I’ve often said that I miss the comics covers of old. Those covers were designed, unlike many of the ones being produced today which are merely mini-posters spotlighting the titular character without giving any indication of the story contained inside, to draw readers in and make them anxious about actually reading the stories contained therein. Of course, this was also a time when comic books could be found all over the place, from newsstands to the local drug store, as opposed to only in specialty comic-book shops, and they were largely focused on catching the eye of someone just passing by the comics rack instead of depending pretty solely on regular readers who are willing to go every Wednesday to get their weekly fix, but that’s a discussion for another time, I suppose. Anyway, “Covering Comics” is going to be an irregular series of posts where I take a look at various covers from the past, highlighting some of my personal favorites, or other covers of note for one reason or another.
Back in Covering Comics #11 I took a look at Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ legendary run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow, but Neal Adams did far more than just that series, and he was one of the most sought after cover artists at the time. Adam’s style was, as you will see, highly realistic, but he never forgot that he was drawing comics, so there’s also a very stylistic quality to his drawings.
Once again, I’m not going to comment on these covers because I think they speak for themselves. Enjoy!
I should note that though most of these covers are from the 60s and 70s, Mr Adams is still alive and working infrequently in the comics field, and even has a new mini-series which he is both writing and illustrating coming from DC entitled Superman: Coming of the Supermen and is scheduled to launch next month.
Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Yeah, it’s become a cliche, but it definitely seems to be the attitude of the Reno brothers in today’s feature, 
Of course, there is no way that this movie can really live up to the true epitome of the paranoid western 
Part buddy cop movie, part let’s fight police corruption movie, The Super Cops works pretty well as at least light entertainment. This is definitely one time where you should think Starsky and Hutch much more than say Serpico or even Lethal Weapon.
Eventually they are assigned to the (fictional) 21st precinct in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Appalled by what they see there, they make it their mission to try to clean up the neighborhood and do what they can to get as much of the drugs off the streets and to bust the Hayes brothers who are the major drug suppliers in the neighborhood. Though they are secretly supported by their captain who wants the to make the busts so that they can get their detective badges and he can, as he says “ride their shirt tails” out of the precinct, this only further infuriates those who oppose them, including among others, a corrupt District Attorney.
One thing that definitely helps keep the movie light and mving are the performances by leads Ron Liebman and David Selby who portray the pair as competent though frequently awkward, so that they always seem just slightly out of place both in social settings and while chasing down bad guys. Also of note in the cast is Pat Hingle who plays the IAD inspector charged with bringing them down. Hingle would later go on to portray Police Commissioner Gordon in Tim Burton’s Batman films.
There are a couple of different definitive film noir themes that Out of the Past immediately brings to mind.
The next thing a great noir needs, of course, is a stunning femme fatale, someone whom the audience can believe is worth the protagonist risking everything to either protect or to follow into the depths of a heavenly hell, and Jane Greer as Kathie Moffat ably fits that bill. Not only does she have the classic beauty of a femme fatale, but she perfectly embodies the attitude that goes along with it.
That last bit of monologue also emphasizes another important aspect of film noir or really of any great narrative film like this: a truly evil villain. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true, because in many cases the real opponent for the protagonist in a noir is simply Fate itself, but, if that fate is going to be brought in by an outside force, especially as a personal antagonist to our presumptive “hero”, then it’s important that they be just as outstanding and powerful as the main character, and that is something that Douglas provides in spades.
Finally, one absolutely has to credit cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca whho also shot Jacque Tourneur’s Cat People. Musuraca’s use of light and darkness is masterful and fully epitomizes what the genre needs and exemplifies exactly where the genre got its name. Truly there are shots in this film that could stand alone as beautiful pices of black and white photography even when taken out of the context of the film. Yet at the same time he never dwells on them or lingers so long that the shots lose sight of what they are supposed to be doing in the first place, and that is servicing the film of which they are a part.
Stanley Kubrick: The Lost Tapes is a short documentary which was compiled by Jim Casey from a series of tape recordings made by Jeremy Bernstein in 1966. At the time of the recordings, Kubrick was in the midst of making 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Bernstein was writing a profile on the director. Casey has taken excerpts from the tapes and edited them together with clips from the director’s films and behind-the scenes photographs to form a very good self-narrated profile of the director from his childhood through his early films, and on until the making of 2001.
In October of 2015 Gambit Magazine posted 
Charles Keating is probably best remembered as an overzealous and nearly rabid campaigner against pornography in the 50s and 60s, including leadership on the 1969 President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Later, as a corrupt and criminal banker in the 80s, he ran the American Continental Corporation and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which so exploited the banking deregulations under Reagan that it led to the complete collapse of the Savings and Loan industry, not to mention investigations of the “Keating Five,” which included the current Senator John McCain.
I suppose I can’t really conclude this without taking a moment to talk about the actual content of the film itself, so I’ll just throw up a quick ***Spoiler Warning*** though what happens really should be obvious. When young Karen Fleming doesn’t come home from school in time for dinner, her parents begin to worry. After checking with neighbors and friends they call in the police, who soon track her to her last known whereabouts, Baker’s drug store. Upon questioning Baker, they find that an older boy, Paul Halliday was also in the store at the time. Though Paul initially denies having had any contact with Karen, or even noticing that she was in the store, further investigation leads the police to discover that Karen is indeed dead (and though it’s never straight-out stated, probably sexually assaulted) and they once again go to question Paul.
All of this is wrapped around by a narration by Tom Harmon further indicting the porn industry and those who make this kind of material available to youths as just as responsible for Paul’s actions as he himself.
Hiya, kiddies! So, the “old dark house”. It’s a mystery/horror sub-genre that we’ve discussed before, and honestly, it’s one of my favorites. I suppose one of the main reasons is because it’s like ordering a favorite meal at a restaurant. Even if you’ve never been to that particular eatery before, you still pretty well know what the ingredients are going to be and how it’s going to taste before you get it. Oh, sure, one cook may include a bit more or less of this ingredient or may put them together in a way that tries to impart a bit of his or her own personal style, but nine times out of ten you’re going to get something pretty much the same as that dish that you’ve enjoyed time and again.
Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m certainly not suggesting that director Frank Strayer has invented anything truly new with The Ghost Walks. No, for the most part it consists of all of the familiar elements that make up an old dark house mystery. 1) A group of disparate people are, for one reason or another gathered together in a creepy old mansion – in this particular case a fallen tree and a washed out road prove effective enough to thrust our protagonist and his traveling companions into a seemingly already quite awkward family gathering, thereby allowing this particular phase to move along quite quickly. 2) There is some reason for everyone to be suspicious of everyone else – often the cause of the gathering is the reading of a will which leaves one or more parties dissatisfied with the results. In this particular case the Mcguffin is the anniversary of the murder of the husband of one of the characters. 3) There should be at least one “coincidental” connection between some of the characters – ofttimes one or more will know another character from a different setting. 4) Quite often there is also a random element thrown into the mix – for instance here we are informed of an inmate recently escaped from an insane asylum. 5) Eventually all of the lights in the house will inexplicably go out, and when they come back on, someone will have been killed leaving the survivors to try to figure out who among them could possibly be the killer. 6) Soon, even more mysterious things begin to happen – a strange hand will reach out from around a corner, the eyes of a picture will move in a way that tells us someone unknown is watching the proceedings, more people will die or disappear, secret passages will be found and more. Yep, kiddies, all of these elements are present in The Ghost Walks, just as they are in pretty much all old dark house mysteries.
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