Among my most prized pieces in The Collection is this original color guide for page four of Denny O'Neil's second of two Bats / Shadow encounters from the 70s, BATMAN Vol. 1, No. 259, hand-colored by the unsung hero of that era, colorist extraordinaire Tatjana Wood. First picture is the original color guide, second is the page in the printed comic itself.
The forced wedding is stopped; the bunny wedding planners are crushed; Bowser is, like The Joker after battle after battle, unconscious, somewhere; Cappy and Mario are, at present, hunting for Princess Peach who has once again gone missing from the just-unlocked Mushroom Kingdom – though it seems of her own volition this time; and my first completion of a MARIO game in over 30 years (SUPER MARIO WORLD is still the best) is in the bag.
Why that long? Other than ignoring most of the post MARIO WORLD games on the SNES – CASTLEVANIA and LINK TO THE PAST were my jams – I had a seizure while playing MARIO 64 on the Nintendo 64 (right combo of lights and images at the right time, I guess) and, rightly or wrongly (seems to be the latter) avoided the series out of fear of it happening again until the gateway drug of MARIO KART 8 and the desire to end my niece's reign of terror (read: beating me every race) but the longer version of that particular saga – the seizure, not my niece's reign of MARIO KART terror – is another story for another time.
But ODYSSEY itself.
One of the things that's been asked in the accolades for TEARS OF THE KINGDOM is how did Nintendo make that game – as in "how did they fit all of that and do all of that in a system that came out in 2017?": the answer's simple: Nintendo knows how to make great games without requiring a bevy of onerous cutscenes and/or shallow open worlds with no point beyond window-dressing – narrative or otherwise. They focus solely on simple stories (rescue the Princess / save the kingdom / stop the aliens) delivered in strange, surreal celebrations of the medium – the "flatland" 2D, pixel sidescrolling sections in ODYSSEY being the most wonderful celebration of video games and video game history in recent memory; I cheered every time I got to stuff myself into a pipe and go 8-bit – with an unfiltered creativity and passion devoid of irony and apology; they are and remain the Disney-under-Walt / early Pixar of games.
While I did miss the block-smashing power-up mushrooms – how long have they been gone? – and, though I loved Cappy and his Black-Lodge / Man From Another Place speaking style, found myself rescuing him from that bird only to shut him up (and get on with the game) there's not a lot I can add other than ODYSSEY is pure, unfiltered fun and that I question your humanity if you don't find yourself charmed by it more than once a gaming session. A must-play.
via artnet:
Curators at Hever Castle were conducting research ahead of an exhibition comparing Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn when they realized Cromwell owned a version of the same Christian prayer book as Henry VIII’s two wives. The link? A portrait of the political giant by Hans Holbein the Younger.
In the portrait, which dates from 1532–33 and is part of the Frick Collection in New York, an austere-faced Cromwell gazes pensively away from the viewer. The painting celebrates Cromwell’s appointment as Master of the Jewel House (hence the prominence of the book’s jewel) and the tools of his statecraft rest on the table before him: a legal document, a quill, scissors, and his Book of Hours, printed in 1527.
The Hever Castle curators took their hunch to Trinity College and experts now believe its identification makes it the sole remaining object from any 16th-century portrait surviving today.
With today's addition of DICK TRACY AND THE FROZEN BULLET MURDERS (online searches for which returned many a blender), my collection of Dell's 1936-41 Dick Tracy "Fast Action Story" (one of many Big Little Book competitors) series joins this hallowed tag – though I would, at some point, like to track down a better copy of CHAIN OF EVIDENCE…
Night City, here I come again…
Still a work-in-progress, but primary exertions on K’s outdoor, under-the-pergola, pondside space are complete (just before the first rain in 20 days began and brought our little “flash drought” to an end). First picture is how the area looked on Wednesday (which was itself an improvement) and the others are from today.
P.S. We got married under this very same pergola almost nine years ago.
(Written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson; starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Colin Farrell, Jon Favreau, Keith David, and Ellen Pompeo. Released 14 February 2003; (re)watched 2023w23 via Max)
Bit late on publishing this one (rewatched it a week ago) but given that I haven't seen DD since its first DVD (or maybe even theatrical) release 20 years ago – and I still need to see Johnson's director's cut – I'll forgive my tardiness. The good news is that I enjoy it as much as I did the first time(s) through: the action scenes thrilled and hurt; the relationship between Foggy and Matt was better, I think, than the Netflix series (Foggy's perpetual Karen-ness, particularly in seasons two (loathed) and three (loved), grated and diminished an otherwise excellent performance from Elden Henson); Affleck – contrary to his own opinion – is a far more effective Matt Murdock / DD than Batman (though I do dig his Batman and wish we had gotten more of his Bats and Jeremy Irons's Alfred) and yes, I love the costume – even have the Marvel Legends action figure; Jennifer Garner, while remaining woefully miscast as Elektra, does her best with it (even making the hokey Matt/Elektra relationship scenes tolerable though apparently the director's cut diminishes the romance angle?) – a shame that her solo film was such an atrocity as she deserved far better; Keith David brought heartache and tragedy to Matt's origin as Battling Jack Murdock; and Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP - can't believe he's been gone for 11 years) and Colin Farrell were fantastic villains who I wanted to see more of – though I wish Farrell hadn't opted for the Tommy-Lee-Jones-as-Two-Face mode of supervillainy as it diminished much of his menace.
Next up: watch the director's cut and write about it sometime within the next 20 years.
