Author: Dennis O'Neil

DENNIS O’NEIL: The End Of Unending Stories?

“You can’t go back home” Thomas Wolfe wrote in a novel and I cry, amen. When I return to visit relatives in Missouri, I find the city I left almost 50 years ago strange and, in places, unrecognizable – alien, even. And last week I visited DC Comics, my employer and sustainer for decades, and found it much changed, beginning with the entrance to the building and the security forces guarding the lobby. I was told that if I wanted to see the floor that once housed Mad Magazine, I’d better hurry because it was being gutted, and the corridors leading to where I had to be were cluttered with cardboard boxes.

Maybe the whole experience was just a little forlorn?

But after a long and pleasant conversation with Dan DiDio, who honchos the company’s editorial department, I thought that perhaps the company is, in a modest, limited, yet quite good way going home again and we funny book aficionados will benefit.

The home that’s DC’s destination? Why, old comics. I mean, really old. Really old. Your grandpa’s comics, published before Marvel made continued stories the norm in the 60s. Stories of six, eight ten, maybe 12 pages, complete in one issue. (And a bunch of them in the – sigh – 52 page total package. Which cost a dime.)

An eight page story? A story even shorter than eight pages? Bizarre, you say?

No, not bizarre, Maybe even beneficial. Indulge me while I quote something I wrote a while back: Every story has to end with a lesson learned, an evil thwarted, a problem solved, a defeat, a triumph – some kind of resolution. The events of the story show how that resolution occurs. And if the writer doesn’t know how his story will end he can’t create a logical progression of scenes leading to that ending…writing an eight-pager forces the writer to know his ending before he submits the manuscript. (Except in rare cases, the beginning and end are in the same sheaf of pages, or email.)

So, knowing what his destination is, the writer can move toward it confidently instead of – brace for metaphors! – stumbling around the narrative thickets hoping to find a path. And limited length forces the writer to write only those scenes that move the plot along and this, in turn, tends to keep the story interesting: no pointless digressions to create ennui and yawns.

So: DC Comics is going to give us a glut of short fiction? No, of course not. But Dan told me that most story arcs would be limited to six issues – not exactly haiku territory, but not a completely open-ended narrative that will meander into the murk until somebody figures out how it might end, either. And writers must tell someone – probably an editor – something about the tale that’s to be told. Again, no making it up as you go along, with no clear plan on how the pieces will fit together.

Usually, I question looking to the past for answers. But every so often, answers might be found there. Don’t try to go home again, not permanently. But a now-and-then visit? To capture a bounty?

Recommended Reading: Pretty obvious, isn’t it? I should be recommending You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. But in the interest of keeping myself honest, or at least honestish, I try to read before I recommend, and if I’ve ever read Wolfe’s novel, it was long, long ago and I have no memory of it. So instead of recommending a book, let me recommend the author’s hometown. Last year, Mari and I toured Wolfe’s boyhood home in Asheville, S.C. while visiting Mars Hill College and found the house interesting, the school welcoming, and the city delightful.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Comic Con Meets Greystache

It’s happening as I sit here typing, on a Thursday, about 30 miles due south of the village where I happily abide, and, barring as always the unforeseen, I’ll be in the midst of it sometime tomorrow, mingling with armies of strangers, gazing at exhibits both exotic and banal, almost certainly meeting folks I have known for decades but seldom see whelmed by noise and flashing lights and color and celebrities and hucksters and the breath of chaos…

I refer, of course, to the New York Comic Con. (You thought I meant Armageddon? Naw… but maybe next week…) This is the younger, but extremely vigorous sibling of the monstrous (in at least two meanings of the word) San Diego Comic Con, but it is no wimpy little brother. Like Athena, springing from the head of Zeus, the NYCC arrived burly and mature, though a bit disorganized, three years ago and has been growing ever since. I’ve heard that 75,000 attendees are expected at the con site over the next four days. (At the San Diego shindig I attended last year, there were 130,000 or 140,000 con goers, depending on who provided the information.) That this event, and its west coast equivalent, could not only exist, but prosper, is yet another sign of how much comic books, that lowly, despised publishing stepchild, have changed and gentrified since I shuffled into the office of Marvel Comics about 45 years ago.

There were conventions then, sure, but they were miniscule compared to the current iterations – a few hundred or later, and at most, a few thousand avid fans who were there, not to ogle celebs or buy cool t-shirts, but to share a love of a certain kind of storytelling. You may have heard me describe (at a convention?) accompanying Flo Steinberg to my first con at the McBurney YMCA in Manhattan: maybe a hundred citizens of various genders and ages wandering around the Y’s gym, a few tables bearing stacks of old comics for sale, and the afternoon’s big deal, a group of comic book professionals on the stage discussing…well, discussing something. I was among them, and that, of course, was to laugh – me, in the business a month or two, sharing an audience with men who had given joy to me on many a summer afternoon and Sunday morning, who shaped the medium in which I labored. I wonder what I said. Probably something. Ah, the arrogance of youth…

The biggest attraction, at the Y that day, was the presence of a genuine movie star: Buster Crabbe, the screen’s Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers, in the flesh. If I hadn’t been a blasé college graduate and Navy veteran who’d actually been to a foreign country, yessir, or if I’d had any sense of what popular culture is, I’d have been impressed.

But hey! I’m no greystache lamenting the good old days when, dang it, things was the way they oughta be, decent and proper. Things now are different, but they’re as decent and proper as the universe allows them to be.

Somebody say amen.

Recommended Reading: Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. Hey, have you ever actually read it? Or read it since you had to do so as schoolwork?

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

DENNIS O’NEIL: TV Supers

Oh, alas. Rest your sorrowing gaze on the gap, the fracture, the breach, the crack, the cavity, hole, crevice – might it even be a lacuna? – and join my lament.

And what, exactly, is that lament? And the gap/fracture/breach and the rest…what are we referring to here?

Well, in case it’s not obvious by now…we’re complaining about the absence of superheroes in the television season that’s a’borning. Not that such an absence is exactly novel. Since Superman made his video debut in 1952 – the Man of Steel was TV’s first costumed superguy – there have been more years without broadcast superheroes than years with them. But they have been sprinkled throughout the schedules in an odd, here-and-there fashion.

Some of them may have been among your favorites. Remember Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific? The Hulk? Electra Woman and Dyna Girl? Shazam? Isis? The Flash? The Greatest American Hero? How about Sesame Street’s Super Grover? If you can tolerate your superheroes minus costumes, the list can be expanded: The Six Million Dollar Man and his female counterpart, The Bionic Woman; The Dark Angel, which introduced many of us dirty old men to Jessica Alba – and yes, we are grateful; Buffy the Vampire Slayer (more gratitude from the DOM squad); the SyFy channel’s Alphas…

I’m not going to insult you by mentioning Batman, but do you recall the show that was apparently meant to capitalize on Batman’s popularity, The Green Hornet?

This list is, I’m sure, incomplete, but you get the idea. Superheroics have been almost television staples for a long time – not as constant as cop action or goofy folks doing goofy things in the sitcom universe, but pretty familiar.

Not currently, though. We thought we’d have an adaptation of one of the classic comics characters to amuse us in prime time and I, for one, eagerly anticipated the new Wonder Woman, as presented by David E. Kelley. Mr. Kelley – he deserves the honorific – is, arguably television’s best scripter, especially now that Aaron Sorkin’s gone elsewhere. I’ve been aware of him ever since Picket Fences in the 90’s and I think Boston Legal was a small weekly miracle. (His current show, Harry’s Law, is pretty damn good, too.) One can’t help wondering: what would Kelley, whose previous work never got near fantasy-melodrama in any form, have done in such unfamiliar territory? I can’t say that we’ll never know because, these days…DVD? Limited cable exposure? YouTube? But we don’t know now. (Or do we? Do you have information that I lack?)

Life is tough.

Know what would be swell? To see Wonder Woman as I first saw Superman 1952. Not knowing that some of the scenes depicting the destruction of Krypton were borrowed from theatrical movies, or noticing that the special effects were less than awe-inspiring – did they even qualify as special effects? No, just looking and accepting whatever was there, without judgment, being amused or bored as the occasion demanded.

But I’ve seen and read and written so much much much…and hell. I’ve even been an editor. I don’t have the capacity to look with an innocent mind at superheroes, or anything else, and that’s the real fracture in my life.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

DENNIS O’NEIL: Poopface

Mr. Grotty couldn’t open the comic book. He didn’t know how long he’d been trying because here, in Limbo, there was no day, no night, no sun, moon, stars, and even if there had been any of those things, Mr. Grotty would not have heeded them because they were all poopystupidpooplappers; this was certain because to Mr. Grotty, everything and everyone was either a poopystupidpooplapper, or it was worse.

The comic book – Justice League Number One, it was called, not that Mr. Grotty cared – had on its cover pictures of seven dopeysnargers who all looked like they were hurrying to get somewhere and Mr. Grotty neither knew nor cared where they were going. But he felt that he belonged there with them, if not on the cover, then at least somewhere inside the comic book. Because he had to belong somewhere, because if he wasn’t anywhere, could he possibly even exist? And if he didn’t exist, then he…wasn’t. And that was pretty poopy.

So he attacked the Justice League: pried and pounded and tossed and humped and jumped up and down on it, too. Nothing. He paused, first catching his breath and then wondering how he could have caught his breath if he didn’t exist and then, when his head either did or did not begin to ache, depending on whether or not his head existed, he considered his situation. He knew that he was in a novel and that would seem to indicate that he existed. But he also knew that the novel had not been published – had, in fact, been read by only four people, not counting the check-chasing poopface who wrote it, and three of those four had said that they thought changes should be made. And since poopface had not given any of the four print-on-paper, but instead had asked them to read the book off computer screens, did the book exist only as digital code, and was that existing at all? Worse: even if Mr. Grotty existed now, would he exist if the book suffered future changes? Couldn’t poopface push a button and cause Mr. Grotty to vanish without a trace? Then wouldn’t it the case that he had never existed, even if he had?

AAAAArrrrrgggghhhhh, Mr. Grotty commented.

Mr. Grotty spat on the Justice League. That didn’t help, either.

So it came down to this: he felt that he belonged with those dopeysnargers on the Justice League cover because he dimly remembered doing feats such as they did, and wearing similar clothing – in short, having another identity – when he was computer code, which is all that he could claim to be, even now, and in order to really exist, he had to join them, but he couldn’t because he couldn’t get the poopy comic book to open.

Finally, not certain whether or not he was exhausted, he sat on the cold stone floor next to the comic book, which seemed to be mocking him. He might have cried if he could have decided the crying status of maybe-non-existers such as he.

Poop, he either did or did not say.

RECOMMENDED READING: Cosmicomics, by ItaloCalvino.

Note: This column only copyright 2011 by Dennis O’Neil. All Rights Reserved. If you’re not a poopface, maybe some day I’ll tell you why.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Superman, Captain Midnight and Me

Yeah, that’s him, little Denny, aged six or seven (or maybe even five), dragging the kitchen chair across the linoleum and putting it next to the icebox. He climbs up on it and then he’s close to Mom’s radio. He knows which knobs to turn, he knows how to find what comes from the speaker, what is very important: his programs.

Every weekday afternoon, after school, from 3:30 to six – dinner time, Dad’s nightly return from Work (and work is also very important, though Denny doesn’t know why) – Denny listens to Tom Mix and Superman and Hop Harrigan and Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy (what other kind of boy could there be?) and what may be his very, very favorite, Captain Midnight. Mom has her programs, too – Ma Perkins and Young Doctor Malone and some others – but Denny thinks they’re no better than okay. But his programs…danger and excitement and air planes and fighting and now and then goofiness: a wonderful world coming from the top of the ice box into Mom’s kitchen and Denny’s mind.

Denny has other things he likes. On Friday night, Mom and Dad let him walk alone to The Pauline Theater to see a cartoon, some previews, and two pictures – usually but not always pictures about cowboys. And there are the comic books, the ones that Dad buys at the little store on Union Avenue along with milk and bread after Sunday Mass, and the ones he gets by trading Dad’s gifts with other kids who also have comics. Sometimes, the same people are in both comics and programs and its fun to hear what Superman sounds like and to see what Captain Midnight looks like.

But comics and picture shows are once-in-a-whiles, and not completely reliable: he didn’t know what comics would be on the Union Avenue rack, and maybe The Pauline would be showing one of his favorites – Tim Holt, Sunset Carson or the King of the Cowboys himself, Roy Rogers (and his golden palomino Trigger and, oh yeah, Dale Evans, the Queen of the West)–or maybe the pictures would be about cowboys or detectives Denny didn’t care for as much, picture-people he might forget about entirely in oh, say, 66 years if he were an old man writing about a child. But he knew when the radio programs would be on and how to find them and that was certainly good, did little Denny.

And that old man…might he be a mostly retired comic book writer, you think? And might he not wonder if the radio broadcasts influenced the work he stumbled into more than the comic books he consumed on the front room floor or the back porch? Because listening to the programs, he had to supply his own imagery, to imagine how the battles were being fought, the planes flown, the horses galloped. He had to puzzle over words and ideas he couldn’t quite understand. The world that came from the radio into Mom’s kitchen became his world.

Then, some 20 years later, in another city, he sat down to write a comic book script…

ADDENDUM: If you enjoy vintage radio drama, or are just curious about it, let me call your attention to the annual Friends of Old-Time Radio convention, to be held this year on October 20, 21, 22 and 23 at the Ramada Plaza in Newark, NY. Email: E-mail: JayHick@aol.com

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

DENNIS O’NEIL: The Original Reboot

All hands brace for a confession….Yeah, you got me. I admit that all the noise surrounding DC Comics’ reboot or relaunch or reinvention…whatever you call it, all the dust raised by this activity has caused me the occasional twinge. I worked in the comics trenches for a lot of years and some of it I still miss. Not all, oh no, but – sitting with bright, talented, convivial people in a room and doping out stories to tell…that was one of life’s joys and I’m guessing that the stalwarts at DC have spent a lot of time recently doing just that.

But they aren’t the first to redact the company’s pantheon of superheroes. Way back before you were born – most of you, anyway – Julius Schwartz did pretty much the same thing. The year was 1956 (I told you that you weren’t born yet) and comics, and their primary contribution to pop culture, superheroes – they’d been sickly for about a decade, ever since some politicians, editorial writers and assorted busybodies had convinced a lot of citizens that comics were spawns of evil. (To be fair, changing publishing and retail realities had something to do with comics’ decline, too.) As Julie told me the story: he and his fellow editors were having a meeting and someone decided to revive The Flash, a once-popular character that hadn’t been seen for years. Julie’s words as I remember them: They all looked at me and I said, I guess I’m it.

They did, and he was. He didn’t merely produce a carbon copy of the original Flash, though. With writer Robert Kanigher  and artists Carmine Infantino & Joe Kubert, Julie gave the world a new Flash – new costume, new origin, new identity. He left the original concept intact – the world’s fastest human – and altered everything else to make The Flash and his world reflect this, the world we non-fictional beings in habit. Julie and his merry men taught those of us who followed them how to do it: leave whatever made the character popular and unique alone, and modernize the rest.

There was no particular fuss over Julie’s work, back in 1956. For him, it was just another day at the office. The network of fan publications was at best just a’borning, as were conventions, and websites, like this one, weren’t even science fiction because, as far as I know, nobody had even thought of them. Sure, some dedicated readers may have reacted, but the world at large…yawn. And that may have been where Julie had an advantage over his editorial descendants.

Imagine doing this complex task with hordes of the curious looking over your shoulder, waiting to see if you fail, some of them, human nature being what it is, maybe hoping you’ll fail. And of course, regardless of how well you perform, a lot of your audience will find fault because they’ve been establishing an emotional attachment to these characters for years – for decades? – and any significant changes is going to seem…well, dammit, wrong! Pretty daunting, huh?

I haven’t read any of the new stuff yet. Have I just convinced myself that I shouldn’t?

Recommended Reading: The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

DENNIS O’NEIL: Superman’s Two Daddies

When Jerry Siegel first conjured up Superman, some time in 1934, he really didn’t tell us much about the Man of Steel’s doomed homeworld. We were informed that it exploded and that only baby Kal-El survived the big bang because his father, Jor-El, shot him into space in a prototypical spacecraft which, for reasons not really explained, had room for only one subsize occupant. This was after Jor-El had appeared before some governing body or other and warned of impending doom, and was ignored.

Not a lot of information there. For openers, we might ask where, exactly, Krypton was located. I’m betting that Jerry had our solar system in mind, and why not? In the early 30s, not even degree-bearing scientists knew their way around our sun and its planets, much less a kid from Cleveland. If Jerry were doing his creation today, he might mention alien stars, or distant galaxies, and worm holes and space/time warps, and then he’d have to explain how someone so far away could know about Earth and an ecosphere capable of sustaining Kryptonian fauna. (Or maybe he’d just ignore the whole question. If so, he’d get no scolding from me, my friend.)

Jerry gave no hints about Kryptonian socio-politics, geography, religion, or customs. We don’t even know if the planet had any moon(s). Nor do we know why Jor-El was the Kryptonian version of Cassandra. (Remember Cassie, from Greek myth? She could foretell the future but was cursed to have nobody ever believe her.) Lately, I’ve been wondering if Jerry was himself a prophet, albeit of the accidental variety.

Let me elucidate:

We begin with raw speculation, but, not having information we can be forgiven for trying to fill in a few blanks ourselves. Let us, then, suppose that at the time of Jor-El’s Cassandra number, the Els had been recently removed from office – the Els being, or course, the legislative clan Jor belonged to. They were replaced in the chambers of Krypton’s odd government by their age-long rivals, the Les. (Long “E.”)

Among those who scoffed at Jor:

Chain-Le: Chain was an industrialist-turned-politician who saw an opportunity to enrich himself and his cronies by blaming the symptoms of impending doom on secret weaponry unleashed by another nation and having war declared on these presumed enemies.

Rev-Le: Rev was a clergyman who said that according to scripture, the world wasn’t supposed to end until half-past the next millennium and so, not only was Jor wrong, he was a heretic who should be stoned.

Iggy-Le: Iggy was another politician who thought these scientists, like Jor, were just a bunch of snooty eggheads who ought to be ignored, though Iggy thought that maybe Rev-Le had something with that stoning notion.

Geo-Le: Geo, the most powerful official in the legislature, didn’t actually join in the condemnation of Jor because Geo was a puppet. It seems that ancient and ill-understood Kryptonian custom allowed hand puppets to occupy the position of head-of-state if the electoral process somehow became hopelessly subverted. The only explanation for this anomaly was written in a long-dead language and has been translated as: Why not?

We could possibly go on but…hey – is it just me or is it globally warm in here?

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

DENNIS O’NEIL: Read This Column Or We’ll Shoot– Okay, We’re Lying

DENNIS O’NEIL: Read This Column Or We’ll Shoot– Okay, We’re Lying

Cheeseface on the cover of National Lampoon.

Image via Wikipedia

Let’s get the anecdotal/name dropping portion of this blather out of the way up front:

Five, maybe six years ago, I was leaving the British Broadcasting Company’s offices in Manhattan, where I’d been brainstorming a kids’ show with a producer and some writers, including Sean Kelly, who was accompanying me to Third Avenue. Sean mentioned that when he was editor of the late, lamented humor magazine, the National Lampoon, and the Lampoon shared a midtown building with my usual employer, DC Comics, he considered asking me to contribute something to his pages, but that someone told him that I wouldn’t be interested.

Now, let me take a deep breath and aver, emphatically, that I would have been delighted to have my work appear in the hippest and funniest magazine on the racks. I don’t know and don’t want to know who Sean spoke with, but it’s fair to say that this mysterious person did me a disservice with an untruth.

So yes, experience allows us to state that falsehoods, whether malicious or innocent, do affect people and events, and we can’t console ourselves by thinking they have no consequences. And they piss us off: some squiggle deep in our brains probably perceives them as threats and we want to react, we want to strike back and avenge and bring low the foe.

Not easily done and maybe not wisely done, either. I retaliate and the foe retaliates to my retaliation and there are arguments and side-choosing and and and and…

The unhealthiest part of the relevant egos, foes’ and mine, fattens on anger and vengeance and, yes, hate, and validates their existence with our sorry conflicts.

Redress by law? Hey, ever been privy to a lawsuit? There’s no guarantee of satisfaction from a process that can drag months in its wake, maybe years, and break the bank and chew up and spit out one’s life…

I’ll stop waxing metaphorical now, take another deep breath and, head bowed, admit that I have recently been on the receiving end of some brickbats that make whatever was said to Sean Kelly, decades past, seem like powder puffs. (I said I was done with metaphors, didn’t I? Sorry.)

A final deep breath and–my friends: I believe the First Amendment to be the best thing in the Constitution and I believe John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty should be required reading for everybody (or at least recommended reading) and I wish there was some way of reprimanding politicians and journalists and pundits when they deviate from the truth but…we pay a price for our most cherished freedoms and allowing the publication of rumors (or worse) is the ugly cost of freedom of speech.

This can be, I admit, a paltry consolation, and at the moment it is indeed feeling pretty paltry ,but it will have to serve.

Recommended Reading:

  • [[[On Liberty]]], by John Stuart Mill.
  • [[[Saints Preserve us: Everything You Need To Know About Every Saint You’ll Ever Need]]], by Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers

 Friday: Martha Thomases

 

DENNIS O’NEIL: The Need For Superheroes

(Editor’s note: Obviously, this column was written before Hurricane Irene hit the Atlantic Northeast. This was very smart on the author’s part, as nobody knew if he’d have power to write and send it until it could have been too late. Thanks for the foresight, Denny!)

If superheroes existed, they’d be near Cape Hatteras, where Hurricane Irene is expected tomorrow, or maybe here, where big wind is expected Saturday or Sunday. Or they’d be monsters.

I lived through a hurricane in 1963, aboard the USS Lake Champlain – petite as aircraft carriers go, about the size of a small village, but huge among ordinary watercraft. We were in the Caribbean, reasonably safe because something as massive as a carrier probably won’t capsize, but making our way along decks that were constantly swaying. Once, I stuck my head outside a port and looked at the huge waves breaking over the flat bow of the ship and thought, well if I wasn’t a believer before…

Our pilots spent the next few days flying rescue missions to and from Haiti and I got a story or two to tell.

And last May, in Missouri, we were close to a tornado that passed within a mile of our hotel. The next morning we drove through the area, where Marifran grew up, past the spot on the curb where we sat in my father’s station wagon after a movie and pizza, good Catholic kids doing nothing more than lingering. Mari’s childhood home was intact, but the garage in the back yard was flattened. That’s how it was in Ferguson, Missouri that May morning: normal plots of suburbia punctuated with devastation.

And what will happen to Nyack, New York tomorrow or the day after?

Superheroes, I think, come from the same place as deities and good luck charms, They represent something greater than our frail and frightened selves, something bigger and stronger and vastly benevolent that will shield us from the cruelties we thrust upon us by ill fate, cruelties that may be edging toward Nyack from the south and may soon ravage us. They don’t exist, these superheroes, but evolution has gifted and cursed us with imagination, and maybe we can be comforted by pretending that they do.

We’ve done some preparing, and may do more. But I remember those waves crashing onto the carrier deck and I doubt that our paltry efforts will be able to affect the results of the storm.

What I want is a superman to protect me, or at least a father’s hand to hold. But supermen aren’t real and my father has been dead for years.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

DENNIS O’NEIL: The Weight of Fall

It’s the time of year when the world holds its breath. Back from vacation and if you’re old enough and lucky enough to be employed, fill the tank, Monday morning will be here before you know it, and if you’re going to school, either to sit in rows among the other students or to stand and teach… well, there are supplies to get – how late is Staples open? – and maybe some last minute reading and – one, two, three, all of us cop to it now – the anticipation: will the subjects be interesting, will the room’s other occupants be pleasant and/or pretty or trolls, will something that spins existence on its axis occur and change life forever and if you’re a lady who’s just retired after schoolmarming in four states for fifty years will you feel a tad blue – not that I know anyone like that – and, finally, will the English teacher get really frosted at having to read sentences that go on and on and on and on…?

No gold star for me? I’ll live with it.

If you’re a comics geek – and yes, we do know who we are – you may be feeling a bit disoriented. Not long ago, the days that cluster around the September holiday marked the end of major fan activity. The big conventions were history, the summer annuals lie all snug in their Mylar nests, the big publishers seemed to take a breather between those annuals and the big Christmas push to fill stockings with graphic novels, preferably in hardcover. Oh sure, all the regular titles appeared, but they were just … you know… stories. Nothing special. This year, though, there are several conventions yet to come, including the monster-doozie that occurs at the Javits Center in Manhattan, Marvel and DC are going digital, which will almost certainly change the biz, maybe a lot, and – what am I forgetting…?

Oh yeah. DC Comics is relaunching its whole line. Relaunching its superhero pantheon when print publishing is struggling to survive and reinvent itself in what may be the most turbulent climate since Gutenberg set his first stick of type: an important bookstore chain that according to one estimate accounts for maybe fifteen percent of retail sales is closing its many doors and an online retailer is altering the way business is done and nobody seems to know what the hell the e-book revolution will spawn.

All that is figure resting on the ground of a legislative system that seems hopelessly broken and huge environmental uncertainties that might affect publishing and everything else.

Plus…is the Mayans who say the world will end next year? Or am I thinking of that television preacher?

Yessir, Mr. D, the times they are a’changin’.

Ask me if I care. In about six weeks, the Rockland County foliage will begin its yearly display and, for a while, the daily trip to the mailbox will be reason for rejoicing. That will be enough now, and maybe forever.

Recommended Reading: The Will Eisner Companion, by N.C. Christopher Couch and Stephen Weiner. Disclosure: I contributed an essay to this book, but I’m not in the way of any royalties. If you know Eisner’s work, you’ll want to read it, and if you don’t…hey, it’s about time.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

 

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