Articles by dennis-oneil
Tue Oct 9, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Darkness in Four Colors
The Four-Color Answer #35
If I want to be reminded of a very good reason for being where I am for the next six weeks or so, all I need do is look out the window. The foliage is always glorious. I wish I were a poet, or Henry David Thoreau, or James Lee Burke, so I could properly celebrate the changing of the leaves.
But I’m not. What I am is a guy who’s had a lot of reason to think about superheroes and – here comes a stretch – they’re changing, too, just like the leaves.
Well, maybe not just like. Actually, whether you think these überpowered gallants are getting glorious or dreary as dishwater is emphatically a matter of opinion. If you’ve already made up your mind about this … permission to skip to another column granted. If you haven’t … some remarks.
They’re getting darker, these superheroes. Grim, tormented, almost tragic. No doubt about that. Just read a few comics, or, if time and/or budgetary constraints don’t allow for a trek to your nearest pop art dealer, turn on the television.
Because one of the major changes in the superhero saga is that they’re no longer the exclusive property of comics (or low-budget film and video enterprises.) There are the big budget theatrical movies, of course. And television is rife with superheroes, and I’m not referring to the Saturday morning kiddie television ghetto, either; I’m talking prime-time network stuff. It’s about money, as it usually is.
Tue Oct 2, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Plugging No-Face
The Four-Color Answer #34
Imagine me jumping up and down and pointing to myself and waving a book and yelling, Buy this you gotta buy this it’ll make you happy and rich and solve all your problems and give you Jessica Alba’s phone number it’s the greatest thing since similes…
Now imagine me reverently kissing the hem of George Bush’s garment.
One event is as likely to occur as the other.
I tell you this because soon I will mention a collection of stuff I wrote before some of you were born and I wouldn’t want anyone to think for a nanosecond that I was recommending you buy it. We Missourians who have attained a certain degree of maturity do not so demean ourselves. (We sip our tea and doze in the afternoon sun instead.)
With that caveat…
Yesterday a Santa’s helper from Brown dropped an early Christmas (or Halloween) present on the front stoop, a box of graphic novel-format volumes titled Zen and Violence. Now, somewhere on the space-time continuum between my typing these words and you reading them, they will be inspected by Mike Gold, who is the editor of this department and also edited the aforementioned collection of comic books. Let us pause to consider that maybe the space-time continuum is, indeed, curved, and then enter a timid demurral regarding that title, Zen and Violence.
Not mine. Not Mike’s, as far as I know. My first problem is this: there isn’t much Zen in those pages. A smidgen, maybe, but when I did the stories I may have thought I knew more about Zen than I did. I’m not sure how the series came to be identified with Eastern thought, but it did, and if it does for someone else what the works of Kerouac and Ginsberg did for me – point to the Something Else out there – then maybe I should shut up and smile and bow and retire.
My second problem: Yes, there is plenty of violence in the stories, or action, as some prefer to euphemize it. These were, after all, published as superhero comics in 1986-1987 and nobody back then was buying superhero comics to study philosophy, nor should they have been; violence…er – action was part of the package. Nor do I want to be snooty about it; violence has some valid dramatic uses (and I guess action does, too.) But I don’t want anyone to think I recommend violence as an all-purpose problem solver, and putting the word in a book title might give that impression.
Okay, okay, I’m being paranoid…
RECOMMENDED READING: You want to know something about Zen? Brad Warner’s your man. Warner is a musician, monster movie fan and Zen priest and that, my friends, is a resume a lot of us would be proud to call our own. His latest book is called Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, Good, Truth, Sex, Death & Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye. The title, for once, says it all.
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Sep 25, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O'NEIL: On Writing Comics, Part Two
The Four-Color Answer #33
Last week, before I so rudely interrupted us, we were discussing the merits of writing comic books using the “full script” method, in which the writer produces a first cousin to a movie script, with visual directions as well as dialogue and other verbal stuff. Now, we should examine he advantages of working in what has come to be called the “Marvel style.” With this method, you will remember, the writer first does a plot and the penciller renders this into a visual narrative. That’s conveyed to the writer who then adds dialogue and captions and, often, indicates where the balloons and captions should be placed by drawing them onto copies of the artwork.
The main one is that, if the penciller is a good storyteller, he can do the writer’s work for him by figuring out pacing and kinds of shots. When Marvel’s Stan Lee adopted this way of operating, he was working with such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, men who were already masters of their craft. Stan didn’t have to worry about such bothers as a boring but vital plot element being eliminated or the pacing of the story being off so that a lot if crammed into the last pages, maybe not leaving enough room for copy. And – when you work with really good artists there’s always the possibility that they’ll improve on your visual storytelling. They will, in other words, make you look good and who doesn’t like that?
When I first worked for Stan in the 60s, our plots were pretty terse, a couple-three paragraphs or even less. But remember, we were usually collaborating with highly experienced artists. When I last left Marvel, in 1986, the plots were generally much longer and closely detailed.
Then there’s Doug Moench, whose plots for 22-page comic books might run 25 pages and include swatches of dialogue. I once asked Doug why he didn’t just do full scripts and save himself some hassle. His reply was that sometimes art inspired him, gave him a character twist or bit of dialogue he would not have thought of otherwise. And this procedure also functions as a fail-safe mechanism – if something isn’t in the art that needs to be there, or if something is unclear, Doug can write to remedy the problem.
Here, my friends, we have a man who is both conscientious and a complete pro.
For a while some years ago, the Marvel style ruled – or at least would have won popularity contests. Now, I’m told by working comic bookers, the full-plot method is much the favored. I don’t know why. It might have something to do with the fact that now, as in the past, deadlines are a major editorial hair-grayer and the full script method is a tiny bit easier to manage because it involves fewer exchanges of material and maybe a little less paperwork. Or maybe, like so much else, these things are determined by evolutionary cycles I can’t quite wrap my brain around.
RECOMMENDED READING: Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Sep 18, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: On Writing Comics
The Four-Color Answer #32
I don’t remember a lot about the first time I ever did a cable TV show. It must have been in the 1980s because I know I was working for Marvel, and it was probably on one of those public access channels which still exist but never seem to have anything on them. The evening’s host might have been Carl Gafford. I do recall, to a certainty, that my co-guest was Jo Duffy and we were debating a topic with, surely, international if not cosmic consequence. To wit: which is the better technique for producing comic book scripts, the so-called Marvel method or the full-script method.
Why the networks, or at least the New York Times, did not report this momentous colloquy I know not. Just another example of the ineptitude of American journalism, I suppose.
Jo had the Marvel side of the dialogue and I championed the full-script side. I have no idea what either of us said or did, but it’s now years later and we’re both still alive, so it couldn’t have been too bloody.
Which brings us, via a prolix pre-digression, to this week’s topic. I put it to you, my friend: which is better, Marvel style or full script?
But before you answer, let’s be sure we’re all talking about the same things and that’ll require some definitions. Here we go.
Tue Sep 11, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O'NEIL: Comics Education
The four-Color Answer #31
If you’re a dedicated reader of movie end credits, the name Michael Uslan might be familiar to you. If it isn’t…let’s remedy that.
If you know of Mike, it’s probably because he was executive producer of all the recent Batman flicks, including Catwoman and The Dark Knight, coming to a theater near you next June. He’s also been involved in producing a lot of other stuff for screens both large and small. And he’s done considerable writing, some of which was for comic books. I first met him when he was a law student at Indiana State University in Bloomington, where he was teaching the first accredited college course in comics and a related correspondence course; he was nice enough to invite me to meet his class.
Mike’s latest project – and here we come to this week’s real subject – is a documentary movie on comics super heroes to have its world premiere on September 15 at the Montclair Art Museum which is located, no surprise, in a town called Montclair in a state called New Jersey, a short drive or train ride from New York City. The movie screening is part of a much bigger deal, an exhibit of about 150 examples of comics art and related stuff at the museum that is currently there and is not leaving until January 13th of next year. The screening is scheduled for 4:30 in the afternoon.
And if you’re still not satisfied, if that isn’t enough…On October 13th the museum will shelter a panel discussion on comics which will put Mr. Uslan, Danny Fingeroth, Tom DeFalco, and me in front of anyone who cares to show up, listen, ask questions. Genuflecting and flinging rose blossoms at us are optional.
I haven’t visited the exhibit yet, but everything I know about it indicates that it’s worth going a bit out of your way to see. If you do – go out of your way to see it, that is, or even if you plan to see it without going out of your way – you might want some info. You can get it by visiting www.montclairartmuseum.org or phoning (973) 746-5555. And while I’m in reporter mode, one final thing, the museum’s address is 3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07042
I believe that at one time it would have been customary to, at this point, urge you to “be there or be square.” Aren’t we glad that time is past!
And aren’t we glad that comics have come to a place where respectable institutions promote and host educational efforts on their behalf? Well, yes, with some qualification. Producing comics isn’t the informal, loosey-goosey business it once was, and so maybe a little less fun. And I, for one, am not entirely comfortable with all this respectability. I’m not happy that pretty young women behind checkout counters call me sir, either. But better respectability than oblivion and, come to think of it, better being called sir than oblivion, too.
RECOMMENDED READING: Walden and Civil Disobedience, both by Henry David Thoreau.
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Sep 4, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: The Missouri Mafia
The Four-Color Answer #30
There we were, in Cape Girardeau, Mo. at a convention chatting with fans and signing autographs – yes, the Missouri Mafia together again.
There is an element in the preceding sentence that’s wrong. It’s the word “again.”
Before I explain, a warning: the subject of this week’s blather is so trivial, so insignificant that it does not merit a footnote in the most comprehensive of comics histories, even if that footnote is in a type font so tiny one could use it to put the whole of next year’s New York Times on the head of a pin, presumably near the dancing angels.
Where was I? Oh yeah, in southeast Missouri with Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich, being very well treated by the convention sponsor, Ken Murphy. The occasion was a reunion of the aforementioned Missouri Mafia – i.e., the three of us. I don’t know who first used the term Missouri Mafia, which Roy, in a recent email called “a dumb phrase,” or why. It was probably because we three, in the late 60s and early 70s, were working as writers at Marvel Comics (and Gary and I also wrote for Charlton) and we were not only from Missouri, we all had a connection to a particular parcel of the state. I was working as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau newspaper; Gary and Roy were childhood friends who lived in Jackson, about eight miles from Cape.
To make a story I’ve told probably hundreds of times as short as possible: Roy was editor of what was unquestionably the best comics fanzine, Alter Ego, and had just accepted a comic book job in New York. I did a story on him for the paper, a month later he sent me Stan Lee’s writer’s test, I did it and then Roy and Stan offered me a job, which I accepted. A year or two later, Roy recruited Gary and…voila! The Missouri Mafia.
The Mafia’s ranks were augmented by the eventual arrival on the scene of Steve Gerber, who, coincidentally, graduated from my alma mater.
Tue Aug 28, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: The Senator is Golden
The Four-Color Answer #29
If a man is to be judged by his enemies, Patrick Leahy is golden. He was, as was widely reported, told to do an anatomically impossible act on himself by our always-classy Vice President, the Honorable Dick Cheney, and badmouthed by James Dobson, leader of Focus on the Family. Great foes to have.
Mr. Leahy, as most of you probably know, is Senator Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, currently trying to get a couple of friends of The Honorable George W. Bush to obey the law by telling the truth and honoring subpoenas.
I like Pat Leahy’s politics and especially his humanitarianism and I liked Pat Leahy before I knew much about either because he invited me to lunch a few years ago, along with my wife and a number of other comic book guys. Senator Leahy, it turns out, is a Batman fan and not shy about saying so in public. Lunch was in the Senate dining room that day, and although my mistrust of what we’re forced to call The Establishment is reasonably sincere, I have to admit that this butcher’s kid from North St. Louis was pretty impressed with himself, sitting at a big table with a living, breathing senator, surrounded by the nation’s movers and shakers. Later, our host wrote an introduction to a collection of comic book stories and later still, had cameos in two of the Batman movies.
According to the Journal News, my local Gannett paper, and reported by ComicMix last week, the senator will have an actual part in the next batmovie, The Dark Knight, and will donate his acting pay to a children’s library in Montpelier. (No word yet on whether Cheney or Dobson will be in the cast, but don’t get your hopes up.)
I mentioned the senator’s humanitarianism, which brings me to our second encounter with him. In 1996, at the instigation of Jenette Kahn, then DC Comics’ publisher, we did some comic books about the landmine problem. Before Jenette dragooned me into a meeting full of impressive people, I hadn’t known there was such a problem. But there was, and is, and it consists of the existence of millions of small explosive devices scattered throughout the planet. In theory, their targets are soldiers, but in practice, they kill and maim many, many civilians, especially children. So the Superman guys did a book, to be translated into the appropriate languages, which showed what landmines are and what to do if you see one, and we Batman guys did a book, in English, designed to raise awareness. And that’s where we reencountered the senator. Every year, he works to help landmine victims. You don’t hear about this much, and he makes no political capital from it; having spoken with him about those victims, I’m convinced that he does what he does sincerely, because it needs doing.
Anyway, to finish the story, the senator and I eventually found ourselves sharing a rostrum as we worked to publicize our comics and the landmine problem they addressed.
I’ve done nothing about the problem since. Not so the senator, and that’s one of the reasons he’s a genuinely good guy.
I’ll bet he’ll be just fine in the movie, too.
RECOMMENDED READING: The Tipping Point
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Aug 21, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: On The Road Again
The Four-Color Answer #28
Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road is 50 years old.
“And this has exactly what to do with comics?” demands the snotty guy in the corner. Well, actually, not much, but maybe if we stretch, a little something. Patience, please.
If you know people my age, or a bit younger, you may have heard On The Road stories. Mine is pretty banal: I was fairly unhappy at school (I was always fairly unhappy at schools, except when I was actively miserable) and I read and had my mind altered by Kerouac’s book which is, among other things, a paean to travel and the highway. So, one morning, I went down to breakfast, borrowed about forty bucks from my father and, blowing off university exam week, got on a bus for New Orleans.
Once there, I didn’t do much: checked into a Y, hung out, walked around, had a friendly lady on Bourbon Street offer to teach me everything about life for only five dollars. I kind of guessed what she was talking about and, being the Good Catholic Boy that I was, politely declined. Then I boarded another Greyhound and went home. No hitchhiking, not that trip, though there was plenty later. (And, by the way, don’t try this at home. Hitchhiking in the 50s and 60s was not without hazards, but not nearly as dangerous as it is now.)
“Did someone mention comic books? This column, this whole dern website, is supposed to be about comics.” The snotty guy in the corner again. Okay, be at peace, brother, and give me another paragraph or two.
Kerouac was, as I’m sure everyone except the guy in the corner knows, the most famous and visible member of a loose confederation of novelists, poets, and musicians that became known as The Beat Generation. I’ve never heard, or read, any of them even evidencing knowledge that comics existed. But they were contrarians that believed that most conventional wisdom was erroneous, that genuine American values involved peace and understanding and, incidentally, that maybe mainstream literary and critical folk – the Establishment – did not own the last word on artistic matters.
Jump ahead a few years to the mid-60s and here we are, on college campuses, and what are the bright rebels reading? Well, a few – those who still wear ties on Sunday – are still delving into Catcher In The Rye, and a few more are grokking Stranger In A Strange Land, but the real nonconformists, the bright ones, are into comics, particularly Marvel comics.
Tue Aug 14, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Spoiler Alert!
The Four-Color Answer #27
Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Danger Will Robinson! Alarums and excursions! Better watch out, better not cry, better not pout…Beware! Mayday! Here there be dragons! Detour, there’s a muddy road ahead…
Okay, enough of that.
What I’m warning you about is the ending of The Bourne Ultimatum, now playing at a multiplex near you, recipient of good reviews, maker of serious bucks and, in the opinion of residents of this house, a pretty good popcorn flick.
Tue Aug 7, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: One Upon A Time
The Four-Color Answer #26
Once upon a time, way back, I was just a tiny bit afraid that the stepchild of American publishing wherein I labored, comics, would not be properly documented – that the right people weren’t being interviewed, the right information preserved. I needn’t have worried. Thanks largely to an army of scholars-without-portfolios – we called them fans – I think comics are likely to be the best documented art form in history. These people, and more recently the academics that involve themselves with popular culture, must have found sources of information completely unknown to me, and I applaud them for it.
Among my current sprinkling of projects is writing introductions for a collection of essays concerning what I guess we can unblushingly call the Batman mythos. More documentation and, I’d like to believe, welcome. The next intro I’ll do will be for a piece by Paul Lytle on Arkham Asylum. That name – Arkham Asylum – is familiar to Batman devotees and maybe to some folk not quite so devoted because it played a prominent part in the last mega-budget Batman movie. It is, for you who are not devotees and those who weren’t paying attention while you watched Batman Begins, the place where the criminally insane of Batman’s rollicking home town, Gotham City, are sent for incarceration and rehabilitation though, judging from results, the staff of the institution aren’t very good at either task.
But – here comes our big reveal, and I’m mostly addressing devotees, though the rest of you can stay – have you ever wondered where that distinctive name came from? Oh sure, the better read among you will recognize the word “Arkham” from H.P. Lovecraft’s tales – Arkham was the spooky burg where Lovecraft’s things went bump in the night. But who had the inspiration to associate it with the residence of Gotham’s host of loonies? I was pretty sure I knew, but, as you may remember, a couple of columns ago I trusted my memory and erred. So I sent an email. Here, in part, is the reply:
Our original conversation regarding where criminals such as the Joker and Two-Face should be incarcerated took place in March of 1974, when you and Len Wein were guest speakers at Jim Dever's and my comics history course at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts). The first mention of Arkham was in your Two-Face story that appeared in Batman #258, which was cover dated September, 1974.
The JCH that signs the letter stands for Jack C. Harris, a veteran writer, editor, historian and, for the past decade, give or take, a comics writing teacher at the School of Visual Arts in lower Manhattan. Credit where it’s due – where it’s long overdue.
If Jack were here, I’d ask him to take a bow.
RECOMMENDED READING: Awareness, by Anthony de Mello. Those of you who look at this blather every week may have guessed that I’m not a huge fan of organized religion these days, largely because of the misuses to which it’s currently being put, and the book recommended above is by a Jesuit. Well, if the Jebbies who presided over my university years were like de Mello, I might lay some bucks on the alumni fund once in a while.
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Jul 31, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O'NEIL: Saturday Noon
The Four-Color Answer #25
Saturday noon, and it still hadn’t arrived. Voldemort’s work? Or the machinations of something a bit more prosaic – book ninjas, maybe, or gremlins? But no. We fretted in vain. At about three, the doorbell rang, and there he was – Mr. Delivery Man, bearing our own copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
(I don’t think a spoiler warning is really necessary at this point – is there anyone who doesn‘t know Harry’s fate? – but what the hell, consider yourself warned.)
Soon, Marifran was in bed, reading – yes – the end of the novel. I asked her if Harry survives and she said that he does. Whew. The next evening, daughter Meg phoned from Seattle. She’s already finished it, all 759 pages. Do all bank vice-presidents spend their weekends reading?
What kind of people are these? What sort of mutated family did I marry into?
Me, I plan to wait for the movie. But I’m glad the book’s doing well. Better that gobs of money go to J.K. Rowling, who comports herself with some dignity, than to yet another deluded, sad young woman who calls attention to her desperate self by displaying what, in gentler times, would be seen only by her mate or her gynecologist.
Of course, not everyone is profiting by Ms. Rowling’s success. Independent bookshops, in order to compete with chains and on-line venues, are selling the book at such steep discounts that their profit is slim to none. And news reports tell us that just because a lot of kids are reading the Potter series doesn’t mean that they’ll read anything else. Apparently, Harry’s sui generis and after Deathly Hallows, it’s back to the tube for many.
But surely some kids will try other printed entertainment, once Harry teaches them that what’s printed can, in fact, be entertaining. Or so those of us who worry about the future of these United States can hope. Al Gore’s new and excellent book, The Assault on Reason (which I recommended last week) tells us that “…the parts of the human brain that are central to the reasoning process are continually activated by the very act of reading printed words…the passivity associated with watching television is at the expense of activity in parts of the brain associated with abstract thought, logic, and the reasoning process…An individual who spends four and a half hours a day watching television is likely to have a very different pattern of brain activity from an individual who spends four and a half hours reading.”
So, my understanding of Mr. Gore is, reading is not virtuous because it’s what grandma and grandpa did for fun, but because it stimulates a part of the brain that may be both underused and useful.
Is Harry Potter our new, albeit fictional, messiah? Well, no. We don’t want to take it that far. But given the current crop of wannabe saviors, we could do worse.
RECOMMENDED READING: Understanding McLuhan, by W. Terrence Gordon, illustrations by Susan Willmarth.
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Jul 24, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: “No wizard left behind”
The Four-Color Answer #24
At the end of last week’s exciting episode, the cute schoolteacher and I were involved in a tense debate about which showing of the new Harry Potter movie we would attend. (Yes, we media people do have lives that throb with excitement.)
We decided, and went.
The schoolteacher, who really does carry Potter devotion to an extreme, at least in one Muggle’s opinion, was enthralled. The Muggle – me – thought it was a pretty good summer flick. I’m a Muggle who can enjoy some good, old-fashioned, British Acting-with-a-capital A, and the Potters are full of A-list thespians. (There may be a pun in there somewhere, but, trust me, it’s not worth the effort needed to find it.) I think British movie acting is still partly influenced by its grandiloquent, stage-bound forebears, and that makes it appropriate to material that is the antithesis of realism, much as Brando’s naturalistic Method acting was appropriate to Tennessee Williams’s realism.
But the Pottery pleasure the teacher and I could share equally began when Dolores Umbridge entered the story. Miss Umbridge, splendidly embodied by a pink-clad Imelda Staunton, is an educational bureaucrat whose saccharine exterior conceals a heart of bile. She’s a stooge for the local politicians whose mission is to insist on a largely useless curriculum and on tests which accomplish nothing except make it impossible for real educators to do their jobs.
“No wizard left behind,” I whispered to the schoolteacher, who nodded vigorously.
I don’t know much about J.K. Rowling, Potter’s creator, but I do know that she must have been writing the novel on which the current movie is based about seven years ago, and that she works and lives in England. Those facts make it unlikely that in conjuring up Miss Umbridge she was commenting on and/or satirizing the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind farce. So maybe art was anticipating life. Whatever the reason, Miss Umbridge could step from fantasy into the real life milieu of those involved in the president’s – ahem – educational efforts and feel right at home.
Spoiler alert!
Miss Umbridge gets hers, though it appears that she survives to be rotten another day, and I rejoiced. I think schadenfreude is a pretty crummy emotion when it’s directed toward people we know, but it’s perfectly acceptable, and maybe even expected – maybe even desirable – when aimed at creatures of the imagination. And despite what the schoolteacher might want to believe, J.K. Rowling does write fiction.
RECOMMENDED READING: The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore.
Dennis O'Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Tue Jul 17, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Do You Believe In Magic?
The Four-Color Answer #23
Here it is Tuesday evening and we’re still debating. Should we go to the 11:59 showing of the new Harry Potter flick at the local 21-plex or catch one of the early showings in the morning? Pros and cons on both sides. But we will see the movie within the next 24 hours; count on it.
Although I’ve enjoyed the previous films, I can’t call myself a Potter fan. I haven’t read any of J.K. Rowling’s novels, though I love Ms Rowling’s bio: single mom writing in a café becomes hugely successful author, celebrity, and megamillionaire within about a decade, without becoming a robber baroness. But Marifran’s read the books. Oh yes indeed. And so have daughters Meg and Beth. So I’m pretty up on the Hogwarts scene and when the final volume in the series arrives in a couple of weeks, I expect my conversations with my wife to be conducted in monosyllables until she reaches the last page and learns Harry’s fate.
I’m surprised that these things are so popular, as I was surprised at the resurgence of interest in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings saga and the huge success of the movies made from Tolkein’s trilogy. The reason is, I thought we were past believing in magic.
Oh, sure, you don’t have to actually believe in something to enjoy stories about it. But we do have to be able to accept it on some level. It helps the willing suspension of disbelief your English teacher told you is necessary to the enjoyment of fiction if you can allow that what you’re being told about exists, or could exist, or at least might have existed. Hero stories are about as old as civilization, and the tale-tellers always supply a reason why their protagonists have extraordinary powers. In classic Greece, for example, and later in Rome, superpowers were explained by their possessors either being gods, or half-gods, or children of gods, or gods’ special pals. Then plain ol’ magic, origin unknown, was used to rationalize superhuman feats in folk tales like those in A Thousand and One Nights.
Tue Jul 10, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: (Hey, Dude, ain’t he ever gonna git done yakkin’ about) Continued Stories
The Four-Color Answer #22
Last week, we were discussing the cons of continued stories, specifically what’s wrong with them, and we posited that they have a major problem in the difficulty new readers (or audiences) have in understanding the plot and characters. I said that there were remedies for this problem and now I’ll suggest, a bit timidly, that though remedies exist, nothing is foolproof.
Which brings us to the second difficulty with this kind of narrative, one closely related to the first. A potential reader who knows that the entertainment in front of him is a serial and that he’s missed earlier installments might think he’s come to the party too late, and so he won’t be tempted to enter it. Admittedly, this has more to do with marketing than stortytelling, but anyone who thinks that sales departments and creative departments aren’t entwined tighter than the snakes on a ceduceus isn’t paying attention.
There are probably more cons, but let’s let the subject rest with those two – we don’t want to beat anything to death, do we? – and proceed on to the pros.
Pro number one: Serialized stories build audience/reader loyalty. If you like the story you’ll want to learn what happens next and how the problems are solved and you’ll keep returning to satisfy your curiosity.
Pro number two (and this, to me, is the biggie): Serials present storytelling opportunities rare in other forms, if they exist at all. Continued narratives allow the storyteller to present a complex plot and a lot of subplots, as well as stuff that might not directly relate to the plot(s) but is, well, amusing.
Tue Jul 3, 2007 — by Dennis O'Neil
DENNIS O’NEIL: Continued stories revisited yet again…
The Four-Color Answer #21
In last week’s installment of what some of you may be beginning to think is an endless blather, when I was discussing movie serials I neglected to mention that serials were among the first non-comics forms to use superheroes. During that decade, lucky young popcorn eaters could see Superman, Batman, Captain America and, in my opinion the best of them all, Captain Marvel in the continued chapter plays that were a staple of Saturday matinees. (That probably doesn’t exhaust the list, but memory is not my greatest gift… At least I don’t think so…) Having seen some of the above-mentioned entertainments, and having, within the past two weeks, seen the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four movies, I realize that the serial makers were born too soon.
Because, let’s face it, some of the serialized costumed do-gooders look kind of silly. That’s because the directors lacked the technology to make them not look silly. It takes an army of costumers, model makers, CGI wizards, animators and, probably, guys whose jobs I’ve never heard of to produce, on the screen, what cartoonists produced with ink on paper in large quantities for lousy pay. Of course, we comics readers had to bring some of our own imaginations to the artists’ static, silent images, but that was okay, we could do that.
Consider the preceding two paragraphs a digression, please. And now we return to our regularly scheduled topic –
What about these continued stories, anyway? Good or bad? Pro or con?
Let’s begin with the obvious con. If you come in late, maybe you’ll have trouble understanding the story. There are remedies for this problem. The serial makers mentioned in the opening digression showed the last minute or so of the preceding chapter before getting on to new material. The old radio serials used a similar technique, and a lot of current television shows begin with a voice over intoning something like, “Previously, on Your Father’s Moustache…” and then we get brief takes of the scenes that will escort us into the new action.
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