Author: John Ostrander

John Ostrander: Sweet Jesus!

The thing about a great story is that it can be told so many different ways. That includes the Greatest Story Ever Told and, at this festive time of year, my mind turns to the Christmas Story. I recently had a flash of (possibly divine) inspiration: how would it work as a sitcom?

Hear me out.

It would focus on a middle-aged Jewish carpenter named Joseph back in Roman times. I’m thinking Tim Allen for the part. He’s got this hot young fiancée named Mary (Megan Fox?) who is saving herself for marriage but then winds up pregnant – and not by Joseph. Well, Joseph’s all set to break off the wedding when he gets visited by the Angel Gabriel. I’m thinking Morgan Freeman or possibly Chi McBride (who was so good in being the smart butler to a daffy, horny Abraham Lincoln in “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer” that aired for about three heartbeats back in 1998).

Not only is it God’s will that Joseph take Mary as his wife but, according to the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, Joseph can never have sex with her. At all. This would be a recurring gag. Joseph gets hot and horny and has to leap into a barrel of cold water to cool down. Maybe steam rises from the barrel. Trust me, this joke will never get old.

So the Romans order a census and Joseph has to go to Bethlehem, the city of David (because he’s descended from David) and get counted. Mary’s “great with child” which means she’s about to give birth at any moment. Maybe they got a late start, maybe Mary can’t move so fast or has to stop often, but by the time they get to Nazareth, everything is booked up. Lots of room for comedy there. One innkeeper (I’m thinking Richard Lewis, although Richard Karn who was in Home Improvement with Tim Allen could do it and audiences might like that) agrees to let them sleep in the barn out back.

Nowhere in any of the gospels or anything else I could find mentions a midwife. You think you would. Mary’s midwife would be a pretty important role. No mention. So – who has to do it? That’s right – Joseph. Tim Allen as Joseph. Can you see it? Alpha male having to deal with childbirth? Tons of humor to be mined there.

So while Mary is screaming and Joseph is ready to faint, Gabriel shows back up. He waves his fingers, Mary’s labor pain goes away (Gabriel claims it’s a divine epidural) and then – lo! – a great light shines ‘round about them coming from Mary’s womb. Enter Jesus.

I’m going to take a little artistic license here and suggest that he’s like the eTrade baby or the babies in the Guess Who’s Talking movies. The adults don’t react but it lets Baby Jesus comment on what’s going on. I always found young Jesus to be a little snarky, what with the “Don’t you know I’m supposed to be about my father’s business?” Jesus can play all sorts of tricks on Joseph, too, like change his wine into water.

In addition to the Innkeeper, there’s all sorts of wacky characters who can be brought in – shepherds wandering the fields at night, three Wise Men bearing gifts (maybe Joseph has to convince them that Jesus is the child they are seeking), and Mary’s Cousin Elizabeth can come for a visit (is it too much to hope for Carol Burnett? And maybe Tim Conway could play Elizabeth’s husband, Zachariah.).

I was contemplating the title. Modern Family is a popular show so I was thinking Ancient Family or Holy Family, but that doesn’t catch the flavor. I think Sweet Jesus! works. It could be pitched to the networks but HBO or Showtime might be looking for an edgy comedy. Or we could get Seth McFarlane interested and take it over to Fox. He’d animate it. Bill O’Reilly could denounce it on his show and when he cuts away for a commercial, there’s an ad for Sweet Jesus! I love it.

So, what do you think, Hollywood? I think we have a winner here. Have your people call my people. Wait. I don’t have people. Maybe Michael Davis could be my people; he’s always putting together deals. Hey, Michael – want to be my people?

And as Tiny Tim was heard to say, “God bless us everyone!”

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

John Ostrander: Head Writer

We all tell stories. All the time. To make sense of the stimuli created by our senses, the brain creates narrative. “Minds seeks patterns,” David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, says in his often troubling book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. What makes it disturbing is that Eagleman is not a philosopher or a psychologist; he’s a scientist working with what the brain actually does. Through tests, through imaging, neuroscientists like Eagleman can see what part of the brain lights up when certain stimuli comes in or certain tasks are performed. Consciousness, as he points out, actually plays a very small part in the brain’s overall functioning.

We make up the stories in order to make sense of the world around us. We crave stories to explain the apparent chaos we find ourselves in. When my late wife, Kimberly Yale, was dying from breast cancer, I could take refuge in the scripts and stories I was creating. Yes, I needed to do that in order to keep money coming in to the household, but it’s where I went where things still made sense. There was a sense of control that certainly was not present in the so-called “real world” for me.

It’s not simply lies we tell ourselves; it is a narrative we need to form in order to have a functioning inner reality. We need story. It gives a “why” to the “what.”

Right now, we’re asking a lot of “why.”

On Friday, twenty-year old Adam Lanza, after first killing his own mother in their home, forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and shot and killed 26 people, including twenty children. A stunned nation was left with the question, “Why?” We desperately search for a narrative, an explanation, a reason why this man, why anyone, would do such a thing. What is the story here? We need a story. Something to make the event comprehensible. Something that will keep the chaos at bay.

There are plenty of narratives starting to surface that I’ve seen loosed on the Internet. “He was nuts.” (I think that’s a given; killing twenty children is not remotely what one would call normal.) “It’s because God and prayer were forced out of schools.” (Dubious at best; a God that would kill twenty children because prayer wasn’t allowed in school is also pretty nutso.) All of the stories, the explanations, presented come from the individual’s own story, their own narrative.

What was Adam Lanza’s narrative?

A lot of our personal narratives, our own private realities, allow or justify some of our own actions, no matter how dubious. Here one of my writing rules apply: no one thinks of themselves as a villain. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot all thought they had good reasons for the mass murders they performed. We are, in our minds, the heroes of our own lives. I’m assuming Adam Lanza was as well.

What was Adam Lanza’s private narrative that allowed, that perhaps compelled him to kill those children? Will we ever know? Lt. J. Paul Vance, a CT police spokesman, said, “The detectives will certainly analyze everything and put a complete picture together of the evidence that they did obtain, and we’re hopeful – we’re hopeful – that it will paint a complete picture as to how and why this entire unfortunate incidence occurred.” In other words, we’ll have a story of some kind. To what extent will any of us recognize elements of that story in ourselves?

In Act III, Scene 1 of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark observes “I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.” I can relate to that. I am all the heroes I have ever written; I am all the villains, too. To write convincingly of a character based on Adam Lanza, I would have to find the Adam Lanza inside of me. I have no doubt that I could. That is not, however, a journey I would like to take.

David Eagleman again writes, “There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behavior.” Some terrible part of Adam Lanza won out and made him who he is. He ended the narratives of all those he killed. As President Obama said of the children in a press conference, “They had their entire lives ahead of them – birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.” All their own stories, ended with gunshots.

Adam Lanza’s personal narrative has now made him part of the nation’s narrative and part of the personal narrative of each one of us. We will make stories, on both a personal and national level, to cope with it, to make sense of the chaos. It’s what we do. It’s what we must do.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: On The Side Of The Angels

On the ballot here in Michigan in the last election, there were several proposed amendments to the state constitution. One was concerning the use of Emergency Financial Managers (EFMs). It’s no big news that Michigan is having a hard time of it financially and several municipalities and other local organizations such as school districts have been tottering on their own fiscal cliffs as a result of ineptitude, mismanagement and plain old corruption on the part of the sundry boards, councils, and mayors involved.

The draconian solution devised by the Michigan legislature, itself a meeting place of miscreants and ideologues who are currently ramming through a “right to work” bit of legislation without any public hearings or other forms of democracy, was a pair of Emergency Financial Manages bills. This allowed the governor to appoint a Financial Manager for an undisclosed amount of time who would take over the troubled entity’s finances. The more extreme of these allowed the EFM to break or change contracts without negotiation and many other dictatorial acts. This one was struck down by the Michigan Supreme Court as unconstitutional. The governor’s office responded by trying to reinsert the law as a state constitutional amendment, outside of the Court’s reach, and thus it was on the ballot last November.

It got voted down and I was one of the ones voting against it. I understood the reasoning behind the law and the proposed amendment. The reason that the various local entities were in the financial mess that they were in was an inability and/or unwillingness to come to grips, get past their own petty personal attempts to hold on to power and do what was necessary to solve the problem. At the same time it was so inherently undemocratic that I couldn’t support it. Good, bad, or indifferent, these local officials were voted in by the populations they supposedly served. I could understand the impetus and reasoning behind the EFM but I couldn’t accept installing what was essentially was a dictator however worthy the reason. It just went against the grain.

And what has all this to do with pop culture, about which I am supposed to be writing?

I and My Mary recently went to see Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s astounding film about the President and focusing on his attempts to get the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, through the House of Representatives. It’s going to win a lot of Oscars at the next Academy Awards and deservedly so. Daniel Day Lewis inhabits the part of Lincoln, making you think that this how the man must have been. He wears the sadness and melancholy of Lincoln the way that Lincoln often wore a shawl. It drapes over him.

The cast of the movie is stellar. Sally Fields plays Mary Todd Lincoln and is every bit the equal to Daniel Day Lewis. One scene features an emotionally intense fight between Lincoln and his wife and Mary Todd gives as good as she gets. If you think of Mrs. Lincoln only as Lincoln’s widow who winds up in an insane asylum, this will make you re-think that notion.

There is some very canny casting in the film, playing to our perceptions of the actor and infusing them into the part. Tommy Lee Jones as Representative Thaddeus Stevens, an ardent abolitionist who was a key to getting the 13th Amendment passed, not only looks like photos we have of Stevens but Jones’ rat-a-tat way with an insult meshed perfectly with the character. These days we are accustomed to James Spader playing slightly sleazy and underhanded characters and his part in the film, W.N. Bilbo, who helps court or bribe representatives to vote for the Amendment, plays to that perception.

There are other fine performances and actors throughout the film – David Straitharn, Jospeh Gordon-Levitt, Hal Holbrook among many, many others. The script is by Tony Kushner (who wrote the award winning pair of plays, Angels in America} based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s superb biography of Lincoln and his cabinet, Team of Rivals. This script will be up for an Oscar as well and deserves to win it.

The film also had me asking questions of myself. Abraham Lincoln was arguably the greatest president this country has known. As I’ve learned about him, he has become and remained one the heroes to me of our country’s history. I wonder, however, if I had lived in his time, knowing only what people then knew, would I have been for or against him?

Lincoln, early in the Civil War, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, a central tenet of our government, by which an unlawfully detained prisoner can demand his or her release. When the Supreme Court of the time overruled his suspension, Lincoln ignored them. Civil law could be suspended in the areas of the South that the Union controlled and martial law, with military tribunals, were imposed. Newspaper and journalists could be censored and some were, inhibiting freedom of speech.

Given my unease with Michigan’s EFM law, how would I have responded back in Lincoln’s day to the suspension of habeas corpus? Yes, there were good reasons for him to act as he did but how much of that is plain in hindsight from where we are now and how much would that have been apparent then? Would the erosions of civil liberties, however worthy the apparent reason, grated on me? Could I, would I, have supported Lincoln back then?

Honestly, I don’t know. Those of us in the moment may not always be able to see things as clearly as the hindsight of history may show. In this time, in any time, perhaps the best we can do is try to do the best as we see it and hope that, as Lincoln said, we side with “the better angels of our nature.”

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: No Man’s Land Redux

One of the interesting developments in the past few years in comics, for me, is that stuff you’ve done earlier in your career gets bundled together and re-packaged. That can be especially nice if you have some sort of royalty arrangement (or incentive or participation or whatever they’re calling it now) because you know that means that at some point the company will issue you a check. That’s like found money; any writing you did was done long ago and you were paid for it already.

That’s not to say the money is unearned. In my view, if the company is getting a second bite of that apple, so should the creators who did the work. Seems fair to me, although the companies have a history of not being fair. And they also usually give a copy or two or three of the volume for your own library. That’s good because I rarely can find my original copies of the work.

Recently, I got copies of the last two volumes of the gathered Batman epic No Man’s Land. Our resident legend here at ComicMix, Denny O’Neil, was editor on the books at that time and asked me to do the Catwoman issues tying into the saga. I really enjoyed working with the character and would’ve enjoyed playing with her more but the book was cancelled at the end of that series. Catwoman, however, has more than nine lives and has gotten her own title back at least twice since then.

I have to admit, however, that I wasn’t too crazy about the whole No Man’s Land concept at the time. The main idea was that Gotham City, following an earthquake and a virus outbreak just seemed in general to be too toxic to reclaim so the federal government declared it a … wait for it … No Man’s Land. The citizens were ordered to get out and those who chose to stay (or were unable to leave) were kept in when the bridges and tunnels to the city were blown up. Any attempt to escape (or get in, as I recall) was prohibited and that was enforced by the Army. Very Escape From New York (a really fun movie, by the way; is Batman the comics’ Snake Plisken?).

At the time I found the premise too far fetched for my tastes. Okay, the main character dresses up like a bat to run around to strike terror into villainous and cowardly criminals but, yes, I found the central premise of No Man’s Land a little over the top for me. Gotham City was a major city in DCU’s USA. No federal government, in my opinion, would just abandon it like that; there would be howls of outrage throughout the country. Every city, every state, would fear that the same would happen to them. It simply wouldn’t be allowed. No U.S. government would be that cruel. It wasn’t politically feasible in my view (and I come from Chicago and, believe me, I’ve seen lots of outlandish governmental behavior that turned out to be very politically feasible.).

And what’s happened since No Man’s Land first came out? Let’s start with Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans and poor people stuck in the city and the horror stories of living in the Superbowl and a federal government’s response that was inept and way too slow in responding. There were people then who argued that New Orleans should be abandoned. The devastation was too great and, besides, it was a wicked, sinful city and the hurricane was God’s punishment yadda yadda yadda. New Orleans still struggles in the aftermath.

Let’s look at Hurricane Sandy. Better federal response this time but, again, the devastation was so widespread and so pervasive that it will take years for the area to recover fully, if it ever does.

Let’s look at Washington, D.C. right now. A fiscal cliff looms, one that was created by government, and one that government should be able to solve. As I write this, the two sides have gotten entrenched in their respective positions and each side is waiting to see who blinks first. A quicker resolution would help the Christmas buying season and, oh, might also keep the U.S. credit rating from being lowered again, but I’m not betting they’re going to get it done by the January 1st deadline.

No Man’s Land no longer seems that farfetched to me. I may still have a quibble or two with certain plot elements but the central premise? No, that’s become all too believable Maestro O’Neil, I tender my apologies. “I was wrong and you was right,” as usual. I should never doubt you or underestimate just how perverse reality can get.

My, this crow is tasty!

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: In Its Time, In Our Time

It starts with notes on a piano, played in the upper register, sounding like a child’s piano. We focus in on an old cigar box as a child’s voice, a girl, hums tunelessly as small hands open the box, revealing what looks like junk but is a child’s hidden treasures. The hands explore what is there, picking out a dark crayon and rubbing across a piece of paper. Letters emerge giving us the title of the film as the main theme returns, first with flute and harp and then a full orchestra. It’s a waltz, elegiac and slightly sad, evoking times past.

So begins To Kill A Mockingbird, Robert Mulligan’s 1962 film based on Harper Lee’s 1960 novel. Set in rural Alabama during the 1930s and the depths of the Depression, the story is told from the viewpoint of young Scout Finch, includes her brother Jem, and their father, the widowed lawyer Atticus Finch. It covers a year and a half during which time Atticus is called on to defend Tom Robinson, a black field worker accused of attacking and raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell.

I had the inestimable pleasure recently of seeing To Kill A Mockingbird up on the big screen as part of the film’s Fiftieth Anniversary celebration. I can’t recall if I saw it on the big screen when it first came out; I certainly haven’t seen it that way in decades. It has a force and emotional impact that I don’t feel from the small screen viewings of it. Mind you, I’m happy to watch DVD versions but I was happier to see it on the big screen.

The film brims with talent. It won a best actor Oscar for Gregory Peck who embodied Atticus Finch as well as the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, won by Horton Foote. Elmer Bernstein, drawing heavily from Aaron Copland, wrote one of the most beautiful film scores I know. Robert Duvall made his film debut here, as did Alice Ghostley and Rosemary Murphy. The two young actors playing Scout and Jem, Mary Badham and Philip Alford, are so natural and unforced that it amazes me that both had never acted before their debuts here.

Something else that strikes me in the movie is the depiction of African-Americans. There is a context for the film in its time that younger filmgoers may not know. The major Civil Rights legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 had not yet occurred. The Selma to Montgomery march in Alabama wouldn’t be until 1965. The March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech, would happen a year later. In his inauguration speech as governor of Alabama on January 14, 1963, George Wallace proclaimed “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In June of 1963, he stood in the entry way of the University of Alabama in an attempt to keep two black students from entering.

That’s what the country and the South and Alabama looked like when To Kill a Mockingbird premiered. In the face of this massive refusal to see African-Americans as anything but second-class citizens (when they weren’t portrayed as subservient and altogether inferior), the movie gives us people of color, individuals, rich in humanity. It leaves no doubt that the accused, Tom Robinson, is innocent; it is Mayella Ewell’s father, Bob Ewell, who is probably the guilty one and he emerges as the vicious, racist animal. Brock Peters’ portrayal of the tragic Tom Robinson captures the fear of the doomed man. There is a dignity to all the black characters that gives the lie to the segregationist’s creed. The movie allowed white audiences to look at black characters and empathize with them, see themselves in the oppressed people, to identify with them. In Gregory Peck’s great speech at the end of the trial, we are sitting in the jury box. We, the audience, are being asked to judge. And we must confront the guilty verdict that the jury in the movie brings in and ask ourselves how we would have decided.

What was true in the 30s in Alabama was true in 1962 when the movie premiered. I would not presume to speak to the experience of African-Americans today. I am white, male, getting older, and I am a product of my times. I have heard too many whites I know still using the “n word”. They assume its safe to do so around me; after all, I am white as well. I correct that assumption as it comes up. I have also heard whites saying that they would never vote for a black man for president. Almost three fourths of the white males who voted in the last election voted against Barack Obama. Perhaps some of it was a difference with the President’s policies but how much more of it is because the President is black?

To deny another their humanity for whatever reason is to deny our own. In context of our time as well as the time it was made, To Kill A Mockingbird remains relevant. It also remains a beautiful, heartfelt film. It makes us feel for another person different from us and with that empathy, breaks down barriers. It’s what pop culture does that nothing else can quite do. It entertains as it opens our hearts and that can change minds. That is where hope lies.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: The Bond Evolution

James Bond, as a movie franchise, has been around for fifty years and the franchise celebrates in magnificent fashion with the latest installment, Skyfall. For me, it’s definitely the best thus far of the Daniel Craig Bond movies and it may be my choice for the best of all the Bond movies. I know that “best” is, as often as not, a personal, subjective opinion rather than an objective choice. People can cite certain criteria as the basis of their opinions but who determines the criteria? For example, there are those who regard and will always regard Sean Connery as the best Bond and anything else is heresy.

Let’s look at Skyfall in context of the past fifty years of Bond films. On my list of the best Bond films are From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond, Casino Royale. As much as I really enjoyed the latter, Skyfall is superior.

To start off, we have an A list director in Academy Award winner Sam Mendes (for whom Craig played in Road to Perdition, made from Max Allan Collins’s graphic novel). Together with cinematographer Roger Deakin, there are some stunning visuals in the film. This is the best-looking Bond movie ever.

The action set pieces, including the opening, are breathtaking, as are the opening credits by Daniel Kleinman, who also did several other Bond films including Casino Royale. The visuals in the opening credits actually play into the story and what has just happened onscreen with a hallucinatory effect.

A Bond film also heavily depends on its villain and with Javier Bardem’s Silva we have one of the greats. You can detect a touch of Heath Ledger’s Joker in him but not blazingly so. He smiles, he laughs, he’s brilliant, he’s predatory and he lusts for Bond’s body. Bardem knows how to both underplay the character and take him over the top. Considering that the character doesn’t even appear for the first hour or so into the film, the impact is indelible.

A Bond story doesn’t always have to make sense; it often provides the framework for the derring-do and the action but this one actually digs a bit into both the character of Bond and of his boss, M, played by the stunning Judi Dench. She is so tough and no nonsense that she could have been a white, British Amanda Waller. The most important relationship in the film is between M and Bond and ultimately it’s very touching, very human. The story doesn’t just keep everything very status quo; the situation and the characters are challenged and there is change.

The movie lets Bond fail early on, lets him get seedy, lets him fall off the mark in his skills so that he has to work to reclaim them. It addresses the question of whether or not Bond and M are dinosaurs, are they truly needed in this age of computer wizardry. (Yes, they are.) It also addresses the fact that Craig, and Bond, are getting older. In the Roger Moore era, it was glossed over as they gave Moore turtlenecks to hide his wattle. Here, Bond looks older, more worn, and it is suggested to him that he has lost a step or two and maybe its time for him to retire.

The movie pays service to the Bond films of the past without being strictly tied to its continuity. It doesn’t reboot the franchise so much as evolves it. During much of the Moore era, the franchise just got silly and even later incarnations didn’t change things much. Then the Bourne movies came out and the status quo changed. Bond had to change as well and that started with Casino Royale but has found its culmination here. At the same time, the Bond franchise doesn’t shy away from its past; there is a suggestion that between the last film, Quantum of Solace, and now many of the previous Bond adventures may have taken place, specifically Goldfinger. It redefines Bond and his world so that they work for today.

Skyfall digs deeper, attempts more, looks better, and challenges both the characters and us, more so than any other Bond film. Yes, I’m including From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. That’s why I’m saying it is the best Bond film ever. And don’t we want it that way? The best is not the past; it’s now and, hopefully, in the future. When people ask me what is the best story I’ve written, I always say, “The next one.” I hope to go to my grave thinking that. Gives us something to work for and to look forward to. Me? I can’t wait. Bring on the next Bond!

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander’s Unsolicited Advice

I think we can all agree at this point that the DC New 52 gambit has been a success. Whether you like or dislike some, all, or none of the offerings, you have to agree that commercially and financially it’s worked which, from DC and Warner’s viewpoint, is what they wanted.

I haven’t been keen on all the changes. For example, I think Superman not having the red trunks looks weird. Superman hooked up with Wonder Woman and not Lois is just wrong, in my book. Thing is, these are not my books and aren’t meant to be. I’m in my sixties; DC’s demographic has to be for those younger than me and more diverse than an old white guy.

In the same mode, the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, has opened to great reviews (and I really want to see this one) and, by all accounts, has paid tribute to the past while paving the way for the future. That’s smart. You keep faith with old fans while reinvigorating the franchise.

Which brings me to the recent elections. As we all know, the Republicans lost the race to the White House as well as a few House seats and didn’t get control of the Senate, which they expected to do. They were certain they were going to unseat President Obama. They’ve taken to whining about the results and some of their spokespeople, like the noted political thinker Ted Nugent, claim their guy lost because of the “takers.” (I’m hearing that often enough to make me think it’s now an official GOP talking point.) Guys, this echoes back to Romney’s comments about the 47% in that clip that probably went a long way towards losing him the election. Do you really want to hit that nail on the head again?

The idea of my giving unsolicited advice to the GOP may seem a little odd. After all, I’m a well-known liberal commie pinko who was solidly and loudly behind Obama in this race and Democrats in general. However, I was raised Republican and have several Republican politicians in my pantheon of politicians I like, such as one time Illinois senator Everett McKinley Dirksen and former Illinois governor Richard Ogilvie. I even voted for some Republicans on the local level in the last election – on purpose. I think the Republic is served better by having functioning Republican and Democratic parties. I don’t think the GOP, if it continues down the road its on, will be a major functioning political party in about a decade. Maybe less.

The GOP used to have a lot of moderate members but, since becoming in thrall to the Far Right and the Tea Party, the moderates were purged and continue to be purged. It used to be that Republicans, while having their own beliefs and philosophy, could concede here and there in the interests of getting something done. Not anymore. Now it’s all ideology and how “true” they are to Conservative Principles as defined by Fox News, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, and Grover Norquist.

Mitt Romney defined what it meant to be Republican. In a time of recession and economic hardships and Occupy Wall Street, they made their standard bearer a member of the 1% and a venture (“vulture”) capitalist. At a time when the fastest growing demographic bases are minorities, they nominate the whitest white man they could find. When women are an increasingly important part of the electorate, they make a stand against abortion a part of the party platform with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother.

The GOP might consider the examples of both DC and the latest Bond movie to see how they can reinvent and reinvigorate their brand. Yes, they might alienate some of their base but that’s always a problem when you make changes. A basic truism for comic book companies – every time you change an artistic team on a book, especially one that has been long established, you know you’re going to lose some readers. The trick is to bring in more readers with the change than you lose. The same is true politically. These days, a GOP presidential candidate has to cater to the Far Right in order to get nominated. But to get elected they have to appeal to the center which is more moderate and that’s tricky to make work without losing your base. Ask Romney. But, as DC and the Bond franchise have both shown, it can be done and, in fact, should be done every so often.

The GOP started as a radical party full of abolitionist lefties before getting co-opted by Big Business. Under Teddy Roosevelt, they were “progressives,” which is now a dirty word among Republicans. Embrace what is best from your past, welcome those who are not just old white males, and re-invent yourselves.

If James Bond can do it, why not you?

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Quo Vadis, Star Wars?

Let’s see – what were the big stories of this past week? Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy slamming the East Coast and turning off power as far away as Lapeer, Michigan. Yup. That’s the big one. President Obama wins re-election. Wait. That’s next week. George Lucas sells his holdings to Disney and Episode VII is announced.

That sounds like the one I’m going to write about.

Caveats: Although I write two Star Wars comics for Dark Horse, I know nothing more than any of you about this. I was as surprised as anyone when the story broke. I hesitated before writing this column for fear that someone might take this as an insider’s view. It’s not. It’s all just rumination and speculation on my part. We good?

There has been, of course, a cacophony of reaction all over the ‘net. Them underground tubes have been humming. Some praise, some wails of distress, some outraged howls of betrayal. Among Star Wars fans there has been a lot of speculation of what Episode VII would be like. Which part of the Extended Universe (EU) would be adapted? The Thrawn Trilogy? The New Jedi Order? Legacy?

The answer: none of the above. Official response has been that it would be “an original story.” Massive disappointment among the EU faithful and fears that the new Episode VII will make hash of the post Episode VI EU. I fully expect the new film to respect EU continuity as much as George Lucas did which was – not at all.

The reason why? If you’re not a EU fan, how many of those possibilities that I named up above made any sense to you? I’m guessing “none of the above.” The fans are important but there’s not enough of them. The first new Star Wars movie in decades? A sequel, not a prequel? Disney and Lucasfilm are going to be looking for Avengers type numbers and that means it has to be accessible to the general public. Heck, they’ll want it to be accessible to those who haven’t watched a Star Wars film ever. That’s not unreasonable. That’s why Disney made the purchase in the first place.

There are also concerns that Disney will “Disneyize” the franchise. That doesn’t make sense to me. Star Wars is very compatible with Disney as is. Also, Disney also owns Pixar and hasn’t messed with that so far as I can see. They own Marvel Comics and Marvel seems to be doing what Marvel does without much change, again so far as I can see.

Not every change is bad. I was one of the doubters when Paramount announced a re-boot of Star Trek. I ended up loving it. I also doubted when Daniel Craig was announced as James Bond. A blonde James Bond? That was just wrong. Now – I think Craig is one of the absolute best Bonds and I can’t wait for Skyfall.

There also has been speculation that the Star Wars comics would move from Dark Horse to Marvel Comics. Here you might think I have some reliable info, but I don’t. Dark Horse has the license at the moment; it was just renewed a few years back. Dark Horse is taking a wait-an-see approach and so am I.

There is history; the Disney Comics were at Boom! before Disney bought Marvel and then they got moved to Marvel Comics. And it would make sense, I suppose, to move the comics to the comic company Disney owns. On the other hand, several of the movie franchises are at studios other than Disney.

As I said, Dark Horse has a license. I have a vested interest to be sure – I have two SW titles out at Dark Horse, Agent of the Empire (the new arc, Hard Targets, has just started and the first arc, Iron Eclipse, has just been released in TPB form) and Dawn of the Jedi (the first arc, Force Storm, will be released on Christmas day, and the new arc, The Prisoner of Bogan, will be released November 28 and, yes, I’m hyping my own product, thank you very much). I’ve worked on Star Wars comics for about ten years. Would that continue if the license moved to Marvel? Beats me.

So is all this a good thing or a bad thing? It’s a thing. George Lucas has been talking about retiring for some time so it makes sense that he found a good home for his creations. He’s still around and I suspect he’ll have as much say as he wants in what happens. Things will change and that includes EU continuity. Does that bother me?

Not really. I don’t own any of the characters that I’ve worked on in the comics any more than I own any characters that I created at Marvel or DC. (I have a financial stake in Amanda Waller and that’s sweet but not ownership.) Fans often evince a feeling of ownership of Star Wars (or Harry Potter or Twilight or any other fan intensive franchise) but that’s not reality.

What we have (and I’m a fan as well) is hope, in this case maybe a new hope, that Episode VII will be everything we want in a Star Wars movie and the stories that come out of it and surround it will also be cool. Why do I hope? Because it’s in Disney’s best interest to do it right.

The galaxy will be watching.

Monday: Did Sandy Get Mindy?

 

John Ostrander: Alphas

In the past, I’ve generally shied away from ongoing series on the channel now known as Syfy. Their version of The Dresden Files sucked toads (sorry, Emily, but compared to the novels by Jim Butcher, the series was execrable) and they put on a Flash Gordon with no space ships. I repeat: No. Space. Ships!

This trend was reversed with the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and continued with such shows as Eureka, both of which I’ve enjoyed a great deal. They have several other original series now that have gained a viewership but the one that attracted me most has been Alphas. The series concerns a group of metahumans who are dubbed alphas, each with different abilities, all of which were gained at birth. Can you say X-Men? You’d be right. There’s good reasons for that.

The series was created by Michael Karnow and Zak Penn. The latter worked on story and/or script on several X-Men movies, The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, and my own personal wonky fave, Incident at Loch Ness. So he has chops. And he knows what the X-Men are about.

The series centers around a team of Alphas, recruited to handle bad alphas (sound familiar?) by brilliant non-Alpha Dr. Lee Rosen, a psychiatrist, played by David Strathairn (notable in the last two Bourne movies and, in one of his best roles, Good Night and Good Luck where he played Edward R. Murrow to stunning effect). Straitharn was a large reason I decided to watch the series in the first place; he’s an excellent actor and I’ve never seen him in anything in which he wasn’t honest and believable, even when he plays bad guys. Frankly, I was surprised to see him doing a cable TV series but he has done a significant amount of TV work. In this, he’s the Professor Xavier analog without being a copy.

There are other analogs in the show. The main bad guy, Stanton Parish (played by John Pyper-Ferguson) is a Magneto type. While he doesn’t have the same powers, he’s an alpha (read mutant) who is gathering his fellow alphas and wants to save them from common humanity. He has a respect for his opponent, Dr. Rosen, and seems to be a reluctant mass murderer.

One character, Bill Harken (Malik Yoba), is sort of a Colossus analog in that he is the strongman of the group. The most original character, Gary Bell (Ryan Cartwright), can plug into and read any wavelength but the character is also autistic (on the level of Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man) and his interactions with the team and the world around him are always interesting.

Do I like the series? Yes. It’s not a rip-off of the X-Men per se; it’s more a re-imagining of the core concepts of the X-Men. People are born with special powers and some of them try to save a world that fears and hates them but it’s a more realistic take on the concept (“realistic” being a relative term). No costumes, no spandex. A touch of soap opera, yes, but almost all comic book superheroes have that these days.

Above all, it has David Strathairn who I think I would watch in almost anything. His character is nuanced and fallible and shows a deep, if sometimes flawed, humanity. I’d give the whole series a B+, A-. A third season has not yet been announced but I hope it will be. You may want to catch the first two seasons before it comes back because the storyline and underlying mythology does build. Not as impenetrable as the X-Men have gotten but I’m not sure just jumping in on the third season would be the best idea.

Besides, it’s enjoyable to watch.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Pros At Cons

Once again I didn’t make it to the NYCC but I’ve been to umpty-bum comic book conventions over the years, both as a fan and a professional, and I’ve learned one or two things along the way. Being a pro (especially if you’re a guest at the con) and being a fan are two very different experiences. I always regard being a guest at a con as a working weekend and it can, in fact, be more tiring for me than going as a fan.

My first job is giving any fan that comes up to my table a good experience. These are people who buy my books and that fact keeps me employed. I may be tired, I may be stressed, there may be any number of things bothering me but none of that matters. The Con promoter has paid my way with the expectations that my name may help draw more paying customers and that the paying customers will enjoy themselves well enough at the Con to want to come again next year. I’m part of that equation. It’s part of my job as a professional.

I also want to create more fans. I greet people who pass by, try to engage them in conversation, try to interest them in what I do. If I have something to sell, I have a quick spiel to give passers-by an idea of what’s there. Folks at neighboring tables soon learn to tune me out because it can get repetitive. My Mary has noted that I have developed a “Con persona” – an aspect of myself that I trot out at Cons. I call upon my theater and acting background to “play” a version of myself. It’s an authentic version of me but it’s meant to give those I meet a good experience of me, no matter how I may be feeling. That’s important. They deserve it. It also creates positive word of mouth.

That’s not to say I’m above goofing around. At one Star Wars Convention, there were lots of people in costume, some playing characters I created. That’s always interesting – meeting real life versions of characters that had existed only in my head. I have to admit I pay closer attention to those cosplaying Darth Talon. For those who don’t know the character, suffice it to say that it’s sexy female in a brief costume and lots of body paint. One such young lady was posing in front of the Dark Horse booth and she sure could wear that body paint. I sidled up to her during a pause in the snapshots, smiled, and told her, “I’m your Daddy.”

She gave me a look and said, “Excuse me?” I then hastily explained that I was one of the two creators of the character she was cosplaying. Then she smiled and said, “Oh, you’re so cute!” Which, translated, means, “Look at you! Old enough to be my grandfather and you’re flirting with me! That’s so cute!”

Yeah. Cute. Swell.

On the other hand, I can’t complain too much. I met the two big loves of my life – Kimbery Yale and Mary Mitchell – at conventions. Kim was at a big combined Doctor Who/Comic Convention in Chicago during one sweltering summer. I was trying to get the rights to do a Doctor Who live action play and was talking with the show’s producer, John Nathan Turner, and Terry Nation, one of the legendary writers for the show and creator of the Daleks. This young woman accompanied Mr. Nation. She had a slight accent and I assumed she was his secretary or some such. Turns out she was working security for Mr. Nation, she was local, and her name was Kim Yale.

The other woman was, of course, My Mary – Mary Mitchell. I’ve told the story elsewhere of how we met; she came down to Chicago and the Con to show her portfolio and chose to show it to me. The reason she chose me was that she saw me playing with some young, shy kids at my table, trying to draw them out, and she thought if I was kind to them I might be kind to her. I wasn’t kind; I was enthusiastic. Before she knew it, this madman had her portfolio and was dragging her around to all sorts of people insisting she get work. The funny thing is that she didn’t really know who I was when she approached me; she just knew I was nice to children.

I was and I am. Those kids may be readers some day and they might become my readers. Also, the parents who are towing them around the Convention floor are appreciative if you’re nice to their kids. I even discouraged some children from reading some of my work, like GrimJack, if I feel they’re a little young for the material. I’d prefer to steer them towards good comics for their age group even if I had nothing to do with them. Parents appreciate that and some have even written me thank you letters. All part of that good Con experience.

I’ve also learned to be careful naming favorites or least faves of my work before fans. I once, on a panel, named my least fave book in a given series, going so far as to state that, if I could, I’d buy all the copies of it and destroy them. I thought I was being clever. One fan in the front row had a wounded expression and said, “But that was my favorite issue!” So I don’t do that anymore.

I also try to be open. At one Con I was having a quick lunch from the food at the venue. I was sitting at a table by myself when a fan approached me. She and some other fans were sitting at another table and recognized me and wondered if I would care to join them. While I don’t mind eating by myself, I said “yes” and we all had a very good time.

I do have fun at Conventions and it gives me a chance go see old friends – mostly pros – and make some new ones. For me, however, they are working weekends. Writing is solitary work but there is that social aspect, the selling of yourself and your work, and for me being a professional means making sure the fans are happy.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

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