/202308260703

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Putting the finishing touches on this week's newsletter. Light week so I've taken the opportunity to add some things (back in) and play with the format a little. Experimenting with doing a comment thread here for the newsletter, but I'm not sold on the notion, though I keep going back and forth. For my innumerable qualms with the platform, I do like Substack's approach to this. You can sign up here if so inclined. Unrelated but pertinent: I have a summer beanie now and I kinda love it.

NY WORLD’S FAIR COMICS, NO.2, 1940 (more + less)

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Excitement! This incomplete, spineless beauty arrived today…

… a beauty truthfully listed as "COMPLETELY LOOSE. MISSING PAGES NO SPINE NO REAR COVER FRONT COVER AND 24 PAGES ONLY," exclusive to the Superman Day at the 1940 World's Fair and featuring the iconic Jack Burnley cover, the first featuring Batman, Robin, and Superman together because, as a writer who fancies himself something of a pop culture historian, holding a piece of history is everything; if I had the chance to buy a margin of a handwritten page of one of Montaigne's essays, I'd take it, whether it was the complete essay or not.

Befuddlement! The 24 pages consist only of the issue's Superman tale, by Jerry Siegel and Jack Burnley (first two pages above) - or so I thought: there was an inexplicable change in art, still featuring Superman, that wasn't in the digital version, as well as an ad for the 1939 Fair...

(Nevermind that that Superman story was only ten pages, not 24…)

Excitement! Opened it up again and found why there were 24 pages: someone, for reasons as yet unknown, had taken the 1939 Superman tale, SUPERMAN AT THE WORLD'S FAIR, by Siegel and Shuster, from NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR COMICS No.1 and glued the first page of it to the advertisement page after the 1940 Superman story to combine both 39 and 40 in one, handmade trade paperback.

Both 1939 and 1940 are complete – and so this handmade hybrid of comics history has finished its long journey to its new home upon the Superman shelf in The Paintshop:

Please watch your step so you don’t step on my my jaw, still upon the floor…

DR MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (Fritz Lang, 1922)

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(Directed by Fritz Lang from a script by Lang and Thea Von Harbou based on the original novel by Norbert Jaques. Starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Aud Egede-Nissen, Gertrude Welcker, Alfred Abel, Bernard Goetzke, and Paul Richter. Released 27 April 1922 (part one) and 26 May 1922 (part two); watched 2023w34 via Kino Blu-Ray)

FritzFest thus begins: this first viewing of DR MABUSE, THE GAMBLER being the start (to be followed by a first of DIE NIBELUNGEN, a rewatch of METROPOLIS, a first of SPIES, a rewatch of M, and an inaugural of TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE – on Criterion Channel not, unfortunately, as with the others, on Blu - yet - though it might be if I have a region-free Blu player. Do I? Mem: check).

Happy that I was able to watch MABUSE not only as a 270-minute, two-film historical document, as a template for pretty much every great villain since – Ledger's Joker, among many others – but as the compulsively watchable, exhilarating tapestry of fascinating – and devastating, especially the Tolds and Carozza – characters at the mercy of the ruthless, titular force of nature played with mad-scientist-mold-defining aplomb by the great Rudolf Klein-Rogge, whose capture at the conclusion of Lang's four and a half hour epic is an epic in and of itself, a firefight wrapped in gunsmoke and sewer escape devolving into entrapped madness, a template for all great action denouements to come: THE THIRD MAN, HEAT and countless others, off the top of my head.

MABUSE’s true power is, like all of Lang's films, that it remains – in spite of being the century-old mold-forming work that it is – first and foremost a ripping yarn, a rare feat that exemplifies one of Lang's great hallmarks: his works always feel as though they were released yesterday – though some, like MABUSE, were released more than a century of yesterdays ago.

Highly, highly recommended.

/202308250738

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Another night of weather, of watching a live feed of local news station, midnight tornado warnings and storm warnings resulting in... pretty much nothing. Other than a lack of sleep. And a fascination with the head meteorologist's water-down-a-cutting-board / tornado formation analogy.

Potential for a good mail day = solid. MABUSE postscript coming later this morning, once I take another post-food crack at it.

Think I want to officially title these morning posts which are seeming to become a thing. Not sure what. For now, sticking with the zettelkasten ID... thoughts welcome.