HAPPY SUPERMAN DAY!

Eighty-seven years ago, Action Comics #1 was published on this date, heralding not just the arrival of Superman but the birth of the comic book superhero genre. 

April 18 is now - and forever - Superman Day, celebrating the first, and greatest, superhero.

While we didn't get a new trailer for James Gunn's eagerly-anticipated Superman movie today, as many of us had hoped, we were gifted this look behind-the-scenes which is full of tantalising glimpses of things to come:

Among the many Superman items being released - or put up for pre-order - today was, the previously mentioned, Golden Age facsimile of 1938's Action Comics #1.

Action Comics #1: Where it all began...

However, available for pre-order from today, DC is releasing another Golden Age facsimile on July 30: 1939's Superman #1.

See the origin of Superman retold as the infant Kal-El escapes the destruction of Krypton and is adopted by the kindly Kents on Earth. Then, thrill to the early escapades of the Man of Tomorrow as he saves an innocent woman from the electric chair, foils a plot to foment war, and champions the cause of workers’ rights as a reporter for the Daily Star!

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Pantiles

The Pantiles, circa 1900

Something a bit different this week for Throwback Thursday, a slice of local history.

The Pantiles, in Tunbridge Wells, is probably the most famous part of the town.

Wikipedia will tell you: "The Pantiles is a Georgian colonnade in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. Formerly known as The Walks and the (Royal) Parade, it leads from the well that gave the town its name. The area was created following the discovery of a chalybeate spring in the early 17th century and is now a popular tourist attraction."

It is called The Pantiles simply because the Upper Walk was originally paved with pantiles in 1700, until these were replaced with stone flagging in 1793 and the area became known as The Parade.

Its original name came back into use in 1887 and it has remained The Pantiles ever since.

There are a number of pubs along there and these used to be a favourite haunt for Matt, Nick and I before we went to see live bands at The Forum, over on The Common.

TUNBRIDGE OR TONBRIDGE?

I currently live in Tonbridge (Tunbridge Wells' neighbouring older brother), but grew up in Pembury (a village just outside Tunbridge Wells).

I then lived for many years in and around Tunbridge Wells (with a break for university in Bournemouth and a spell in Sevenoaks) - until I moved in with Rachel  in Tonbridge.

Until 1870, Tonbridge was actually spelt 'Tunbridge', but it was changed to 'Tonbridge' by the General Post Office due to confusion with nearby Tunbridge Wells... despite Tonbridge being a much older settlement!

The "wells" in Tunbridge Wells refers to the aforementioned chalybeate spring, which sits at one end of The Pantiles.

Photochrom of the Pantiles, 1895 (via Wikipedia)

Welcome To The Family: A First Step For The Fantastic Four, One Giant Leap For Superhero Cinema

Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters July 25.

This trailer makes the MCU's Fantastic Four look as near to perfect as an old school superhero flick can get. Honestly, I cannot wait, I'm buzzing to see First Steps.

It's also quite sneaky of Marvel to release this trailer today, the day before Superman Day, when we expect to see a new, full trailer for James Gunn's Superman.

For me they're not competition, but complementary displays of the positivity that symbolises the best comic book adventures of both The Fantastic Four and Superman.

PROJECT 60: Bitz 'n' Pieces

Inside our garden storeroom

With the first batch of my Dead Man's Hand miniatures sent away for professional painting, my attention is slowly turning to other aspects of this summer's ambitious plans.

As I mentioned the other day, part of that will involve putting together the lovely plastic buildings supplied by Great Escape Games for their wild west skirmish wargame. 

I also pointed out that I haven't painted anything for years and when I was putting away some things in our garden storeroom earlier this week I realised I had quite a bit of my old modelling kit stashed away in there.

The four giant blue plastic box boxes (visible in the photo above), along with a couple of other smaller ones, are what I packed my various "bitz" in when we moved here six years ago; "bitz" being plastic model parts; broken miniatures; plastic toys and parts of action figures; old packaging; paints; brushes etc that could all come in useful "at some point" for scratch building wargame terrain and scenery. 

Of course, I haven't actually looked in these boxes since we moved. I'm not even sure if the old pots and tins of paint will still even be viable.

So, this side project has been subsumed into my plans for this summer. I need to go through these boxes, sift their contents, see what is still useable and suitable for my planned Western setting (I recall a lot was geared towards post-apocalyptic settings, so there should be some overlap), and bin/recycle the rest.

Ultimately, as well as giving me some solid terrain-building material this will hopefully free up some space in the store room (which will please Rachel, who doesn't embrace clutter like I do).

Deadlands Reincarnated!

Thanks to the combination of Deadlands and eBay the whole "no impulse buys in April" deal isn't going too well.

For a very reasonable price, I just picked up a brand new - still sealed - copy of Deadlands: Night Train, a glorious 25th anniversary box set, celebrating the original Night Train "dime novel" adventure for the first (pre-Savage Worlds) iteration of Deadlands.

It also came with Wendigo Tales, a hardback collection of short stories set in the Deadlands universe, these were the text part of the old "dime novel" series of adventures that Pinnacle published for Classic Deadlands back in the day (when I discovered and fell in love with the setting).

These digest-sized booklets were half-fiction and half-adventure module; Night Train by John Goff was number three in the series.

There were 10 published back in the late 90's, of which I still have four or five, including Night Train.

Me with my original copy of Night Train

The 25th anniversary box set, released a year or so ago, is a treasure trove of gamesmaster/player aids, as well as including a rewrite of the old adventure for use with Savage Worlds (and a couple of new, related, adventures).

We have battle mats, cardboard pawns (complete with stands; an economic alternative/addition to 28mm figures), prop toe tags to mark player-character deaths, a themed 'Wild die', cards, and wanted posters.

I haven't even gotten round to opening up these items, but am already excited that as well as the solid card pawns of monsters and non-player characters there's also tiles for the interior of the central locomotive and its cars. That's definitely something that can find a bonus use in Dead Man's Hand skirmish scenarios.

The Shed (2019)

Having been attacked in the woods by a Nosferatu-like vampire (Damian Norfleet), hunter Joe Bane (Frank Whaley) crawls away to a nearby shed to recuperate... and complete his transformation into a bloodsucker.

The shed stands in the garden of Bane's neighbour, 17-year-old orphan Stan (Jay Jay Warren), who lives with his alcoholic and abusive grandfather, Ellis (Timothy Bottoms).

After the vampire kills Ellis and his dog, Stan realises he can't go to the authorities as his grandfather was the only thing standing between him and another spell in a juvenile detention centre.

Thus, he confides instead in his best friend, Dommer (Cody Kostro).

Unfortunately, Dommer immediately sees the "pet monster" as a weapon to strike back at the school bullies, Marble (Chris Petrovski) and his cronies, Pitt (Francisco Burgos) and Ozzy (Uly Schlesinger).

Naturally, things don't really go well for anyone, eventually culminating in Stan and his cute ex-girlfriend Roxy (Sofia Happonen) besieged in his house by a small horde of vampires.

Slightly reminiscent of several classic urban vampire flicks, from the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie and Fright Night to Near Dark and Salem's Lot, The Shed is an innovative, tight, well-made, well-acted, low-budget, low-key monster movie that, ultimately, doesn't quite live up to its potential.

Jay Jay Warren has a certain Anton Yelchin-like quality about him and together with Sofia Happonen they make for charming, easy-going leads, while Cody Kostro's Dommer, especially when he finally gets one over on Marble and cracks, is superb.

Spanning a three or four day period, the 98-minute movie is well-paced and a believable slice of small town American life in a community where everybody knows everybody.

However, a couple of things stand in the way of The Shed being a truly great horror flick.

The first is that, for a film that isn't a Nightmare on Elm Street, it spends far too long in Stan's dreamscape, unless this is somehow connected to a previously unknown power of the vampire. Sadly, this is never explained.

Secondly, the abrupt ending feels like writer/director Frank Sabatella just suddenly ran out of ideas (or money?) and called a halt.

Too many questions, many of them practical and grounded in the real world, are left unanswered.

And there's the obvious Chekhov's Gun of Deputy Haiser (Mu-Shaka Benson), introduced early on and clearly having a grudge against Stan, who then never appears again, even after his boss, Sheriff Dorney (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) fails to return from a routine call-out.

It feels as though The Shed could have done with, at least, five or 10 more minutes of run time to wrap up its many dangling plot threats.

Shadow Of The Vampire (2000)

The darkly humourous Shadow Of The Vampire is the perfect companion piece for Nosferatu. Its canny conceit is that the dangerously eccentric and driven director Frederich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) has made a devilish pact with a real vampire (an almost unrecognisable Willem Dafoe) to play the role of Count Orlok in his film, Nosferatu.

His payment? The chance to feed on the lead actress, Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack) during the climax of the movie.

Unfortunately for Murnau, things don't run smoothly as 'Max Schreck' aka Count Orlok starts killing off his crew.

Having been told that the actor 'Max Shreck' is a deep method actor, who always stays in character as the vampire, the cast and crew of Nosfesatu quickly find their location shoot in Czechoslovakia is anything but routine.

Suspicions arise, and producer Albin Grau (Udo Kier) and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner (Cary Elwes) conspire to unmask 'Shreck' and end his reign of terror.

Shadow Of The Vampire's (totally bogus) 'secret history' of the making of Nosferatu borders on slapstick with much of its camp delivery.

However, it then manages to slickly change gears for powerful moments such as Orlok's discussion of the inherent sadness of Bram Stoker's portrayal of Dracula (in the novel that Murnau couldn't get permission to officially adapt).

Watching the two films back-to-back allowed me to mentally place the scenes being created for Shadow's movie-within-the-movie in the real movie, but also - especially during the multiple murders in the final scene - to realise where it deviated dramatically from the actual Nosferatu.

As well as an amusing vampire film in its own right, Steven Katz's script - under the guidance of director E. Elias Merhige - gives us a fascinating insight into not only the silent movie making processes of the 1920s but also the lengths an 'inspired' director will go to to craft his masterpiece.

Ultimately Murnau is driven insane by the process and is willing to allow people to literally die, on camera, for his art (even as he is creating the first snuff movie).

Nosferatu - A Symphony Of Horror (1922)

The first, albeit unofficial, cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu takes the novel's core elements, gives the characters new names, and delivers a chilling and iconic vampire tale.

Told in five delineated acts, the striking images we know so well come, primarily, from the climax of the movie when Count Orlok (Max Schreck) arrives, by boat, in the German city of Wisborg and stalks the maiden Ellen (Greta Schröder).

She's the wife of real-estate agent Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), who traveled to Transylvania, at the behest of his increasingly insane boss, Knock (Alexander Granach), to negotiate the purchase of a property in the city for the enigmatic Count Orlok... who happens to be a vampire.

Orlok spies a picture of Ellen in a locket of Hutter's and immediately knows where he's dining once he arrives to take up residence in Wisborg.

As a film that's almost a hundred years old, Nosferatu has a very different narrative structure to that which we are used to today. For instance, Hutter - the protagonist - has no involvement in Orlok's eventual demise, this is all down to Ellen, who takes it upon herself to act as bait for the vampire.

Nosferatu is a silent foreign-language film, meaning the intertitles (the cards that appear onscreen, between live-action shots, with dialogue or narrative) are written in German, with English sub-titles.

However, the result of this is that sometimes, when the intertitles contain a lot of text, the sub-titles clash with the text underneath, which is somewhat annoying.

I know the restoration of this movie for the Blu-Ray was striving for authenticity, but perhaps an option to view the film with English intertitles might have been an idea.

The print is tinted, alternating between, mainly, yellow and grey, but as far as I could tell there was no pattern, or meaning, to the changes of colour, it just helped make the film's imagery pop a bit more.

Of course, the main draw of Nosferatu is Max Shreck's incredible portrayal of the vampire count. With a single performance he encapsulated, and created, an entirely new vampire sub-species, with its own mannerisms and abilities that are, at once, similar but markedly different to the traditional (Hammer/Universal era) vampires we generally think of today.

Shreck's Orlok is not charming, suave, or romanticised, but an otherworldly beast that happens to have taken a human form. He is the living embodiment of plague - a theme echoed in The Strain television series (and books and comics), whose vampires bear more than a passing resemblance to Orlok.

Graf Orlok - portrayed by Max Schrek

Child's Play (2019)

Single-mum Karen Barclay (Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza) works on the returns desk of ZedMart in Chicago, and brings home a faulty Buddi doll as an early birthday present for her deaf son Andy (Gabriel Bateman).

The Buddi doll is a robotic companion for children, capable of adapting to their owners, syncing with smart technology etc

Only this Buddi, which says it's name is Chucky (voiced by the legend that is Mark Hamill), has issues.

Once it has bonded with Andy, declaring him his new "bets friend", he becomes psychotically protective, taking punitive measures against anyone, or anything, that it feels has slighted Andy.

Written by Tyler Burton Smith and directed by Lars Klevberg, Child's Play is a brilliant, clever, reworking of the original Child's Play from 1988.

Voodoo possession has been replaced by the vengeance of a pissed engineer in a Vietnamese sweat shop/toy factory, and 2019's Child's Play has great fun with the modern penchant for "smart homes", integrated devices etc

Its resemblance to the original is purely superficial, and that's a great thing because this Child's Play is very much its own thing.

Andy even acquires his own, rather Stranger Things-like, gang of amusing and entertaining young friends, who both help and hinder him in his growing troubles with the overly possessive android (perhaps letting Chucky watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 wasn't the best call?).

As bodies start to drop in the neighbourhood, local police detective Mike Norris (Atlanta's Brian Tyree Henry), whose mum, Doreen (Carlease Burke) lives down the hall from Mike and Karen, gets involved.

Matters come to a head at a midnight launch for the Buddi 2 doll at ZedMart, when Mike thinks he has his culprit.

The climax of the movie is a gruesomely over-the-top splash of Grand Guignol, that skirts Saw-sensibilities to lean more into Evil Dead II (but without any supernatural involvement).

A heady blend of suspense, excitement, creative kills, dark humour and a top-notch cast, Child's Play is one of the strongest new mainstream horror flicks I've seen in ages.

While I love the whole voodoo shtick of the original Child's Play franchise, I think rooting the new movie firmly in the realm of modern technology was a stroke of genius.

Not only is there a tongue-in-cheek lesson here about society's rapid embrace of inter-connected technology, but the pathos Mark Hamill brings to Chucky makes the killer doll almost sympathetic.

He's just responding to societal stimuli to do what he thinks is right to look after his "best friend".

But he doesn't know any better. To paraphrase Brian Conley: "It's just a doll!"