![]() ![]() … Have you ever heard of the Flaming Carrot? UT!įlaming Carrot Comics was an absurdist indie comic book, written and drawn by Bob Burden, that began publication in the mid-‘80s. But what character(s) would be the ideal vehicle through which to satirize a genre so sprawling, unfocused, and already quite ridiculous on its face? And genre parody was certainly having a MOMENT in the ‘90s Gen-X-ers seemed to find joy in deconstructions of the artificiality of the pop culture they’d grown up with in films like Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Galaxy Quest, and the Hot Shots movies. ![]() It wasn’t exactly the ideal climate into which to sell moral parables about colorful do-gooders righting wrongs and standing for abstract notions of justice while inevitably protecting an entrenched status quo.īut you know what WOULD seem to be an ideal fit for the decade? A parody! A satire of the oddball tropes and outdated stylings of a genre that was easy to depict as a goofy, childish farce. T’was a decade that eschewed romanticism for realness-by which I mean a cultivated skepticism and mistrust about anything that seemed “ too good to be true”. One wonders if our beloved Supermen, Spiders-Man, or Avengers-es would really have caught on as film franchises in the cynical and irony-poisoned late nineties, what with its Reality Bites and its Broadway debut of Rent and its endless vacuous disaster movies. And let’s not forget the 2000 X-Men’s defensive snarkiness about not wearing “yellow spandex”. Now, the following year DID see the release of New Line Cinema’s surprise hit Blade… but the first Blade was underplaying its comic-book roots as much as it could-lest anyone think the movie about a trench-coat wearing, sword-wielding vampire slayer was SILLY or anything. And then summer 1997 had featured the three straight flops of Steel, Spawn, and the universally-reviled Batman & Robin-an embarrassing triple-threat that seemed to kill off the comic book’s Hollywood prospects for good. But it certainly wasn’t anything that the mainstream moviegoing audience would have even RECOGNIZED as a comic-book movie at the time. Sure, there’d been a couple of big Batman movies at the start of the decade, but there weren’t a lot of successful follow-ups at the genre besides that 1 I think maybe The Mask was the biggest non-Batman comic book movie for, like, the whole decade? (* checks Wikipedia*) No, wait-it was Men in Black. It might be hard to imagine this in the post- Avengers days of 2023, but in the late 1990s, the pop-culture mainstream saw comic book superheroes as… kind of a joke. For this spin of the Rack, we’ll be looking at a long-forgotten superhero parody from the tail end of the 20th century, which has lately made a resurgence as a cult classic: 1999’s Mystery Men! In the end, movies will be marked down on a scale from $1.00 (a surprise gem) to $0.05 (better used for kindling). We’ll take a look at the things that actually work and the parts that absolutely don’t, and decide whether it’s worth your time and your dime. The Discount Spinner Rack is where you’ll find the worst, the weirdest, and the most puzzling of comic book movie misfires. But for every triumphant high- The Dark Knight, The Avengers-there have always been a good number of stinkers… some bad enough to become punchlines or talking points, but most mediocre and ultimately forgotten… I was following you, Morty.Over the last few decades, comic book movies have reached heights of storytelling and spectacle that readers could never have DREAMED of. Morty: What do you mean? Why are we here, then? Rick: I don't know. Rick: What the fuck are you talkin' about, Morty? I never said that. Rick: So? Where's the cube? Morty: I don't know, you're the one who said it was in Bendigo. Rick: What do ya see round here, Morty? Morty: I see. ![]() You're a damn legend! Charlene, bring our ripper legends some stubbies and a pack of menthols! Rick: Sii-ck. Uncle Barry: Grab a fucking stubby, mate. I-I've only met you for like fifteen seconds, but it feels like fifteen years. And I know this is weird to say, but I feel a strong bond between us. Uncle Barry: Look, I don't know who you are, but you look like a top bloke. And who am I speaking to? Rick: Name's Rick. Seasons Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 Season 6 Special Bushworld Adventures Uncle Barry: Kick the ball! Kick the bloody ball! Rick: Uncle Barry? Uncle Barry: Yeah, mate.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |