which the protagonist is an unprincipled soldier interested only in his own survival. The small budget makes it all feel like a television show, so it's more like watching a play. I think that abstraction actually works in its favor.

62/2632. Ace of Aces (1933)
During World War I, sculptor Richard Dix works so hard to prove everyone is so wrong about how soft he is that he becomes a flying killing machine. I don't think there's any lesson in here, just standard melodrama.

63/2633. The Naked and the Dead (1958)
During World War II, Cliff Robertson argues to his asshole general that men will fight harder for leaders they respect than for leaders they fear. In this case, Cliff is proven right, but, I mean, he still gets mortally wounded. Was that really a win, Cliffy?

64/2634. Seven Days to Noon (1950)
It's a silly name for a procedural about the frantic search to catch a nuclear scientist planning to detonate a suitcase nuke in downtown London. The movie has enough strong parallels to George Clooney's 1997 Peacemaker (which I have always liked) that I think we can call the latter movie a remake.

More to come.

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I was just looking back at old blog posts to see if I had a "garage door" category. I don't. But what I noticed while looking was that many of my posts referencing the garage also reference Star Wars. I knew I referenced Star Wars frequently, but I hadn't consciously connected Star Wars with garages. Funny the things you notice when you actually go looking.

The motivation for this latest round of navel gazing was that I spent too many hours on Friday replacing the other automatic door opener in the garage. I replaced the north bay opener ten years ago — I checked receipts — but the south opener survived until this week. Technically, it still worked, but its speed had become increasingly variable; sometimes it took a half minute to open. Mom had had enough and finally gave orders that it should be replaced.

Of course, Genie no longer makes the exact model I installed in 2016, so I had to get a newer model (with accompanying cost increase), but it was pretty much the same thing. I read the instructions. Twice. They made it sound like a job so easy, any idiot could have done it. Unfortunately, the idiot was me.

Despite the pictures, I still screwed up assembling the track. The new drive head was narrower than the previous, so I had to make an additional trip to Home Depot for extra hanging hardware. Then I dropped the spool of wire off the top of the ladder and had to spend the next forty-five minutes untangling. And just when I thought I had it all working, I found that the signal from the new safety sensors conflicted with the sensors on the other door and had to be rewired. So easy.

It probably wouldn't have been so bad if the heat index wasn't in the mid-nineties. I also need to learn to give myself more room to work. The place is so full of tools, recyclables, and painted cutouts, it's amazing we can still get any cars in there. Between the heat and the clutter, the place is starting to remind me of a Jawa sandcrawler. Utinni!

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The latest Supergirl movie opens today, and while I wish it nothing but the best of luck,* I don't plan on seeing it.

True, I'm in the 1% of people on this planet who didn't care for last summer's Superman, and you're probably right to call me a grumpy old man with no sense of humor. But I just can't get past the fact that James Gunn gave Superboy's dog, Krypto, to Supergirl when she already has her own perfectly close-up ready pet, the adorable Streaky the Super-Cat.

cover blurb and interior art from Action Comics #261, February 1960

They say a lot of things to warn you away from comic books, boys and girls, and some of them are actually true. But they don't tell you that one day your head will be so full of familiar adventures that you'll get actively angry when new storytellers come along and screw up the classics by randomly giving Pegasus to Hercules.

Bah, I say. Bah.

*I do, in fact, want more movies set in the DC Universe. If they make enough, sooner or later, they'll make one I actually like, even if only by accident.

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Last night I was lying in bed reading The Tick Omnibus comic book. Not to brag, but it's the 1990 limited edition first printing, numbered 1446 of 3000, hand signed by Tick creator Ben Edlund, art director/letterer Robert Polio, and editor George Suarez. You know the one. Anyway, the point is that I was reading Tick comics in bed, and what should start crawling up my leg?

It could have been worse. I could have been reading issues of Poison Ivy. Or Hellboy.

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