Challengers Of The Unknown may sound like a B-movie, but they are an adventurous team seen in the pages of DC Comics. After a near fatal plane crash, Ace Morgan, Red Ryan, Rocky Davis, and Mark “Prof” Haley” are men living on borrowed time. Yet one question remains- “What happens when time runs out?”
Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale attempt to answer that question in Challengers Of The Unknown Must Die. While they became famous for their work on Batman, this 1991 miniseries is their first work as a duo. Although not a big hit, DC had plans for a follow-up, but this never came to be.
Challengers of the Unknown in action
Loeb and Sale depict the Challengers as middle-aged heroes in semi-retirement. Their hometown, Challenger-ville, is a tourist attraction. One day, an explosion from Challenger Mountain destroys the town. Haley and wife June Robbins are among the thousands killed in the blast. Ace, Rocky, and Red manage to save people, but they are facing manslaughter charges.
Ace, Rocky, and Red endure a heavily-covered trial, but Superman testifies in their favor. The court decides Haley’s experiments are to blame, but the others are found not guilty. They are liable for damages and ordered to disband.
What a way to start the series- with a bang
From here, the team ventures into different paths. Ace moves to New York and rents a room in Greenwich Village (a la Doctor Strange). He delves into the mystic arts and gets lost in his own demons. Red becomes a mercenary fighting in third-world countries. As for Rocky, he goes to Hollywood and becomes a famous movie actor. He develops a major drinking problem and ends up in rehab.
Meanwhile, reporter Harold Moffet suspects sinister forces are at work. He’s certain the Challengers didn’t cause the explosion, but he lacks the evidence to prove his theory. Soon, a series of similar events indicate there is someone else behind it. Moffat makes it his mission to reunite the team.
Loeb succeeds in breathing life into the Challengers and exploring their personalities. He deconstructs the 1950s concept of heroes and makes it work. By being out of their comfort zone, the team has to come to terms with their existence. It is unfortunate the series didn’t get a follow-up, because Loeb gets what makes the characters tick.
Is it just me, or is Sale’s artwork very cinematic?
Sale uses real-life people as a basis for his characters. Red bears an uncanny resemblance to Ed Harris. Rocky sports the Kirk Douglas chin, and Ace has Robert De Niro’s aquiline nose. Heck, Moffet looks like Jerry Seinfeld.
The series’ main problem is the lack of team action. Since Haley and June are dead, one would expect the survivors to step up as a group, but they go their separate ways. When the group reunites, it is exciting to watch, but one keeps wishing for a bigger payoff.
Nor is the villain very exciting. At first, the main antagonist appears to be Duncan Pramble, a small nerd who used to be known as Multi-Man. However, he only serves as a puppet of a cosmic entity from another realm.
We get some character exploration of Ace and Rocky, who cope with their own problems. While Ace’s arc might feel like Doctor Strange, his struggle with faith and destiny are thought-provoking. Rocky’s alcoholism subplot is moving to read about. That being said, Red’s vigilante career feels like a light version of the Punisher. Prof and June get some development as a married couple, which isn’t given much depth.
Challengers Of The Unknown Must Die has some great moments, but it struggles to find a direction. Loeb tends to weave dated pop culture references into the story, but these feel cliche at times. Sale’s artwork and visuals are very impressive. The duo’s first collaboration is a sign of greater things to come.
The Challengers have big screen movie potential, but would audiences pay to see it?
I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking: “Donald Duck? This is kid stuff! What possible interest could I, a sophisticated comics reader, have in a talking duck who wears a sailor outfit?” I’m familiar with this kind of reasoning because I had similar thoughts when I borrowed the “Lost in the Andes” and “Trail of the Unicorn” Donald Duck box set from a friend of mine. My friend assured me that these stories are excellent. But he likes DC so there’s no accounting for his taste in comics (just kidding, DC fans).
How wrong I was to take this ageist approach to Carl Barks‘s work. These aren’t only the best Donald Duck stories I’ve ever seen. Barks’s deft artwork and mastery of pacing make these some of the most entertaining stories I’ve read.
Donald Duck: This Box Set
This box set contains 32-page long-format stories, like “Lost in the Andes” and “Trail of the Unicorn,” shorter 10-page adventures, and single-page gags. It’s hard to say whether the long-format stories or the one-page gags are more impressive.
The long stories give Barks’s characters a chance to travel to many distant parts of the world. The gags, though, show off Barks’s succinctness. And, they often allow his characters a surprising level of emotional development over their nine or so panels. No wonder Barks was one of three original inductees to The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1987, alongside Jack Kirby and Will Eisner.
A complete analysis of this box set would take several articles. So, I’ll focus only on “Lost in the Andes” here, and leave another author the pleasure of covering the others.
Donald Duck: “Lost in the Andes” – Characterizations
The most important thing to remember when reading these stories is that Donald and his nephews are people who look like animals, not talking animals. It might sound like I’m splitting hairs, but the layered personalities of Barks’s characters have more depth than a run-of-the-mill funny animal strip. In line with Floyd Gottfredson‘s work on Mickey Mouse, Barks’s Donald Duck has more of the working class in him than he does the barnyard. In fact, in “Trail of the Unicorn” two of Donald’s identical nephews remark, “You can’t lock Unca’ Donald in your old zoo! And, besides, he isn’t an animal!”
And, speaking of Donald Duck’s famous nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, their characterizations in Barks’s stories are much different from their usual roles as mischievous foils for their angry uncle. Although they do pester him from time to time, in Barks’s stories Donald Duck’s nephews generally act as willing, and often more clear-headed, accomplices to their uncle.
Donald Duck: “Lost in the Andes” – Cameos
Although “Lost in the Andes” doesn’t feature any cameos by familiar Disney characters, “Trail of the Unicorn” features a walk-on by Donald Duck’s uncle Scrooge McDuck, “the richest man [again, not duck] in the world”. And, for die-hard Donald Duck fans, there are a few stories that feature Donald’s infuriatingly lucky cousin Gladstone Gander, who can’t help but win at nearly everything he tries.
And, because several of the stories in this box set revolve around Christmas (obviously one of Barks’s favourite holidays), readers are treated to more than one appearance of the man in red himself, Santa Claus.
Donald Duck: “Lost in the Andes” – The Plot
Working as a museum “janitor,” one of the many jobs he’ll have over the years, Donald Duck accidentally breaks an Incan artifact while dusting it. Upon breaking it, though, what appears to be nothing more than a cuboid rock turns out to actually be a centuries-old cuboid egg. This startling discovery sets Duckburg abuzz, and a scientific expedition to Peru is undertaken. Of course, Donald Duck and his ever-present nephews, continually chewing bubble-gum in this adventure, join the South American egg hunt as third, fourth, fifth, and sixth assistants to the leader of the expedition.
When the expedition finally arrives in the Andes, Donald and his nephews are the only members able to leave their bunks. Their superiors are busy recovering from having eaten omelets made from the centuries-old cuboid eggs, prepared by Huey, Dewey, and Louie of course.
Donald Duck: “Lost in the Andes” – Plain Awful
“I wonder what they call uncool people, circles?”
After a few interactions with some Andean locals, Donald and his nephews wander aimlessly through a dense mist until they come upon a hidden city made entirely of cuboid structures. During a tense search of the lost city, Donald and his nephews hear someone singing an unmistakably American song, “I Wish I Was in Dixie”. The singer reveals himself as he turns a corner, and his features are as cuboid as the city he inhabits.
Once Donald reveals that he and his nephews are from USA, the cuboid man rejoices. He invites the ducky quartet to dine with the city’s “president”. The president reveals to them that they took up their southern dialect after a visiting professor, Prof. Rhutt Betlah, came to their city.
The ducks confirm their suspicions that this lost city, which the president reports Professor Butlah named “Plain Awful,” is the source of the cuboid eggs when the Plain-Awfulians serve them several square egg dishes during the ducks’ state dinner. Not content to head back to Duckburg with just a bunch of eggs, Donald demands to know where the Plain-Awfulians keep their chickens. All the Plain-Awfulians know, though, is that the “aigs” are found in “Aig Valley”.
Donald Duck: “Lost in the Andes” – Square Chickens
Huey, after sticking one of his bubble-gum bubbles on what appears to be a large rock in Aig Valley, finds that the rock is actually a cuboid chicken. The elusive chickens found, the president of Plain Awful names the ducks Secretaries of Agriculture. The honour is short-lived, though. When Donald’s nephews demonstrate how they found the chickens, the Plain-Awfulians cry sacrilege. Anything round, even bubble-gum bubbles, are strictly taboo in Plain Awful.
The president demands that Donald’s nephews atone for their sins by blowing cuboid bubbles. Luckily the young ducks outsmart the cuboid culture by putting small cuboid chickens in their mouths and having them blow the bubbles. Absolved of their sins, all the ducks are free to go. Before they do, though, they take two cuboid chickens to bring back to Duckburg.
Unfortunately, when they finally get home, it turns out that Donald and his nephews have brought back two cuboid roosters rather than hens. The whole adventure has been for naught. Humiliated, Donald and his nephews seek succour at a diner. But (as a final gag) the ornery duck loses his temper when the cook offers he and his nephews egg and chicken dishes.
Donald Duck: “Lost in the Andes” – The Art
Carl Barks’s art is amazing. In terms of landscapes, of particular note in this story is his dramatic reveal of Plain Awful. Of course, this isn’t to say that Barks does bad subject drawings. Barks’s depictions of a wide-eyed Donald seen through the Andean mists show a surprising level of emotion even though the drawings are purposefully indistinct and crafted entirely with horizontal lines. Sure, these are cartoons but Barks drew them expertly.
The Merc with a Mouth returns … in 1953?
Next Time …
For the impatient Marvelites out there, don’t fear! I haven’t hung up my Timely Comics Watchamacallit hat yet. I’ll be back with another Golden Age retcon next week. Given his unexpected box office appeal, I’ll cover one of my favourite looks back at the early days of comics. Try to contain your excitement: next week I’ll cover the Merc with a Mouth’s very own Deadpool: Pulp.
It’s Friday on Halloween Weekend, and between now and Monday morning a lot of costumes will get ruined, alcohol will vanish, and delicious things like pizza rolls consumed in mass quantities. Between the parties and getting plastered there’s plenty of time to binge-watch all thirteen episodes of Black Mirror.
What is Black Mirror?
It’s a UK anthology series much like Twilight Zone or Outer Limits only taken to a whole new level of demented. As an anthology, Black Mirror packs more into one (typically) hour-long episode, than most movies do in two hours.
Since Black Mirror is an anthology series, there’s no need to watch episodes in order. So, we created the episode guide below in case you want to jump around.
Be warned!
Black Mirror is not the kind of show that’s trying to make you happy with predictable plots and super-pretty, likable characters. It’s trying to unnerve you in every way possible.
Episode 1: The National Anthem
If you ask me, watching Black Mirror in order allows you see just how insane the show is in so many different ways. The very first episode goes full on crazy with a story about a British politician who is forced to do something truly heinous for his country and the world. Each twist at the end is more disturbing and heartbreaking than the next.
Episode 2: Fifteen Million Merits
Some people become obsessed with fame and others with love. Both fame and love will sometimes drive people to extremes. Fifteen Million Merits exists in a not-so-distant future where generating energy is currency, skipping ads costs money, and being fat makes you a second class citizen. Sucks for me!
Episode 3: The Entire History Of You
Each Black Mirror episode seemingly takes place within a unique reality. In the final episode of the first series, the near-future story unfolds around a technology known as “re-do.” Everyone has an implant that records their memories, allowing us to watch every second of our lives or share every second of our lives. It’s like Facebook only more annoying. And it goes to dark depths as Black Mirror does so well.
Episode 4: Be Right Back
Series two starts with a couple who moves into a remote, countryside house. The next day husband Ash dies. Hayley Atwell (Marvel’s Agent Carter) carries the episode as Martha, the grieving widow. But technology here can virtually recreate the personality of a deceased person. Martha struggles with letting go of a ghost created by technology.
Episode 5: White Bear
One of the best examples of Black Mirror’s precise storytelling is the second episode series two. White Bear follows Victoria Skillane (Lenora Crichlow) through what at first plays out seemingly predictable. But like many of the best Black Mirror episodes, just when you think you have everything figured out it swerves right and left and back again to make its real point clear.
Episode 6: The Waldo Moment
Depending on your political stance, the final episode of series two is probably more terrifying to watch today than it was when originally aired in 2014. Waldo, a CG animated cartoon from a late-night comedy show (think Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), goes around making fun of politicians. Waldo enters an election, and the world crumbles from there.
Episode 7: White Christmas
Yes, leave it to Black Mirror, a twisted and dark show, to have a Christmas special. White Christmas is 90-minutes of pure Black Mirror magic. Jon Hamm (Mad Men) stars in three, thirty-minute episodes that each highlight what this show does best: believable science fiction, spot-on satire, and gut-punching twists.
Episode 8: Nosedive
Series three is the first with Netflix involved but Black Mirror doesn’t miss a beat. Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World) stars in a story about a future world that we’re not too far away from. In this dark reality, your “Like” score sets your societal status. Howard will do anything to raise her score to be in with the in-crowd.
Episode 9: Playtest
Playtest is one of my top three favorite episodes. But at the same time, F this episode. It’s horrifying and heartbreaking and packaged within awesome virtual reality. For Cooper (Wyatt Russel), the need to earn enough money to head back home to his mom leads him to be a guinea pig in an experimental video game technology. As Black Mirror does best, it drags Cooper and the viewer through psychotic imagery and mind-bending shenanigans.
Episode 10: Shut Up And Dance
You’ve seen this kind of story before. A secret group forces someone into a deadly game. As Black Mirror will do, they build the familiar while setting you up for the grand surprise. And few rarely survive the surprise in an episode of this show. The acting by both Alex Lawther and Jerome Flynn (Bronn from Game of Thrones) is as good as it gets.
Episode 11: San Junipero
What if science creates a heaven? One of the most thought-provoking episodes of Black Mirror takes us into the love between two women. The technology here downloads the memories of the deceased to live eternally young in a virtual world. The story is patient, provocative, terrifying, and meaningful. The direction does every minute just right. The use of music in every Black Mirror episode is great, but here it goes to a whole new nostalgic level.
Episode 12: Men Against Fire
Another familiar science fiction story of soldiers brainwashed by alternate realities. This episode does everything the 5th Wave wanted to do but didn’t. Men Against Fire has rare weak moments for a Black Mirror episode but no less ends with a poignant punch about warfare and the warriors made to fight.
Episode 13: Hated In The Nation
The longest single episode of Black Mirror focuses on the consequences (or lack thereof) related to social media. A detective testifies to a case which begins a year earlier. Two new partners adjust to each other while following the clues left behind like robot bees. The entire episode plays out almost like a pilot for its own TV show without losing the power-punch of a twist that makes Black Mirror the brilliant show it is.
All episodes of Black Mirror, including the Christmas Episode, are available on Netflix. Another six-episode series arrives in 2017.
Amazon has revealed a new trailer for the extended cut of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. The trailer gives fans a quick glimpse at some of the highly exciting new footage, including a few more scenes with Jared Leto’s Joker.
Watch The Trailer For The Suicide Squad Extended Cut Below!
The trailer doesn’t give too much away, but it definitely looks like we’ll be getting a lot of added material. Suicide Squad didn’t receive the warmest critical response so hopefully, this extended cut will help to win over some of the critics.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice also received a negative critical score, however, the Ultimate Edition managed to win over even some of the biggest haters. Granted this extended cut isn’t as “extended” as Batman v Superman, but any added footage is likely to give the fans more to love. Especially when it comes to The Joker.
It feels good to be bad…Assemble a team of the world’s most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government’s disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren’t picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it’s every man for himself?
Robert Redford and Casey Affleck are joining forces for The Old Man and The Gun, David Lowery’s next crime drama.
Lowery previously directed Affleck in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and had a modest hit with this summer’s well-regarded Pete’s Dragon, starring Redford. Here is the story of The Old Man and The Gun, courtesy of IndieWire:
Written by Lowery, the movie is based on a 2003 New Yorker article by David Grann and tells the true story of Forrest Tucker (Redford), an outlaw with 18 successful prison breaks and a lifetime of bank robberies to his name. The film will retrace Forrest’s twilight years from his escape from San Quentin at the age of 70 to his unprecedented heists that confused authorities and enchanted the public. Affleck will star as a detective who’s captivated by the lawbreaker’s commitment to his craft.
Sounds pretty solid. And Redford and Affleck make for an intriguing pairing, an old legend and the better Affleck (fight me).
The Old Man and The Gun will begin shooting early next year. No release date is attached as of yet. I suspect it will be ready for some late 2017 festival action, and Affleck very well might have an Oscar in his pocket from Manchester by The Sea.
Jesus is returning, only not in the way evangelicals like to tell you. No, this is the one and only Jesus Quintana, the scene-stealing pederast bowler in The Big Lebowski. He’s starring in his own spinoff of the Coen’s classic, Going Places, and we have our first image, courtesy of IndieWire to get you excited:
The purple is back, but I hope he dons the jumpsuit somewhere along the way. As for the synopsis, it sounds appropriately nuts:
“John Turturro plays Jesus Quintana in ‘Going Places,’ a film about a trio of misfits whose irreverent, sexually charged dynamic evolves into a surprising love story as their spontaneous and flippant attitude towards the past or future backfires time and again, even as they inadvertently perform good deeds. When they make enemies with a gun-toting hairdresser, their journey becomes one of constant escape from the law, from society and from the hairdresser, all while the bonds of their outsider family strengthen.”
Going Places also stars Bobby Cannavale, Audrey Tatou, and Susan Sarandon (!). Who knows if this will be any good, but it definitely has a chance. It’s based on a 1974 French film, Les Valseuses, which is appropriately weird.
There’s no release date for Going Places yet, but stay tuned.
This Article Contains Major Spoilers For Doctor Strange!
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a great big success. Since Iron Man Marvel Studios has come to dominate the comic book genre, and Doctor Strange is another successful feat, but the films Marvel produce do have their faults. It is a well agreed upon statement that because Marvel takes such an in-depth look at its heroes, the studios greatest villains are often left out in the cold.
I would argue that Doctor Strange introduces audiences to Marvel’s best villain in years. Mads Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius, while not a great villain does open the door for the introduction of multiple Marvel villains. Not only does the film introduce audiences to Dormammu a giant demonic monster who dwells in the Dark Dimension but we are also teased with a dark turn in Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character Baron Mordo.
The problem Marvel has with its villains is that they don’t take the time to develop what could be great characters. A lot of the villains we’ve seen in films such as Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy and Iron Man 2 , introduce a lot of villains that serve their role within that one movie. With the exception of Loki, Marvel hasn’t really had a villain develop over the course of several movies (Thanos not included), but not anymore. It looks like Marvel is finally learning their lesson, and setting up some great villains for future movies.
In the final after-credits scene, we see that Baron Mordo has developed a dark and twisted idea of what is right. The character believes that the world would be better with less magic, and fewer sorcerers. Now while it might not seem like a lot, this is a major step forward for Marvel. This means that when we next see Mordo, possibly in the Doctor Strange sequel, the film won’t need to tell his origin as a villain but can get straight to the action, and continue to develop him as an interesting character.
Are You Glad To See Marvel Introducing Better Developed Villains? Be Sure To Let Us Know In The Comments!
If you’ve seen Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope, you know how the upcoming Rogue One will end. Not the specific ending, but the story details. The director of the new Star Wars film, Gareth Edwards, commented on how they made the story work with everyone pretty much knowing how it ends, via Entertainment Weekly.
“The thing every [filmmaker] typically struggles with is ‘How does it end?’ But we knew how our film was going to end. Our problem became ‘How do we reverse engineer from that and know where to start?’ You’ve got a finite number of options and you go through them all like a puzzle to find the one that’s going to lead to the strongest result.”
Rogue One stars Felicity Jones, Riz Ahmed, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, and James Earl Jones.
“From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,’ an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.”
‘Deadpool 2’ needs a director after Tim Miller left the project over creative differences with Ryan Reynolds, and it appears ‘John Wick’ director David Leitch is at the top of the list of three possible candidates, according to a source at Mashable. The article continues to say, there doesn’t appear to be an official offer on the table yet, but by most accounts, 20th Century Fox has found its man.
Leitch worked as a stuntman on 83 projects as he climbed his way to the director’s chair. He will have big shoes to fill as the first film grossed $782 million at the box office worldwide on a $58 million budget.
‘Deadpool 2’ stars Reynolds, the plot details of the sequel have been vague at best. We know that Cable, Domino, and time travel are involved. 20th Century Fox is looking at a January 2018 release date for ‘D2.’ (Do you think the Mighty Ducks will be upset if Deadpool steals their title?)
News regarding Iron Fist has been slow since New York Comic-Con, but today we have an interesting piece coming out of Film Music Reporter.
The outlet statest that Trevor Morris will score the upcoming Netflix exclusive series. Morris is known for his work composing both London Has Fallen and Olympus Has Fallen, as well as the History Channel hit Vikings.
Are you familiar with his work? If so, what are your thoughts on this news? Be sure to let us know in the comments section.
“Fifteen years after being presumed dead in a plane crash, Danny Rand mysteriously returns to New York City determined to reclaim his birthright and family company. However, when a long-destined enemy rises in New York, this living weapon is forced to choose between his family’s legacy and his duties as the Iron Fist.”
Episode 4: Be Right Back
Episode 7: White Christmas
Episode 8: Nosedive
