Author: Dennis O'Neil

Dennis O’Neil Comes To Save The Day!

 

mightymouse

I am sitting across the dining room table from a DNA-sharing fellow human being and, for no reason I can recall, the subject of Mighty Mouse arises and, for no reason I can recall, I start to – yes! – sing:

Here he comes to save the day / Mighty Mouse is on his way…

Okay, before we lurch further, let’s get a bit of full disclosure out of the way: What I was singing – no, what I thought I was singing – was the Mighty Mouse theme song.

But wait! That chap at the rear of the room, scratching his bald head, his long, curled fingernails tearing bloody streaks in his taut scalp – yes, him! Is he puzzled because he’s never heard of Mighty Mouse? Well, it’s probably unkind to leave him in torment, so, briefly:

Mighty Mouse was created in 1942 as an animated cartoon character destined for theaters – gotta plump out those double bills, particularly the ones that cater to the kiddies. He starred in 80 movie shorts until he took a long vacation in 1961 and returned from it in 1987 when Ralph Bakshi did a Mighty Mouse series destined for Saturday morning television. (And since we seem to be digressing, another factoid: One of Bakshi’s scripters was Doug Moench, who wrote hundreds of comics for Marvel, DC and, I think, Warren. And Doug, if I’ve forgotten any of your publishers, forgive me. I’m not as young as I used to be.)

But weren’t we noticing MM’s theme song? Yes. Well. What I sang last night, at the dinner table, was, “Here he comes to save the day / Mighty Mouse is on his way.” My bad. The real lyrics:

Here I come to save the day / That means Mighty Mouse is on his way…

Okay, maybe you don’t think that switching pronouns is important, but others might beg to differ! And that second line? Doesn’t it suggest that the Coming of the Mouse has some greater meaning? Offering, perhaps, some existential hope? Even a promise of existential hope?

But wasn’t I telling a story, way back at the top of the page? Yes I was! To continue, then: the person sitting across from me, whom I’ve known for over 65 years – I’m not really sure of his birth date – suddenly continued the impromptu recital that was being created:

Yes sir, when there’s a wrong to right / Mighty Mouse will join the fight!

Now, you have to understand that this person has no direct connection to pop culture – he’s a grocer if you must know – nor have I ever observed him to have any particular interest in it (though he does like the old Have Gun, Will Travel show.) Yet here he was in in my dining room, with no hesitation, singing the lyrics to a long gone cartoon presentation.

Did I mention that I’d never heard him sing before?

The question I have for you, my friend, is, what the heck is this column about? Which itself begs another question: Did you see that coming?

Dennis O’Neil: Commissioner Gordon, Here And There

jim-gordon-commissioner-gordon-sprang

The new television season has begun. (Goody goody gumdrops?) With only two superhero shows displaying their wares, it’s a bit early to comment on innovations, trends and outrages, whatever causes to hurl an anvil at the screen or curl up next to it and purr.

Of the two returnees, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD seems to be serving more of the same. It’s kind of interesting that some comic book stuff is being repeated in the electronic media. A complaint I used to hear about Marvel’s comics is that the storylines were difficult to follow, especially for newcomers. I have a similar complaint about SHIELD, but maybe I’m just dumb. Well, maybe, but if that’s true I’m not the only one. Last week I was talking comics with an Ivy League professor and this certifiably intelligent and erudite intellectual admitted that he, too, had trouble following SHIELD’s plots.

Not a problem with the other early returnee, Gotham. Though the stories are reasonably dense, there’s never any difficulty knowing who’s doing what to whom and why, and I remain firm in my belief that clear storytelling is a virtue. The show has given us a plot alteration, however: James Gordon, heretofore known as the straightest officer in town, has quit the force and is working as a bounty hunter which, as far as I’m concerned, is the same thing as a private eye.

Gordon has done some impressive evolving since he first appeared 77 years ago in Detective Comics #27, He began as a softish, elderly functionary who was never seen doing any hands-on law enforcing; he had Batman for that. He was a bit of a blank slate, our Jim, with no private life, hobbies, quirks, just duties to perform, which he did perfunctorily. Not an impressive dude.

But, like flesh-and-blood people, he changed. Got himself a wife and kid (though not in the television version). Became somewhat bitter – for a cop in Gotham City, that was natural – and maybe got chummy with people he should have avoided. He has just acquired a new girlfriend but, uh oh, his ex is back in town and is probably heading his way and that can’t be good. (But we’re happy to see Lee Tompkins again.) He’s still a credit to his kind, but he’s no longer a Goody-Two Shoes; if the rules need breaking, he breaks them.

Gordon is, in short, the kind of hero who began to be popular after World War I. He knows that the system is broken and that no authority figure should be trusted, including police. So he lives by a personal code and brings justice to places even good cops might not care to reach. He’s brave and tough. Though he’s basically a loner, he often has a sidekick and here, too, TV’s Gordon fits the archetype; Sergeant Bullock, who was a slob in the comics, is a groomed and decent man who has Gordon’s back.

I wonder if there’s a John Watson somewhere in Bullock’s family tree.

Stay tuned for more excitement!

(Editor’s Note: We included the shot of J K Simmons in the art because he’s the next guy to play the role of Commissioner Gordon – in the upcoming Justice League movie – and because the editor likes J K Simmons and it’s his computer.)

Dennis O’Neil: Defy! We Dare Ya!

 

cw-dare-to-defy

Done any daring to defy lately?

If you’re a fan of the television versions of superheroes, you know what I’m talking/typing about. The network that calls itself The CW has, for a while now, been advocating such daring and this is the very same the go-to corporate entity that has made itself the go-to bandwidth for costumed do-gooders. They already have, in Arrow and The Flash, a couple of established hits (provided your definition of “hit” is modest) and in Legends of Tomorrow a show that has at least enough watchers to warrant renewal for another season. And the biggie…Supergirl has, with much hype, migrated from the kind of old-folkish CBS to the youthier CW and we Maid of Might mavens are allowed a happy sigh.

But about that youthiness and that “daring to defy” business: Really? Can they possibly mean it? Since they don’t specify exactly what they want us to defy, I have to guess that what we’re asked to defy is what we children of the Sixties might refer to as “the Man.” You know – the Establishment. The necktie wearers. Wall Street. Politics. Corporate America. The military-industrial complex (a term coined by no less an Establishment icon than President Dwight D. Eisenhower.)

Well, okay, but…where to begin? A logical answer: Consumerism. A denial of, or least a vigorous questioning of, t shirt wisdom, something like Whoever Has the Most Toys When He Dies Wins. So, all you wannabe defiers, stop buying stuff you don’t need. Stop discarding clothing just because some Seventh Avenue pooh-bah has declared it unfashionable which, I think, means whatever the pooh-bahs say it means. (And rest in peace, Noah Webster.) And if this means buying clothing that’s durable instead of merely new, amen. While you’re at it, extend that policy to motor vehicles, appliances, furniture, housing, vacation sites, playthings. If you’re killing time waiting for Supergirl to come on, you can make your own list.

But whoa. Subtract the money wasted on the unnecessary and suddenly those bandwidth-borne heroes aren’t there anymore. The money we spend (waste?) on frivolities pays for the programs we enjoy. No wasted cash = no Supergirl (who, it might be said, is herself a frivolity, but we could be flirting with blasphemy here, so let’s not.)

Okay, we exempt consumerism from the list of things we defy. What else? School? Hey, I am the husband of a teacher and the father of a professor and have been known to stand at the front of classrooms myself, so you aren’t going to catch me knocking education, though some varieties of it might deserve a knock or two. Besides – big secret a’comin’ – it’s fun to know stuff.

Now, a true story. At my high school graduation the school’s principal told my mother that the good Christian Brothers never wanted to see me again. Maybe if you wore a funny collar you could spot a defier from a mile away and if they said Joe O’Neil’s offspring was a defier, well, they were the authorities. But that offspring didn’t know he was a defier.

You don’t believe me?

Dennis O’Neil: Politics

cap-for-prez-buttonSome kind of contest going on? Oh yeah, the president thing. I guess I should care…

But a lot of us don’t. I’m reminded of a folk song I haven’t heard since the muddled days at the university, titled “The Vicar of Bray.” Here’s a taste:

And this be the law, I shall maintain

Until my dying day, sir

That whatever king may reign,

Still I’ll be the vicar of Bray, sir.

In other, less metered words, the day-to-day of the ordinary citizen, doesn’t usually change much after any given governmental upheaval. No matter who occupies the carpeted corner office or plunks his ass onto the throne, the guy who delivers the mail will continue to deliver the mail. And the shivering folk on that side of town will continue to be hungry.

So, yup, there are a couple of presidential campaigns afoot, and some other office-seekers asking for the favor of your vote, too, and you may or may not give a hoot. If you’re a character in a comic book, you probably don’t.  Politics don’t get into comics much. I think a lot of the reason is that stuff we discussed last week, the tendency of fiction writers to be stingy with the minutiae of their hero’s existence less they offend readers who absolutely despise and abhor the collecting of doilies, the hobby you gave the aforementioned hero. Or like that.

(The one time that I made politics part of a storyline by having a character elected mayor, I did what was customary and did not supply a party affiliation. I don’t think it occurred to me to do anything else.)

Climb up out of the comics page to the editorial office where it was incubated in what we jokingly refer to as The Real World and in matters political, it’s much the same.

I worked in comics for more than 50 years and I remember very little mention of politics in the publishers’ headquarters. Oh, there were creative folk who, I knew, shared my opinions and in the natural course of a meeting or a lunch we’d occasionally get around to talking about such matters, but they were never part of our work. I honestly don’t know how folks voted, and this does not impoverish my life.

I’m aware that, a while back, there was a rumble in the comics world when some freelancers said that their conservative political views cost them assignments. I’ve known and worked with one of these guys for decades and there are few creators that I respect more. So if he said that something ugly happened in his professional life, as far as I’m concerned, something ugly happened.

But that was not my experience. Liberal bias? It seemed to me that there was a slight conservative bias in all aspects of comics, partly because comics grew up in a world at war, when patriotism was a valid response to what was happening abroad.

Almost everyone was a patriot in World War Two, and you’ll get no complaint about that from me.

Let’s not mention other wars.

Dennis O’Neil: Rain Gods

tialoc-chalchiuhticue-superman

Maybe Tlaloc and Chalchiuhticue will stop for a visit with Superman on their way to wherever they’re headed. Or maybe it’ll just rain.

Tlaloc and Chalchiuhticue, as some of you undoubtedly know, are the Aztec god of rain and his wife. We English speaking moderns might considering borrowing them from the Aztecs because we don’t have rain gods of our own.

Oh, we have our share of deities, sprouting from the traditions that constitute our polyglot culture: we have several creation gods and gods of thunder and craftsmanship and wisdom and mischief and war and message delivery and … er – sex and governance and heroes who can come pretty close to being gods themselves and gods of religions that I won’t mention and perhaps yet other candidates that might be included here if I felt like working, but to heck with that. (Is there a god of laziness?)

But no god of rain, not in our catechisms, and, according to my highly unscientific and therefore next-to-useless conjecture, a dearth of journalism about events that certainly merit notice.

I’m referring to the floods that have decimated much of the country recently. Someone whose identity escapes me has suggested that the lack of coverage of the floods might be at least partially because we don’t give floods names. Tropical storms and their big brothers, hurricanes – we have plenty of names for them, names that change every year, but despite several mythologies that incorporate flood stories, no names thing for really bad precipitation. Big wind = looky looky. Big water = who cares?

Which may be why the problems currently on the east coast are easy to identify –

we call them Hurricane Hermine – and the deluge remains nameless.

We humans like to personify and so our meteorologists’ name calling may be a version of behavior that precedes history. Our unkempt ancestors probably lived in constant terror, at the mercy of forces they couldn’t identify. Nasty forces. But eventually, our scruffy forebears did give them names – Zeus, Odin, those guys – and then, because humans also like to make patterns, the early versions of ourselves added stories to the names and then began asking favors of these Others (call them gods). Sometimes the requests were granted and sometimes they weren’t. Could I have offended the mighty ones? Time to start feeling guilty and maybe sacrifice a fatted calf or two.

Soon Evolution met Meme and they began their long, long dance. Things changed. Along the way, the idea of super powers fell away from godhood and landed on humans, mostly what we call “heroes.” Subcategories arose, among them what are known as “superheroes,” and here we are. So: Tlaloc and Chalchiuhticue

socializing with Superman? Why not? They are, after all, related.

Dennis O’Neil: Priorities

Talia

Hey, ja hear? Two Supergirl episodes tonight! ‘Course, I’ve seen ‘em all, but it’ll be a pleasure to see ‘em again. You too?

And hey. Looks like the Cardinals won’t make the playoffs this year. Darn shame, if you ask me. But there’s always next year. One’a these years, the birds’ll go the distance.

Huh? You said something about water?

Netflix has a new sitcom streaming. Maybe that’s why you mentioned “water,” ‘cause water streams just like sitcoms. Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean. Anyway, we’ll give the new sitcom a watch right after dinner. Well, maybe not right after dinner ‘cause Supergirl’ll be on from eight to ten and we won’t be missing a single second of that. It’s important to know what Netflix is up to, though not as important as Supergirl. That Melissa Benoit – is she an actress or what! But I don’t have to tell you that it’s important to know what Netflix is up to. Ja hear that they’re releasing a Luke Cage movie, to go with Daredevil and Jessica Jones? We’ll be turning off the phone that day! It’s important to know what Netflix is up to. Did I already say that?

Rain? Is that what you said? Like what kings do? That kind of rain?

And ja hear about Brad and Angie? Apparently they’re talking divorce. Wow, I’d sure hate to see that. A darn national tragedy, that’s what that would be. Seems like Brad got caught kissing Marion Cotillard – she was Talia in the last Batman flick, you remember. No, no, not the tall woman, the shorter one. The tall one was Anne Hathaway – how could you forget that? She was Catwoman. No, not Halle Berry Catwoman or Michelle Feiffer Catwoman, or those other ones…We’re talking the lovely Anne Hathaway, darn it.

“Run for office,” did you say? Like, an office is on wheels and it’s going downhill and you have to catch it?

Oh, politics. Yeah, politics can sure be fun. I can’t wait to see what those wacky ducks’ll do next. One said the other was a “poopy head,” or something like that. I heard it from my uncle and he I think he was eating something while we were talking, and, you know, he was hard to understand. It was a doughnut, maybe. Anyway, those politics’ll come up with something funny every time – you can take that straight to the bank, my friend.

There you go again, yakking about floods. So there were some floods in some of those states we don’t know about and in Louisiana they’re saying it’s the worst disaster since Hurricane Sandy? Houses lost. Dead people. Stuff like that’s too bad. But they’ll get over it.

Ja hear that Ben Affleck is the next Batman?

Dennis O’Neil: Have I Offended Anyone?

judgment-day-ec-comics-4

So there’s some kind of election going on? Well, not in comicbookland there isn’t and maybe that’s just as well.

Last week, we blathered about the lack of ethnic diversity in mass entertainment, particularly regarding names, and suggested that the purveyors of such entertainment didn’t want to alienate potential customers by giving their heroes traits that some might find offensive. And it doesn’t stop with names.

You may have noticed, the more astute among you, that we as a nation are embroiled in what is surely the daffiest presidential contest in our history, and by “daffiest” I don’t necessarily mean most entertaining. On the contrary: I’m disgusted with it. But we’re stuck with it until November and then, if the results are not to my liking, I may consider some serious depression.

Politics generally plays no part in the procedurals that glut television, and even less in comics stories, and given the nastiness of our current national conversation, maybe we should be grateful. Here it is again, that fear of losing audience in action.

I’m not complaining. Mostly, we go to our screens and pages, not to be proselytized but to be entertained, and we don’t have to know everything, or even much, about a character to be amused by said character’s adventures. (Do we know how Spider-Man likes his coffee? Do we care?)

Let’s forget about television and movies for the moment and concentrate on comics, which have almost entirely avoided politics. I don’t recall any comics that labeled a character Democratic or Republican, or even Independent, or anybody in comic book political campaigns being identified by party. Maybe Abraham Lincoln. But comics have, occasionally, touched on subjects that concern politicians – or should concern them. There was, for example, an excellent short story in EC Comics’ Weird Science, published in 1953 and titled “Judgment Day.” It is as relevant today as it was 63 years ago and, given the subject matter, bigotry, that’s a shame. In an early Superman story our Man of Steel give the what-for to a wife beater. And in the early 70s, Neal Adams and I did a series inspired by the state of the world. All this and much more were possible political concerns, but they nothing to do with parties and precincts and superpacs and the rest of the kerfuffle of modern politics.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned religion. You’re right. I choose not to step into that particular quagmire. Ah, but why? Religion, as a subject for stories, is certainly pertinent to our discussion. The boundaries are relaxing and once in a while, character’s religious preference is specified. But this is new. Throughout the history of the media, religion has been largely avoided. (When it is part of a narrative, it usually affirms that what the parson told you about the Lord and going to Heaven was absolutely correct and don’t give me any of your sass, young man.)

Come to think of it, why have I not engaged what some might call spirituality here? Could it be that I’m afraid I’ll offend someone?

 

Dennis O’Neil: Superman – What Do We Really Know?

lois_lane_1964_by_ shawn vanbriesen

“Someone has just thrown Lois Lane from an airplane and she’s plummeting Earthward. But today is Humtyglumf Day, the most sacred day in the Kryptonian calendar – a day on which it is absolutely forbidden to rescue falling females. But if I do nothing, in about a nanosecond Lois will squish…”

Full disclosure: I don’t really know if Kryptonians celebrate Humptyglumf Day. On the other hand, I don’t really know if they don’t. Superman seems to have a lot of information about his shattered home world – he seems to knows a lot more about Krypton than I know about, oh…McCausland Avenue where, I have it on reliable authority, I spend the first four years or so of my life. But nothing about politics or religion.

The profit motive partly explains this. I’m thinking of one of my favorite novelists, now deceased. His name was John D. MacDonald and his best known character was/is Travis McGee. McDonald and McGee were, for me, buy-immediately-upon-sighting as I checked out the fresh paperbacks. I don’t know how many McGee novels I read before I realized how little I really knew about our hero. McDonald gave us what seemed to be a heap of personal data about his creation – his friends, his houseboat, his car, his workouts, his opinions of certain cities, his party-timing, all this and more well covered. Yessir, after reading two or five of the books you knew ol’ Trav. But did you? Tell me about his parents, his siblings (isn’t a brother mentioned somewhere?), his home town, the schools he attended, his political preferences, where, if anywhere, he worships…You might be tight with Trav, but you couldn’t fill out his census questionnaire.

I think what McDonald was doing, consciously or not, was employing a bit of literary legerdemain – what Penn and Teller might call “misdirection.” He gives you lots of detail and maybe you don’t notice that he withholds anything that is crucial – anything that might prejudice you against the character. (You don’t like Presbyterians? Well, he’s no Presbyterian!) It’s fair to say that most, if not all, writers of mass-consumption worked a similar dodge. The radio programs and television shows and movies were populated by…well, Americans! Probably ate white bread. Probably went to church (though which church we didn’t have to know.) Probably voted. (But which lever they turned is really none of our concern.)

Comic books? Let’s see…there’s Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker and Tony Stark and Steve Rogers…Nope – not an ethnic name in a truckload. And none of these guys have lapel pins indicating political preference, either.

I can’t decide if this pop culture homogenization has been helpful or harmful to the general welfare. Maybe a bit of both? I have a hunch that its time is almost past, but that’s not today’s topic. Nor is Humptyglumf Day.

Art by Shawn Van Briesen

Dennis O’Neil: I Think, Therefore I Yam What I Yam

Descarte Matrix

So, you think you exist, do you?

Okay, you probably do, but not in the way you’ve always believed you do. (And let’s be wary of that word “always.” Might be a slippery one, that “always.”) Way back when, in the seventeenth century, a brainy guy, a philosopher and mathematician named René Descartes put cogito ergo sum” into the world’s head. A lot of you know that René’s observation means, in the usual English translation, “I think therefore I am.”

What he was trying to do, our René, was find Truth with a capital T – some fact that could not be doubted, no matter what, no matter who. He asked us to imagine that there exists an evil demon who has created a vastly elaborate illusion. We’re just a brain, or something akin to brains, floating in demon porridge or maybe suspended from a demon ceiling and everything else is a part of demon’s foolery. It just ain’t. But someone other than the demon must be on the receiving end of the demonic sniggery, or else the sniggery itself couldn’t exist. That someone is me.

popeye the matrixI can’t be sure about you. How do I know that you’re there?

Our movie-going friends may have already noticed something familiar here. Yeah, that flick – The Matrix, written and directed by siblings named Wachowski and released in 1999. Same idea: bad machines have humans in some kind of suspended animation, and the humans don’t know it because they’re being caused to hallucinate a fully populated and developed Earth.

This is a bit like what I do/did for a living. Sketch out characters who don’t exist except as brain blops and jerrybuild an imaginary world for them to inhabit, then present the fruits of this labor to others. Usually, for me, that involved writing comic book scripts.

And you? Well, for purposes of this discussion we’ll assume that you do exist, though how and in what form and why we won’t stipulate.

Here we nod to philosopher Nick Bostrum who, in 2003, offered the theory that the universe is a computer simulation. Some people believed him – Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson among them. It’s been estimated that there’s approximately a 20 percent chance that Bostrum’s wacky theory reflects reality, albeit a reality we can’t comprehend and might not recognize if we found ourselves plunked down in the middle of it.

As for that reality’s inhabitants… who can guess? I’m wondering if they, covertly, interact with us and if they hear what we say and see what we do. And if such is the case, how do we know that they aren’t inhuman doppelgangers able to coexist in the same space that we occupy? And hey, you doppled others, what’s your deal? What are you up to, anyway? Playing a game with a gamepiece that’s me? Running an experiment? Doing something my brain is not configured to understand, or even to perceive?

Waiting for me to make a mistake? Well, that shouldn’t take long, but if you control me, wouldn’t the mistake be yours?

I could get to like this game.

Dennis O’Neil: The Sound of the Bat

kevinconroy

I was on my way to meet the voice of Batman when I lost my mirror. I’m pretty sure the culprit was from New Jersey and so I’d like to blame Chris Christie but the Jersey governor really had nothing to do with it. Maybe next time.

We were in Manhattan, on busy 34th Street, in the midst of dense crosstown traffic creeping along, barely moving. Suddenly something struck the car, only about a foot from the driver’s head. Since I was that driver, the matter was of some concern to me. What had happened was, a truck had inched into my lane and hit my driver’s side mirror and there I was, looking injured and forlorn, and there, too, was the truck driver, a youngish dude in work clothes, blaming me. If you know me, you know that refusing to cop to a fault is not in my catalogue of questionable behavior, so believe me when I tell you that I am pretty damn sure that it was not my fault, thank you very much, but the east bound lane of a street rife with vehicles in the middle of the afternoon didn’t seem like a good venue for a debate and anyway, he was back in his truck pretty quickly, creeping east, so I would have been debating his tail pipe and, finally, going a distance to avoid any sort of confrontation is in my catalogue of questionable behavior. (Is writing very long sentences questionable behavior? You decide.) I got out and briefly inspected the damage.

I got back behind the wheel and saw a parking lot a block away. We weren’t late, not yet, but we were getting close, but the parking lot could be our friend in need. Just zip in there, grab a ticket and hurry to my destination. Then a police officer came from the curb and knocked on my window. I rolled it down and started to explain the broken mirror. But the mirror wasn’t the problem; intent on getting to the parking lot

I had forgotten to rebuckle my seat belt. That omission was going to cost me the better part of a benjamiin. And I remembered some of the reasons I no longer lived in Manhattan.

But we finally reached our destination, a recording studio, and I finally met Batman… well, actually, Batman’s voice. Kevin Conroy has been doing the voice work for the various animated versions of Batman for almost 25 years, so yes, I’d certainly heard him, but I’d never seen him. Soon, I was sitting next to him in a sound booth, both of us wearing microphones, watching an animated movie on a monitor and talking about it. No script, no rehearsal, just looking at the flick and commenting on what we saw. When the movie was released on DVD, what Kevin and I said would be an optional soundtrack. Strange gig. But a nice one. Kevin was pleasant and friendly and so were the techie guys. I’d do it again in a hot second, though I might ask to negotiate the broken mirror. I could live without attention from the officer, too.

PS: The Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times dated July 31 had a nice story about Kevin Conroy and Batman, which is where I got the idea for what you’ve just read. Maybe there’s some way you could check it out?