Kimono My House

So, this week I've been listening to Matt reading a Japanese adventure by Martin Day, formerly of "Keith Topping and ---", who came up with the greatest Who book title ever: The Devil Goblins From Neptune. In 2004, Day wrote a ponderous Eighth Doctor called The Sleep of Reason, which featured a self-harming heroine named Laska, after the Velvets' "Stephanie Says".On the other hand, his Tenth Doctor book Wooden Heart is one of my favourites, a little more challenging than the rest of that range.
Feudal Japan was handled very well in The Room With No Doors, way back in '97, in the -ahem-dying days of The New Adventures and in '99 in The Road To Hell comic strip. It's an alien world in many ways, with  swordplay, honour and exoticism, like Burroughs' interplanetary romances. A fascinating setting for a pseudo-historical Who.

 Most excitingly, besides the eponymous jade pyramid, the audiobook features shaggy, clawed robots called Otoroshi, shrine guardians in Japanese mythology. For fanmen like me, pyramids and hairy robots can only mean one thing: the return of theYeti that served the Great Intelligence in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear!

Except it doesn't. The Otoroshi are some completely unrelated robot drones protecting a stranded spaceship. There is some backstory about them but it was too generic to register. Perhaps this was supposed to be some kind of bait-and-switch; or perhaps Day wanted to use the Yeti but was vetoed. In any case, I was disappointed by the anticlimax. On a positive note though, the Chop Socky music cues were okay and I like listening to Matt's drawl. His attempts to impersonate Gillan's Hielan' cadences are quite endearing. It's not a terrible story- the sequence with the ninja is quite exciting and well told-but it could have been a much more memorable one.

The samurai/shogunate culture is a favourite trope in genre tv and books. It supplanted the heavy-handed Red Chinese and Cold War parallels inherent in Star Trek's Klingons. As you know, Jean-Luc Picard aside, I'm not keen on much of Star Trek after The Wrath of Khan. So I've been enjoying watching the first half-dozen episodes of ST: The Animated Series on dvd.

One of the favourite battle-cries of fanmen is "It's not Canon!" In Who terms, the webcasts Shada, Real Time and Scream of the Shalka aren't canon; the books and audio plays aren't canon; nor are the comic strips, because none of it was broadcast on tv.

For Trekkies, STTAS isn't canon because, despite scripts by writers of the original series and voice work by the original cast, the shipmates above- Arex and M'ress- were silly cartoon aliens. In the same way, The Phantom Menace isn't canon because of  silly cartoon alien Jar Jar Binks. Personally, I don't give two hoots about canon. Do you know more than me about Geek Culture? Good for you, then. We've all got our personal canon in our heads (my own Who canon includes The Tides of Time, Lucie Miller and Dodo being shot in Who Killed Kennedy). I am particularly fond of the Animated Trek because of Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek Log books: I read Log Two on my first-ever vist to Rothesay in the sizzling summer of '75. Steve Harley, the Bee Gees and Typically Tropical  were on the radio and several other pop culture icons are also lodged in my mind from that pre-Secondary holiday.

This book was on the same spinner rack as ST Log Two in Rothesay's ferry terminal Many, many years passed before I read this "biography" of the Man of Bronze and last summer, I finally got my hands on the Marvel adaptations. Apart from some fine work by the under-appreciated Ross Andru, there was no great appeal in the campy adventures of the Pulp superman. But back in the 70s, the American  nostalgia craze that included everything from "The Sting" to "Annie" began the process that would restablish superheroes in the media... for a while, anyway.

Case in point: the never-to- be-made tv series starring Angie Bowie as Natasha, the Black Widow. She does look amazingly like Colan's depiction of the "little tsarina" although her Daredevil- Ben Carruthers- is fairly comical. I remember seeing another less posed b/w photo in the Sun or some tabloid on the beach near the Skeoch Woods but what I didn't see-until today- was Angie's attempt at securing the role of Wonder Woman. She doesn't look quite as wholesome as Lynda Carter but she does look like she stepped out of a Harry Peter strip.

Finally, one of my all-time favourites. Kirby took the basic conceit of  Planet of the Apes and ran with it, producing a cavalcade of bizarre animal characters in a satirical adventure series with touching moments of pathos and optimism. Kamandi has guest-starred in the recent Brave & Bold cartoon series but I think a series of his own  would be a "monster" hit with kids. I love the King's triple exclamation marks!!!

 In the subsquent thirty years of Star Trek spin-offs, it's easy to forget how influential the original series was on other Genre works. In comics, that's most apparent in  Legion of Superheroes- the Legion crusiers, the United Planets, even Brainiac 5's "Bah! Illogical!"- and in the X-Men:

A pretty obvious homage. In the wake of Star Wars, the struggles of rebel bands against the might of an interstellar empire became an additional trope in the mutants' sci-fi adventures. In the Noughties, the House of Recycled Ideas pits perennial substitute X-Men  Havok and Polaris- plus the remnants of Dave Cockrum's charming Starjammers, and an ersatz Wolverine, unimaginatively dubbed Korvus- against generic mutant psycho Vulcan in "Emperor Vulcan",this week's Elgin Library pick.

Unsurprisingly, this is a dull and pompous space opera devoid of any of the wit and humour that abounded in Cockrum's work; or of the liberal Humanism of Claremont's often overwrought writing.

Vulcan, in case you might be wondering, is the long-lost brother of both Havok and Cyclops (Marvel's' poster boy for absent father issues). As the result of a whopping continuity implant, Gabriel Summers has  a grudge against Xavier and his X-Men, while setting himself up as despotic ruler of the Shi'ar. Just his name alone- the angel turned devil:  irony used as a blunt instrument- indicates the heavy-handed tone of the collection.
And I don't know where it leaves this guy:

Very 90s, right down to the baseball cap and the -ahem-cutting-edge fashion sense. X-Treme, as they used to say. Making four appearances in X-Force, X-Men  and Captain Marvel  between '93 and '96, Shi'ar hybrid Adam-X, with his sadistic but rather confusing ability to ignite people's blood, was heavily hinted to be the missing Summers sibling. Although it was always (and more sensibly) meant to be this guy: Remy LeBeau, the Cajun thief Gambit. Sporting another 90s superhero wardrobe staple -the duster coat- and rocking a magenta bodysuit - the red-eyed romancer was quite the star in the era of foil covers and trading cards, even starring in his own comic. He also debuted in the 2009 Wolverine movie but  more on that anon...

This does sound like a typical Grumpy Old Man tirade but it looks like even the benighted 90s generated more original concepts and simply more goofy fun than the gory, event-driven Noughties.

Next time: more on animated Trek, Daleks and Sugar Smacks.
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