Swimming in India Ink

The new Black Panther movie brings Sub-Mariner to the MCU screen. He apparently now has some sort of an Aztec connection. Or maybe it’s Mayan. Whatever it is, he’s nothing like the character created by Bill Everett in 1939.

Sub-Mariner #57, on sale 50 years ago, October 1972, with art by Bill Everett

By 1972 Everett had stopped drinking, and he was helping other alcoholics through his work with AA. His art was better than ever, but then tragically he died only a few months after issue #57 was published. There is some more information at this link:

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-namor-bill-everett-final-days/

A glaring oversight is there’s no mention that Everett illustrated Daredevil #1. Although he had trouble meeting the deadline, Everett’s art is as fine as anything he ever drew. He was a master of inking with a brush, as was my dear old friend Joe Sinnott.

Insider Incomes

Parade has stopped publishing as a Sunday supplement and gone 100% online. A feature I have always looked forward to seeing in Parade is “What People Earn.”

https://parade.com/living/what-people-earn-salaries-2022

There is a big ongoing push for pay transparency beyond the categories where it’s always existed — jobs that pay minimum wage to start, pay grades within unions, and what public employees are paid, unionized or not.

This comes after the Great Resignation, which was followed by Quiet-Quitting, and now there’s the inevitable Big Layoff. At a personal level, the guy who took over my job when I retired didn’t quiet-quit, he just plain quit. He submitted his resignation and declined an unprecedented counter-offer. His area of expertise — cloud computing — is in high demand.

I was never the quiet-quitting type, and neither is my replacement who has moved on to another opportunity. I would suggest that those who have been doing the quiet quitting, especially while working from home, are among those who are now caught up in the layoffs sweeping through the tech sector.

Brideshead Revisited Revisited

I greatly admire the superb television production of Brideshead Revisited, that I first watched on a 19-inch black & white TV when it originally aired in 1981. Brideshead is as far from British Kitchen Sink Realism as it gets, this side of Shakespeare.

The series was co-directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, whose name was heard often a year ago when Disney released The Beatles: Get Back. Lindsay-Hogg directed Let It Be, and his original reels of film were used by Peter Jackson for his project.

The complete Brideshead series is here, although the playlist has the eleven episodes out of order. I’ll leave it to you to sort them out from the drop-down menu.

Sixty-Seven Minute Man at 67

I’ve finally returned to running for more than an hour straight. The pace isn’t what it was in my younger years, but I’m very pleased with being able to go the distance without ankle trouble. I’ve been carefully working my way back up to this since Daylight Saving Time.

Here’s a bit of what Jim Dawson says about “Sixty Minute Man” in his book, What Was the First Rock ‘N’ Roll Record: 30th Anniversary Edition, Updated and Revised.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947521969

Why important: It was the first raucous, bluesy R&B hit to cross over to the pop charts, the first shamelessly double-entendre pop it, and the first million-seller by a formative R&B vocal group.