Blechman has been making comics and related art for six or seven decades now, going back to 1953’s The Juggler of Our Lady. Most of that stuff was collected a few years back in Talking Lines
— but Blechman is still around and still making art.
(If anything below ends up sounding critical — I never know which way my fingers will tend — let me say up front here that it’s really damn impressive that Blechman is still around, still working, and still getting books published. This is a man who was born in 1930 and got into the Art Directors Hall of Fame nearly twenty years ago…and he had a new book out in 2016. I only hope I can be around when I’m 86.)
Amadeo & Maladeo
is a historical graphic novel, something of a compare-and-contrast about two musician-composers in the late 18th century, loosely inspired by the life of Mozart. And it looks like it will have a crisp, defined contrast between the two of them, but then…wanders off into specifics on both sides that make that comparison muddied.
I’m torn on whether that makes this book stronger or weaker — on the one hand, the book it seemed to be heading towards could have been dull and obvious, with the rich prodigy brought low in the end and the poor kid finding fame and success in America. On the other hand, their careers aren’t particularly parallel, and there’s a moment where something bad happens to a middle-aged Amadeo — a carriage accident of some kind — that Blechman never quite explains.
But, anyway, Amadeo is a prodigy, performing for the crowned heads of Europe in the 1750s, before the age of ten. Maladeo, born on the other side of the blanket to a servant girl who had a happy night with Amadeo’s violin-teacher father, performs on street-corners and is shanghaied to New York at a young age.
In the end, we are with Maladeo as a happy old man, which I suspect is the big clue — Blechman himself lived to an impressive old age, and he had Amadeo die at an age similar to Mozart’s. Neither man could choose his life, of course, and both had successes and happiness along the way — but Maladeo is still going at the end, and that has to count for something.
So there may not be a moral here, just the story of two contrasting lives. The world has enough morals, though, so the lack here is not a problem. And Blechman’s trademark “shaky line” is as expressive and wonderful here as ever — note that it’s not because of age; he’s always drawn like that on purpose. If you’re not expecting something stark and classical in its construction, you’ll likely enjoy Amadeo & Maladeo a lot.
BURBANK, CA (May 16, 2017) – Their time is now! Just before their third season premiere on The CW, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment releases DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Second Season on Blu-rayTM and DVD on August 15, 2017. Fans can zoom through 17 exhilarating episodes from the second season, plus exciting special features including the show’s 2016 Comic-Con Panel, crossover featurette, gag-reel and deleted scenes. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is The CW’s #4 show among Total Viewers, with over 3.2 million viewers tuning in weekly.⃰ DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Second Season is priced to own at $39.99 SRP for the DVD and $44.98 SRP for the Blu-ray, which includes a Digital Copy.
*Source: Nielsen National TV View L+7 US AA%; excluding repeats, specials, and <3 TCs; Season To-Date = 10/13/16-12/08/16
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow amps up the firepower for Season Two of the Super Hero team-up series by enlisting both a league and a legion of new characters to join the legendary crew of the Waverider. Charged with protecting the timeline from temporal aberrations – changes to history that spawn potentially catastrophic consequences – the Legends reassemble with the addition of historian Nate Heywood (aka Citizen Steel) and Justice Society of America member Amaya Jiwe (aka Vixen). And yet, for every force of good, there is an opposing force of darkness. In Season Two, the Legends of Tomorrow face off against the first ever team of DC Super-Villains: the Legion of Doom, including Malcolm Merlyn, Damien Darhk, Captain Cold and the Reverse Flash. After saving the world from Vandal Savage and the corrupt Time Masters, the Legends of Tomorrow are now charged with protecting time (past, present and future) itself, taking them across history and up against the power of the Spear of Destiny – a threat unlike any humanity has ever known.
“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow has captivated audiences through its incredible action and impressive special effects,” said Rosemary Markson, WBHEG Senior Vice President, TV Marketing. “We’re thrilled to release the complete second season on Blu-ray™ and DVD to give fans even more of the excitement and adventure that they crave from this series.”
With Blu-ray’s unsurpassed picture and sound, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray release will include 1080p Full HD Video with DTS-HD Master Audio for English 5.1. The 3-disc Blu-ray will feature a high-definition Blu-ray and a Digital Copy of all 17 episodes from season two.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow stars Victor Garber (The Flash, Titanic), Brandon Routh (Arrow, Superman Returns), Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who), Caity Lotz (Arrow, Mad Men), Franz Drameh (The Flash, Edge of Tomorrow), Maisie Richardson-Sellers (The Originals), Matt Letscher (The Flash), with Nick Zano (The Final Destination) and Dominic Purcell (Prison Break, The Flash). Based on the characters from DC, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is produced by Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Blindspot, Riverdale), Marc Guggenheim (Arrow), Andrew Kreisberg (Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl), Phil Klemmer (Chuck, Political Animals), Sarah Schechter (Arrow, The Flash, Blindspot, Supergirl, Riverdale) and Chris Fedak (Chuck, Forever).
BLU-RAY & DVD FEATURES
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: 2016 Comic-Con Panel
Allied: The Invasion Complex (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow)
Deleted Scenes
Gag-Reel
17 ONE-HOUR EPISODES
Out of Time
The Justice Society of America
Shogun
Abominations
Compromised
Outlaw Country
Invasion!
The Chicago Way
Raiders of the Lost Art
The Legion of Doom
Turncoat
Camelot/3000
Land of the Lost
Moonshot
Fellowship of the Spear
Doomworld
Aruba
BASICS
Street Date: August 15, 2017
BD and DVD Presented in 16×9 widescreen format
Running Time: Feature: Approx 714 min
Enhanced Content: Approx 45 min
DVD
Price: $39.99 SRP
4 DVD-9s
Audio – English (5.1)
Subtitles – ESDH, Spanish, French
Warner Home Entertainment is commemorating Wonder Woman’s 75th Anniversary leading up to the June 2 release of Patty Jenkins’ feature film. Joining in on the fun is this week’s rerelease of 2009’s animated film, directed by Lauren Montgomery.
This new edition, out as a Combo Pack with Bu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD, comes with just one new extra (the old ones remain): What Makes a Wonder Woman with a nice assortment of people chatting about her cultural significance, including Jenkins, Montgomery, Phil Jimenez, William Moulton Marston biographer Jill Lepore, and a few others for good measure.
Here’s our original review, which remains unchanged:
The DC Universe series of animated features got off to a rocky start with the Superman vs. Doomsday offering but has gotten steadily better. New Frontierwas pretty amazing and now they offer up Wonder Woman, which may be the closest we get to a feature about the Amazon Princess for quite some time.
And I’m pretty okay with that, given how good this direct-to-DVD offering is. It’s not perfect, but it’s entertaining and a great introduction to the character. If you’ve been following the interviews we’ve been posting here at ComicMix, you know that it comes from the usual suspects behind the animated DCU along with a very strong voice cast.
The movie posits that Wonder Woman exists in a world of her own and there are no references to the greater DCU, allowing you to dwell on the mythological background that spawned the character. Created by William Moulton Marston, his grasp of the Greek mythology he predicated the character on was shaky at best and frankly, it wasn’t until the George Perez-driven version of 1987 before anyone explored the Greek gods and their role in the Amazons’ world.
This is an extended origin story hewing fairly closely to the familiar canonical tale although there are several different interpretations of characters and events to make this another flavor of the origin.
We get to learn of the Amazons and how they arrived on Themyscira and how their queen, Hippolyta, longed for a child, fashioning one from clay and given life by the gods she worshipped. Life in paradise was fine for some, not for others but the island also served as a prison for Zeus’ son Ares, god of war. His scheme for freedom coincides with the accidental arrival of Steve Trevor, an Air Force pilot and the decision to hold a contest to allow the winner the right to bring the man back to his world.
The look of the island and its inhabitants is nicely designed and many of the familiar characters are given more personality and wit than their comic book templates. Steve Trevor, voiced by Nathan Fillion, has more charm and unique characteristics than in any previous interpretation and makes you understand what Wonder Woman eventually sees in him.
Once Diana wins the contest and takes Steve back to “man’s world”, the story begins developing logic problems which are never resolved (or even explored in the accompanying commentary). She’s given the invisible robot plane with no explanation or training in its use and then they go to America. The Air Force doesn’t seem remotely interested in his whereabouts so he’s never debriefed but remains free to use their equipment. He then says that Ares, now freed, is leaving a trail of destruction and a pattern will form and he can be followed, a logical point but never followed through.
Instead, Ares finds an ancient cult that remains active, and uses them to gain access to Tartarus where Hades aids his cause. Let me say that the look and handling of Hades wildly varies form the comics but works perfectly here and I applaud the design.
Ares, now more powerful, summons an army from…somewhere…and launches his campaign of war against mankind from Washington D.C. which, from his point of view, makes no sense. He makes a pretty speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial which also makes little sense. But it does kick off the climactic fight which is well handled throughout. The arrival of the Amazons, though, makes it appear the Potomac River is as large as an ocean and is a little too reminiscent of moments from Troy and Lord of the Rings.
While the story doesn’t hang together as well as one would like, it also is filled with deft little moments and great bits of dialogue so kudos to WW scribe Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic for the overall story and Jelenic’s script. The voice cast, led by Keri Russell, Alfred Molina, Rosario Dawson, and Fillion, is also strong, letting the animated people feel more than two-dimensional.
The score is a generic animation score and in that regard is like wallpaper but could have done more.
The disc comes with a 10-minute background to their next offering, the just announced Green Lantern feature due in July. There are other background features to several other DCU animated projects and trailers for related product from Warner Home Video. The commentary from the production team could have been more focused but does provide some interesting insight into what made it to a storyboard and what made it to the final cut. The two-disc set comes with several Justice League episodes as does the Blu-ray.
Last week, we had one of those delightful father/daughter days when Adriane and I went diving for Funko. According to our drivers’ licenses, we are “adults” but, according to our predilections, we are “fans.” Personally, I’m only an adult when I’m on the clock, and then only when I’m in court. Hey, it’s a living.
Whereas we, like most of you out there in comics ethersphere, saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 the week before, we weren’t really looking for GOTG stuff. Oh, sure, if they’ve got a Funko Pop with Baby Groot teething on Drax’s arm I’m buying it but, as you probably know better than me, the really good shit is grabbed well before the movie opens. Nope; we were spelunking for Wonder Woman chachkas, coming soon to a theater near you.
The trick is, there are certain Pops that are made exclusively for certain retailers. Target has theirs, Electronics Boutique and Game Stop have theirs, and so on down the drive past the malls and big box stores on the road formally known as “Main Street.” So doing the fanboy supermarket sweeps involves checking out a number of establishments.
Despite Adriane’s adulthood, she’s more familiar with the product than I am. It’s not like I don’t have a small shitload of Funko stuff, but Adriane’s collection could fill a warehouse. That’s fine by me, as long as I don’t have to schlep it the next time she moves. And Adriane doesn’t want to have to move my comic book collection. This is known as “21st-century quid pro quo.” So as we zot down the aisles, Adriane brings to my attention the more unusual stuff.
Which brought us to the Lego aisle. To be specific, it brings us to the Lego Lashina toy. Yes, your favorite Jack Kirby S&M character is now a Lego toy. This is pretty damn cool, unless the Department of Children and Family Services tends to frequent your home.
I realize Lashina is a card-carrying member of the DC Universe in all its forms. She’s been in the Suicide Squad. She’s been on Smallville. She’s been on sundry DC cartoons. And, honestly, I’m not opposed to S&M among consenting… um… Lego toys. Maybe she’ll get her own Lego movie.
But somebody’s gotta tell me what Krypto is doing there.
We didn’t get many Wonder Woman exclusives (remember when they were called “chase cards?”), but I did score a great Peter Capaldi as the guitar-playing Doctor; something to hold on to as they jerk us around with the “who is the new Doctor” bit… even though the BBC already filmed the regeneration scene.
I suspect Adriane will keep an eye on eBay, the best place on Earth to overpay for already overly expensive collectibles. The forthcoming Wonder Woman movie allows us to resurrect and adapt an old joke: Funko Pop! can market an invisible bi-plane in an empty box.
I wonder what that will go for on eBay.
Then Adriane showed me the Funko Pop! Vito Corleone. Yep, The Godfather. Hey, they had to put something next to their Fredo vinyl. Why not a murdering drug dealer who refuses his Academy Award?
As weird as that seems to me, to be completely honest when (not if) Funko comes out with a line of Pops dedicated to Fritz Lang’s M… I am there!
I’m not sure what it would take for me to get solidly behind a war movie these days. There’s certainly a fatigue component from the unending wars we seem to be fighting in real life, full of drama and heartbreak in their own kind. It’s also very hard to get anything new out of the genre right now. Perhaps because so many fantastic directors have made big important war movies, or maybe just because we seem to get three to five every year. I would need either a fantastic take on the themes I’ve seen a thousand times (and I think you’re about to fall well short of that with Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan) or some fantastic new way of telling a story in the backdrop. The Wall is an attempt at doing the latter; this is a horror/thriller movie set in the Iraqi desert, but it isn’t a good enough movie to get over my general distaste for the genre.
The Wall is not a complicated movie. Two soldiers are in the Iraqi desert to investigate an attack and are ambushed by a sniper. Staff Sergeant Shane Matthews (John Cena) is hit first and is incapacitated, and Sergeant Allen Isaac is shot in the leg and is trapped behind the eponymous wall. The rest of the movie is mostly Sergeant Isaac talking to his assailant (Laith Nakli) over short-range radio while he devises numerous plans to stay alive, identify and locate his attacker, and try to escape. It’s not the strongest plot in the world, but it’s only an 81 minute movie and it’s more than enough to make that time feel full. It hits the necessary action beats, it has some unsatisfying twists which I’ll come back to, and it does what it can to find catharsis.
What the movie is missing is a coherent thesis statement. For a short film it does an awful lot of bouncing around. There’s a fair amount of assuring the audience that war is hell, but there’s not a person alive that hasn’t heard that a thousand times by now. There’s a lot of dialogue about who is really the terrorist, the insurgent fighter or the invading army, but they undercut it pretty dramatically with the way in which the Iraqi sniper threatens to gouge out Isaac’s eyes or staple his tongue to his chest. Ideology aside, I’m not looking to even entertain the idea of rooting for someone that wants to do that so there’s no incentive to look at both sides. There’s a desperate last minute attempt on the part of the movie to perhaps assert that this was a movie about the way people deal with guilt and grief. I could entertain that idea if it weren’t introduced in the last ten minutes of the film, that’s a little late to be telling me what the movie is actually about and seems more like a last ditch effort to seem important.
This isn’t a story that needed to be set in the Iraq War. You could have set this in a city with only a couple changes. It could be in the distant future or an awful lot of the earth’s past. I kind of want to know why they decided to make it a movie about a modern war. One of the twists late in the movie (and this is a spoiler and this is your spoiler warning and I hope you’ve stopped reading by now if this bothers you) is that the Iraqi sniper is using the information he gets from talking to Isaac to fake a distress call to command and he plans to ambush the rescue team, and he probably did the same to get Isaac and Matthews out here to begin with. It turns the sniper from a troubled person who claims to feel forced by the circumstance of the war into a cold blooded serial killer in a snap. It bucks the trend of the last 40 or so years of war movies, and instead of showing the adversaries as people fighting for country this man is undeniably evil and is killing for sport or pleasure. If the whole movie were set up like this it would be one thing, but as a last minute reveal it works to dehumanize the enemy in a war we aren’t even fighting anymore. It left me cold, I didn’t like it.
That said, I don’t think I was supposed to like it. I’m not entirely confident who The Wall is made for but it isn’t me. It’s violent and graphic in ways I’m not interested in seeing. It’s a gritty war movie and I don’t need any more gritty war movies; it’s not interested in deep or meaningful characters as it is in manipulative drama and shock moments. It isn’t a movie for me, but it’s probably a movie for some. There were two teenagers sitting behind me who seemed really into it. They’ve probably seen a lot fewer war movies than I have. Ironically, this movie about people who use fantastically precise weapons is a dull, blunt, instrument.
The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship By Phillip Pullman and Fred Fordham Scholastic Graphix, 160 pages, $17.99
There’s little original in Phillip Pullman’s first graphic novel. We have a mystery ship shrouded in fog. Time travel. A rich madman. A plucky heroine. Still, he manages to spice things up then stir them into a tasty concoction that makes this book a cut above many of the more recent releases from Scholastic’s Graphix imprint.
First, it is taller and wider than the other books and artist Fordham takes advantage of this with solid sequential storytelling, barely wasting a panel. Pullman’s characters can be talky but at least here he’s giving them meaningful things to say.
We open with multiple threads all involving the Mary Alice, a sailing vessel that is legendary in its random appearances, always foreshadowed by thick fog, making it hard to discern. There are two different sets of people seeking it, one to understand it, one to destroy it. They work at cross-purposes throughout, which heightens the tension.
Then we have Serena, an Australian teen, who tumbles overboard her family’s sailboat only to be rescued by the boy in the red shirt, John Blake himself, the master of mayhem. As we learn throughout the book, the Mary Alice’s predicament is one of his unfortunate making and he’s trying to set things to rights. To accomplish that, he has to expose Carlos Dahlberg’s perfidy and it turns out, he needs Serena’s help to pull that off.
Dahlberg comes off two-dimensional while everyone else is nicely delineated by Pullman. Some of the best scenes are watching Serena acclimate herself to life aboard the Mary Alice and getting to know her time-lost crewmates. I actually wish there was a little more of that and little less mustache-twirling action.
It’s an ambitious tale with a lot packed into the pages. Fordham designs good characters and layouts but some of his figures are too stiff. The color work is also strong, which helps the overall story.
The best part may be that this is a done-in-one story. If we never see John Blake again, the readers will be satisfied. On the other hand, the title says “Adventures” so expect to see more of him in the future. This recommended for ages eight and up although younger readers may find the time travel paradoxes a little difficult.
We all have mothers. I had a mother of a cold last week, and since Sunday was Mom’s day, I thought I would take a moment to honor all those women who have taken on the absolutely hardest job in the multi-verse… even though I’m a bit late.
I think the best-known mother in the four-color universe is the farmer’s wife from Smallville who, with her husband, found and raised the “strange visitor from another planet” who would grow up to become the one and only Superman.
Although I’ve always known that farmer’s wife as Martha Clark Kent, her name varied for quite a while; she was known as Mary Kent in Superman #1 (1939). In George F. Lowther’s 1942 novel, The Adventures of Superman, and on the radio program for which Mr. Lowther was a writer, Mrs. Kent’s first name was Sarah, which also followed her to the George Reeves television series of the same name. (The Adventures of Superman, Episode 1, “Superman on Earth,” written by Richard Fielding). Mort Weisinger finally settled on “Martha” sometime in the 1950s and since then, every variation of Superman’s mom on the page and on television and in the movies has been known by that name.
Several actresses have played Ma Kent on the big and small screens. Virginia Carroll was the first to play her in the 1948 movie serial that starred Kirk Alyn as the Man of Steel, in which her name was Martha. Francis Morris played Sarah Kent in the aforementioned The Adventures of Superman. Phyliss Thaxter was the perfect Martha to Christopher Reeve’s Superman in the one and only Richard Donner film – and if you haven’t seen Donner’s version of Superman II, get on it, guys!!!!! The venerable actress Eva Marie Saint played her in Superman Returns, and Diane Lane is the most recent Martha, doing an admirable job in Man of Steel, Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and is about to return as Martha Kent in Justice League.
Television Marthas have been portrayed as younger and hipper. K Callan’s version, in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures, was a sixties-something woman whom you could easily imagine having burned her bra and marched with Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and other women during the social upheaval of the ‘60s. And I have a special fondness for Annette O’Toole, who played Martha on Smallville for the show’s entire run. This was Ms. O’Toole’s second time around in the DC universe; she played Lana Lang in Superman III.
I think her Martha was innately every bit a feminist as K Callan’s, but, im-not-so-ho, I don’t think she ever needed her consciousness “raised” – she just instinctively understood that she was as equal and capable as her husband and any other man, and her choice to be a “stay-at-home” mom was just that – her choice. In later seasons, Senator Martha Kent went to Washington, representing the state of Kansas, although her political party was never stated; my own political leanings make her a Democrat, although in reality I think she would most likely be what in today’s political climate is called a RINO, which is pronounced like the animal and stands for Republican In Name Only – a pejorative for someone who is not considered conservative enough in their beliefs.
I also want to take some space here to give a shout-out to two very important moms in my life: Loretta Yontef Newell, my mom, and her granddaughter (and my daughter), Alixandra.
I haven’t all that often talked about my mom here – I’m really not sure why. She and my late dad were married for 69 years – they almost made it to 70 years, as their anniversary is coming up this June – and I know she was the linchpin for their relationship, for my dad adored her. I remember when we celebrated their 60th year of marriage; I said, “y’know, I gotta tell ya, there were times I was sure you two were headed towards divorce.” My father scoffed and said, “You’re nuts!” My mother wouldn’t even deign to answer.
She was a woman who was “feminist” in the same way that Annette O’Toole’s Martha was – raised to be able to stand on her own two feet in a time when most women were raised to become wives only, she first worked as a telephone operator before entering the U.S. Army Nurse Cadet Corps during WW II, and was stationed in Washington, D.C. as the war drew to a close.
After the war she worked as a labor and delivery nurse at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital – she commuted every day from Bayonne, taking bus, ferry, and subways! – where, she told me, she and her friends, after a long night delivering babies, went to the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn to see a certain young singer from Hoboken whose first name was Frank and whose last name was Sinatra. (I could never get her to admit to being one of the “bobby-soxers” who screamed his name earlier in the decade.) She was a school nurse, a medical-surgical nurse, one of the very first nurses to work with dialysis patients back in the day when the dialysis machines looked like giant rotors with a netting strung across their innards.
She also worked for the U.S. Public Health Service at a hospital on Staten Island, where one of her jobs was to ride a jetty out to the ships moored in Lower New York Harbor and give physicals to the merchant marine crewmen, clearing them for entrance into the States. She was a school nurse, a sleep-away camp nurse, and an ER nurse. And she did all this while being an involved wife and mother. My dad was always proud of his wife being a professional woman and she was, for the longest time, the only one of their circle of friends who worked “outside the home.”
She made time for me and my brother as well. She encouraged us to read – leading her own two plus their reprobate friends to the public library – and took us into New York City to Broadway shows and museums. I think our elementary school teachers were afraid of her, because if she thought one of us had been treated unfairly, she didn’t sit on her hands.
When I was in second grade I went to my school’s library and wanted to take out “The Black Stallion,” by Walter Farley. The librarian would not allow it, saying that it was a book for the older grades. When my mother heard about this, she went up to the school and demanded that I be allowed to read whatever I wanted to read. Of course, I wasn’t present for this showdown, but I can only imagine what my mom said because from then on I never had a problem.
Another time, I think I was in third grade, the class was assigned to read a biography and then write a book report about the subject. My mom took me to the public library, and I chose the story of Y.A. Tittle, the N.Y. Giants quarterback. When I handed in my report, the teacher gave it back to me, saying, “Little girls do not read biographies about football players.” Up went my mother, back to P.S. 29. Again, I don’t know what she said to the teacher, but I got an A+ on that book report – I’ve always wondered whether it was because it was an early example of my writing ability or because, simply put, the teacher was scared shitless of my mother.
My mother never told me what she said, and now it is too late – right before my dad died, maybe two weeks prior, my mom had a stroke, and though she is not physically disabled, her cognitive abilities are, to put it sadly and simply, pretty much shot to hell. She now lives in the same nursing home, and on the same floor, where my father spent the last years of his life. Sometimes she is more “cognitive” than at other times – sometimes when I speak to her on the phone, she is almost my mother; and other times, most times, she simply cries and says she wants to go “home.”
The other mom I want to talk about is my daughter, Alixandra. She and her wonderful husband Jeffrey, my son-in-law the doctor – he is a Ph.D and a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey – have a son, named after both grandfathers: Meyer Manuel. He is loving and beautiful and the light of my life. He is also autistic.
When Meyer was definitively diagnosed at 18 months – the earliest age at which autism can be definitively diagnosed – Alix was working full-time and applying for a second Master’s program in Public Health and Policy at New York University. She didn’t quit her job. She didn’t quit her education, she delayed her entry into the program for a semester and started researching autism and the education of autistic children.
Alix found Meyer the best school in her area, Caldwell University, enrolling her son in the Applied Behavior Analysis program there. It was incredibly expensive, and when the insurance company lagged in its responsibilities, she fought them. She has never, ever ceased fighting for her child, has never ceased to put him first; they sold their beloved first home and moved to a town with better, and more progressive, educational policies towards special needs kids, choosing to rent and investing the monies from the sale of their home in Meyer’s future. And meanwhile, she did go back to school for that second Masters and continues to work full-time, commuting to New York City and always bringing work home with her.
This week I’m covering Scout Comics and Ben Kahn. Ben had self-published a comic titled Heavenly Blues which I had picked up a while back at Carmine Street Comics here in Manhattan. Since then, Scout Comics has picked up the series. I got the chance to talk with Ben about his comics career and having Heavenly Blues added to Scout Comics growing roster.
JC: Thank you for taking the time to chat with me about your new series at Scout Comics, Heavenly Blues! Before we get started, you’re a fairly new face to comics, at least in terms of being Diamond distributed. Can you tell us a bit about your writing career leading up to this?
BK: Of course. Heavenly Blues is my first series handled by Diamond, but my work in comics stretches back over twelve years. In high school, I worked on a webcomic that ran for around 700 strips between 2005 and 2012. It wasn’t much. I took video game sprites and used them to make comics in MSPaint and Photoshop. For a shock-comedy webcomic it was pretty successful, but that’s not exactly setting the bar very high. I loved working on the webcomic and making it taught me a lot about writing dialogue, but it eventually just kinda ran out of steam. A big part of that was I had started working on Shaman. Production on Shaman ran from 2011 to 2015, when it was released. Shaman was actually distributed by Diamond as a trade paperback. So Heavenly Blues is my first series in Diamond, but it’s not my first rodeo with them. While I was working on Shaman, I was also working as a writer and designer for a mobile game company. Don’t ask me what games I worked on, they were all terrible. But working on those games gave me the resources to make Shaman, so all’s well that ends well.
JC: I’d like to expand on what you were discussing regarding Shaman. As someone whose self-published before I understand how daunting of a feat that can be. How did you go about making that happen and what were the challenges and rewards for you?
BK: Making Shaman was one of the most difficult, and rewarding things I’ve ever done. It’s a five-chapter graphic novel that I worked on with Bruno Hidalgo (who is working with me again on Heavenly Blues) and was about a necromancer and his teenage daughter going on crazy adventures and bringing heroes and villains back to life. Think Hellblazer meets Rick & Morty. I was very lucky to work with Philly-based publisher, Locust Moon Press. They helped me put together a creative team, find artists for covers (including Farel Dalrymple, JG Jones, and Jim Rugg). Really, they taught me everything I know about making comics. To get the book actually printed and into stores, I had to do a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was successful, but man was that the toughest month of my life. Kickstarter’s great. The stories and creative voices it’s empowered are truly something to behold. But man oh man am I happy that I don’t have to do another Kickstarter. I’m so proud of the work Bruno and I did on Shaman. It was my first real comic book, the first time I really got to see characters I imagined come to life. It was beyond rewarding, and not just because seeing your book in a store in between Saga and Spider-Man is the coolest thing ever.
JC: Okay, now onto Heavenly Blues! How did you come about thinking up this idea, and at what point did your collaborator Bruno Hidalgo join the project?
BK: The original kernel of an idea was an old Irish proverb “may you be in Heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.” It got me thinking of a heist on Heaven, where thieves had 30 minutes to break in and make the ultimate score. The story naturally moved away from that idea, but that’s where the idea of “heist in the afterlife” started. Rather than having present day, alive characters break into heaven, I realized that the characters could be much more varied and complex if they were already dead. Bruno came on board the very second there was a script done. He was the only artist I wanted to work with on this. There was almost no downtime between Shaman ending and Heavenly Blues beginning.
JC: Like Shaman, you went about self-publishing Heavenly Blues at first. Why did you decide on the self-publishing route for this series?
BK: Self-publishing was never the end goal. The idea was always to do a small print run to get the word out there while I pitched to publishers. Part of the reason I wanted to do a print run before pitching to publishers was to build up some early awareness and buzz. Judging by the existence of this interview, it worked! With Shaman, I wanted to have all five issues done before printing. But with Heavenly Blues, I decided to do a small print run of the individual issues. Part of this was wanting more content for conventions, and part was seeing just how easy it was when my life partner did it (Kathleen Kralowec of the wonder The Lion & The Roc webcomic).
JC: When did you decide to pitch the series around and why is Scout Comics the best home for Heavenly Blues?
BK: Pitching was always the plan. From day one, I wanted Heavenly Blues to have a real publisher. It was the same with Shaman. I pitched it to every comics publisher there was, but even though we got really close with some, it didn’t work out. But I pitched Shaman back in 2013 and 2014. And even though that feels like such a short time ago, the comic industry has really changed in just the last couple of years. There’s a whole new tier of publishers that just didn’t exist when I pitched Shaman. No Scout, no Black Mask Studios, no AfterShock Comics, no Vault Comics. Heavenly Blues simply entered a very different environment than Shaman did. I had a couple of publishers interested in Heavenly Blues, but Scout really impressed me from the get-go. Brendan Deneen and James Pruett have been fantastic to work with. Scout is young and hungry, and is putting out some really spectacular books like Solar Flare, Mindbender, InferNoct, and Girrion. It’s a library I’m very proud to be a part of.
JC: Some of the characters we see in Heavenly Blues are based somewhat on real people. What about those people and events in history inspired you to write this story?
BK: The nature of the story gives me access to all of history. I wanted to create the “ultimate” team of thieves and wanted to pull from the most iconic archetypes from around the world. I didn’t want to use real historical people though, I wanted more freedom in establishing their personalities and backstories. Some characters are based off more generic archetypes, like 16th-century ninja Hideki Iwata and ancient Egyptian grave robber Amunet. Others are inspired by more specific people. With the main character, Isaiah Jefferson, he’s a bank robber from the Great Depression. He very much follows in the John Dillinger model of the Criminal as Celebrity. Wild West outlaw, James ‘Coin Counter’ Turner, was based heavily on Doc Holliday with some notable differences (namely Coin Counter’s less than heroic morality and his queer sexuality). I think Erin Foley’s inspiration is the most interesting to me, as she doesn’t originate from a traditional ‘thief’ archetype. Instead, she comes from the character Pearl in Scarlet Letter. Scarlet Letter was one of my favorite books in high school, and I was excited at the opportunity to explore that kind of time period and culture.
JC: You tackle elements of Christianity in this story. Since that can be a sensitive subject for some people, how do you go about writing a story with a religious backdrop?
BK: Honestly, the religious aspect never really factored into it. I’m Jewish. Heaven and Hell were never presented to me in a religious context. The afterlife isn’t a big deal in Jewish culture. It’s almost never mentioned, and when it is there are very few details. When I was first told about Heaven and Hell, I had so many questions that there were no answers to. So Hell is just the torture dimension? Who decides who goes where? Does judgment change with modern morality, or is it fixed? Heaven and Hell never seemed like real places that people could exist in, so this is my attempt at answering those questions and creating an afterlife that feels, for lack of a better word, real. I think by now people have been exposed to dozens if not hundreds of depictions of Heaven and Hell that are relatively secular. And if someone is offended…*shrug*
JC: What comics and comic writers influence your work and made you want to get into comics in the first place?
BK: Oh man, I was just thinking about this today. Now I actually get to tell you my comics Mt. Rushmore: Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Brian K Vaughn, and Geoff Johns. They each influenced me in major ways. Vaughn’s Runaways was the first comic I ever read, Johns’ Green Lantern was my first superhero series I followed month to month, Gaiman’s Sandman inspired me to become a writer, and Morrison’s everything turned my reality into a fragmented kaleidoscope of dream time. I think comics are greatest creative medium ever invented. I think it’s the perfect union of incredible writing and incredible art. I think every medium has its specialties and what it does best, but what comics do better than anything else is depict the impossible. An epic battle of the gods among the cosmos is just as easy to depict as two people talking in a diner, maybe easier. There’s absolutely nothing that can’t be done in comics, and that inspires me every day.
JC: What advice can you give to all the self-publishers that may be reading this?
BK: What advice can I give? Be obsessed. Like, crazy obsessed. Unhealthily obsessed. Be prepared to forgo social events and spend ludicrous amounts of money on a creative team. You want a professional book? Gotta pay people a professional rate. There’s no cheat or shortcut. I truly believe comics aren’t something you can do unless you’re willing to throw absolutely everything you’ve got at it. But if you’re obsessed enough, that’ll be a price you’ll pay without a second thought.
JC: Thanks again for taking the time to chat with me! Where can people pre-order Heavenly Blues and do you have anything else you’d like to plug?
BK: Heavenly Blues is out in stores on July 26th, and the Diamond order code is MAY171769. You can find Shaman on ComiXology or on my Etsy store. My next convention is Five Points Comics Festival, so catch me there in New York this weekend on May 20-21st. And make sure to check out all the other great books from Scout Comics!
I’ve grown to appreciate Vin Diesel over time so I thought it as high time I checked out his xXx franchise. I know it was intended as high octane action, his Rambo or Commando and it’s been fifteen years since the first such file. He supposedly died after the first while a second film focused instead on a different member of the XXX program, Darius Stone (Ice Cube). Diesel has been talking about xXx: The Return of Xander Cage since 2006 but it took a decade to finally get it done and in all that time, you would have thought they’d come up with a story.
The basic gimmick is that there is now a device that can override satellite programming and turn them into weapons, bringing them crashing down on targets. Nicknamed Pandora’s Box, it is in the possession of the CIA until they are betrayed, allowing a tactical to invade and steal it. When a satellite is brought down on NSA Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel Jackson), it triggers a mad scramble to obtain the device. The CIA’s Jane Marke (Toni Collette) tracks down Cage and convinces him to find the box in Gibbons’ memory.
From there, it’s a dizzying collection of set pieces as various factions clash in pursuit of the box which takes them around to tropical locales allowing Diesel’s muscles to glisten and women to wear very little, including rival Serena Unger (Deepika Padukone). The story’s conceit is that nothing is as it seems and betrayals and reversals come quickly until the various factions band together to destroy the device before it can be used again.
The set pieces are fast and usually imaginative, although the editing shreds many excellent moments, a disservice notably to Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa. DJ Caruso’s direction is frenetic but does little to enhance the storytelling.
There are the Schwarzenegger-like quips, notably “I love this shit” as Cage reaches the film’s climax. But beyond that, the dialogue is flat and unrevealing about the characters which wastes some good actors, especially Collette. Joining the team as their geeky tech expert is Felicity Smoak, I mean, Rebecca “Becky” Clearidge (Nina Dobrev), who at least gets some good moments. Jackson appears early on and is on the joke that Gibbons and Nick Fury are almost identical (which gives the film its best inside joke in the opening scenes).
Overall, it’s a lot of noise and action and very little to hang it on which is disappointing and could explain why the $85 million production earned about half that domestically, a major disappointment. Even its worldwide gross of about $350 million makes a fourth installment questionable.
The film, out now from Paramount Home Entertainment, has a superb 2.39:1 high definition transfer coupled with a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio track that lets you hear every shell casing hit the ground. It has been released in multiple packages including the Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD combo and 4k UHD.
The Blu-ray comes with a handful of special features that focus on the cast and crew including Third Time’s the Charm: Xander Returns, Rebels, Tyrants & Ghosts: The Cast, Opening Pandora’s Box: On Location, I Live for This Sh#t!: Stunts, and a great Gag Reel.
He never made a comic. He never created a TV show. He never even went to a comic convention. But his impact on Geek Media was profound.
Without him, toy store aisles would be very different. Without him, comic shops would be very different. Without him, licensing deals would not be where they are today. And if he didn’t do what he did, millions of children would have had very different childhoods.
Last week, the news broke that the creator of Captain Action and GI Joe, Stan Weston, had died.
Creating GI Joe – and creating a category
Stan’s biggest idea was to create what would become the action figure category. He had this idea to transform the 12” Barbie Fashion Dolls into a something for boys. Just as the 1960s Barbie could transform, via a simple costume change, from a fashion model to a teacher to a nurse, he envisioned a soldier who could shift from an infantry man to a Navy diver to a fighter pilot.
At that time, the idea to create a Barbie Doll for boys was a radical one. Boys might play with soldiers, but never dolls. In the sixties, I remember my grandfather, who’s approval meant the world to me, get confused about his grandsons playing with dolls. We tried to explain how off-base he was, but someone from his generation just couldn’t wrap his head around it.
It was a big deal. And with a series of comic book ads drawn by Irv Novick, GI Joe became the next big thing for a generation of young boys
Captain Action
Captain Action was Stan’s “next idea” after GI Joe. While GI Joe could change from a soldier into a frogman, or an astronaut, Captain Action could change into different superheroes. And the amazing thing was, Captain Action could change into different heroes who were owned by different corporations. He could change into Marvel Comics heroes like Captain America or Sgt. Fury. He could change into King Features heroes like The Phantom or Flash Gordon. He could even change into the NPP characters, owned today by Warner Bros’ DC Comics.
Paul Gulacy is the only artist to draw covers for both GI Joe and Capt. Action.
He explained to me that it was “easy.” They’d just hop into NYC cabs, have a meeting, ask the secretary to type up the contract and a carbon copy and they’d be all set to go.
It was simple idea that wasn’t capitalized upon before this. Kids would mix-and-match the toys in their toy box for creative play. Why couldn’t they mix-and-match the toys in one particular toy line too?
Contrasting those Mad Men days with the complexity of finalizing deals now makes today’s licensing executives want to cry. No lawyers. No emails. No conference calls. No style guides. Just a firm handshake, a focus and a little personal integrity.
Stan Weston wasn’t a one-trick pony. He did a lot of other things that become the favorite things of a lot of people. He was involved in ventures that included everything from Nintendo to Thundercats to Farrah Fawcett.
Passing the Torch
When my business partner, Joe Ahearn, and I acquired the Captain Action property, I had the opportunity to speak with Stan. He was everything you’d want him to be. He was gracious, and confident and so very encouraging. His whole attitude towards our acquisition of Captain Action was, “Wonderful! You boys have fun with that! Make some money and have some fun!”
I had an idea that Stan should be a guest of honor at New York Comic Con. I think it would have been fantastic for fans and especially for Stan. Sadly, at that point, he was living in France and was reluctant to add more travel to his schedule. In retrospect, perhaps I should have pushed harder.
But like so many of the iconic comic creators, or a guy like Chuck Berry, Stan would not reap the financial rewards of his category-creating ideas. He’d take a run at re-negotiating/re-litigating with Hasbro, the company that grew out of the little toy company started by the Hassenfeld Brothers. Hasbro had grown into the behemoth it is today based upon, in no small part, the success of Stan’s ideas. But those agreements aren’t public knowledge and it’s unclear where it all ended up.
Weston, and his heirs will have to just take pride in the worldwide industry established, innumerable jobs created and countless hours of fun resulting from a few great Stan Weston ideas.
