It’s time for San Diego Comic-Con! Thousands of fans, many in costume, with gather to pay tribute to and get updates on the greatest of lively arts, from movies to games, television, and of course comic books.
Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick will be there to promote their new animated musical “Trolls” and master of political paranoia Oliver Stone will be there with the cast of “Snowden.” “Fifth Element’s” Luc Besson will be there to talk about his trippy new space story ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” starring Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan. I’m looking forward to an update on “Guardians of the Galaxy 2,” “Wonder Woman,” and next month’s “Suicide Squad.” Sigourney Weaver will be there for the 30th anniversary of “Aliens.”
There will be full-length previews of new television series including “Riverdale” with Archie and his friends and Conan O’Brien’s “People of Earth.”
There are as always great panels, including two hosted by my friend Leslie Combemale, one on women in animation and one on diversity in animation. As always, one of the highlights will be MAD artist SergioAragonés showing us his lightning-fast drawing skills and wicked sense of humor in the “Quick Draw.”
I very much enjoyed The Losers and am looking forward to seeing it again on DVD. Warners has been generous enough to allow me to give away copies to the first five people who send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Losers” in the subject line. Be sure to include your mailing address. USA addresses only. Good luck!
This week’s announcement that Chris Evans (“The Fantastic Four”) will star in a new “Captain America” movie makes this the right moment to think about the history and meaning of the character. Never as iconic and popular as Superman or Batman, Captain America’s status has risen and fallen according to the political sentiments of the era. Unsurprisingly, he first appeared at a time of the most vibrant patriotism, the beginning of WWII. The character was Steve Rogers, a sickly young man who was given an experimental Super-Soldier Serum and “Vita-Ray” treatment that made him very strong and healthy in order to aid the United States war effort. His costume was inspired by the American flag. He has no superpowers but he carries a red, white, and blue indestructible shield. Captain America was often portrayed as fighting for the Allies and he was Marvel’s most popular hero during the war.
But his popularity waned in the Cold War era. His explicit Americanism did not fit either the complacence and materialism of the 1950’s or the Cold War concerns. He disappeared from comics until 1964. Interestingly, a character who appeared to be Captain America was featured in a comic book story starring the Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm (also played by Evans on screen). But that character turned out to be a villain in disguise. The unabashed pro-Americanism of the character did not fit well with the turbulence of the 1960’s and Captain America himself became so disillusioned with the government following Watergate that he took on another persona for a while. In another episode he led a protest against government oppression of superheroes that was a commentary on infringement of civil rights. The character has had many different iterations and the Steve Rogers alter ego has died and been brought back and been in suspended animation and been brought back as the Captain America identity has shifted as well for a while being taken over by Roger’s one-time sidekick. There is also a black Captain America named Isaiah Bradley, whose origin was explicitly inspired by the real-life Tuskegee experiments. He was injected with the serum before Rogers.
Chris Evans was one of the best things about the uneven “Fantastic Four” movies and I look forward to seeing where he takes this character.
It has been one of popular culture’s most enduring conundrums: Betty or Veronica?
Until now. Archie Andrews, after seven decades as a teenager, has all of a sudden grown up. Archie and his friends have made only the smallest concessions to the passage of time. Moose used to be dumb; now he has a learning disability. The Riverdale kids may send texts now, but the punchlines are the same, as are the featherweight story-lines. And the eternal triangle with Archie being pursued by both rich glamor girl Veronica and wholesome girl-next-door Betty seemed as unchangeable as Archie’s immovable red hair.
It is almost impossible to imagine now but there were similar cultural shockwaves when Li’l Abner married Daisy Mae and Dagwood married Blondie. Both comics thrived and became even more popular as their “merry war” bloomed into usually-gentle domestic conflicts. But in those cases, while there was a question about whether they would get married, there was no question about who the couple was. The essence of Archie’s storyline has been the rivalry between the brunette and blonde who were pursuing him — in a high school setting. If he is going to grow up, get married and even, as news reports have noted, have children, is there any Archie-ness left?
It may be that this is a plan to reboot the venerable series. While many people will react to this news by being surprised he is marrying Veronica, many more may be surprised that Archie is still publishing new comics. This put them on the front pages of newspapers across the country. I suspect that there may an accelerated storyline ahead that within a very short time will find the children of Archie and Veronica in high school with the children of Jughead and Ethel, Moose and Midge, and Betty and Reggie (well, if anyone can straighten Reggie out, it has to be Betty). And that the jokes will still be, reassuringly, exactly the same.
