BID Mailbag – Alien 3

Originally published July 24, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #975

Time to start assaulting the dreaded BID mail bag.

First, old business: I’d like to thank the folks who volunteered to send me copies of the episodes of that I missed, and particularly “Andy Mangels,” who got the dupes out to me in… well… a flash. A reminder that those of you who enjoyed Mark Hamill’s demented work as the Trickster can thrill to even more dementia as he does the voice of the Joker in the upcoming Batman animated series. (Reports elsewhere that Tim Curry is doing the Joker are out-of-date. It’s definitely Hamill. Remember, you read it here first.)

Also, thanks to Eric Hess who belatedly contributed to the debate over how to save The Little Mermaid comic book, back around the time when Disney was trying to explain why cutting all their regular comic titles except for reprints was a good thing. Eric’s rather succinct visual speculation not only appears here, but has me trying to think of way to con Kevin Dooley, my editor on Aquaman, into letting her make a guest appearance in that title.

Disney folks, of course, would look at this illo and simply say, “She’s off-model.” To that I reply, Change the model!

On to new business:

First, the “I Spotted It” Challenge drew a swift and immediate response as five letters arrived on the same day pointing out the line in Romancing the Stone that was mildly funny at the time, but with subsequent events becomes that much more amusing. In the words of Phillip Jackson in Asbury Park, New Jersey:

“Regarding the line of dialogue from Romancing the Stone—Danny DeVito (who now plays the Penguin in Batman Returns) saying ‘Now move it, before Batman comes home!’ while holding Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner at gunpoint–what can I say? It was very cool (too bad the story in Batman Returns was so lame). Thanks for bringing it up.”

Correct answers also came in from Dan D. Long from Pleasant Hill, IL; James M. Lucas in Zionsville, IN (who apologized for handwriting his letter, stating that “not all conservative Republicans can afford typewriters” and signing himself as The World’s Most Conservative Peter David Fan.); Delmo C. Walters in the Bronx, NY; and Michael Dobosz in Turner Falls, MA.

I’m sure that everyone who saw Basic Instinct also snickered during Romancing when Michael Douglas, lying atop Kathleen Turner in bed, is shown dropping down a hand and reaching towards the underside of the bed. This engendered, from me, a scream of, “Look out! He’s got an icepick!”

But Michael Dobosz didn’t content himself merely with pointing out the humor of the Danny DeVito/Batman gag. He took it one step further in writing:

“Now for a more eerie irony. The Christmas episode of Married With Children a few years back had Sam Kinison as Al Bundy’s guardian angel. One of Kinison’s lines was, more or less, `I hated life so much I had vanity plates on my car that read: HIT ME!’ Consider for a minute the cause of Kinison’s death. Now that’s ironic.”

Indeed. Thanks to cable and the continued airings of shows from long ago, there are many things that you see now on television that shake you up. For me, it’s the filmed segment from the first (or maybe second) season of Saturday Night Live that features an elderly John Belushi, standing over the graves of all the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players. The image itself is creepy enough. If I’m remembering the dialogue correctly, Belushi says something like, “They all thought I would be the first to go,” and then proceeds to describe how everyone else in the cast died (I can’t recall what he said about Gilda Radner…I don’t think I’d care to remember). At the last, he states that he lasted so long because, “I’m a dancer!” and he cavorts around in the cemetery, the last surviving SNL cast member.

Not hardly.

Have you ever seen something on TV, or in an old movie, or read in a book that, with the knowledge of later events, made you go, “Geeeeez.” If so, send in your recollections to: “Geeeeez, c/o To Be Continued, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, New York 11705.” Best ones will run in the column. As always, there’s no prize or anything involved–just the questionable honor of appearing in the column that a number of fans are nuts enough to turn to the back of their CBG to read first.

Lastly, I offer the following letter, received unsigned (except for the letter “O”), offered without comment–except to say that different films certainly strike different chords within people. Herewith a “take” on Alien 3 that never would have occurred to me:

“I’ve enjoyed reading But I Digress and appreciate your enlightened views (on homosexuality in particular). I’m writing to share with you some experiences which put a different spin to my perception of Alien 3 and which are probably why I liked it so much.

“A friend got the idea that an alien was gestating inside Ripley from the opening flashback sequences. You got it fifteen minutes into the movie. I’m `not altogether dim’ (as God said in Time Bandits) but I didn’t get it until Ripley actually scanned herself and saw the thing on a monitor. Oh well. So for me personally, predictability was not a factor.

“I guess I didn’t allow myself to think it was an in Ripley because I keep assuming everyone worships at the altar of continuity as fervently as all good No-Prize true believers like me. Okay, I suppose the alien queen have laid an egg or two aboard the evac vehicle en route to the Sulaco. And I suppose a face-hugger breaking into something is more powerful than a face-hugger breaking out of a jar of–what?–chloroform? What I want to know is why there isn’t a dead face-hugger in Ripley’s capsule–they’ve always just dried up and fallen off after planting their chrysalis before. From a single viewing of the movie, there appears to be only one face-hugger which plants a queen in Ripley and then removes itself and attacks the prison dog. Well, this was a queen-planter, so maybe…

“I was angry to find out Newt and Hicks were dead, too, but I’m more cynical about sh*t happening, even to the innocent and heroic, so that particular bit of sloppy plotting doesn’t bother me as much. Also, I see no contradiction in the Company sacrificing lives (if this benefits its Weapons Research and Development department) in maintaining a prison planet. Lives are apparently expendable when profits are at stake—that could describe any number of businesses and industries currently in operation, especially if you widen the scope to include the environment. Besides, operating a prison planet was probably a tax write-off.

“But the overriding reason I liked Alien 3 a lot is that it’s the only film I’ve seen which addresses my anxieties about being HIV+. Forget about Longtime Companion or An Early Frost—in order for any film to be commercially viable, some amount of sugar-coating has to happen. And as to gritty, politically correct documentaries, they scare me much that I can’t watch them. But Alien 3 worked for me on the same level as one of Bruno Bettelheim’s “uses of enchantment”–a fantasy story that allowed its hearers to confront and perhaps overcome their own fears. Here we have a frightening creature, a relentless, amoral killer which gestates in the human body, invariably killing its host. What a perfect–and perfectly hideous–embodiment of the AIDS virus, my pet bete noir!

“I was diagnosed on Thanksgiving Eve 1991 (I thought the timing was pretty rich). Every day since then, I wrestle with the frustration of knowing that a virus inside me will, very likely, cause my death…and there ain’t a dámņ thing I can do about it! I’d like to be around and in pretty good shape if and when they do find a cure, or even if and when being HIV+ becomes as manageable as being diabetic. But as I write to you today, all I can do is take my $1.50/capsule of AZT four times a day and that it’s doing something. That and relish Ripley’s spectacular heroism in killing her own gestating killer.

“As I found out, sh*t does happen to average Joes like me, who are far from being innocent or heroic, who pay their taxes and do volunteer work, and who happen to be gay. So yeah, plot-wise it doesn’t make sense to kill off promising characters like Newt and Hicks and Ripley, but as a promising character myself who can’t help feeling that my lifespan is truncated–I find it completely plausible, and in Ripley’s case, deeply, deeply cathartic.

“One other thing I like is that, as far as I know, no one had the alien-as-AIDS-virus metaphor point of view in telling this story. So like a good Bettelheim-ian fair tale, it allows itself to be interpreted and personalized by its audience. (And personalize it I did–when Ripley scans herself and finds the gestating alien, it was Thanksgiving Eve for me all over again!) Sloppy story-telling aside, and as amusing as your `it’s all a dream’ scenario is, I prefer the movie as it is. When my HIV-related frustrations are mounting, I’m going to watching Alien 3 again.”

(Next week, Peter David, writer of stuff, responds to the type of letter he gets most often. Until then, dwell on the following trivia question: Name two movies that starred both Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito. Answer next week if you haven’t gotten it by then.)