Author: Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases’ Girl Fight!

Last week, I vented my pique at Marvel’s tone-deaf marketing of the new Spider-Woman comic. Then, on Monday, my esteemed colleague, Mindy Newell, offered a different perspective. Who’s right? Normally, I would say I’m right because I’m the mommy. However, in this case, Mindy has also given birth, and even trumped my creds by being a grandmother. So I’m not playing that card. This also means I can’t just say “Because I said so.” Denied my two favorite debating tactics, I’m going to have to approach this from a different angle. Despite what one might think about feminism and other kinds of so-called “identity politics,” there isn’t a single governing board that determines what is “politically correct.” There are married feminists who take their husbands’ last name, stay home with the kids, and volunteer at the PTA. There are radical lesbian separatists who live in communes and never have to interact with men at all. There are feminists who wear make-up, dye their hair, use Botox and wear high heels. There even used to be Republican feminists. To be a feminist, you must support equal rights and opportunities for all, and respect the right of women to define themselves and their role in the world. See? You don’t even have to be a woman to be a feminist. Being a feminist doesn’t mean one doesn’t enjoy sex. Not even heterosexual sex. It does mean one opposes coercion, rape, and the unwilling objectification of one’s partner or partners. It means one can imagine a woman being the subject, rather than the object, of desire. In other words, feminism is not the same as Puritanism. So, what does this have to do with comic books, I hear my editor thinking? Plenty. For one thing, it means that a comic book cover, like the variant for Spider-Woman #1, is not a feminist image. It is not intended to make women feel empowered, nor to show a woman being heroic. However, that doesn’t mean a feminist can’t like the cover. Manara is a famous artist with millions of fans. Liking the cover doesn’t make them “bad” feminists. As a feminist, I am in favor of pleasure and joy. I like a lot of media that isn’t specifically feminist. I like Power Girl, for crying out loud. I like those inane Silver Age stories where Superman has to “teach a lesson” to Lois Lane for having the nerve to try to do her job and find out his secret identity. And, as a feminist, I’d like to propose a new standard for graphic storytelling, similar to the Bechdel test, dubbed the Willis test by the Jezebel blog. They quote pioneering rock critic Ellen Willis, who wrote this: “A crude but often revealing method of assessing male bias in lyrics is to take a song written by a man about a woman and reverse the sexes. By this test, a diatribe like [the Rolling Stones’] “Under My Thumb” is not nearly so sexist in its implications as, for example, Cat Stevens’ gentle, sympathetic “Wild World”; Jagger’s fantasy of sweet revenge could easily be female—in fact, it has a female counterpart, Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots” – but it’s hard to imagine a woman sadly warning her ex-lover that he’s too innocent for the big bad world out there.” Would Supergirl try to teach Jimmy Olsen a lesson if he tried to find out her secret identity? Of course she would. Would Superman wear a costume that distracted his enemies by focusing their attention on his sexual organs? Of course he would not. Would Spider-Man stick his ass in the air submissively, as a way to demonstrate his web-sticking abilities? I don’t think so. Is this a comic book I would buy for a young girl? Probably not, unless she was taking a class in gender studies and had the vocabulary to talk about it. None of this will stop me from enjoying Power Girl stories (unless Scott Lobdell starts writing them and turns her into Starfire), as long as I still find them fun. Comic books and fun. Now that’s a marketing campaign I’d like to see.

Martha Thomases: Sex and Comic Book Marketing

It is a truth universally acknowledged that women in possession of disposable income must be dissuaded from buying superhero comic books.

Okay, that’s not how literature works. It’s not even supposed to be how capitalism works. According to the economic theories I understand, under capitalism, the market determines what products are offered for sale. This is not a comment on the quality of the products, but rather what the public wants. So Coca-Cola and McDonalds make a lot of money, because the public wants cheap sugar, salt and fat.

However, the least common denominator is not the only way to be a successful capitalist. There is a lot of money to be made in niche markets. For example, there are enough people who don’t like Coke for a company like Jones Soda to be successful. There is probably a restaurant in your area that isn’t a burger joint like McDonalds, but does well enough in your market.

Niche markets are even more important in the entertainment business. Sometimes the public wants to laugh, and sometimes the public wants to cry and sometimes the public wants to be scared and sometimes the public wants to think big thoughts and sometimes the public just wants adrenaline.

Which brings us back to comic books.

I can’t recall a time when there were so many different kinds of graphic stories to read. There are comics and graphic novels in all sorts of genres: for children, for non-fiction readers, for mysteries and science fiction fans, even literary fiction. There are far more different kinds of people at comic book conventions and even at comic book stores than I can remember seeing at any other time.

It would seem like a great time for a comic book publisher with deep pockets to experiment with different kinds of books. In this specific case, I’m talking about Marvel (with Disney’s bank). They’ve been doing some cool stuff, like Hawkeye, which look different from the rest of the line.

Marvel says they want to publish comics that will attract women readers, comics with strong female characters that will inspire girls to regard themselves as heroines. Characters like Spider-Woman.

And then they do this.

Marvel hired Milo Manara, an artist best known for his erotic work, to do a variant cover for the launch of their new series. To no one’s surprise, he turned in a piece that looks not the least bit heroic. If anything, that pose reminds me of what my cat does when I scratch her hips.

There have been a lot of articles in the blogosphere about what is wrong with this cover, from the anatomy to the politics. And I find the politics appalling.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the marketing.

There is no way a woman or girl who is thinking about starting to read superhero comics is going to pick up a book with this cover. It looks like the title character is groveling. There is no threat or hint of action. Instead, the character is on her knees, wearing an outfit that looks so tight that it would give the wearer the mother of all wedgies. There are certainly women book buyers who enjoy a little bit of pain and submission in their recreational reading, but that’s not who Marvel says they’re trying to appeal to here.

I don’t fault Manara for the cover. He did what he was hired to do. I fault the person who assigned the cover to him, knowing full well what he would deliver.

When the new Spider-Woman book fails to reach women readers, Marvel will, undoubtedly, claim they tried their best, but women just don’t want to read superhero comics. We hear the same thing from the toy industry, claiming that girls only want to play with dolls and pretend to be princesses or mommies (or both).

The problem with this is that it isn’t true. If you offer girls a toy that lets them pretend to be scientists, as Lego did, stores can’t keep the kits in stock.

You might think, because capitalism, that a toy that sells out is most likely successful enough to stay in production. However, that’s not happening. It seems as if even money isn’t enough to smash gender stereotypes in corporate America.

There’s a nice little niche market there, for a strong female venture capitalist.

 

Martha Thomases: The DCU – Getting There Is Half The Fun

kandorTraditionally, the last two weeks of August are the time when everyone goes on vacation. The chi-chi restaurants, the ones that don’t rely on tourists, are closed, which is fine because most tourists seem to prefer chains like Red Lobster, which I don’t understand at all. The kids are home from camp and taking two weeks to go to the beach, or the lake, or the mountains (whichever is closest to grandparents), and that seems like a fine idea.

When I was a kid, that was just fine. No schedules, plenty of new places to explore, or just plop down with a book.

As I got older and more pretentious, I wanted to explore the world on my vacations. I wanted to see the great nations of Europe and more. I wanted to see sites I’d never seen, eat food I couldn’t pronounce, and, maybe, fall for with someone who spoke a language I didn’t understand.

I still want to do that. But I also want flop. Is there anyplace to go on vacation that lets me explore and relax at the same time?

Of course there is! Comic books!

As a DC girl, I tend to think of escapes in the DC Universe. And, for the purposes of this column, I’m assuming I do not have a Time Bubble, so I can’t vacation with dinosaurs or Legionnaires. Even so, I’ve found three places that seem, to me, to be ideal.

3. Atlantis! No, not the resort. Not even the sunken continent of myth. The undersea home of Aquaman, king of the seas. It would have all the grandeur of a royal court on dry land, such as castles to explore, and probably cathedrals (or whatever Atlanteans call their communal spiritual structures) and museums as well. I imagine the food is like nothing I’ve had before, maybe sushi, maybe seaweed, but much, much more salty, since it is grown and prepared in saltwater.

Best of all, I bet that tourists would be able to play with the fish. I’ve fed stingrays, and I’ve swum with dolphins, and both have been so much fun. Sure, it’s for rubes, but it’s fun. I would entirely enjoy being exploited by tourist wranglers in Atlantis, and I’d tip as well as I could afford for the privilege.

2. Themyscira! Again, not the place of myth, but the home of Wonder Woman. Coincidentally, it’s also known as Paradise Island, which is also another name for the Atlantis resort. And I imagine it as a paradise, at least for women. Like the Canyon Ranch, but with optional hunting and sword-fighting, it would be all organic food and rejuvenating spa treatments. I have done neither archery nor horseback riding since I went away to camp forty years ago, but I bet the Amazons would tolerate my ineptness as long as I wasn’t an asshole and I tipped well. I can’t think of a better place to go for a Bachelorette party or a class reunion.

1. Kandor! I’ve saved the best for last. I would like to tell you that I want to go to Kandor, the Kryptonian city that Brainiac shrank and put in a bottle, because it would be educational to learn about a culture that is, literally, out of this world in origin. I’m sure that learning how Kandorians interact, their customs and habits and beliefs, would be fascinating.

But that’s not why I want to go.

Kandor retains Krypton’s environment, which includes red sunlight and massive gravity. Unless I took extra precautions, I wouldn’t be able to get up off the ground.

Slide a mattress under me first, and let my lie there in a lump for my two weeks. Now that’s a vacation.

Martha Thomases: Comic Without Book

Robin WilliamsLast year, I noticed an ad for Apple. I mean, you can’t not notice them, since they air every few minutes. This one was special, though, quoting someone quoting Walt Whitman. I wondered if it was made by the same agency that made the Patti Smith Levi’s commercial. And I wondered why the unseen narrator sounded so familiar.

It was Robin Williams, from The Dead Poets Society.

As I’m sure you know, Robin Williams died Monday. God, I’m going to miss him

Now is the time when I would like to tell you what good friends we were, but that would be a lie. Instead, I have only loved him since the first times I saw him do his stand-up on television shows. I was lucky enough to see him perform, twice.

The first time, back when John and I were publishing Comedy Magazine (and why isn’t there a Wikipedia page, damn it!), was at a benefit for the First Amendment Improv Group. Our pal, Jane Brucker, was the emcee for the show and she had to vamp for 45 minutes because Williams’ plane was late. By the time he arrived, the audience was exhausted, but he put on a full and energetic show. To this day, I don’t know how I had the strength to get home, because I laughed so much my muscles were sore.

The second time was at a fund-raiser for Michael Dukakis. This was in the days before everybody put everything up on YouTube. It was before YouTube. Which is just as well because no politician could get elected after being endorsed by someone whose act was so filthy.

Williams was a brilliant stand-up, and a manic improviser. You can see a bunch of his genius here, but it’s not the same. He was so immediate, so of-the-moment, that seeing old material doesn’t capture the wallop of seeing it as it happened. It would be like watching old episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. One can admire the craft and the wit, but it’s so much less funny when it isn’t happening now.

Robin Williams was, for a time, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) things in comedy. It is to his everlasting credit that he used his celebrity to draw attention to and raise money for Comic Relief <http://comicrelief.org>, which helped the sick, the homeless, and others in need.

His acting work was less well-respected. Many critics didn’t like what they perceived to be a sentimental streak in some of his performances, especially in films like Patch Adams or Hook. I understand what they say, but disagree in some cases. Hook never fails to make me cry like a baby, although as much for Maggie Smith as for Williams.

My favorites of his movies have comics’ connections. I adored Robert Altman’s Popeye, based on everyone’s favorite spinach-eating sailor with a script by Jules Feiffer. Everyone in the cast chews up the scenery with glee, and there is a sweetness with the movie that one does not often associate with Altman.

I equally love Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King. Gilliam, aside from being an integral part of Monty Python, worked with Harvey Kurtzman on Help magazine <http://www.helpmag.com> Williams plays a man driven mad by the murder of his wife, describing himself as “The janitor of god.” Yes, his performance is sentimental. I don’t care.

His television show from last season, The Crazy Ones, wasn’t picked up. He has three movies scheduled to be released in the next year, including a new Night at the Museum.

Sweetness and sentiment are part of the human experience, just like anger and hate. We deny them at our peril. Robin Williams combined them in his work in a way that was cathartic and hilarious.

I only wish it had worked for him.

Editor’s note: Yesterday, Robin Williams’ widow revealed her husband was diagnosed as in the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease. He was not suffering from substance abuse issues, but he long had been trying to cope with the disease of depression,

 

Martha Thomases: What – Me Nerdy?

English is a living language, which means that the words evolve through usage. It’s the kind of thing that drives grammar nerds crazy, such as when a person uses the word “literally” to mean “figuratively,” e.g. “I literally could not be any hungrier,” when you’ve only missed one meal.

What drives this grammar nerd crazy is the vulgarization of the word, “nerd.”

I don’t mean that ner” is a vulgar word. Rather, I mean it no longer means what it used to be. In my day (by which I mean, all that is real and true forevermore), a nerd was someone who was socially awkward, maybe a little OCD, and with obsessive interests in matters seen as trivial by more well-adjusted members of society. There were comic book nerds and science fiction nerds, but also AV nerds and theater nerds and band nerds.

“Nerd” was the word the cool kids used to put down their social inferiors. Therefore, by definition, a “cool nerd” is an oxymoron.

Because of this, I remain amazed every day by the popularity of so-called “nerd culture,” such as the blockbuster movies based on science fiction and fantasy books and comics. I’m not used to a world where everyone knows who Tony Stark is.

And now, perhaps as a sign of the Apocalypse, we have people calling out nerds as bullies who exploit their position at the top of the social ladder.

I’m not going to refute the politics of this piece (which is done fairly well here, although, as a nerd myself, I have some disagreements). I’ve already been kicked off this site once for talking about politics too much.

The author, Charles Cooke, confuses many things, including what kind of people are actually nerds. Al Gore… really? Al Gore is a lot of things, but he is not socially awkward. Neither is Neil Degrasse Tyson. Both men can hold their own in an interview, without notes, without a teleprompter. Cooke also confuses knowledge for opinion – although, as Stephen Colbert has taught us, “reality has a liberal bias.”

In fact, nerds are not all progressives. They are no more likely to base their political opinions on facts alone (as opposed to emotion) than anybody else. I remember one of my first arguments at the Marvel office in the 1980s, when several people said they would vote for Reagan instead of Mondale. I would describe the candidates stands on the issues, and that didn’t matter. They wouldn’t vote for a “wimp.”

I also am amused to see comments on message boards about Marvel and DC (and, to a lesser extent, Dark Horse) “forcing” writers to take political positions in stories, such as introducing an Hispanic Spider-Man. Marvel and DC have enough trouble getting the books written, drawn and printed on time. They want to get the talent that is most reliable and most sought after by fans. Politics is way, way down on the list.

I like to see science and math and history and economics valued in our culture. I enjoy having the opportunities to research the things that interest me, which is easier when having interests is considered to be cool. I like seeing scientists and comic book fans as television heroes … although the depictions are not necessarily any more real than those of TV cops, lawyers or doctors.

We could have worse heroes than scientists. If it’s good enough for Bruce Banner and Barry Allen, it’s good enough for me.

 

Martha Thomases: Where’s My Batman?

Ever since I moved to New York in 1977, I wondered what it would be like if there was really a Batman.

Sure, Superman lived in a version of New York as well. So did the entire Marvel Universe. But Batman is the one who felt most like the way I lived, in my tenement apartment. Batman belonged in a city with fifth floor walk-ups.

I don’t mean that I looked up at rooftops for someone to fight crime. Even then, I didn’t normally feel physically threatened on the streets. And Batman was not going to stop the men who made disgusting comments to me as I went to work, did my chores, or met with friends. I might have been in my naïve 20s, but I knew that Batman wasn’t real.

My 20s were not only naïve, but pretentious. I hung out at CBGBs and The Mudd Club. I went to art openings at downtown galleries because I knew the artists. I stayed up all night and wore black, even though I had to be properly dressed at my very proper day-job at 8:30 AM. I knew the kinds of people who could help me stay up all night and get to work on time.

This was a different New York. There were local banks. There were local stores. There were local donut shops. Everything wasn’t part of a chain. Rents were, if not reasonable, at least affordable for someone working an entry-level job. There were bands forming and breaking up and reforming. There were alternative weekly newspapers, alternatives to the alternative weekly newspapers, poetry ‘zines and underground comix. There were community gardens and the beginning of the Green Markets.

In short, it was the kind of city where Batman would be noticed. Even the version of Batman that was then current, the urban legend thought to be a myth by most, known only to Commissioner Gordon and a few others.

I mean, this was a city where punk bands wrote songs about Bernhard Goetz and Gary Gilmore. Certainly, rumors of a giant bat (or a man dressed like a giant bat) would capture the creative imagination. Patti Smith was writing songs about Rimbaud and Verlaine; of course she would have comments on what flew through the streets at night.

As would the Dead Boys. I bet if I look closely, I can find myself in that video somewhere.

And then there is Bruce Wayne, reclusive billionaire. He’s like the opposite of Donald Trump. What would Spy Magazine have made of him? Would they send someone to dig into his affairs the way they did with Trump? Would he have a Spy nickname, like Trump did (“short-fingered vulgarian”)?

I like to imagine that New York-based fashion designers would include a lot more capes in their collections.

It’s more difficult to imagine Batman in present-day New York. While we have gang-related crime, it’s a much smaller part of our lawlessness than you’ll find in corporate boardrooms. The artists and musicians have been gentrified out of town by the international trust fund kids and their investment-minded parents. We have lots of problems, but they aren’t the kind can be fixed by someone bursting through a skylight.

We need a new kind of hero. Has anyone ever seen Elizabeth Warren and Batman in the same place?

 

Martha Thomases: Superheroes Attack New Markets

Female ThorThis is a great time for the business side of American comics. Sales are higher than they’ve been for decades, at least in terms of dollars.

(It’s true that in the 1940s many titles sold millions of copies apiece. Those were different times.)

According to the article cited in the link, only titles featuring Batman and Spider-Man consistently sell more than 100,000 an issue. It’s true that Spider-Man and Batman star in a lot of titles, and comics cost a lot more than they did in the 1940s. Still, superheroes are not the monolithic force in the market that they used to be, and single-issues print copies are no longer the biggest part of the market. Graphic novels account for almost half the sales. Digital is estimated to be at least ten percent.

(I know that these categories overlap. My point stands.)

In any case, I think this is good for the medium. I think more kinds of books, available at more kinds of stores, will attract more kinds of readers. More readers mean more money, and more money means more books. Yay!

By their announcements these past few weeks, Marvel demonstrated that it notices changes in the market and will at least pay lip service to them.

The more high profile story of the two is this one, which Joe Quesada announced on The Colbert Report. Captain America will no longer be Steve Rogers, but instead will be his pal, Sam Wilson, who until this point has been The Falcon. Also, up until this point, he’s been African-American, which I assume he will remain while he is Captain America.

This is not the first time a comic book character has changed his or her race. My first experience was when Lois Lane literally went from white to black. We’ve also had John Henry Irons as one of the possible Supermen, come back from the dead.

For that matter, we’ve had a black Captain America before. I love this book. I wish Marvel’s lawyers had been able to work out the deal for the sequel before we lost Bob Morales.

Does this bring in non-white readers? I have no idea. I don’t even know how they could find out, unless comic book stores now have NSA technology that lets them secretly photograph every sale. However, I think one of America’s great shames is the way we handle race relations, and therefore, this is a rich subject for fiction.

Speaking of difficult relationships, Marvel’s other big announcement is that Thor will soon be a woman. One of my favorite story lines of all time was from back in the 1980s, when Walter Simonson made Thor a frog. To me, this epitomizes what’s great about comics, because in any other medium, this would be ridiculous (and, if filmed, really expensive), but in Walter’s hands, it made perfect sense. Therefore, I hesitate to denounce this new development, although that is my first impulse.

I’m not really up on my mythology, but Thor is, after all, a god. The Norse gods, like the Greek gods, and probably like a whole bunch of other gods, are personifications of primal human emotions and experiences. The only reason Thor has gender is that the Norse decided that thunder and lightning were masculine.

Like the Greeks, the Norse often had male and female deities representing different aspects of the same thing. Ares and Athena, for example, were both aspects of War to the Greeks. Baldur and Freya represented beauty to the Norse in different ways.

In other words, there is no real reason for Thor to be female. And if he’s going to now be she, I would find the storyline more appealing if the character was represented as a woman with a build that is a reasonable counterpart to the masculine representation. The only artwork I’ve seen shows a woman with gigantic breasts (or, at least, a gigantic breastplate) that would be impossible with the muscle mass I assume she has.

Maybe gods get free implants when they transition. Maybe she’s using the space in her armor for snacks.

Marvel has said they want this new female Thor to appeal to women readers. I don’t know why they think women want thunder goddesses with implants. Marvel says women readers will like the strong female protagonist Thor now represents.

This woman reader would prefer a version of female strength that isn’t derivative of a male character. I’d prefer something new and different, something that reflects the kinds of modern experiences that women have. Marvel already does this well with Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel.

Maybe they don’t have enough snacks.

 

Martha Thomases: That San Diego Con

San Diego CosplayIt’s that time of year again. All the cool kids are getting ready to go to the San Diego Comic-Con. And by “cool kids,” I mean people who are younger, stronger and more patient than me.

Every year, I kvetch about Comic-Con. And every year, I kind of want to go. I mean, not go to the Comic-Con that will actually take place. I want to go to the Comic-Con of 1993, when I was an important part of a major publishing company and everyone kissed my ass and I could get a table at the restaurant of my choice at the time of my choosing.

I would also like a unicorn, but that’s another column.

Anyway, this year, what I mostly regret is the opportunity to meet my future husband, Chris Hardwick, who is podcasting his program from San Diego all week. Not only would I enjoy meeting him, but I’d like to see the look on his face when he realizes we are fated to be. Either delight or horror, it would still be a treat.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to a subject that has concerned this column all year: The changes women make to pop culture, and the way pop culture is adapting to women.

You may recall my previous columns on the subject (here, for example), that women at comic conventions have a problem with sexual harassment. By which I mean, men and boys harassing them. It’s a big enough story that even non-comics news sites cover it.

Many people want SDCC to prominently post its policy on sexual harassment on signage around the convention, so that offenders cannot claim they didn’t know they were doing something wrong. Others would like to make the policy more specific. Here’s what it currently says, according to the website:

“Attendees must respect common sense rules for public behavior, personal interaction, common courtesy, and respect for private property. Harassing or offensive behavior will not be tolerated. Comic-Con reserves the right to revoke, without refund, the membership and badge of any attendee not in compliance with this policy. Persons finding themselves in a situation where they feel their safety is at risk or who become aware of an attendee not in compliance with this policy should immediately locate a member of security, or a staff member, so that the matter can be handled in an expeditious manner.“

For more about the various arguments, here, in a nutshell is the debate.

Now, I love David Glanzer with all my heart and soul, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is completely devoted to making Comic-Con a fun and educational event for all who attend. I understand that he wants to make everyone who comes to the show comfortable, and this includes families with young children, who might be spooked if they see signs warning about sexual harassment. He might also think it puts ideas in the heads of kids who want to show how great they are at this rebel stuff.

Still, I respectfully disagree. I think it’s entirely appropriate to say that, because of incidents at other shows, SDCC wants to assure everyone that they are committed to a safe and friendly show. And I’d make a big deal about meeting with law enforcement before the show starts, so that if crimes are committed on-site, there is a system in place to get rid of the criminals who assault women and others. For all I know, they do this already. Still, I’d make sure everybody knew.

And, as I’ve said before, I’d have more women as special guests and expert panelists. It’s not easy to stop people in comics from seeing women (real and fictional) as simply sex objects. One step to fix that would be to feature them as talented professionals.

Which brings me to the next huge show on the horizon, New York Comic-Con. It’s still a long way off in convention time, but they’ve started to announce guests, which gives us a hint as to what the programming will be. So far, they have announced a dozen guests in the comics category, and two of them are women. That’s better than last year, when only ten percent of the guests were women, but not by much. I should note that there is also one literary guest announced, and that is Kim Harrison, who is female.

Not enough, but a step in the right direction.

So, if you’re going to San Diego, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. Wait, wrong city. Be sure to have a great time. Bring me back stories.

And points.

 

Martha Thomases: The Men of Orange

pennsatuckeyI ran out of energy over the holiday weekend. Instead of going on picnics or watching fireworks, making potato salad (which I loathe) or lying on the beach, I binge-watched Orange Is the New Black. I’m late to this party, and even with four days of inertia, not being able to leave my chair except to eat, sleep and throw toys for the cat, I only got halfway through the second (and current) season.

Why did I wait so long? The initial hype turned me off. I thought it was going to be played more broadly, and I didn’t want to see women in prison played broadly. My son told me I would like it and I still didn’t watch it.

But then I read this, an article that criticizes the show for not paying enough attention to men. That pissed me off enough so that I had to watch.

See, OITNB is based on a book written by a woman about her experiences in prison. The show, like the book, represents her point of view. It’s not a documentary about our prison system, which would be a much harsher series, and much more difficult to watch. It’s a story. A story with characters.

It’s the author’s perspective. If she didn’t perceive the men in her life at that time as fully-rounded characters, well, then that is her life and how she chose to portray it in her book. And, since she’s a producer on the program and has described the show as “96%” accurate, I’m assuming she signed off on the television versions as well.

Every work of art does not have to represent the universe. In fact, I would say that is almost impossible. Every work of commercial entertainment does not have to represent the universe. As a consumer, I would like to have the choice of a universe from which to choose. I would like to be able to get the perspectives of men and women, queers and straights, people of all colors and cultures and social classes.

When I want a creative fictional depiction of the male experience in prison, I can watch Oz: The Complete Seasons 1-6. You may notice that there are not many women featured, and yet I don’t recall complaints at the time. Because those complaints would have missed the point!

My pal and colleague Michael Davis started The Black Panel at the San Diego Comic Con as a place where people of color could talk about their own creativity, rather than simply gripe about the racism of corporate comics. Instead of kvetching that Spider-Man isn’t black, or that DC wouldn’t let African-American creators work on Superman, Davis urges people to make their own art, providing examples and role models on the dais. Watching OITNB excites me in the same way. It’s a show created by women, based on a book by a woman, with women in the majority of roles.

If you find yourself with time on your hands, a Netflix subscription and you haven’t yet done so, I highly recommend OITNB. The physical contrast to most commercial (and, let’s face it, indie) entertainment is startling. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many women on a program, with so many different body types and colors and ages. Some have bad skin. A few have really bad teeth. They have bad haircuts. They sag. Their clothes do not fit well.

The characters, all of them, are rich and complex and heartbreaking. Even those I don’t like, I want to see pull through. The actors really nail it (although I’m sure the scripts and the direction contribute, I think it is, ultimately, the actor here). After I watched a bunch of episodes, I went to see what else I could find about them. When I saw this, when the cast dressed up for an awards show, I could not believe how well everybody cleaned up. And how much I missed their fictional selves.

So, despite my initial resistance, I’m now a fan. Not enough of a fan to want this Orange Is the New Black Presents: The Cookbook, but a fan.

 

Martha Thomases: Independents Day

James MurrayI love comics.

Is that too obvious? Is it like saying, “I love breathing,” or “I love skin?”

But, really, I love them. I love the big, splashy comics from The Big Two, with their shiny covers and fancy computer coloring. I love black-and-white self-published pamphlets, loving hand-stapled by the creators as the pages come off the copier.

If it’s words and pictures working together to tell a story, I’m going to at least sample it.

Graphic storytelling, like rock’n’roll, is a uniquely American art form. Like rock’n’roll, it started out as throwaway culture, designed to be an impulse purchase for impulsive children. And like rock’n’roll, anybody can pick up a pencil and create comics.

When I was growing up, it never occurred to me to consider comic book creation as a career. It didn’t occur to me that humans created them, not anymore than it occurred to me that Oreos came from a baker.

Later, when I met people who wrote and drew comics for a living, I was in awe. These folks got to decide what Superman did! Unfortunately, they didn’t get paid a very large proportion of what Superman earned. I don’t mean as a comic book, because there is that throwaway economic model to which I referred above. I mean the value of keeping the property alive for decades.

That was then. This is now. Talented people can keep their own copyrights and trademarks. There are enough successful independent publishers like this and this and this, just for examples to create a competitive marketplace for writers and artists.

And yet, some people still self-publish. Maybe they do it because they can’t find a publisher. Maybe the story has no commercial potential. Maybe it does, but the only way to find out is to do it.

I met one of these people at the recent Reed Show in New York. He’s James Murray, and in addition to comics, he’s a novelist and a poet and he has a YouTube Channel. The comics I saw were about classic monsters and horror. Not my genre, but clearly one that absorbs his interest and channels his creativity.

I decided to ask him a few questions about why he does it. And I thought the Fourth of July was the right time.

When did you start reading comics? Did you always write?

I was fascinated by reading at a real young age. When I was really little I would sit with the newspaper and say out loud words and letters I recognized. My mom said when I was little and she’d take me to the store I wouldn’t ask for a lot of toys but I’d ask for books. I remember making this 32-page story called G. I. Joe vs the Moon Monster. This was before I was even in kindergarten, mind you. I drew a little bit but I was never that kid that was doodling in class all the time and stuff like that. I don’t really have that aptitude for drawing so other people drew my comics.

When I got older I didn’t write too much but in 9th grade I took a creative writing class and my senior year I took writing seminar. As a teenager I became a metal head, big Axel Rose and Ozzy Osbourne fan. I wasn’t a musician but got into writing poetry and was partly inspired by the music I liked. In college I started going to poetry readings at the local coffee shop. I really ran hard with poetry for a long time, and always sought out readings. At this point I’ve even read poems in South Korea and Australia.

As far as comics go when I was in college comics almost died. My freshmen year of college there were three comic stores in my college town, by the time I graduated there were none. A few years back Comics Experience with Andy Schmidt started offering online classes geared to writing comics. I took those and learned a lot about how to actually get stuff done. I’d been teaching in Korea for a while and had some money saved up and decided to go for it. In late 2011 I came back to America and took a year off. I self published my first comic, a short novella, and a collection of poetry. I also had some finite web-comics up and sold my books at conventions. In 2013 some stuff came up and I couldn’t do shows but I’m back at it now and hope to keep doing conventions and making books.

Why horror?

I liked monster movies when I was little. When I was starting to talk to people about making comics the advice I was given from people that made their own books was to do something different. I figured I didn’t want to plan some 60-issue epic. I thought if I could do a comic I’d want to do a one and done story, and I knew making a black and white book was less expensive than color. So I thought, black and white, one shot, and something different. Remembering how I liked monster movies I thought of Classic Horror Comics, the idea of mimicking seeing a movie during the Golden Age of Hollywood, complete with news reel footage before the film starts etc.

You write comics and poetry. Was picking up bottles at the side of the road too much of a high-profit business?

If that’s not bad enough, I teach for a living. Why do all my passions promise poverty? I’m a glutton for punishment I guess.

How do you find people with whom to work?

My first comic I found the artist on Digital Webbing. Sarah Benkin, I met at the New York Comic-con in 2011. It was at Creator Exchange, which is like Speed Dating for creators. We did a short webcomic called Shock Value and that turned out well so then we did my newest comic, Curse of the Mummy’s Stone. The cover for my Frankenstein Novella was done by someone I met through Concept Art.org. Pat Volz, who did the Phantom Flyer webcomic, is a friend I met teaching in Korea. I was at an open mic reading a piece about how awesome the Punisher is, and he made a point to introduce himself to me because he likes comics too.

What is your dream project?

I love crossovers, Superman/Aliens, Robocop/Terminator etc. I’d love to write some of those. My prose stories, which I call the Crosso-verse, are what I hope to be a life long project. My ultimate dream is that someday Disney buys Hasbro and that I get to write a massive Marvel meets Star Wars meets Transformers meets G. I. Joe in the world of Tron, with appearances by Gargoyles, Dungeons and Dragons, Visionaries and the Inhumanoids.

How can people buy your books?

My website is www.hardcoalstudios.com Through there print copies of my books can be ordered, My comics can be purchased there digitally as well. On my site I also have the two finite webcomics, Shock Value and the Phantom Flyer, and the sequel to my novella which is called Nemo: The Power of the Coming Race. My blog is linked there www.jemurr.wordpress.com on which I have the story Frankenstein: The Last Man. This summer I’ll be posting online my new prose story, The Last Vampire.

 

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