Author: John Ostrander

Twenty Minutes Into the Future, by John Ostrander

Twenty Minutes Into the Future, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • July 10, 2008

A little more than twenty years ago there was, briefly, a smart satiric SF TV series called Max Headroom. It starred Matt Frewer who now has a supporting role on another smart comedic TV series called Eureka, which in a few weeks will start its third season on the SciFi channel. On the earlier series, Frewer played both the crusading young news reporter, Edison Carter, and his manic, stuttering electronic alter-ego, Max Headroom. It also had a terrific cast that included Jeffrey Tambor, Amanda Pays, George Coe and – as an regularly recurring villain – Charles Rocket.

I’m surprised no one has thought of updating it for a movie or another TV series.

The series was set, as it stated at the start of every episode, “twenty minutes into the future.” This future has a cyberpunk feel and TV rules the land. It is, in fact, against the law to turn your television off. If you cannot afford a television, one will be provided for you. The major networks are global and ratings are instantaneous and constant, being tied to revenue. The programs we glimpse might have come from Paddy Chayefsky’s great movie, Network. In addition, Max Headroom really did anticipate a number of trends that are now commonplace.

It’s that “twenty minutes into the future” gag that keeps popping up in my mind. It’s both brilliant and really tough to do. You need to be perceptive of the world as it is and then be able to project forward, to see the consequences of what we’re doing today, and that seems almost impossible. If there’s one thing we’re real good at doing, it’s ignoring unpleasant facts until it’s no longer possible to do. By then, it’s usually too late.

When I was teaching, one of the assignments I gave my students was to take something of today and then project it “twenty minutes into the future.” In other words, describe that future. They had to be able to justify it; it has to have connections to the real world. Anybody can play.

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Life 101, by John Ostrander

Life 101, by John Ostrander

My Aunt Helen turned 101 years old last weekend. Let me repeat that – my Aunt Helen is 101 years old. She beat her own father’s record, who died a mere six months after turning 100. She still lives in her own apartment, with help especially from my sister, Marge. Helen gave up smoking only a few years ago but she still has her drink now and then. She gets to church when she feels the urge. Big Cubs fan, even though they haven’t won a World Series since she was born. I kid Helen that she intends to hang on until they win another one if it takes another hundred years.

She’s so old she dated John McCain. Ba-dump bump. I think she’d like that gag. Aunt Helen is still pretty sharp. Me, I’m not so sure about.

She lived in the house next to ours in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood when I was growing up, along with my paternal grandmother and grandfather. When Pop-Pop had bought the property, Rogers Park was actually a suburb on Chicago’s North Side. Me, my brother, and my younger sister ran over there with some frequency because there we were little princes or princess – which we sure weren’t at home. Lord knows we took advantage of it. Well, I know I did.

Saturday night we’d have dinner there in front of the TV. Helen always served up the same meal: a bit of steak, Campbell’s Pork and Beans, and for dessert, ice cream cake roll swimming in chocolate syrup.

Let me take a moment to extol on the glories of the ice cream cake roll. The principle was the same as a jelly roll cake only the cake would be a deep chocolate and would use vanilla ice-cream instead of jelly. It’s impossible to find on the East Coast. Even in Chicago, the quality has gone down. The last one I had, the cake was stale, thin, and had freezer burn, as did the very artificial vanilla ice cream that was in it. I’ve wandered off the topic again but… dang! It was ice cream cake roll!

I think I remember some of the shows I used to watch during those Saturday night dinners such as Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man (which would later become Secret Agent) and Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk playing Nick and Nora Charles in a TV version of The Thin Man. After dinner we’d watch The Jackie Gleason Show that included the Miami Beach version of The Honeymooners. If we were lucky, we escaped before The Lawrence Welk Show came on.

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Comic Book Market Farces, by John Ostrander

Comic Book Market Farces, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • June 26, 2008

How’s this for a concept of a superhero? A guy who is strong, can leap maybe a mile but doesn’t fly, and only a bursting cannon shell can puncture his skin. He is on the outs with the government, the local representatives of whom may be corrupt. He’s on the side of the “little guy” who otherwise may not have a chance against the Big Interests. He dangles neer-do-wells by one foot high in the air and threatens to drop them unless they co-operate – and he laughs while he’s doing it. The guy may be more than a little crazy.

Like the sound of this guy? Readers during the Depression did when they first started reading Superman. You ever go back and read those initial stories? In one, Superman decides that one slum area of the city needs urban renewal, which, of course, the city is disinclined to do. Superman then provokes the army who tries to drop bombs on him. He rushes in and out of abandoned tenements and the bombs level those buildings instead. The army fails to capture Superman and the tenements are leveled. The city now has to rebuild public housing, given the attention on the area.

That Superman today would be labeled a terrorist.

Or how about Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner over at Marvel when it was called Timely Comics. He was at war with the surface dwellers – us – and, in one story, deliberately flooded the Hudson Tunnel into New York. The tunnel is shown full of cars and there is no doubt in my mind everyone in them drowned.

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Comic Reality Bytes, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • June 19, 2008

Samuel Keith Larsen recently popped me a question on my message board that I found interesting:

“Remember back in the Death Of Captain Marvel, where Rick Jones asked the Avengers why they haven’t discovered a cure for cancer? To this day, given all the magic and super-science, there hasn’t been any good answer for why cancer hasn’t been cured in the Marvel Universe. If you were asked to write a story dealing with that topic, how would you answer the question?”

Well, I’d note that Captain Marvel was dead but seems to be feeling better these days. Same with Bucky. However, that’s beside the point – and the question being asked.

As I answered the question on my board, if I was approached to write a story such as Sam described, I’d probably not cure cancer but use the story to explore the problems with curing cancer and why finding a cure is so difficult. The question asks really about continuity – if Mr. Fantastic is so freakin’ smart, why can’t he cure cancer? Or AIDS? It begs the issue of consistency.

For me, there is a larger issue and it gets back to the basic purpose of storytelling – all storytelling, to a greater or lesser degree. As the rector at my church, the (sometimes) Reverend Phillip Wilson, has often put it, stories are the atoms of our society. We use them to tell, share, compare, illustrate, defend, and maintain our lives, our experiences, who we are as individuals, as communities, even as a nation.

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Alone Together In the Dark, by John Ostrander

Alone Together In the Dark, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • June 12, 2008

I remember the first time I saw the film Casablanca. It was at the 400 Theater in Chicago, just up Sheridan Road from Loyola University where I attended college. It was on the bill with Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam, an obvious but terrific double feature. I went stag but was lucky to get in at all; the small theater was packed.

I had missed or ignored Casablanca up until this point. I’m not sure why; I liked old serials a lot. The movie had certainly played on TV enough. I’d seen bits here and there or seen send-ups of it; callow youth that I was, I thought it wasn’t for me. Part of it was my own perverseness; my immediate reaction, on being told by everyone else that I must see this or I must hear that or I must read such and such is to say, “No, I don’t.” I get stupid stubborn about such things some times. Being told I would love the film I, of course, refused to see it. Finally, my curiosity overcame my perverseness and I sneaked off to view it without anyone else.

As I said, I went stag but I soon discovered I wasn’t alone. I was part of an audience, folks who mostly knew and loved the film. At the end of the singing of La Marseillaise, they cheered. When Captain Renault said, “Round up the usual suspects,” they cheered again. They laughed out loud at the funny lines (the movie is incredibly witty and they had actors who knew timing) and listened with rapt attention to Bogart’s speech at the end. Their delight and enthusiasm was catching on its own. And then there was the film itself.

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Crossing the Line, by John Ostrander

Crossing the Line, by John Ostrander

I’ve been in this comics business for umpty-bum years now. Its not that I’m ashamed of the number; I just keep forgetting it. Ah, the joys of aging! It’s more than a quarter century since I started as a full-time writer; I know that. I’ve been a comic fan even longer. I’ve watched the occasional villain become… well, if not a hero, then something like one. Magneto, over in X-Men Land, for example. He’s gone from being the arch-enemy to our merry mutants to metamorphosing into an ally, to sometimes becoming their leader, and then back. Batman periodically gets darker until it’s hard to tell him apart from his foes.

Occasionally, this happens in real life.

Today, June 5, 2008, Ian Paisley steps down as First Minister of Northern Ireland.

Brief background, in case you don’t know: Northern Ireland is not a part of the Republic Of Ireland. It’s a constituent county of the United Kingdom and comprises the six counties that chose to remain a part of the U.K. when the Government of Ireland Act in 1920 created Home Rule in Ireland, formerly directly ruled by England. The Republic of Ireland, the South, with its capital of Dublin is (nominally, at least) largely Roman Catholic. Northern Ireland is largely Protestant but with a large Roman Catholic minority. In general, the Protestants regard themselves as English (they’re considered “Unionists”) while the Roman Catholics consider themselves Irish although, in fact, a citizen of Northern Ireland born before 2004 could claim citizenship in either or both the U.K. and Ireland.

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Indiana Jones and the Secret to Adventure, by John Ostrander

Indiana Jones and the Secret to Adventure, by John Ostrander

Spoiler warning: Spoilers. Why did it have to be spoilers?! I hate spoilers. Hate ‘em! Unfortunately, I can’t talk about what I want to talk about regarding the latest Indiana Jones flick unless I spill some beams. So I’m warning you upfront. The spoilers won’t appear until after the break and I’ll give you a final warning before I go into them. If you want to just skip the column this week, I’ll understand… this week. Don’t make a habit of it. I know where I live.

Wait. That didn’t come off right.

Okay, I’ve gotten out the fedora and went off to see the new Indiana Jones flick, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As much as I’m a Star Wars fan (and I’d better be – I’ve been writing Star Wars for about eight years now and you can see what I’m doing in Star Wars: Legacy and, yes, that’s a plug), I’m a bigger goon for Dr. Jones. Even before Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, I was a fan because George Lucas talked in interviews about how his new movie originated in his and Steven Spielberg’s love for the old Saturday Matinee Serials. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I loved ‘em, too. Still do.

Saturday Matinee Serials are also known as “chapter plays” and originally were shown in movie theaters on Saturdays as a way of getting the kids to come back, week after week. They would last 12 to 15 chapters and each one would end with a cliffhanger for the hero or heroine with no way out. Of course, when the next chapter appeared, they showed you the segment that they hadn’t previously shown you which allowed said hero/heroine to escape just in the nick of time. The serials date back from the dawn of cinema to the early 50s when they fell prey to the confangled new invention that was to blight/enrich all out lives, television.

And it was there that I discovered the Saturday Serial. The old serials were re-packaged for Saturday Morning TV kid’s fare and, like the old matinees, were part of a package. It was here that I discovered these often cheesy pleasures. I remember Tim Tyler’s Luck – a 1937 Universal jungle adventure adapted from the comic strip of the same name. The strip petered out only in 1996. I also remember Don Winslow of the navy, also based on a comic strip of the time. In fact, it’s amazing how many of the comic strips and books of the time were adapted into serials – Dick Tracy, Superman, Batman, the Shadow (yeah, he had a comics strip), Spy Smasher, and an excellent version of Captain Marvel, among others.

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Patriot Games, by John Ostrander

Patriot Games, by John Ostrander

You may have seen this via e-mail. It’s getting passed around a lot.

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.
 
It is the VETERAN, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
 
It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
 
It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.
 
It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
 
It is the VETERAN, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.
 
It is the VETERAN who salutes the Flag.
 
It is the VETERAN who serves under the Flag.

At this point, a photo follows with Marines escorting a flag draped coffin to a grave and is followed by a prayer for the dead that I remember from my Roman Catholic days.

This is lump-in-the-throat, tear-in-the-eye agit-prop. Normally, I wouldn’t care – but they’re using veterans, whom I think should be honored, to try and make points for the Right, and that gets me riled.

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Disney Invades Iraq? by John Ostrander

Disney Invades Iraq? by John Ostrander

You may already know about this story – it surfaced in late April elsewhere. I found out about it thanks to This Is True, a weekly newsletter and website run by Randy Cassingham and one of my fave e-mails of the week each week.

Here’s the story, in case you missed it. An American entrepreneur has looked at the mess in Iraq and decided that what Baghdad needs is an entertainment park. Llewellyn Werner, chairman of C3, which The Times of London online says is “a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms” is putting 500 million dollars – a cool half billion – into the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience outside but near the American “Green Zone.” It will comprise fifty acres and, in addition to the former Baghdad Zoo, will include a skateboard park, rides, a concert theater, and a museum.

The Baghdad Zoo itself now has only 35 animals out of about 700 it had originally. The rest were lost to the war – starved to death, stolen, and killed so they could be eaten by Baghdad citizens who were afraid there was going to be no food.

Quoting the Times:

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Them Bones, by John Ostrander

Them Bones, by John Ostrander

Oh, Your toe bone connected to your – FOOT BONE.

Your foot bone connected to your – ANKLE BONE.

Your ankle bone connected to your – LEG BONE.

Now hear the word of the Lord!

Remember that song? Dry Bones – a great African-American spiritual.Some of us remember it from the climatic episodes of The Prisoner, that great TV series starring Patrick McGoohan, the ending of which still befuddles the hell out of me. That’s alright; I like a lot of things that befuddle me – women have befuddled me a lot over the years but, dang, I like ‘em a lot!

What I like about the song is the word “connected.” It suggests we look at things in context. I can understand how, in academia, it’s useful to parse things out for study. Sometimes studying a tree can tell you a lot about a forest. However, I do wonder if we haven’t gotten too specialized in our daily lives. Special Interest Groups (SIGs) seem to have more pull in government than ordinary citizens. Their power comes from their myopia. They are not there to think of the general well-being; they are there to work for the narrow interests of one group, whether or not that benefits the whole, and sometimes despite the fact that it does not benefit the whole.

The same is especially true on the Internet. There is a niche for every conceivable group and sub-group and some groups of which I would never conceive or would want to conceive (child pornography being an example). I worry, however, about a fracturing of our vision. I’m concerned about our ability to see beyond our own narrow scope of vision and interests anymore.

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