Articles by elayne-riggs
Sun Jun 1, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending June 1, 2008
Now with more regular features!
As readers doubtless have noticed, we've been adding a lot of regular features to ComicMix in addition to our columnists. So it's time to add Van's Weekly Haul comic reviews to our rotation! Here's what we've done for you this past week:
- Mike Gold - Whizzy's Wazoo: The Ghost of Wertham
- Dennis O'Neill - The Four-Color Answer: Science Friction
- Me - It's All Good: Touchstones
- John Ostrander - Tales From The O-zone: Indiana Jones and the Secret to Adventure
- Michael Davis - Straight, No Chaser: Sex In The City
- Andrew Wheeler - Manga Friday: Zombies and Gods and Sexy Teens
- Van Jenson - The Weekly Haul: Reviews for May 30, 2008
- Martha Thomases - Brilliant Disguise: Are We There Yet?
- Michael H. Price - Forgotten Horrors: An Unprecedented Perspective on Edgar G. Ulmer
In addition, here's the listing of all the ComicMix Six fun we've come up with so far:
- April 2: Alan Kistler - Worst Moments in Skrull 'Invasion' History
- April 9: Alan Kistler - Why Marvel's 'Secret Wars' Was Better Than 'Civil War'
- April 17: Martha Thomases - Top Political Campaigns in Comics
- April 24: Alan Kistler - The Worst Superhero Names in Comics
- May 6: Chris Ullrich - The Worst Movies Adapted from Comic Books
- May 14: Alan Kistler - The Worst Supervillain Names in Comics
- May 21: Chris Ullrich - The Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books
- May 28: Martha Thomases - Biggest Tease in Comics (Male)
And with that, we bid our numbering goodbye! Next week we'll start adding in our Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica reviews (from Rick Marshall and Chris Ullrich respectively) to the roundup...
Wed May 28, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
Touchstones, by Elayne Riggs
It's All Good #67
Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby
Can you tell me where he's gone
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John.
Well, last time I did an actual comic book review, and as expected it received almost no comments. So I don't want to hear from anyone about how this column isn't about comics!
I could probably make it about comics. After all, I'm going to be discussing the '60s, which were about many things. Many people my age cut their fanboy and fangirl teeth on Marvel comics of the '60s. (Me, I didn't start reading until the mid-'80s or so, even though my late best friend Bill Marcinko tried pretty hard to get me interested in the Marvels of the late '70s.) But, despite my trepidation about the kind of Google ads this column will attract, today I want to write about something else that happened in the '60s, and about the persistence of memory.
Last week on the campaign trail, in an interview given to South Dakota's Argus Leader, a frustrated Hillary Clinton reiterated her response to the "why won't that bitch just quit?" crowd of media pundits that she'd initially articulated in a Time magazine interview back in March. Her original words: "I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual."
This time around the phrasing was only slightly different: "My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June. We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just don't understand it," the "it" in question being the pundits' incessant and unprecedented calls for a leading candidate to step aside (as if the media were orchestrating the process rather than the voters of each state). In March, nobody seemed to notice; this time, with the anti-Clinton hysteria ratcheted up as high as it's been since the Whitewater nonsense, suddenly all sorts of folks were up in arms.
Sun May 25, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 25, 2008
Throw another one on the barbie!
Hope everyone's having a nice three-day weekend, and that we all remember that the real focus on Memorial Day ought to be putting an end to the sheer folly of war, so that someday we won't have to mourn all those whose lives have been lost in its perpetuation. Oh, and of course, outdoor grilling and summer movies and retail sales.
Here's what our columnists have been selling you -- for free! -- this past week:
- Mike Gold - Whizzy's Wazoo #67: Piling It On
- Dennis O'Neill - The Four-Color Answer #66: The Squires of Science
- Me - It's All Good #66: Hereville, Thereville and Everywhereville
- John Ostrander - Tales From The O-zone #67: Patriot Games
- Michael Davis - Straight, No Chaser #67: Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut
- Andrew Wheeler - Manga Friday #29: Done in One
- Martha Thomases - Brilliant Disguise #58: My Week Without Comics
- Michael H. Price - Forgotten Horrors #58: Stuart Gordon's 'Stuck' Unstuck
Remember the barbecue sauce!
Wed May 21, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
Hereville, Thereville and Everywhereville, by Elayne Riggs
It's All Good #66
Oregon has become the latest state to garner the national spotlight in this Democratic Presidential campaign "silly season." Just about every liberal blog I read had effusive reports of the huge turnout at last weekend's rally for Barack Obama in Portland's Waterfront Park. Now me, I can't think of Oregon without thinking of two things: the annual Stumptown Comics Festival, which I've never attended but which sounds pretty neat; and the person who first introduced me to the idea of Stumptown, my friend of many years, Barry Deutsch.
Barry and I go back so long that, like ComicMix commenter Vinnie Bartilucci, he knew me before my first marriage. As I recall, he visited me a few times back when I worked in the East Village, we probably even shopped at St. Mark's Comics together, and he was an utter delight to be around. He still is, whenever he comes back east to visit. But he currently makes his home in the wilds of Oregon, so I pretty much see him around MoCCA time and that's it. Fortunately, I get to see his art whenever I want to.
Barry's been sketching and doing comic strips for awhile now. His political work reminds me a lot of Matt Wuerker's style, the way it relies on gentle caricature and well-thought-out illustration to get his points across easily and without straining the reader's credulity. He'd been bending my ear for awhile about a special long-form project of his, and that project has finally come out. It's called Hereville. You've probably seen lots of reviews about it online already. Here's another one.
Continue reading Hereville, Thereville and Everywhereville, by Elayne Riggs ›
Sun May 18, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 18, 2008
Functional and aesthetically pleasing!
According to The Google, today marks the anniversary of the birth of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School of Design, whose influence can still be felt daily by urban workers every time they look up at a skyscraper featuring way too much glass. Meanwhile, here's what our designer columnists have created for you this past week:
- Mike Gold - Whizzy's Wazoo #66: Barack Obama and the Comic Book Time Machine
- Dennis O'Neill - The Four-Color Answer #65: The Real Hero
- Me - It's All Good #65: In the Pink
- John Ostrander - Tales From The O-zone #66: Disney Invades Iraq?
- Michael Davis - Straight, No Chaser #66: Cool Like That
- Andrew Wheeler - Manga Friday #28: Toto and Tokugawa
- Martha Thomases - Brilliant Disguise #57: Vogue
- Michael H. Price - Forgotten Horrors #57: Women in Comics - Etta Hulme
Sure to keep your eyes from glazing over!
Wed May 14, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
In the Pink, by Elayne Riggs
It's All Good #65
I visited my mom's house for Mother's Day, which always seems to include watching baseball, as Mom and I are both fans of the game. No, honest, this isn't another column about sports! It's about pink.
You see, every year on Mother's Day, Major League Baseball provides its teams with pink bats, pink ribbons and so forth. It's all Komen-driven, of course. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has become the country's largest breast cancer charity due largely to its habit of painting things pink.
And so we watched not only pink bats, but pink-ringed bases and pink home plates and pink wrist bands and pink caps in the crowd and Jose Reyes even had pink shoelaces for the occasion. It was, as always, very cool. It would have been even nicer if the Mets announcers had actually noted the real reason for the pink; instead, the disappointingly misogynist Keith Hernandez said it was for Mother's Day. 'Cause, uh, Moms like pink, I guess, Keith? Seriously, do you know the difference between "for" Mother's Day and "on" Mother's Day at all?
I was surprised to find out that Komen isn't the only charity focused on pink. Apparently a number of other less reputable places engage in "pink washing," where it's not as clear where your breast cancer charity money's actually going. In fact, Breast Cancer Action has a website called Think Before You Pink which reminds folks that "breast cancer is about women's lives, not a marketing opportunity," and that there are a lot of places riding the bandwagon just to make a profit.
Sun May 11, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 11, 2008
Come to Momma!
Greetings from Asbury Park the wilds of New Jersey, where I'm visiting my Mom for Mother's Day! Hope all you moms out there are having a good one. Here are some loving presents we've given you, and every other ComicMix reader for that matter, this past week:
- Mike Gold - Whizzy's Wazoo #65: Name Dropping
- Dennis O'Neill - The Four-Color Answer #64: Wrath
- Me - It's All Good #64: What I Can't Write About
- John Ostrander - Tales From The O-zone #65: Them Bones
- Michael Davis - Straight, No Chaser #65: I Got Nothing...
- Martha Thomases - Brilliant Disguise #56: I Lost It at the Movies
- Michael H. Price - Forgotten Horrors #56: Child Brides of the Ozarks and Beyond
Hey, why not take your Mom to see Speed Racer today? After all, Susan Sarandon plays the protagonist's mom, doesn't she?
Wed May 7, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
What I Can't Write About, by Elayne Riggs
It's All Good #64
So last week my column was criticized for not being primarily about comics, the same day that my fellow columnist John Ostrander got over a dozen comments writing about politics, not one of which queried the appropriateness of his subject matter. Obviously people who have written and drawn comics for a living (Denny, Michael, etc.) can get a little more slack than someone who's only ever written four comic book stories and had them all published. Not that I'm bitter! Oh no, indeedy; I'm actually grateful those critiques have given me fodder for this week's column!
As I mentioned in my reply to this criticism, I understand some readers' frustration with me not writing about comics more often. Even my mom asks me why I don't focus on comics more often, and she doesn't even read the stuff! But after all, ComicMix is a pop-culture site dominated by people heavily invested in the artform. Heck, that's what CM 2.0 is all about, giving our readers original comics content. And we haven't yet introduced a separate tab for our columns to distinguish them from our regular pop-culture news, so it's probably reasonable to expect that we columnists will focus on comics as much as our news reporters do. And I love reading comics, but... but...
But nowadays, when I talk about my favorite reading material and hobby and community, I can usually only discuss what's happened recently, not what's going to happen in the near future or even Right This Very Week. As many of you know, this wasn't always the case. About 10-15 years ago I did weekly comic book reviews on Usenet and CompuServe under the header "Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts." I'd get the books on a Wednesday and most of the reviews would be up by Friday. My job at the time allowed me to do this, I was being somewhat under-used (technology and outsourcing would eliminate that position in '97) and I had plenty of energy when I got home. Then I got a new job which proceeded to harness a lot of that energy, so the reviews had to go, I just couldn't keep them up any more.
When I married Robin, I stopped buying most DC books the week they hit the stores, because as a regular freelancer for DC he receives a comp box each month of all the "pamphlets" they put out. For a time the comps were usually current to within a couple weeks of what was in the stores, so I could still keep up as plot discussions moved from Usenet to message boards. But by the time blogs became big, the synching had fallen a bit behind. (The new comp box arrived at our house on Monday, and I now have all the Countdown issues up until "04," when of course the current big discussion is about the final issue.
I also now have the first issue of Tangent: Superman's Reign
Continue reading What I Can't Write About, by Elayne Riggs ›
Sun May 4, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 4, 2008
Doing whatever an iron can!
Hope you all had a great Free Comic Book Day! Here at ComicMix, of course, every day is free comics day, with all our new original graphic material! But don't forget the original material from our columnists as well; here's what we've had for you this past week:
- Mike Gold - Whizzy's Wazoo #64: Del Close Close Up
- Dennis O'Neill - The Four-Color Answer #63: Marvel Millie and Me
- Me - It's All Good #63: Unsporting Behaviour
- John Ostrander - Tales From The O-zone #64: It's Obama... Hillary... no, it's Superdelegate!
- Michael Davis - Straight, No Chaser #64: Sound Bites for Dummies
- Andrew Wheeler - Manga Friday #27: Yoshihiro Ttasumi says 'Good-Bye'
- Martha Thomases - Brilliant Disguise #55: Flash Rising
- Michael H. Price - Forgotten Horrors #55: Ian Schaughnessy Emerging
And while every ComicMix reader with disposable income has probably already seen Iron Man, I have a date later on with my ironing board... that's sort of the same thing, right?
Wed Apr 30, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
Unsporting Behaviour, by Elayne Riggs
It's All Good #63
The 2008 Major League Baseball season is now well underway, so much so that broadcasters tend to get bored already and search around for anything else sports-related about which to pontificate; last weekend, as I recall, it was the NFL draft. Heaven forfend we stick to one sport at a time, after all. Or that we enjoy the leisurely pace of a game that used to be America's Pastime until what happened between the lines got crowded out by commercial concerns, steroids and Americans' need for speed.
Still, I'll take the off-topic prattling of networks like FOX and ESPN over some of the local shmoes. Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay is particularly infuriating. Do he and his colleagues really need to make it so obvious how beholden they are to the Steinbrenner family by being completely unable to criticize the home team when the Yankees objectively act like schmucks?
Last month in spring training, the Yankees were playing the Tampa Bay Rays when Ray infielder Elliott Johnson, trying to score in the ninth inning, hit rookie Yankee catcher Francisco Cervelli hard, breaking Cervelli's right wrist. His immediate strategy didn't work, as Cervelli held onto the ball, but it precipitated retaliation, as these things often do. On March 12 outfielder Shelley Duncan (whom Robin and I have nicknamed "Mongo") slid spikes-high into the Rays' second baseman Akinori Iwamuri, and naturally a benches-clearing brawl ensued. It was all Kay & co. could talk about -- from a strictly Yankee-centric standpoint, naturally. Those awful Rays, breaking that young catcher's wrist! Those brave Yankees, suspended for a paltry couple of games for their rally of revenge! It's enough to make tonstant viewer fwow up.
Sun Apr 27, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 28, 2008
To the moon, Louis!
Last weekend's New York Comic Con affected ComicMix columnists in different ways, with Michael, Martha and myself all musing about the con experience (and Dennis and John discussing other events of note from that same weekend). Here's what we've written for you this past week:
- Mike Gold - Whizzy's Wazoo #63: Superman Blue...Archie Orange
- Dennis O'Neill - The Four-Color Answer #62: The Holy See in NYC
- Me - It's All Good #62: We Become What We Deserve to Be
- John Ostrander - Tales From The O-zone #63: 59
- Michael Davis - Straight, No Chaser #63: Send in the Clowns
- Andrew Wheeler - Manga Friday #26: Shoulder-a-Coffin!
- Martha Thomases - Brilliant Disguise #54: Convention Queen for a Day
- Michael H. Price - Forgotten Horrors #54: Amos 'n' Andy 'n' Independents (sic)
Michael's column totally wins for "best byline" this week.. He probably wins for "best comment thread," too.
Wed Apr 23, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
We Become What We Deserve To Be, by Elayne Riggs
It's All Good #62
It's now been three days since NY Comic Con 2008 ended, but I had to save my con report until now because it usually takes me this long to fully recover and gather my thoughts. The older I get and the more convention time I've logged, the more a few patterns begin to present themselves, and this con pretty much ran the gamut for me.
Friday was our longest stint at the con, and is pretty much a blur to me now. I'd had no set plan other than touching base with the ComicMix office and wandering around Artists' Alley to see friends, but I was determined to give the exhibition hall as thorough a perusal as possible during the "trade only" portion of the con in the morning. But between the non-comics media stuff and the dealers in which I had little interest, it all ran together far sooner than I'd expected, and I quickly found myself in "seen one, seen 'em all" mode, wishing I'd prearranged specific meetups with blog friends and such. Thing of it was, though, I wanted to wing it. I've had to insert so much structure into my life what with the job search that I just wasn't up to organizing anything having to do with fun, leisure activities.
Speaking of organization, I should mention that this was hands-down the best run NYCC yet, even with the reported surge in attendance. The volunteers were helpful without being intrusive, polite to a fault (one even asked if we needed help finding anyone in Artists' Alley) and extremely professional. What a total pleasure! We saw a queue on Friday to get into the Javits, but nothing like the chaos of previous years. And here I must confess that part of the reason we may have seen only the sunny side was that we'd decided to truncate our time on Saturday and Sunday to about four hours rather than the entire day.
We have to face facts -- these days, even in our home town, a full convention day takes a lot out of us, between all the walking and the hour-plus bus rides (which turned into two hours going back, as the crosstown bus from the Javits tended to arrive at Sixth Avenue moments after our express bus departed, leaving us to wait another 30 minutes for the connection). We're not about to keel over or anything, we make it up and down the two flights between our apartment and the sidewalk just fine, but neither are we cut out any longer for the more frenzied activity we could handle ten years ago.
Continue reading We Become What We Deserve To Be, by Elayne Riggs ›
Sun Apr 20, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending April 21, 2008
Live and draggy from the con!
Welcome to all New York Comic Con attendees discovering ComicMix via our coverage and con presence! Do stop by Conference Room 10 (mid-level by the bathrooms and Kinko's sign) to say, "hi," pass along news tidbits and so forth! In the meantime, as Rick Marshall mentioned in Friday's "The Changing Face of Online Journalism" panel, one of the things that makes any comics site standout is its unique columnists, of which we have many. Here's what we've written for you this past week:
- Mike Gold - Whizzy's Wazoo #62: DC's Killing Fields
- Dennis O'Neill - The Four-Color Answer #61: The Shadow's Web
- Me - It's All Good #61: The Bronx is Up and My Battery's Down
- John Ostrander - Tales From The O-zone #62: Other Than Myself
- Michael Davis - Straight, No Chaser #62: New York, New York
- Andrew Wheeler - Manga Friday #25: Plight of the Themeless
- Martha Thomases - Brilliant Disguise #53: Is Ma Kent Old?
- Michael H. Price - Forgotten Horrors #53: Prowling for "Sh! The Octopus"
Oh, and happy Passover! Rumor has it that Danny Fingeroth will have chocolate macaroons at the "Disguised as Clark Kent" panel at noon today...
Sat Apr 19, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
NYCC: Steve Gerber Memorial
Friends Of Ol' Gerber reminisce
The memorial panel for the late great writer Steve Gerber was about as eclectic as he was. The panel began with a slideshow tribute to Steve's work, set to the tune of the Beatles' "Revolution." Moderator Mark Evanier and Steve's friends and relatives made sure Gerber's spirit was as much in attendance as it could possibly be -- his ashes were present on the panel table:
Mark even made a joke about how appropriate it was that the box bearing the ashes had gotten a little cracked.
Gerber may have had a cracked sense of humor, but what emerged from the anecdotes told about him by those who knew him well and those he inspired was his tremendous generosity. Mark recalled an incident when the two of them had heard a scream coming from outside, and in the few seconds Mark began to act on that sound Steve was already outside hoping to help the situation. While the noise turned out to be a false alarm, Mark pointed out how it was indicative of Steve's "immediate compassion for a stranger."
Wed Apr 16, 2008 — by Elayne Riggs
The Bronx is Up and My Battery's Down, by Elayne Riggs
It's All Good #61
As you probably know, except for the LA-based Michael Davis, every ComicMix columnist lives in the NY-NJ-CT metropolitan area. The famous magazine cover at right chides our perspective as somewhat skewed, but in reality I think New York City and its surrounding suburbs offer a pretty good microcosm of modern civilization. Not for nothing are we the melting pot of the world.
The thing is, for a relatively small island, Manhattan is so much bigger than most people can cover, either on foot or in the media. Leaving aside for a moment the vast array of cultures inhabiting the "outer" boroughs (our northeast Bronx neighborhood seems to be a mix of mostly Jews and Irish but it appears to be diversifying at last), there's just so much within NYC (the way many of us in the boroughs abbreviate New York, New York) itself that you can hardly take it all in. Manhattan never ceases to fascinate me, and I've been lucky enough to see a lot of it these past few months while searching for a job.
Job search hours tend to be peculiar, because you're usually coming into or leaving The City while other people around you are either on holiday or working. So I see the passing parade in a different way than I would if I were cooped up in an office for the better part of eight ours, only coming out to commute with the masses. And I've been able to pretend I'm sightseeing at the same time, revisiting old haunts as well as traveling to areas I never had the time or inclination to check out when I actually worked in NYC.
Continue reading The Bronx is Up and My Battery's Down, by Elayne Riggs ›
