The Second Hundred Years

I stumbled upon a copy of America's Best TV Comics recently and snatched it up because it is relatively rare and features an original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four story.  This 1967 oddity was produced primarily by the ABC television network to promote their Saturday morning cartoon lineup, which featured Marvel properties like the FF and Spider-Man along with other cartoon classics like George of the Jungle and Casper, the Friendly Ghost.

The short stories were all fairly simplistic and rather pointless, but I'm sure they served their marketing purpose at the time.  What interested me more than the actual content of the book was some of the advertisements included promoting some of the network's prime time broadcasts.  These shows ranged from ones that are still fairly recognizable, like the Flying Nun (really?  Someone thought this was a good idea?) and the Adam West Batman show, to shows that I had never heard of before.  Of these, one stood out, and I scanned the ad to post below:

The Second Hundred Years, according to those cagey geniuses at the Internet Movie Database, as well as...well, this ad in front of you, is about a prospector who gets frozen in ice, only to be revived 67 years later, and - get this! - he has to ADJUST TO MODERN SOCIETY!  Holy crap, what a concept!

Okay, okay...I'll admit that this isn't the worst idea I've ever heard for a television show, and the concept of the man's son being older than he is is kind of funny...I guess.  What I don't get from the ad is this - why would you let your recently returned grandfather who has been obviously traumatized and absent from the world for two-thirds of a century carry a gun around the house?  And better yet, why would he just randomly decide to shoot the television?  You'd think that, rather than remarking that we're gonna have to teach grandpa about "modern miracles" (we apparently have low standards for how we define miracles), we might have given him the tour before we left him alone?  Absurdity, I tell you!

Monte Markham, who played both grandfather and grandson in this one-season series, has acted fairly regularly since 1966, but unless I'm mistaken, this show is STILL the most work he's done on any one production other than - get this - Baywatch.  A jack of all trades, it seems.

Remember when season one was cool? Well, for season three, we present...season one!

I'll admit that there is something appealing to the show "Heroes".  If nothing else, it takes a bunch of really overused comic book plot points and showcases some of the more sensational attributes to an audience larger than any single comic book can hope to entice.  I'm not its biggest fan (nor am I of any J.J. Abrams project...which makes me worried about "Star Trek"), but I can at least appreciate the fact that it's an original superhero property, and not just an adaptation of the latest Marvel or DC title.

I guess I wasn't alone in hating all that took place in the show's horribly-paced season two, as last week's season premier, in which we got the first two episodes of the new "chapter", pretty much decided to ignore everything that happened  after the first season ended.

As an outsider, I guess, as someone who has never really been all that drawn into the show (but why watch it then, Jeff?  What a good question!), I find it both a little funny and a little patronizing that they've decided to revive nearly every single plot point from season one.  It's like the producers are saying "hey!  Remember all that cool stuff that made you watch us in season one?  Well...it's just like that, but MORE!"

Funny stuff.  I guess the ratings for the premier weren't quite what the network was expecting, and that's surprising given how much hype the show has been getting.  I guess season two's Wonder-Twin-themed production put more people off than I realized.