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This Is The Future, Right? (Classic Repost)

12 Sep

September 12, 2012

This has the distinction of being one of the very rare posts I’ve run a third time. Why? I like it.
At any rate, nothing much has changed since 2007 but I’ve pretty much given up my crush on Judy Jetson, she’s such a tease. Plus Sailor Moon is just so much hotter.

from May 12, 2007

This is the future, right? I mean, when we were little kids, the 21st century was it. IT. Flying cars, robots, atomic supermen, that sort of thing. Criswell said it best- “We are all interested in the future, for that is where we shall spend the rest of our lives.” And damn if he wasn’t right, ’cause I haven’t managed yet to live in the past, at least not for real.

I was reading an old Ray Bradbury story that was set in the far-off future year of 1978, and I hate to complain and pick on such a “legend,” but man, was he wrong. I’m sorry Mr. Sci-Fi Legend Guy, but I’m not living on a Mars colony. And my “atomic-powered short-wave radio” doesn’t exist. So what’s the deal?

I’m very well-read and I’ve seen tons of movies. I know what I’m talking about. I want my ray gun! I want my personal robot! I want my own jet pack, flying car, and combination space radio-slash-TV! My hat is supposed to protect me from atomic fallout and my food is supposed to be in pill form. I should commute to work by rocket and my personal computer should be about the size of my bedroom and have the computing power of thirteen abacuses.

But I know that old movies and TV shows can be somewhat unreliable when it comes to showing things as they are. You just have to be selective. For example, I don’t really take The Jetsons seriously. How can you? It is so phony. I think that show has the worst special effects I have ever seen. That car folding into a briefcase? I can see the CGI. And the actors? I don’t know who played George Jetson but he was so weird looking! He had a head that was about as big as his torso. I’ve tried reading the credits, but they don’t tell you who played any of the Jetsons. It may be for their safety- can you imagine how many stalkers Judy Jetson had? I must have written her thirty or forty letters when I was a kid and she never wrote back. I was so stupid back then- it took me until I was 23 to realize that she lives in the future! She hasn’t gotten the letters yet!

Movies do a little better job. I like Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. These two goofy delivery guys get mixed up for scientists and, somehow, end up piloting a ship to Mars, with two bumbling crooks along for the ride. Now it may sound silly, but the film has a rather complex inner-logic and the use of soft-focus cinematography is particularly effective, especially in the sublimely genius sequence when Costello is blasting people with his freeze ray. If any film could be held up as proof of the auteur theory of filmmaking, this is certainly it. Subtle in its satire and carefully nuanced in the use of pre-Marxist Soviet propaganda, my only problem is that how can these be the same guys who played janitors who met Frankenstein and Dracula in a previous film? That part I could never figure out- when did they change careers from janitors to delivery men?

At any rate, that future was clear- men would travel to Mars and meet a race of giant dogs, as well as mechanizing the Statue of Liberty so it can duck when a rocket flies too close overhead. We would all have freeze rays and we would wear spiffy space suits. I want my spiffy space suit!

So far the future is not all it was cracked up to be. I blame Congress. They keep holding up all those laws I want them to enact. Just last month I sent Congress my Bill For The Construction Of Lunar Radium Mines. And what did they do? Sent an FBI guy with a search warrant to my house. It’s like they don’t appreciate all my help.

I sent Congress my ideas for a Rocket-Man Brigade to protect us from Interstellar Plutonian Ice Hounds and all they did was pass some sort of dopey Iraq troop-funding bill.

So as I get older I’m resigning myself to the fact that maybe I won’t be getting that robot any time soon. I may not live on the moon or have a Martian space-dog as my pet, but at least I have my fifth-grade imagination. And maybe I don’t have a jet pack or own a space-yacht, but I know that I will someday. Flash Gordon said so!

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The Saturday Comics: Herman

8 Sep

September 8, 2012

I remember Herman growing up. Before The Far Side there was this strange one-panel strip that seemed to star no one in particular. It was populated by odd characters in odd situations. I seem to recall that the strip also had more than its share of the main character getting blown up, though I didn’t find any examples of strips with explosions.

From wikipedia, insert your own joke:

Herman was a comic strip written and drawn by Jim Unger. While the daily ran as a single panel with a typeset caption, it expanded on Sunday as a full multi-panel strip with balloons.

It was syndicated from 1975 to 1992, when Unger retired. In 1997, Herman returned to syndication with a mix of classic strip reprints and occasional new material.

The eponymous Herman is actually anybody within the confines of the strip—a man, a woman, a child, any animal or even an extraterrestrial. All characters are rendered in Unger’s unique style as hulking, beetle-browed figures with pronounced noses and jaws, and often sport comically understated facial expressions.

I don’t think that the Sunday strip ran in NYC but I could be wrong. I simply don’t remember it.

This (more accurate) information is from http://www.gocomics.com/herman/?ref=comics, whom I don’t mind plugging since I took all the panels from there:

HERMAN®, the hilarious groundbreaking cartoon feature that appears in hundreds of newspapers worldwide, continues despite the sad passing of creator Jim Unger.

Unger, who died in June 2012, left a legacy of more than 8,000 HERMAN comics and a large following that’s still going strong today. In order to keep the laughs coming, Unger passed the comedic torch to cartoonist David Waisglass and illustrator Roly Wood. Waisglass had been working closely with Unger on HERMAN since 1997, when Waisglass stopped work on his own syndicated comic, FARCUS®, to assist his mentor and manage HERMAN.

In 2010, Wood joined the team to help create new Sunday strips with Waisglass and Unger. Unger told friends and family that he’d never before met anyone who could draw HERMAN as well as, if not better, than himself! Unger loved the new material and began contributing more and more new gags until his death.

Although Unger wanted to publicly credit his creative partners, Waisglass and Wood strongly believed that the focus should remain on the work and its originator.

Amazing. The strip is still signed with Unger’s name. This may be the first case I know of where the creators don’t want credit!

I obviously don’t know which are classics and which are new but they are all copyright 2012. It doesn’t really matter anyway since the strip is still the same as I remember it from all those years ago. (Except for the awful coloring. This is the first time I’ve seen Herman in anything but black and white.)

Click the thumbnails to enlarge.

 

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