Articles by mike-gold
Mon Sep 8, 2008 — by Mike Gold
What's Wrong With Wonder Woman, by Mike Gold
Brainiac On Banjo
In this space on Friday and Saturday, my esteemed colleagues Mr. Davis and Ms. Thomases waxed on about the political situation of the day. Whereas there is no more important issue facing us as Americans in this moment in time (and it has considerable impact on non-Americans as well), I will not follow in their wake this week. I’m sure I will in the future.
Instead, I’m going to take a point central to their themes, and those expressed to a somewhat lesser extent by Ms. Riggs last week, and talk about comic books. Specifically, about Wonder Woman.
Since I’m in a name-dropping kind of mood, I should point out that my comments have been heavily influenced by recent conversations with Ms. Adriane Nash, a frequent commenter here at ComicMix, as well as our new editorial proofreader (for those items that come in early enough to be proofread…). And, oh yeah, she’s my savvy and opinionated daughter.
So what’s wrong with Wonder Woman? Positioning. Not unlike what many people think the McCain campaign did by selecting a fundamentalist book burner as their vice presidential candidate, under the theory that women are so stupid they’ll simply vote for one of their own no matter what her position is on the issues. You know, just like the conservatives.
Back in the 1940s, Wonder Woman was fabulously successful. She had as much exposure as any DC/AA hero (but not as much as, say, the real Captain Marvel). She had her own title, she starred in a monthly anthology book, she starred in a regularly published giant-sized star-studded superhero thing, and she briefly had her own newspaper strip. All she was lacking was a cheap movie serial.
By the time the 70s rolled around, DC had a hard time giving Wonder Woman away. As of this date, she’s undergone more revisions, reboots (one, quite literally, brought her original boots back), reinterpretations, and make-overs than Madonna. What happened?
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Fri Sep 5, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Review: Learn Spanish With Batman
Top Talent Teaches Translation Tips
So there I was at the supermarket maintaining a half-century long tradition: hanging out by the magazine racks looking for treasure. Or at least something interesting to read. Nada. As usual.
But there was a dump next to the racks with a trade paperback titled Learn Spanish With Batman. Well, that seemed interesting. I picked one up, flipped though it and found that the stories were reprints from DC’s sundry Batman cartoon tie-ins. Top-rank stuff by top-tier people: Terry Beatty, Rick Burchett, Tim Levins, Scott Peterson, Dan Slott, and Ty Templeton. What the hell; I picked it up.
Truth be told, I took a couple years of high school Spanish. My first teacher would have done better as a guard at Guantanamo Bay. My second, Ron Manger, was vastly superior but it was probably too late. I picked up a lot more Spanish on the Chicago streets. So I approached Learn Spanish With Batman with my typical cynicism.
They reprinted the stories but certain key words in Spanish, lettered in a red color hold. The translation was off to the side in the appreciable borders. The whole thing was done by Berlitz, who have quite a track record when it comes to the foreign language racket.
Reading the 110 pages, I felt a few ancient memory cells being brought out of a coma. I don’t know how effective this process would be for someone without my slight Spanish language background but – to be fair – the book is obviously targeted to kids and pre-adolescents. I only fall into that category for a living.
It was a pleasurable experience; the stories were great fun and some actual knowledge got hammered into my leaden brainpan. There’s two volumes of Superman and another of Batman in the series thus far, and I’ll probably pick up the latter.
If you’re only interested in the stories, DC’s many trade paperback reprints are a better deal. But if you’d like to try a little experiment, or you’ve got kids or young siblings, I’d give this a try.
Mon Sep 1, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Getting Screwed, by Mike Gold
Brainiac On Banjo
We’re all familiar with the story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They created Superman but nobody would buy it so it sat in a drawer for a few years until an editor remembered seeing the submission and thought it would fill out the first issue of a new title that was lacking a lead story. Siegel and Shuster signed away their rights for something slightly in excess of a hundred bucks, although over the next decade they earned hundreds of thousands off of the property. The trouble is, the publisher was making millions.
Siegel and Shuster were getting screwed. They raised a stink about it and found themselves out of jobs. Later, after several publishing failures Siegel limped back to the offending publisher to work-for-hire for page-rate; Shuster was blind and couldn’t work for anybody.
Batman co-creator Bob Kane saw what was going on and offered to negotiate a contract that would: a) cover himself financially, b) somehow guarantee him sole creator credit, and c) screw the people who made Batman truly unique, people like co-creator Bill Finger and artists such as Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang. This scenario was repeated by a number of creators who became publishers or intellectual property owners years and years later.
So the moral standard is rather flexible. That’s business. That’s human nature – most businessmen aren’t all that different from Al Capone, who, in fact, was generally more appreciative of his end-users than he was of his competitors. Now, everybody cooperates benignly, being careful to operate out of a sense of mutual self-interest instead of an actual conspiracy that might constitute anti-trust. We’ve just endured eight years of a government that was totally dedicated to this concept.
Mon Aug 25, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Let's Go Raise Us Some Dumb Kids, by Mike Gold
Brainiac On Banjo
Lately, my wife Linda and I have been watching the Maverick reruns on one of the many Starz channels IDW’s owners foists upon our cable system. Maverick was one of the very few live-action teevee shows I enjoyed as a kid, and I’m amazed to discover that it is actually even better than I remembered it. The writing, in particular, was amazing – a standard rarely reached by broadcast television today.
Then Linda noticed something. The show was rated TV-14.
The television ratings system was proposed by Congress 12 years ago, caving in to a bunch of professional busybodies who firmly believe that we, unlike our parents and their parents, are too stupid to raise our own children without their blue-nosed “guidance.” I don’t know if it preceded the V-chip or not and I do not care to look it up: the V-chip allows parents to completely avoid the bother of being involved in their children’s television experience by having a slide of silicon do their thinking for them.
The idea behind the TV-14 rating was not that parents shouldn’t let their kids watch these shows. According to the guidelines, “Programs issued the TV-14 rating are usually unsuitable for children under the age of 14 without the guidance of a parent or guardian.” Please note that last phrase: “without the guidance of a parent or guardian.” Since it has been proven that today’s parents are too lazy or too stupid or too “busy” to provide such guidance, they can fire up their V-chip and let the teevee do all the heavy lifting, thereby denying their children such fine writing and acting on shows from 1957 such as Maverick.
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Wed Aug 20, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Star Trek Comics Go 'Round and 'Round
DVD-ROM has it all
According to CBS Consumer Products, the entire Star Trek comic book oeuvre from 1967 through 2002 will be released on a single DVD-ROM disc this September 1st.
The disc, produced by Graphic Imaging Technology, will contain everything published by Gold Key, Marvel, DC, and Malibu. This includes work by Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Dave Cockrum, Tom Sutton, Mike W. Barr, George Pérez, Tony Isabella, Peter David, Robert Greenberger... pretty close to a Who's Who of comics creators of the past couple decades.
IDW and ToykoPop are the current Trek comics publishers, but their works are not included on this disc. It will be available at big-box electronics stores and wherever better DVD-ROMs are sold.
Mon Aug 18, 2008 — by Mike Gold
The Real World, by Mike Gold
Brainiac On Banjo
In an environment where we debate the finer techniques of villains who travel the galaxy to gobble up planets for lunch, the awesome realities of day-to-day life have a habit of intruding upon our vocations and hobbies. Sometimes, the intrusion of reality shatters us completely.
Last Thursday night, 20 year-old Robbie Greenberger lost his struggle with leukemia, surrounded by his family. That’s a real-world horror of incalculable proportion; as we all know – yet, from time to time, must ignore – that sort of thing happens somewhere to somebody every minute of the day. And there’s no villain afoot to acknowledge our outrage.
Robbie was the son of Robert and Debi Greenberger and brother of Kate. For a long time, Bob was an editor and administrator at DC Comics and at Marvel, and an occasional comics writer. He’s also written a ton of Star Trek novels and stories and is editor of the Famous Monsters of Filmland website. Bob is also part of the ComicMix crew: he’s been involved in behind-the-scenes activities for quite some time (you’ll be seeing the fruits of these labors anon), and he’s contributed nearly 50 articles and columns to our site. He’s a real pro.
I remember when Deb went into labor with Robbie. The father-to-be showed up at DC’s offices, ready for work. I asked him if… well, if he was crazy. No, Bob just wanted something to do while waiting, and he had deadline stuff to clear off. He politely asked if it was okay if he were to leave early to join his wife at the hospital.
Unfortunately, I also remember working with Bob on Thursday. I knew the family was at the hospital with Robbie 24/7, doing what they could, giving Robbie comfort. Through Wi-Fi and cell phone, Bob was able to keep busy and meet his deadlines. There’s a strength there that would put a super-hero to shame.
I don’t know how Bob, Debi and Kate will be able to deal with this. There’s a saying that a parent losing his or her child is life’s greatest tragedy; by definition, you really can’t compare. Life has no “11” on the dial; we all max out at “10.”
But the Greenberger family is not alone, not by any stretch of the imagination. Our love and our support will always be with them.
Contributions in Robbie's memory may be made to The Tommy Fund for Childhood Cancer, Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital, 20 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511-3202.
Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix, and is proud to have shared many a credits box with Bob Greenberger.
Mon Aug 11, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Comics Out Of The Closet, by Mike Gold
Brainiac On Banjo
My old pal Joe Staton, one of the most brilliant graphic storytellers in the history of this medium, is currently enjoying a long-overdue exhibition of his work at the Storefront Artist Project in Pittsfield, MA. Peculiarly titled The Art of Joe Staton, it runs through August 31. We talked about this here at ComicMix a while ago; click-through and read to your heart’s content. Better still, go there and check it out.
This could have been the shortest column I’ve ever written, but no, I aim towards broader context. We’re seeing more and more of this sort of thing. Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel’s Breathtaker was among the dozen or so graphic novels recently honored at the Norman Rockwell Museum, and that exhibit is now touring the nation. There have been many theme-based exhibits of comic art all over the country – too many to mention.
Oh, boy. We’ve been accepted as a real art medium. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth (for a change), I just wish this happened a couple decades ago.
Will Eisner and Stan Lee lived long enough to feel the full brunt of public acceptance; Jack Kirby really didn’t. He was honored as the ABC News Man of the Week after he died, but I’m sure that didn’t massage his ego any. Wally Wood got bubkis. The fact is, the first generation of comics creators is almost entirely gone, and most died with a stigma attached to their names. Sure, Stan and Joe Kubert are still around (thankfully) and are still producing stuff (also thankfully), but that’s because they entered this craft while still pre-pubescent.
Sun Aug 10, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Calvin... and Jobs
Calvin! CALVIN!!!
Here's a little ditty that ComicMix's Macintosh majority would like to share with you. It's from The Daily Cartoonist, and it's called Calvin and Jobs.
Sun Aug 10, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Review: Creepy Archives Volume 1
... but mostly Archie Goodwin and airports
Pretty soon, this is going to turn into a review of Dark Horse’s Creepy Archives Volume 1. Hang in there; I’ll get to it, I promise.
I miss Archie Goodwin, particularly this time of year. He died 10 years ago from cancer at the ridiculously young age of 60. He was one of the best writers this medium has ever seen. In a field that sports the talents of Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, and Dennis O’Neil, Archie was of that highest caliber. If Archie ghosted bible tracks for Jack Chick, I would have read them. He was that good.
As a human being, he was even better. A life-long EC Comics fan (you could see it in his work, as well as in those with whom he chose to associate), for a couple years Archie and I had adjoining offices at DC Comics. We used to go out to lunch and talk about, oh, Tales From The Crypt and Ronald Reagan. Did I mention Archie was very politically aware? Read his Blazing Combat stories. Anyway, sometimes our conversations scared the Manhattan businessmen who sat near us.
Archie enjoyed that. I enjoyed those conversations immensely; I wish I could relive them.
So why do miss Archie “particularly this time of year”? This is convention season. No matter where we were, we would run into each other a couple times each year at various airport gates. He could be leaving from New York and I from Chicago and we’d run into each other on connecting flights in Denver. We could both be at a show in, oh, his native Kansas City and we could be flying to two different places, but we’d still share the first leg of our respective flights. At first it was uncanny; quickly, it became another fact of life.
I haven’t met all 6,500,000,000 people on this planet, but based upon my unscientific sampling I can state with complete confidence that there are few people with greater wit, charm, and intelligence. So there.
This brings us to Dark Horse’s Creepy Archives Volume 1. Archie started writing for Jim Warren’s Creepy with the first issue; by issue two he was story editor and issue four he was the sole credited editor. He wrote most of the stories and, therefore, did a lot to define the 1960s horror story while working with a lot of EC greats like Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Al Williamson, Alex Toth, George Evans, Joe Orlando, Wally Wood and Frank Frazetta. As time progressed, he added younger talent like Gray Morrow, Neal Adams, and Steve Ditko.
Sat Aug 9, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Adams, Kubert and Lee Come To Aid Of Concentration Camp Artist
Six page story details Dina Gottieboa Babbit's plight
The perfect trifecta of living comic book legends – Neal Adams, Joe Kubert, and Stan Lee – have come to the aid of Nazi concentration camp survivor and animator Dina Gottlieboa Babbit in her fight to retrieve her long stolen artwork from a Polish museum.
According to today's New York Times, Ms. Babbit survived two years at the infamous Auschwitz Polish concentration camp by painting watercolor portraits for the notorious butcher of Aushwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele. Many of these paintings are in the possession of the Aushwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum; as her work, Ms. Babbit claims ownership and has long demanded its return. The Museum has refused, and Neal, Joe and Stan have taken up the effort.
To help raise awareness, Neal teamed up with Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, to produce a six page comics story detailing the situation. The story was inked – in part – by Joe and sports an introduction from Stan.
They are presently looking for a publisher.
Since her liberation, Ms. Babbit had worked as an animator for Jay Ward Productions, Warner Bros. Animation, and MGM.
Sat Aug 9, 2008 — by Mike Gold
New Torchwood Without The Make-Up
BBC Radio 4 to air original episode
Torchwood will be retuning to the airwaves next month in a somewhat unique fashion, according to the good folks at Outpost Gallifrey.
BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting an original 45 minute full-cast radio drama, Lost Souls, on Wednesday September 10 at 9:15 Eastern Daylight Time. The story is set right after Exit Wounds, the season two finale, and deals with the events of that traumatic episode. Therefore, you might not want to hear the show until you've seen the second season.
Torchwood regulars John Barrowman, Eve Myles and Gareth David-Lloyd will be starring in the broadcast along with Doctor Who regular (and Torchwood guest star) Freema Agyman. The show was written by Joseph Lidster.
BBC Radio 4 can be accessed online right here. There's no word yet on its availability through BBC Radio as part of their podcast programming.
Fri Aug 8, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Michael Silberkleit, 1932 - 2008
Archie Comics Chairman The Last Of His Breed
Archie Comics chairman Michael Silberkleit, the last of the original breed of comic book company family-owners, died August 5th from cancer, Archie Comics announced last night.
Along with his life-long friend Archie publisher Richard Goldwater, who passed away last year, Michael spent virtually his entire life at the comic book company. MLJ, its original name, was started in 1939 as a pulp magazine publishing house when Michael was seven years old. It was founded by his father, Louis, along with Richard's father John and accountant Morris Coyne. During World War II and after the massive success of their feature Archie, the name of the company was changed to Archie Comics.
Living in Westchester County New York, Silberkleit had also volunteered as an auxiliary policeman in Scarsdale, NY.
Speaking personally, I was always impressed with Michael's adventurous spirit, always looking to new ways to further the Archie franchise and bring new energy to the company. Archie was one of the first comics companies to embrace the use of computers in their production, and one of the first to establish a fun, interactive website.
The funeral for the 76 year-old founding brother will be this Sunday.
Thu Aug 7, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Online Animation: An Olympic Train Wreck?
Animator / cartoonist prepares for the worst
Cartoonist / animator / musician Joe Fournier has been doing some sweet stuff online, including this clever black-and-white cartoon about Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics... something about a... train wreck?
Joe's illustrations have appeared in all sorts of places – Playboy, Forbes, Premiere, and all sorts of newspapers – and he plays a vital role in the burgeoning online animation field. His cartoons have been seen on the Sci-Fi Channel, at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, and the National Gallery of Art.
It's good stuff. Check him out.
Wed Aug 6, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Quarry Returns For The First Time
Quarry, the world's first hit man to star in his own series of novels, is returning to the racks in October courtesy of Ms. Tree / Road To Perdition / Batman / Dick Tracy writer Max Allan Collins.
The "final" Quarry novel, The Last Quarry, was published two years ago by Hard Case Crime to much success – and it provided the basis for the movie The Last Lullaby. So if there's a last there's got to be a first, and at long last, this is it: The First Quarry, all underneath a perfectly lurid cover by Ken Laager. It's the story of Quarry's first job: infiltrating a college town and eliminating a nasty professor with a thing for his female students.
In addition to his noted comics work, Max Allan Collins has an astonishing number of mystery and private eye novels under his belt – most notably, the Heller series and a whole slew of C.S.I. tie-ins.
Mon Aug 4, 2008 — by Mike Gold
Forward... Into The Past, by Mike Gold
Brainiac On Banjo
Typically, birthdays are a time for self-reflection and so, in this spirit, I am today changing the name of my column to “Brainiac On Banjo.” I have come to accept the likelihood that few, if any other than Mark Waid, got the “Whizzy’s Wazoo” reference. “Brainiac On Banjo” is a bit easier.
In fact, both are titles of APAzines I used to produce. In today’s age of blogging and Twittering and other ways to avoid actual physical contact while maintaining the ability to be instantly obnoxious, APAzines are the buggy whips of comics fandom. They’re still around, although I suspect the average age of the APA participant is over a half-century.
APA stands for “amateur press association” and it’s a holdover from science-fiction fandom from whence comics fandom came. What it is is this: you, as a member of a specific association, write up your fanzine. You write all kinds of stuff: what comics you like, which ones you hated, which movies are great, which comics creator(s) has his head so far up his ass he can get a haircut by swallowing… you know, blogging. You comment on all the other ‘zines in your APA. Said association may or may not be based around a common theme, and said theme may or may not be addressed on every page of your ‘zine. Things tend to wander a bit.
APAs require far more work: you mimeograph or photocopy your ‘zine, collate the pages, staple them, mail them off to the Central Mailer (a guy named Norman) who then collates all the other APAs and mails the package out to each member. The roster is usually around 25 or 35 members, so there’s often a waitlist for membership. Waitlisters can participate and might get the overage ‘zines, but there’s no guarantees.
A lot of people were involved in the production of their own APAzines and I had established many of my most enduring and wondrous friendships through this vehicle, including many folks in the media like Richard Pachter and Mike Valerio and folks in comics like Paul Levitz, Kurt Busiak and Carol Kalish. I met my closest buddy, ComicMix’s podcast producer Mike Raub, through a Legion of Super-Heroes themed APA back when Gutenberg was a kid.
