Play MSTie for me? Sort of.

Mike Gold

ComicMix's award-winning and spectacularly shy editor-in-chief Mike Gold also performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com (search: Hit Oldies) every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information.

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16 Responses

  1. Russ Rogers says:

    I wish LJ had said something more clever, profound or iconic than "Boy, fella, you sure holler like a little girl!" That's a stupid, schoolyard bully taunt. And having LJ silently walk away from a cry for help (even coming from a goon) doesn't make LJ look like a Bad Ass, just a heartless creep. Especially when the goon says, "Please!" LJ has to say something, he has to acknowledge the other man, even if he won't stop to help the goon.Kibitzer's Korner: Scratch the "little girl" taunt. Shift the goon's cry for "HELP" into the bottom of that panel on page #66. Maybe have just LJ give a thoughtful, "hrmm." Replace "Don't leave me here! Please!" with "You can't just leave me here!" (This makes the goon less sympathetic and more demanding. And goons don't say "Please.") Then, as LJ walks away on the train trestle, he could say, "Sorry, fella! No time. Got a train to catch." This makes the goon's predicament poetic justice for harassing the men on the train and knocking Lone Justice off it in the fight.Putting that quibble aside, I really enjoyed this episode. I liked that Lone Justice has more tricks than just fists and guns. The flare/glare effect at the bottom of #65 is sweet! And I like the bit of foreshadowing on #67. You've resolved the fight, but immediately transition to a new tension. Because it sounds to me like the Mayor is complaining to the Police Chief ABOUT Lone Justice. It's a bit that makes me want to turn the page. But I will have to wait till next week to do that.

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      Your comments could be perfectly valid when you are reading these pages in weekly chunks. But ultimately LONE JUSTICE is going through some serious stuff. He may have to start examining every choice he has ever made.

      • Russ Rogers says:

        Oh, I understand how this is just a small piece in the Lone Justice: Crash puzzle. And a Hero can't find redemption until after they've fallen a bit first. But Lone Justice comes across as a real jerk and a bully here. I keep thinking: What if nobody finds the goon and he freezes to death? What if that lasso around his ankle snapped his leg? What if the goon is able to get out of the snare by slipping his foot out of his boot, but gets frostbite because he walks back to town with a bare foot? Suppose the goon loses several toes or his foot, would LJ be responsible?The funny thing is, if LJ had just let the goon fall to his doom, even if he had said something hackneyed like, "It's a fitting end to one so foul," I wouldn't have any moral qualms about the situation. It's the word "Please" from the goon, and Lone Justice's lame girly-boy taunting that has my undies in a bundle.

  2. MARK WHEATLEY says:

    Let us revisit this next week – because I'd rather not go into too much detail about the scene or our thinking until we get a bit more into the story.

    • Lord Snooty says:

      LOVED those four pages and being a big fan of Grimjack love a bit of "bad ass" even if the goon said "please" after his actions I can't feel sorry hes ended up that way !

      • MARK WHEATLEY says:

        Cool! A vote for badassery!

        • Russ Rogers says:

          Oh, I'll vote for badassery too! Lone Justice just walking away on the train trestle reminded me of the end of the original "Mad Max." Here's a quote from WotNews: We've gathered here today to discuss a man who once handcuffed another guy's ankle to a soon-to-explode vehicle, then threw him a hacksaw and explained that slicing through his own leg would take half the time of chopping the cuffs. http://wotnews.com.au/like/greatest_movie_badasse…But, just to belabor the point, Lone Justice mocking the goon by saying that he screams like a little girl is stupid, cheap and sexist. Yeah, the '30s were different times, when the biggest insult a man could through at another man was saying that he seemed feminine in any way. But unfortunately that is still too true today. It just makes me wish for a character here like "Darlin' Lil" from GrimJack, a strong woman who can deck Lone Justice, clean his clock a little. Maybe bring in a bit of sexual tension too. Does Lone Justice need a "Catwoman" or a "Maggie the Cat"? Hmm, come to think of it, "Darlin' Lil" is a Cat Burglar too! Why are comic heroes attracted to Cat Burglars? Is that a classic theme worth exploring here or a played out cliché?

          • MARK WHEATLEY says:

            Okay Russ – I will say this: If you are thinking of LONE JUSTICE as a Doc Savage kind of pulp hero – then I can see where what he did here might be out of place. But Bob and I are aiming more in the direction of the SPIDER as a pulp model. And if you've ever read the SPIDER in the original pulps you know that what happens in these four pages does even make the neadle quiver on the BADASSERY scale.

  3. Lord Snooty says:

    Sorry Russ I just don't see it as "sexist" it anyway maybe your reading that into it ? with in the four pages and the run up to it, I thought it worked well.

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      Right! In fact that line of dialogue was an echo of the stuff that the bad guy was spouting in previous episodes – where we were not GAY bashing.

      • Russ Rogers says:

        Having the Stupid Henchmen repeatedly use the term "Pansy" is not GAY bashing. He is, after all, a Stupid Henchmen. You are, in effect, pointing out that that kind of language and rhetoric is stupid! But when the HERO stoops to that level, you almost lose that point entirely. You end up saying, "Guys call each other Pansy, Sissy or Little Girls all the time. There is no bigger insult. It's cool tough-guy talk."OK, so Lone Justice calls the goon a "Little Girl" in response to the goon's repeated use of the word "Pansy." I get it. It's, "Nyah, nyah, nyah! Who's the Pansy now, Pansy!" It's still lame, playground bully talk. I can see how LJ would get some smug satisfaction out of just walking away from a pleading man. But I don't see the Justice in it, especially for a character who has boldly stated, "Justice! I've always been on the side of Justice!" It also seems pretty dumb. If Scion comes along and slits the helpless goon's throat, Lone Justice gets pinned for the murder. If the mob of hobos, who were just chased into the woods by this goon, come across this guy strung up like a piñata, what's to stop them from beating his brains in, hoping candy and prizes fall out? And again, Lone Justice would get the blame, since he was the last person seen with "the victim." After all "the victim" had been bound with a "Lone Justice Rope." And I hope I'm not playing inadvertent spoiler.You could make Lone Justice be a real, crass, schoolyard bully badass. Have Lone Justice rip the the arms off a bad guy and beat him about the face and shoulders with the bad guy's own hands, all the while mockingly saying, "Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself! Ha ha ha!"Maybe I'm sensitive to this point because I still have Post Traumatic Stress from being the "Pansy Little Girl" who got beat up in Elementary School, sometimes with my own hands. How humiliating.

        • MARK WHEATLEY says:

          Again I say – let us revisit this in the coming weeks. I just can't address all of what you are raising here until we are deeper into the story.

  4. Lord Snooty says:

    Growing up reading comics in the UK for me ment reading them with 4/5 differant storys like say BATTLE and ACTION, with each story being 6/8 pages long ! What that did to me as a reader was to have patience as the story "set up" would take weeks sometimes months before you got the "pay off" I find reading stuff on COMICMIX like say EZ STREET I need the same patience as at times I thought that story was going one way only to find myself happly wrong !

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      Ah yes – a tradition of continued stories going back to Sexton Blake and even Dickens! Y'know – I wish I could churn out 6-8 pages a week! If I could I could almost avoid situations like this. I almost managed 6 this week. But it is a lot of work to pencil, ink, letter and paint that many pages in a week. I just run out of hours. If this was a black & white strip I could hit that many on a regular basis. But the color work just takes it over the time limit.

    • Russ Rogers says:

      I must admit that I have merrily jumped to the wrong conclusions about ComicMix comics based on just a few pages. I was wrong about "The White Viper," which grew and developed into a much more mature, complex and well rounded story than I gave it credit for at first. I've been fooled the other way too! "Black Ice" began with a bold new vision from a creator I've admired for years, but it degenerated into plot holes and hyper-extended lame premises, culminating in disappointment and disillusionment.I would make an ass of myself less often if I withheld comment until more of the story was revealed. Or if I just commented less often. I enjoy speculating on where the plot might lead. I like questioning and analyzing the choices made by the characters and creators. I know, this sometimes makes me seem like a sanctimonious twit, a yenta or a loquacious boob. I really don't think I'm right all of the time. I'm just bravely (and I hope politely) opinionated. Being right isn't as important as sharing or creating a dialog.But I would rather leave a thoughtful comment, even if I'm stupid and wrong, than no comment at all. It's like the Oscar Wilde quote: "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." I want to say, "This was fun and made an impact on me. Here's how…" I want to give back (in some small way) for what ComicMix and it's creators give to me (for FREE)!ComicMix has a lot of GREAT free comics. Wheatley and Tinnell are (separately and together) responsible for many of the BEST of them. And Lone Justice continues that trend.

  5. Lord Snooty says:

    The artists here in the UK only worked in black and white at that time, maybe if they were lucky they get to do a colour front cover but at the time they were using almost newsprint paper so the colour never looked and good, one of the big things I had to get used to with U.S.A comics was full colour and glossy covers