ROUND OF 16
Uruguay over South Korea
Ghana over USA
Netherlands over Slovakia
Brazil over Chile
Mexico over Argentina
Germany over England
Japan over Paraguay
Spain over Portugal

ROUND OF 8

Ghana over Uruguay
Netherlands over Brazil
Germany over Mexico
Spain over Japan

ROUND OF 4

Netherlands over Ghana
Spain over Germany

FINAL

Netherlands over Spain

I picked up IDW’s first Archie Comics collection, The Best of Dan DeCarlo Volume 1. Since no one has yet posted a list of the contents, I thought I’d have a go at it.

Before I do, I’ll give some brief thoughts: the biggest quibble is that there are only 26 stories here, and they barely scratch the surface of DeCarlo’s output in the years 1958-1969. It’s limited to Betty and Veronica stories (DeCarlo had that almost exclusively, but also contributed to many other titles), and while almost all of them are good, not all of them can really be called standouts. However, I’m assuming that the choice of stories was dictated in part by which stories had original art available. Many of these stories look lovely, especially the late ’50s/early ’60s material when DeCarlo was at his best, and a comparison with an old copy of one of the comics seems to suggest that they’ve done a good job of reproducing the original colours.

The most pleasing thing, as I said elsewhere, is that the table of contents includes credits for all the stories, which originally appeared uncredited. DeCarlo got to sign his name alongside Stan Lee’s when he was at Marvel, doing Millie the Model, but at Archie he never got credit for anything except a tiny “By Dan n’ Dick” credit on some of the Josie comics. (Dick being the editor, Richard Goldwater.) That restores credit not only for DeCarlo, but for his main inker, Rudy Lapick, for his brother Vince DeCarlo, who did most of the letters, and above all Frank Doyle, who is credited here with writing 23 of the 26 stories — and the story for which the credit reads “writer unknown” might also be a Doyle script.

I’ve always been a fan of Doyle ever since I read his credited work in the ’80s, but his earlier, uncredited work is even better; it’s his writing that really elevates the best of these stories. DeCarlo is excellent here, sexy and funny and smooth, though by the end of the volume you can see how his slickness and polish sort of settled into a “factory” style (the early stories have much livelier and funnier drawing). But his drawing for Archie wasn’t any better than his work for Timely/Marvel, and if you want to argue that Millie the Model represents his very best drawing, I wouldn’t really disagree. But though Stan Lee’s writing on the Marvel/Timely humor titles certainly wasn’t bad, Doyle’s best stuff is in a different league (from Lee’s humour comics, I said — I’m not talking about the action/superhero stuff), with simple yet smart dialogue that’s not on-the-nose awkward like most comic book dialogue, a storytelling style that favours observational humour over plot mechanics, and lots of visual opportunities for DeCarlo.

I’ve compared Doyle’s work to “Seinfeld” because, on a smaller scale, he has that ability to build stories around tiny details of social life and relationships, or the way people can get obsessed with petty things. (That’s why the stories sound pretty basic when I summarize them, but have a much stronger profile when you read them.) The definitive story in the book, “Snob Sister,” is just five pages of Veronica showing Betty the different ways in which people can be “snobbish.” It’s simple, it’s fun, and it just comes off as a little smarter and sharper than any of the Archie imitators of the era.

So yes, there are a bunch of stories I would have liked to see in this volume that aren’t there. And fans of “good girl” art may be a bit disappointed that there are so few beach stories. But if you’re not a buff on this kind of comic, it’s a reasonably-priced introduction to DeCarlo’s art and the “good” years of Archie comics in general. And the decision to include credits is, as I said, something that fills me with a lot of good will. IDW has further Archie collections planned, including Bob Montana’s newspaper strip — which is where the Archie “house style” was really created — and a “Best of Stan Goldberg” collection with Stan Lee writing the foreword (this volume doesn’t have a foreword). I hope this one sells enough to justify more artist-themed collections and, in time, perhaps more DeCarlo collections; we really need a collection of his best post-Marvel work, the early, funny, pre-Pussycats Josie.

Here then are the contents. All scripts are by Frank Doyle unless otherwise noted:

1. “Birth of a Notion” (Betty and Veronica # 37, July 1958) – The boys toss around a doll and fool the girls into thinking they’re tossing around a baby. (Script: Sy Reit)

2. “Flip Flopped” (Betty and Veronica # 38, September 1958) – Veronica signs up for the cheerleading squad.

3. “Sheep Skinned” (Betty and Veronica # 44, August 1959) – The boys accuse the girls of being “sheep” for following the latest fashions.

4. “A Choice Choice” (Betty and Veronica Annual # 8, 1960) – Archie has to break his date with Veronica to take his mother out on her birthday.

5. “Something to Remember” (Betty and Veronica # 63, March 1961) – Veronica is peeved because Archie can never remember what she wears.

6. “The Reader Knows Best” (Betty and Veronica # 63) – Archie tries to do the same task for both Betty and Veronica, while assuring the reader that he knows what he’s doing.

7. “The Bluest Angel” (Betty and Veronica # 63) – Betty feels guilty about exploiting a misunderstanding between Archie and Veronica.

8. “Gambler’s Luck” (Betty and Veronica # 65, May 1961) – The girls toss a coin to see who gets Archie.

9. “Snob Sister” (Betty and Veronica # 69, September 1961) – Veronica argues that everyone is a snob about something or other.

10. “Switchcraft” (Betty and Veronica # 69) – Veronica thanks Betty for taking Archie off her hands.

11. “The Original” (Betty and Veronica # 77, May 1962) – Veronica explains that she doesn’t wear real jewels in public. (Credit reads “Writer unknown,” though it might also be Doyle)

12. “Commercial Caper” (Betty and Veronica # 83, November 1962) – Betty blows up “Archie Loves Betty” balloons.

13. “Glad To Help” (Betty and Veronica # 86, February 1963) – Archie tries to use Betty to make Veronica jealous.

14. “Dear Diary” (Archie Giant Series # 23, September 1963) – Betty writes her version of the day’s events in her diary.

15. “Sugar Doll” (Betty and Veronica # 103, July 1964) – Veronica tries to make candy.

16. “Heat Wave” (Betty and Veronica # 106, October 1964) – Archie, Betty and Veronica spend a hot day squirting each other with hoses.

17. “Bully Girl” (Betty and Veronica # 106) – Veronica shows off her new martial arts skills by beating up everyone in sight.

18. “The Midas Mess” (Betty and Veronica # 112, April 1965) – Everything Betty touches turns to gold.

19. “Prize Package” (Betty and Veronica # 112) – Betty tells Archie he’s won a “most popular boy” contest.

20. “Message Center” (Betty and Veronica # 116, August 1965) – Betty sees a message on the bulletin board saying Miss Grundy wants to see her after school.

21. “The Phenomenon” (Betty and Veronica # 117, September 1965) – Betty and Archie discover that when Veronica stands on her head, her speech balloons are upside down.

22. “Rhyme Time” (Betty and Veronica # 119, November 1965) – The narrator re-introduces us to the Archie gang, in rhyme.

23. “Do No Evil” (reprinted in Archie Giant Series # 137, January 1966 — but from the look of it it’s clearly an earlier story, probably from 1960 or so) – After the girls accuse them of being slobs, Archie and Reggie try to get revenge.

24. “Feed Deed” (Betty and Veronica # 130, October 1966) – At the beach, Veronica tries to outdo Betty’s cooking. (Script: George Gladir)

25. “Wing It” (Betty and Veronica # 155, November 1968) – Betty impresses the boys with her great throwing arm.

26. “Drive To Distraction” (Betty and Veronica # 167, November 1969) – Archie uses a beach umbrella to give Veronica some shade in his car.

For those just wanting to read my G20 stuff for Torontoist rather than go through the site looking for it, here you go.

…as I am Torontoist’s official accredited journalist (well, one of two, but I do the writing bits) covering the G20 summit here in Toronto (motto: “When We Have An Economic Summit, We Have Earthquakes And Tornadoes Just To Make The Fucking Point”). Needless to say, this is totally awesome and I hope I get the opportunity to do Jello shots with Paul Krugman, but it also means I am basically not here for the next four days.

So head over to Torontoist and follow along with all the world summit skinny and, presumably, the eventual massive riots.

Before anything even happens on this episode, there was this sequence where each contestant draws their All-Star and each All-Star then tells them the style they’ll be dancing, and everybody pretends to be surprised when everybody except Kathryn (who can of course dance anything) explains they’ll be dancing, amazingly, in the preferred style of that All-Star! This is the opposite of shocking.

Your judges are Adam, Mia, and Nigel, and Nigel really hits new lows tonight, be forewarned.

Cristina and All-Star Pasha: paso doble. JEAN-MARC (andhispartnerthelovelyFrance) REPRESENT. Pasha calls it a “Pasha-nate paso doble” because he is, beneath the leading man looks, a giant nerd. Cristina started off a little shaky (she nearly didn’t stick that first flying leap) but then found her footing and killed it. Pasha is Pasha, duh. This was good.

Adechike and All-Star Allison: contemporary. Mandy Moore reacts to criticism that she only ever choreographs to Eighties songs by switching it up and choreographing to a recent cover of an Eighties song! Anyhow. Last week, Adechike got to dance with the best all-around dancer who’s ever been on this show (Kathryn) in his style. This week, he got to dance with one of its best female contemporary dancers, again in his style. Last week, he was perhaps a bit cool and disconnected. This week, he was… again perhaps a little bit cool and disconnected. Strictly a B performance, perfectly enjoyable on its own merit, but nothing anybdy will remember six months from now, and this is supposed to be his strong suit and he’s dancing with the very best.

Alex and All-Star Lauren: Broadway. Out of all the Tasty Oreo Broadway numbers I have disliked, I believe I disliked this one most intensely: warmed-over third-rate Fosse imitation that was just fucking simplistic and actively annoying. Nigel suggests that Alex might not have heard of Bob Fosse, because Nigel is a stupid patronizing asshole, and because he can’t criticize EMMY AWARD WINNING Tasty for coming up with a bad routine and instead has to give Alex shit. Shut up, Nigel.

Ashley and All-Star Mark: jazz. I’m pretty sure Nigel must secretly dislike Travis Wall, because this is the first time I’ve ever seen anybody call out a choreographer on this show for using contemporary movements in a jazz routine. (God knows they don’t complain when they use contemporary in hip-hop.) The routine itself was perfectly okay and danced very nicely by both Ashley and Mark; I still think Travis is often too unformed as a choreographer, a little too prone to imitate his heroes/teachers rather than do his own work, but he’s growing and that’s not nothing. Nigel then complains that his core audience of teenaged girls are mostly voting for the pretty boys now that he’s using a voting format that lets them divide by gender, because Nigel is a dumbass.

Billy and All-Star Comfort: krump. Monumental failure on Billy’s part: after the first, oh, fifteen seconds of the routine he just completely lost his groove and danced it softly and smoothly, and spent the rest of the routine being outdanced by Comfort. (Of course, this format means that the eventual winner will likely be the person who is outdanced least.) Nigel congratulates Billy for trying hard because the people he likes get points just for showing up; Mia and Adam are honest and say it was shit, albeit nicely.

Robert and All-Star Anya: Argentine tango. JEAN MARC! Using “Libertango” by Bond, which already got used back in season 2 for Allison and Ivan’s tango, but whatever. You know how back in his heyday people would say Ric Flair could carry a broom to a three-star match? Well, when it comes to ballroom partnering, Anya is Ric Flair squared; she’s just that good. Robert was passable – clearly nervous, but didn’t bobble – and Anya made him look brilliant; but he was not brilliant.

Melinda and Ade: contemporary. Stacey Tookey continues the ongoing CANADIAN INVASION of the American show. (Maybe she can hit Tasty Oreo with a steel chair. Man, I am on a wrestling references kick this week for some reason.) This was a very nice routine danced quite capably by Melinda and Ade (who, I think, is probably the least distinguished of the All-Stars – not that he is not good, because of course he is, but… yeah). Nigel pretends that tap dance is easy, which is mindboggling because Nigel is a tapper and he should not say stupid shit like that.

Not Legacy and Kathryn: Bollywood. Well, on the one hand it’s always nice to see Kathryn totally fucking destroy a new genre. On the other hand, Nigel makes a World Cup reference (shut up, Nigel) rather than point out the obvious, which is that Not Legacy was very, very bad in this, embarrassingly bad, and that he’s really just not even in the league of the other competitive dancers let alone the All-Stars. Don’t get me wrong: Not Legacy seems like a nice enough guy and his work ethic is, I am certain, ridiculous. But he is not good enough and no amount of judge comments about how he’s a shining star of happiness is going to change that.

Lauren and All-Star Dominic: lyrical hip-hop. How do you distinguish lyrical hip-hop from just about all the hip-hop on this show, anyway? That having been said, this was actually pretty good – better than most of the Tabbynaps lyrical routines – and Lauren and Dominic both sold it really well. I quite liked this. It wasn’t quite an A-level routine, but it was very close.

Kent and All-Star Courtney: jazz. Oh god, Kent trying to be sexy is actively fucking painful to watch; he just comes across as tentative, prissy, virginal even. (I am also sick of the golly aw-shucks schtick.) Courtney stands up for him during the judging, and then kindly doesn’t answer Nigel’s gross question about “would you eat him alive.” Tasty’s jazz is, as always, much more tolerable than his Broadway. Nigel then compliments Tasty for choreoing jazz dance that is “actually” jazz, and you get to see Travis muttering something in the background that I am pretty sure is “fuck off, Nigel,” forever making him one of my favorite human beings.

Should be the bottom three: Kent, Jose, Billy.
Will be the bottom three: Ashley, Melinda, Jose.
Should go home: Jose.
Will go home: Melinda.

Something something oh no it’s a tornado what will we do oh no etc.

Seriously, do we even have to bother pointing out that the tornado is no match for the likes of Rex the motherfucking Wonder Dog? It seems almost counterproductive to say it these days.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Also: after today, I don’t think Spain has nearly as good a chance to advance to the group rounds as some people do, even though they did beat Honduras today. Chile was always going to be their toughest match in this group, and if you assume that Switzerland beats Honduras (and the Honduran team just isn’t on the level of anybody else in this group, so the Swiss have good odds), then Spain has to beat Chile to advance. Chile can cheerfully play for a tie, which still nets them first place in the group.

I still think Spain can eke it out – heck, I picked them to win the whole thing before it started – but, yeah, it’s a bit uphill.

Strictly B+ Pixar, with some moments that feel perhaps more repetitive than thematic – but nonetheless extremely funny and touching, and B+ Pixar, while not A-level Pixar, is still better than 95 percent of everything out there.

Seeing those pages MGK posted from his reworking of “Civil War” reminded me of the story that was supposedly going to shake up the Marvel Universe forever. (So let’s see…Cap’s alive again, Spider-Man’s secret identity was restored, Iron Man’s brain was literally reset to pre-Civil War status, and the Registration Act was repealed. And most of the people involved were Skrulls anyway. But Black Goliath is still dead!)

But what really irked me at the time was Marvel’s claim that this was a more “realistic” look at how super-heroes would operate in the real world. In the real world, they said, super-heroes would be regulated and controlled. In the real world, there would be an authority governing them. In the real world, things would look like they did in “Civil War”.

Suuuuuure they would. That press conference where Tony Stark announced the Registration Act, and revealed his secret identity to wild applause from the crowd of reporters? Would have gone something like this.

“I’ve revealed my secret identity before, but always in ways I could go back on. This time, there’s no going back. I’m Tony Stark, and I’m Iron Man.”

“Mister Stark…didn’t you just say a few weeks ago that you were retiring from being Iron Man after the stress of your dual identity caused you to get drunk and publicly threaten to kill the Latverian Ambassador?”

“Um, yes, but that was evil magic, not alcoholism that–”

“Have you always been Iron Man? What about the time you claimed you ‘fired’ Iron Man for attacking government agents and murdering a Russian super-hero? Was that a lie too?”

“I think I should wait to speak to my lawyer about–”

“You don’t actually have any super-powers, Mister Stark, yet you’re claiming that the new Super-Hero Registration Act requires you to register because of your possession of the Iron Man armor. What happens if you decide to license or sell the armor? Does the new owner instantly become a law-breaker?”

“Well, these are questions that will be answered by the courts when–”

“As we understand it, you attempted to arrest Captain America for failing to register under the Act before it was even enacted into law. Isn’t that a blatant abuse of your new-found power?”

“This press conference is over.”

Soon, Iron Man would be forced to resign, the law would be tied up in the courts for years before being declared unconstitutional, and the Negative Zone prison would wind up being an expensive and unworkable boondoggle due to the use of shoddy and substandard contractors. Then Blaastar shows up at the United Nations, asking them to condemn America’s invasion of his sovereign territory…

There should totally be a four-issue Marvel miniseries featuring Captain America and Pete Wisdom and Sunfire and a collection of Marvel’s never-used “international” superheroes like Shamrock and Defensor and they’ll all be trapped in Arcade’s deathtraps and it should be called Murderworld Cup.

Recently got a couple more requests to repost the Sally Floyd/Captain America remix I did years ago, and the truth is that I don’t have both pages any more; I’ve only got the second page, courtesy of Edward Saul.

For those who never saw the first page: basically Sally Floyd says that Captain America is irrelevant because he doesn’t have a Myspace and doesn’t watch American Idol. (No, really, she makes those exact references. Three years later, Myspace is a backwater zombie site and American Idol doesn’t have Simon any more, which just makes her point even stupider.)

Your hosts are Nigel, Mia Michaels and Adam. No Mary Murphy! Now if they can get rid of Nigel

Billy and All-Star Lauren: Broadway. Kicking off the season with Tasty Oreo Broadway is always a touch worrisome. Billy hits his moves well enough (and has an Early DiCaprio sorta-goatee), but they are big and slow and boring. I don’t have the hate-on for Lauren that many fans of this show do, but this was generic and Lauren is not the sort of person who is especially distinctive as a dancer, and that didn’t help. Nigel applauds the slow, dull choreo because it let Billy do big stretches (which is of course so appropriate for “Footloose”) and makes a Karate Kid reference. Shut up, Nigel.

Cristina and All-Star Mark: jazz. A pretty good Sonya piece, and Mark is fantastic, but the problem here was that Mark was so good and the choreo so attuned to him particularly that Cristina seemed almost like an afterthought for large chunks of the routine, which I suspect will not be the first time this happens to a contestant this season. Cristina was not bad by any means, though.

Jose and All-Star Comfort: hip-hop. The B-boying Jose was called upon to do was a lot less organic than the b-boying Legacy did last season, which is unfortunate because it threw his strictly average hip-hop portions into sharp relief, especially when dancing next to Comfort. Not bad, but definitely not anywhere near strong, and this is the closest Jose is going to get to “his own style” all season. Tack on the fact that Jose’s group dance last week was probably the weakest of the night and I don’t like his odds.

Adechike and All-Star Kathryn: jazz. Oh, Travis Wall does like his props. I thought the routine was decent; I thought Adechike’s performance of it was quite strong and held my attention, which when dancing with Kathryn is especially impressive; I certainly liked this better than anything All-Star Jason did in his season, for example, just because his moves were so clean. Of course, this means that the judges hated him, because they can actually judge contemporary on its merits and talk about performance quality, whereas when they judge hip-hop it’s all “you were so fierce because you were a werewolf!” Adam says that since this is the top 11, that they’ve skipped the learning period that you normally get with a top 20 – ignoring the fact that since they’re only eliminating one contestant a week this is actually earlier than the top 20 starts, so to speak.

Melinda and All-Star Pasha: jive. A much better than average routine from Tony-N-Melanie. Melinda’s retractions were very sharp and she has a good dance-face, which I think is the most important thing for a week one jive, because if the retractions are good and you look like you’re having fun, the rest of the flaws (and her legs were definitely a bit askew) are minimized. Nigel complains and makes a World Cup reference. Shut up, Nigel.

Alex and All-Star Allison: contemporary. Well, that was a pretty much flawless thing right there.

Alexie and All-Star Twitch: hip-hop. Sometimes I complain that Tabbynaps routines devolve into mediocre jazz routines with a few beats. This is one of those times. I then die of shock when Nigel actually explains how Alexie, in this dance, is dancing hip-hop badly. We must at this point wonder who Alexie pissed off to have Nigel actually point out how she was not hitting beats. I mean, fuck, Evan got away with dancing bad jazz instead of hip-hop.

Non-All-Star Lauren and All-Star Ade: jazz. I see Mandy Moore and I know it’s going to be an Eighties song, but seriously, “Oh Yeah” by Yello? Can Mandy Moore get any more Eighties than “Oh Yeah”? I think not. But the choreo was extremely clever and the physicality of it was pleasant to watch. Nigel again complains that the non-all-star has no chemistry with her all-star partner, which WHAT THE FUCK NIGEL. You went and changed your show’s format specifically in a way to ensure as little partner chemistry as humanly possible, so do not complain when that actually happens.

Kent and All-Star Anya: cha cha. Wait, Anya got eliminated at top 12. That’s “All-Star” now? Anyway, once again a better routine than I usually expect from Tony-N-Melanie, which is unfortunate because Kent was a bit on the stiff side and clearly being led by Anya for three-quarters of the routine. (This is going to happen every week Anya dances, incidentally. She’s going to blow away every single dancer she dances with and make them look weak in comparison, even when, such as in Kent’s case, they actually were relatively competent.) It doesn’t matter, though, because Kent is like a giant teddy bear and will not get voted off anytime soon. Nigel makes a cougar joke which is so fucking creepy I do not think I can really do it justice by mocking it.

Ashley and All-Star Neil: jazz. Someday I’ll figure out why Tasty Oreo’s jazz pieces are so much dramatically better than his Broadway pieces. It’s like there’s some little switch inside him that controls the flow of lame. This was quite nice and that’s all I have to say about that.

Robert and All-Star Courtney: afro-jazz. CHEESEMAN~! (Yes, Sean Cheeseman gets the DVDVR tilde.) This was excellent, and probably the only performance all evening where the non-All-Star definitely outdanced their All-star partner. (Alex and Allison were on an equally high level of awesome so they don’t count.) At this point the judges have been all “this All-Star season is so awesome” like forty billion times now and SHUT UP JUDGES.

Bottom three: Alexie, Adechike, Lauren.
Should go home: Alexie.
Will go home: Alexie.