Inventing the Child - Fishtails, Supermen and Pilates

Inventing the Child - Fishtails, Supermen and Pilates

It’s finally time for another look at children’s books. I thought I had too many examples to use but because of having so many library books going through our home, I missed some opportunities of capturing some of the more interesting pages. But I still got enough as it is, so here we go.

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Comics Are for Everyone: 1940 Edition - Spanking During War Times [1940 Week]

Comics Are for Everyone: 1940 Edition - Spanking During War Times [1940 Week]

(Coincidentally, this is the 200th post on this blog! Yes, go and count, it's true. Hooray!)

Comics in 1940 were very different than they are now. If you know anything about comics history you know that publishers back then didn’t really care about artists or writers, let alone royalties. Stories were cobbled together with no time and not much care. That the mess of the origin of many famous characters is the basis for what we still read and watch today is somewhat amazing. If you actually look at those comics, you see no great art in most cases and certainly no stories that are well-written. I decided to take a look at some #1s that came out during that year and focus on the most interesting, funny, weird or problematic panels.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is not a great movie but has some entertaining bits. But it’s also very long and at stretches boring, especially since it rehashes so many elements of the first movie which gets tired fast, including Jack Sparrow. Which is surprising since his character basically carried the first movie. I was also frustrated with the depiction of the Keira Knightley character who is supposed to have grown tough but a for a long scene just acts like a pouty girl while the men are fighting.That was annoying. On the other hand, I loved the design of Davey Jones and his crew so much that it almost saved the rest of the movie for me. No, to be clear, these characters are so well designed, produced and played that it’s worth seeing the movie for. The rest, not so much, since it’s mostly action set pieces that feel like action set pieces.

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