Lifelong comic book man Carmine Infantino died yesterday at the age of 87. If you are even a casual nerd, you know Infantino as that guy that got to draw The Flash off and on for thirty years. And his pencils were immediately identifiable: square-jawed and kinetic, with characters constantly tilting into a run or skidding to a halt. But that’s not all Infantino did.

Born in Brooklyn in 1924, Infantino got into the business while still in school (at what is now the High School of Art and Design), freelancing for “packagers.” (At the time, the early 40s, some comic books were sub-contracted to studios — “packagers” — who would write and draw the stories from scratch and deliver the final work to publishers.) As a hint of his later career, he illustrated the first appearance of DC superheroine Black Canary in Flash Comics #86 in 1947, a character design with Veronica Lake hair that made preadolescents feel funny for decades.

By the mid-1950s, Infantino was full-time with DC Comics. Led by editor Julius Schwartz and along with writers Gardner Fox and John Broome, Infantino was intrinsic to the launch of the so-called Silver Age of DC Comics. The comic book business was contracting, and heat from Congressional hearings instigated by Dr. Fredric Wertham’s lurid (and poorly researched) Seduction of the Innocent, which concerned the immorality being pumped straight into the eyeballs of American children, resulted in the formation of the Comics Code Authority. That self-regulator for the industry prohibited depiction of things like kissing, and crime. This all but erased the super-hero characters that had been so popular only ten years before. With a backlog of Golden Age characters like Green Lantern and Hawkman that were not being used, Schwartz opted to relaunch the characters, the first example of company-wide retconning in the history of comics.

The first character (re)launched was the Flash, and Infantino’s costume design was ground-breaking. This was no circus costume with the underwear on the outside — instead, a sleek red jumpsuit with heavy-soled yellow boots, incorporating the insignias of both the lightning bolt and the wings of Hermes. And the Flash was not muscle-bound, but sleek and lithe, like a marathon runner. The first appearance of the new Flash was Showcase #4, in 1956, and from there DC’s Silver Age began.

Besides the Flash, Infantino also co-created the Flash’s Rogues Gallery, an assembly of arch-criminals, each usually embodying an element of science (Mirror Master, Captain Cold, the Top), and Batgirl. (No, not Bat-Woman, the one from the 50s, but Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon’s daughter.) But perhaps the most interesting contribution of Carmine Infantino is being indirectly responsible for the Pop Art infusion into comics. In 1964 Infantino was assigned to Batman, who was at the time a bit fusty, as he had spent most of the 50s chasing aliens and fantastical monsters while Robin would stagger around, crippled by separation anxiety. Infantino brought the characters up to date, spiffed up the supporting cast, and — and this is the big one — added the yellow circle to the Bat-insignia on his chest, which before that was just a big grey lumpy bat. Coincidence or not, the uber-camp television series “Batman” that aired from 1966 to 1968 was developed soon thereafter; history made.

Infantino was not just an artist. By the time “Batman” was on the air, he had been promoted to artistic director, making him responsible for the design of all the characters and each cover, and in 1971 he was bumped up to publisher of DC Comics, where he remained for five years. The parting was not so amicable, as is so often the case in the comic book industry, and rumor had it that Infantino never set foot in the DC offices again. But he freelanced steadily, most notably on a sixty-issue run on The Flash in the 1980s, ending with the “death” of Barry Allen, (Flash’s secret identity). Don’t worry, he came back.

Infantino was one of the last surviving architects of the Silver Age of comics. He will be missed by all the little kids who read his comics, back in the day.

Brent Cox is all over the Internet.

“Polls show the majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, but should dogs have it too?”

“Brisk walking reduces the risk of heart disease more effectively than running when the energy expenditure of both activities is balanced out, a study has found. Running reduced the risk of heart disease by 4.5% while walking reduced it by 9.3%. Calorie for calorie, walking also had a stronger impact on heart disease risk factors. The risk of first-time high blood pressure was reduced by 4.2% by running and 7.2% by walking.”
 — Taking a nice, brisk walk is better for you than running! It even reduces your high cholesterol more than running. Best of all, you don’t have to run around sweating and huffing like an idiot, wearing those ridiculous clothes. Just have a nice walk, every day!

Photo by Christopher Edwin Nuzzaco.

by Mike Barthel

While we have already addressed many fine full-length vanity albums, our album-oriented format has not allowed for the discussion of vanity singles: songs released by otherwise un-musical celebrities that are never followed by a full album. The most common contemporary source for these singles is undoubtedly reality TV stars. They are so common, in fact, that we can divide them into sub-genres, and this column will address the most visible one: singles by cast members of Bravo reality shows, which exist in their own little Bravo universe. The songs are often about their actions on the shows and often made with other cast members. They become the subject of plotlines on future seasons, and are then played semi-ironically by Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Live.” Though the defining feature of vanity singles is that they’re made by people putting as little effort as possible into being musicians, though, some of these have more than a little going for them.

Since there’s no album to speak of, I’ve made a YouTube playlist of all the tracks, and also listed them here, with links to each song’s audio.

Countess Luann (Real Housewives of NYC) — “Money Can’t Buy You Class” (2010)

Countess Luann (Real Housewives of NYC) — “Chic, C’est La Vie” (2011)

Kim Zolciak (Real Housewives of Atlanta) — “Tardy for the Party” (2009)

Kim Zolciak (Real Housewives of Atlanta) — “Google Me” (2010)

Kim Zolciak (Real Housewives of Atlanta) — “Love Me First” (2012)

Miss Lawrence (Real Housewives of Atlanta) — “Closet Freak” (2011)

Kenya Moore (Real Housewives of Atlanta) — “Gone With the Wind Fabulous” (2013)

Melissa Gorga (Real Housewives of New Jersey) — “On Display” (2011)

Melissa Gorga (Real Housewives of New Jersey) — “Rockstar” (2012)

Melissa Gorga (Real Housewives of New Jersey) — “How Many Times (Dear Joe)” (2012)

Melissa Gorga (Real Housewives of New Jersey) — “I Just Wanna” (2012)

Michaele Salahi (Real Housewives of DC) — “Bump It” (2011)

Simon Van Kempen (Real Housewives of New York) — “I Am Real” (2011)

Danielle Staub (Real Housewives of New Jersey) — “Real Close” (2010)

Gretchen Rossi (Real Housewives of Orange County) — “Nothing Without You” (2010)

BONUS TRACK: Kim Zolciak — “Ring Didn’t Mean a Thing (Demo)” (2011)

THE SONGS
Though many vanity projects lean heavily on covers (even as recently as then-reality star Kelly Osbourne’s 2002 debut single, a Madonna cover that went #3 in the UK), the Bravo folks have all musically introduced themselves to the world through original compositions. These either lean heavily on current dance-pop styles, or are weepy ballads (“Love Me First,” “How Many Times (Dear Joe),” the original of “Nothing Without You”).

DO THEY SELL?
There is not much evidence that they do, and presumably folks such as these would happily update their Wikipedia pages with any impressive sales information. “Money Can’t Buy You Class” does have over 900k YouTube views, though (and did well enough for a follow-up single on a major dance label), and Kandi is suing Kim for the profits from “Tardy for the Party,” which implies that there were some profits to speak of. It was top 3 on the iTunes dance charts, and apparently sold at least 29,000 copies.

CURRENT AVAILABILITY
Mostly all available on iTunes. You can buy a real actual CD of “Tardy for the Party” remixes, if you want to, though since it is “manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media” you could also just make one at home. Probably there is vinyl of “Money Can’t Buy You Class” floating around out there somewhere, but they’re not on ebay.

SKETCHINESS OF LABELS
Countess Luann’s were released on Ultra Records, which has been around for almost 20 years and is one of the biggest dance music labels in the US of A. (deadmau5 is on their roster, for instance.) Everyone else: not so much. Gorga’s are on a LLC created in New Jersey 2 years ago that has no other artists, and is presumably run out of her house. Simon Van Kempen’s is on JSM, which makes music for commercials. Poor Michaele Salahi didn’t even bother to make up a label, or at least the iTunes store entry for her song didn’t list one.

WHO HELPED THEM MAKE IT
Melissa Gorga recorded “I Just Wanna” with a man who calls himself Santino Noir, whose own website mentions that his other musical credits include “King of the Night,” a Whitney Houston cover from the Six Flags FrightFest: Ghoulmaster original soundtrack. The Countess worked with Chris Young, another longtime producer who then appeared on her Real Housewives franchise, though it’s unclear exactly what he did before that track: ASCAP credits him with over 500 songs, but a random sampling doesn’t turn up any artists Google recognizes.

But the Quincy Jones of producing Bravo vanity singles is undoubtedly Kandi Burruss, who’s responsible for all the ones coming out of Atlanta. Burruss, as regular viewers know, is a legit pro, from her time in top-20 R&B; group Xscape to her songwriting awards for “Bills, Bills, Bills” and “No Scrubs.” (Though she gave her second album the working title B.L.O.G.; nobody’s perfect.) She is, coincidentally, parlaying this into a spinoff called “The Kandi Factory,” premiering next week, on which she winnows down 16 aspiring artists to two lucky winners who will have the opportunity to score a “Tardy for the Party”-sized hit. 29,000 copies, here they come!

Burruss’ business practices as producer have led to some conflict. Miss Lawrence complained about never receiving any payment for “Closet Freak,” which Kandi defended by noting that the single didn’t sell enough to make up for the costs of recording. Of course, traditionally someone would at least get paid an advance for doing the recording in the first place, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors. And just last month, though, Kandi and her songwriting partner Don Vito sued Kim for releasing “Tardy for the Party” without the producers’ consent. Interestingly, though it’s rarely addressed on the shows, the ASCAP database shows that both Kim and the Countess received co-writer credits for their tracks. (Danielle, from New Jersey, did not.) For all that people want to see these as fitting a semi-famous person into an already-existing track, there’s good evidence that, for better or for worse, (some of) the singers came up with (part of) their own songs. (It also shows that there are 11 other songs titled “Google Me.”)

WHEN THEY MADE IT
Bravo’s reality shows have evolved into the televisual equivalent of the Marvel universe, with a few initial seed shows spinning off successively more tangential projects, all managing to circle back to other Bravo shows. From “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” a blatant cash-in on the then-popular “Desperate Housewives,” came all the other “Housewives” shows, and the Bravo universe has expanded to include decorators, PR agents, Persians, designers, hair stylists, and people who seem to do not much at all. And they all know each other, somehow.

Where the acknowledged illusion of other reality shows is that they show lives and situations that would exist regardless of the show, the illusion of Bravo shows is that nothing — absolutely nothing — happens outside of Bravo shows. Relevant parts of a person’s background, which might otherwise come out only in the gossip press, on Bravo get brought up by their enemies on-camera. Books get published or lawsuits filed between seasons, but are then introduced, like clockword, as plotlines on the next season. There to collect and canonize any stray bits of information are the reunion shows and “Watch What Happens Live.” Andy Cohen plays the corporate yenta, putting the latest tidbits to the afflicted parties for reaction and comment, thus sparking a whole new incident. The whole system is like some Disney theme park of minor squabbles, cosmetology, and cartoon characters whose common characteristic is that they cannot feel shame.

THE MUSIC
It is, as you might expect (or already know), a mixed bag. The most individually loathesome one is Melissa Gorga’s first song, “On Display,” which gratingly laments the travails of being in the public eye — an already questionable stance for people who became famous through pursuing some creative endeavor like acting or music, but entirely untenable for someone who signed up for a long-running reality show. But her oeuvre improves markedly from there, and by her 2012 has reached the level of competence. The Countess’s tracks, given their visibility, are less forgivable. First, the misuse of AutoTune on “Money Can’t Buy You Class” makes the vocals sound like they were delivered during a water tank challenge on “Top Model.” Second, the second single, “Chic, C’est La Vie,” is utterly indistinguishable from “Class.” And third, she doesn’t do enough with the persona of bored condescension she’s so carefully cultivated. There are whole swaths of pop music that have spun gold out of that, especially in the 80s (or even in the 00s, with Miss Kitten and the Hacker’s “Frank Sinatra”), but the Countess gives us a half-hearted performance.

The best (Kim’s are OK) are the total one-offs. Simon van Kempen, husband of Alex on the New York branch, has the same regretful subject matter as “On Display” or “Class” (“they trash me on the Twitter,” yeeesh), but he at least has an interesting mid-range voice, and the track built around it is consequently pitched lower than most dance tracks (and with more guitars), making for something a little more interesting than just EDM-by-the-numbers. The only really actually truly good song in the bunch, though, is Miss Lawrence’s “Closet Freak.” Give it a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUcQq1sbWsM

Though the sounds are a little boilerplate (certainly it’s got nothing on Cee-Lo’s song of the same name), the vocals work surprisingly well, with a message that goes beyond self-pity and, by leaps and bounds, the best voice of anyone here. It’s not really considered part of the main body of Housewives work, though, which is too bad. But it makes sense: these aren’t supposed to be consumed as music. They’re little bits of plot, like songs in a musical disconnected from the stage.

Previously: The Japanese Pop Album Alyssa Milano Made As A Teenager

Mike Barthel has a Tumblr.

When the Arab Spring began jumping from country to country a couple of years ago, it seemed like a good idea to add a “revolution” section to my Google News page. During the Occupy Wall Street protests, it continued to provide interesting news about social unrest and nervous rich people hiring extra security. How is the Revolution section faring today, now that it’s okay to be horribly rich again and Jeffrey Skilling is looking at an early release from federal prison?

• “Get three free meals at IHOP valued at $7.99 each when you join the chain’s Pancake Revolution e-mail club. Sign up and pick your favorite location and you’ll get a email coupon for a free meal of whatever you choose.” — Sun-Sentinel
• “Tiny technology could spark revolution in house buying: The endless ranks of estate agents’ signs peppering towns and cities across the country could be a thing of the past thanks to scientists at Plymouth University.” — Phys.org
• “Is a fresh pasta revolution near? Way down at the end of the piece we learn that there’s potentially a huge productivity revolution in the works here: ‘Ninety-seven percent of the restaurant industry wouldn’t consider having a pasta machine, because they buy prepared pasta, or they seem intimidated by the machine,’ he said, ‘but they all have a Hobart,’ referring to the burly commercial mixer.” — Daily Freeman

So what does revolution mean today? Pancake marketing, reducing For Sale signs in nice neighborhoods, and exploiting factory workers for more productivity in the manufacture of high-end pasta machines.

“It’s a new crime. Businesses have attracted thieves and they’re stealing more because they can find a buyer for it.”
 — Guess what “it” is. GUESS! [Via]

Probably one of the four of five most prominent hip-hop producers of all time, Pharrell Williams turns 40 today. The new Myspace is celebrating with a nice collection of 41 of his greatest hits to listen to. (One to grow on, I guess.) But right here, please enjoy his latest, with the very-blue-eyed soul singer Robin Thicke (the one who’s dad was on “Growing Pains”) and T.I. It’s a perfect little remake of the gorgeously slinky beat he made for Jay-Z’s “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It To Me)” thirteen years ago. The video borrows style from 1980’s Robert Palmer videos, and there’s a version with lots of nudity you can watch if you’re a perv. Happy birthday, Pharrell!

North Korea Actually Wants To Nuke Austin Because Of Its Racist Hipsters

by Abe Sauer

Last weekend, when North Korea’s United States Strike Plan was revealed, one city’s inclusion had everyone baffled. The list included Washington D.C., Hawaii, Los Angeles and… Austin, Texas.

“No one seems to have any clue about how that last one made it on,” Slate wrote. The genius foreign policy analysts at Townhall opined that “The literal answer, and literal target, is South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.’s Samsung Austin Semiconductor (SAS) manufacturing facility.” Less serious reasoning has blamed South By Southwest.

Nope! The real reason Kim Jung-un is targeting Austin for destruction is hipsters. Because of their acts of aggression against North Korea.

In September of last year, Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Fantastic Fest Film Festival played host to the premier of the new — and long awaited — Red Dawn reboot, which featured a North Korean invasion of the USA.

By its own account, the all-out premier party transformed the “Austin American Legion into a maximum-security prison for the ultimate Red Dawn shindig.” At the party, “prisoners” experienced “mandatory enjoyment from delousing stations as well as free prison tattoos and head-shaves.”

The party also featured “torturoke,” described as “regular karaoke except you have electrodes strapped to your chest” allowing the audience to administer electric shocks to poor singers.

Beyond setting the perfect North Korea atmosphere, Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse founder and Red Dawn party host, Tim League, dressed up as Kim Jung-un’s father Kim Jung-il (“Tim Jung Il”) complete with “slanty eyes” glasses, black wig and characteristic Dear Leader suit.

Really, it’s enough to make anyone want to nuke Austin.

“I think the basic answer to your question is you have to have a revolution among the voters. You cannot expect, at a state, federal or city level, the elected officials to go and to do something that will keep them from being able to feed their families. And this is a job for them. It’s just not gonna happen. There’s no chance whatsoever. So where you can have a referendum, that’s where you have a chance of changing things.”
 — The mayor’s “fuck you”s are getting more and more meta.

Hey, can you see your favorite neighborhood spot in Cat Power’s new video? Tompkins Square Park? Doyers Street in Chinatown? The basketball courts on Christie and Houston? Economy Candy on Rivington? Max Fish? The Prince Street subway station? No, you can’t. Those places aren’t in your neighborhood anymore because you moved to Brooklyn like all the rest of your friends. And you can never be Manhattan. Never again. You’re old and you suck and you aren’t even allowed to look at the moon anymore.