Author: John Ostrander

John Ostrander: Redshirts

I love to read. I have ever since I was very small. I startled my parents when I started reading the milk cartons and cereal boxes aloud when I was in pre-school. I love it when a book sweeps me up and takes me wherever it is set. The genre doesn’t matter – fiction/nonfiction, history/memoir, sci-fi/fantasy, mystery/western – just tell me a good story and I’m yours. If I don’t have a good book to read somewhere around the house, I get a little hinky.

If the author wastes my time by not telling me a good story, I get a little irate.

Fortunately, John Scalzi tells a very good story with his new novel, Redshirts (Tor books, hardcover). Tells a very funny, engrossing and ultimately thoughtful story in a novel that includes three codas at the end. Tells a story that will strike very close to home for Star Trek fans, especially those of the original series.

SPOILER NOTE: I’ll give some things away about the plot as this review goes forward. Can’t discuss the story without talking about the story but I’ll try to give away as little as I can. This is as much warning as you’ll get.

The story is set in the Universal Union, mostly aboard its flagship, the Intrepid, and Ensign Andrew Dahl is happy to be posted to it – until he notes something odd. There are all these away missions and the command crew, the captain, the chief science officer, and the astrogator are assigned along with some low level member of the crew. Like ensigns. There’s just about always a fatality but not among the command crew although the astrogator can get hurt really bad but recovers within a week. Odd, to say the least.

These moments come and go but, when they come, it’s as if the crewmembers aren’t really in control of their actions. As it turns out, they’re not.

Turns out that, in an alternate universe/timeline, they’re all characters in a cheesy Star Trek knockoff TV show and their lives are being controlled by a bunch of hack writers. Dahl and an intrepid group of fellow Intrepid redshirts have to travel backwards/sideways/whatever in time/space/dimensions/whatever via a means familiar to Star Trek fans to somehow stop these writers (mainly the head writer) from probably killing them for cheesy dramatic reasons, usually just before the commercial break.

The story owes something of its concept to the wonderful movie Stranger Than Fiction (my favorite Will Ferrell movie and maybe my only fave Will Ferrell movie) and acknowledges that but also, to my mind, owes its tone to an equally wonderful movie, Galaxy Quest, which it doesn’t acknowledge. There are flaws: many of the characters are identified only by their last names and are more a collection of characters traits then characters. On the other hand, that may be deliberate since the book satirizes that way of creating support characters on TV and indeed elsewhere. Take a character trait from column A, column B, and column C and provide a name and – bingo! – instant character. To my mind, they also sounded quite a bit alike but what they said was often funny and entertaining. I just had trouble telling them apart sometimes.

The book is clever and light which makes it great for summer reading. It doesn’t get particularly deep until the three codas that follow the end of the story proper. They’re like three short stories using minor characters in the main book. Here Scalzi plays more with the concepts brought up in the main story. I can see why they are separate – the tones wouldn’t work in the primary narrative but they’re very worth reading and add a great deal to the overall book.

Recommended. It also makes me very sure that I never want John Gaunt to find a way to meet me. I’ve done too many nasty things to GrimJack all in the name of compelling narrative and I think he would hurt me bad. So – shhhh! Don’t tell him where I live.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Seduction of the Gun

In the wake of the terrible shootings in Aurora CO during the midnight showing of The Dark Night Rises, I was contacted by television station WRTV in Richmond VA to comment about my Batman anti-gun violence book, Batman: Seduction of the Gun, that was first published in 1993. Those interested in the interview can find it here.

The stand-alone Batman story was done in response to the killing of John Reisenbach, the son of a Warner’s executive. DC wanted to respond at the time and it was felt that Batman was the logical choice for the story as his own parents were victims of gun violence and had a well-known aversion of handguns.

Denny O’Neil was the Batman editor back then and offered me the writing job, knowing I had once worked with an anti-gun organization. Denny emphasized that we couldn’t just preach; first and foremost we had to tell a good story. We could make our points but they had to be part of the story. I had no problem with that; it’s one of the lessons I learned from studying Shakespeare – theme should be hardwired into the plot.

I took what I knew and then researched more. One of the things that I learned was about “straw men sales.” If you lived in a state or municipality that had strict laws about the sales of firearms, you could get around it by having someone in another state buy the gun(s) for you, even in bulk. Gangs in New York City were doing that down in Virginia. I used that as a small section of the overall story, but it resonated. Virginia’s then-governor L. Douglas Wilder used the comic to help get his modest but controversial gun control law passed – buyers could purchase one gun a month. You could have belonged to a “Gun of the Month Club” and still been perfectly legal.

I was and am proud of the book. I’ve been asked recently if I thought that DC might or should reprint it in light of the events in Colorado. I’ve thought hard on it and I’ve come to my own conclusions.

I want to say, first of all, that I have no idea whether DC has any plans to re-issue Seduction of the Gun. They haven’t said and I haven’t asked or suggested it. I don’t think they will re-issue it, however, and perhaps they shouldn’t. There are reasons why not.

First of all, it would be months before it would get out there. It would have to be solicited in the Diamond Catalog and that’s planned way ahead. I don’t know as it would appear before next year and one could question the relevance.

Second, even if the book was re-published tomorrow, this is an election year and everything gets politicized. Putting Seduction of the Gun out there now would be characterized as a political statement and I don’t think it’s one either DC or Warners wants to make. The Dark Knight Rises is already connected with those terrible murders and I can’t see Warners wanting to keep reminding people of that. They want to sell tickets. It’s hard enough these days to get people to come to the movie theater instead of just waiting to see it at home. This wouldn’t help.

Third, what audience would the book reach? There’s no stomach, no political will these days, for a further conversation about gun control or banning guns. None. Sales of guns in Colorado spiked following the tragedy. Furthermore, in the comics community, any time you do a story about an issue these days a certain very vocal percentage of the comics’ blog-o-sphere dismisses it automatically as an “Afternoon Special.”

Finally, and I don’t want to seem too bleak here, but what good would it really do? Yes, Governor Wilder used it at the time to pass his gun control legislation but that law was repealed not long ago. You can once again buy as many guns as you want in Virginia. I heard one leader in the VA government claim the law wasn’t really needed now – that they had background checks and such to prevent bad things from happening. Tell that to the victims of James Holmes. He was able to legally get all the guns he wanted.

Let me be clear: I’m not in favor of banning guns and never have been. At heart, the country is not prepared to go for that and I think you would create the same sort of situation that the government did when it banned alcohol, that it does now in banning marijuana – people wouldn’t/don’t obey resulting in a large sub-rosa underground market that would make plenty of money for Organized Crime. There are also plenty of people with a legitimate reason for guns and rifles – hunters, for one example, and on farms and ranches there’s a need for pest control. That’s always been true.

On the other hand, what need does any private citizen have for an AK-47 or similar attack rifle? Explain it to me, please, someone. It might be argued that people have a perfect right to own them and its guaranteed by the Constitution. I’ve read somewhere that your Constitutional right to self-expression ends where your fist hits my face.

I’d say the same thing applies to a bullet.

When I wrote the story, I thought it was important for the reader to have characters who were sympathetic who became victims of gun violence. I wanted the reader to feel for them, to identify with them, so they would feel some sense of loss at their deaths. You can’t argue with a closed mind but you might be able to reach people by engaging their hearts. In the Aurora shootings, there are stories of people dying to protect ones they loved, shielding them with their own bodies. There was the single father who was out with his kids for the day. There were the very young children who were shot or killed. If these true stories don’t engage the heart, I don’t know what my fictional story will do.

I would love if Seduction of the Gun became anachronistic; my fear is that it will remain relevant. The cycle will resume – more gun shootings, more hand wringing, more passionate defense of perceived Constitutional rights, and nothing more will happen. That’s the life we live.

Monday: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Aurora

What do we say? How do we react? A guy named James Holmes slipped into a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in a suburban town in Colorado and opened fire with an AR-15 rifle, a shotgun and two 40-caliber handguns. He set off what may have been tear gas as he started his killing spree. According to CNN, the suspect was dressed head to toe in protective gear including a gas mask. CNN also reported that a federal law enforcement official stated Holmes had colored his hair red and told the police he was “the Joker.”

He killed 12 people and wounded 58. As I write this, eleven are in critical condition.

His apartment has been booby trapped with incendiary and chemical devices and trip wires. Residents in the surrounding five buildings have been evacuated. It may take days to defuse it all.

What do we say? What can we say? Should we say anything at all at this point?

If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be writing this column. I was working on a different one but I’ve let it go for now. Why?

Words are important. It’s how we take something that is inconceivable, incomprehensible, horrific and give it a shape and form. We communicate thoughts, beliefs, fears and give them a human shape. Some will misuse the power of words and cast the events in terms of their own ideology. They will try to shape the narrative to support or further their views. The events will not be described; they will be twisted. You can see some of this already on the Internet. I know I have.

In the past I have said that nothing that is human is alien to me, that I am capable of understanding anyone on a human level, that somewhere within myself I can find something of that person. Is that true in this case? Am I capable of understanding Holmes?

If I was writing the Joker, I’d have to find somewhere inside of me where I felt like the Joker. And that can take me to very dark places, not places to where I am eager to go. When I was writing Wasteland, I wrote a story from the point of view of a serial killer, or at least what I thought was a perspective a serial killer would have. I now think it was a little naïve. The story was interesting but I don’t know if it was successful in what I set out to do. Would I really want to be successful in that sense? Could I?

The Joker in Nolan’s previous Batman film, The Dark Knight, was not a “criminal” as much as an anarchist forcing Batman and the entire city of Gotham into choices that would reveal that, at heart, they were not better than he was. He would expose them as what his own dark twisted concept of humanity said they must be. Is that what James Holmes thought he was doing? If so, what more appropriate venue that the opening night of the next Batman film?

I’m speculating, of course. Guessing. That’s all any of us can do at the moment. It may be all that we can ever do. I think it’s important that we try. I don’t want to dismiss Holmes as an aberration, a freak, a monster – something that is not me. That’s too easy. He is human. Yes, a very screwed up human but human nonetheless. If I deny him his humanity what happens to mine?

I don’t have answers. Maybe I won’t be able to find any. Maybe the only answers will be the ones I impose on the situation. Maybe I’m wrong and there are monsters. Maybe I’m wrong and it’s not possible to find a common humanity with this killer. In the days and weeks to come, we’ll have more information. Maybe that will help; maybe it won’t. The attempt, I think, is necessary.

We also need to look at a basic fear underlying all this, one that hits home.

The Dark Knight Rises’ director, Christopher Nolan, was quoted as saying, “The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me.” I think that’s true for all of us in this little community. This is our home, too, and this weekend was supposed to be a triumph for us in a summer of triumphs – the best summer of comic book movies ever. Now it’s sullied, bloodied and sullied, and whatever sales records the film sets, whatever awards it may win, that opening night in Aurora will be forever linked to it.

And I think that what we fear, deep down, is the possibility that the killer may have been one of us – a deranged, twisted version but one of us nonetheless. That’s the fear we need to name and only words will ultimately serve.

Let’s talk – and listen.

Monday: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Details, details, details

There’s an old maxim that says “God is in the details.”  So is a story and especially in comics.

I’ve said and I believe that a good writer can write any character. I don’t have to be African-American to write an African-American character; I don’t have to be female to write a good female character. Gail Simone, for example, writes terrific male characters. So did Kim Yale. Our own Mindy Newell does a terrific job as well with this. What you have to be able to do is have empathy and to understand what is universal – the common humanity. If you don’t connect with your characters, neither will the reader.

All that said, there is a need for what is called the telling detail. Something specific that helps the reader feel the story you’re telling is based in some kind of reality. You can do research and come up with a ton of details but not all of them are necessary for the story. It may be necessary for you as the creator to know them but they’re not necessary for the reader to understand the plot or the characters.

It’s what I call the “iceberg theory.” The bulk of an iceberg is underwater. That bulk is necessary for the part of the iceberg that shows. In the same way, you need to know a lot about the characters, the setting, the story but only a certain percentage of it needs to show. So you select which details help make the story real and convincing to the reader. Those are the telling details.

A writer needs to be able to describe the scene to the artist; likewise, the artist needs to pick the details that he or she will draw. An example is what the character is wearing. That is how the character chooses to present him or herself to the world and that says something. What Peter Parker chooses to wear as Peter Parker says something about him just as what Bruce Wayne wears as Bruce Wayne says something about him. They shop in different places. The look, the texture and the drape of an Armani suit is going to be different than something from Wal-Mart. The reader may not be consciously aware of those changes but, if those details are not there, if everyone dresses the same, the reader is going to pick up on that as well. It will feel false.

What we choose to wear says something about us. You may think that doesn’t include you; many guys – and sometimes I am one of them – will say they just pick what is clean, or cleanest. That, however, does say something about that person and how they wish to be perceived. Do you have a power tie? Do you wear something special when going to meet someone important? What are you projecting about yourself? How do you want to be perceived? It’s true in our lives and so it should be true in our stories as well.

In the past few decades, many people have opted to become walking billboards for a particular brand. It might be a cola company or a sports team or even a comic book character or comic book company (be sure to buy your GrimJack stuff at the ComicMix store, btw – end of shameless plug). By wearing that apparel, we claim a tribal affinity. Stuff like that used to be given out as free advertising; now you have to pay real bucks for them – and sometimes its not cheap – to say you belong. It becomes part of the wearer’s identity. Details like that matter.

When I taught classes at the Joe Kubert School, I tried to make the students think about character design, the costume. It’s not just a matter of what “looks cool” or is easy to draw. The character is telling something about themselves when they choose what they wear. It is a choice they make that says something about themselves and what they are trying to project. At least, they should.

When Jan Duursema, my partner of many Star Wars stories, draws the martial arts fights or sword or lightsaber fights, there is an authority there because Jan herself has studied martial arts, including swordplay. Jan thinks out her locales as well and includes all kinds of information in the background.

When I first met My Mary Mitchell and she showed me her portfolio, I was floored by the amount of telling detail in the panels. Her heroine’s bedroom looked like someone’s bedroom – there were details in the pictures and what the woman hung on the wall that made me think of her as a person. A few panels later, when the woman was walking down the street, there were all kinds of people in the panel, all different body shapes, all wearing different clothes. The clothes reflect what the weather is as well.

Mary also was conscious of the buildings in the background; like any real city, there will be different types of buildings one against another. It gives a visual texture. Too many artists draw a generic background and that makes the story a generic story. Cities are characters in the story; New York is different from Chicago which is different from Memphis or Detroit or Los Angeles or Portland. I’ve been in all those cities and you can tell.

It all matters. The storytelling needs to be universal and, at the same time, it all needs to be specific. It may sound like a contradiction but I’ve found throughout my life that truth lies in the seeming contradictions. God is a contradiction; he/she is in the details and so is the story.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell


John Ostrander: Bad Things

My thanks to Martha Thomases for her column this week. In it she confessed to having a fondness for the 1980 Flash Gordon film that started the immortal Sam Jones and Max Van Sydow. It’s bad film and she knows it but she has legit reasons for her fondness of it. Martha, just so you know, the 2007 SyFy TV series is much worse, not even having space ships, for crying out loud! Flash Gordon without space ships?! Talk about not getting the concept!

I say thank you because I had no idea what I was going to do for my column this week and now I do. There are bad films and one CD that I know are horrible but I felt a compulsion to go out and buy a copy of them. This isn’t the same as the weird films of which I own a copy and that I like – things such as Incident At Loch Ness, Get Crazy and, soon, Troll Hunter. These are all justifiable. Not the ones I’m about to talk about; uh-uh, these are plain bad and they are not recommended for viewing. Just to be clear about that.

First up – Barb Wire starring Pamela Lee Anderson. I may have talked about this one before but I stumbled on it one late night on TV while scanning the cable for something to occupy my sleepless mind.

The movie is based on a comic put out by Dark Horse at one point, part of their Heroes Greatest World series of superheroes. I wrote one of those comics for a while and I knew all the other titles. As I said, Pamela Lee Anderson starred in the movie and I lingered, waiting to see if she would take off her clothes, which is the main reason for any guy to watch a Pamela Lee Anderson movie.

I came in after the film started and then watched in horror as I became aware that the movie was an update of Casablanca into a future setting and featuring Pammie in the Humphrey Bogart part. ‘Nuff said? Nuff said.

And then there’s The Return Of Captain Invincible from 1983, a superhero spoof from Australia starring Adam Arkin in tights as the titular hero and Christopher Lee as his archenemy, Mister Midnight. Lee sings in this, by the way. Did I mention there are some songs sprinkled throughout? Not enough to make it a musical, just enough to not make sense – which fits right in with the rest of the movie. The lyrics to some of them were done by Richard O’Brien who wrote the original musical play of Rocky Horror Show and as an actor he was also in, among other things, Martha’s guilty pleasure, Flash Gordon.

I could run through the plot of Captain Invincible but – why?

Next on my list of very dubious pleasures – Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter. Yes, you read that right. It’s a kung fu movie that has Jesus returning to Earth and winding up fighting as a king fu warrior against hordes of vampires, including lesbian ones, with the aide of a masked Mexican wrestler, Santo Enmascardo de Plata. Hmm. I may need to re-write that sentence; it makes the film sound too interesting.

Oh, and it also has a song in it. One. Right in the middle of the film. Why? Who knows.

Finally, there’s a CD – Pat Boone’s In A Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy from 1997 in which Pat covers heavy metal and hard rock songs with big band arrangements. Oh, and on the cover he wears black leather pants and matching vest – no shirt. Get that picture out of your mind if you can.

I don’t know if I’ve ever listened to the whole thing.

My friend, Bill Nutt, used to have a weekly radio show and, on occasion, I would be invited in as a guest and allowed to select some of the music. I told My Mary one such time to listen in because I would be dedicating a song to her.

That week I also played one of the cuts from In A Metal Mood and it played before Mary’s song came on. When I got back home, Mary demanded why I made her listen to the Pat Boone cut. In an unwise moment, I admitted neither Bill nor I had actually listened to it; we turned down the studio monitor once it came on.

That did not go down well. She has since forgiven me but I doubt she will ever forget my doing that to her.

What unites all these choices is the fact that I own a copy of each and every one of them. I can’t explain to you why these and not the other very bad CDs and DVDs that are out there. The selection probably says something about me and its probably not good.

And, Martha? Flash Gordon is superior to any of them.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Displaced

One of the brilliant moves that Stan Lee made in the early issues of The Avengers was to bring Captain America from the 40s into what was then the modern day. He had Cap frozen in ice from the end of WWII until he was thawed out. Cap hadn’t aged, Stan didn’t bring a new guy into the costume, this was the same Steve Rogers and he became a man out of time. A hero of one era moved to a time when just about everyone he knew was dead. And the world as he knew it was gone.

They repeated that idea in the Captain America movie and picked up on it in this year’s Avengers movie blockbuster. I think that it’s Nick Fury who notes that, for Cap, World War II was not decades ago – it was just a few weeks. The society, for good and bad, is not the same, the values aren’t the same, so where does Steve Rogers, Captain America, fit in? Does he fit in?

Most of America is celebrating the Fourth of July this weekend, even though the real Fourth isn’t for a few days. We celebrate the birth of our nation that was, as Abraham Lincoln said, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.” That was the United States I believed in when I was young. Now? These days I find myself identifying more and more with that Steve Rogers who came out of hibernation to a whole new nation.

Maybe it’s just creeping old cootism; I’m 63, I grew up in the Fifties and came of age in the 60s. Maybe it’s just this election cycle with its hideous negativism and polarization. Maybe it’s the rise of this new era of Robber Barons. Maybe it’s this continuing recession (depression?) that drags on and on. Maybe it’s just me, where I am and how I feel right now, as I write this.

I remember a country where different political parties and even groups within those parties could argue and disagree, perhaps vehemently, but still could come together and do things for the good of the country and its citizens. The political game wasn’t the be-all and end-all of the process. When the concept of compromise wasn’t “do it my way.” When political dogma wasn’t the rule; when ideology wasn’t engraved on tablets of stone. No one person had the answers; by working together, by compromise, a better answer could be reached.

I remember when corporations were corporate citizens and not multinational conglomerates that were landless nations in their own right. When the CEOs and CFOs operated these companies to the benefit of the stockholders and those who were employed there instead of making sure their executive bonuses increased whether the company prospered or not.

I remember when there wasn’t such a great divide between the wealthy and the poor or even the wealthy and the middle class. Hell, I remember a strong and prosperous middle class. I remember a time when a parent could expect that their children could rise and do better than they did, to graduate from college without the crushing student debt with which these young men and women are now saddled.

I remember when teachers, policemen, and firemen were all respected and not among the first to have their jobs, wages, and pensions cut or their unions attacked and even accused of being among the principle causes of this recession.

I’m a student of history; an imperfect one, I’ll grant, but I’ve read about the robber barons of a century ago. I know how many of those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were slaveholders. I know how every minority group has had to fight for basic civil rights, be they the right to vote or the right to marry or the right to be treated as full citizens in this country. I know how we pushed and robbed and committed genocide against Native Americans. I’m not naïve and I don’t simply look backwards with rose-colored glasses.

But I used to have more hope.

Woody Guthrie sang:

“This land is your land, this land is my land

    From California to the New York Island

    From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

    This land was made for you and me.”

He also sang in a later verse that is not always performed with the rest of the song:

“In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

    By the relief office, I’d seen my people.

    As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

    Is this land made for you and me?”

I don’t know. I used to think this was my land but now I don’t know.

Was it ever?

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Legal Fiction

At one company I worked at, I received a contract and, in the boilerplate text, there was a new phrase, something that I didn’t understand. I asked my editor about it; he didn’t understand it either and shrugged and said, “Just sign it so we can get the project going.” I went on to a business manager who didn’t know what the phrase meant either but said, “Oh, John – we’re all friends here. Don’t worry about it.” I continued to pursue it up through a corporate counsel who finally told me what it meant.

The phrase said that the company could do anything they wanted to my scripts, change them as they deemed fit, and publish them under my name without even telling me. Once I understood what the phrase meant, I wanted it taken out (I had more leverage in those days and was able to do that). My reasoning – all I had to trade on was my name. An employer hires me based on my track record and that track record is based on what has appeared under my name. That’s my livelihood and I couldn’t let someone else change my work without the right to remove my name.

In general, I have liked, respected, and gotten along well with the editors for whom I’ve worked. They, however, are not the company. They may represent the company but they are not the company. They may leave, get fired, die or in some other manner not wind up employed at the company. It’s my “hit by a bus” theory. If everyone at a given company I know went out for lunch together and got hit by a bus, all I would have is the contract that I signed.

Despite what some politicians may have told you, companies are not people, too, my friend. They are “people” only as a legal fiction; the law treats them as a “person” in the sense that they can sign binding contracts, sue or get sued, and enter into other legal situations that supposedly can only happen between two “people.”

You do not have a relationship with a corporation; you have a relationship with people who work at a corporation. Corporations are not family. They are not sentient, they are not cognizant, and one could argue they are rarely intelligent. Multinational corporations and conglomerates do not belong to any one nation and their loyalties belong to no one nation but rather to themselves and, in theory, their stockholders, although top executives can make sure they get their bonuses even if the company fails.

Corporations do not believe in equality; corporations are hierarchical, usually male dominated, and white. Management is the top echelon and the workers, who do most of the heavy lifting, are drones. In artistic matters, they will tell you that the people with the money are more vital than the creative types. After all, creative people are a dime a dozen; another will be around in a minute or two. The guys with the money are the ones taking the financial risk and, thus, are more valuable. You can always get another idea to fund. Theirs is the corporate mindset – it’s the money that matters most. Artistic ideas are just widgets as are their creators.

Despite a remarkably boneheaded Supreme Court decision, money does not equal free speech. It enables you to buy the soapbox from which you can exercise your free speech and the more money you have, the bigger soapbox you can buy. The money that corporations have enables them to buy extremely large soapboxes outfitted with loudspeakers that common citizens cannot afford. This electoral cycle we’re seeing unprecedented amount of spending both by corporations and by individuals made rich by their corporate holdings. That creates an imbalance between the legal fictions that are corporations and the humans that are the actual citizens.

I’ll grant that all this sounds like I really hate corporations. I don’t. They are a necessity. I respect them when they act in a manner deserving respect, and I respect their power. I simply don’t think they are more important than the individual and that their rights should supercede those of the average citizen.

The preamble to the United States Constitution refers to “We, the People”, not “We, the Corporations.” When the framers of the Constitution said that its purpose was “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” they weren’t talking about the legal fictions that are corporations.

I don’t expect corporations to be my friends no matter what their corporate spokesmen and animated logos may tell me. I know who my friends are, I know who my family is, and they aren’t legal fictions. Nothing personal; corporations aren’t persons. It’s business for them and that’s how it is for me.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

John Ostrander: Death and Comics

At a convention I was at some years past I was having dinner with, among others, Howard Chaykin and Joe Rubinstein. Howard is always an interesting dinner companion; whether you agree with him or not on a subject, the conversation is going to be interesting. I didn’t know Joe Rubinstein much before that – except by his talent – but he raised a serious point with me. Joe knew about my late wife, Kim Yale, and her death and what he was interested in seeing coming from me was a story or stories about how you cope with the grief and the mourning that comes with the death of a loved one. It’s an interesting challenge and, while I’ve had some ideas about how to do it, I have yet to answer it.

I don’t think that comics, as a medium, deals well with death. It’s become a plot device, a sales gimmick, since we all know the character who has died is going to be back. I was staggered at the time of the Death of Superman storyline and by the number of people I knew who contacted me and breathlessly asked, “Is he really dead?” I pointed out that DC had too much money to lose from Underoos alone to let Kal-El stay dead.

Sure enough, Superman got better.

I will say that DC dealt well with the aftermath of Superman’s apparent demise in the World Without Superman follow-up storyline. There was real feeling, real emotion, by individuals and by the general population. And life went on without Superman.

That’s what happens. Your world ends; life goes on. The one you loved doesn’t come back. You cope however well or badly. You recover or you don’t.

I’m not saying that killing off a character can’t be effective or shouldn’t be done. When I was doing Suicide Squad over at DC, I was something of a literary mass murderer. I killed off lots of characters – mostly villains. I even killed off my own GrimJack character and brought him back albeit in a different, cloned body. I then reincarnated him somewhere further down his own timeline and, eventually, killed off that incarnation as well. So, how is that different, you ask.

Reincarnation doesn’t give you back the same body; it gives you a different one. The resiliency of the Doctor Who series rests on the title character’s ability to regenerate or reincarnate. Completely different actor, very different personality traits. There is change. That’s the difference and a key one.

Over at Marvel, the Pearly Gates is a revolving door. Captain America dies; oops, he got better. (Okay, it was really a “time bullet” but it was sold as the death of Captain America.) His teen sidekick in WWII, Bucky, dies in action. Oops, no, he gets better decades later. Both “deaths” generated interesting stories but is there anyone who really thought that the original Captain America wasn’t coming back?

Actions have consequences and death does as well. Grief should be shown; tears should flow. One of the major flaws, for me, of the first Star Wars film is that Luke barely sheds a tear at the death of the only parents he’s really ever known but then gets mopey about a mentor he’s known only a few days. Whereas, in the Harry Potter films, especially the later ones, when a character dies we see real grief and sorrow. It matters to the characters and therefore matters to us. And, yes, Harry dies and comes back to life but that doesn’t change my argument. His death grew out of the story and was, in fact, demanded by it; it was the way to resolve the story. That includes his resurrection. My gripe is with deaths that simply are “events” and meant to push sales.

Death in comics is too easy because resurrection is too easy. It doesn’t mean anything most of the time. It’s a cheat. Life – and death – doesn’t work that way. If death doesn’t mean anything, does life?

Monday: Mindy Newell and how she got that way.

John Ostrander: Pop Food

When I was back in college, a girl I was dating teasingly insisted that if I had to choose between her and a double chocolate cake I would have to think hard. “Nonsense, my dear,“ I told her, “You exaggerate. I would always choose you.” After a beat, I added, “With infinite regret for having lost that double chocolate cake.”

The relationship with that young lady did not last but my relationship with chocolate and, indeed, food in general certainly has. I’ve become a pretty good home cook over the past few years and I credit television for a lot of that.

I was not into cooking all that much for most of my life. Oh. I could feed myself and even – on occasion – make a really good meal. Then one day I was reading in the newspaper an article about a new show coming onto the Food Channel (which at that point I not only didn’t watch but disdained). It was Iron Chef (the original Japanese version) that was described as a cross between a cooking show and a sports event. Well, that intrigued me enough to sample it and, in short order, I was hooked. It was complete with play-by-play announcer, a field reporter, an analyst, and guest commentators who also were part of the judging committee.

The Chairman who presided over it all was also over the top – heck, the whole thing was over the top – with florid weekly attire. Weekly challengers would come in to challenge the three (later four) Iron Chefs and, while the whole thing may have been rigged, it was played straight.

It led me into sampling more of the Food Channel which in those days included Sarah Moulton, Mario Batali, as well as Rachel Ray and Bobby Flay until the Food Channel became one of the most frequent stops for me on the dial. I also started checking out some of the food shows on other channels such as PBS where I discovered America’s Test Kitchen and its sister show, Cook’s Country, which are my two favorites. Sarah Moulton eventually migrated over to PBS as well and there’s the indomitable Lidia Bastianich, the Italian cooking grandma who scares the bejabbers out of me. I would never cross Lidia. However, she’s a great cook, good teacher, and excellent communicator.

I’ve learned things from them over the years, especially America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Country, and Sarah Moulton. Tips around the kitchen, recipes, ways to prepare food and even how I think about food. I subscribe to some of the magazines and bought some of the cook books and, in general, have become a much better cook as a result.

Things have changed along the way, some not for the better, IMO. The Japanese producer took Iron Chef off the air. An American version followed, with William Shatner as The Chairman but it was (thankfully) aborted after only a few episodes. It was terrible. Food Network launched its own Iron Chef America and it’s been pretty good. A bit tamer than the Japanese version but very watchable.

The problem is that it also ushered in a generation of cooking competitions that now dominate the network. There are battles over cupcakes, you can get Chopped, there are even competitions to decide who will be the next Iron Chef (whose roster has grown from three to a bloated six or seven). To get a cooking show on Food Network you now have to survive a competition called Food Network Star. Only one winner – Guy Fieri – can honestly be said to have gone on to become a real Food Network Star. The others get a show that seems to last a season or two and they’re gone.

The competition shows so dominate Food Network that the parent corporation had to create a new channel, the Cooking Channel, to house the shows that actually are about cooking. Some of the best cooks who were teachers – Mario Batali and Sarah Moulton – left (or perhaps were forced out). I’m watching less of it.

I know on the regular networks they’re even doing a talk/food show called The Chew. It sometimes has Mario Batali or Iron Chef Michael Symon on it, both of whom I enjoy, and I’ve tried watching it sometimes during my daily lunch break but, in general, I find it unwatchable. I know Rachel Ray has also gotten a syndicated talk show on which she also does some cooking but she’s not a great interviewer. If I want that kind of show (and I don’t often) I’ll watch Ellen.

I’ve watched a fair amount of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. It’s formula – Ramsey is asked to come in and help a struggling restaurant, he finds food, décor, and/or sanitary conditions deplorable, hollers and berates everyone in sight, makes things better, and leaves somewhat akin to a surly Scottish Lone Ranger. I mostly enjoy it even though I learn nothing and it’s successful enough to have spawned a rip-off imitation on Food Network and about a bajillion other Ramsey starring shows. You cannot watch all the shows Gordon Ramsey does and have any sort of real life. It would just take up too much of the day. He’ll probably have his own cooking channel shortly – all Gordon Ramsey, all the time. I suspect his ego would like that.

For me, it’s about the food, and can a show make me learn something new or does it make me want to run out and cook. My Mary and I saw one of Julia Child’s later cooking shows when she was in a kitchen with her friend, Jaques Pepin, and they were making hamburgers. They concocted what they considered to be the quintessential hamburger. It got us drooling so much that we ran out to find a place that served good hamburgers. What we got wasn’t on the scale of Julia and Jaques’ but we had to have a burger – any burger. That’s how well Julia communicated and why she was the Master Chef of television. Gawd, just remembering it is making me drool some more.

Excuse me, I’ve gotta go find something to eat.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

John Ostrander: Great Horny Toads!

Censorship can, sometimes, be a spur to the creative mind. It’s more often a pain in the ass but there are times when a creative mind finds ingenious ways of getting around the bans, whatever they may be.

For example, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, them crazy guys who created South Park (and, even more oddly, the Tony Award winning musical The Book of Mormon) originally wanted to call the South Park movie South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose. That got rejected by the MPAA for having the word “Hell” in the title. Parker and Stone re-named the film “Bigger, Longer, Uncut,” which is more salacious. Evidently, the MPAA were the only ones who didn’t get the penis reference. Creativity trumps censorship.

George Carlin in 1972 famously listed seven words you could never say on television. Not only can I say them here, but I think editor Mike Gold would insist. They are: “shit,” “piss,” “fuck,” “cunt,” “cocksucker,” “motherfucker,” and “tits.’’ These days I think you can get away with “shit,” “piss,” and “tits” on television sometimes) but the other ones are still right out. You definitely can’t say any of them in mainstream comics.

For example, Marvel’s Luke Cage is a streetwise badass motherfucker who swears like your granny. “Sweet Christmas!” is his most common swear word. When I wrote him in Heroes For Hire, I had a villain taunt him about it. Cage, as he beat the shit/poo (take your pick) out of the guy explained it was because his grandma didn’t approve of swearing and “she was tougher than you.”

On Battlestar Galactica, instead of saying “fuck,” the characters said “frak” but we all knew what they meant. The word has gone on to enter the vocabulary of the fans and some other sci/fi works. One of the things I enjoy about it is that the process of raping the earth and poisoning it to get at natural gas is called “frakking.’’ For me, it means they’re fucking us all to get at the natural gas and its profits.

George Carlin also famously noted that when we say “Fuck you” we’re actually wishing something nice on a person. Working from that, in some sci-fi stuff I tried replacing “fuck” with “nuke,” as in “Nuke you and the nuking horse you came in on.” Or calling someone a “mothernuker.’’ “Nuke” has the harsh “uk” sound as “fuck” and hoping that someone gets nuked is not wishing them a good time. However, the substitution seemed a little forced and drew too much attention to itself. It read like the author was trying to be clever, which I guess he was, so I dropped it. Sometimes you just can’t beat the fucking classics.

Worse than that is anything sexual. You can rip a guy’s arm off and beat another guy to death with it, all the while spurting gouts of blood but you show too much skin or a couple getting it on or (Christian Right Forbid!) any sort of same sex naughtiness going on and there will be a hue and cry far greater than any uproar over profanity. See the current Right Wing brouhaha over Alan Scott’s Green Lantern being gay or Northstar over at Marvel marrying his boyfriend.

For a long time, if a movie had a couple in bed together, at least one of them had to have one foot on the floor. On TV, I remember that on The Dick Van Dyke Show, whenever they went to the bedroom of Rob and Laura Petrie, they had separate beds. Who were they fooling? I was young at that time and even I, sheltered Roman Catholic boyo that I was, knew my folks slept in the same bed. I didn’t want to think whatever else they might be doing in that bed (still don’t – shudder!) but I knew sure as hell they didn’t have separate beds.

Still, there is a certain sexuality, a certain sensuality in suggestion rather than in statement. I remember when First Comics was doing Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! everyone talked about the sex and the nudity and all except … there wasn’t. It was implied. Sexy, yes – and sensual. It was a great, classic series whose rep is dirtier than the book ever was.

Over at DC, on Wasteland, we did all sorts of crap. We tossed a baby out of a window in a story called R.Ab (which stood for retroactive abortion) and we managed to honk off both pro-lifers and pro-choicers (and, if memory serves, our publisher) at the same time. We eviscerated a biology teacher for laughs and tried to get the reader into the mind of a serial killer among other things. Without bad language and without sex. We got accused of bad taste, which we reveled in, but rarely bad language or blatant sex.

I’m not saying that the envelope shouldn’t be pushed or that censorship is a good thing. However, if you try to establish boundaries and tell creative folks not to go there, odds are the creative folks figure out a way around it, if they can. That’s why they’re called creative. They’re never more creative when trying to do something naughty. Or juvenile. Or naughty juvenile.

Whoaaaa! Sounds dirty, that! Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

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