On Technology, Media, and Popular Culture

One shot in the trailer for the forthcoming film World War Z displays the Philadelphia skyline viewed from the rear of a cargo jet. The twin towers of Liberty Place are visible in the foreground and, across the Schuylkill River, the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Park can be seen. Just to the left of the Liberty Place spire, you can spot Wharton’s Jon M. Huntsman Hall. 

It looks like we’re ground zero for this summer’s zombie apocalypse. 

A look back at the early days of comic-cons: The program listing for the 1969 Comic Art Convention at the Statler-Hilton in New York, July 4-6, 1969.

Note to your local movie theater’s projection department from our friend David Lynch.

Sly Ditko Reference in “Before Watchmen: Rorschach” #4?

In the concluding issue of Rorschach in DC Comics’ “Before Watchmen” series, before he dispatches the captured Rorschach, Rawhead’s henchman Lucky P. wants to know his name. “Vic,” Rorschach tells him. To which Lucky P. Replies, “Vic? You don’t look like a Vic. More of a Howard.”

His name isn’t Vic, of course, it’s Walter — Walter Joseph Kovacs. The fake name provides a play on words for Lucky P. who then addresses him as his “Vic-tim.”

Yet one wonders whether the bogus moniker is more than a set up for a pun. Is it a sly reference to Vic Sage, alter ego of The Question, Steve Ditko’s Objectivist hero on which Rorschach is based? 

And Howard? Perhaps the name is a nod to Howard Roark, the Objectivist champion of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, to whom Ditko is sometimes compared. As Richard Metzger wrote in Dangerous Minds several years ago: “It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that Ditko sees himself as a real-life ‘Howard Roark,’ Rand’s fictional architect in The Fountainhead, a man who refuses to compromise his vision.”

While Rorschach is Walter Kovacs, he is also a reflection of Vic Sage and Howard Roark. And, in a different way, Steve Ditko also embodies some of the attributes of these icons of Objectivism.

In honor of Rutherford Chang’s exhibition, “We Buy White Albums” — my copy of The Beatles’ White Album, serial number 0902135.

For more details on the sequential numbering of the White Album, see: http://www.thebeatlesrarity.com/2012/09/26/collectors-corner-the-beatles-aka-the-white-album/ and http://www.whitealbumregistry.com/stats.php.

“Best wishes to Ken — Stan Lee, Jack Kirby”

The website for the Jack Kirby Museum, which honors the legendary comic book artist, somehow came across a scan I made of a page with two autographs. It’s a sheet of mid-1960s Marvel Comics stationary which says, “Best wishes to Ken” followed by the signatures of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Robert Steibel posted the image on the Museum’s website with the comment, “If anyone knows the original owner of this piece I’d love to know the story behind it.”

I’m the owner of the piece. Here’s the story behind it. Read more…