Author: Mike Gold

Mike Gold: Saturday Cartoons No More? Sleep In!

A friend of mine was complaining about how there aren’t any more Saturday morning cartoons on teevee. I wasn’t the only one who thought, “damn, bro, through the miracle of cable teevee we’ve got cartoons everywhere, all the time.”

Then I started to think about it from a historical perspective. Saturday morning cartoons started when local teevee programmers started turning their lights on early sometime around 1950, recognizing that small children were attracted to the boob tube like babes to teat. Somebody in the advertising community realized that kids have enormous influence over their parents’ breakfast cereal purchasing decisions. Not coincidentally, Kellogg’s came out with Frosted Flakes and Sugar Pops in 1951 and Sugar Smacks in 1953. Also not coincidentally, the incubation period for diabetes is about 30 years, which is why this particular plague has been devastating the Baby Boomers for over 15 years now.

In the world of commercial broadcasting, invention is the mother of necessity. Local programmers had no budget for Saturday mornings so they put on cartoons that were in the public domain, including silent cartoons and the works of the Fleischer brothers – no wonder my generation warmed up to LSD in the late 60s.

It didn’t take long for the network programmers to notice, and it didn’t take long for the packaged food industry learned just how seductive the phrase “pre-sweetened” was to baby Baby Boomers. Chocolate milk enhancers, flavored straws, powdered sugar candy, and something called “Maypo” which, in fact, was actually maple-flavored oatmeal. It was created in 1953, but its 1956 television commercial with the catchphrase, “I Want My Maypo” (animated by the legendary John Hubley) quickly became the most obnoxious thing uttered by children en masse since Woody Woodpecker’s laugh. It is no surprise that most, if not virtually all, such products featured cartoon characters or cartoon-like characters that could be used in animated commercials.

Nostalgia for one’s childhood delights is a powerful force, and not always a force for good. Nonetheless, it is a strong part of our popular culture business and of the comics racket in particular. Look at all the comic book revivals of GenXers’ cartoon shows such as G.I. Joe and Transformers.

Sure, now we’re worried about this “health” thing. Now that we’re craven sugar addicts. And, yeah, I blame Saturday morning cartoons for being the delivery system. But I am not pissed about it. I enjoyed all that shit.

Sugar Smacks became Honey Smacks which became, simply, “Smacks.” Personally, I would have changed the Smack word and kept sugar. But they didn’t sell opiates on Saturday morning teevee.

Until Rush Limbaugh came along.

 

Mike Gold: The Reason Why We’re Here

Forgive me if I ramble as I babble. I just got back from a 2000+ mile drive, linking up with a whole bunch of good people including ComicMix’s own Marc Allan Fishman – and family, Kitchen Sink’s own Denis Kitchen (the University of Wisconsin honored Denis with a well-deserved exhibition of his work), the real First Comics’ own Rick Obadiah, Prime’s own Len Strazewski, Hardy Boys’ own Rick Oliver, and Max Allan Collins’s own George Hagenauer. And then, the next day…

You get the idea. I love going back to the midwest, even when the streets of Chicago are tied up with the big David Bowie museum exhibit. Comics with less plot but better music. Now it’s just a few hours before your earliest opportunity to read this sucker, but Monday Mindy beat be to the brass “I got nuthin’” ring. (Monday Mindy, Monday Mindy… damn, after running her column a couple years, the alliteration just dawned on me).

Because I drove – no, I’m not afraid of flying, I’m afraid of how I might react after being treated like cattle in its own crap from the moment I leave for the airport to the moment I drive off the rental lot) – I spent a couple nights in remote hotels somewhere off of Interstate 80. ComicMix’s own Adriane Nash won’t let me drive straight-through. I’d comment, but she’s just doing her job and she’s very… effective at it. Elderly widower that I am, I spent those two nights cuddled up with my iPad, reading comic books.

If you’re a comics fan who travels a lot, you’ll quickly develop an attraction to electronic comics. I loaded the tablet with over one hundred of them, along with a ton of music, of course. And I read about a dozen or so.

I want to review the excellent Justice Inc., but I’ll wait until the series is over before I give you reasons to get the trade paperback. I read a few of my top shelf favorites like Sex, Aw Yeah! Comics and Savage Dragon (those are three different titles, folks), as well as the wonderful DC Digital First Sensation Comics. And I spent some more time trying to figure out the Future’s End stuff, unsuccessfully although I really enjoyed the Booster Gold issue.

Best of the lot? The first part of Michael Uslan’s current Betty and Veronica storyline wherein the other two sides of the famed Archie triangle ditch Riverdale for an amazing opportunity in Europe. Why would they leave home for a European adventure? Hell, wouldn’t you?

Over all, it was a great way to spend a few hours in an otherwise empty hotel room. Reading a bunch of comic books, most very good, some great, some not so much.

At the end of the proverbial day, that’s what it’s all about. Not the type of controversies real, exaggerated and make-up, that we see online every second of the day, but sitting down and enjoying the stuff. My affection towards the community of comics creators present and past grows each time I can kick back and remember why ComicMix is here.

Yep. That’s really what it’s all about.

 

Mike Gold: The Joker’s New Friend

I always wondered how World War II would have turned out if only Joseph Goebbels had a sense of humor. After all, what’s the old adage – you get more with a smile and a bomb than just a bomb alone? Really, the whole concept of Harley Quinn is based upon this philosophy.

You know Harley Quinn. The Joker’s… ah, paramour? Quadramour? Well, hold that thought for a couple paragraphs.

This is the start of the new fall television series, not only in North America, but evidently in Iraq as well. A new program, The Superstitious State, is being promoted up in the land between two rivers. It’s tagged “satire,” but it’s not going to close on Saturday night. Here’s the premise.

There’s this big celebration somewhere in some desert. It’s a wedding, although the focus is on the consummation of this blessed event. Don’t worry, it’s G-Rated, common for a Muslim nation that makes its media available to citizens of all ages. The idea is…

… jeez, I hope you’re sitting down…

(more…)

Mike Gold: Marvel’s 75-Year Marvel

Marvel 75th Anniversary MagazineIf you can find a decent magazine rack near you, or you are lucky enough to live near a bone fide comic book store, you might want to check out Marvel’s 75th Anniversary magazine, conveniently pictured to our left.

Oh, look! Rocket Raccoon and Star Lord and Groot and Nova! And no Sub-Mariner or Human Torch! Man, 75 years go by so fast we forget our roots.

Look, these magazines are rarely more than the team programs they sell us as we walk into sports stadia, and by that measure this one is a lot more attractive than most. It’s good for what it is – an opportunity to get people excited about new talent, new media and new movies. In other words, it’s really more about Marvel’s next 75 years than it is a tribute to its past. Not a lot about Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, Steve Ditko or even Jack Kirby here.

A real Marvel history would run a hell of a lot more than four-dozen pages, and there are plenty of such histories in the bookstores to prove that. The only real “history” is the article about Marvel’s golden age written by ComicMix’s own Robert Greenberger.

Bobby, as we affectionately call him, was once DC Comics’ own Robert Greenberger. And Marvel’s own Robert Greenberger. And Starlog’s own Robert Greenberger. And Star Trek’s own Robert Greenberger. He’s also been my friend long enough to deserve a medal for perseverance. Oh, and his daughter is getting married this month, so he’s The Father-of-the-Bride Kathleen Michelle’s own Robert Greenberger. And, as pictured here, he’s also Deb Greenberger’s Robert Greenberger. Woof.B&DGreenberger

OK. Enough fawning about a talented old buddy. I’m embarrassing him. (OK, I’ve been doing that for three decades. Hey, it’s a living.)

His piece is called “The Timely Birth of Marvel.” Get it? Timely Comics begat Atlas Comics which begat Marvel Comics which is now the Pac Man inside the Disney empire. It’s worth the price of admission. I said it was about the golden age, but to be clear Bobby’s piece is not just about the Golden Age – it’s about the company’s founding right up to the founding of the contemporary Marvel Universe.

There’s a hell of a lot of information in this article. It is the Secret Origin of Marvel Comics, which is vaguely ironic in that Bobby edited DC’s Secret Origins title.

Marvel survived on enthusiasm. Bigger publishers – Fawcett and Dell/Gold Key, to be sure – went blooie in the mid-1950s, as did Quality, EC, Gleason, Gilberton (Classics Illustrated), Charlton, Harvey and a great, great many others. Only DC and Archie join Marvel in its unbroken timeline from the beginnings of the Golden Age, and it survived by respecting the readers’ intelligence while consistently catering to our sense of wonder.

You did ‘em justice, pal.

 

Mike Gold: What Goes Around Inevitably Comes Around

DC Entertainment Co-Publisher and Editorial Big Kahuna Dan DiDio let the cat out of the bag on Facebook last week. In referring to Countdown To Infinite Crisis, he said “Definitely one of the highlights of my time at DC, but it gets me thinking, has it really been almost ten years since then, and maybe its time to do it one better.”

Dan, I’m sorry to say this, but your average seven year old could do it one better; two if you gave him a bigger box of Crayolas.

Look, we haven’t even finished Future’s End, a.k.a. Crisis on Infinite Angst. That means we haven’t even seen its trans-universe gangbang follow-up (pictured above, WordPress willing), Blood Moon. And now you’re “teasing” us with still another Crisis?

No, you are not. I know the difference between a tease and threat. A tease involves taking off almost all of your clothes. A threat is Vladimir Putin taking on Darkseid.

I really liked the original Crisis On Infinite Earths. It was a great series in and of itself. But immediately thereafter DC relaunched Superman and Wonder Woman, which sort of pulled the rug out from under the linear reboot. Then DC launched into a whole mess of predictable game-changers: The Death of Superman, followed by The Death or Disappearance of Almost Everybody Else One At A Time. It wasn’t too long before all the cool stuff in Crisis On Infinite Earths was invalidated or contradicted or ret-conned into oblivion. I can’t count the number of Crisis sequels that followed the one that set the DC Universe straight for the first and still-only time.

Indeed, over the past 30 years the DC fans have learned one and only one thing: we cannot trust DC to sustain a thought.

Like most of your readers and ostensibly many of your staff (hard to tell with the big move to Los Angeles), we all love and revere the DC characters. I know you share these feelings because you’ve said so yourself many times. Some of us were inspired to read because of DC’s output. Some of us got a nice slice of our morality from the doings of these characters. They may be entertainment, but entertainment can be enlightening and DC has spent the best part of 79 years doing just that.

Dan, I am not picking on you, nor am I picking on the talented writers and artists you employ, many of whom I count among my friends. If you want to do a sequel of something, base it upon one of the most innovative, daring and worthy projects in American comic book history. Maybe you can call it Thursday Comics.

You wanna do another Crisis? Do another Crisis. I can’t stop you. But, please do one thing: do not call it “Crisis.” Show some originality.

Besides, Marv Wolfman and George Pérez deserve better.

 

Mike Gold: Sinful Sin City

I had a whole rant plotted out in my mind, but when my fingers hit the keyboard I decided against it. Perhaps I’m mellowing in my antiquity. I hope not, as being not-mellow is how I make my living. Maybe it’s because I’m going to this weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con, always a wonderful event, and I’m awash in breathless anticipation.

Well, either way, I’ve got a deadline and ComicMix’s editor-in-chief is an asshole (not to be confused with this column’s editor, Adriane Nash, who is not an asshole) and I’ve got all these Sin City thoughts attacking my brain like anti-bodies at a clown orgy and I’m willing to share. Let’s see how long it takes for me to become non-mellow.

Fellow ComicMixer Martha Thomases and I saw Sin City: A Plot To Kill With last week. I enjoy going to the movies with Martha because, together, we tend to like just about everything we see. We have a spirited and usually positive conversation afterwards, often at the fabled Katz’s Delicatessen on New York’s lower east side, where we both enjoy the pickles.

This time, well, not so much. Maybe it’s because we were creatively filling time before the Doctor Who season debut. Maybe because we went to an Italian restaurant where they didn’t serve pickles, although the garlic bread was great. But, you see, I’m spending all this time talking about food instead of the movie. That alone should tell you something.

It’s not that A Plot To Kill With was a lousy movie. It was, essentially, a remake of the first one. The rule of thumb for sequels and remakes is “what about this is different from the original and, at the same time, worthwhile.” There are plenty of sequels that equal or exceed the source material: From Russia With Love, Godfather II, Spider-Man II (the real one, not the doppelganger featuring the Flying Nun), and quite a few others. But if “they” were to do a sequel to The Maltese Falcon (and they sort of did, and it sucked) it would have to pick up a dozen years later with Humphrey Bogart waiting for Mary Astor to get out of prison.

Oh, wait. They did that. It was called Blues Brothers 2000.

Sin City Il Secondo brought us nothing new. The Frank Miller comics-to-movies style is no longer new. It’s been used in most subsequent Frank Miller films. These days, I watch that stuff and I wonder if Lynn Varley gets royalties. Most of the multiple plotlines simply vanish into a haze that is more boring than it is confusing. There’s some truly fine performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haysbert, Christopher Meloni and Christopher Lloyd, but storywise I’m reminded of what happened when they poured acid on the Toons in Who Killed Roger Rabbit.

Worse still, the amazing thing about the first movie – the surprisingly powerful performance from Mickey Rourke – was just lame. His character was predictable and not engaging and, even worser, his Marv prosthetics weren’t as impressive as they were in the first movie. He looked like he was wearing a Ben Cooper mask.

Sin City Le Deuxième was one of those unfortunate movies that got worse upon reflection. When we left the theater we didn’t particularly feel we wasted our time. With each passing day, that feeling faded and by now I want my time back.

I looked up the opening weekend box office receipts. Sin City Zwei pulled in $24.00. That means: a) we didn’t see it in 3-D, and b) we were the only ones in North America who paid to get in.

And that means the entire rest of North America is smarter than we were.

 

Mike Gold: Money For Nothing

I was having lunch with www.getthepointradio.com’s Mike Raub yesterday and we were deep in discussion about our favorite topic, what the hell is wrong with the planet and why we are the only ones smart enough to realize it. Before long we were ranting about the lameness of most mainstream comics and the various attempts the sundry marketing departments make to boost sales.

As always, this discussion came to the point where I started in on my favorite seething rage, which, in short form, goes like this: “Screw this variant cover shit; it has nothing to do with getting people excited to actually read the comic book.”

Variant covers became amazingly popular among comics retailers and a handful of wealthy consumers some 20 years ago. In fact, while packaging some books for Image Comics, I wanted to publish a variant cover printed on chewable bubble gum. Image vetoed that one; I strongly suspect they got the joke and had an understandable aversion to biting the hands that feeds them.

But as I was about to babble on and on, I came to a quick stop. A 25-watt light bulb (LED, of course) went off over my head. Indeed, I had an epiphany! It dawned on me there are at least three types of comic book covers being published today: the regular cover, the variant covers that are celebrity-drawn and/or way too cute for words, and the blank cover variant.

You’ve probably seen a few of them. Ostensibly, readers are supposed to get an artist at some convention to draw the cover for you, often in exchange for a stipend. Maybe you’ll just get autographs. Fine. Audience participation is cool. But variant covers generally go for a premium, or in exchange for purchasing X number of comics. What does this mean?

It means many comic book publishers have figured out a way to soak the reader for an “exclusive” that, in fact, costs the publisher next-to-nothing to produce.

That, my friends, is a business model.

Mind you, I may have been the first to publish a blank cover. It was DC’s Wasteland #6, and we did that because the printer screwed up massively and put the wrong cover on the issue. They reprinted it with a blank cover; my idea, as I wanted to alert the reader and the retailer that this was something different. I designed this cover, but I didn’t get paid for it for three reasons: 1) I was on staff, 2) Publisher Paul Levitz knows sarcasm when he hears it, and 3) the damn cover was blank!!!

Same thing with these contemporary blank variants. They are blank! You, the reader/collector/dealer, are spending money for nothing.

And your chicks for free.

To paraphrase Yakov Smirnoff, Comics – what a business!

Someday, somebody will try to sell a comic book based upon its merits and not rely on stunt marketing to do the heavy lifting.

If the business lives that long.

Mike Gold: The Wonder Woman Sensation

Back in the 1970s during my first tenure as a DC Comics employee, I rhetorically asked the question “who was relaunched more often – Wonder Woman or Captain America?” For you young’uns, in today’s lingo “relaunched” means “rebooted.” Even as a rhetorical question, people’s heads exploded. This, of course, did not stop us fanboys from counting.

It turns out in order to get a fair count we needed to summon the spirit of Milton Sirotta. Oh, okay, check it out here. Yes, I’m asking you to Google Googol.

My advice, offered at the time and I continue to offer today, was to treat Wonder Woman as though she were a genuine superhero and have her do all the other stuff the other superheroes, almost exclusively male, could do. It’s amazing how often she was just… lame. I’m not saying the mythological approach, as best presented by George Pérez although the present team of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang is absolutely first-rate, is in any way wrong. Not at all. They-all use mythology in a manner similar to Jack Kirby’s Thor, and that’s about the highest praise I’ve got.

Wonder Woman did not get her start in the All-American Comics’ anthology title, Sensation Comics. She got her start a month earlier, in the DC/All-American hybrid, All-Star Comics #8. But it was Sensation Comics that was her launchpad to superstardom.

Wonder Woman quickly earned her own title, as well as a regular slot in Comic Cavalcade and the job of – wait for it – secretary in the Justice Society. As time wounded all deals, only the eponymous title survived the “Golden Age,” one of only three superhero comics to do so. And that’s about all of WW’s really, really strange creation history that I’m going to share right now.

Last week, DC returned Sensation Comics to the world as part of its much celebrated (well, celebrated by me, often, in this chunk of the Ethersphere) Digital First line. That means it’ll be reprinted, I think today, in traditional comic book form and then ignored by too many retailers who think “digital” is a four-letter word. Woe onto them: Sensation Comics is a pure superhero title. It is Wonder Woman the Superhero. Which is what she was created to be.

You couldn’t put this first story in better hands. Gail Simone is no stranger to the character and no slouch as a writer – in fact, she’s one of the best practicing the craft today. Artist Ethan Van Sciver is a fan-fave as well, and for good reason: he is great at handling superhero stories. He should be cloned.

Together, Gail and Ethan give us … well, a Batman story, except Batman isn’t in it, Wonder Woman is. Instead of the ever-expanding Batman family, we’ve got WW’s sisters-in-arms. We’ve got The Joker, The Penguin, Two-Face, The Riddler et al, and Wonder Woman is taking them all on, as any great superhero would.

This is one of the best superhero comics I’ve read in quite a while. More important, it’s the superhero comic Wonder Woman deserves.

Check it out.

 

 

Mike Gold: Our Superhero Summer

I’ve decided the summer is over. Yeah, I know. School hasn’t started yet, the dandies can continue to wear white for a few more weeks, and the metaphor-challenged will remind us the Autumnal Equinox doesn’t happen until September 22nd – and quite late in the day at that.

Screw them. I say summer is over because the summer movie season has pretty much ended. Yeah, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For happens next week, but we’ve had Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, and The Guardians Of The Galaxy and, clearly, my definition of “summer” is pretty quirky.

I haven’t mentioned the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie because I haven’t seen it. Or its forbearers. In my world, I guess talking raccoons are good but talking turtles stretch the imagination. Go figure.

The day after the Sin City sequel (say that five times fast) appears, the 2014 – 2015 television season begins. Oh, really?, you might ask. Yes: I define the beginning of this coming season as the debut of the newest round of Doctor Who. So there.

When it comes to superhero-based movies (and I’m putting Dawn of the Apes in with the others because I believe it belongs there) I don’t think the average comics fan has much to bitch about… unless he’s one of those screaming asshole naysayers than mindlessly shits on everything anybody else likes under the protection of the shield of anonymity that the Internet gleefully provides. Of the five released movies I noted above, only one – in my opinion – actually sucked.

That would be Amazing Spider-Man 2, a needless sequel to a useless remake, made by clueless people. It was a waste of a handful of fine actors. I enjoyed all of the others, and really, that’s more than I would have expected. As a group, they’ve raised the bar for heroic fantasy movies.

I’d even toss the quirky Lucy in with the rest. That one was clearly heroic fantasy, and it was damn good. So was the equally-quirky Snowpiercer, based upon the French graphic novel of the same name (but in French). Lucy didn’t have comics cred to fall back on, but Scarlet Johansson most certainly does. That one just might make it easier to get a good superheroine movie made. And wouldn’t that be nice?

So… is this all a fad? Yes, probably, but just in quantity. Quality rules and if “they” continue to make movies that are well-written, well-directed and well-performed, we’ll continue to see more – just as we have ever since the early days of film and vehicles such as Tarzan, Tailspin Tommy, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon and Joe Palooka.

When it comes to the movies based upon the comics media, quality rules.

Isn’t that amazing?

 

Mike Gold: Marvel Does The Right Thing – And More!

I cribbed the information contained herein from the piece written by our pal Rich Johnston over at his Bleeding Cool website which, for what it’s worth, I endorse for its honesty and professionalism. But instead of simply posting the link and letting it speak for itself, I shall wax poetic.

It’s easy to blame all sorts of bad, evil things on corporations and, damn, the Supreme Court recently made that a whole lot easier. But in the interest of fairness we should endeavor to embrace the whole enchilada.

No doubt you were one of the 160.1 million dollars worth of humans worldwide (and counting) who have seen the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. If you haven’t, there are no spoilers here: I thought it was great fun, as did the other minions of the Lower Connecticut Comics Mafia that occupied the theater last Thursday. The fact that we all seemed to be in agreement was, in and of itself, the highest praise I can heap upon any movie. But unless you don’t have a television set, a comic book habit, and/or friends, you are probably aware that the movie stars a small sentient rodent-like creature named Rocket Raccoon.

Rocket was created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen. One of the true horrors of comics history is that in 1992 Bill was the victim of a hit-and-run driver while rollerblading, suffering irreparable brain damage and ending his career in both comics and in law as a public defender. After awakening from a coma, he has spent the ensuing 22 years in a health-care center.

When work on GOTG commenced, Marvel (part of Disney, which I might not refer to as “the evil empire” any longer) renegotiated Bill’s deal regarding Rocket Raccoon, providing some ongoing income to help offset his enormous ongoing medical expenses. This alone is, as we say on 47th Street, a mitsve. Last week, Marvel outdid themselves – big time.

As quoted by Rich, Bill’s brother Michael reported “Marvel hooked Bill up with a private viewing of Guardians of the Galaxy, and my wife Liz and my beloved cousin Jean assisted Bill throughout, enabling him to sit back, relax and relish in the awesomeness of what is going to be, in my humble opinion, Marvel’s greatest and most successful film ever! Bill thoroughly enjoyed it, giving it his highest compliment (the big “thumb’s up!”), and when the credits rolled, his face was locked into the hugest smile I have ever seen him wear (along with one or two tears of joy)! This was the greatest day of the last 22 years for me, our family, and most importantly, Bill Mantlo!” Marvel execs David Bogart and David Althoff arranged for the screening and joined Bill at the event.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Marvel did not have to do this. Their only obligation here was moral and, even then, arranging for all of this goes beyond even that high standard. I am impressed, and as a person who has toiled in the four-color fields for almost 40 years, I am proud of how Marvel’s consideration reflects on the creative industry we all enjoy.

As for Bill – who we miss, and whose work we miss – his legacy is now assured.

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