be a movie star, blah, blah, blah

Huh?
Wha-?
Oh, dear lord….

The above panels are from Iron Man v1 #227, part of the “Stark Wars” (more commonly known as “Armor Wars”) arc from the late 1980’s. Given recent events, I’ve had a hankering to read a story where Tony Stark takes the role of an anti-authoritarian jerk, and these stories have been effective at providing that fix. While it’s a bit overpraised, due to the warm and fuzzy aura of inflationary nostalgia, it remains a fun little read and quaint example of what passed for “badass” behavior in mainstream superhero comics at the time.

It also has those lovely celebrity cameos…. Let’s see, in the top panel we’ve got Lionel Richie (and thank you, Marvel Comics for getting that damn song stuck in my head), a brown-haired (?) Hulk Hogan, and George “Norm” Wendt from Cheers. I’m not sure if the big-haired woman next to Wendt is supposed to be Tina Turner after a coloring mistake or Motley Crue frontman Vince Neill in a dress. Either scenario is possible, I suppose.

In the middle panel, we have Don Johnson, looking very much like a porn star (what, no pastel blue suit?), and a young starlet named “Brie” (God bless the 1980’s!) whose career was given a boost by Stark’s Hollywood connections in a previous issue. No, it’s not what it sounds like – Tony was already engaged in the CCA-approved suggestive bedding of a high-class yuppie caricature named – are you ready for it? – Rae LaCoste. (Not that Brie didn’t try for the brass ring, though. A mullet like Stark’s is hard for the ladyfolk to resist.)

Finally, in the bottom panel we have Michael J. Fox, making one of the worst, self-promoting popcult jokes in comedic history. Other lines considered and rejected for that word balloon included:

“That villain ought to see a doctor – Doc Hollywood!”
“He’s getting his ass handed to him like a casualty of war!”
“Iron Man is really High School USA-ing his ass!”
“Ma-ah-ah-ah-lll…” (That's a reference to Family Ties, not Fox's struggle with Parkinson's Disease. I do have some standards, after all.)

I’m not sure who the other guy in the panel with Fox is supposed to be. If it’s Pierce Brosnan, he must have left his polished exterior in his other suit that morning.

I get what writer David Michelinie and artist Mark Bright were trying to do in this sequence. They were attempting to show the sorts of folks that run in playboy billionaire Tony Stark’s orbit, even if the end result resembled something lifted from an old issue of Cracked magazine.

The whole cult of celebrity eludes me, though. One of my wife’s guilty pleasures is reading the various gossip rags while dining on food from one of the many take-out eateries we frequent. Occasionally, I’ll flip though one of her scandal sheets if I’m bored or waiting for her to get ready in the morning, but the bitchy tone and vicarious obsession with the career trajectories of the stupidly rich and untalented leaves me cold.

However, the concept of celebrity, and its distortive effects on people, fascinates me to no end. Forget the feather, heart, and balances of ancient Egyptian myth; if you want to know the true measure of what lurks in someone’s soul, just give them a few million dollars, some face time, and a personal assistant. The truth will come out every time.

Reel Big Fish – She’s Famous Now (from Why Do They Rock So Hard? 1998) – “She’s like me/just not as ugly.” I don’t know why I love that line, but I do.

Roxy Music – Virginia Plain (from Roxy Music, 1972) – From the deceptively soft opening, to the lack of a chorus, to the astonishingly abrupt end, this is a song calculated to screw with the listener’s expectations. I love it so very much.

Leftfield and Lydon – Open Up (from Leftism, 1995) – I wish John Lydon had done more, either with a refurbished Public Image Limited line up or as solo/collaborative project, to follow up on this exceptional track, which felt like the next logical step in his musical evolution. Instead we got the mercenary efforts of a Mountain Dew commercial and a fairly embarrassing Sex Pistols reunion, while The Prodigy’s Keith Flint did his best Lydon impersonation on 1996’s “Firestarter.” I’m sure the money was grand, John, but was it really worth it?