Thanks to the magic of the world’s #1 social networking site and the nonstop promotional hustle of my ardent supporters, particularly Guess Who? and The Pirate Musketeer, in one short month of operation, WORLD OF HURT has developed a truly international outreach. I would like to take this time to welcome my readers in the United Kingdom (Good afternoon), Sweden (God dag), Germany (Guten tag), and the Independent Republic of South Carolina (Wh’sup) who have joined the WORLD OF HURT Fan Club on Facebook. Keep spreading the word and we’ll bring the world together one old-school ass whuppin’ at a time. If I mangled your native tongue or if I missed any nations, just drop me a line and I’ll gladly give you a shout out.
Now what better way to celebrate our newly formed brotherhood of international players than with the instrumental version of ”International Player’s Anthem?” The 2006 hit by underground hip-hop phenoms, UGK, featuring an appearance by Outkast, incorporates an extensive sample from Willie Hutch’s song “I Choose You” from the soundtrack of the seminal 1973 Blaxploitation film, The Mack.
Enjoy:
Thanks for choosing to stop by. Again, I genuinely appreciate your support and enthusiasm.
Remember, I have a new strip every Wednesday and update my blog every Friday.
As I mentioned on Monday’s post, this past weekend I attended HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina. Last year at HeroesCon 2008, one of my personal highlights was meeting artist Jim Rugg. (Unfortunately, Rugg was not on the 2009 roster of attendees.) Jim Rugg is a talented illustrator, gifted cartoonist, and all-around nice guy. His main claim to fame is Street Angel, a comic series published by Slave Labor Graphics about a skateboarding, samurai sword-wielding, kung-fu fightin’ street urchin who dispenses justice to the odd assortment of meglomaniacal, rogue geologists; luchador mask-wearing Incan gods; basketball-playing ninjas; and time-displaced pirates who terrorize her city of Wilkesborough. However, the series also introduced an ally for Street Angel whom Rugg and his writing collaborator, Brian Maruca, have subsequently spun off on his own: Afrodisiac.
Set during the 1970s, the Afrodisiac stories feature Alan Diesler, aka Afrodisiac, a Black pimp who not only runs a stable of Wilkesborough’s finest prostitutes, but who also acts as the city’s last line of defense against some of its more bizarre menaces. His nemeses include a softball-playing Count Dracula, who siphons the blood of Afrodisiac’s hookers in order to increase his rec league stats; a mind-controlling computer named Megapute; and the advance scout for an all-female army of Venusian invaders (an adventure which brings Afrodisiac into direct confrontation with his old tag-team wrestling partner, President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon).
If this all sounds like some sort of pop culture fever dream, then welcome to the world of Afrodisiac! Rugg and Maruca intentionally create a convoluted, and conflicting, backstory for Afrodisiac, and that, combined with the grab-bag of absurd scenarios, would appear to work against Afrodisiac’s favor to make the stories impenetrable and far too cute for their own good. However, the short stories are dense, fun, action-packed reads that don’t require any prior knowledge of Afrodisiac’s exploits.
Also to their credit, Rugg and Maruca don’t mock the Blaxploitation genre. Given Afrodisiac’s occupation as a pimp, his double-entendre name, massive ‘fro, and the bizarre, over-the-top situations Rugg and Maruca place him in, one might expect yet another jokey, one-note Blaxploitation parody. While the creators do have fun with the concept, they always play the character and the events absolutely straight. Afrodisiac is a man facing impossible situations with steely resolve and righteous fury. The overall look and style of the Afrodisiac short stories successfully evoke the feel of a Blaxploitation film and the creators’ ear for authentic sounding dialogue is pitch perfect. If some mad scientist spliced together the brains of Jack Hilland Jack Kirby, the result would be Afrodisiac. When I spoke to Jim Rugg at HeroesCon in 2008, his depth of knowledge and genuine appreciation of Blaxploitation was immediately apparent. He effortlessly riffed on the little-seen film, Candy-Tangerine Man, and hipped me to author Chester Himes, whose novel “Cotton Comes To Harlem” was adapted into the proto-Blaxploitation film of the same name in 1970.
To date, Afrodisiac’s longest story was his debut in Street Angel, which showed the reader Afrodisiac’s ultimate fate in the present as a old man who still has a way with the ladies. However, the longest story featuring the character in his prime was an 18-page, limited edition, black & white ashcan that Rugg sold (and sold out of) at HeroesCon 2008. I was lucky enough to snag one of those editions from the artist himself. I was impressed by the craft, wit and style that was present within those pages. I was gobsmacked by the book’s fidelity to the genre and the wild, anything-goes adventure that seamlessly moved from smoky, backroom craps games to James Bondian, sci-fi death traps It was a real inspiration to me, and helped me realize what I wanted WORLD OF HURT to be. Besides those issues, Afrodisiac has only appeared in a handful of short, full-color stories , each between five to eight pages in length. (Cleverly, the full-color strips are colored like ’70s era comics. And, yes, I will steal Rugg’s coloring style if I ever do WORLD OF HURT in color.) Afrodisiac’s next appearance seems to be an homage to the giant monster movies of the 1950s. Rugg also has a fairly extensive gallery of illustrations and mock covers featuring Afrodisiac which can be found on his website. The Afrodisiac tales definitely need to be compiled into a single edition. It would be essential reading for any fan of Blaxploitation or comic book storytelling, in general.
Four months into WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM, and I’m finally posting my first review of a Blaxploitation movie. This may contain some heavy spoilers, so be warned.
Without a doubt, my favorite Blaxploitation film is Trouble Man. The film continues the fine Blaxploitation tradition of hiring some of the best Soul music and R&B artists of the day to score the movie. Like Isaac Hayes on Shaft and James Brown on Black Caesar, Marvin Gaye delivered a stand out musical counterpoint to Trouble Man’s onscreen action. The movie’s title theme song, “Trouble Man,” is a slow burning Soul masterpiece that has been covered by artists like Neneh Cherry and Alicia Keys, and no matter what song list I create, it never leaves my iPod. Also, I’ll be the first to admit that I shamelessly stole the template for Pastor from Robert Hooks’ portrayal of the movie’s steely-eyed, no-nonsense lead character, Mr. T. (Robert Hooks’ Mr. T preceded the bejeweled, mohawked , fool-pityin’ public persona of Laurence Tureaudby several years, so I’m inclined to believe he was influenced by the movie as well.) As the movie’s trailer boasts, Mr. T. is a man who is “street smart and steel hard” and “was a man ever since he was a kid.” Below is one of the trailers for Trouble Man, courtesy of YouTube. Many of the lines from the voiceover were lifted from, and re-used, in the original teaser trailer for the soon-to-be release Black Dynamite.
In Trouble Man, Mr. T is an freelance trouble shooter based in Los Angeles, who is hired by two mid-level criminals, Pete Cockrell and Chalky Price, to find out who has been ripping off their floating craps games. The entire tale is a ruse to eliminate their competition, a crime lord named Big, and frame Mr. T for the murder. Unfortunately for Pete and Chalky, Mr. T gets wise to them and unleashes Hell on the two crooks, tearing down their organization and leaving a trail of corpses in his wake.
At the start of the film, after returning home from an evening with a lovely young woman, Mr T is greeted at his door by one of Chalky’s men, Billy Chi, a slow-talking, sinister goon who dresses in cast-offs from Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. He’s there to deliver a message that Chalky needs to talk to him. Mr. T doesn’t appreciate the invasion of his personal space and dismisses Billy off with the message that Chalky can “kiss my Black ass.” (Billy Chi turns out to be an entertaining foil for Mr. T, who, despite his cruel intentions, can never quite get the upper hand on T. When Mr. T finally comes around to dealing with Chalky, Billy Chi mocks him by saying, “You some kinda ho, baby. Tellin’ the man to kiss your ass in the mornin’, and workin’ for him at night.” Mr. T.’s response: a stiff, sharp punch to Billy’s gut and a warning for him to keep an eye on T’s car. Stone cold, baby. Stone cold.)
Later that day, Chalky and Pete arrive at Jimmy’s pool hall to speak to Mr T themselves. Chalky, who is Black, and Pete, who is White, prove that crime and greed are the keys to racial harmony, because together their growing criminal empire can serve the discriminating gamblers in either community (pun intended). Chalky and Pete allege that a group of masked crooks keeps busting into the craps games and robbing the gamblers. They want to hire Mr. T. to find out who is behind the robberies. Mr. T. agrees to help, laying out a basic plan to surveil their next game as “just another (craps) shooter,” but his price of one night’s take is too steep for the duo. When Chalky and Pete try to lowball him on the fee, Mr. T refuses to budge on his price, and kicks them out of his Lincoln with the memorable line, “Now get out. You two are fuckin’ up a perfectly good day.” You gotta take an icebreaker to find a vein in Mr. T’s arm.
Chalky and Pete’s “problem” turns out to be an elaborate ruse to lure Mr. T into eliminating their only competition in the vice rackets, a crime lord by the name of Big, played by Super Fly and Shaft’s Big Score veteran, Julius Harris. When Chalky and Pete finally accept Mr. T’s price, the men stage a fake robbery and make it appear as if it was committed by an operative of Big, specifically a big, hound’s-tooth jacket wearing debt collector named Abbey Walsh, whom they had kidnapped earlier in the day. As the masked “robbers” flee, they switch out one of the plants with Big’s man. Chalky shoots Abbey Walsh in the back before Mr. T sees the switch or has the chance to stop him. Chalky and Pete’s men dispose of Walsh’s body, but call in an anonymous tip to the cops that tells a) tells them where to find the body, and b) implicates Mr. T in the murder.
After a series of machinations by Chalky and Pete, Mr. T gets wise to their plan and sets a plan in motion to get his revenge on Chalky and Pete, and claim his fee. Mr. T stages a one-man assault on the respective hideouts of Pete and Chalky, culminating in a brutal, close-quarters fight in an elevator and a well-staged penthouse shoot-out. The best part of the finale is, even with police bearing down on him to investigate the gunfire, Mr. T still takes the time to calmly change into a fresh suit before leaving the scene of the melee. Mr. T is colder than cold.
Although Shaft is the standard bearer for Black action movies of the 1970s, I think Trouble Man is imminently more watchable. Although Blaxploitation movies get a bad rap for their low production standards, Ivan Dixon’s direction is crisp and economical, and the movie itself is a taut action film with a lean running time. There are a few clunker moments, like Mr. T’s need to reclaim his gun from the property room of the LAPD before he can exact his revenge, but mostly the story moves along at a nice, brisk pace. Shaft, as a character, is more approachable than the stoic Mr. T, but T comes closer to the Blaxploitation Hero Ideal. The Ideal Blaxploitation Hero is a lover and a fighter. He’s a ruthlessly driven one-man army who always comes out on top. He’s an independent man who lives a comfortable lifestyle, yet never sweats where his next paycheck is coming from. Shaft was cast somewhat closer to the hardboiled Raymond Chandler private eye. As a private detective, Shaft has to be surreptitious, stealthy, and unassuming at times, but Mr. T owns every room he enters the minute he walks into it. He’s the Alpha Dog, and his bearing and demeanor demand respect and attention.
The movie is chockful of quotable lines and memorable moments. When Mr. T squares off with a pool shark named Wesley at the beginning of the movie, T inquires if the young man can cover his bets, to which Wesley glibly remarks, “Is an elephant heavy? Is pig pork? Then it won’t hurt me.” I love that line.
As Wesley makes a strong showing against Mr. T, Jimmy, Mr. T’s confidante, whispers, “He’s good, but he ain’t got no cool.”
“Then he’s not good, Jim,” Mr. T replies, in a perfect encapsulation his philosophy: Mr. T is so damn good at everything he does, because he’s that damn cool.
Trouble Man gets my highest recommendation. If you’ve got a NetFlix account, don’t bother using it. You need to BUY this one, Jack!
A little over two years ago this month, at Wizard World Chicago, the Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack creator announced that he was working on a four issue mini-series featuring Marvel Comics’ Black supehero icon. The above concept art accompanied the announcement, and that, combined with Tartakovsky’s pledge to return Cage to his 1970s Blaxploitation roots had me pretty excited.
Sadly, I haven’t seen any subsequent stories about the project. If ya got any info, be sure to send it my way.
NOTE: This post was inspired by SideBarNation.com’sOctober 2007 interview with Phil LaMarr, the voice of Samurai Jack. You can find their podcast with the talented voice actor and MadTV alum here.
Last week, friend of WORLD OF HURT, raconteur, entrepreneur, podcaster, talent wrangler, noted satirist, and fellow Blaxploitation fan, Chris Sims ran a series entitled “Dracula Week” on his hilarious and always informative blog, The Invincible Super-Blog (The “The” is mandatory). I was traveling late last week, so I missed his review of the Blaxploitation film, Scream, Blacula, Scream. I’m passing this along to you, so you don’t make the same mistake. Enjoy!
Yesterday was a HUGE day for me, A) because it was my birthday and my fiancee, among other wonderful gifts, gave me Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Livelong Vision Of The Heroic, and B) WORLD OF HURT received a mention on CNN.com. I spoke with CNN journalist, Lisa France, on Wednesday about the new movie,Black Dynamite and its potential to spark renewed interest in the Blaxploitation film movement. [My conversation with her also underscored why I think journalists are so freakin' cool. (Heck, I'm marrying one!) The first thing Ms. France did was apologize for calling a few minutes past our appointed time, because she had to take a call from Hulk Hogan. Yes, the Immortal, Say-Your-Prayers-And-Eat-Your-Vitamins Hulk Hogan. And she said it in the same matter-of-fact manner you reserve for asking a co-worker if they want a cup of coffee.]
Ms. France quoted me in her article, “‘Black Dynamite’ pays homage to blaxploitation films”, which included a hotlink to WORLD OF HURT. As a result, I enjoyed the highest daily traffic this site has ever seen. I’ve been really rooting for the success of Black Dynamite, and I was a little disappointed that the initial release of the film was not as widespread as I had hoped. I’ve enjoyed riding on the double-knit polyester coattails of Black Dynamite’s $100 suits, and I definitely think it can, and already is, doing a lot to bring new fans to the movement. Search out some of the interviews with Michael Jai White or director Scott Sanders and you can hear the passion in their voices for this film and the movement that became known as “Blaxploitation,” particularly when you hear them lament the absence of any Fred Williamsons, Jim Browns or Pam Griers in films today.
If you don’t have the luxury of living in some progressive, major urban center with a vibrant arts community (I ain’t namin’ no names, Columbia, South Carolina, but you know who you are), then do your part to bring Black Dynamite to your town and click on the fancy, color coordinated widget below:
Show of hands: How many of you knew that “Shaft” started as a literary character before he moved to the silver screen? In response to one of my tweets, a supremely literate and knowledgeable friend of mine recently told me he had no idea and suggested that it would be a good topic for a blog post. I completely agreed. With this post, I just wanted to give an overview of the literary version of the character, but in subsequent posts, I will review the novels themselves.
Shaft was the literary creation of Ernest Tidyman, who also co-wrote the screenplay for original film and among other works, he also co-wrote the screenplay for another iconic 1970s film, The French Connection. Ernest Tidyman was one of the few White individuals to ever receive an NAACP Image Award, due to his iconic character. The literary version of Shaft, hereafter referred to as “Literary Shaft,” is a lot like the character Richard Roundtree portrayed in the films (”Movie Shaft”). Both are cool, confident, tough brothers from the streets of New York, with a taste for the finer things in life. In all, there were six Shaft novels: Shaft (1971), Shaft’s Big Score (1972), Shaft Among The Jews (1973), Shaft Has A Ball(1973) , Goodbye, Mr. Shaft (1974), and Shaft’s Carnival Of Killers (1975). (There was a seventh novel, entitled The Last Shaft (1975), that allegedly ended with Shaft’s death, but I believe it only had limited distribution in the United Kingdom.)
The novels use an omnicient narrator, and due to the inherent nature of prose, we get into Shaft’s head a lot more than in the movies. For instance, in the novel Shaft, published in 1971, we learn exactly where Shaft was coming from before the film’s iconic opening shot of him emerging from the subway station. He wasn’t just heading to work, he was replaying his wonderful, romantic escapades of the previous evening, which only ended shortly before we catch up with him on the street. Also, in the course of his investigations, Shaft freely riffs on everything from hot dogs, to the weather, to his insecurities about getting older. When the reader is first introduced to John Shaft in the first book of the series, he is 28 years old, but by the sixth novel, Shaft’s Carnival Of Killers (1975), despite although only five years have passed since the first novel, Shaft’s Afro is now peppered with grey hair. The reader also learns about Shaft’s nearly fatal tour in the US Marine Corps and the mental and physical scars he still bears from his time as a common street hood.
Undoubtedly because of his past, Literary Shaft has a mean streak a mile wide. The movie downplayed this aspect, most notably in the first action scene in Shaft’s office. In the film, a scuffle between Shaft and two of Bumpy Johnson’s henchman results in one of them hurtling through the office window to his death after a mis-timed leap. In the novel, after calmly making mental notes about his office mail, Shaft dispassionately grabs the skinniest hood by the lapels and tosses him through the window, merely to serve as an object lesson to the surviving crook.
One of the regrettable, features of Literary Shaft is his homophobia. Movie Shaft enjoys a genial, familiar relationship with Rollie The Bartender (played by Rex Robbins) from The Bar With No Name, which is located across the street from Shaft’s Greenwich Village apartment. Whether it was through Gordon Parks’ direction or Robbins’ interpretation, in the film, it is strongly implied that Rollie is gay. For example, in one blink-and-you-miss-it moment, Rollie gooses Shaft in the ass as he steps behind the bar. Movie Shaft barely acknowledges the gesture, however Literary Shaft probably would have broken the guys fingers. Literary Shaft drips disdain for gays, and it’s an ugly attitude that recurs with irksome regularity throughout the series, particularly in Shaft Has A Ball, in which Shaft investigates a scheme to pull off a heist during a drag queen ball. At one point, Shaft feigns a come-on to a gay waiter to gain information, then encourages the man to meet him in a particularly sketchy area of Central Park later that evening. Shaft does so with the explicit hope that the man will get beaten up when he arrives.
Tidyman also demonstrates a strange fixation on the idea of a Black revolution, and this fixation manifested itself in the character of Ben Buford. In the first Shaft novel, and in the movie, Shaft needs an army to fight the Italian mob and recover the missing daughter of the Harlem gangster, Knocks Persons (known as “Bumpy Johnson” in the film). Persons manipulates Shaft into recruiting Ben Buford and his group of Black nationalists to be that army. Although the Buford/Persons interplay makes for interesting commentary on the state, and aspirations, of Black America at the time, Ben Buford somehow becomes a recurring bogeyman as the series progresses. Whether it’s a gang disguised as drag queens or Shaft getting dragged into political intrigue on the island of Jamaica, Buford’s name, and the specter of revolution, always lurks in the background.
Despite some of the drawbacks above, which could be dismissed as products of their time, all the Shaft novels are remarkable examples of taut, hardboiled crime novels. There’s nothing campy or satirical about them. Tidyman’s Shaft admirably captured the attitude and mindset of a Black man carving out his own niche in a very violent world, and in that regard it remains a unique and welcome addition to the ranks of detective fiction, but in actuality, there’s very little space between a classic fictional detective like Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and Ernest Tidyman’s John Shaft. The differences are only skin deep.
@WallE132 Just some new guy who was a determined, true believer in Khonshu, but w/o Spector's psychoses. Think Ardeth Bay in 'The Mummy.' in reply to WallE1322 hrs ago
He could be a totally different and stable character who wasn't a rip-off of Bruce Wayne and Lamont Cranston...maybe even Middle Eastern. 3 hrs ago
Marvel could let his Marc Spector character die in a blaze of glory and reboot Moon Knight with the guy who SHOULD have gotten the job... 3 hrs ago
