{"id":18652,"date":"2015-02-07T19:31:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T00:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=18652"},"modified":"2015-02-07T19:31:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T00:31:45","slug":"can-you-id-the-comic-book-in-annie-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/07\/can-you-id-the-comic-book-in-annie-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you ID the comic book in Annie Hall<\/em>?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was watching the opening of Annie Hall<\/em><\/a> recently, and was immediately distracted by a comic book Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer is seen reading in a flashback. Distracted because, whenever I see a comic in a movie or on TV, I’m immediately overcome by a desire to know what that comic is, and whether it’s real or merely a prop mocked up for the screen.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it’s the latter, as when a kid in a 1975 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show<\/em><\/a> was reading an issue of The Fantastic Blob<\/em>. But often the comics are real, which I know because I’ve been able to track those issues down, such as The Eternals<\/em> in a 2010 episode of Law & Order<\/em><\/a>, Justice Society of America<\/em> in a 2012 episode of Alcatraz<\/em><\/a>, or Saga of the Human Torch<\/em> in a 2013 episode of Revolution<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

So when a comic book guest-starred in Annie Hall<\/em>, I had to know—was the comic book real, and if so which comic was it? (Of course, the other question is, why hadn’t I noticed this before? But let’s set that one aside for another time.)<\/p>\n

Here’s the issue spread open in a screen grab.<\/p>\n

\"AnnieHallComicBook\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I can’t seem to find anyone else online who attempted to figure this out. I’m hoping now that I’m asking the question, perhaps you<\/em> can figure it out.<\/p>\n

The script<\/a> doesn’t name the comic, as the stage directions only say, “Alvy as a child sits at the table eating soup and reading a comic book while his father sits on the sofa reading the paper.”<\/p>\n

We don’t get the exact year this is happening, only the statement in a voiceover that, “I was brought up in Brooklyn during World War II.”<\/p>\n

And no clues are given within the film itself as to genre of comic book, though a description of a deleted scene<\/a> reveals that when young Alvy skips school by pretending to be sick, a cousin “looks after him by reading war comic books to him.”<\/p>\n

So there you have it. Any experts out there in World War II-era war comics who can look at the open issue above and recognize from the configuration of panels what Alvy Singer is reading?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was watching the opening of Annie Hall recently, and was immediately distracted by a comic book Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer is seen reading in a flashback. Distracted because, whenever I see a comic in a movie or on TV, I’m immediately overcome by a desire to know what that comic is, and whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,88,636],"class_list":["post-18652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-comics","tag-movies","tag-woody-allen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18652"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18665,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18652\/revisions\/18665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}