Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), also known simply as Scary Monsters, is the fourteenth studio album by David Bowie, released in September 1980 by RCA Records. It was his final studio album for the label and his first following the so-called Berlin Trilogy of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger (1977–79). Though considered very significant in artistic terms, the trilogy had proven less successful commercially. With Scary Monsters, however, Bowie achieved what biographer David Buckley called "the perfect balance"; as well as earning critical acclaim, the album peaked at No. 1 in the UK and restored Bowie's commercial standing in the US.

Although the album is commonly referred to as Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), in keeping with the song title, and the album title as written on the front and back covers of the LP is Scary Monsters . . . . . and Super Creeps, the album is identified simply as Scary Monsters on the LP spine and disc label.

Album production

According to co-producer Tony Visconti, David Bowie's method on Scary Monsters was somewhat less experimental and more concerned with achieving a commercially viable sound than had been the case with his recent releases; to that end the composer spent more time on his own developing lyrics and melodies before recording, rather than improvising music in the studio and making up words at the last minute. Aside from one cover, Tom Verlaine's "Kingdom Come", all tracks would be credited to Bowie alone, unlike the 'Berlin Trilogy' where there was an increasing amount of input from his collaborators.

Disney Princess

Disney Princess is a media franchise owned by The Walt Disney Company. Created by Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney in the early 2000s, the franchise features a line-up of fictional female protagonists who have appeared in various Disney franchises.

The franchise does not, as its name might suggest, include all princess characters from the whole of Disney-owned media, but rather refers to specific characters from the company's animated films. As of 2015 the eleven characters considered part of the franchise are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel and Merida. The franchise has released dolls, sing-along videos, apparel, home decor, toys and a variety of other products featuring the Disney Princesses.

History and conception

"Standing in line in the arena [of a Disney on Ice show], I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses...They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, "'O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.'"

Spider-Man

Spider-Man is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics existing in its shared universe. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko, and first appeared in the anthology comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962) in the Silver Age of Comic Books. Lee and Ditko conceived the character as an orphan being raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and as a teenager, having to deal with the normal struggles of adolescence in addition to those of a costumed crime-fighter. Spider-Man's creators gave him super strength and agility, the ability to cling to most surfaces, shoot spider-webs using wrist-mounted devices of his own invention, which he calls "web-shooters", and react to danger quickly with his "spider-sense", enabling him to combat his foes.

When Spider-Man first appeared in the early 1960s, teenagers in superhero comic books were usually relegated to the role of sidekick to the protagonist. The Spider-Man series broke ground by featuring Peter Parker, the high school student behind Spider-Man's secret identity and with whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" young readers could relate. While Spider-Man had all the makings of a sidekick, unlike previous teen heroes such as Bucky and Robin, Spider-Man had no superhero mentor like Captain America and Batman; he thus had to learn for himself that "with great power there must also come great responsibility"—a line included in a text box in the final panel of the first Spider-Man story but later retroactively attributed to his guardian, the late Uncle Ben.

Joker

Joker may refer to:

Common meanings

Fictional characters

In print

In film and television

Snow White

"Snow White" is a German fairy tale known across much of Europe and is today one of the most famous fairy tales worldwide. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales. It was titled in German: Sneewittchen (in modern orthography Schneewittchen) and numbered as Tale 53. The Grimms completed their final revision of the story in 1854.

The fairy tale features such elements as the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, the glass coffin, matricide, filicide, and the characters of the Evil Queen, Snow White's evil stepmother, the huntsman, a beautiful princess named Snow White into a sleeping enchantment, a handsome prince and the seven dwarfs. The seven dwarfs were first given individual names in the 1912 Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and then given different names in Walt Disney's 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Grimm story, which is commonly referred to as "Snow White", should not be confused with the story of "Snow White and Rose Red" (in German "Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot"), another fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm.