Author: John Ostrander

John Ostrander started his career as a professional writer as a playwright. His best known effort, Bloody Bess, was directed by Stuart Gordon, and starred Dennis Franz, Joe Mantegna, William J. Norris, Meshach Taylor and Joe Mantegna. He has written some of the most important influential comic books of the past 25 years, including Batman, The Spectre, Manhunter, Firestorm, Hawkman, Suicide Squad, Wasteland, X-Men, and The Punisher, as well as Star Wars comics for Dark Horse. New episodes of his creator-owned series, GrimJack, which was first published by First Comics in the 1980s, appear every week on ComicMix.

John Ostrander: Double Cross Over

For the past few weeks I’ve been discussing the stories contained in the upcoming volume of Suicide Squad reprints (Volume 7, The Dragon’s Horde, out December 22). I’ve been running down the stories in order but this week I’m jumping to the last story in the collection.

This last story was a tie-in issue to the War of the Gods crossover event that DC was running at that time. I’m jumping to it not because it’s my favorite story in Vol. 7 but because it isn’t.

I’ve had mixed reactions to Big Company Wide Crossovers. They do interrupt the flow of what you have planned but, OTOH, that’s like what we laughingly refer to as Real Life: big events happen and toss our best laid plans out any convenient window. It is said the gods like when mortals make plans; it gives them something to shoot at.

There are all kinds of ways of doing a crossover issue; it can be a vital chapter in the overall story, it can show how the Big Event is affecting part of the world, it can be a Red Sky story. That happened during Crisis on Infinite Earths, the granddaddy of Big Events at DC.  One of the hallmarks of the events was the red skies. An issue of an ongoing series could qualify as a “crossover issue” if it featured red skies and some person said, “Ooh! The skies are red!” Something less than a vital piece of the narrative; I was a fan and not a pro at the time and I resented it.

However, the red skies stunt underscored one of the major purposes of a crossover – to lure the reader into trying other (or all) of the books in the line. Hopefully, they’ll see a bump in sales. Most of the time, the increase doesn’t last. So – you do another crossover and so on, ad nauseam, until you get fan burn-out. And then marketing tells you to do another.

I’ve participated in all kinds of crossovers, from doing the Main Event (Legends) to tie-in issues (hopefully none of which are “red sky” issues). Some were easier than others; some were nearly impossible. One we had to co-ordinate with all the other books out that week and I wound up with that assignment since I had two or three of them.

In the story in this volume, the Squad ties into the War of the Gods event. To be honest, I don’t remember what that crossover was about. My problem with the result is that it resulted in a not very good story, let alone a good Squad story.

Captain Marvel’s… excuse me, Shazam’s… Bad, Black Adam, comes calling on the Squad. He needs some warm bodies for an attack he is planning on a temple on an island in a lake in South America guarded by were-beasts and an offshoot of Amazons who live in the Middle East. Where? Somewhere.

Waller feels they’ll need a lot of warm bodies so she recruits a fair amount. The reader at this point probably expects most of them to die and they’re not wrong. We do, however, take the opportunity to get most of the Squad back into uniform. Black Adam claims that, when you go to fight gods, ceremonial garb should be worn. (The hold-out is Deadshot who recently killed the guy wearing his costume, shooting him right between the eyes. You can understand Lawton’s reluctance; the dry-cleaning bill on that would probably be steep.)

Oh, Kim and I (well, mostly me) threw in a new character called The Writer and then killed him off. He was supposed to be a well-known DC writer who had written himself into continuity. It was strictly a gag and, frankly, a puerile one. Apologies all around.

There’s a lot of yelling and fighting and characters die; not the sort of stuff Kim and I usually did with the Squad. It’s also incomplete; at one point in the midst of the battle, Black Adam vanishes into the temple followed by a few Squad members. Shortly afterwards, the island and the temple blow up. Why? Who knows. What’s in the Temple? Doesn’t tell you here. What was Black Adam’s agenda (he definitely had one)? To be told somewhere else.

There’s a block of white space on the bottom of the last page of the story in which the reader was informed where to go for the next thrilling chapter. The reader of this volume doesn’t have that and so they are left with an incomplete story with big gaps in it. And it’s the last story in this volume as well and I think leaves a somewhat sour taste in the mouth.

However, it may be someone’s favorite story. Years ago, I was on a panel at a comic book convention and was asked what was the story I’d written that I wished I could unwrite. I named it and ridiculed it and some poor guy in the front row looked stricken and said “But that’s my favorite story!” If this story was one of your favorite’s, I apologize.

But I have to be honest; it ain’t one of mine.

John Ostrander Is Getting His Redux In Line!

This week we’ll continue with my commentary on the latest collection of my run of Suicide Squad stories, # 7, The Dragon’s Horde. This one will be out just a few days before Christmas making it a perfect last-minute Christmas gift. Well, for some pretty strange people on your Christmas list, I’ll grant you. Once again, although I feel foolish in saying it, the Spoiler Flag is flying although the stories are about two decades old.

Last week we explored the first story in the volume which was the 50th issue celebration. That had everyone, living and dead, from the Squad in it. The next story, Fractured Image, focuses down to mainly just Deadshot. There are others in the story but the main plot centers on Floyd Lawton.

After a major storyline with lots of characters in it, Kim Yale (my wife and co-writer) and I liked to do stories complete in a single issue with a tighter focus to them. When you write an ongoing series, you need to think of the rhythm not only of a given story but of the series as a whole. You can fatigue the reader if you have too many Big Big Big stories with Action Action Action. It’s why we used to do Personal File stories in the Squad maybe once a year; focus on ongoing subplots and individual characterization. This issue isn’t quite a Personal File but it comes close.

Among other subplots, we advanced the connection between Eve Eden (Nightshade) and Tom Tresser (Nemesis). The two always had an attraction for each other but the time never seemed right; it gets right in this story. On a more significant note, Count Vertigo has a conversation with Deadshot that will linger for the rest of the series. Werner Vertigo is manic depressive and had recently been under the thrall of Poison Ivy in which his soul, as he puts it, no longer felt his own. He can’t live that way should it happen again. For reasons he doesn’t go into here, he can’t commit suicide so he wants to know if Lawton will put a bullet in Vertigo’s brain if Werner asks him. Lawton has no problem with that but warns Vertigo to be serious if he asks Deadshot to do it because he will.

The main story spins out of another subplot that we had been spinning for awhile. (Kim and I could nurse a subplot along for more than a year.) Lawton and Captain Boomerang had made a trip Down Under to Harkness’s old stomping grounds when they were summoned back to join the Squad on a mission. Because of Boomerbutt, the two missed their plane. As a result, their luggage got lost – including Lawton’s costume and wrist magnums.

Deadshot is not amused.

At the start of the issue, we discover the costume has been found and recovered – by a luggage handler in France named Marc Pilar who was described as a nothing working in the fringes of the mob. Lawton flies to Marseilles, France, to deal with the imposter and recover his property but there is a real question as to whether or not he can kill “himself.” Lawton had always been described as having a death wish but I never felt he was out to commit suicide. He just didn’t care if he lived or died. Now he is being hunted by “Deadshot”; will he let himself be killed by his alternate persona?

At this time in the run of Suicide Squad, I had decided it would be more realistic to take the Squad out of their costumes and code names. They were supposed to be a covert action group and, as such, should not be drawing undue attention to themselves. In theory.

I now look back at this decision as a mistake. These are comics and the costumes and codenames are a major part of the visuals. I think we started to hemorrhage readers at this point and it would help lead to the book’s cancellation about a year and a half later. Any book that’s more than five years old is going to start losing readership but this choice may have helped.

Nonetheless, I like this story a lot. It’s fair to say that Deadshot was one of the Squad “trinity” (along with Waller and Captain Boomerang) who were never going to get killed. Oh, they occasionally got shot just to make the readers think we might kill them but it was never going to happen. I just enjoyed playing with them too much.

Next time: when the Squad got silly.

John Ostrander: Suicide Squad Redux – The Dragon’s Hoard

It feels a little silly to be issuing a spoiler warning for a story that’s more than twenty years old but it’s entirely possible that there are folks out there who have never read the story described below. I’ll need to discuss some plot points and twists so if you don’t want to know ‘em, avoid this week’s column. Spoiler warning issued.

December 22 will see the publication of the seventh volume in the reprint series of my Suicide Squad, just in time for last minute holiday giving. See? Sometimes it does pay to wait until the last minute to shop.

This will probably be the penultimate volume in this reprint series as there are only a few more issues to gather. Kim Yale was once again my co-writer. I’m taking this opportunity to re-read these stories myself and over the next few columns I’ll comment on them, as I’ve done with some previous volumes.

The title tale is the biggest one in the volume but, as not unusual, is not the only story. The first one reprints issue 50 which was extra-sized. I’m of two minds about anniversary issues. Certainly, you want to celebrate the longevity of the given title but sometimes setting it up can throw off the whole pacing of the series. That happened with GrimJack and maybe the Spectre; you can wind up treading narrative water trying to get to an anniversary issue.

However, the Squad 50th issue worked.

Kim’s and my goal was to take as many story points that we had in the early days, especially issue 1, and re-work them into a new narrative. That can be difficult when you’ve spent as much time killing off your characters as Kim and I did. Basic background on the Squad; the series was created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru and ran for five issues of the Brave and the Bold. The first Squad was a team of four: leader Captain Rick Flag, medic Karin Grace, and scientists Jess Bright and Hugh Evans. Rick and Karin had fallen in love but felt compelled to keep it a secret since the two scientists were also in love with Karin. It could’ve gotten kind of kinky but this was 1959.

The element that I took for the new Squad was that the old one fell apart on a disastrous mission to Tibet. Bright and Evans found out about Rick and Karin and were pissed at being played for chumps. They died falling into a chasm during an attack by a Yeti. Karin had a breakdown and wouldn’t see Rick anymore.

Rick and Karin were both part of the new series but by issue 49 both had died. Rick would get better and return but for issue 50’s purposes, he was still dead. However, we revealed that they had a son; Rick was never aware of it and Karin blocked the boy’s birth from her memory during her breakdown.

The incident triggering the plot is that the boy has been kidnapped by a zombie like character named Koschei the Deathless. During the story, it’s revealed that Koschei is actually Jess Bright who had survived the fall into the chasm but loss his nose, lips, toes and fingers to frostbite before being rescued by the Chinese. He later winds up with the Russians where he becomes Koschei.

Unaware that both are dead, Jess wants revenge on Rick and Karin and, having run afoul of the new Squad since becoming Koschei he also wants them dead. To this end he has resurrected members of the Squad who were killed on missions by using mechanical implants at the base of their skulls. Oh, and I should mention that Koschei has also died but, using the same technology, walks and talks and plans terrible revenge.

So we have the Suicide Squad up against the Zombie Squad which makes for some fun visuals and match ups. The climax takes place in a fake Quraci airport that figured into the first story.

Yeah, it all does sound convoluted, but I think it all works in context of the actual story.

One of the flaws in issue 50 is that it concludes rather quickly without a lot of space for visuals but that’s a flaw I sometimes have as a writer; I don’t always pace everything as well as I might. All things considered, however, I think it is a good story and covers the anniversary tropes pretty well. It even ends with a surprisingly tender moment for Amanda Waller. It also gets this reprint off to a good start, I think, although you folks are the ones who have the real say.

We’ll continue this next week as we look at the next story or two. Ciao for now.

John Ostrander: Forces for Change

By now, everyone has heard (or should have heard) about the sexual depredations of film producer Harvey Weinstein (and James Toback, Kevin Spacey and others of their ilk). This follows revelations of the sexual depredations of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly (seriously, what can you do that commands a $32 million settlement?). And everyone in all the other walks of life who have been playing predator.

The constant refrain that has been heard is that this kind of stuff has been going on out in Hollywood since there has been a Hollywood. Among the reasons that there have been so few direct accusations is that all the predators have been powerful men who could really exact retribution. And the fact that the women speaking out would be shamed, discounted, and not believed. And they would literally never work in that town again.

That’s changed. Women are coming out in droves, speaking up, making themselves heard. Makes no mistake – Weinstein, Ailes, and O’Reilly were extremely powerful individuals. The women have spoken up anyway and it’s the men who have, justifiably, suffered.

Why now? What makes this era different than eras in the past?

There are a lot of different reasons and possibilities but I would like to offer one that, at least in part, contributes. That is our own “pop culture.”

We have seen recently the rise of the strong woman hero or lead. Witness two Star Wars movies, both Episode 7 and the stand alone, Rogue One. Episode 7 not only centered around Rey but Princess Leia is now General Leia, a full and equal commander of the Resistance. And, behind the scenes, you have Kathleen Kennedy, who is head honcho of the whole Lucasfilm legacy.

Rogue One centers on Jyn Erso, the daughter of one of the principal designers of the Death Star and the main person responsible for obtaining the plans to the battle station that will enable the good guys to destroy it and save the galaxy.

And we have also had this year an amazing Wonder Woman, not only played to perfection by Gal Gadot but directed by Patty Jenkins. lt’s unheard that a woman would get the opportunity to helm such a big ticket film and Ms. Jenkins really delivered. Thank Hera both are returning for the sequel!

It extends these days to TV as well with Supergirl who not only gives us a Maid of Steel who may be stronger than her cousin, the Man of Steel, but shows women in so many different roles, including a very strong and positive lesbian couple.

I’m not forgetting Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games movies or Ripley in the Alien movies, or Hermione in the Harry Potter films or Buffy, the redoubtable Vampire Slayer and many others.

My point is this: seeing positive and strong heroes who look like you is important and they need to be seen on a regular basis. Will and Grace had gay characters in it and, because of the show’s popularity, they are invited into peoples’ living rooms every week. It normalizes meeting LGBTQ folk for straight people who may never have knowingly met one.

In the same way, movies and shows such as Wonder Woman or Star Wars or Supergirl gives us the image of women heroes who are strong, brave, resourceful and are examples to other women and to men as well. You need to see what you want to be, something the black community knows very well.

I’m not claiming that the pop culture examples I’ve given are the main reason that women now are speaking up against the Weinsteins of this world. However, I think they are a contributing factor. No single film or TV show alone but all taken together they contribute to the change. Make no mistake; “pop culture” is a potent force in our society. It entertains and bypasses our brain to reach the heart – and that’s where real change comes from.

John Ostrander: From This Nose… A Hero?

I’m pretty excited!

Recent doctor visits revealed that three spots on my otherwise remarkable countenance were basal cell carcinoma, a.k.a. skin cancer. Okay, that’s not exciting. It’s really a bit of a downer, although if you’re going to have cancer, this kind of skin cancer may be the one to have since it is (by all reports) the most curable.

The treatment strategy has been decided: high level bursts of radiation. Okay, that’s not exciting either. Also a bit of a bummer as the possible side effects include vomiting which is also a bit of a bummer.

However, it is a well-known fact of comic book physics (especially MU physics) that radiation in some form may be the greatest single cause of mutations that result in super-powers! Pretty spiffy, eh?

So I’m wondering what sort of super-powers I might get. I know that I speculated like this once before but that was just an injection for a heart catheterization or something. I don’t remember and I can’t be bothered to look it up. Besides, it was something small like a particle for tracking purposes.

Obviously, since I never got any superpowers it wasn’t enough to trigger a transformation… and boy-howdy I still feel gypped! But this time it’s going high level burst of radiation! High level bursts, ladies and gentlemen! (I think that’s what they said.) As Nietche once said, what radiation bursts that don’t kill me makes me super-powered. You can look it up!

I have long posited that the powers a character receives are based on aspects of his personality or character and if that isn’t true, it should be.

So, working from this principle, I’ve been trying to guess what might my powers be.

I’m a writer so the ability to become invisible and observe people might be really useful. I’d would say it would allow me to sneak into a women’s locker room unobserved but this is the era of Harvey Weinstein and that’s not funny.

Maybe my power would be to step into other people’s lives such as Deadman or Dr. Sam Beckett (and while we’re on the topic of Quantum Leap, why – in the era of reboots and relaunches – haven’t they brought that show back?). As a writer, I invent other people’s lives; this power could be pretty useful, no? At my age, I could become OldMan with the power to get those kids off my lawn!

However, none of these powers would get me into either The Avengers or the Justice League, let alone my own solo movie. That and action figures are where the real money is. Not that I’m in this for money but, you know, what could it hurt, hmm?

Which makes me think I shouldn’t just limit myself to super-heroes. If I’m going to be in it for the money, I should consider super-villains. I’m good at writing them; they’re usually a lot more fun and they get all the best lines. Yeah, they get put in prison a lot but they never seem to stay there.

I have a fraternal twin brother so maybe I could be my own evil twin (not that my brother Joe is my evil twin; it’s more like I’m his goofy twin). I could be a super-hero by day and a super-villain by night; I could be my own arch-enemy! And neither personality is aware that they share a body with their foe. That might be fun.

Of course, fate could be cruel and instead of giving me super-powers, the radiation makes my nose fall off. Still, even then, I could be Lee Marvin as Tim Strawn in the movie Cat Ballou and wear a silver nose tied to my face. Or Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera. Maybe my nose will become bright red and I’ll become JohnO the Red Nosed Writer.

Naw. Fate won’t be that cruel. We already have Donald Trump.

 

John Ostrander: Alt Universes

Pencilers are not always satisfied. Maybe they’re never satisfied. They’ll take a page or panel that they’ve drawn and if they don’t like it, erase the sucker and do it over. If they do it too often, it gets all gray and muddy. I got a page to dialogue once that was erased so often that I couldn’t really tell what the figures were doing. Based on the plot, I threw on a lot of sound effects and hoped for the best.

You can do that as a writer as well. You can worry a plot or an idea to death, to the point where nothing really makes sense. At that point, it would almost be better to scrap it and start over.

Comic book companies (we’re talking about DC and Marvel) can do the same thing with their universes. For decades, DC had a stable universe – to the point of static. It was easier; the stories in one book were rarely if ever connected to any other story in that book or the larger DC Universe.

Marvel changed all that; their universe was very interconnected with stories and characters from one book often appearing or referenced in another. However, they were also proud of the fact that the continuity, once laid down, didn’t change (in theory if not lf not always in practice) even when that continuity creaked and groaned with age, begging for change.

These days, the universes (and some of the characters on them) flit by, get trashed, re-written, usually in a great company-wide crossover that promises that “Nothing will ever be the same again!” I’m not saying change is not a good idea; DC’s Crisis On Infinite Earths was a landmark event that DC desperately needed at the time. Marvel desperately needed barnacles scraped off its editorial hull.

It seems to me, however, that these “events” are simply marketing ploys designed to make the reader buy as many tie-in books as necessary. They’re not born out of a need for anything but sales.

The problem (again, it seems to me) is there appears to be no plan for where they want to wind up. Even Crisis suffered from the fact that there was no clear concept of who the characters would be at the end and what the DCU would look like.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing a fine job of connecting the dots that are their movies and have had a real plan for where they were going and how each film fit into and furthered that plan. The DC Cinematic Universe… less so. They opted for dark and broody, broody, broody. Man of Steel, for any other faults it may have had, suffered from a Batmanization of its worldview.

Now Warners Bros (DC’s parent company) has announced that, in the future, not every film will fit together with the other films; in other words, like the DC Comics University of old. Some will fit together but not all and that seems to me to be a mistake. That invites confusion and there’s one thing that the general public will not appreciate is confusion.

The comics themselves, both DC and Marvel, also seem to be wrapped in confusion. It doesn’t help when the origin or the nature of the character is radically changed or the whole universe is re-stacked and changed. I think you run the serious risk of losing readers. You can erase things and redraw them so often that you turn it all to mud. You don’t grow the audience and, with the success of the superhero franchise films, you should be able to add readers. However, the event-driven books these days are not very accessible to new readers. Maybe there should be a line of a limited number of books that would be accessible and thus draw readers into the respective comic book universes. Even I, an old hand, am finding it hard to get into what’s going on. Constant change just becomes constant noise.

Find a good story. Tell it in as few issues as necessary. Otherwise, the reader starts to suspect you don’t have enough good stories to tell.

Unlike the movies.

John Ostrander: “A Legacy Of Spies”

A Legacy Of Spies by John LeCarréI’m a huge (or as our president would say, YUGE) fan of John le Carré, the English writer specializing in espionage stories. le Carre’ is the pen name for David John Moore Cornwell, who was a member of the Secret Intelligence System or MI6 so he brings a great deal of first hand knowledge to his work.

le Carré’s agents are far more realistically drawn than James Bond or Jason Bourne. Don’t get me wrong; I loves me some Bond and Bourne but, honestly, I’m far more drawn to the very morally murky world that le Carré depicts. You can see that influence in GrimJack but especially with the Suicide Squad. This is particularly true with the first multi issue Squad arc, “Mission to Moscow”. Bureaucratic screw-ups result in the mission’s failure with one dead and a member of the team captured while the rest barely escape. The feeling is meant to be realistic and the morality dubious. Very le Carré and that was by design.

le Carré’s most famous book, I think, has to be The Spy Who Came In From the Cold which was his third book, first published in 1963. Like much of le Carre’s work, it’s rather bleak but its success enabled le Carré to devote himself full time to writing.

le Carré’s latest book, A Legacy of Spies, revisits the events around of that earlier tome, giving us new background and insights to its characters and events. The legacy deals with the consequences of those acts as the offspring of two of the main characters, Alec Leamas and Liz Gold, bring a lawsuit against MI6 and some of the people involved, especially our narrator, Peter Guilliam, and George Smiley, Peter’s superior and le Carré’s spymaster and protagonist through a series of books.

As always, the book is suffused with feelings of regret and betrayal and not just in the matters of espionage. Smiley’s wayward wife, Ann, regularly betrayed him with affairs, one in particular having terrible consequences. Loyalty is important but more on an individual basis; the Service does not always share that loyalty to those who serve it, usually at such great cost. The story is set long after the events of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and there is serious doubt if the whole thing was worth it. The participants, and the reader, now see things in context. What was achieved, and at what cost, and was the cost worth it?

As I noted, Peter Guillam is the narrator of the story but it is also told through official reports and documents of that earlier era, like extended flashbacks. I’m not sure that always works; flashbacks can take the reader out of the “now” of the narrative. In this book, it can sometimes get a bit dry. However, it can be argued that it also serves the storyline and the themes.

le Carré is an old master and this is the work of an old master; assured, in full command of the material and his own gifts. Does the new reader need to have read The Spy Who Came In From the Cold or the other two le Carré’s novels – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Smiley’s People? Technically, no – all the information you need to understand A Legacy of Spies is in the book itself, which is as it should be.

However, it is filled with “spoilers”. The book reveals things that the reader perhaps really should experience first hand for themselves. If you haven’t read the other books, I recommend doing that first. They’re very worthwhile in their own right and, IMO, makes the full experience in A Legacy of Spies far richer. That said, the book is well worth reading on its own, the work of a master still showing his mastery.

 

 

 

 

 

John Ostrander: Face Front, True Believers!

You may be wondering just what the heck is going on here with my face.

Alt. Explanation 1: You should see the other guy. Be-YOO-Ti-Full! Not a mark on him! It was a privilege to see him work!

Alt. Explanation 2: I leaped out of the second floor of the burning house, the kitten cradled in my arms and I landed on my face.

Alt. Explanation 3: Don’t piss off Mary. Which I may have just done. (Just Joking, Dear!)

Alt. Explanation 4: My face got nibbled by piranha. (Don’t ask.)

Alt. Explanation 5: I had some minor growths on my face that my doctor wanted to be checked out and so the skin doctor nicked them off and sent them to the lab. Probably not cancer but we’ll know for sure in about two weeks.

So… which one sounds like the true explanation? That’s right – the boring one. #5. However unlikely the other four sound, they are potentially the more entertaining stories, true or not.

You see, I am a professional liar. It’s how I make my living. I make up stories and try to make them seem/feel real so that other people buy them. Companies pay me to do this.

The lies I tell (okay, the “fictions”) are in service to the truth or to a truth. They have to feel true, feel real, to the reader at least for the duration of the experience. Hey, Jesus did it. He spoke to them (the crowds) in parables and without parables, he did not speak to them. Matthew 13:34. You can look it up. The events in the parables never happened; they’re lies – in service to truths Jesus was trying to teach. It’s the same in all religions.

I include “non-fiction” in this. The authors aren’t telling the whole truth – they focus on certain events, emphasizing these, de-emphasizing those, depending on the narrative they’re telling. They are after the (a) truth and we need those liars who can take the mountain of events and find context and meaning – truth – in them.

That’s the big difference between artists and (shall we say) certain government spokespersons – the artist is after the truth and the spokesperson is trying to sell something. That’s a whole different kind of lie. It is, as often as not, intended to obscure or confuse what is true while the artist is trying to get at some form of the truth, to reveal it. Intent is everything.

The intent of four of the five explanations for the photograph of my face is to amuse you and entertain myself. Those of you who know me and Mary know she would never hit me except once with a plastic whiffle bat.

That’s a good story, a fun lie, but for another time.

John Ostrander: The Ultimate Illegal Alien

I’m indebted to Fox News anchor (and blogger) Todd Starnes. About two weeks ago – okay, I’m late to the party again – he posted a commentary entitled “Superman defends illegals against angry American.”

In his complaint, Starnes gripes about a scene in the most recent Action Comics where “Superman comes to the rescue of a group of illegal aliens – under attack from a white guy wearing an American flag bandana and waving around a machine gun… Instead of rounding up the illegals and flying them back to where they came from, the Man of Steel snatches the white guy and with a menacing look snarls, ‘The only person responsible for the blackness smothering your soul – is you.’”

This upset Mr. Starnes no end and has provided me with grist for this week’s column.

I could start by pointing out that the incident is fiction (or fake news) and that Superman is not real but I’ll give Mr. Starnes the benefit of the doubt and assume he already knows that. Although the guy is the host of Fox News and Commentary so maybe one shouldn’t assume. But we will.

Superman stops the assailant from killing these people (the alleged illegals). And this is a bad thing – because? Maybe Mr. Starnes is conflating the First and Second Amendments in the Bill of Rights and suggesting that the use of the machine gun on illegals is an expression of free speech.

Okay, I’m joking. Sorta.

This is what Superman does. This is what Superman is supposed to do. Defend people (and they are people) like these. Would it be better if he let them die at the hands of this asshole no matter how good of a reason he thinks he has? That is Superman’s job. Deporting them afterward? He’s not I.C.E. – that’s not his job. He has no legal status to do that any more than I do or Mr. Starnes has.

What I’m really indebted to Mr. Starnes for is his observation “Clark Kent is technically an illegal alien – a native of Krypton.” (Okay, technically Kal-El is the illegal alien.) Supes came to this planet, this country, in a rocket and was found by the Kents in a field who then adopted him. No border guards or checkpoints. No visa. No green card.

Who better to symbolize what an immigrant, legal or otherwise, brings to this country? Kal-El’s strengths, his abilities, his character has immeasurably aided his adopted country. He represents Truth, Justice, and the American Way in all the best senses. He is not a rapist or a drug dealer or a terrorist as some would have us believe. Superman represents the best of immigrants, legal or illegal – and us.

So, thank you, Mr. Starnes, for this timely reminder. The Man of Steel is indeed an illegal alien. We should try to make him the face of the illegals and remember not just his powers and abilities but the fact that he also from small-town America and that Superman is a good man.

 

John Ostrander: The Family of Sociopaths

Commercials are the point of commercial TV. I realize that, for those of you who do only streaming services, this concept may seem a bit foreign, but your monthly fees take the place of paid commercials, assuming the streaming service isn’t double-dipping.

Advertisers buy time to pitch products and/or services and/or whatever and the amount that the channel can charge is based on how many people are watching and which demographic groups those people represent. That’s why an ad during the Superbowl costs so much.

You probably knew all that.

I tend to mentally surf commercials; they’re on but I’m tuned out. Some I wake up for because either there’s some element I like or it really annoys me and I want to throw something at the TV. An example of the former is a commercial with Mark Wahlberg as the spokesman at the end of which his mirror image turns into Sir Patrick Stewart who is, as he says, “more handsome, more talented… and more British.” All of which he is. JK Simmons had been doing a series of commercials for Farmer’s Insurance; it’s always a pleasure to watch JK Simmons. And their theme is memorably goofy: “We are Farmers, bum-da-bumbum bum bum bum.” I also love watching Sam Jackson in just about anything but I won’t get into his credit card commercials until he says “What have you got in your motherfucking wallet?”

I do wonder at the use of CGI English spokesowls. Several companies have them. Why? Why all at the same time? There’s also the use of pieces of classical music in the background of more than a few commercials. I often don’t understand why the use of a particular piece of music in a given commercial but maybe I’m not supposed to understand.

I’m also not a fan of the commercials that try to guilt you, whether it’s to adopt a pet or help a child in Africa or somewhere else. I appreciate that there is a great need but they really hammer on it. It’s gotten so that the moment I hear Sarah McLachlan start singing, I switch the channel. And I like Sarah McLachlan!

PBS pledge nights also fall under this truck.

And then there are the commercials that I hate so much, I remember them only so I will never use the company, product, or service being promoted. One is a car parts company that uses animation so cheap and primitive it hurts my eyes. Another is for a travel booking website that has a kindergarten teacher who is totally inept at her job. The kids have completely taken over the classroom and are running riot and all this forlorn cow can do is moan about how she is looking forward to her vacation. Put her on a permanent vacation. She doesn’t belong within five miles of a classroom. Children will die under her watch. She’s the Betsy DeVos of the kindergarten set. I’d change the channel if it wasn’t so much effort to find the TV remote.

The worst commercial is the one for another insurance company. It’s a family – mother, father, ten-year-old boy. We’re in a suburban front yard, Mom has just gotten back from who knows where (I suspect a covert affair) and Dad is holding a cloth to his face. Son reports that Dad got hit in the face with a swing (I suspect the son was on it at the time). Mom groans: there goes our Hawaii vacation. Dad says he really needs to go to the hospital. “There goes the air conditioner,” Mom sighs. Kid votes for going to Hawaii; Mom laughs and agrees, “Hawaii!” Dad appears to reluctantly cave in to the pressure.

This is a family of sociopaths. I’m supposed to identify with them? Please. That’s the problem with a lot of commercials for me – the person using/touting the product is a moron, an asshole, or a creep. Why should I want to buy what they want me to buy?

I understand that, in many cases, I am not the target audience. I can’t help wondering who is. Does the target audience find this funny? Will it entice them to buy the product or use the service? Please tell me it’s not so. I don’t want to totally despair on America.