Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Mayer uses the plight of the aging comic-book hero to parody most of what characterizes America and everything that makes up New York. Shortly after the novel begins, chaos strikes the bankrupt Metropolis. The unpaid and overworked police force have resigned en masse and looting, rape and murder pervade. Brinkley, watching football, curses his bookie and tries to ignore the city's crisis until the fateful thought strikes him, "Is it a conspiracy?" Needless to say, it is. And Brinkley plunges into a crisis of conscience. Should he leave the repose of his suburban home, his loving wife...
Anyone who has ever read a comic book, watched a rerun of Superman or tuned in same bat-time, same bat-station, knows, despite sweating palms and churning stomach, the superhero always wins. But lingering childhood confidence in the media creation cannot quite assert itself against Superfolks. Mayer is not Alfred Hitchcock or Agatha Christie, and when one turns a page anticipating a crucial revelation and finds instead a new, unrelated chapter, one can cringe and say "Aha. He's trying to build suspense--cheap trick." The simple reason Mayer used moth-eaten tactics is that he can use them...
...world war, the nationalization of the mines--these provide the backdrop against which Storey's characters move. The landscape Storey describes is not only social, but literary: beside the stolidity of a Lawrentian mining village, he sets the formal rigidity of a Dickensian public school, with its masters almost comic in their severity. Through this landscape flits the mystical figure of Stafford, Colin's foil, who, like Dickens' Steerforth, sloughs off the spoils of his prosperity and talent with the same ease with which they accrue...
...stars are not so impressive. Singer modulates her voice well, but her acting suffers from lack of direction as she continually repeats the same confused or bitter facial expressions. Boo Shreeve's Jeannie whines and giggles a bit too much; she would be more at home in an "Archie" comic book. Of the remaining males in the cast, Woof (Jay Baer) projects puppy dog charm, particularly in the scene where he ecstatically praises Mick Jagger...
...song and mimes in the show. Launce and his fellow servant Speed (Jonathan Alex Prince) run through some congenial duets on the way to the ale house, and Speed makes up for his raspy voice with quick foot work. Apparently, Speed's affinity for fruit is supposed to be comic, but all he ever does with the apples is eat them and the banana-rape is a tired...