Author: Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases: The Horror! The Horror!

It is more than a little likely that, as you read this, I am getting a root canal.

Dentists terrify me. Not on purpose — they are not the stars of It — but, nonetheless, they fill me with dread.

I’m sure that most people who go into dentistry as a career are motivated by a desire to help others, and yet, when I go to the dentist, I can’t help thinking about this movie and this scene.

A lot (not all!) of horror fiction is about the fear and loathing of our bodies. As children, they frustrate us with their limitations. We can’t fly, and we are not tall enough to reach the cookies. As adults, they frustrate us because they no longer do the things they did when we were younger, like stay awake all night on purpose, or digest spicy food.

I’m not really a fan of horror fiction. My life as an informed citizen has enough horror non-fiction. However, I understand that fiction provides a way for humans to process our fears in a healthy way. And I enjoy Stephen King books, not because they are scary, but because he has a gift for creating characters he seems to really care about. If we didn’t care about them, we wouldn’t be frightened by the threats they face.

20100414-rock-bottom-remainders-stephen-king-band-600x411-4004220(A friend of mine was in a rock band with King, and he says the conversations on the tour bus focused on body functions a lot.)

The horror and thriller genres are, to me, most effective in prose, when I can imagine the threats, or in movies, where a good director (and script) provide surprising jumps. Comics can’t do that, at least not in the same way. Comics can give the reader some vivid imagery, and there is no limit to the amount of blood and gore and mucus the artist renders on the page, but, in the end, it’s just a flat picture. We, the readers, come at these images at our own pace. We can rip them up or throw them across the room if we like.

For me, the primary exception is Alan Moore. From his first Swamp Thing stories, with Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, he made stories that haunted me long after I finished reading. It wasn’t just the insects (although they gave me the icks), but the way he treated the characters’ perceptions of their bodies. The stories inspired not only fear, but disgust and mistrust.

More recently, Moore has explored these issues and this imagery in Providence. I confess that I’m not a big Lovecraft fan, so these books are not my jam. Still, Moore, with Jacen Burrows, gets plenty creepy and ominous, and perhaps you will enjoy it.

There are scary stories about ax murderers and the like, but it is those with threats from within that freak me out the most. As a culture, we especially fear women’s bodies. In modern film, from Rosemary’s Baby to this week’s debut, Mother!, it seems that the men who make most movies are terrified about women’s ability to have babies. What if women decide they don’t want to? What if women want to have babies, but with somebody else? What uncontrollable forces inhabit the bodies of women that allow the creation of other beings?

There aren’t many horror movies from the perspective of the women who might have children, especially when they don’t want them. The closest I can think is Alien and, this day, I can’t watch those movies because I read the comics adaptation first. A monster who plants a fetus in my body against my will that bursts from my chest? No, thank you.

The lesson I learn from horror fiction is that I am responsible for myself, especially my own body and what happens within it. Nothing will make me immortal, alas, but the choices I made about food and exercise and how I go through life are my own. This is why it is so important to me to support Mine!. Without access to health care, people cannot make the choices necessary to live the lives we want. We need to get PAP tests and STD tests and mammograms and birth control. We need pre-natal and post-natal care. Today is the last day you can pledge, and I hope you will.

Any other being that grows in and comes out of my body should only do so with my permission. The alternatives are too frightening.

Martha Thomases: The Next Big Thing

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News flash! Time passes!

When I was a child, I was mesmerized by the very concept of time. How was it discovered? Why are units of time, like minutes and hours and days, all measured in multiples of 6? What was there before time? Could time ever end? If so, what would replace it? Eventually, these thoughts made me throw up, and I would have to make myself think about other stuff.

But here’s the thing: Time happens. Whether you think about it or not.

I am reminded of this when I look at the list of contributors to Mine! A Comics Collection to Benefit Planned Parenthood. In addition to talents like Neil Gaiman and Jill Thompson, there are a bunch of people whom I know personally on the list but there are also a whole lot I don’t know.

For example, there’s Gabby Rivera. And Tee Franklin. And Yona Harvey. And Dave Kelly and Lara Antal.

All of these people do amazing work. All of them were new to me. This is because I am old and stuck in my ways, and even when I try to keep up, time passes.

It’s not just comics. Movie actors have a tendency to age as well. To me, Keanu Reeves is a young time-traveler, not a 53-year old man. Christina Ricci is Wednesday Addams, not a grown-up with breasts. All of the people I would cast in a movie about the Teen Titans are no longer teenagers.

Don’t even start me on popular music. Rock’n’roll is barely even a thing anymore. The angry young men (and women) of my punk rock days are now old cranks if they survived. Nobody wants to be the Next Dylan.

This is all fine. The entertainment (and art!) that I loved is still available to me. It’s easier to find than ever before, even when it was new. And new generations of artists are always being born, always working to create work that is meaningful to them, and to their peers.

There are some downsides to this, and I blame capitalism. There are financial incentives to those publishers (and producers, and manufacturers) who are first to find the Next Big Thing, or at least the Flavor of the Month. They can sign new talent for less than they pay more experienced workers, and they can offer something shiny and new to the marketplace. As part of the marketplace, I enjoy more choices.

As someone of a certain age, I don’t like being passed over for someone who will work for less money.

Being of that age, I’m also really worried about having access to affordable health care. Obviously, a huge chunk of the comics community agrees with me, because so many are contributing work to Mine! They know that, without Planned Parenthood, millions of people wouldn’t be able to get tested (and treated, if necessary) for STDs. Poor women and women without insurance (which might be all of us, if the GOP has its way) wouldn’t be able to get mammograms or other kinds of cancer screenings. They wouldn’t be able to get pre-natal and post-natal care. People would not be able to plan parenthood, one of the most important decisions a person can make.

The Mine! campaign runs for one more week. There are lots of cool perks you can get, and lots of good you can do by chipping in to make this book happen. I’m looking forward to reading stories by some of my favorites and discovering good work from more people I don’t yet know.

Consider a pledge today and you could find the same kind of fun. You could get a book and have a good time.

Martha Thomases: The Insufferable Inhumans?

Somehow, I seem to have inserted myself onto the Marvel “Friends and Family” list for preview screenings. A few weeks ago I got an advance look at The Defenders in a small screening room with about 25 people. On Monday, I went to an IMAX showing of The Inhumans with an audience of several hundred.

The environment in which I see a film influences the way I feel about it. I love going to screenings because they make me feel cool and sophisticated. The Defenders event was in the morning, with a group that included people I’d known for decades, in comfy chairs with excellent sight lines. The Inhumans was in an enormous theater, with an enormous screen, and hundreds of strangers (although there were some people I knew, including a new friend, an old friend and a really old friend.

Even before the movie started (and, to be fair, it’s not really a movie, just the first two episodes of an ABC television series), the mood was festive and celebratory. My date, ComicMix colleague Joe Corallo and I found our assigned seats and gleefully looked around to see whom we might recognize. Lots of people brought children with them, and they were thrillingly well-behaved. Before the movie started, we sang a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday” to Jack Kirby, in celebration of his hundredth. The print was crisp, and the creator credits received applause.

If only I could tell you I liked the show.

I knew nothing about the characters beforehand. I did a little browsing online, and Joe told me a few things (including how great the Paul Jenkins run was). I would imagine that most people who will watch on the ABC television network are similarly ignorant, and the show would allow for that.

It is not good. And it’s not good in a way that makes it seem, to me, to be the anti-X-Men. People with mutant powers are exalted here and given high-status government responsibilities. Those with no powers are sent to work in the mines.

The Inhumans live on our moon, in a city at the border between the light side and the dark side. We first see the king and queen, Black Bolt and Medusa, in bed, where she is using her superpowers (magically manipulating her long hair) to excite him as much as network television allows. These two people are attractive and playful, so I was ready to like them. Also, the actress, who plays Medusa, Serinda Swan, looks like a grown-up version of Ann-Margaret in Pocketful of Miracles, one of my favorite movies.

We see them getting on with their royal responsibilities, as they walk up and down and through the massive castle. First up is a ceremony in which two siblings find out if they have super-powers. It is there that we meet Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus, who we know must be a bad guy because it is the same actor, Iwan Rheon who played Ramsay Bolton on Game of Thrones. Maximus seems to have no powers but is allowed to stay in the royal quarters because his brother is such a softie.

There is lots of back-and-forth travel to Earth, sometimes through a sentient wall and sometimes with a giant bulldog which I think has some kind of fan following (and, hence, anticipation) but which is just a big CGI dog in these first two episodes. There is a royal betrayal, a rebel uprising, and a great escape. Each character gets a chance to use his or her powers, sometimes to great effect, sometimes just because, I assume, Jim Shooter said every character must use powers within the three pages back when he was editor-in-chief at Marvel. Some powers, like being able to come back to life after being killed, seem like a narrative cop-out, a deus ex machina of the gene pool.

A lot more questions were raised for me than were answered. Where does the royal family get all the leather for their outfits? What are they digging for in those mines? Are terrific eyebrows a way to tell which women have super-powers? Where does the food come from? I would have preferred to see more of the city as a whole, and less of the king and queen walking up and down stairs. Also, why are we supposed to think the king and queen are good and Maximus is bad? Wouldn’t it be more interesting from his point of view?

I think that Inhumans wants to be the new Game of Thrones, but without the historical parallels, the multiculturalism, the armies, the enormous cast or the budget. Instead, it seems much more like high school writ large, with the cool kids getting to have a working source of light, and the rabble doomed to the underworld.

Will it get better? Will it be even worse when it’s on a television screen, not in a theater? Will there be dragons or just giant dogs?

•     •     •     •     •

mine-logo-150x84-7482452Just a reminder: It’s not too late to get in on our Kickstarter campaign for Mine! A Comics Collection to Benefit Planned Parenthood. This book will be full of cool stuff… including a story by Neil Gaiman and Mark Wheatley! You’ll be helping people around the country receive quality health care. We’re on track to hit our initial goal, and if we raise more than that, there will be lots more other goodies. So check it out, and pledge whatever you can afford.

We have to take care of each other.

Martha Thomases: “If You Have A Message…”

Martha Thomases: “If You Have A Message…”

The events of the last several weeks, while horrible, raise several issues that affect us not only as citizens, but as creative people and fans of the popular arts.

How do we respond to racism and other forms of bigotry in our government. Do we cooperate and try to change the minds of the people in power? Do we quit and make a statement? Do we resist? Do we perform non-violent acts of civil disobedience and fill the jails?

In my life, I’ve advocated (and disagreed with) all of these things. Different times in my life, different circumstances, different perspectives. Therefore, I hesitate to call out people who make different choices than I do, as long as we share the goals of a fair and just, egalitarian, non-hateful non-violent society.

When the artists who were chosen for the Kennedy Center honors refused to attend a White House celebration hosted by a president they considered immoral, I was pleased. I was even more pleased to see the result of their resistance.

And I was also delighted by the clever way in which the Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned, with a hidden message for people who love puzzles.

Should people in the arts resist? Should we try to change people’s minds with art? Should we use art to share our points of view in the hopes of understanding each other?

Absolutely.

My mom’s favorite author as a child was E. Nesbit, and she turned me on to those books as soon as my reading level allowed. I loved the fantasy, but I also loved the insight into the lives of children like myself, but also not like myself. Nesbit was a Fabian Socialist, but none of her characters or their struggles pit the proletariat against the capitalists.

Later on, a librarian gave me A Wrinkle in Time, with a heroine as committed to social justice and compassion for all people as I wanted to be.

Neither of those authors was marketed as political propagandists. Both heavily influenced my political development.

(Also, decades later, reading a dedication to Nesbit in the front of The Books of Magic started my friendship with Neil Gaiman.)

We watched a fair amount of television in my house, all gathering around our only set on Sunday nights to watch Ed Sullivan. Even before the Beatles, I loved the show because of the stand-up comics. Often New York Jews, they sounded like my relatives, only smarter. And then there were guys like Dick Gregory, who didn’t start out political (at least to my child’s ears at the time) and then became radicalized and inspired me for the rest of my life. I will miss him and his Twitter feed.

In comics, I was knocked out by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’s brilliant Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, which, unfortunately, are still much too relevant.

Not everyone reading this will share my passion for these stories and story-tellers. Some of them will quote Moss Hart and say, “If you have a message, call Western Union.” That’s an easy way to dismiss work you don’t like, or that makes you uncomfortable.

ComicMix is sending a message this fall, with Mine! A Comics Collection to Benefit Planned Parenthood. I’m really excited about this project. Not only do I have a story in it, illustrated by the brilliant Bob Camp, but the book shows how committed our community is to making healthcare available to all.

Looking around the Internet, I notice some people complaining about our book and Planned Parenthood, with the usual lies and distortions about the services it provides. I don’t know where they get their information, but I know this much is true: Planned Parenthood is often the only place where people of all ages and genders can get cancer screenings, STD tests and treatments. Especially in rural communities, there might be no place else to get a PAP test or a mammogram. It might be the only place to get pre-natal care.

If you haven’t pledged already, please consider donating whatever you can afford. We have some really cool stuff for perks, and the book looks to be awesome. I’m sure a first edition is a terrific investment.

Martha Thomases: Defending…?

Last Friday, my pal Larry Hama invited me to a “friends and family” screening of the first two episodes of Marvel’s The Defenders. I mean the new series debuting on Netflix today, not the classic television show, The Defenders, the source of many many jokes made during the screening.

Also in attendance: Tony Isabella, Michael Gaydos and his adorable son, Arvell Jones, and the families of Archie Goodwin and George Tuska. Plus a bunch of current Marvel folks who had probably already seen the whole series, but who were gracious hosts.

Before the screening began, I was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about seeing so many of my old friends and meeting people whose work I admired. Hence, I was psyched to enjoy two hours in a comfy chair in a screening room.

Mostly, I had a great time. I have a huge crush on Charlie Cox, the beautiful man who plays Matt Murdock. And I love Rosario Dawson, Mike Colter, and Kristin Ritter. The production design for the series suggests the color schemes associated with each of the four main characters so that Daredevil’s scenes are dark and red, Jessica Jones’ scenes are blue, and Luke Cage’s seem to have been shot in the 1970s.

If only there were no Iron Fist.

I don’t blame Finn Jones. He’s working as hard as he can. Unfortunately, the way Danny Rand has been written for these series, he’s a narcissist. A benevolent narcissist, but still a man who only sees the world as it relates to him. Daredevil is trying to keep crime out of his neighborhood. Luke Cage is the Hero of Harlem. Even Jessica Jones goes out of her way to help a stranger.

Danny Rand only thinks about Danny Rand. Even in his guilt, he can’t see past himself.

I guess this makes a certain amount of sense, given that he was raised by Buddhist monks and taught to look within himself for strength. Buddhists can be rather solipsistic. They aren’t the only ones, certainly, and that’s not all there is to Buddhism, but that’s what I infer from the Netflix series. In any case, his self-absorption has the effect of making the character and his struggles seem less important.

(For another perspective on Buddhism and action heroes, you might want to check out this series, co-written by my high school friend, Tinker Lindsay.)

A few supporting characters from each series are here, so our heroes have someone to provide exposition. I like to see Colleen Wing and Misty Knight and Foggy Nelson and Trish Walker. Sigourney Weaver and Waitlist Ching Ho make excellent villains. And there are many many, many other characters, enough so that it feels like it’s actually shot in New York City, where many millions of people live.

I can’t give a real critical overview of a series from just the first two episodes. It felt like they were taking their time getting to the real story because when the screening ended, the four main characters had not yet all met each other. That seems to me to be a bit too slow.

Still, it’s the tail end of August. What else do you have to do this weekend? I certainly have nothing better.

•     •     •     •     •

mine-logo-150x84-6915485An important reminder: If you haven’t already, get thee to this Kickstarter page and pledge some money for Mine! the anthology book ComicMix is producing to benefit Planned Parenthood. You might not know it from the Fake News Media, but Planned Parenthood provides necessary health care to millions of people of all ages and genders. In some communities, it is the only place where women can receive pre-natal and post-natal care. In some communities, it is the only place where poor women can get vital cancer screenings. In some communities, it is the only health clinic available, for women and men.

You might also want to pledge so you can get a cool book, with stories by Neil Gaiman, Trina Robbins, Rachel Pollack, Jill Thompson, Becky Cloonan, Stuart Moore, Mark Said, Amber Benson, Louise Simonson, Jody Houser… and me me me!

 

Martha Thomases: Obesity and Honesty

Roxane Gay’s new book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body is a knock-out of a book. It kept me glued to my couch for a long weekend. I finished reading it about ten days ago, and I cannot stop thinking about it.

Does it have anything to do with comics? Well, Gay wrote a mini-series for Marvel. Beyond that, if you want to know more, you’ll have to keep reading.

In addition to being an accomplished author and journalist, Roxane Gay is, in her own words, a morbidly obese woman of color. Hunger is about what happened to her, how she got this way, and what it’s like to live the way she lives. It’s incredibly honest, so much so that I couldn’t look away, even as I squirmed in recognition.

I am not morbidly obese. Sure, I could drop twenty or thirty pounds to look more like the mannequins in the department stores, but I can pass. I am not a woman of color. As a Jew, my people have a history of persecution, but I can pass. Unlike Gay, I was not gang-raped when I was twelve years old. Because I have these privileges, I could sneer at her with my societally-approved advantages, but I can’t. I feel my own version of what she feels, and I went through my own version of what she went through.

Gay started to overeat because she wanted to make herself unattractive to men so she wouldn’t get attacked again. She knew that a woman who is overweight is considered to be ugly – and an ugly woman is invisible. By building a wall around herself, she would be safe.

Her descriptions of her experiences are harrowing. Strangers in the supermarket take away food from her shopping cart. People complain to airlines about having to sit next to her, even if she pays for two seats. Instead of taking her ideas seriously, critics comment on her looks. Everything about her life, good or bad, is dismissed by those who only see her size.

And then there are the people who think they are helping her. The people who tell her that maybe she doesn’t really want dessert. The people who suggest exercise. I can assure you that every woman in Western society who is larger than a Size 0 knows about diet and exercise.

Still, reading about her pain, the Jewish mother in me did want to lean in and offer Gay some advice. She talks about regularly starting (and giving up on) a diet-and-exercise plan, and my first suggestion is to uncouple those two things. Various eating systems have made me feel variously better and worse, but if I didn’t exercise, I would go mad. I don’t do work because I expect it to make me a fashion model or an Olympic athlete but because it keeps me sane. Working up a sweat on a regular basis burns up a lot of my hostility. My resting pulse is 48. I can’t claim I’m never angry or never hating, but it doesn’t burn me up inside.

Except I know that she is a different person than I am, and what works for me as a coping system might not work for her. I’ll try to shut up about that now.

Women obsess about our appearances because society consistently tells us that it is our most important duty. My mother used to beg me to lose weight, starting when I was twelve (5’ 3” and 113 pounds), telling me that “boys don’t like fat girls.” Even now, at 64 years of age, when I know that my life is about more than boys liking me, those thoughts won’t go away.

My mom (and Roxane’s) were only trying to teach their daughters how to get ahead. To succeed, we were told, a woman must be thin and fit and beautiful. That was difficult enough. Today, when society pays at least lip service to the idea of diversity, we are supposed to be not only thin and fit and beautiful but also, if we are not, to pretend that it doesn’t matter (even though it does).

It gets even more difficult at menopause. Not only can we no longer bear children, the only true purpose for the female life, and the reason we must be attractive to men, but biology conspires to make us more fat.

We can’t win.

I would like to be like Faith, the Valiant superhero who is large. She wears a skin-tight white costume that does nothing to conceal her size. She is strong and she can fly and she has an interesting life and, in her current incarnation, spends no time at all thinking about her looks or what she eats or how many calories she burns off.

Sure, she also catches bad guys and saves the world, but that’s not why she’s my hero.

Martha Thomases: Of Milkshakes and Men

This column is not for the lactose-intolerant. Or for the anything-intolerant.

Last week Heather Antos, an editor at Marvel, went out with a bunch of her colleagues for milkshakes at a nearby Ben & Jerry’s and posted a selfie on Twitter. She said, “It’s the Marvel milkshake crew! #FabulousFlo.” The hashtag refers to Flo Steinberg, who had just died.

So, you know, a Friday after a long week, Heather and a group of her pals went out to remember a woman who was their friend and mentor. They didn’t go to a bar. They went for ice cream. They posted a photo on Twitter because that’s what the kids do these days. I don’t know what could be more wholesome.

Naturally, there was an upset. To some, this photo represented everything that was wrong with Marvel today. Women and people of color in editorial offices apparently is a menacing concept to them, and they menaced back. Ms. Antos received threats of rape and other kinds of physical violence. Others chimed in to say these women weren’t attractive enough to rape.

I feel like this shouldn’t be necessary, but I’ll say it anyway: The photograph does not contain any comic book images. It supports no candidate nor ideology. It is a group of women affectionately remembering their friend.

(In the 1990s, there were a group of us at DC who used to go to women’s night at the Russian Baths in the East Village to sauna and steam. I’m very glad that the Internet wasn’t a thing yet, or we would have probably made it nuke itself.)

The comic book community rallied in support, which makes me so happy. We are, in general, thoughtful folk, and we are frequently very funny about it. The hashtag#MakeMineMilkshake was trending all weekend.

I’m still entirely gobsmacked that this happened. I know we are a polarized country today, and a lot of us feel scared and threatened by people with whom we disagree. Sometimes it doesn’t feel good when things change, especially when these are things we love. We want someone to blame so we don’t have to take responsibility ourselves. I get this. Really. I’m still pissed that the Carnegie Deli is gone.

My inner two-year old wants to scream and yell and break things when the world doesn’t do what I want. Over the decades, I’ve learned that when I scream and yell and break things, nothing gets better and sometimes change so that I like it even less. It’s much more effective to use my words (and, when appropriate, my money) to try to change minds to agree with me, or at least take my feelings into consideration. That’s not what happened to Heather Antos. Instead, a bunch of two-year olds screamed and yelled and threatened to break things. We can disagree with each other without all this other dribble-dribble.

Writer Mike Baron

Mike Baron and Kyle Chapman announced they were making an alt-right comic and somehow, I have managed to control myself enough so that I haven’t publicly appraised their physical appearance or whether I think they should be stabbable.

I’ve been part of some horrified private conversations among people who disagree with Baron and Chapman. These are just that – private. No one taking part in these conversations said anything about committing physical violence against any of the creative talent. We mostly just said that the book didn’t sound like anything we would want to read.

Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Chapman and Baron will create the next Maus and we’ll all be knocked out by their insight and artistry. I don’t think they will, but that’s my bias and I would love to be proven wrong.

And if they want to post a picture to Twitter of them having a milkshake or even (horrors!) a beer, I’m cool with that. I bet Heather Antos is, too.

Martha Thomases: Winners

The Eisner Awards were handed out last Friday, and I have to say, I’m feeling just a little bit smug.

No, I didn’t win anything.  There is no Eisner Award for the Best Procrastinating by a Writer.  However, quite a few of the prizes went to people and projects that I championed as an Eisner judge this year, selecting the nominees.

I’m not going to tell you which ones I’m talking about because to do so implies that I met with resistance.  (You’ll have to get me drunk the next time we’re together.)  As I said before, talking about the selection process the committee used, “I can say that none of us got all of our first choices, but all of us got some of them.” In other words, we had different tastes and different criteria, and that is as it should be.  We talked, calmly and respectfully, about why we liked the things that we liked.  We worked it out.  You should send us all to Congress.

But a lot of my tastes and criteria meshed with those of the people who voted for the final awards.  And that makes me feel like I have my finger on the pulse of Pop Culture Fandom.

Yay, me!

So many different kinds of books won awards.  Some of this is a result of the categories because a superhero story isn’t going to win a best nonfiction award, nor will DC or Marvel win an award for Best U. S. Edition of International Material.  The inclusion of several different categories for younger readers means that there will be prize-winning books for children.

Although I might not know you, Constant Reader, I feel confident in saying that there is at least one book on this list that you’ll enjoy.

This expansion in the audience for graphic story-telling is a wonderful thing, decades in the making.  It should be an opportunity for all sorts of publishers.  You would think that DC and Marvel are in the best position to take advantage of this since they own characters known to the entire world.  They should be, but, according to this, at least one of them does not.  The link describes a panel at SDCC with DC’s Jim Lee and Dan DiDio, talking about how they plan to navigate the future of comics.

They say a few things with which I agree.  There should be excellent graphic novels about the characters that customers might know from the movie.  These books should contain stories that are accessible to new readers, people unfamiliar with decades of continuity.  I’ve been arguing such a position for decades, so I’m glad to see that there is at least lip service in that direction.

However, when DC actually publishes a book like that, Jill Thompson’s Eisner-winning Wonder Woman: The True Amazon, there is very little promotion when it first comes out, and it isn’t included in the ads that tied into the movie release.

Lee and DiDio also think that resurrecting the Watchmen universe and integrating it into the DCU will draw in newcomers.  Leaving aside the morality of this (given series co-creator Alan Moore’s resistance), and only talking about it in marketing terms, I still think this is a terrible idea.  The movie is nearly a decade old and does not seem to have been successful enough to earn out.  The characters require a lot of explaining, which is only a disadvantage if you’re trying to sell them to people who don’t read a lot of comics.

If I had been a new comics reader today, I’d have problems wading into the Big Two waters.  It would be much more appealing to me to check out Valiant or Lion Forge if I wanted a connected universe because I wouldn’t have so much to catch up.

I still think the way to draw in audiences who want to sample comics after seeing the movies and television shows is to create multiple imprints.  There can be a line for geeks like me, who’ve been reading comics since the Fifties, and a line for younger readers and a line of self-contained short stories.  There can be all sorts of other lines that I haven’t yet imagined.  These can be tested through digital sales, to keep development costs down, and then published in paper if there is demand.

And, yes please, a line of Super-Pets.

•     •     •     •     •

Flo Steinberg died this week.  She was part of the original Marvel Bullpen, Stan Lee’s assistant back in the days when that was the best job a woman can get in comics.

I met her soon after I moved to New York in the late 1970s, and since I wasn’t a big Marvel fan, I didn’t know enough about her to be intimidated.  To me, she was the kind of kooky New York character I’d moved to New York to meet.  She had a funky cadence to the way she spoke (at least, to this Ohio girl), and she was outgoing and enthusiastic in a manner discouraged by the prep school I attended.  Flo was one of the best people you could invite to a party.

My two favorite Flo stories don’t have much to do with comics.

1)  When I worked in the events department of a New York department store, I had to hire extra people to be entertainers during the holiday season.  One job was to dress up like a Teddy bear.  The costume was really hot and smelled after a while, but the job paid $20 an hour, a fortune back then.  I was able to hire Flo for this gig a few times, and from her, I learned how many children like to punch costumed characters in the chest.  Also, we called her “Flo Bear,” the kind of joke Ivory Tower elitist East Coasters love.

2)  A few years later, I had another job, and I was telling her about a place I would go to get lunch.  They had a salad bar, and every day, I would stare at the barbecued spare-ribs, tempted by their dripping sauce, but too worried about the fat and calories.  Really, I would dream about these ribs.  Finally, one day, I ate one.  Later, talking to Flo, I confessed my sin.  It went like this:

Me:  So I finally ate one of the spare-ribs.  It wasn’t very good.  Definitely not worth it.

Flo:  Well, at least you tried it.

Because that is who she was.  She didn’t talk about life in terms of denial and defensiveness.  She talked about life as something worth trying.

Martha Thomases: Yup. Still Reading!

I’m celebrating San Diego Comic-Con this week by reading some new comics. As you may remember, Constant Reader, this is something I try to do all the time.

Last week, among the new titles I picked up was Calexit, which caused varying political outrage because people thought it was a commentary on Trump (maybe it is!) but I liked because it reminded me of two of my favorite movies.

I also bought Skin & Earth, which is apparently based on a music video and I didn’t even know that was still a thing, unless you are Beyonce and you rule the universe.

Anyway, I liked these titles, but they are both the beginnings of multi-part stories and I don’t feel like I have enough insight yet to say anything pithy about them. If, from these columns, you think we have similar tastes, you might want to check them out.

I’ve also been reading some old comics in a different format. I missed a few titles at my local comic book store that I wanted to read, so I downloaded them onto my iPad. At the same time, I read two prose books on paper, something I have done rarely since falling in love with my Kindle, nearly a decade ago.

Reading is weird.

One of the things I like about reading comics is the act of turning the page. A good creative team knows how to play with this physical reality by pacing the story so that there is a cliff-hanger every time. This doesn’t have to be life-or-death on every page. Sometimes one character asks a question and the reader doesn’t discover the answer until the page is turned. Sometimes the story demands a two-page spread, so there is one less page to turn.

Using my finger to swipe the page is less suspenseful. Of the comics I read, there were no two-page spreads. There were also no ads until after the story finished, so I was never taken out of my fictional world.

And the colors! The colors glowed!

If I had wanted to, I could have manipulated the size of the panels, changing the way I perceived the page. I don’t want to do this. Now that I have the giant-size iPad, I don’t have to do this to be able to read the story.

The backlit screen on my Kindle Paperwhite is one of my favorite features. It means I can read in bed without a reading lamp, so I don’t have to turn anything off to go to sleep. My absolute favorite thing about my Kindle, however, is that it’s a compact, lightweight way to take dozens of books with me everywhere I go. It even fits in my purse!

Hardcover books don’t do those things. Hardcover books can be heavy, and I can’t adjust the size of the type when my eyes get tired and I want bigger print. Hardcover books require me to move my arms, a lot.

With all of this, I had forgotten the very real, physical pleasures to be had sitting in a comfy chair with a heavy book in my lap. I had forgotten how grounded this could feel. It made what I was reading feel more important, perhaps because they were non-fiction.

There are people who think one format is morally superior to another, and I am not one of them. If you like paper, read paper! If you like electronic books, read electronic books!

It was delightful to switch it up for a bit. More than ever, I know that there is no way to read or buy books that I don’t like.

Martha Thomases: Getting Your Nerd On?

The San Diego Comic-Con is next week, and I’m going through my annual trajectory of feelings.

On the one hand, I like comics. I like a lot of the people who work in comics. Twenty years ago, I had a great time when I went because San Diego is a lovely city and it’s pleasant to walk out of the convention center and see palm trees.

On the other hand, I don’t like huge crowds, and SDCC has only attracted more of them. I don’t mean to begrudge anyone their good time, but I don’t necessarily want to be jammed in the middle of it. Especially when their good time is more and more about pop culture in general, and less about comics specifically.

Yes, you can still go and wallow in the sweet, sweet mud of comics love. My experience, the last time I tried, however, was that I still had to struggle to get a seat, because people who wanted to see a television star or a movie preview four panels from now had taken all the good spots. And this was not Hall H.

This year, I’m noticing a change in the tone of the pre-Con hype. Perhaps this change is all in my head, influenced by my contradictory feelings. There was a time when SDCC was “Nerd Prom,” a place where those of us who were never accepted by the cool kids could have our own space, our own definition of “cool” that included us.

And then, the really cool kids noticed us. Hollywood came to court us, to flatter us, to assure us that they, too, loved comics and cartoons and science fiction and fantasy. Movie stars competed to prove they could differentiate Stan Lee from Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby from Neal Adams.

I wanted to believe. If nothing else, it would give me something to talk about with my future husband, Robert Downey, Jr. In any case, even if they were only reciting lines that had been fed to them by publicists, it showed respect to the stories that we loved.

It was a nice gesture.

Lately, I’m not sensing the same respect. Just as in the episode of Entourage referenced above, I sense less a sense of affection for comics and fandom than a sneering sense of superiority. Yes, some of us like to dress up in costumes. Some of us like to talk for hours about obscure facets of our favorite genres. Some of us look forward to a chance to meet the talent whose work has brought us so much joy.

We don’t go to watch from the outside as Hollywood parties. We had enough of the outside in high school, thanks.

We don’t go to provide easy laughs for guys from Harvard too lazy to look beyond the obvious. We love comics for our own amusement, not yours.

So how can you get your geek on without becoming an unwitting accomplice to your own abasement? One solution that works from is going to smaller conventions. The focus tends to be more on comics, and there is more chance to interact with guests as well as other convention goers. It’s also usually easier to find a place to eat and a hotel room close to the show.

For the record, I’m not saying that everything I like at SDCC is cool and everything you like is not cool. Nor am I saying that geeks are never so ridiculous that one can’t laugh at them derisively.

I’m just saying that we don’t have to put on a show to get ridiculed by Hollywood. We don’t have to be so grateful for their attention that we become their dancing bears. Although that might be a cool costume.

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