Author: Dennis O'Neil

Dennis O’Neil, Time Bandit

O'Neil Art 130103Okay, let’s agree that 2012 wasn’t a bad year. It wasn’t a good year, either. (Does that mean it wasn’t tired?) It just…wasn’t. It had no reality other than the one we slathered onto it, and either do minutes, seconds, hours – the whole temporal shebang. (All hands brace for Blather.)

Once upon a time…no, let’s just say once the ancestors who still live deep within us observed certain natural events and recurrences and used them to structure their lives and somewhere in the ancestral murk they gave the intervals between these events names and when a lot of intervals had passed and the universe committed us, we homo sapiens acted as though the names were real and – heck, we probably believe that they are. We place labels on the unknowable and believe the labels are the reality.

Anyone seen a unicorn lately?

There were obvious benefits to believing these illusions – this time stuff. For some of us, probably for most of us, these phantom seconds and hours and so forth help prevent our lives from being a tumble through chaos. If they weren’t useful, evolution would have dispensed with them before now. (Can you define now?)

Of course, not everything is part of an interval and maybe we should be glad. How boring would our lives be if they were ticked off by a metronome? If our happenings were utterly predictable? A little surprise occasionally brightens our…I was going to type “days,” but given the context, it might be better to use the word “existence” instead.

I’ve had some good happenings this past yea…ooops!…this past interval. Enjoyable books, movies, television. Enjoyable companions. A few laughs. New snow in the front yard and dazzling foliage in the fall…ooops again! Not “fall,” not another damn time word. (Maybe “state of existence after a warm interval”?) I’ve taken some interesting courses and finished writing a book and taught a comics writing class and traveled a bit and there is nothing much wrong with any of that. I should be grateful for all of it and I probably am.

But the interval had its negatives, too. My world is emptier without Jerry Robinson and Joe Kubert. Although it was kind of exciting too watch Hurricane Sandy shake the trees outside the window, the storm wasn’t really very friendly. And I could have done without the kinney stoones. It has been a dismal exercise in masochism to learn of the behavior of our politicians and to witness a presidential campaign that might have shamed Thomas Jefferson. Lies have been told and the telling of lies has gone unpunished and we wonder if it is now acceptable to lie. And if it is, what happens next?

That’s what we always want to know, isn’t it? What’s next? And this mystery, this next, is what none of our constructs can help us with. Not que sera sera, not “what will be will be” but rather, “what is, is.”

Have you defined now yet?

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

DENNIS O’NEIL: The World Must Make Sense

Here we are again: Christmas Eve, and I had an idea for a column – a kind of story/parable that would culminate in a macabre image involving the season’s most prominent icons.  The Scrooge in me thinks the piece might be pretty cool, but there’s another me that doesn’t want to perpetuate ugliness of any kind.  This second me believes in the season – or, to be exact, the need for the season.

I’ve never wrapped my head completely around Claude Levi-Strauss’ contention that ritual precedes mythology.  But the Christmas frolics might give me a clue.  Begin with this: outside, it is cold and bleak and the days are very, very short.  We glimpse the coming void and we are afraid.  Not panicky, just feeling a quiet dread.  And we rally – we gather together where there is light, and we sing, and we dance, and we exchange gifts and festive foods.  We defy the darkness, the dread.  The days will get longer, and warm: this we proclaim, and we are comforted. Deep inside, we share with our ancestors.

We accept the stories that arose in them to answer the brain’s need for structure and logic – the world must make sense!  – we must be able to explain.

We conflate ritual and myth and – behold!  A holiday!

So no ugliness from me today.  Nor tomorrow.  The next day?  Who knows?

The Weather Channel predicts snow tonight.  Tomorrow we will waken and perhaps the world outside the window will be lovely.  Later, Larry and Perri will come up from Brooklyn and we will share a meal and exchange tokens and that will be fine, just fine – exactly as we want it to be.

RECOMMENDED READING: Why Does The World Exist?, by Jim Holt.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

Dennis O’Neil: The Elephant in the Punch Bowl

Dear Uncle Huff ,

Look, I know that your guns are important to you: more important than Emmy’s knitting is to her, more important than the twins’ comic book collection is to them, maybe more important than Gran’s daily mass and communion is to her.

For openers, there’s your collection, the best in town. From the nifty little .22 derringer to the awesome AK47, it’s a display of firearms you’re justly proud of. And yes, I remember sitting in your living room, cocking and dry-firing your Colt Peacemaker. Sure, guns fascinate me. I’m an American male.

But the collection is only the beginning. Guns provide a focus for your energy and enthusiasm. They give you a social life, too. I’ve seen you at the gun shows, kidding around with your pals, sharing information and opinions with them. They’re your tribe and you’re happy to have a tribe and to be part of this one. And guns give you an area of expertise – something most of us want. You stand holding the Glock in both hands and empty it downrange and the target you’re shooting at is shredded. You smile. You’re a damn good shot and you know it.

I wonder if fear isn’t part of your devotion to weapons. Some where along the line, you realized that the world is dangerous and unpredictable and having the capability to end an enemy’s life with a half-pound of pressure on a trigger give you a feeling of security.

Let us not forget your patriotism. When the “liberals” – a word you expel from your mouth like it has a bad taste – criticize guns and gun owners, you cite the Second Amendment and when the liberals suggest that our founding fathers meant for state militias to be armed and said nothing about ordinary Joes, you shrug.

Even if the founding fathers hadn’t limited their recommendation to military organizations, they lived and wrote about 236 years ago. Do you still ride to work on a horse?

I’ll ask one more question – a snide question, I admit: if you’re so star-spangled patriotic, why have you never worn a uniform? You’re strong and healthy and intelligent and, let us remember, a fine marksman; the Army would have welcomed you. Okay, like I said: snide. I have no right to judge you, or anyone else.

So instead of judging you, let me plead with you to be enormously brave. Admit that you’ve been ignoring the elephant in the punch bowl, that guns may bear some responsibility for the barbaric slaughter of innocents we are continuously witnessing. Heed facts and ignore slogans. Find the courage to abandon important elements of your life so a greater good can exist. Admit that you might be wrong.

Whenever there’s an Aurora or Virginia Tech or Gabby Gifford, the pro-gun pundits say that now is not the time to discuss gun control, let’s wait until emotions cool. Then time passes and other matters claim the national attention, and eventually, there is more cause for mourning.

At least start asking the questions. Last week, 20 school children were shot to death.

Your nephew,

Jimmy

THURSDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: Our Christmas Funnies

If memory serves – and how often does that happen? – I saw my first 2012 Christmas decorations in late summer. In Miami, maybe? At the merchandise mart that adjoined the convention hotel? Anyway, months before anything resembling the start of the Holiday Season, which seems to have climbed into the vicinity of Halloween.

(And are you now bracing for one of my hate-Christmas screeds? Am I preparing to validate Fox News’s diatribes against The War On Christmas, ho ho ho? Naw. Maybe next year.)

What I am wondering, though, is whether any of our comic book bretheren still produce the annual Christmas story. In fact, I’m wondering if they ever did. I know that I wrote at least a couple of them, two featuring The Dark Knight (ah, but was he a silent knight? a holy knight?) and a third, I think, starring one of his favorite adversaries, that feminine feline funster, Catwoman. Two of these were commissioned, produced by editorial fiat, and what the hell? We’re pros, right? Guy behind the desk says Christmas story and we say, how many pages and when? The other, a Batman, may have been my idea, or, more likely, it may have originated with My Favorite Editor, Julius Schwartz.

And, o holy holly, while typing the above, I forget the weirdest Christmas-Meets-Batman of them all: A Slaying Song Tonight. This eight-pager appeared in an anthology, Batman Black and White, and I’m pretty sure it was my idea to make the thing a Christmas story and if you insist on my telling you why, I’d guess that I hadn’t done a Christmas piece in a long time and I felt like revisiting old turf. Maybe I shouldn’t even mention this because it surely wasn’t an annual anything: rather it was, as they say in the British publishing dodge, “a one-off.”

(An oddity concerning Batman Black and White: the book was conceived and edited by DC’s color editor, Mark Chiarello. And for those of you who haven’t seen it: yeah, every story in it was in black-and-white. And consider this a Recommended Reading. And finally, to end this windy digression – Mark, if Slaying Song was your idea, I apologize.)

Where were we…? Wondering if comics do Christmas stories anymore. Well, if they aren’t published, or if there are fewer of them than in days of yore, it may be because these stories, from Dickens onward, were focused on one day, a holiday, Christmas. Well, Christmas isn’t a day, not for a while now. A … what? Season? That’s closer. What it has evolved into, this Christmas, is something we don’t have a name for. Not yet. Shall we coopt a bit from an old Seinfeld and call it “festivus”? Or how about frumalackel? You like that – frumalackel? Sleep on it.

Frumalackel or Christmas, I’m not complaining. It is what it is – what it has become, and it is not wise to argue with reality, and so I won’t. Not this year.

Next year? Who knows?

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: She-Spies

Fictional spies seem to come in two varieties, with numerous subsets: There are the glamorous and super-competent who bop around the globe, always traveling first class, driving lavishly sports cars, staying at palatial hotels, indulging in expensive cuisine and exotic liquor and comely members of the opposite sex and killing bad guys and saving civilization from slightly caricatured nut cases. (Bond – James Bond.)

If you can ignore the authoritarian subtext, mentioned in his space last week, and if you aren’t bothered by the veneration of conspicuous consumption, this almost-fantasy can be excellently entertaining, and often I have been excellently entertained by it.

This kind of secret agent is currently represented on television by Covert Affairs, a show in which the superspy is a woman incarnated by Piper Perabo. Her character isn’t quite as over-the-top as Bond, and thus far her opponents haven’t been any more caricatured than most televised antagonists, but she is one tough jet-setter who doesn’t stay in hostels when abroad and seems to have no qualms about her profession. She is part of a CIA unit that functions as a surrogate family, has a brotherly colleague with whom she has a platonic (so far) relationship, and even a biological sister. Oh, and she’s gorgeous. Did I mention that – the gorgeousness?

The other kind of fictional spy is a lot less fun. You find him/her in print in the novels of John LeCarre and Graham Greene and on the screen in movies made from those novels, and, I guess, some others. On the screen in your living room, this brand of spy is represented by another woman who is a far distance from Ms Perabo’s Annie Walker. Claire Danes’s Carrie Mathison, of Homeland fame, is deeply conflicted and in need of psychiatric help, which she got in the last episode of the previous season in the form of shock therapy. Ouch!

She has a love-hate relationship with her primary antagonist and doesn’t always mesh with her fellow CIAers. She usually looks unhappy and she’s been known to raise her voice. Her world is dark and the mortal climate is ambiguous: watching Homeland this week, I saw a beautifully written and played scene in which Carrie and a terrorist debated the righteousness of their respective causes and neither was in error. Grey is apparently the universe’s hue of choice and Homeland reflects that.

So what kind of spy story is better? Hey, no need for such a comparison. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pure entertainment and I would sashay along Annie Walker’s path any time. But – maybe drama should occasionally try for something more than entertainment. Maybe it should reflect the perplexities of the real world and maybe it should prompt us to question inherited wisdom and assumptions and so, if we were indulging in pointless comparisons (and we’re not! We’re not!) Carrie would be the more valuable she-spy.

But I’d still rather sashay with Annie.

RECOMMENDED LISTENING: The Science of Natural Healing, presented by Dr. Mimi Guarneri and available from The Teaching Company. The information Dr. Guarneri gives us could conceivably save lives. Stuff everyone should know.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases – Where Are The New Nerds?

 

 

Dennis O’Neil: Movies, Comics, and Heroes

Okay, first another bow toward my friend and colleague, John Ostrander. No sense in reviewing Skyfall, the new James Bond flick, since, in his November 18th column, John already wrote virtually everything I might have written about the entertainment. Let us agree: best Bond ever, for the reasons John cited.

It’s been a banner year for this kind of show, hasn’t it? We had two of the best superheroes – no, let’s not be mealy mouthed, Marvel’s Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises were, though quite different, the best superhero movies yet. (You want to disagree? Fine. This is only my opinion and, doggone it, I’ve misplaced my cloak of infallibility. Wonder if I could borrow the pope’s…) I think there’s been, among media types, a discernible learning curve. They have learned how to do this kind of material really well. Not that all such material is really good, but now there is the possibility of it being as good as anything out there. And, maybe more important, there has arisen the consensus that it ought to be good; no need to phone it in just because it’s that comic book stuff.

Reasons? Hey, do I look like a savant? Let’s just make one guess and hurry on.  The guess: for the past couple of decades, many (if not most?) of the bright, creative kids have been comics readers. The form is familiar to them and they’re friendly to it. “Of course the movies can be good,” they might say. “Why wouldn’t they be good?”

The first Hollywood guys who tried adapting comics to the screen were on unfamiliar turf; to the current guys it’s home territory.

That was the guess, plus addenda. Now, the moving on, in the form of a confession: When I was a drifting, quasi-beatnik/peacenik, still on the south side of the dreaded 30, Bond was a Guilty Pleasure. A peacenik buddy (who was not as quasi as I was) and I saw the movies, first run, and enjoyed the action and adventure and romance and pretty females – all the Bondian delights – but! There was what I thought was an unhealthy glorification of consumerism – no, whoever has the most toys when he dies doesn’t always wins – and this aspect is, blessedly, almost absent from Skyfall. The other guilt-inducer was a bit thornier: wasn’t James Bond a fascist?

Sure, the word “fascist” has been tossed around and in the process lost some precision, but it usually involves unquestioning obedience to some authority figure, presumably for the common good. (Has any leader ever claimed to act for the common bad?) Strongly implicit in this conduct is that the authority figure gets to decide what the good is. So enter Bond: His friendly neighborhood authority figure, M, tells him to go commit bloody mayhem and he does. No questioning of right or wrong–just do the mayhem, often merrily. Recent history has demonstrated the inadvisability of blind obedience to the boss.

Again, we can pretty much find Skyfall innocent. The authoritarianism is muted, and neither Bond nor M seem to be happy about the mayhem. And they both seem fallible.

Maybe this kind of analysis is bringing too much baggage to what is, after all, just show-biz. But I’m glad I did it 50 years ago, and I don’t think it’s unhealthy to do it now.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: Can We Be Heroes?

Well! They are certainly biting the dust, aren’t they, these “heroes”? A few weeks ago, I lamented the steroid-fueled fall from grace of that bicycling phenom, Lance Armstrong. And for quite a while we’ve been learning about perverse clergymen who can’t keep their cassocks buttoned and their hands to themselves. Now, we have the sorry spectacle of two of our nation’s high-profile warriors behaving like eighth graders enthralled by their female classmates’ sudden bumpiness. Could they be taking their cues from a rather impressive list of horny congressmen? Don’t know. Is this a matter of national security? Shrug. Are they dumb asses? Well, I have no rocks to throw when it comes to asinine concupiscence, so let us hurry past this and ask the big question: Are they heroes, these horn dogs?

Okay, what’s a “hero,” anyway? The answer, if you don’t mind regressing past a lot of centuries, is that a hero is something pretty close to a god. Heroes first presented themselves in mythology, and often, maybe most of the time, they were half-deity themselves: Gilgamesh and Hercules and that crowd. We worship gods; we venerate heroes. And the need to perform these acts of worship and veneration seems to be pretty deep within us. Our genes seem to like them; every culture seems to have its pantheon of über-beings. Might have some survival value – uniting folks unrelated by blood into a social unit, the better to grow crops and defend against enemies and invent video games.

And here’s where it gets vexing for those of us in the hero business: maybe the time for heroes is almost past. Not just any one hero, or group of heroes, or class of heroes – the very concept of hero. Going, going, gone. Because it’s hard to venerate something you know, in your synapses, does not exist – not just on Olympus, or heaven, but nowhere at all. Which is what contemporary experience is telling us: no Santa Claus, no Easter bunny, no heroes. Now move along…

Oh, there are still plenty of extraordinary feats to admire. Physicists and mathematicians and delving into realities that their forebears didn’t know existed and if you doubt that athletes are amazing, just check out any random season of a major sport or watch the next Olympics. But the “hero” idea has accumulated a lot of baggage over the millennia: our heroes should be noble and honest and honorable and self-sacrificing and, as the Greeks had it, should “serve and protect.” They aren’t any of that – not the ones that exist outside make-believe.

Still, we go to the movies and watch the television and get entertained by heroic figures, so, bottom line, whatever prompts us to hero worship is still with us. And if our heroes are a bit more smudged than those our fathers and grandfathers favored…hey, our air isn’t as clean as theirs, either, and we’re still breathing, at least for a while.

Before I go…did I tell you that I’ve finally seen the new Arrow TV series and…

RECOMMENDED READING: Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: Truth, Justice, and the American Press

 “I was taught to believe you could use words to change the course of rivers – that even the darkest secrets would fall under the harsh light of the sun. But facts have been replaced by opinions. Information has been replaced by entertainment. Reporters have become stenographers. I can’t be the only one who’s sick of what passes for the news today.”

Well said, Clark!

The words that begin this column were spoken by Clark Kent as he quit his job at Metropolis’ greatest (and only?) newspaper, the Daily Planet.

Clark has been a journalist at the Planet for either five years, or 74 years, depending on whether you prefer comic book years or the kind of years most of us measure time by. Either way, what Clark did was a noble gesture.

This is not Mr. Kent’s first stray from the Planet city room. Some forty-one years ago he accepted a job in television and though, if memory serves, he didn’t completely sever all ties with the paper, he didn’t report for work there, either. Instead, he bopped around the city in a van seeking opportunities for on-the-spot, live coverage of news events. His secret – well, his newest secret – was that the van had an concealed escape hatch through which Clark could exit, unseen, when his alter ego – and you know who that is – was needed.

So Clark’s (temporary) change of status wasn’t dictated by ethics; he was just a working stiff doing what his boss wanted. And, not incidentally, what Superman’s biographer’s editor wanted. This was the splendid Julius Schwartz, who felt that Clark’s reporting gig was becoming a bit dated and that maybe shunting him into the electronic media would give him a dash of contemporaneity. You know, spiff him up a little.

I don’t remember what happened to Clark’s video career. Obviously, it didn’t last.

Now, he’s again cut loose from the only serious job he’s ever had, and I applaud him.

I expect that you applaud him, too, when you think about the egregious farce we’ve all just survived. It was called “an election” and it produced millions of words. Words spoken into microphones and in front of cameras and printed on paper: words used incorrectly and irresponsibly; words used to obfuscate and obscure; words that angered and irritated and infuriated; some words that distracted from the truth, some that denied the truth, some that seemed to bear no relationship to the truth.

Clark complained of “what passes for news today.” Does he mean all the print and broadcasting that details opinions and misadventures of instant celebrities – inconsequential nattering that once would barely have qualified as back fence gossip? Global warming? Palestine? Syria? The economy? Well, yeah, those get mentioned too, but maybe not a lot and besides, they’re not as interesting as Justin Bieber’s split with his girlfriend.

Are they?

RECOMMENDED READING: Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie.

FRIDAY: Thomases. Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: Krypton and the End Times

From the totally unauthorized history of the late, great planet Krypton.

dedicated to Sandy

Fer-El waited until the building stopped shaking, stepped around a slab of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling, and entered the senator’s office. He crossed to the desk and, without waiting for an invitation, slouched into a chair.

Senator Ban-El brushed plaster dust from his shoulder and asked, “Did you feel it?”

“Didn’t feel a thing,” Fer-El answered. “Building didn’t shake, not a bit, and even if it did, that’s happened before. Plenty of times. But enough of that. I bring good news. I just topped off our coffers. Put another four billion in your campaign fund. No problem with the election now.”

The windows rattled and a picture fell from the wall.

“Did you feel that?” the senator asked.

“Nope. Feel what? Say, you haven’t been listening to that Jor-El buzzard, have you?”

“He spoke to the combined chambers this morning. Said there’s still time. We can fabricate a substitute for –”

“And you bothered to stay awake? Banny, I’m gonna tell you once more plenty of what you already know. That Jor-El…not just him, all those so-called scientists with their ‘facts’ and ‘data’ – all wishy washy sissies. Not a real Kryptonian man in the lot! What is it they say again?”

“We’ve exhausted the planet’s supply of dragonbreath and without it there’s nothing anchoring us to the space-time continuum.”

“All lies. There’s plenty more dragonbreath where that came from.”

“All the dragons died out five million years ago.”

“Piddykrunch! I believe I saw a dragon on my way down here. And anyway, our beloved Krypton’s only about four hundred years old. That’s in The Scrolls and you know what else’s in The Scrolls? Nothing bad’s ever gonna happen long as we obey the Rules handed down by our beloved senators –”

I’m a senator,” the senator protested.

“See? My point exactly. Proves that nothing bad can happen or you couldn’t do it. See how simple it is? And anyway, it’s all happened before and nothing bad came of it then.”

“A continent crumbled and forty million people died.”

“You believe that?”

“My mother was one of the forty million.”

“See! Your mother was and Jor-El’s mother wasn’t. That’s in The Scrolls , too, if you know how to look for it. I’m a little disappointed. I shouldn’t have to tell you this stuff. Maybe I can find another home for my four billion.”

Senator Ban-El half rose from his chair and said, “No no no. I didn’t mean anything.”

The senator sank down and sat on the floor. His chair had vanished. Then the floor suddenly wasn’t there and as the senator fell, he heard Fer-El screaming, “It’s happened before.”

RECOMMENDED VIEWING/LISTENING: Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind, presented by The Teaching Company and taught by Professor Eric S. Rabkin. Note: These Teaching Company courses are generally offered in two formats, audio and video.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: Superman and the Big Blow

This week I thought maybe I’d do a few hundred words on Superman. Instead, I find myself sitting here wishing that Superman really existed and I knew him and he owed me a favor and I had him on speed dial.

Another big blow coming. Here we go again.

I saw my first hurricane when I was on an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean. I watched gigantic waves breaking over the ship’s bow and thought, wow – this’ll make a man believe in an Almighty. It was a glorious experience and I’m glad I had it.

A couple of years ago I had dinner with old friend/colleague Annie Nocenti, who was shortly to leave to teach a film class in Haiti. She was there when Katrina decimated that eternally tormented island nation. For while, I lost touch with her and I worried. But she was okay and we’ve exchanged emails since.

Next came a trip to the Midwest and a tornado that passed about a half mile from our hotel. The next morning Marifran and I drove through the suburb she grew up in. It looked like a toy town kicked by a careless child.

Then home again and soon…our gal Hurricane Irene, the fifth costliest big wind in U.S. history. We lost two trees, one of which hit and damaged the car. It could have been worse.

And now, on a gloomy October 27, the weather folk are saying that Sandy will be worse than Irene. “Widespread devastation” – that was the phrase one forecaster used. What to do? Not much. Fill jugs and sinks with water. Put inside the stuff on the lawn. Make sure we have batteries for the radio, and canned food that can be eaten cold if necessary. And…hold on to our asses. Tuesday morning’s when the fun is expected to start. It will all be over by Wednesday; Thursday at the latest. Happy Halloween.

Enter he who isn’t – Superman. Surely a guy who can “change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel in his bare hands” can deal with a lot of feisty wind. (Though, I admit, bending steel is pretty small potatoes.) Part of the reason we invented superheroes – and, cynics might aver, deities – is that sometimes we feel helpless and sometimes we are helpless and we want…no, we need to believe that some great something who likes us, some mamadaddy who offers unconditional love, will come along to save us. Imagining such a being might be better than nothing. Believing in such a being might be even better.

Deja vu, anyone? (And yes, I know that one of the synonyms for deja vu is “boredom.”) Okay, I’ve perpetrated this kind of blather before, less than a year ago. So let me make a deal with the universe: you stop throwing monster storms at me and I’ll stop whining.

I mean, I lived the first 71 years of my life having experienced only two total hurricanes (and a couple of tornados, but maybe they shouldn’t count.) Now – two in two years? C’mon, universe!

Ah, but the universe doesn’t negotiate, does it?

Maybe Superman does.

 (Editor’s note: Denny wrote this before Hurricane Sandy hit our area, and Ye Ed is ye editing it the same day. So whatever Sandy did to us… right now you know more about it than we do.)

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases, if the creek don’t rise.