This Is What I Do When I'm Not Reading Comics...

This is Melt-Banana. They are the best live band in existence today.

Today I'm meeting friends and going to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo. Tomorrow, I'll try to find Blister and celebrate Free Comic Book Day.

Excuse My Brief Hiatus...

At least I hope it'll be brief. I'm about to take off on my victory lap around Tokyo, so I doubt I'll be able to update here. But in a couple of weeks expect more Maggie and Hopey, more Planet of the Apes, more whining about how DC isn't treating Cassandra Cain right and a lot more stuff about how cool Dani Moonstar, Dr. Spektor and the Star Trek gang are.

The Return of Dr. Spektor and His Crazy Occult Files!

Okay, maybe my characterizing them as "crazy" is a bit over the top. But you have to admit that Dr. Spektor is one strange dude. He dresses kind of like Sherlock Holmes and, most alarmingly, he also sports rather longish hair... and a full beard, like a common hippie! Dr. Spektor and his mad, mod secretary, Lakota Rainflower, shamelessly co-habitate in a manner best reserved for man and wife; a scandalous flouting of our social mores. And rather than work an ordinary, salaried job and enjoy the benefits won for him by our valiant American fighting men in Europe and Asia, Dr. Spektor spends his time investigating vampires, ghosts and other assorted supernatural freaks. At one point he even becomes a werewolf!

I rather suspect he eschews gun ownership and does not worship in the church of his choice on Sundays.

Taken all together, my fellow Americans, this evidence suggests Dr. Spektor poses a threat to the very fabric of our society. To our way of life. I'm not saying he's part of the International Communist Conspiracy; I merely suggest he might possibly be a communist who's engaged in some sort of conspiracy on an international scale.

Now Dark Horse Comics is bringing back this notorious subversive and his paranormal adventures in a 200 page hardcover book reprinting the first seven issues of The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor. Created by Donald F. Glut-- who would go on to write scripts for a variety of TV shows that have since entered the pop culture canon, plus the "novelization" of The Empire Strikes Back-- and artist Dan Spiegle, Spektor was an early prototype of characters like Kolchak, Fox Mulder, even Hellboy and the BPRD. Filipino artist Jesse Santos provided the art for the regular series; his illustrations have a rich, noodly line that adds a strong graphic element to Spektor's world. It reminds me a bit of Alex Nino's artwork.

Santo also largely ignored ruling his panel borders unless necessary for clarity. As a result, the page layouts seem very open.

I only remember owning one issue of The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor and that was #11, the beginning of a story arc where the good doctor finds himself cursed with lycanthropy. As I've probably told you, Gold Key comics were notoriously difficult to find in my hometown, so that may have been the only Dr. Spektor I ever saw. I was seriously disappointed Valiant didn't revive him along with the other Gold Key characters during their early 90s heyday; Spektor wouldn't quite have fit in with the likes of Dr. Solar (who nevertheless once guest-starred in the original comic) and the Harbinger kids, but somewhere might have found a way to work him into the mix. After all, The X-Files was quickly achieving its status as the cult show of the hipster cognoscenti. I think having been exposed to Dr. Spektor and Carl Kolchak as a child made me susceptible to Mulder and Scully's moody adventures, and to Hellboy's as well. Perhaps even Ghostbusters, although I probably approached that from the Saturday Night Live connection; I was as big a fan of comedy as I was of comics and the outre.

Anyway, I never found out what happened to Dr. Spektor and Lakota after that single issue. Did he remain a werewolf? Did she find the rest of her clothes? The ending satisfactorily concluded the issue's plot but left that story element curiously open-ended. It was a mystery to haunt me the rest of my days...

Or at least until the advent of the Internet and comic companies like Dark Horse. Dark Horse seems intent on reviving every part of my childhood. It's almost as if they've gone into the attic of my brain and started opening dusty cardboard boxes there. Creepy and Eerie, Savage Sword of Conan. And now The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor. Pinko hippie commie or not, the good doctor needs to investigate Dark Horse and see what kind of bizarre psychic powers they're channeling over there!

And now the bad news. The suggested retail price is $49.95, which puts this book a bit out of the range I'm willing to pay. Dark Horse's archive books are nice and hefty but expensive. As much as I enjoyed that one issue of The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor, I need a more consumer-friendly softcover edition before I shell out cash to revisit this series. I hope there are enough Spektor-freaks out there to justify Dark Horse's venture and make this happen.

Bob McLeod Accepted My Friend Request on Facebook!

That ends several anxious weeks of waiting. As you know, I have a mild interest in comic books and the art they contain, so when I saw a friend of mine had inker extraordinaire/New Mutants co-creator Bob McLeod on his friends list, I had to make a request too. McLeod isn't as active as Steve Rude or Michael Golden-- those guys are always posting updates and eye-popping artwork-- it's just a nice feeling to have made a connection with another of my favorite artists.

In other news, I may not be able to make it to Blister for day one of Free Comic Book Day. Fortunately, these wonderful peeps do it for two days. Don't we deserve a second helping of Free Comic Book Day? I think we do and the Blister staff apparently agree.

I now have lunch plans with a former student in addition to the visit I'll make with friends to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. I'm still going to give Blister a go on day one, but I may not be able to make it over there until nearly closing time. We'll see what happens. Last year they had long boxes full of books at a major discount and I hate to miss out on that in case the good stuff has been thoroughly picked over by discerning comic consumers.

I'm desperate to do this one more time even though I'll have ample access to four-color funnybooks starting next week. At regular cover price rather than the import mark-up. They're still overpriced, though. Most of them. That carping aside, it's fun to check out American comics in Japan, even more so than in the States. Here they're an oddity, a little side-niche not even as prevalent as Japanese comics are back home. Which is probably a more accurate assessment of comic book demographics worldwide: Japanese comics big, American comics small.

The Future Technology of Gold Key's Star Trek Comics!

Here's an amazing device featured prominently-- and with little justification as far as the rest of the plot goes-- in Gold Key's Star Trek #39. The Enterprise crew has just recovered a floating coffin from deep space and now they have to endure "steri-rays."

Which tickle you. This is a moment dauntless space pioneer James Tiberius Kirk did not record in his captain's log.

By the way, the coffin contains the body of one Dr. Alfred Bleikoff, a combination of Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi. He's the deceased leader of a 20th century peace movement, and once revived by the amazing super-tickling science of the 23rd century, he starts all kinds of trouble. If you thought Gene Roddenberry's conceptualization of the United Federation of Planets was something of a liberal's paradise, apparently it's not. According to Dr. Bleikoff, it's practically a fascist police state. The only four who remain unaffected by Dr. Bleikoff's ultra-pacifist teachings are Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott, who, for some reason, also gets to order even his superior officers to take off their clothes for some nude tickling in what appears to be a Radio Shack warehouse.

I'm not sure why he's in charge, but a page or so later he's also calling them "fools" and generally bullying both McCoy and Spock during a medical procedure. I'm also not sure why our heroes dance in the steri-ray machine, but there you have it. Nude, sterilizing, tickling rays and manic disco dancing. So rest assured, comic fans-- science will someday make some great strides in these closely related medical fields.

That New Kid Over in Riverdale...

I don't write about Archie Comics here very often. They don't give me reason to. But I'd feel pretty left out if I didn't offer my stupid opinion on Kevin, the first openly gay character in the Riverdale cast. I'm sure everyone else is going to, so why shouldn't I? And I wrote "openly" because we don't know who might or might not be closeted or questioning.

Anyway, here comes Kevin in a splash of self-congratulatory publicity and potential blog-blowhard (like me!) explosion. And I have a mostly positive view on this, with a few caveats.

It's not as if Kevin were the first openly gay character in comics. So it feels a little odd patting Archie Comics on the back for doing this so far behind the curve. Gilberto Hernandez frequently features gay protagonists with zero fanfare (just his usual topnotch storytelling skills), while both DC and Marvel often trumpet their characters' sexuality for a quick publicity jolt and possible short term sales boost. But the fiction-writing aesthetics and ethics of that kind of stuff are two essays unto themselves (or possibly one giant essay), and probably not one I'm qualified to write. On the other hand, Archie Comics isn't Fantagraphics, so perhaps the comparisons aren't completely fair. People think of Archie Comics primarily as kids' comics, perhaps the last ones aimed at the medium's original demographic; I can see a few commentators of a particular political or religious stripe taking dead aim at Archie in an attempt to fight one of those "culture war" battles over this.

I'm more concerned with characterization. I wouldn't want "Veronica's gay friend" to become Kevin's sole defining characteristic. While depth of characterization and Archie Comics aren't two concepts that usually go together, I hope Kevin grows beyond the initial "world's hunkiest guy who can do anything and... hey, he's gay!" introduction. Give him a real personality and interests outside simply being "the gay character we stuck in a story or two, then decided not to use again because that's pretty much as far as our thinking carried us."

They also need to have Kevin date. If they really want to show progress, he shouldn't be gay in character description only. Once he's part of Archie's world, they need to do some stories where Kevin has the same kind of romantic quandaries as the rest of the gang, with the same level of fun and lightness as any of Archie's love triangles. You don't have to explain it or justify it, just make the stories entertaining and funny.

And finally, I wonder why it couldn't have been an established character rather than this newly-created person. The obvious candidate would be Jughead, but that's too easy. Reggie would be an intriguing choice, but that would eliminate Archie's greatest rival. Still, the Riverdale cast is huge, so there are plenty of others to choose from and I'd bet on one or more of them being gay, bi, transgendered or some combination just from a statistical analysis. They've got more people walking around than in Hoppers and Palomar combined.

On the other hand, and this more than trumps my little concerns... it's a gay character in Archie Comics, where no doubt his portrayal will be positive and affirming:

"The introduction of Kevin is just about keeping the world of Archie Comics current and inclusive. Archie's hometown of Riverdale has always been a safe world for everyone," said Archie Comics Co- CEO Jon Goldwater in the release. "It just makes sense to have an openly gay character in Archie comic books."

I like that. A safe world for everyone. I like the idea of Riverdale being the kind of place where your worst experience is having to choose between two equally awesome dates for the high school prom rather than your high school cancelling your prom simply because you exist.

Occasionally Archie Comics does something that fills me with a kind of nostalgic warmth and makes me want to start reading them again. The last time was when they introduced Kumi, the exchange student from Japan, and hired Misako Rocks! to script (they need her to write and draw a few more, by the way). As a result, Kumi is one of the few believably Japanese characters in American comics, with an authenticity of voice not found in the usual offerings. Without all the stereotypical martial arts trappings, samurai ancestors, yakuza relatives or blue hair for no reason. You know, Katana from Batman and the Outsiders, Armor from Astonishing X-Men, Surge, Silver Samurai, the second Dr. Light, Colleen Wing and the like. None of that stuff would fit Riverdale, but the Archie people could have botched Kumi and her family in any number of other ways. Instead, they got it right.

That in itself was a hell of an achievement for an American comic company. If Kevin's conceptualization comes close to Kumi's, then Archie Comics will really have cause to celebrate themselves. And we will, too.

Happy Retirement, Leonard Nimoy!

It's not comic-related, unless peripherally, but Leonard Nimoy just announced his retirement from show business. It isn't sad news, because it's not like he's going away. Certainly, he played a wide variety of other roles, but Nimoy has left an indelible mark on pop culture with his Mr. Spock characterization. I just finished watching the first season of the original Star Trek and spent a great deal of that time largely focused on Nimoy's performance. It's subtle, engaging, shows a flair for the comedic and incredibly sympathetic; all this while playing a character supposedly without emotions. He also managed to keep his dignity while sporting a bowl cut, pointed ears and shaved eyebrows.

Sure, Mr. Spock and other charming aliens are familiar to us now, but imagine how bizarre and silly he must have appeared to audiences tuning into NBC back in 1966. Yet by the end of the show, Spock-- as portrayed by Nimoy-- was a star. Even during the first season, you can see writers adding more and more Spock to the stories. I give the credit almost solely to Nimoy's ability to pull off something that must have seemed impossible at the time; once writers saw what he could do with the character, it unfettered their imaginations and we ended up with so many wonderful moments in episodes such as "City on the Edge of Forever" and "Amok Time."

And not once do you see Nimoy flinch or give even the most ridiculous scenes and dialogue anything less than total commitment. Even lumbering around in the atrocious "Spock's Brain," in which the dialogue and personality-free nature of what he was given to do in the script strikes me as the producer's punishment for Nimoy's protectiveness and stewardship of his role, he tries to make it work.

That the real Nimoy is so dedicated, likable and thoughtful is a bonus. Those of us who are Star Trek nutcases have been lucky to have had him around for so long, willing to put on those ears and bring Spock back to life on so many memorable-- and occasionally, ludicrous-- occasions.

So congratulations, Mr. Nimoy, and thanks!