DC Horror Presents…

While Marvel gets more credit for integrating traditional monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein into its 1970s superhero universe, DC always had its own horror chops. After all, they had the Creature Commandos and the long-running House of Mystery was “hosted” by Cain, who sort of has a place in the DC universe. Periodically, the major heroes battle the supernatural, but they never like it, not one little bit. Unfortunately, many of them must face the dark side in the anthology DC Horror Presents…(the ellipsis makes it scarier), which goes on-sale today.

Frankly, it kinds of seems like cheating to contribute a story focusing on super-villains, like Dollhouse and Dollmaker. Nevertheless, David Dastmalchian & Leah Kilpatrick do exactly that in “Love You to Pieces.” However, they certainly capture the spirit of vintage horror comics while artist Cat Staggs cranks up the gore well above what EC Comics could ever hope to get away with.

The next story is even darker, while fully embracing the challenge of placing iconic characters in a new horror context. The Boulet Brothers rise to the challenge, forcing venerable Wonder Woman to confront a supernatural force that hits very close to home. This encounter will leave a permanent mark on Diana’s psyche, in which ever universe and timeline it might take place. Butch Mapa’s art and Kristian Rossi’s colors also really pop off the page.

LaToya Morgan’s “Living Doll” takes an approach similar to “Love You to Pieces,” this time focusing on Scarface. However, his presumed victims’ Batman and Wonder Woman Halloween costumes lend it further DC-ness. In this case, artists Tom Derenick and Walt Barna really lean into the gore, in a fan friendly way, of course.

Yet, Aarons Sagers’ “Superstitious Lot,” stands out as the clear highlight of what was originally issue #2. It might seem like another super-villain spotlight, but hopefully this story serves as a backdoor pilot for Tennyson Stacks, a.k.a. Dr. Spooky, the Carl Kolchak-looking paranormal investigator summoned by Oswald Cobblepot, loved and feared as The Penguin, who has been haunted past reason. It seems that all those henchmen he betrayed have come back for vengeance. In addition to the fresh new character and the clever concept, Sagers also delivers a sly cameo for you-know-who.

Francesco Francavilla finally fully embraces the bat in “The Chthonian Dawn,” also delivering the most striking art of the four-issue run. It starts as one kind of horror, but suddenly turns into a more Twilight Zone-worthy “oh the horror, oh the horror” tale. Plus, the guest-starring role for Abby Arcane aptly fits the story’s themes.

Frustratingly, Patrick Horvath’s “The Brooding Public” starts with a truly horrifying concept, but it is poorly served by patchy storytelling. To compound the problems, the cartoony art conflicts with the grim apocalyptic themes. However, it is nice to see an underutilized character like Adam Strange get a feature spot. If this story could be smoothed out and tightened up, it could make a worthy companion to the short film, DC Showcase: Adam Strange.

Arguably, Catwoman counts as both superhero and super-villain. Regardless, she finds herself the victim of a sinister O. Henry-from-Hell curse in Patton Oswalt & Jordan Blum’s “The Diamond Steals Back.” At times, the story is surprisingly poignant, but it ends with a deliciously macabre punchline, which probably represents Oswalt’s funniest work in years.

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines

Wonder Woman has always been a particularly military-friendly superhero, thanks to her close relationship with Captain Steve Trevor. Sadly, Trevor was killed in the Wonder Woman All In comic book series. Diana Prince was busy caring for their newborn child, so the killer was brought to justice in issue #16 by Detective Chimp, who is exactly what he sounds like. (Please, please Sam Liu and DC Animated, give the world a Detective Chimp movie.) This is a different timeline, but Prince and Trevor are still immediately interested in each other when he literally drops into Themyscira in Sam Liu & Justin Copeland’s Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, which deserves a re-watch today, the day Prince was originally molded out of clay. (That must have been high quality clay.)

Some kind of kaiju attack Trevor’s air squadron, but Princess Diana (the original one, who didn’t live off UK tax revenue) saves his life. Her mother Hippolyta intends to keep him imprisoned, because she fears “Man’s World.” Yet, ironically, it will be a rogue’s gallery of female supervillains who eventually threaten the hidden Amazonian civilization of Themyscira.

This is indeed a female-dominated story, except for Trevor, but he is definitely a manly kind of guy. Recognizing his sense of duty, Diana helps Trevor escape, so she can help him fight the invading monsters. Presumably, they are successful, since that subplot mysteriously vanishes.

To prepare herself for her career as a superheroine and member of the Justice League (who are mentioned in passing but never seen) Trevor places her with archaeologist Julia Kapatelis, who will teach her about our world and to learn about her civilization. Unfortunately, Kapatelis’s teen daughter feels like Diana steadily steals her mother’s affections—to an extent that creates super-villains.

Indeed, Dr. Poison and Dr. Cyber exploit her rage, mutating her into the Silver Swan. Of course, the transformation process will eventually kill her, but they do not care. They just want to use her as a pawn to find Themyscira and plunder its advanced tech.

Adapted from the Down to Earth comic story arc, Bloodlines works best when it focuses on Princess Diana’s slow-building relationship with Trevor. They really represent one of the great comic book romances. On the other hand, it is a little off-putting to hear Trevor’s intelligence colleague Etta Candy explicitly lusting after Amazons (this is a film kids will watch, after all). In contrast, the old school William Marston-esque scene of a hog-tied super-villainess come across like a knowing wink to Wonder Woman’s history.

Regardless, Rosario Dawson and Jeffrey Donovan nicely express the personas of Wonder Woman and Trevor. It is also cool to hear Michael Dorn as the fan-favorite character, Ferdinand the Minotaur.

Justice League: Throne of Atlantis

In the recent first issue of DC’s “All In” Aquaman, the Atlantean king is learning how to use his wife Mera’s telekinetic power over water, when they shifted to him after the conclusion of the Absolute Power miniseries. (Long story short, everyone lost their super-powers and then they mostly got them back, but sometimes slightly differently). It is a bit of déjà vu, because he had to learn his original powers from scratch back when he thought he was a mere mortal named Arthur Curry. Aquaman’s origin story had a snappy DC animated treatment in Ethan Spaulding’s Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, which makes fitting viewing today (Curry’s in-world birthday) and this Friday (1/31, Mera’s birthday).

As the film opens, the relatively new Justice League has a lot of fancy infrastructure, but only Cyborg really takes it seriously. Consequently, he answers the call when a US Navy submarine is attacked by mysterious forces. Viewers soon learn it was destroyed as part of Prince Orn’s false flag operations to foment a war between Atlantis and the surface world.

Deep down, Queen Atlanna recognizes the Prince’s ruthless nature, so she designates Curry, her secret half-human love child as her heir. Slightly disappointed, Orm responds by killing her and framing land-dwellers. Of course, Black Manta is the Svengali pulling his strings.

Cyborg will need the full Justice League to deal with this problem. Mera understands Atlantis also needs Curry, so she goes rogue, revealing his birthright. He can breathe underwater and communicate with fish, but learning how to best apply his super-powers will take time he does not have.

Heath Corson’s adapted screenplay roughly follows the 2013 Throne of Atlantis comic arc, but some of the best parts focus on other JLA members. It often seems like Cyborg gets unfairly overlooked by casual superhero fans (as a sometimes member of both JLA and the Teen Titans), but he has a new licensed flavored coffee that sounds delicious. Cyborg also gets some of the best scenes in Throne of Atlantis, wherein he considers the effects of his constant robotic upgrades on his underlying humanity, nicely expressed by Shemar Moore.

In addition, there is a cool subplot following the burgeoning romance between Clark Kent and Diana Prince (a.k.a. Wonder Woman). Yes, they were an item for a while in some of the comic storylines, because fans demanded it and it made logical sense. After all, Wonder Woman might be the only love interest who can withstand the force of Superman’s passion, so to speak. Obviously, the film does not go there, but its depiction of their courtship is quite appealing. Both super-characters are well-served by the winning voice-over work of Jerry O’Connell and Rosario Dawson.

American Experience: The Lie Detector

Many laid claim to inventing it, including a police officer and an academic. Somewhat ironically, it was the cop who worried about its civil liberties implications. The academic was the weirdo who created Wonder Woman. Right from the start, the so-called “polygraph” was controversial, but it eventually supplied some work for ambulance chaser F. Lee Bailey, who hooked people up to it on his early 1980s reality TV show. The history and disputed authorship of the polygraph is chronicled in writer-director Rob Rapley’s The Lie Detector, which airs Tuesday as part of the current season of American Experience.

John Larsen was a rookie cop with a PhD, who actually wanted to make policing more scientific and less thuggish. On the Berkley, CA police force, he had a reformer Chief, who was open to his potential creations. A lot of shrinks had already created dodgy lie detectors, measuring one thing or another, but with the help of his high school intern, Leonarde Keeler, Larsen put them all together and created the iconic print out of the subject’s responses.

Yet, Larsen quickly started second guessing his invention after it supposedly help solve a rash of thefts at a Berkley women’s dorm. He would argue his device only measures strong emotional responses and not necessarily lies. However, Keeler broke with his one-time mentor, applying his lie detector with great fanfare in Los Angeles. William Marston was an inventor of one of the half-baked predecessors, but he could talk a good game. Eventually, the three became bitter rivals of each other in the media.

Rapley’s documentary is only one-hour long, but it tells an interesting story. The subject definitely raises issues regarding civil liberties and law enforcement, but it does so in a reasonable, levelheaded manner. It helps that all of his talking heads are real experts, rather than cheesy celebrities trying to virtue-signal.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

It is the origin story of an origin story. Think of it as everything you wanted to know about the creator of Wonder Woman but were afraid to ask. Go back to a time when S&M was frowned upon in comic books in Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

William Moulton Marston was the star of the Radcliffe psychology department, but his wife Elizabeth had the brains of the family. Yet, no university would take her on as a full professor, not even Radcliffe (which probably thought it was progressive simply because it had a psych department). Nevertheless, Olive Byrne, Marston’s pretty new work-study assistant is in awe of the couple—and romantically attracted to them both, even though she is engaged to a painfully traditional frat brother.

Nearly from the start, Prof. Marston is convinced they can make their unconventional relationship work, but Ms. Marston is more skeptical. Her concerns regarding social stigma prove well founded. The trio will indeed suffer disgrace and ostracism, but just when their prospects look dreariest, Marston causes a sensation with his comic book heroine, Wonder Woman, inspired by the strength of his partners and the light boudoir bondage they enjoy. Sadly, the schoolmarms at the Comic Commission take a dim view of her Amazon ways.

It is hard to keep up with Wonder Women’s frequent tonal shifts. One moment, we are invited to gawk at their naughty sessions and the next minute the film is stoking our outrage at middle class America’s Puritanical narrowmindedness. (If they had just locked their front door a lot of trouble could have been avoided, but apparently those were different times.)

No matter which primal emotions the film happens to be appealing to, Rebecca Hall is a wickedly smart, riveting screen presence as Elizabeth Marston. Not surprisingly, the legal Marston wife is also the most complex character. In contrast, it is hard to see how Bella Heathcote’s passively mousy Olive Byrne could inspire a paragon of female butt-kicking. However, Luke Evans is surprisingly expressive conveying the former Professor’s insecurities and regrets.

It is truly a drag how voluntary morality regulation drained so much fun out of comic-books. Still, you have to wonder what Dr. Drew might say about this film. Let’s be honest, such an arrangement really isn’t a practical option for most people. Arguably, Robinson presents a permissive moral world-view that is just as simplistic as the one she critiques. Wonder Women is a handsome period production and the deep roots of the American icon are certainly provocative, but the film doesn’t add up to much more than the smug feeling of superiority over the prudish booboisie. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is not an affront to anything, but it is too inconsistent to merit Wonder Woman fans’ time and money when it opens this Friday (10/13) in New York, at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square.

DOC NYC ’12: Wonder Women

The last few years have been tough for Wonder Women.  While her Justice League colleagues have gotten big screen treatments, she suffered the embarrassment of network rejection for her pilot.  Considering it was from David E. Kelley, maybe it was just as well.  The heroic Amazon will always have her fans, several of whom explain her personal significance and lasting cultural influence in Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s Wonder Women: the Untold Story of American Superheroines (trailer here), which screens as a Midnight selection of the 2012 DOC NYC.

Psychologist William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman to embody feminine virtue, but she also found herself frequently bound-up, like a comic precursor to Bettie Page.  Wonder Woman might imply much about her creator’s subconscious, but her self-reliance struck a chord with many readers.  Unfortunately, when the Comics Code Authority began nannying the industry, Wonder Woman was amongst the hardest hit, effectively becoming a costumed Ally McBeel.

Guevara-Flanagan incorporates many talking head interviews with self-identifying feminists who celebrate the 1940’s era Wonder Woman and bemoan her subsequent watering down.  Frankly, she would have gotten much the same response had she interviewed conservative cultural critics as well.  The old school Wonder Woman might have been an Amazon Princess, but she adopted the American cause, fighting the Axis tooth-and-nail.  That’s a role model. 

Indeed, the film frequently frets about how society responds to “strong women,” yet it scrupulously ignores a recent high profile woman, known for being an accomplished outdoor sportsman, who rose to prominence in a male dominated world, only to become the target of some shockingly profane, sexual explicit vitriol.  Her name is Sarah Palin.

Regardless, when addressing the Wonder Woman’s cultural influence, the doc is rather hit-or-miss, by any standard.  Guevara-Flanagan and her experts draw a straight line from Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena the Warrior Princess, who serve as representatives of a small contemporary golden age of strong women action figures.  Yet, they ignore a huge chunk of Michelle Yeoh’s intervening filmography, in which she made a practice of playing strong butt-kicking women.  (She still does.)

Oddly, Wonder Women largely ignores recent developments for the character, including her comic book reboot in conjunction with the 2011 re-launch of the DC universe, the 2009 animated direct-to-DVD animated feature (featuring the voice of Keri “Felicity” Russell), or the much hyped but ill-fated pilot.  That is too bad, because the film is at its strongest when tracing Wonder Woman’s early evolution. 

Too politicized for the natural comic fan audience, Wonder Women is expressly intended for those who fondly remember her appearance on the first issue of Ms. Magazine.  For the rest of us, it is quite uneven, reflecting a rather insular perspective.  It screens at the IFC Center this coming Sunday night (11/11) and the following Tuesday (11/13) as part of DOC NYC 2012.