SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #193

Primary DAN CASTELLANETA, best known for voicing Homer Simpson, also voices characters in the 2004 BATMAN series, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, JUSTICE LEAGUE, KIM POSSIBLE, JACKIE CHAN ADVENTURES, BATMAN BEYOND, HERCULES, BUZZ LIGHTYEAR, ALADDIN, EARTHWORM JIM, THE TICK, DARKWING DUCK, and LOONATICS UNLEASHED, as well as acting in the 2015 FANTASTIC FOUR and an episode of STARGATE SG-1.

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Primary GLORIA CASTILLO acted in an episode of ZORRO.

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Primary NICK CASTLE, not shown but best known as the original "Shape" from HALLOWEEN, had an uncredited role in ESCAPE TO NEW YORK.

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Peripheral PEGGIE CASTLE acted in INVASION USA with--

Primary GERALD MOHR for voicing "Mr. Fantastic" on the 1960s FANTASTIC FOUR.

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Peripheral WILLIAM CASTLE, whose acting roles were either minor figures or making introductions as producer, performed in the former capacity for ROSEMARY'S BABY alongside--

Primary MAURICE EVANS, a.k.a "The Puzzler" on BATMAN.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #192

Primary VINCENT CASSEL acted in RENEGADE and THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF.

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Primary DAVID CASSIDY acted in the 1990s FLASH (as a version of "the Mirror Master" and voiced an episode of KIM POSSIBLE.

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Primary JACK CASSIDY acted in episodes of GET SMART and THE GIRL FROM UNCLE.

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Primary JOANNA CASSIDY acted in BLADE RUNNER, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT and two episodes of ENTERPRISE, as well as voicing characters in the MEN IN BLACK cartoon and the nineties SUPERMAN.

Primary TED CASSIDY acted in MACKENNA'S GOLD, the TV-film DOCTOR STRANGE, and in episodes of STAR TREK, TARZAN, MISTER TERRIFIC, SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, MAN FROM ATLANTIS, BIONIC WOMAN, MAN FROM UNCLE and GIRL FROM UNCLE, did a cameo (as Lurch from ADDAMS FAMILY) on BATMAN, and voiced characters in FRANKENSTEIN JR., SPY SHADOW, GALAXY TRIO, the 1967 FANTASTIC FOUR, SPACE GHOST (2 voices), SPACE SENTINELS, SUPER FRIENDS, the 1978 FANTASTIC FOUR, TARZAN, JANA OF THE JUNGLE, and the 1977 INCREDIBLE HULK cartoon.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #191

Primary DANA CARVEY acted in MASTER OF DISGUISE, HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2 and the 1984 BLUE THUNDER series.

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Primary BERNIE CASEY acted in NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN and in episodes of BATMAN BEYOND, BABYLON 5, STAR TREK DEEP SPACE NINE, TARZAN, and TIME TRAX.

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Primary ROSALIND CASH acted in THE OMEGA MAN, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI, and episodes of KNIGHT RIDER and LOIS AND CLARK.

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Primary PHILIP CASNOFF acted in MESSAGE FROM SPACE, the 1998 telefilm CHAMELEON, and in episodes of DOLLHOUSE.

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Peripheral JOHN CASSAVETES acted in THE FURY with--

Primary KIRK DOUGLAS for his starring role in ULYSSES. 

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Primary NICK CASSAVETES acted in FACE-OFF and BLIND FURY.

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Primary JEAN-PIERRE CASSEL voices a character in ASTERIX AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

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Primary SEYMOUR CASSEL played "Sam Catchem" in the 1990 DICK TRACY, acted in episodes of BATMAN and STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION, and voiced a character on JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED.

HOP-FROG (1849)

Though HOP-FROG was apparently published a little before a few other 1849 stories, I chose to focus on the earlier story for my final post of THE POE PROJECT. Though Poe's forays into pure humor and philosophy are not entirely worthless, there's no question that his true genius appeared in his works of the macabre-- of "the grotesque" rather than "the arabesque," so to speak.

HOP-FROG takes place back in an indeterminate medieval period, when the king of an unspecified country takes great pleasure in tormenting his jester Hop-Frog, a misshapen, crippled dwarf. Hop-Frog's sole delight is in his female companion Tripetta. During one of the king's raucous gatherings, the monarch amuses his obsequious underlings by forcing Hop-Frog to drink wine that makes him instantly drunk. Then, when the dwarf can't think quickly enough to suit the king's fancy, the monarch abuses Trippetta. The dwarf then devises an infamous revenge. He tricks the king and seven of his retainers into donning the costumes of ourang-outans-- the better to terrify other members of the court-- and then sets them all on fire. The dwarf and his companion escape without harm.

This colorful revenge-fantasy doesn't seem to have been adapted to film very often, aside from its use as a subplot in 1964's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.

X-ING A PARAGRAB (1849)

Like THINGUM BOB, this one is Poe's attempt to satirize the world of small magazines. Again, there are barely any "characters" worthy of the term, but the satire seems a little more acute. Still, the story is only interesting to those who want to know more about Poe's career in American periodicals.

MELLONTA TAUTA; VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY (1849)

Here we have two more of Poe's incredibly detailed hoax-stories, though despite their detail I tend to doubt that they fooled many readers.

MELLONTA TAUTA takes the form of a letter written in 2848, detailing the satirically oriented innovations of the future. It's largely a catalogue of wonders, with no conflict as such.

VON KEMPELEN's discovery is an alchemical device that turns lead into gold. His efforts to profit thereby lead to his being accused of counterfeiting, but Poe seems to lose interest in the fate of Von Kempelen once the author's made his point about the possible devaluation of the prized mineral.

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO (1846)

In the twilight of his career, Poe produced this bizarre-crime story, in which an obsessed narrator-- one who's actually given a name this time-- lures the object of his hate into a catacombs. After  making the victim Fortunato drunk on Amontillado wine, narrator Montresor imprisons Fortunato behind a wall of bricks and leaves him to die.

Unlike some of Poe's other murderers, apparently no "imp of the perverse" moves Montresor to confess his crime, though it's been suggested that the text of his story is his confession of his deed to either a priest or some official of the law.

THE SPHINX (1846)

In this trifle Poe returns to the image of the "death's head moth" that he'd used in THE GOLD BUG. An overly nervous and superstitious narrator, while staying in the company of a more level-headed, logical friend, imagines that he sees a huge monster. Eventually the friend explains how the narrator perceived this illusion, which came from viewing an ordinary moth with the death's-head image.

. THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR (1845)

This story, famously adapted to the 1962 film TALES OF TERROR, is little more than a reprise of Poe's MESMERIC REVELATIONS from the previous year, in that again a hypnotist endeavors to place a dying man under a spell, to see what happens to a human mind as it dies. But VALDEMAR is a much more relatable story, and where REVELATIONS confines itself to an uncanny effect-- the body of the dying man hardens like stone after death-- VALDEMAR goes the extra mile and has the subject dissolve into "putrescence."

THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE (1845)

Whereas in THE PURLOINED LETTER Poe gave his readers a definite crime, followed by a lot of windy philosophizing, before revealing the crime's solution.

In THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE, though, Poe spends half the story having a monologist explain his theory that the human possesses a hitherto unacknowledged "principle of human action," which he calls "perverseness," which exists to make the subject act against his best interests.

The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well, is excited simultaneously with its development. It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.

The monologist gives three examples in which the principle of perverseness interferes with the subject's self-preserving actions: a speaker's tendency to talk around his subject, thus irritating his listener; general procrastination about needed tasks; and finally, a tendency to want to throw oneself into an abyss no matter how aware one is of the physical threat-- which might be used as Poe's justification for writing about horrific subject matter:

 And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

Finally, after all these ruminations-- strangely dependent on the supposed revelations of phrenology-- Poe finally has his monologist reveal that he is the best example of perverseness, because perverseness has placed in him in prison, waiting for the hangman. In order to secure an inheritance, the monologist used a poisoned candle to kill his intended victim. The crime went undetected for some time, until at least the speaker could no longer stand holding the secret, and revealed all to the authorities-- not out of guilt, but just for the perverse pleasure of plunging into the abyss.

The murder is certainly a bizarre crime by any reckoning. And though the narrator is not a "psycho" in the usual sense of the word, he does commit one psychologically unstable act, even though only he is harmed by it.

THE POWER OF WORDS (1845)

Poe never seems to have lost interest in the idea of angelic colloquies, but "Power of Words" is definitely better organized than earlier works like "Eiros and Charmian" and "Monos and Una."

Once again, we have two angels, at least one of whom used to be a human from a now destroyed Earth. The other angel is more "in the know" about the nature of the universe, and relates a somewhat Deist-sounding diatribe about how the angels, acting for the Creator, brought the universe into being through "impulse upon the ether." Poe's descriptions of the angels winging their way through constellations like Orion are impressive despite their brevity, and though Poe was never a philosopher, his attempt to imagine God as an ever-evolving intelligence is a pleasing blasphemy for the time. And for once, the colloquy actually has a climax, as the know-it-all angel comes near a star he personally brought into being, and sees in it the twin sides of his own nature, of both the love of beauty and the horror of psychic turmoil:

"[The star's] brilliant flowers are the dearest o all unfulfilled dreams, and its surging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts."

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE; SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY (1845)

Here are two more works showing in detail why Poe is not known today as a humorist. The two stories are almost inversions of the same formulaic joke.

In, THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHEREZADE, Poe informs us that following the triumph of the long-winded storyteller, after she finishes  her thousand-and-first story, she tells one story that goes too far. Scheherezade tells her sultan a rambling story of Sinbad encountering a host of marvels, all of which were based on real phenomena known to Poe's more scientific age, like coral islands and a hot air balloon. The sultan is so insulted by this affront to his credulity that he has Scheherezade executed.

In SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY, a group of Poe-era scholars revive an Egyptian mummy with the curious name of Allamistakeo. The mummy informs the group that he was never subjected to the usual mummification rituals, because he actually fell into a trance brought on by that old Poe standby, catalepsy. Allamistakeo then plays a game of one-upmanship with the scholars, telling them that everything in their modern era was preceded by Egyptian genius. Only at the climax does one of the modern people manage to come up with something the mummy's words can't trump. Clever, maybe, but not funny.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #190

Primary ANGELA CARTWRIGHT, best known for LOST IN SPACE, acted in episodes of LOGAN'S RUN and AIRWOLF.

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Primary NANCY CARTWRIGHT voiced characters on THE REPLACEMENTS, KIM POSSIBLE, ALADDIN, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, the 1988 SUPERMAN, and WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT.

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Primary VERONICA CARTWRIGHT  acted in an episode of SUPERNATURAL.

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Primary ANTHONY CARUSO acted the STAR TREK episode "A Piece of the Action" as well as in episodes of GET SMART, TIME TUNNEL, THE GIRL FROM UNCLE, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, TARZAN, ZORRO, ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, and THE WILD WILD WEST (3 separate episodes), He also did two Tarzan movies, TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN and
TARZAN AND THE SLAVE GIRL.

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Primary DAVID CARUSO had one relevant role in HUDSON HAWK.

MONSTER MASHUPS #31

Far more enjoyable than 1998's SUPERNATURALS was this one-shot, 1975's LEGION OF MONSTERS, in which Bill Mantlo and Frank Robbins bring together four disparate monsters-- the Ghost Rider, the Werewolf by Night, the Man-Thing and Morbius the Living Vampire-- encounter an alien being, the Starseed, with tragic results. The best joke comes at the end, when Ghost Rider proposes that they get together again and the others say something like, "Hell no!"

MONSTER MASHUPS #30

THE SUPERNATURALS was a 4-issue Marvel series drawn by Ivan Reis and written by Brian Pulido and Marc Andreyko. This team was a hodgepodge of two characters who could be credibly considered monsters (the Ghost Rider and the Werewolf By Night) and three who are more like heroes with supernatural powers (Brother Voodoo, the Black Cat and the Gargoyle). These characters-- whose adventures take place on some alternate Marvel-Earth-- contend with an evil mastermind named Jack O'Lantern, who has some vague plan to conquer the world. He uses as temporary lackeys a number of other Marvel monster-mainstays: the Living Mummy, Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Zombie, and the Scarecrow (though the latter isn't given this name or his alternate cognomen, "Straw Man.")

The most interesting part of this helter-skelter tale is a segment in which Jack O'Lantern resuscitates about a dozen of Marvel's Godzilla-style gargantuas, though they don't get more than a few pages of exposure. In my review of the 2005 MONSTERS ON THE PROWL, I said:

Other named monsters include Tragg, Taboo, Droom, Fin Fang Foom, Vandoom, Rommbu, Groot, and Grottu-- but not, in an unforgivable omisison, "Gruto." Dang, I could have really got behind a teaming of "Groot, Grottu and Gruto."

Though I first read THE SUPERNATURALS years ago, I failed to note that Pulido and Andreyko do use all three of these similarly named beasties, though they never cross paths. I'm still waiting for a scene in which Groot, Gruto and Grottu get into a big fight about who gets to keep his name.

THE ANGEL OF THE ODD. THINGUM BOB, ESQ. (1844)

THE ANGEL OF THE ODD concerns a young fellow who disparages the power of odd coincidences to affect him. Then a weird-looking fellow appears out of nowhere, chastises the man for his anti-coincidence prejudice, and proceeds to make his life miserable until he mends his ways.

No one else in the story ever sees the Angel, rather like the alleged double of WILLIAM WILSON. Poe never raises the possibility that the narrator is only dreaming, but after the man is put through many wild ordeals-- falling out of a burning building, being suspended from a hot-air balloon-- it may not be "coincidence" that he ends up back into his own home-- supposedly completely rebuilt after the fire-- waking up from his experiences.

THINGUM BOB, ESQ is just a Poe-escapade satirizing the world of small literary magazines, and hardly rates as a story at all.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #189

Peripheral JANIS CARTER acted in I MARRIED AN ANGEL with--

Primary EDWARD EVERETT HORTON (right) from BATMAN.

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Primary LYNDA CARTER's most famous credit goes without saying, and she also acted in SKY HIGH and in episodes of SMALLVILLE and SUPERGIRL.

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Primary NELL CARTER acted in an episode of SEVEN DAYS and voiced "Glory Grant" in the 1995 SPIDER-MAN cartoon.

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Primary SARAH CARTER (left) acted in DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE and in episodes of SMALLVILLE and DARK ANGEL, as well as having a starring role on LAS LUCHADORES.

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Primary TERRY CARTER had a regular role on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and acted in a SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN TV-movie.

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Peripheral T.K. CARTER acted in THE THING with--

Primary KURT RUSSELL  in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.

SUPERHEROES ARE DAMN-NEAR EVERYWHERE #188

Primary DIXIE CARTER  (not shown) acted in an episode of THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO.

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Peripheral FINN CARTER acted in the first TREMORS with--

Primary KEVIN WHAT'S-HIS-NAME from X-MEN FIRST CLASS.

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Peripheral HELENA CARTER acted in INVADERS FROM MARS with--

Primary MILBURN STONE from THE MASTER KEY.

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Primary JACK CARTER acted in the movies ARENA and THE OCTAGON, in episodes of TIME TRAX, WILD WILD WEST, and LOIS AND CLARK, as well as voicing characters in JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, DISNEY'S HERCULES, and STATIC SHOCK.