I got into a polite disagreement about the relative merits of Breakfast at Tiffany's with Friend Ken, who admitted he has never much enjoyed movies from the late 50s through early 70s. Breakfast at Tiffany's aside, my uncultured friend is not entirely wrong. Obviously things did start to go a bit stale as the American Studio System died a slow death, but that doesn't mean there weren't movies worth watching in the 1960s. For example:

1960: Inherit the Wind with Tracy and Kelly taking turns stealing scenes. The Apartment deserves its Oscar for its sharp script, but I still prefer to watch (and listen to) The Magnificent Seven.

1961: Judgment at Nuremberg is still topical, as evidenced by the fact they just revisited it. I'm particularly fond of Murder, She Said, a fantastic whodunnit with a great theme. Of course, I hear Breakfast at Tiffany's is also pretty good.

1962: To Kill a Mockingbird. If you don't like that, we can't be friends (although I cannot tell you how many times I've watched The Music Man and Gypsy).

1963: Lilies of the Field has Poitier at his best, but I'm a sucker for Charade (which is not a Hitchcock film; his 1963 effort is The Birds which I also like very much).

1964: The Umbrellas of Cherborg is simply brilliant (best movie of the decade?), and if you like musicals, also A Hard Day's Night. Everyone has already seen Goldfinger, right? The template for all action spy movies to come.

1965: Bunny Lake is Missing. Yes, it's a lesser Otto Preminger film, but I'll take lesser Preminger over the likes of The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago any day.

1966: A Man for All Seasons won Oscar for a reason, but the tide is turning from the hackneyed films of yesteryear and there are a bunch of films from '66 that have entered enduring classic status, including Batman and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

1967: Hotel. I just love it. Actually, there's a lot to love about '67. I'm especially partial to In the Heat of the Night and the original Peter Cook/Dudley Moore Bedazzled, but you could throw a dart at most movies released this year and not come out too badly.

1968: The Phantom Tollbooth, because I grew up with it and was idly thinking about Subtraction Stew just yesterday. And while this is the year of Bullitt which stands up really well as an action film, I'd recommend The Swimmer as a hidden gem.

1969: Putney Swope is well outside the envelope of what came before it, but so are so many of the films of the year. I've seen quite a few movies from '69, when the cultural turmoil of the decade really starts to creep into almost everything, and I don't enjoy most of them, including the ones you're probably thinking of. I did, however, enjoy If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium and Z.

That's nothing like a complete list of worthwhile '60s movies, but the only way to find out what you'll really like is to start watching. Good luck, Ken.

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Following up on yesterday's post about the S-shield on Superman's cape: it has never appeared on any of the Superman balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

I previously posted about the very first Superman parade balloon from 1940 back in November 2008. That original balloon, used for only one year and record holder as the tallest balloon until 1982, had a loose red cape that came down just to the seat of its pants. The second Superman balloon (a particularly ugly one with a round chest) debuted in 1966, and its cape was a little longer but just as solid red. The third Superman balloon, the largest balloon since WWII and the one I painted in 2020, entered the parade in 1980, and despite several mishaps, flew each year until 1987. This last one also had a solid red cape, though it was a horizontal "flying" pose, so the back was never seen from street level.

The parade balloons are expensive to create and fill with helium (though the people who walk them through downtown Manhattan are all unpaid volunteers), so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the balloons that make the annual cut are the ones that Macy's can make money on. That was true even in 1940, when Macy's had a sponsorship deal with National Periodicals to produce exclusive Superman merchandise, as you can see from this advertisement from page 21 of the May 16, 1940, edition of the New York Daily News:

If you look at those illustrations of Superman, the S-shield is clearly visible on his cape. However, the "playsuit" that Macy's sold to kids, not so much. It was just a solid red sheet with a comics-inaccurate blue drawstring. (The pants featured pictures of Superman around the waist, so comics accuracy was clearly not a big concern.)

For the record, the very first Superman to ever appear in a parade was Ray Middleton, who dressed the part as the Metropolis Marvel for "Superman Day" on July 3 at the 1940 New York World's Fair. The event was created to promote the New York World's Fair Comic 1940 Issue featuring Superman (and Batman and Robin!). In the comic, Superman very clearly has a shield on his cape, but Middleton's costume didn't. If the "real" Superman had a solid red cape, the kids at Macy's couldn't be too disappointed.

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If you were keeping track of such things, DC Comics' latest Batman Day was this past Saturday. By all accounts, things went really well for comics retailers, who seem to have sold out of this week's Marvel Comics' Deadpool/Batman #1 inter-company crossover issue.

*ahem* "Clear to whom."

Yes, you read that right: The book was published by Marvel, not DC. It has been literally decades since competitors DC and Marvel agreed to put their intellectual properties in the same comic book, but, whether I agree with it or not, it is a fact of life that nothing is more important in 2025 America than the Almighty Dollar. Printing a comic with Deadpool and Batman in it is functionally the same as printing money, so of course they did.

Demand was unnaturally high for this, even considering the enduring appetite that some readers have for these two characters. I hear secondhand reports that a significant portion of buyers were new customers drawn in based on their familiarity of these characters' movie appearances. I cannot tell you how rarely that actually happens. Less surprisingly, many of these new customers bought multiple copies for speculation purposes. Comic companies have learned from past experience, and there were 20 covers to choose from. Too bad those speculating customers haven't learned from past experience the truth that few if any of those copies will outpace inflation in investment value. They'd be better off investing their money in crypto. (The currency, not the dog.)

I have no idea how many copies of Deadpool/Batman were printed. Publishers do everything they can to keep those numbers a secret these days because they're usually shockingly low, often (much) fewer than 15,000 copies. (If you want to follow along at home with a calculator, know that the average cover price is $3.99 with something near a 50/50 split between retailer and publisher.) But the recent relaunch of Batman #1 (cover price $4.99) is widely reported to have sold through half a million even before starting a second printing. Of course, that book also has 56 different covers (starting at $5.99), counting the many retailer incentive variants and event exclusives in addition to the open order and blind bag alternates. (If all those terms boggle you, please stay away from the comic book market. It's not safe for you. Frankly, It's not safe for anyone who values their pocketbook or their sanity.)

Don't worry that you might have missed out, though. There is a follow up coming from DC in November, naturally called Batman/Deadpool #1. That way they both get to be number ones! (Which they say will sell more. If They say it, who am I to question?) And this one will also have 20 covers. Isn't comic collecting fun?

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When my aunt told me I had to wear a mask to a masquerade ball she was throwing on Saturday, there was really only one option.

Beware, evildoers!

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Welcome to the 20th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month!

Twenty years is a long time. Not so long for Batman, though. He's a spry 87 years old and still fighting crime!

Not that you'd know he's an octogenarian from reading comic books. Comics have a way of sliding time so that "the past" is always no more than twenty years ago. For example, when Batman has a flashback to his college football days in 1978, it somehow looks like the facemask-free 1950s.

Batman Vol. 39, No. 304, Oct 1978

Some people will go to any length to stay young.

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Fifteen years ago, the top ten keywords at Wriphe.com were "comic books," "football," "news," "holidays," "batman," "superman," "movies," "television," "wriphe.com," and "uga" (which at some point in the past decade I changed to "georgia" because I now use Uga exclusively to refer to the UGA Bulldog mascot).

As of today, the top ten keywords are "movies," "comic strip," "poodle strip," "walter," "poodles," "football," "comic books," "news," "holidays," and "havanese strip."

The five constants there are "comic books," "football," "holidays," "movies," and "news."

I don't know what that means, if anything. I just thought I'd point it out.

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This has nothing to do with Batman or football. It's just Mr. Spock out standing in his field.

Live long and prosper.

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 Wriphe [Official Comment]: Posted Sep. 19, 2024 at 01:10:26 AM

CamMoscatiello Posted Sep. 20, 2024 at 04:14:29 PM
EXCELLENT!!

Anti-Spam Validation

If you had ten amusement park rides and I took away seven, how many would you have?

Afterwards, if I gave you two more amusement park rides, how many would you end up with?

For your aural pleasure.

Miranda

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McFarlane Toys recently announced a new line of Batman cowl replicas. The "replica" in the name is important, because these cowls have never been worn by the actual Batman.

My topmost bookshelf currently showcases a Golden Age Superman statue, a battery-powered Star Trek TOS starship Enterprise, a Judge Dredd badge with my name on it, V.I.N.cent, Captain Carrot, and Booster Gold inaction figures and a life-size Batman Begins Halloween pail. The red-headed stepchild there is the Halloween pail. I'm not a big fan of the Batman Begins version of Batman, and it would be nice to replace the piercing gaze of that blue-eyed plastic pail with something less horrifying.

The new McFarlane cowls represent the 1966 television Batman, the 1989 movie Batman, and the 1993 comic book Batman. I like the idea of them, but I cannot bring myself to order one. For one thing, as I mentioned, they are stiff plastic replicas. More importantly, they are only 1:3 scale.

As everyone knows, the average American's head is about 9.5 inches high. (Batman is slightly larger than the average American, so assume his head is closer to 10 inches tall, not counting the pointy ears.) That means that a 1:3 scale cowl would only fit a 3-inch tall head! The packaging says they're about 7 inches tall with stand and pointy ears. If I put a 3-inch hood on my shelf, I'm worried it won't look so much like a Batman tribute as something I stole it from a racist Smurf.

So for the time being, I guess I'm sticking with plastic Christian Bale. On the bright side, his head can hold several bags of Halloween candy, and that's not nothing.

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