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21 Years Ago: When the Predator Landed in New York City
Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor

 
When Joel Silver smiled upon Stephen Hopkins from his mega-producing throne and said, go forth, make Predator 2, it never dawned on me in 1990 how many similarities were present between the sequel and Dark Horse Comics' first foray into the 20th Century Fox franchise. Revisiting the comic book follow-up, just in time for Predators of course, those similarities come to the fore, however, they're really only present in the first issue.

Hitting comic book shops before Predator 2 landed in theaters, "Predator: Concrete Jungle" utilized the same conceit: Take a hardened cop and put him up against the ultimate, extraterrestrial hunter. The backdrop? The big city. It's a "no duh" scenario and a natural progression for the franchise. What "Concrete Jungle" does that Predator 2 never did was open the scope just a bit wider than what Silver and his producing team could do 20 years ago. The hunting ground may have been comparable, yet "Concrete Jungle" was a game changer.


Written by Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Galactica, My Name is Bruce), a Dark Horse regular, and illustrated by Chris Warner, backed up by Sam de la Rosa's striking ink work, "Concrete Jungle" is a four-part mini-series. The story picks up a couple of years in the future (Predator 2 was set in '97) where we meet New York City cops Rasch and Schaefer, the latter an imposing figure who is the brother of Predator's Dutch (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger).ZZZZ

Schaefer doesn't know what happened to his brother, but all of the answers he's looking for start raining down on him when the Predator comes to town and starts picking off gangs. Issue number one introduces us to several beats that carry over into the Los Angeles-set Predator 2 - the massive attack on a gang; the tough-as-nails police captain who has to bend to a higher force that knows about the new alien in town; the subway slaughter where every passenger is packing heat; one character refers to a talk show hosted by Charles Manson (in Predator 2, loud mouth Morton Downey, Jr. was the TV personality); there's even a line about "candy" that the Predator mimics when he makes his introduction to Schaefer.

But, as I said above, issue one is where the similarities end because by issue two, Verheiden turns up the heat and sends Schaefer into the jungles - after being "tagged" by the Predator - to learn more about what happened to Dutch. He does this in spite of General Phillips' (carried over from Predator) best efforts to steer Schaefer off of the case. "They like the heat, dammit," Phillips say. "Leave 'em be and in two, three weeks they'll be gone." Phillips here fills the shoes Gary Busey wears as Peter Keyes in Predator 2 - a man aware of the Predator situation and who reveals information to our hero on a need-to-know basis. Keyes, however, was more proactive than Phillips because he takes the fight to the Predator in Hopkins' film. In "Concrete Jungle," Philips shoulders a "hands off" approach and would rather give a free pass to the Predators and let their hunt continue.

 

As a sequel, it works organically and it would be amazing to see realized on the big screen. Focusing on Dutch's brother brings a sort of "grudge match" aspect to the Predator hunt this time. It delivers on giving you the best of both worlds, bringing the Predators to a big city and throwing you back into the jungle for a bit of familiarity. Verheiden also intellectualizes the nature of the Predator race and why they hunt, adding a welcome layer to the story. It's absent of new Predator weapons and the cameo of an Alien skull, but it more than makes up for this with the scope of the story.

"Predator: Concrete Jungle" is available in Dark Horse's "Predator Omnibus" collection.

 
Brain Development

The brain grows at an amazing rate during development. At times during brain development, 250,000 neurons are added every minute! At birth, almost all the neurons that the brain will ever have are present. However, the brain continues to grow for a few years after birth. By the age of 2 years old, the brain is about 80% of the adult size.

You may wonder, "How does the brain continue to grow, if the brain has most of the neurons it will get when you are born?". The answer is in glial cells. Glia continues to divide and multiply. Glia carries out many important functions for normal brain function including insulating nerve cells with myelin. The neurons in the brain also make many new connections after birth.

The Brain During Development

The nervous system develops from embryonic tissue called the ectoderm. The first sign of the developing nervous system is the neural plate that can be seen at about the 16th day of development. Over the next few days, a "trench" is formed in the neural plate - this creates a neural groove. By the 21st day of development, a neural tube is formed when the edges of the neural groove meet. The rostral (front) part of the neural tubes goes on to develop into the brain and the rest of the neural tube develops into the spinal cord. Neural crest cells become the peripheral nervous system.

On Friday, January 1st, 2010 come into BookPeople for a sweet deal on almost everything in the store! To thank our loyal customers and friends in the community, we’re offering 20% off on most items. Start the new year with some new books: we’ve got lots of 2009′s best-sellers, and plenty of self-help books for those of you who need a little support sticking to your resolutions.

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The deal lasts all day, and we will be open from 11 AM until 11 PM. Thanks for making us the biggest independent bookstore in Austin. Happy New Year!

I was going to do a little review of Kitten With a Whip (1964), which I saw John Waters introduce last week at Anthology Film Archives for their 40th anniversary, but seeing as not only L Magazine but also Interview and Slant have done detailed writeups (two with interviews, one with on-site reportage), there's not a whole lot left to say--particularly as Waters repeats almost all his talking points from one writer to the next. I had no idea it would be so popular, but then again, John Waters is the kind of person with such a devoted following that even his slightest public appearances are newsworthy. So that takes some of the fun out of blogging. But, you know, commitments! etc. I'll sum it up in a few lines: Ann-Margret, a violent runaway from juvenile hall, breaks into the home of John Forsythe, a rising politician, in an attempt to hide from the police. A married man whose wife is out of town, Forsythe is eager to usher the bipolar jailbird out of his posh dwelling. Rather than brave the wilds of San Diego, she threatens him with rape claims to ruin his marriage and career, and for the next 24 hours terrorizes the bumbling politician (gratuitous scratch marks abound), eventually calling her three Beatnik friends over for a party and a disastrous trip to Mexico--a Tijuana roughly the size of a Universal backlot, and a climactic scene which, incidentally, is actually filmed in the old Bates Motel. (The user-submitted IMDB synopsis, with its random capitalizations of words like COPS, MATRON, and BACKERS, is kind of a brilliant piece in its own right.)

One line that stuck with me from Waters' intro: "Kitten With a Whip is like Douglas Sirk without the direction." And there are many things to confirm the Pope of Trash's assessment that this film isn't self-conscious camp, it's "a failed art film"--particularly in its first half, with all those gloomy 360 degree pans around John Forsythe's home and the deadpan zoom into the crazed eyes of a stuffed animal. Or--an audience favorite--one of Ann-Margret's demented harangues framed against a Tex Avery-like cartoon on a television set. There's a quintessential post-party scene that feels lifted from vintage Antonioni or Fellini, with youthful hipsters sprawled out on couch and floor, drinking and smoking while fondling an older man's records. You can see director/screenwriter Douglas Heyes trying so hard to craft Art from this material, patting himself on the back with every compositional trick deployed, but really only ending up with a variant of Beat Girl six years too late. Indeed, Waters attributes this film's total commercial failure to its obsession with outdated Beatnik slang, cynicism and stereotypes in a new era of hippies and free love. I know Waters didn't want us to laugh at this film ("I'm not showing this in any way to laugh at it"), but based on the audience's reaction Friday night, I'd say that aspect of promoting Kitten With a Whip was a total failure. On its own, Kitten With a Whip is a fun movie to see, full of lingo like "Everything's so creamy," "What a brainburger," and "I feel so shiny good about you," which one may feel tempted to add to his/her own everyday stock of phrases. But it's particularly interesting in a Waters context, and hearing the director warmly reminisce about how he saw this film on LSD with Divine when they were still kids, how he took Divine to Ingmar Bergman films when all Divine really wanted was more Liz Taylor, how Divine loved bad girls and Ann-Marget was nothing if not a bad girl... that alone should induce the wary viewer to gi

predator---cj3Schaefer, naturally, won't stand for this. In the jungle, he confronts the Predator that tagged him and kills the creature, setting off a chain of carnage that takes the action back to city. Rasch discovers cloaked Predators ships hovering all over Manhattan and Schaefer is taken into custody by Philips and used as a bargaining chip. "They seem to like you Schaefer boys," Philips reminds our hero. If Schaefer is turned over to the Predators, perhaps Philips can avoid seeing Manhattan being leveled by a nuclear blast similar to the destruction seen in Predator.

Such a devastating blow to the Big Apple is avoided, however, and Schaefer puts up a fight. He rallies Rasch and the city's biggest gangs for an all-out war against the Predators in the streets of Manhattan! It's as epic as it sounds. Predator ships level cars and buildings. There is panic in the streets. The army rolls in, increasing the intensity of the firefight. Predators lay waste to armed macho drug runners. And Schaefer discovers a way to exploit the weakness of an enemy who loves to fight while invisible. Quite frankly, the final act is huge, taking the Predator series to levels its cinematic counterpart has not reached. Furthermore, "Concrete Jungle" feels like an action-packed Joel Silver picture which makes it a terrific companion piece to the films. Everyone is a hard-ass, there are some choice one-liners and the narration - which jumps between Rasch and Schafer - has a Lethal Weapon grit to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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21 years