THE MAN IN THE TORN SHIRT

Here is a reprint of my most recent post for the AMAZING STORIES website. This post was inspired by my good buddy Cal over at the Cave of Cool who tends to knock one of my great childhood heroes because of his choice of shirts.


 

This post is about icons.

It's about powerful images and the way that they can become stuck in the public consciousness.

But it's also about old pulp heroes. One in particular.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Not back in the 1930's when Street and Smith released a new hero pulp magazine featuring a super-scientific crime fighter named Doc Savage. Not even in the 1960's when the adventures were reprinted in paperback format with covers painted by artist James Bama.

For me the beginning was the summer of 1976. I was eleven years old and it was the start of our family summer vacation. Summer vacation for me meant long drives in a hot car with my brothers and I in the back seat. We had made a stop somewhere and my mother sent us in to a used bookstore with a little bit of pocket money to buy comic books to try to keep us interested in something else other than fighting amongst ourselves.

I started rifling through the second-hand paperbacks. I can't remember exactly what I was looking for, but when I came across the Doc Savage paperback I was stopped cold. The cover showed a muscled man with a torn shirt and a strange haircut, fending off a trio of weasel-like creatures. The name DOC SAVAGE was blazoned across the top but above it was the name of the adventure: The Other World.

The description on the back of the book got me even more excited. “To the world at large, Doc Savage is a strange, mysterious, figure of glistening bronze skin and golden eyes...”

How could an eleven year old resist that? I read the paperback and wanted more.

Fortunately there were lots around at the time. George Pal had just made Doc Savage, the movie. There were comic books and magazines and plenty more paperbacks all featuring the iconic image of Doc Savage sporting a torn shirt.

The iconic torn shirt.

An icon is a religious work of art from Eastern Christianity. Depictions of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, saints, what have you, these images were very powerful representations of a people's faith.

The icon has become co-opted by our society for anything but religious purposes. An icon is a visual representation of an idea or a feeling. It can be a symbols that encapsulates a feeling or an idea. Icons are very powerful, though we tend not to think too consciously about them. But that's how they work.

Take Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was never... NEVER... described as wearing a deerstalker cap. The illustrator of the stories, Sidney Paget depicted Holmes wearing a traveling cloak and a deerstalker hat for one adventure. For whatever reason, the deerstalker became permanently associated with Holmes. The deerstalker was a country cap, favored by hunters. To wear it year round, in the city was an absurd thing back in the late 1880's, yet it quickly became Holmes' costume.

Put on a deerstalker cap and you are Sherlock Holmes. Even the recent BBC TV series Sherlock, which has updated Holmes to the Twenty-First century, could not entirely get away from at least giving a nod to the existence of the famous cap.

Doc Savage wearing a torn shirt ALL the time is ridiculous. Yes, he's an adventurer and very busy. If, in the course of an adventure his shirt gets torn he doesn't have time to get a new one.

Some bloggers, including Calvin from Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool, take to complaining about it, asking why he doesn't make his shirts out of the same, seemingly durable material out of which his pants are made.

But these questions are immaterial. Doc Savage's ripped shirt is iconic. It's as iconic as Sherlock Holmes' deerstalker, or Tarzan's loin cloth.

It was not always like that. Just as with Holmes's deerstalker, the torn shirt is a product of the illustrator. Doc Savage's original pulp magazine run featured lots of action-filled covers and on some Doc appears wearing a ripped shirt. In the very first issue Doc's shirt is torn. Nowhere near as torn as it would be in later covers, but it was there from the beginning. But other covers do not feature the torn shirt. In some cover illustrations Doc is wearing a suit and tie with not a single rip in sight.

When the adventures were released in paperback the job of painting the covers went to artist James Bama. Bama was the one who settled on the image of the torn shirt (the publishers insisted on the weird, widow's peak hairstyle, but that's another story) and the torn shirt appeared on every single cover that Bama or any other artist painted, right up until today.

So now, poor Doc Savage has to wear a torn shirt all the time, just like Sherlock Holmes was saddled with his ridiculous deerstalker. Perhaps Doc will move beyond the torn shirt. There is supposed to be a new movie in the works. Perhaps that will give us a new iconic image for Doc Savage. Maybe something cleaner, sophisticated and less... torn.

Perhaps that is a vain hope. I imagine that the poster for the movie, should it ever materialize, will feature a picture of whatever broadly muscled actor they cast sporting a shirt hanging raggedly about him to better highlight his pectorals and six-pack abs. That image will still overshadow the essence of a character who is so much more than a torn shirt.

Such is the power of the icon.

I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
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MY DEAR SHERLOCK...

Sherlock;

You know that I love you. You are the best. The six episodes that we have had together have been magical and, honestly, there are few other shows that could take your place. That is what makes this letter so hard to write.

You see, my darling, I've been watching another show.

Yes. It's Elementary.

Look, Elementary is not you. It doesn't have the same style, nor half your intelligence. Nor does the actors have the same impact on me as yours do. In every way that matters, you are far superior. But... Elementary is there. It's there every thursday and it will be for the next four weeks and maybe another twenty after that. It's hard to say no to that kind of consistency.

I know it takes a lot of time and effort to make you as wonderful as you are. And I know that is difficult for you to do that right now, what with Benedict doing Star Trek, Martin doing The Hobbit and Mark Gatiss, playing Charles I at the Hampstead Theater until the end of November. I know it is just not possible for us to be together as much as I would like.

But it's not fair for you to expect me to wait. And Elementary, as pedestrian and run-of-the-mill as it is... well, it's on and you are not.

When you come back, you know I will drop everything in a heartbeat to be with you, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Smith. You know that I will. Until then I'll have to be content with Johnny Lee Miller and put up with Lucy Liu.

Until the day you return to my screen,

Love, always,

M


I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
http://mdjackson.deviantart.com
http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/mdjacksons%5Fportfolio

ELEMENTARY (NOT SHERLOCK)

So after some consideration I am really not impressed with ELEMENTARY, mainly because it doesn't "feel" like a Sherlock Holmes story the way that the BBC's SHERLOCK does. In many way, despite it being updated to modern times, SHERLOCK feels more authentic than, say, Guy Ritchie's big screen adaptation with Robert Downey Jr as Holmes. Even that version felt more authentic than ELEMENTARY does.

ELEMENTARY is just another US mystery/procedural. Nothing special about it. If this is Sherlock Holmes, then there really needs to be something special about him and there really isn't. Recovering addict? Meh. Seen it. The potential for sexual tension between the two leads? Obvious and old hat.

The mystery itself was a cheat. Conan Doyle's Holmes mysteries give you all the clues. If you're clever you could figure it out. The first episode cheated. The one vital clue was kept hidden until nearly the end.

Also Holmes' deductive capabilities seemed to range from elementary (pardon the pun) to supernatural. He overlooked the one vital clue that solved the mystery, but Watson spotted it. One observation that could have been deducible he admitted that he learned it from Google. Conversely his deductions about how the baseball game will turn out... sorry, bullshit unless you're psychic.

ELEMENTARY has a very high bar set for it by the BBC. I know it's only the first one out of the gate, but I'm afraid this US version doesn't come close, nor does it seem to even be trying hard enough.


I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
http://mdjackson.deviantart.com
http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/mdjacksons%5Fportfolio

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A Game of Shadows

Went and saw this last night. Not sure if I liked it better or not quite as well as the first one. It was on a par with it, nevertheless.


However. I have read all of the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories and I can tell you that the original stories did not contain a lot of explosions, gattling guns, urban camouflage, martial arts and slow-motion-MATRIX-like fight scenes. If you really like that stuff then you will be fine with this movie. If, on the other hand, you're a bit of a purist when it comes to Conan Doyle, you might want to give this a miss.


Despite the Victorian atmosphere (sometimes a little overwrought) and Stephen Frey as a flamboyant Mycroft, these films don't really capture the essence of the Conan Doyle stories as well as Stephen Moffat's excellent series SHERLOCK.

Despite being transported to modern day London, SHERLOCK captures the feeling and the essence of the Conan Doyle stories in a way that hasn't happened since Jeremy Brett was still alive and playing the great detective.


Nevertheless if you don't mind the "Big Screen Experience" overwhelming everything, then by all means go and see A Game of Shadows. You will be entertained, if not educated.


I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
http://mdjackson.deviantart.com
http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/mdjacksons%5Fportfolio

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE GAME OF SHADOWS

You know, I really liked the first one and I am really looking forward to the sequel.

Well, at least it'll be something to do between Christmas and New Years.

I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
http://mdjackson.deviantart.com
http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/mdjacksons%5Fportfolio