Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The Coolest Thing I’ve Read This Week*

Lobster Johnson es muy macho!
Beginning with Lobster Johnson vs. Black Magic (1951), most of the films start the same way. A large black car, usually driven by a woman in a black dress and veil, pulls into an unnamed town. In the back seat is an old man, or sometimes, a mummy-like corpse. As the sun sets, the old man (or corpse) magically transforms into a masked crimefighter who then usually battles aliens or Satan. In Lobster Johnson vs. the Inferno (1954), he fought both. In Lobster Johnson and the Circus of Hell (1953), he fought Death himself, and over the closing credits, Death sang a song.
That’s from “The True History of Lobster Johnson” installment found in issue #4 of Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus. But don’t go scouring the video stores and such for Lobster Johnson on DVD. Author Mike Mignola is a dirty, dirty liar. I mean that in the nicest way possible. He made up the awesome character Lobster Johnson and his completely fake media history, too.

*And that’s saying something. I’ve been reading Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison, too. And a couple of neat books about heraldry.

7 comments:

  1. Man, I'm so behind on my Hellboy.

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  2. It's too bad those movies don't exist. I can totally picture them.

    Out of curiosity, which heraldry books? I have a small collection and I'm always on the lookout for more.

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  3. When I first saw this post's headline, my heart jumped!

    ... and then fell. Ah, well. Groovy looking thing there, though :)

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  4. Kathleen:

    Basic Heraldry by Stephen Friar and John Ferguson is a reasonable intro to the field. Not much new there for me, except for the attributed arms of Satan, but many of the pictures look highly scannable.

    Shield & Crest by Julian Franklyn in a delightful romp of stuffiness and snark, with lotsa side anecdotes and trivia.

    S. John: I'm trying to figure out if it would help for me to note that I haven't downloaded your text game yet.

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  5. Good books. I am also fond of Franklyn's "voice". I lucked into inexpensive copies of his Shield and Crest and Heraldry at a used bookstore many years ago.

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  6. Jeff, yeah, that clears it up :)

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  7. To be clearer, though: as you may recall, I promised that a part of the game would be included specifically for you in reference to this blog, and that's a promise I kept ... I wasn't assuming any kind of response to the game as a whole (though, of course, I hope you enjoy it) but for a half-second my thought was "Hey, cool, Jeff found the scene I added just for him!" :)

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