rec.arts.movies.past-films

Jerry Brown wrote in
news:0328f3pin6gl1jutg9ho44di5uc3j75a4r@ :

> On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:51:28 GMT, Agent Smith
> wrote:
>
>>Anim8rFSK wrote in
>>news: @ :
>
>
>
>>> There's an episode of one of the old Fantastic Four cartoons where
>>> Rama-Tut is talking to our heroes on a TV screen (in a pyramid!) and
>>> the screen swings down revealing the 3 cathode ray tubes and
>>> Richards shouts LOOK OUT! ELECTRON GUNS!! and everybody dives for
>>> their lives. Me, I fell off the couch laughing. :)
>>
>>Sure, today's electron guns are only used in crt's, but just imagine
>>how nasty one of them would be, if you could make it work at
>>atmospheric pressure.
>>
>>I don't know what the current status is, but I was a grad student at
>>MIT's Plasma Fusion Center when Reagan gave his notorious Star Wars
>>speech. Immediately after that, the director of the PFC gives a talk
>>about "non-neutral plasmas" in the second biggest lecture hall on
>>campus.
>>
>>He was obviously gearing up for SDI grant proposals, in case federal
>>money should rush in that direction. But you can see where I'm going,
>>because "electron gun" vs. "non-neutral plasma" is just a case of
>>"potato" vs. "po-tah-to." :)
>>
>>I've often suspected that Stan and other comic writers would browse
>>Scientific American, or in your case, perhaps Popular Science, looking
>>for cool jargon to write into their stories.
>
> There's a similar moment in Tron, when the David Warner character
> calls for "The Logic Probe" and a huge and menacing looking cannon is
> brought in.
>
> Here's a selection of real logic probes...
> < /images?hl=en&q=logic%20probe&oe=UTF-8&um=1
&
> ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi>.

Years after I saw Tron, I was quite surprised to learn that a logic
probe really was a tool used to debug digital circuitry. Maybe it was a
Batman cartoon, but somewhere I also remember seeing a reference to a
"logic bomb" as software that actually manages to explode, somehow. :)
However, that was some time after the tv news exposed it as a computer
routine that does, in fact, suddenly activate, with malicious intent.

Tron looks so quaint now, but it was more futuristic and cutting edge
than either Jurassic Park or the Matrix, during their respective
heydays. I still love those neon colors. The only action/adventure art
that I've ever seen, which was more psychedelic, were the Marvelmania
black-light poster series, from '70 or '71. Are you familiar with
those?

These days, realism is more popular than abstractness, in fantasy art,
but in those days, op art was fresh and new. To this day, Steranko's
psychedelic issues of Nick Fury has yet to be approached, much less
surpassed. I still enjoy comic colors that burn themselves into my
retina, although, much like LSD itself, they're best experienced only in
limited quantities.