Japanese Superheroes in film: The early years

Japan’s first televised superhero was the “Moonlight Mask” (first aired Feb, 24th 1958), described as a cross between Batman and the Lone Ranger. He rode a bike, wears a turban, a pair of cool shades and reminds me a bit of Marvel Comic’s “Moon Knight”. The series was cancelled a little over a year later after the death of a boy who tried to imitate Mask's dangerous stunt's (the movies would continue and the series would return 13 years later). The show would lead to others, like the popular live action Astro Boy (59-60) and not very popular National Kid (1959 – which strangely became highly popular in Brazil) And later Ultraman.

Preceding them all in 1957 was “Super Giant”, which became the first big screen superhero. Known as Starman in the United States… the American release, "Atomic Rulers of the World", combines those first two Super Giant mini movies (Supah Jaianto, 1957) & "Super Giant Continues" (Zoku Supah Jaianto,1956) which ran about 50 minutes) while editing out 19 minutes of footage and changing some plot lines.

A sad practice that would continue with the 2 part hour long Planet Prince films (Planet Prince (Yusei Oji) and Planet Prince: The Terrifying Spaceship (Yusei Oji: Kyofu no Uchusen) both originally released in 1959, merged into a single 90 min film titled Prince of Space for U.S. release). Though considering how the Prince of Space feels like it goes on forever - what with the heroic Prince constantly warning the Earth invading Phantom Dictator of Krankor that his weapons are useless against him, and that the Phantom and his chicken faced men continuing to blast away regardless of how ineffectual the effort is… I’m not sure my poor brain could handle another 30 minutes of that monotony.

The film doesn’t offer any back-story as to who this Prince guy really is, where he acquired the power of invulnerability or how a poorly paid bootblack could afford his own space ship? His main weapon is a wand that looks like a grill lighter and it shoots out a laser that stings and annoys his foes, rather than causing any real damage. Out of costume he's known as Ken and he has adopted 2 orphans, who are friends with the son of the scientist that developed the fuel coveted by the Phantom. The kids are a constant presence, in the thick of the action and often getting in the way

Earth's foes are pretty goofy looking. Beak nosed, with lil' TV antennas perched atop their heads. The filmmakers also leave nothing to the imagination in regards to their groinacolagical area, which is common in these films. I’ve read that in Japan they wanted their super powered men to be well represented (according to one source, in the "Super Giant" series they even stuffed the front of the heroes underoos with cotton!)

The evil Phantom cackles often and in the American translation, refers to those who oppose him as scum and he's intent on stealing a secret fuel formula. This results in the same back and forth pissing match between Prince and Phantom. The tedium was wearying and even when it gets to the big finish it’s taxing. In the final act, Prince flies almost all the way to Krankor, but heads back to Earth to blacken some boots after he is feebly attacked. Aliens on our planet then uncover his secret identity, which forces him to return to Krankor where he fights a lumpy giant and, after yet another of exchange of "Ha, Ha, Ha, haven’t you learned your weapons are useless against me!", the Prince does what he should have done straight out and blows up the invaders.

Despite the silly costumes, the doll that poses as a jumping Phantom and that the string holding up the toy ships are sometime visible, the movie looks good, the cinematography is crisp and there is a nice contrast between shadow and light. Director Eijirô Wakabayashi looks to have put some thought behind the camera angles, movement and framing (in one scene the Prince's ship is shown reflected in a puddle of water). Still, the most enjoyable way to sit through this repetitive action is while watching the MST3K version.

Another Japanese superhero skewered on MST3K was Iron-Sharp, called Space Chief in the U.S. in a film titled "Invasion of the Neptune Men". The original film was released in 1961 and starred a young Sonny Chiba (only 22 and with an ample amount of puffy hair). This was the only Iron-Sharp movie ever made and the guy is hardly a presence in his own flick (much like Batman, in Batman Returns). We see him battle a small squad of bullet headed Neptunian’s, in full view of a gang of shorts wearing children. He then quickly drives off in his sooped up space car and disappears for most of the movie. In his place we get his alter ego, a scientist who is working to stop the Neptune invasion by operating a giant electric invisible shield that blankets the city, and aiding Doctor Tanigawa with the Alpha-Electron rocket. The real focus of the film? Are those kids and their parade of tiny upsetting shorts (they are the source of much mirth in the MST3K riffing).

Although the camera work isn't as interesting, the costumes are better than those seen in "Prince of Space". It isn't as light in tone as the older film - the aliens might start off as merry pranksters, cause things to run backwards - but they quickly move on to blowing up a nuclear reactor, killing many. Neptune is also laboriously strung out. The final battle -supplemented by actual World War II stock footage- drags on and on and on and on. As Mike Nelson laments in the riffing, Iron-Sharp (Space Chief) keeps shooting down the same 3 ships, no matter how many he blows up there’s always 3 of them! I thought the damn invasion would never end!

One bummer is that the American version leaves out a reported off key Iron Sharp theme song sung by the kids at the end of the film. Man I'd have loved to have heard that thing, I bet it's a hoot.

And with that we come to the first Japanese superhero of the modern age... The Golden Bat (Ōgon Bat), who made his début sometime in the 1930s. He wouldn’t make it to the movies until 1966 and I’ve reviewed this feature in full, here The Golden Bat

Miss Fury - Trendsetter!

No, she's not the wife of Mr. Furious (thought I'd pay to see that movie), er, anyway…

I spoke about Sun Girl not long ago, but there are a host of forgotten female crime fighters in the comic-verse. Aside from die hards, historians and Alan Moore fans, who else has heard of the Purple Tigress or the original Miss Masque? And can you name the first female heroine?

The first known super powered female was a character named Fantomah. Created by Fletcher Hanks for Fiction House’s Jungle Comic #2 in February of 1940. Fantomah was an immortal Egyptian who could transform into a super powered skull faced creature whenever she needed to take on the forces of evil. A month later the first true costumed heroine was born, she was named The Woman in Red. Soon after the floodgates opened and fans were introduced to such figures like the Red Tornado (who wore a pot on her head to conceal her face and masqueraded as a man), At DC in 1940 Catwoman (then known simply as “the Cat”) made her debut in Batman #1 and a year later in 1941 Wonder Woman created a splash and became an iconic character. Squeezed in between those creations, in April of 1941, came a costumed heroine named Black Fury… later to be re christened Miss Fury and what was notable about her was that she was the first costumed crime fighter created, written and drawn by a woman.

Pure Imagination Publishing released the first 3 issues of Miss Fury in trade paperback form (the comics themselves were collections from the original Sunday newspaper strips) and I thought I’d share my impressions of the work: Out of costume her name was Marla Drake. A debutante who was heading out to masquerade ball wearing a suit made of black leopard skin (it was all she had, because she’d angrily torn off her original choice after receiving a call that someone else was wearing the costume she had planned wear). An Uncle sent the skin to her and it was once worn by an African witch doctor! (Hmm, I wonder how he looked wearing such a thing?) Anyway, Marla never made it to the ball because she crossed paths with a killer who she helped apprehend… and thus a legend was born. Sadly despite the fact that the incredibly popular strip ran for over 10 years the character and the creator have been largely forgotten.

June Tarpe Mills, went by the name Tarpe Mills because it was tough for women to get work or respect in the field back in the day and she felt readers might respond better if they thought a man was scripting a saga such as this. She created several characters before Fury, including Cat Man and a guy named Daredevil (Not the Matt Murdock version) but Fury was her most notable. Marla looked a lot like Mills (described as an Irish Beauty), and the similarities continue, as both creator and creation owned a cat named Peri Purr.

Mills art was solid but raw; her faces were well rendered and she had a strong fashion sense (she once worked as a fashion model) though the ink work was at times too heavy. She continued to improve over the years but sadly, some health issues (including arthritis) made it tough for her to keep deadlines and she resorted to hiring a less talented ghost to do the work at the end. Her stories relied on too many convenient happenstances and there are a few outlandish situations (as when her fiancé discovers and then tosses an explosive that just happens to blow up a car filled with the villains who created the device). Despite this, the tales are fast paced, exciting and held my interest from page to page.

Fury wasn’t a traditional crime fighter; in fact after one of her early adventures she buried her cat suit and vowed never to be troubled by it again. Somehow trouble always found her and gave her excuses to slip into her skintight costume - but she wasn’t happy about that one bit! Marla was -for the most part- a strong willed woman, self-assured and liberated at a time when it wasn’t trendy to be so, and perhaps this trait was modeled after the creator as well?

There was a large supporting cast: Fury was aided by her French maid Francince and a doorman at her Hotel who went by the name Cappy, In addition to that was the tough detective Dan Carey, who carried a secret crush on Marla Drake. Later on her stories would shift to political intrigue in Brazil where she would team up with Albino Joe, a favorite of the creator and one she would attempt to revisit later in life (there is an unfinished, unpublished Albino Joe story she was working on at the time of her death). Her main foes were the scheming Countess Erica Von Kapf and a one armed German with great strength and perseverance, Bruno Beitz.

Marla didn’t wear the black leopard skin suit very often, and I’ve read she put it on less and less as the years progressed. Though it was suggested that the suit enhanced her natural athletic abilities Throughout the book Marla Drake was known as the Black Fury, or Miss Black Fury, rarely Miss Fury. Not having read the other adventures I’m not sure when they dropped the word “Black” but the title was Miss Fury as seen in an early newspaper strip. I found it interesting to compare her to Catwoman, as Selina would later don skintight suits with ears, sometimes a tail. Fury once used that tail like a whip (Catwoman’s weapon of choice) and as Drake climbed up the side of buildings, lithe and sexy I couldn’t help but think of DCs playful thief and sometime anti-hero.

To sum things up - The strip entertained me, it was a real page-turner and I hope another collection finds its way to comic shops soon. (There were 8 collected issues in total; each issue was 50-plus pages long)

In 1952, after the cancellation of Miss Fury, Tarpe Mills retired from the industry, returning briefly by contributing a 7-page tale for Marvel’s “Our Love Story” published in 1971. She died in 1988 at the age of 73. Miss Fury and June Tarpe Mills should be better known. As a talented writer and artist and the first female to publish a popular costumed female hero, hers should be a name spoken with the same reverence as Jack Kirby or Will Eisner

I Watched the Watchmen

Note, I tried to keep the most important spoiler out of this review and in the footnote at the end.

I got the chance to see Watchmen earlier this week. A while ago, I made a somewhat doom’n’gloomy prediction a while back:

“My official prediction for Watchmen is that it will be visually awesome, but will be pretty shallow, stripping down too much of the story. We'll occasionally wonder if Zack Snyder really "gets" the story, or if he is adapting it more at face value as an action movie. I'm hugely excited about it, but I'm also pretty worried about the final product. I'll quote myself in a few weeks and see if I'm right or (hopefully) wrong.”

Fortunately, the film exceeded these expectations. It was not perfect by any means, but after one viewing I would say it's very good overall. As a standalone product, I felt it actually worked - it's impossible for me to tell for certain, but I don't think understanding the film really required knowledge of the graphic novel. It seemed like the film was structured well enough as a drama with a fair amount of action, giving the viewer enough information to understand the characters' motivations and actions. In that respect, I think the film generally succeeded.

It did have problems as an adaptation, however, though they weren't as significant as I had predicted above. Compared to the comic, the movie’s characters often lose some nuances in their representation. After the backstories and plot were compressed and edited, the film is almost like Cliff's Notes versions of the original story. After thinking about it, though, that really doesn't bother me too much - an adaptation can only use so much of the original material, and I think this one did a good job at providing viewers with the essentials of the characters. The same goes for the change in the ending - some nuances of the comic's ending are lost, but the film's ending captures much of the meaning and works well (or better, within the film*) on its own. Overall, I rarely got the feeling that Snyder didn’t “get” the original story; in the end, the changes seemed conscious on his part to alter it into something a bit more filmable.

Aside from the compression of the story, I think my main problems had to do with the dialogue and violence. Some of it is awkward because it’s too close to the written story – what works in a written, exaggeratedly noir-ish style doesn’t necessarily work in spoken words. Rorschach’s narration is the biggest problem here – some of the journal entries were already a bit much to take seriously, and they just sound more bizarre here. At other times, the dialogue is just clunky, or sounds like it’s been summarized from various points in the novel and thrown into the film. The violence is also a bit much – it’s a violent book, and I can handle violent films, but some of the scenes are so overboard as to be ludicrous. Do we really need people’s legs snapping or blood fountaining absurdly during the fight scenes?

Some of the acting was mixed - Laurie’s actress was easily the worst, and Veidt occasionally came across a bit flat. Dr. Manhattan was very well done in general – initially, I couldn’t stand his somewhat thin, higher-pitched voice, but eventually I came to think that it actually fit the character very well. Finally, Dan, the Comedian, and Rorschach were almost perfectly portrayed – the actors were spot-on aside from a few bad line reads and a few awkward growly-voiced moments for Rorschach.

Stylistically, I think the film was very well done. In addition to the scenes mentioned above, the direction of the action worked well, and the representation of period superhero costumes was awesome. I loved the earliest superhero costumes, which were straight out of old serials and TV shows. I also thought the updates to the main characters costumes worked pretty well in general – they’re more high-tech and modern-looking than the ones in the original story, but I think that works because they’re a conscious mirror of modern superhero films.

From another review: “No mere comic book could have properly captured the awesome spectacle of Dr. Manhattan unleashing hell on Vietnam to the strains of 'Ride of the Valkyrie,' or captured the pathos of a funeral for a man nobody loved, accompanied by 'The Sounds of Silence.' And the opening credits sequence (which has been rightfully praised elsewhere) is unique to the film, and a grand contribution to the canon.”

This states very well exactly how I feel about the high points of the film: at best, it uses its medium extremely well to show things that couldn’t be done in the written material. Overall, I think these great moments outweigh the problems in the film, and another example I’d add would be the first interlude on Mars. This section was possibly my favorite in the book, as it was almost a pause in the action that really laid out Manhattan’s character, his simultaneous incredible power and feeling of helplessness due to seeing his future actions played out already. The film simplifies some of this, but they managed to convey a lot of the material while adding some incredible visuals and music. I’d have to watch it again, but on first viewing, that struck me as about as an incredible scene. The return to Mars later in the film doesn’t succeed as well, mainly because it seems compressed too much (and because Manhattan, out of nowhere, says the completely obvious line about Laurie’s father for the benefit of the duller audience members). That second scene was adequate in the film, but the first made up for it to me.

Overall, as I’ve said, there were a lot of problems throughout the film. On the other hand, though, so much was done well, particularly using the film medium to do things that are difficult to get across in comics. I’ll need to watch it again to solidify my opinion and see how it holds up over more viewings, but I think 3 ½ out of 4 stars would be the rating: incredible and epic at parts, but enough flaws to keep the overall rating below the best of the best in superhero films.

SPOILERS IN THIS FOOTNOTE!!!

*I still have some issues with the original ending. Thematically, it's perfect, but I still feel it’s something of a stretch in its execution. If we can accept that Dr. Manhattan was given his powers through “SCIENCE,” almost everything else in the story follows naturally – the technology the characters use is mainly based on mechanical breakthroughs from knowledge gained from Manhattan. The construction of a giant telepathic space squid which is designed well enough to pass for a natural life form even after scientific analysis (which we have to assume would take place) is not that believable for me in the story. The implications of its use in the story’s themes are fantastic, but I just don’t feel it fits in that well with the rest of the story. The film has a simpler solution which I like better in some ways – it loses something thematically, but works better overall for me.

END SPOILERS!!!!

What ever happened to Sun Girl?

She was born in August of 1948 and back then she didn’t have a real name, but she did have a sunbeam ray gun and arch nemesis like Bokk the Beast and Peanuts McCoy. She was fast, acrobatic and proficient in several martial arts. She was a tough talker, willing to "Choke the life" out of an uncooperative thug and the comic implied that she was world famous, a respected hero… so whatever happened to her?

Her own series, drawn by the magnificent Ken Bald (writer unknown), lasted a mere 3 issues. She then made appearances in a couple issues of Marvel Mystery Comics, teaming up with Namora and Golden Girl. Then Captain America (#69 Nov 1948), Sub-Mariner (#29 Nov 1948) and filled in for Toro as the original Human Torch’s sidekick in his title from issue #32 to #35 (final issue March 1949)

And that was it, 7 months in the sun for this great heroine.

Roy Thomas, who was into nostalgia, recapped the original Torch’s origin in 1990 and in the final 2 issues of that mini series Sun Girl finally was given a name, Mary Mitchell. Sadly Roy turned her into Torch’s secretary, who had a crush on the hero and became Sun Girl to impress him. Boo!

Sun Girl was never given an origin in her original incarnation, Marvel never told us how she got to be who she was… she was just there. A veteran of the superheroing game, beloved by all right out of the gate. It would be very cool if Marvel would revisit the character (but show a lot more respect than Roy Thomas did). Celebrate her Golden Age adventures by giving us more.

For additional info on the "Mysterious Beauty" Sun Girl visit Jess Nevin’s page