Author: Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases: Who Is Batman’s Accountant?

batman-c-p-a

Sometimes I think the most difficult job in the DC Universe is Bruce Wayne’s accountant.

Bruce Wayne doesn’t go to H & R Block. Who takes care of him?

I mean, I assume that all the Wayne businesses, including WayneCorp and the Wayne Foundation, use one firm, and the person who does Bruce’s personal tax returns is part of that firm. Or there are accountants and tax lawyers who work directly for the company, and one of them is assigned to Bruce. Whatever the arrangement, one hopes that they strive for an impeccable separation of business, philanthropy, and personal finances.

Because if they don’t, it’s sloppy, mistakes get made, and the public gets bilked.

Bruce rarely seems interested or involved in his corporate financials. The Nolan movies established that Lucius Fox uses an unobtrusive division of WayneCorp to develop various Bat-tech under the guise of government military research. Those expenses won’t show up on Bruce’s tax forms.

Bruce is extremely interested and involved in Wayne Foundation charities. He is often shown to be an active donor and fund-raiser. Almost as frequently, he is shown learning about the potential recipients of his charity, studying how to best help them. He does this so often that it seems unlikely that anyone would connect his generous impulses in general to the innocent victims of Batman’s specific activities.

Neither his corporation nor his charities would raise tax questions. I’m thinking about his personal tax returns. All the equipment deliveries to the Manor. All the repairs after on-site fights. Even the medical supplies that Alfred keeps on hand. All of these things leave a paper trail, the kind that the IRS wants to know about.

My tax returns aren’t as complicated as I imagine Bruce Wayne’s to be, but they do stack up to be several inches tall. I know that I need to have receipts and more on hand. I can’t believe that Bruce (or, more likely, Alfred) doesn’t have file cabinets and/or hard drives full of the stuff.

Bruce Wayne needs to hire the best possible people to take care of his taxes. His wealthy playboy persona demands it. And I do believe that because he’s Batman, he would only hire the most ethical. And smart, honest accountants ask a lot of questions. And they want to see receipts.

I don’t believe Batman is trying to cheat the federal government. Bruce Wayne is not using his position to amass personal power. He’s not on the ballot. His taxes are none of my business.

But I’d like to hire his accountant.

Martha Thomases: 4DX, Batman’s Religion, and Me

batmans-jewishIt’s a twofer this week, folks. I have two things that are obsessing me, neither of which really qualifies for a full column, but both are so interesting (to me, anyway) that I must opine.

Hey! There’s a new movie format!

It’s called 4DX, and it’s not a better picture or more frames per second or three dimensional. Instead, it involves seats that vibrate and sometimes move, fans that mimic wind, and sometimes water and aroma effects.

Apparently, this format has been around for a few months, but I only found out about it this past weekend. My friend Renee and I went to see The Magnificent Seven. When we got to the theater, we found out that the show we had planned to see was in this funky new format. It was going to be another 45 minutes before the next show in a normal theater. So, we paid the extra $8.00 (!!!) each, and decided to consider it an adventure.

It was hilarious.

It’s not as funny as “Smell-o-Vision” or the John Waters movie Polyester, filmed in “Odorama.” In fact, there were no discernible smells, at least for this movie. Which is a good thing, because there were lots of horses and very few humans seemed to bathe very often.

Although a sweaty Denzel can come sit by me anytime.

Every time a person opened a door, there was a breeze. When horses galloped across a stream, a fine mist of water sprayed from the chair. Every time the camera moved, the seats moved with it. Every time a horse galloped on land, the seats vibrated.

I didn’t feel like I was part of the movie, but I did feel like I was at Walt Disney World. I was on an amusement park ride that lasted longer than the wait on line to get on.

This format was probably not designed for westerns. It was probably meant for super-hero movies, with lots of flying and explosions. I don’t think I will ever pay extra for it again, unless maybe they provide virtual reality goggles to go with it.

Batman’s Jewish?

In the last few issues of Batman and Detective comics, since Rebirth, it has been revealed that Kate (Batwoman) Kane’s mother is Martha Wayne’s sister. It was previously established that the Kane’s are Jewish. According to tradition, the child of a Jewish mother is Jewish.

(Aside: I don’t believe that, because I think one’s religion is a matter of what one believes and not one’s genetic make-up. This is why the Haredi don’t want me in Israel.)

I searched the Google, and no one seems to have said anything about this, at least not on the Internet. I suppose it’s possible I’m reading it wrong. I suppose it’s possible that this will be dealt with in future storylines. I suppose the Waynes might have been extremely closeted about their heritage, or that Thomas Wayne never told his parents that his wife was Hebrew. Maybe it’s a modern day Ivanhoe.

It might be December before we find out if there are menorahs in stately Wayne Manor.

Martha Thomases’ March Revelation

congressman-john-lewis-march

Hallelujah! Over the weekend, I had a revelation.

March, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, is the answer to every question, the solution to every problem.

Let me explain how I came to see the light.

I was at a conference for American Jews interested in increasing the opportunities for a shared society among Jewish and Arab Israelis. In attendance were representatives from various American Jewish funding organizations as well as Israeli Jewish and Arab leaders. It was heady stuff for me, and I was thrilled to see that Israeli Arabs are just as opinionated (and enjoy a good argument) as much as I do.

All of us being Semites, of course we wanted to eat. A lot. Over meals, we didn’t just discuss policy and programs. We talked about current events (oy) and our various jobs and interests. When I said I worked in comics and was writing a graphic novel, I got asked a lot of questions.

Some people hadn’t read a comic book since they were children four decades ago (or more). Some had read Maus, but didn’t know about anything else.

When I mentioned that they might enjoy March and told them that Congressman John Lewis had written this three-volume graphic novel, almost everyone was interested.

On this site, because we write about comics all the time, we know about John Lewis. And because we are rabid consumers of comics and books and movies and television, we know a lot about how comics influence our larger entertainment choices. We know that comics supply the creative content for a bunch of mega-billion dollar industries.

We know less about how comics can save the world. Specifically, March.

The third volume was published recently, and while I loved the first two, this final piece knocked me on my ass. It’s so good and so powerful and so subtle. I thought I knew the story about the March on Selma and the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. I’d watched it on television in real time. I’ve talked to people who were there. I’ve read other accounts.

Nothing prepared me.

I’m a person who frequently enjoys movie violence. March 3 viscerally demonstrated the difference between fact and fiction. I felt actual pain reading about the mobs of white people who beat people demonstrating for their rights as citizens. I also felt pain for those white people, who must have led fairly miserable lives to think that the proper response to peaceful protest is to split a person’s head.

Somehow, Lewis and Aydin and Powell convey these horrors in such a straightforward fashion that I doubt any parents will object to their children reading the books for school.

An Arab woman who is principal of an Arab middle school in the Western Galilee told me her students very much admire Dr. Martin Luther King. She said they recognize that his fight is their fight. If/when there is an Arabic edition, I’m going to donate a bunch of copies to her library.

Let’s hope those kids are just as successful using King’s tactics as he was when they attempt to achieve their goals. And, because I’m greedy, let’s hope they create books that are just as wonderful.

Martha Thomases: Call Any Vegetable

screaming-peppers

capt-carrotIt is harvest time. The Green Market is a riot of colors, and I can’t seem to eat fast enough to take advantage of the riches of the season. I spend far too much time worrying about what to cook so that I don’t have to throw away any of my beautiful produce.

This might seem like a stupid thing to obsess about — why don’t I just buy less? — but it’s far better than my other current obsession, which is to wonder if I should have kissed that guy I like, and, if so, would there have been tongues, and had I brushed my teeth recently enough for that to happen. Often, it’s no fun inside my head.

No matter. Too much good food is not a bad problem to have. It’s certainly better than the obsession with death that seems to be once again encroaching on American superhero comics, a genre I like because it’s often full of hopeful fantasy. Here and here and here, just to take three examples from various rumor mills around the ‘Net. (Beware! Those links contain spoilers.)

I know that heroism involves risks, and that death is a part of life. I’m just bored with killing off characters as a stunt to get attention. It makes story- and character-driven deaths less meaningful.

So let’s talk about vegetables. Superhero vegetables.

Surprisingly (to me, at least), there are very few. One is a Green Lantern, and one is a Guardian of the Galaxy, who is also currently a movie star.

cuddling-carrotsAlas, Captain Carrot is not, in fact, a vegetable. And Swamp Thing can be food, but he can also be poison, since he can be any plant he chooses to be.

With the growing concern about children’s health, it’s not a surprise that parents want to find ways to get their kids to make healthier food choices. And it’s not a surprise that these parents, thinking that superheroes are kid stuff, would try to co-opt the vocabulary and imagery of comics to tempt their children.

Some have even found a way to make a business out of it. A successful business that seems to be accomplishing its goals, at least so far. And they have Aasif Mandvi among their celebrity spokes-plants!

I don’t know what you might like to eat, or what variety of nutrients makes you feel your best. Because we are human and capable of infinite variety, you probably have a different list than I do. I find that whatever I want to eat, I want to add more vegetables to it (except for, maybe, ice cream). In the process, I suppose I am causing the death of these vegetables, or at least creating the demand that is the incentive for farmers to kill them.

It’s possible vegetables have feelings. Whether that is true or not, they have more life than a fictional character.

Even one with super-powers.

Martha Thomases’ School Daze

peanuts

The week after Labor Day is the traditional beginning of the school year. Yes, #NotAllSchools, but enough.

When I was in elementary school, the first day was a big deal. My mom and I had spent a lot of time over the summer selecting my new clothes, usually an activity that included lots of arguments. (I hated wearing uniforms at boarding school, but it did reduce the fighting at home.) On that first day I wanted to show off my favorite selections, so I usually spent all of my class time sweating through my lovely winter jumper with coordinating turtleneck sweater.

Naturally, I wondered how superheroes would fare. I don’t mean those lucky enough to have classes that catered to their specific mutations or skills, but regular school, with tiny milk cartons in the cafeteria and bullies at recess.

I remember Superboy and Supergirl stories from my youth where they would be stuck in class while their super-hearing picked up some disaster that needed their attention. They had robots available for such occasions, although I do not remember any stories in which those robots had to take tests or get punched in the face. Today, we can read about Moon Girl and her issues with being smarter than her classmates (as well as trying to keep a dinosaur secret). Her powers are the least of her problems.

As usual, I wonder about superheroes with more esoteric powers. Mind-readers like Saturn Girl could cheat on tests simply by barging into the thoughts of the teacher. She could also get completely icked-out simply by walking past the boys locker room… but that also happens to girls who aren’t telepathic.

Matt Murdock could avoid bullies by sensing when they were planning to punch him out. He could probably also tell when the lunch lady lost a hair (or worse) in his food. Matter-Eater Lad could avoid cafeteria problems altogether. He’d have no reason to fear  mystery meat when the tray would be a satisfying substitute lunch.

Truly, there are few situations in which it is not amusing to imagine Matter-Eater Lad.

Individual problems and opportunities for individual students might present story opportunities, but the conditions of our schools, physically and structurally, are the real outrage. Public schools are constantly forced to do more with less. No matter how much money any particular municipality might budget towards them, an insufficient percentage trickles down to individual teachers in individual classrooms.

Even worse, there is increasing pressure on students to pass specific kinds of tests that purport to measure their learning but are more likely to measure their ability to take tests. Some groups want to eliminate arts education to focus on science, math and technology, as if math and science don’t benefit from people with artistic imaginations.

Children, even those without super-powers, are each unique. I know there are those who don’t like it when someone points out that everyone is special, but they are wrong. I learn at a different pace and in a different way than you do. Schools should take this into account. No, we shouldn’t lower standards and pass kids from one grade to the next purely for social reasons. Diplomas should indicate a level of accomplishment, and we should have a nondiscriminatory way to measure this… although I don’t know what this would be.

I was always good at taking standardized tests, usually placing in the 99th percentile. This helped my parents with their bragging rights but did nothing to indicate that, for example, I was terrible at memorizing, especially foreign language vocabulary words. If there had been a way to catch that earlier, I might be able to spend more time in Paris.

My point (and I do have one) is that schools don’t have to be places of boredom and terror. We could treat our kids with more love and respect, appreciating their differences in a way that celebrates their victories and nurtures them when they fail.

I thought of this while listening to Dean Haspiel give the keynote address at the Harvey Awards last weekend. Dean talked about the challenges of being a freelance artist in a culture that values neither art nor freelancers. After a lifetime in New York working with colleagues in a studio in a building with loads of other artists, Dean admitted that he is considering leaving.

New York City drew me here because it was a place where one could meet artists and writers and rock stars and poets and radical activists. It was a great place to raise my kid, who went to public school with kids who spoke Spanish, Russian, Chinese and lots of other languages at home, and who might live in shelters or brownstones, projects or penthouses.

That doesn’t happen anymore.

Those of us who value each other’s special abilities should consider finding a town in decline and moving in en masse. We could work together to provide the services we want, and we could live close enough to each other so we could ease the trauma of moving. We could volunteer at libraries and schools and summer camps so all the kids who feel like mutants would know we think that’s a good thing.

And we could install air-conditioning in the schools so that, if I show up on the first day, I can wear my best new outfit.

Martha Thomases: Tony Shalhoub and the Virus

brain dead shalhoub

“Gimme danger, little stranger / And I’ll feel your disease”

Iggy and the Stooges, “Gimme Danger”

Mortality is a bitch, and being aware of it even more so. On the other hand, knowing we’re all going to die someday is the inspiration for some great art and some rousing entertainment.

Especially this summer. Gee, I wonder what’s happening this year to freak us all out?

If you listen to the network news (or even read a newspaper, like an old person), you have probably heard plenty about the Zika virus. Spread by mosquitoes, it causes microcephaly in the fetuses of infected pregnant women. I first heard of it striking in Brazil, well before the Olympics, and the virus has spread (as viruses will) throughout the world, including outbreaks in Florida. Besides mosquito bites, Zika is also spread through sexual contact.

Some doctors think that, if one isn’t pregnant, Zika is no worse than a cold or the flu. Others think that it might cause neural damage in people who are infected.

That’s scary enough for me, thanks.

Luckily, my fears (and maybe yours, I don’t know your life) are being exorcised this summer by Brain Dead, a really funny series on CBS about aliens from outer space who look remarkable like ants and who eat the brains of humans. In this case, the humans are senators and other denizens of Washington, DC. A side effect of having aliens eat your brain is that you become more extreme in your opinions and less amenable to compromise.

It’s amazing anyone notices anything wrong, doesn’t it?

I started to watch this because it has Tony Shalhoub in it. He is a treasure, chewing up the scenery with the same enthusiasm as the bugs eating his brains. I kept watching because many of the episodes are directed by Allan Arkush, who directed

one of the greatest, if not the greatest (depends on my mood) movie of all time.

The series is best when it plays the jokes as broadly as possible. The conservatives with their rabid hatred of progressives and the liberals who loathe right-wingers, work themselves up into froths of rage. Sometimes their heads literally explode. Everyone is extremely paranoid of every little thing, and with good (and hilarious) reason.

It’s less successful when it gets earnest and tries to tell us (not show us) that compromise is an honorable way to get things done.

There are only two episodes left, and apparently, there is a slim chance the series will be renewed for another season. Personally, as much as I enjoy it, I would prefer to see it end. Under the Dome, also a CBS summer series, suffered when it lasted longer than the book, as the producers tried to come up with more and more ridiculous ways to extend the menace. Step on the alien ants and be done with it.

Another television show with a viral subtext is The Strain, which just started its third season on FX. Based on a trilogy by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, this is the scariest thing I watch on television. It’s about vampires attacking New York City. Unlike your average vampires, these creatures are humans who have been infected by worms, who attack new victims while their hosts are feeding. The hero is a scientist with the Center for Disease Control.

I really liked the books, and I really like this series, although it started to veer away from the source material last season and will probably continue to do so. Since both authors are actively involved as producers, I assume the reasons for the changes have to do with the differences between print and video. However, three seasons, like three books, seems to me to be a natural and organic life-span for this concept.

Enjoy this last unofficial weekend of summer! Try to stay out of the sun (or use lots of sunscreen), and stay away from things that bite. If you can, avoid the news, at least for a day, because the political coverage will make you crazy.

And, please remember — language is a virus.

Martha Thomases: Diving Into Diversity

 

Famous Lesbians of Comics

One of the most exciting developments in the comic book industry in my lifetime has been the increased diversity, both in content and in creators. It is no longer a given that only straight cis white men can be writers, artists, or heroes.

It’s something we champion here at ComicMix. Many of our contributors (including but not limited to this person, this person, and this person) discuss these issues on a regular basis.

I really love this. As a reader, it means I have a lot more different kinds of stories to sample. More stories means a greater chance to find something I like, or something that challenges me, or something that shows me something I haven’t seen before.

As a writer, it’s something I find more difficult.

When you are part of a minority group, whether through race, religion, ethnic heritage, sexual and affectional preferences, gender identity, body type or otherwise, you pretty much know how straight cis white guys see the world. Almost all of our art, music, writing, cinema and entertainment is from the perspective of straight cis white guys. Cis straight white guys are the default perspective in modern culture.

So, as a white woman, I feel comfortable and confident writing characters who are white women and men. As a Jew, I feel pretty comfortable writing about Christians as well as Jews. My problems arise when I try to write characters who are different from me in ways I might not fully understand. For example, I’ve been attracted to women in my life, but I have no idea how one acts on that attraction because, for me, it’s never been strong enough to go for it.

It’s not that the stories of people who are not either the default acceptable types or their female counterparts are not worth telling. I’m just not sure I’m the person who should tell them. It’s all too easy to stereotype someone who has different experiences than I do or, even worse, use them as archetypes and not real people. This article, although written about improv comedy, shows the how easy it is to unconsciously limit and even demean someone when you see only her differences, not her humanity.

The pitfalls arise, in my opinion, when the person in power sees those who are different only from this perspective. To use my previous example, I might be able to imagine, broadly, what being a lesbian feels like, but I don’t have any idea about the myriad obstacles and bliss in a dyke’s daily life. It would be all too easy for me to think my lesbian character is all about breasts and labia and coming out, and not how she thinks about getting the rent together every month, or whether a vegan diet is a good idea, or if she should make a play for the cute and possibly straight woman in accounting. She should be a fully-rounded human being, not just a contrast to the default assumption.

Does this mean I should avoid writing lesbian characters? There isn’t one single answer to that. It might be that I lack the skill. It might be that I should ask a queer friend to read what I write and point out where I’ve missed the point. It might be that I should just assume that, among my characters, there are queer people in roughly the same proportions as the general population, and let it go at that. In my real life, I know lots of people without knowing who they would prefer to have sex with. The same can be true in any fictional universe I create.

This might be useful things to consider as a writer. What about as a producer, someone who is, essentially, a gatekeeper about what amusements are available to the public? How does he consider the responses his audience might have, and whether that response is what he meant to convey? In this example, a video game company created a game that attempts to show a former soldier fighting organized crime in a fictionalized New Orleans in 1968. One would expect criminals at that time and place to be racist as all get-out. Does using the language that those people would have used add to the gaming experience or distract from it? What if it only distracts black players?

As we continue to explore this brave new diverse world, a bunch of us are going to make mistakes, some well-meaning and some no so well-meaning. If your mistakes fall into the latter group, you might think you’re a brave truth-teller fighting political correctness, but I think you’re an asshole.

For the rest of us, we’re going to have to take the criticism, absorb it, and see if we told the story we wanted to tell in a way that was understood the way we wanted. If we made a mistake, we have to try harder.

Every piece of entertainment cannot be all things to all people. Every story, every movie, doesn’t have to represent every possible experience. All people should be able to easily find stories with which they can relate, that make them laugh (and cry) in recognition.

Martha Thomases: Oh, Larry Wilmore. We Hardly Knew Ye…

Larry Wilmore

Sad now.

Yesterday was the last episode of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.

(Note: As I write this, there are still three more shows. I’m going to assume that, if something newsworthy happens on-air between my deadline and publication, my editor will let me revise this accordingly.)

The Nightly Show replaced The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert’s Comedy Central show a few months, before Trevor Noah took over The Daily Show from Jon Stewart. Both Wilmore and Noah had been featured correspondents on The Daily Show, as had Colbert a decade earlier.

I love Jon Stewart. He is the man my mother wanted me to marry (even if he’s a decade younger than I am). I also love Stephen Colbert. He’s really, really smart and he can sing. I was sad when they were no longer hosting their own fake-news shows.

It was gutsy of Comedy Central to give their most successful hour to two relative unknowns, both men of color. If you don’t believe me, look at who else hosts television news shows, fake and otherwise. You’ll be blinded by the white.

I like Trevor Noah. Because he’s not an American, his perspective is very different from what I’m used to hearing. He’s not even European. From South Africa, Noah’s point of view, his entire frame of reference, is completely alien to me (although I took two semesters of African history in college, I’ve forgotten almost all of it). Therefore, when I hear him tell a joke about American politics, the surprise I feel from the way he sees it adds to my laughter. There were weeks when he didn’t have a single white person as an interview guest, and no one said anything about it.

The show has problems, of course. Noah’s interview skills could be better. I’m sorry that Jessica Williams left, even though she’s going to have her own show and make more money. Mostly, because they inherited The Daily Show format, it’s taking them too long to find their own rhythm.

I love Larry Wilmore much much more. He’s really sharp and smart. He’s nerdy enough to know super-heroes and science. Watching the show, I want to know if he would consider dating an old Jewish woman.

His contributors (especially Francesca Ramsey and Mike Yard) took a while to grow on me, but now I love them.

Some critics have said that the panel portion of the show (when a guest star and two contributors sit with Larry and discuss The Issues Of The Day) never gelled for them. I like it. Sure, it often features rappers I never heard of before, and I want to interrupt and give my opinion (extra difficult since I usually record it and watch the next day). That’s okay. That’s how conversations work. Watching the panels, I feel like I’m having conversations with people I don’t know, on their own terms.

My favorite parts are not funny, but revelatory. For example, Larry Wilmore complains about Bill Cosby a lot (he still hasn’t forgotten, as he often reminds us), but what he’s mostly enraged about is that fact that nobody believed he was a rapist until a man http://hannibalburess.com said something about it. I’m not one of the dozens of women violated by Cosby, but I felt validated when Wilmore said that.

Comedy Central said that The Nightly Show never got the ratings it needed. The Daily Show is also doing less well than it was before Jon Stewart left. Is this racism? Are millennials (the target audience) more resistant to getting their fake news from black people than we thought?

I don’t have the statistics to demonstrate whether this is true or false. I just have sadness that there is no more.

In the meantime, black-ish, for which Wilmore is executive producer, remains hilarious.

Martha Thomases: Comicons, Guns and Flutter

Toy Guns

There is a chance this year that I might again attend the Baltimore Comic-Con next month. This pleases me. It’s a fun show, almost entirely about comic books.

Yeah, there are some movie and television celebrities, and that’s fine. Their presence makes many people happy. They don’t take up a lot of the show floor. For the most part, it’s easy to get around. Similarly, although the cosplay can be brilliant, it doesn’t consume all the available aisle space. Or oxygen.

There is a delightful feeling of cooperation between the folks who run the con and fans and other attendees. Announcements made through the sound system are clear and easy to understand. The pros are accessible, and, in return, the fans don’t maul them. I’m sure there are examples of rudeness and discourtesy, but, unlike at other shows (I’m looking at you, NYCC) they don’t overwhelm the good vibes.

And, also, they have a weapons policy.

I never thought about a show having a weapons policy before. I mean, every municipality has its own laws about guns, and of course a comics convention within city limits must abide by the laws of that particular city. As cosplay continues to grow, cosplayers will want to look as authentic as they possibly can so they can garner the most admiration possible. This means they’ll want realistic-looking imitation swords, knives, lances, maces, lasers and, yes, guns.

Alas, reality intrudes. Just as we must open our bags before we go into a theater these days and walk through an X-Ray machine at the airport, it’s not unreasonable to expect comics conventions to devise tighter security measures. I would rather be patted down before entering, and possibly even surrender my beloved knitting needles, than fear an attack like the one in Orlando.

Fake plastic weapons don’t phase me. Fundamentalist terrorism does.

A lot of my comrades in the anti-war movement think toy weapons are bad. While I respect their opinion, I disagree. I think all of us, including children (maybe especially children) get frustrated with reality and want to act out our rage and fury, even if only in our imaginations. Children need to be taught to accept themselves and their feelings, even the so-called “bad” feelings, if they are ever to have a chance to learn how to control themselves.

It’s a wonderful thing to dress up in a way that expresses are hopes and fears, and then be admired for our creativity. Although cosplay is not my thing (and you should thank your lucky stars for that), I understand how cool it must feel to walk around in public, costumed as a fierce warrior or an intrepid heroine. It must be fun to flirt with evil, dressed as a villain.

While I love these flights of fantasy, I also admire the way graphic storytelling has, over the last couple of decades, expanded into genres that offer more kinds of heroes to admire. Yes, we have Batman and Supergirl and Thor and the Hulk, and villains like Harley Quinn and Loki and Brainiac. We have dorkier, more human-looking characters like Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel. We have real life heroes such as Congressman John Lewis, who has organized kids at his convention panels into cosplayers who replicate the March on Selma.

Along with pretending to have superpowers and smashing bad guys (or good guys, as the case may be), the good stuff about Congressman Lewis encouraging this kind cosplay in children is that these kids are learning how to accomplish the same results through active non-violence.

I love him so much for doing this. And I’m not the only one.

Martha Thomases: We’re A Happy Family!

ramones archie

Ah, the dog days of August. Carefree times when our only worries are going outside where we might sweat to death or staying inside and being driven insane.

Luckily, we have each other, right? We can band together and support our shared passions, especially as they relate to pop culture, can’t we? Isn’t that why we have the Internet?

Well, sure, unless you’re a woman, queer, a person of color, or a member of some other group of random people that someone decides to insult gratuitously and, usually anonymously. The most high-profile recent example is what happened to Leslie Jones, but there are a zillion others we can cite.

Up until now, there is nothing anyone could do about it except ignore it, and shudder in despair at the hatred that eats away at certain human souls. And, when it gets personally threatening, tell the police and take out a restraining order, if possible.

However, there may be hope that haters will no longer be able to hide behind a fake user name. Technology might be able to discover which anonymous trolls actually are in real life. We will, virtually if not actually, tell their moms how badly they behave.

Let me be clear here. I’m all for freedom of speech. You can say anything you like, no matter how hateful. However, if you don’t say out loud it in public, or if you don’t sign your name on media, I will think you are a weasel and a coward and deserve to be ridiculed. And if you make credible personal physical threats, the law says you have moved beyond free speech and into criminal activity.

Look, I understand baseless rage. I feel it several times a day. It’s a characteristic we all share, proof of our inner two-year-olds. Is the line too long at the ATM? Is my food delivery delayed? Does my elevator stop at every floor? Is it hot in the subway station? All these things make me want to rant and rave and call people horrible, abusive names.

But I don’t. I’m an adult. And my inner two-year-old is properly terrified that my inner Mom will yell at her.

That’s maturity.

Mine will be tested this fall, when Archie Comics publishes Archie Meets the Ramones. One of my pet peeves is that many more people now claim to be Ramones fans than ever supported them in the late 1970s or 1980s, when they could have used the money. They couldn’t even get radio play. And now AT&T uses their songs to sell their wireless service and most of the Ramones are dead.

I went to see them a lot when I was young enough to go out at night. And I took as many people with me as I could, famous and not. Those memories not only bring me pleasure, but they contribute to my sense of self.

I sure as hell never saw Archie Andrews and his ilk at CBGBs. Nor, despite what the actual story might depict, did I see his father, either.

So, perhaps in a way that might provide me with some empathy for those who don’t want anyone to remake Ghostbusters, I’m skeptical of this. I don’t know if it will seem true to me in the ways that the best fiction is true.

And then I remember how much the band liked comic books, and how much they probably would love being in an Archie comic, and I try to let go of my resentment.

I’m not promising to love the story when it comes out, but I promise not to anonymously make threats about its creative team on the Internet.

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