Lightning was cracking the Big Sky apart last night! Several thunderstorms sailed over the Flathead Valley with spectacular cloud-to-cloud bolts that had to be over thirty miles long. At a couple of times the clouds were firing off were several flashes per second -- and all lit by a nearly full moon. The waterbirds didn't seem to mind the turmoil much -- they kept doing what they did in between the storms.

Sax Legend Maceo Parker at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
NEW! Spitfires of the Spaceways
Watch Dale Arden rescue Flash Gordon for a change!

Charity Alert: Keep that resolution as Summer approaches! Click on The Hunger Site every day.

Sitemeter Sez: Great Barrington, Massachusetts read a couple of pages about the Winold Reiss show at the Hockaday Museum of Art last year; (Along with my essay on the Quicksilver Messanger Service.) Durham, North Carolina was searching for P-Funk; Ohio, Nevada, and Ireland were blogging through.

Media Watch: I stayed up past my bedtime to watch A&E's presentation of Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman®. (It will play once more on Saturday, June 17 @ 1pm EDT.)
Superman has been part of our cultural landscape for all of my life, and this documentary traces the origins of the character back when my parents were children in the 30's. I'm glad they devoted a reasonable amount of time to the story of young Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster's post-high school creation of what was to become a mass-media archetype. The film told how Superman went from being an unknown feature in an unknown medium (comic books) to being a newspaper comic strip, a marketing phenomenon, and a full-color cartoon star from Max Fleischer Studios in only three years. Bud Collier's radio show really entrenched Superman in popular consciousness, though -- that's where he changed in phone booths, and flew instead of jumped.
The film left out most of the details about Superman's extremely important position in the history of comic books in favor of TV and movies. They showed scenes from the two somewhat lame Kirk Allyn serials -- he was a bit thin and gawky for the role, and the spliced-in cartoon flying sequences are still embarassing today, but they were made before I was born, plus I never heard of them until after high school.
The film spends quality time with Noel Neill and Jack Larson, two of George Reeves' co-stars in the 50's TV series. They also treat Reeves with respect, and mention how successful he was in ex-comics editor Whitney Ellsworth's filmed adaptations of Superman -- he was even on I Love Lucy, America's most popular show! George Reeves' death is handled with tact, but it WAS a public-relations blow to the franchise. The name Mort Weisinger comes up in it's proper context -- he was the editor of a Superman universe that spanned six magazine titles, and tried everything -- a super-monkey, a super-horse, a super-dog, and a rainbow of colored Kryptonites to grieve the Man of Steel, besides features devoted to Lois Lane, Jimmy Olson, Superboy (the young Superman) and a Supergirl, who unfortunately for our hero was his first cousin. This was the Superman I knew as a child -- and some of it was good fun!
I became a fan of comic art in the late 60's -- Neal Adams' then-current version of Superman played a part in transforming the whole industry. Soon after, my friend Jack Kirby had some fun grafting his New Gods universe onto the Superman mythos when he was writer/artist/editor of Jimmy Olson for awhile -- Jack had previously defeated Weisinger in the marketplace with the Marvel Comics Group. Just like the film said, Superman struggled to find his place as the 70's progressed. I will mention the quality draftsmanship of Superman's artist Luis Garcia-Lopez during that period, just because someone should! The Christopher Reeve movies redefined Superman for the better, and even though producer Salkind's films got worse and worse, the character was a success again -- and proved it on TV with better-than-average shows like Lois & Clark and Smallville, not to mention the Fleischer-inspired animated cartoons for another generation of kids.
The film mentioned DC Comics' machinations in the pages of their Superman magazines -- including details of the Death & Life of Superman series -- but the character's owner, Warner Brothers, mainly made this documentary to promote the upcoming movie Superman Returns. Many of the guest interviews were interesting -- arch-enemy Stan Lee of Marvel Comics, and walking comic-book musician Gene Simmons of Kiss in particular. Let's hope the new flick does justice to Siegal & Shuster's remarkable creation.



Turtles, Ducklings, and Mama Duck on our log in Middle Foy's Lake,
June 12, 2006