Wizards

Ralph Bakshi once called Wizards his attempt to make a kids movie, which just goes to show how marvelously screwed up he is as an artist. Wizards has fairies, pixies and elves, sure. It also has scathingly unsubtle religious satire, nihilism by the bucket load, and a huge side order of Nazi's.



Often it's like watching two films at once, where a bunch of subversive stinking hippies has broken into the editing suite at Disney and inserted their own footage, seemingly at random.
It also has many connections to the comic world, not just in it's underground stylings, but also the fact that Mike Ploog contributed huge amounts to it, as well as the great trouble it takes to rip off both Wally Wood AND Vaughn Bode.



In a post-apocalyptic future, humanity is long dead, leaving space for the forgotten people of fairyland to return and live in harmony over what's left of the world. Except for the fact that the radioactive mutants are still around too.
Ten million years after the holocaust, twin wizards are born. As they grow up, Avatar (the good twin) and Blackwulf (the evil one) fight for control of what's left of the world ( in a series of Ploog illo's, rather than full animation) Eventually, Avatar wins and Blackwulf is banished to the blasted land of Scortch, to rule over the mutants, while the good lands of Montagar are benignly looked after by Avatar.
So this is a fairy tale, of sorts, but one turned right on it's head. Nothing quite happens the way it should in this 'kids film'.
The main antagonists introduced, we cut to 1000 years later, as Blackwulf sends robotic assassins out into the neighboring countries, to kill anyone still practicing magic. Blackwulf. see, firmly believes in the power of technology, particularly pre-holocaust technology, which he has his demonic minions scouring the ruins for. Avatar's side of the world, meanwhile, full of the aforementioned pixies, elves & fairies, has outlawed any kind of science or machinery, and apparently lives in blissful harmony with the natural world.
Wizards is actually full of talk about the perils of The Machine, as in one scene where a village of fairies is being wiped out, (a village that looks suspiciously like a jewish ghetto). A fairie mother explains to her soon to be killed son why they can't fight back, as the tanks roll in: They have weapons and technology. We just have love.

Following one of Blackwulf's hitmen, the blatantly Bode-esque Necron 99, we meet up with Avatar again, by this time a cigar smoking dirty old man vaguely reminiscent of Frank Thorne. Avatar has sent his barbarian elf buddy Weehawk (who's basically Wally Wood's Odkin from The Wizard King crossed with Hogun The Grim) out into the wilds to see what Blackwulf's up to.


Unfortunately, Weehawk runs into Necron 99, and fails to make it back to Montagar in time to stop the murderous droid kill the president of the good lands, leaving Weehawk, Avatar & his Mae West-esque fairy babe Elinore in a bit of a post-apocalyptic pickle.


Meanwhile, Blackwulf has been trying to find something that can motivate his fairly useless goblin army to go to war for what's left of the planet. And, at last, all that scrabbling around in the ruins has borne fruit. Having killed all the leaders of the good lands, Blackwulf is finally ready to mount an invasion, and now he's got the very thing that'll get the mutant population of Scortch all fired up and ready to kill. To wit, an ancient movie projector with footage of the Nuremberg rallies!



Remember, this is a kids film.


Back home, Avatar has reprogrammed Necron 99, rechristened him with the wildly optimistic name of Peace, and much against his better judgement, is off leading a quest with Weehawk & Elinore to locate Blackwulf's dreaded 'Dream Machine' and destroy it.



As you can probably tell, Wizards is a wildly inconsistent film, with quite a few flaws (particularly the reverse rotoscoping Bakshi uses for the final battle, which sadly doesn't work at all), but it's that very inconsistency that makes it so much fun. It veers from beautiful, childlike fairy tale-ness to insane, ultra grown up black satire, often in the same scene. And though Bakshi freely steals from pretty much the entire history of comic book fantasy, at least he admits it. (At one point, Avatar swears an oath to the effect of: By Morrow, Krinkel & Frazetta!)
And although the constant use of Ploog's static, though stunning, illustrations betray the low budget, it's still full of more ideas than any animation with ten times the money. Like all of Bakshi's films, there's a real darkness to Wizards, that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable watching it, but y'know, sometimes it's good to see something that doesn't want to be your friend. Plus there's the audaciously brilliant ending, as Blackwulf & Avatar finally face off, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. I won't spoil it if you've never seen it, but rest assured, your jaw will drop.
Oh, and there's everybody's favourite scene right here:


They've killed Fritz! They've killed Fritz!! Those lousy stinkin' yellow fairies! Those horrible atrocity filled vermin! They've killed Fritz!!!
The whole thing's on Youtube if you want to see it...

Mike Ploog

It's Mike Ploog's birthday today, which leads me to making a bit of a confession. Back in The Bronze Age, I was a huge Ploog fan ( still am, obviously ), devouring Ghost Rider, Monster Of Frankenstein and particularly Werewolf By Night. So much so that, well, remember when Warren first started reprinting The Spirit? That was the first time a lot of fans had ever seen any Will Eisner, me included. And what was my first thought? How great this legendary strip was? How masterful Will's short story skills were? Nope, my first thought was: This guy is blatantly ripping off Mike Ploog!
I know, I know. Don't tell anyone, ok?

Not sure if everybody knows the Carmine Infantino story, or if I've mentioned it before, but what the hell, I'll tell it again, 'cos it's so great. In fact, thanks to Comic Book Artist, here's the whole sorry tale from Mike's own lips:
" ( When I started ) I knew nothing about comics. I remember sitting in a cafe called Friar Tuck's, across from DC Comics, with a bunch of artists. Sitting next to me was a total stranger. He had been introduced to me as a bigwig at DC Comics. His name was Carmine Infantino. Everybody was chatting and drawing on the table cloth. Suddenly this executive next to me picks up a ball point pen and begins to draw on the table cloth. I was impressed; Imagine an executive that can draw! I attempted to pay him a compliment, and said, " I'll be a son of a gun! You can draw too! " He glared at me, and you could've fried eggs on his cheeks. I don't think he said a word, just glared at me as if to say, " What do you mean, I can draw?? " I looked around the table at a load of blank, wide eyed faces. And with a further display of ignorance, I added. " Yeah, now if worst comes to worst, you could do that for a living. "
My memory is a bit vague about what happened next but I never worked for DC Comics. "

Here's The Ploogster doing his usual incredible job on his all too short run on Kull.

The Mirrrors Of Tuzun Thune

This might just be my favourite Robert E. Howard story of them all, and there's nary a monster or swinging sword in sight. Kull, of course, was Howard's more reflective, contemplative version of Conan, and most of the Kull tales were inspired by dreams that REH had had. This one is, in fact, all about dreams & reality, and the tonal pencil art of Mike Ploog suits the story entirely.

Terror On The Planet Of The Apes

Along with adapting the movies into comic form, Planet Of The Apes also ran some great original serial's, courtesy of the fevered mind of Doug Moench. Copyright not being as stringent back then as it is these days, Moench was pretty much left alone to tell whatever kind of stories he liked, regardless of whether it fit into the Apes universe or not. Here's one of my all-time faves, the first adventure for Angry Young Human Jason & his hip and groovy pal, McDowellian chimp Alexander. I obviously didn't realise as a kid, quite what a product of the '70's these two were, but, natch, that makes the strip even more fun these days. The gorgeous wash artwork is, obviously, by Marvellous Mike Ploog. Here's part one: