When FiOS kicked in with all of the HD channels I wasn’t getting, but should have, I also started getting HD Video on Demand offerings. I like Gary Sinise’s work, so I watched a few episodes of CSI: NY. One was really good, another was pretty good, but one was flat-out lame. Here’s the big finish.
[flv:/Video/2008/JUN/CSI.flv 440 330]
This really gets my comic book fan hackles going. It portrays comic books as having a bad influence on kids, and I’m really tired of that misconception. In fact, it makes comic book readers look stupid, and their parents too, because in the show what those kids needed was some adult supervision.
How old is the character supposed to be whose friend drowned in the cardboard sub? At the oldest I’d say he’s 35. And the death happened when he was, say, ten years old. Better make it eight. Ten-year-old kids aren’t that stupid. OK, so that means the flashback takes place 27 years ago, in 1981. The drawings appear to be the character Bullseye, from a Frank Miller issue of Daredevil. Miller took over writing the series in late 1980, and that type of ad was long gone from comics by then. The age of the newsstand comic book was pretty much already over, and comic book shops had taken over. Further, there weren’t any “Laughing Larry” type figureheads that I can recall, for any of the cheap outfits advertising in comics. And the idea that he’d still be in business is, well, silly. But I bet the character actor playing Laughing Larry had a good time with the part, because he looks like he usually gets stuck playing a gangster.
Above is one of the original ads for the cardboard submarine, taken from a 1967 Marvel comic. I never owned one, but Boing Boing has a picture of the real thing, also from 1967, at this link. Hmm… maybe they’ll do a show where some kid dies abusing the Digi-Comp 1.
