‘Agents of SHIELD’ improving, but what it could learn from ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘The Blacklist’

Okay, that was more like it.

Five weeks in. “Agents of SHIELD” feels a little more like it’s finding its way. And who knows, maybe the slow burn strategy of Joss Whedon and his showrunners has been planned this way all along.

But tonight’s episode, “The Girl in a Flower Dress,” took a couple of big steps toward making the show a must-see each week and, in the process, accomplished a couple of things: It (mostly) resolved the “is she or isn’t she a mole?” storyline about hacker Skye, and it furthered a series Big Bad in Centipede, the group that’s continuing the Extremis experiments – giving people superpowers, as in “Iron Man 3” and the “SHIELD” pilot, through dangerous chemicals.

It also established some other nifty ideas, including the fact that “SHIELD” has a list of superpowered people it’s keeping tabs on. This has been a matter-of-fact part of the Marvel movies and needed to be re-established here.

What still needs to be resolved right away: Coulson’s secret. If there’s one more reference to how the unwitting Coulson (the wonderfully deadpan Clark Gregg) has changed since Loki impaled him in “The Avengers,” I’ll cry.

Coulson thinks he died for a few seconds. Higher-ups including Maria Hill know something else is the truth … and think Coulson must never know.

I think everyone suspects that Coulson is a Life Model Decoy – as mentioned in “The Avengers” – or a clone or something. But please, please don’t save the explanation for the end of the season. Coulson needs to find out sooner rather than later, maybe in a November or February sweeps week episode. And then he needs to get pissed, taking it out on Nick Fury – Samuel Jackson’s already appeared in the series, so there’s no reason he can’t come back – and everyone else who deceived him. Knowing how buttoned-down Coulson is, that “taking it out” might consist of an icy glare and a brisk walking away. But do it soon.

That way, expectations will be defied and the next story arc – how Coulson comes back to lead the team – can begin.

Okay, now here’s what I intended to touch on before I saw tonight’s episode: A few things “Agents of SHIELD” could learn from its counterparts on other networks, “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Blacklist:”

Turn up the charisma. Yes, Clark Gregg is no James Spader, who’s chewing the scenery and loving it on “The Blacklist.” But “SHIELD” needs some flamboyance.

Turn up the crazy. “Sleepy Hollow” is getting points for the relish with which it embraces its storyline. “SHIELD” shouldn’t imitate it, but it needs more of the kind of moments that will make fans and casual viewers alike chuckle.

Show why these people are together. A seven-year-must-prevent-the-end-times-like-in-“Sleepy Hollow” plot device isn’t necessary. But there’s got to be more of a reason holding these people together than just the “we’re all in the SHIELD helicarrier break room at the same time” vibe that sometimes seems to be the case.

Give us more surprises. In the first episode of “The Blacklist,” the frustrated FBI agent stabs sneaky fugitive Red Reddington (James Spader) in the neck with a fountain pen. Yikes! It was quick and unexpected and totally justified. Give us more of that kind of “hey did you see that?” moment. (They even had Reddington make a joke about it in a later episode.)

Give us some Marvel comics names. Remember before the series began, people were speculating on which characters would be introduced? Luke Cage? Moon Knight? Who would have thought that “Arrow” would be introducing established DC Comics characters every week and Marvel, the king of synergy, would be running a series of wannabes past us every week?

Give us the goods, “Agents of SHIELD.”

Cap’s back: ‘Winter Soldier’ teaser poster

So this is cool.

The teaser poster for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was released today.

And we’re told a new teaser trailer comes out in a couple of days.

The poster confirms some things we had already heard:

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is mostly (or entirely) set in the present day.

It’s mostly set in Washington DC.

It’s a political thriller in some respects (that follows, considering the setting).

SHIELD is heavily involved, and it looks like Cap is about to jump out of a SHIELD aircraft and the helicarrier is visible.

The movie’s to be released April 4.

Today in Halloween: ‘Phantom of the Opera’ live

One of the coolest live theater experiences I ever had was one October evening in the 1980s when I experienced a unique way of seeing Lon Chaney’s classic 1925 silent film “The Phantom of the Opera” – with a live organ performance.

Dennis James, at the time the resident organist for the Ohio Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, came to Muncie with a Halloween-season show he had been doing for a while: A live organ performance with the Chaney film.

I’ll never forget standing onstage before the show – by virtue of covering the event for the newspaper, I had a little access – and seeing James, a showman, walking out of the dark wings at Emens Auditorium.

Actually, my friends and I heard James first: His footsteps echoed across the stage. When we could finally see him in the still relative darkness of the stage, he was wearing a tuxedo, top hat … and Chaney Phantom mask.

James, whom I had interviewed by phone before he came to town, is a friendly guy with extensive knowledge of not only music but the Chaney film.

He performed, on the theater organ, the historic score to Chaney’s film, Watching James perform added immensely to the experience, which to this day remains one of my favorite Halloween-era memories.

Today in Halloween: Frankenstein fluorescent ad

I was a big magazine reader when I was a kid. Between the magazines that were delivered to my house, the magazines in the school library and the magazines at the pediatrician’s office, I looked at a lot of magazines.

I can’t swear that this was a Halloween-season ad, but it sure seemed like it: An ad for GTE fluorescent light bulbs that made use of a Universal-style Frankenstein monster.

I remember the ad so vividly. And thanks to the Internet, I can now determine that it appeared in magazines in 1970.

Lookin’ good, Frank.

‘Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle’ on PBS

Truly the geeks have inherited the Earth: A three-hour documentary about comic books on PBS.

“Superheroes: A Never Ending Battle” played on PBS this week and is still available online (if you can put up with PBS.org’s wonky video player).

I didn’t see all of it when it aired last Tuesday – three hours is a big chunk of time – so I watched the unseen balance today online.

A lot of documentaries have been made over the years about comic books, superheroes and their creators. Because of the wealth of interviews, this one is among the best and most entertaining. Maybe that’s in part because the tone is no longer so defensive and “can you believe it?”  The tone is what it is because superheroes are such a big part of pop culture right now, a huge presence in video games, movies and TV shows. Even though a fraction of the number of comic books are sold today as were sold two or three generations ago, their influence on pop culture has never been greater.

The first hour traces the early history of comics, from the first newspaper strips, folded and stapled and re-sold by the father of the creator of MAD magazine, to the heyday of comics in World War II and the 1940s, when virtually every boy and most girls read comics.

Influences like pulp magazine heroes including The Shadow are cited and the origins of Superman and Batman – familiar stories for longtime fans – are told. Before the first hour has ended, Wonder Woman’s kinky origins are recounted. Acknowledgement is made of the less savory aspects of comics, particularly racist treatment of Japanese characters during World War II. The first hour ends with the 1950s campaign against superhero comics.

Besides the classy treatment and nice graphics, the best part of the show are the interviews with pioneers of the early days, including Joe Simon (co-creator, with Jack Kirby, of Captain America) and other artists and writers who got their start in the Golden Age but continued to work in the Silver Age.

Throughout the three-hour documentary, we’re treated to lively interviews with creators, experts and actors. They’re funny and witty and sometimes surprisingly still vital. I swear that great DC artist Neal Adams, one of the driving forces of the 1970s, looks 40 years old.

 

And “SHIELD” artist Jim Steranko, whose towering head of hair is now quite gray, displays his comic historian side.

The second episode starts in the 1960s and the birth of modern-day Marvel Comics. The impact of comics on the larger world – including the campy 1960s “Batman” series – is explored and, rightfully so, called a “game-changer.” This seques into Steranko and the “pop art” era.

The ground-breaking moments of 1960s and 1970s Marvel – Peter Parker attending an integrated high school, the introduction of black heroes like The Black Panther and Luke Cage – are given their due. Likewise, DC’s experimental book teaming Green Arrow and Green Lantern, tacking injustice and racism, are cited, as are the Comics Code Authority-flouting campaigns against drugs.

The third hour is kind of a victory lap, noting the huge role in today’s pop culture that comic book characters play, particularly due to the big-budget, big-box office movie adaptations of the modern era. As “Spawn” creator Todd McFarlane says, “None of it is silly anymore.”

But one thing is certain: Lynda Carter still looks amazing.

Today in Halloween: ‘The Halloween Tree’

As a kid and young teen in the early 1970s, I counted among my favorite authors Ray Bradbury.

I loved Harlan Ellison and Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, mind you, but Bradbury had a poetry to his prose that appealed to the young romantic in me. Heinlein was a funky libertarian and Asimov a mind-reeling intellectual and Ellison – Ellison! – was a cranky, spit-in-your-face rebel.

But Bradbury wrote small-town fantasy like no one ever had, and as a small-town kid with a mind and a heart for fantasy, I loved him.

It had been a while, though, since I’d read “The Halloween Tree,” and I was afraid I’d have the same experience I’ve had in going back to other works that I loved when I was young. Let’s just say I still haven’t managed to struggle my way back through “A Wrinkle in Time.”

I knew I had to re-read “The Halloween Tree” this October, though. And I’m relieved to say I still enjoyed its oddball, old-fashioned homage to Halloween.

I will say, though, that the book is incredibly dated. Considering it was published in 1972 – the year that I participated in an anti-Nixon mini-protest outside a school-adjacent polling place on election day – I’m kind of amazed it wasn’t too hokey and cheesy for me even back in the day.

I can’t imagine my son, reading it now, putting up with the earnest “Pipkin is the greatest boy who ever lived” stuff.

For better or worse, kids are more sophisticated today than we were. The boisterous love among 13-year-olds for their buddies, the “oh gosh” dialogue, the thought of boys disappearing into the Halloween darkness with a mysterious man … well, let’s just say all but the most poetic and artistic kid today would roll his eyes and think about all those parental warnings of “stranger danger.”

Which is too bad, in a way. But I think we’re safer in a savvier world.

But in Bradbury’s world, in a small Illinois town, a pack of eight 13-year-old boys costumed as archetypes like skeletons and witches and mummies goes out to trick-or-treat on Halloween night, worried about the whereabouts of their friend, Pipkin, and whether he will join them for trick-or-treating.

Before long, they discover the house with the Halloween tree – a towering growth with hundreds or even thousands of carved and lit jack-o-lanterns hanging on its branches – and the occupant of the house, Mr. Moundshroud, who takes them on a time-traveling adventure to not only find Pipkin but the origin of Halloween. It’s a journey that takes them from ancient Egypt to Europe to home in time for the midnight (!) finish to trick-or-treating.

I remember loving “The Halloween Tree” when I was a kid and still have my original copy, in much better condition than the one at the top of this entry. It was not my favorite Bradbury, however, which might just be “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

If you’ve never read “The Halloween Tree,” you should, even if your tolerance for brave and poetic boys is low. Bradbury’s imagery is beautiful, and there’s another kind of great imagery, too: The drawings of artist Joe Mugnaini.

I used to love to draw, pencil or pen-and-ink drawings, and I can’t image the artistic talent and work that went into Mugnaini’s work. It’s simply beautiful.

And a great accompaniment to Bradbury’s story.

Today in Halloween: Yvonne Craig

This installment of Today in Halloween comes all the way from the fall of 1967.

Yvonne Craig has been added to the “Batman” series in its third season, playing Batgirl.

By most accounts, executives thought the addition of Batgirl would attract more young girls to the series, although I think it’s more likely that Craig brought more adolescent boys and men to the TV.

Anyway, something during that fall of 1967, this photo of Craig with a little pumpkin and trick-or-treat bag was released.

Why? We don’t know.

Why is it here now? Yvonne Craig, of course.

Two credits scenes in ‘Thor: The Dark World?’

I was already looking forward to Nov. 8 and “Thor: The Dark World.”

Then today ScreenCrush.com reports that initial screens indicate the latest Marvel movie will have two credits sequences, not unlike “The Avengers.”

There’s supposedly a scene part way through the credits, like the Thanos scene in “The Avengers,” and an after-credits stinger, like the restaurant scene at the end of “The Avengers” and the Bruce Banner appearance at the end of “Iron Man 3.”

True? We should get some kind of confirmation soon.

And the movie opens Nov. 8.

Today in Halloween: Sammy Terry’s jack o’ lantern

You’d be surprised how hard it is to find a picture of Sammy Terry celebrating Halloween.

Strange, isn’t it? The Indianapolis TV horror host – also known as Bob Carter, who passed away just this past June – was the embodiment of spooky stuff. But I didn’t find a lot of pics of good old Sammy marking the spookiest of holidays.

I’m not even sure that the pic above is Carter or if it’s his son, Mark, who took over some Sammy Terry duties after his dad retired a few years ago.

At any rate, here’s your requisite picture of Sammy Terry in the Halloween spirit.

Today in Halloween: Do-It-Yourself beard

It took me a while to figure out what I liked about this Halloween mask.

Then I realized it:

It was a Halloween character that I could have – and did – duplicate even without a mask when I was a kid.

How?

I used my tin of watercolor paints to paint a stubbly beard on my face.

Kids, I don’t recommend you try this at home, although the watercolors washed off with a little soap and effort and made for a pretty effective “stubbly” beard.