Word: comically
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...What are you doing that for?' And I said, 'If I were an English screenwriter and I were writing about King Arthur, you wouldn't be asking that.' " John Byrne, who actually is an English-born writer but now turns out the monthly scripts and drawings for the Superman comic books, calls his hero the "ultimate American success story -- a foreigner who comes to America, and is more successful here than he would ever be anywhere else." But though Superman lives in America (mainly), he is a hero all over the world. One admirer, Science-Fiction Writer Harlan Ellison...
...turned into a reasonably sane but incurably wicked conglomerate tycoon. Superman is also vulnerable to Kryptonite, the stuff that Krypton was made of, except when he is sometimes not vulnerable to Kryptonite. There is no longer one Superman, in other words, but half a dozen or more. The comic-book hero is different from the movie hero or the TV hero, and all of these differ from what Jerry Siegel imagined one sleepless night...
...this month's 50th-anniversary issue of Action Comics, one episode opens with the man of steel indulging in a long and steamy kiss with Wonder Woman. After a good deal of fisticuffs and flying around, though, the tale ends with Superman saying "I was fooling myself when I thought there might be a chance for romance between the two of us, Wonder Woman . . . I admire you, Wonder Woman. I respect you. But I really am just a boy from Kansas." From which it seems clear that the comic-book Superman, at least, remains as squarely virtuous as ever...
...embalming process. "It keeps the body from exploding at a bad moment," he tells her. When he sees the expression on her face: "Of course, any moment would be a bad moment--that goes without saying." Later, as her husband, he swings quickly and adroitly from a comic character into a tragic figure. Frost displays a character who reaches the end of his rope even after he thought his rope had run out. The anguish in his voice when he tells his wife to "Shut up for just five fucking minutes!" is palpable...
...white wine. For years union leaders at Labor Day picnics pressured him to stand holding a glass of beer in his hand, but the Governor declined. Aides do not smoke around him. Language is mostly cleaned up in deference to his sense of propriety. There is only small comic relief around Dukakis. He has little sense of irony, and his jokes are as forced in private as on the stump. Says a Dukakis Cabinet officer: "Don't get the idea we hang around Michael. He's not that interesting." But colleagues are exceedingly loyal. They are drawn by his smartness...