Author: Mike Gold

Mike Gold’s Top 9 of 2012

It’s the end of the year, so it’s time for still another mindless list of favorites – maintaining a cloying, egotistical annual tradition throughout the media. Once again, here are my self-imposed rules: I’m only listing series that either were ongoing or ran more than six issues, I’m not listing graphic novels or reprints as both compete under different criteria, I’m not covering Internet-only projects as I’d be yanking the rug out from under my pal Glenn Hauman, and I’m listing only nine because tied for tenth place would be about two dozen other titles and I’ve only got so much bandwidth. Besides, “nine” is snarky and when it comes to reality, I am one snarky sumbytch – but only for a living. On Earth-Prime, I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.

Having said all that, let’s open that hermetically sealed jar on the porch of Funk and Wagnalls and start.

1. Manhattan Projects. If I had to write a Top 9 of the Third Millennium list, I’d be hard pressed not to include this title. It’s compelling, it’s different, it’s unpredictable and it’s brilliantly executed by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra. It turns out the scientists and the military leaders behind the creation and the execution of the Atomic Bomb had a lot more in mind than just nuking Japan… a lot more. And their plans run decades longer than World War II. Based largely upon real-life individuals who are too dead to litigate, each person seems to have his own motivations, his own ideas for execution, and his own long-range plan for how to develop the future. Yet the story never gets bogged down in political posturing or self-amusing cuteness – the latter being a real temptation for many creators. Each issue gives us the impression there’s more than meets the eye; each successive issue proves there most certainly was. If the History Channel spun off a Paranoia Network, Manhattan Projects would be its raison d’être.

2. Hawkeye. If you’ll pardon the pun, Hawkeye has never been more than a second-string character. An interesting guy with an involving backstory and enough sexual relationships to almost fill a Howard Chaykin mini-series, this series tells us what Clint Barton does when he’s not being an Avenger or a S.H.I.E.L.D. camp follower. It turns out Clint leads a normal-looking life that gets interfered with by people who think Avengers should be Avengers 24/7. He’s also got a thing going with the Young Avenger who was briefly Hawkeye. Matt Fraction and David Aja bring forth perhaps the most human interpretation of a Marvel character in a long, long while. Hawkeye might be second-string, but Clint Barton most certainly is not.

3. Captain Marvel. Another second-string character. Despite some absolutely first-rate stories (I’m quite partial to Jim Starlin’s stuff, as well as anything Gene Colan or Gil Kane ever put pencil to paper), the guy/doll never came close to the heritage of its namesake. This may have changed. A true role model for younger female readers and a very military character who uniquely humanizes the armed forces, Carol Danvers finally soars under writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy – both as a superhero and as a human being. DeConnick doesn’t qualify as “new” talent, but this certainly is a breakthrough series that establishes her as a truly major player… as it does Marvel’s Captain Marvel.

4. Creator-Owned Heroes. Anthology comics are a drag upon the direct sales racket. They almost never succeed. I don’t know why; there’s usually as much story in each individual chapter as there is in a standard full-length comic. I admire anybody who choses to give it a whirl (hi, there, honorary mention Mike Richardson and company for Dark Horse Presents!), and I really liked Creator-Owned Comics. Yep, liked. It’s gone with next month’s eighth issue. But this one was a lot more than an anthology comic: it had feature articles, how-to pieces, and swell interviews. The work of Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Steve Niles, Steve Bunche and a cast of dozens (including swell folks like Phil Noto and Darwin Cooke), there wasn’t a clinker in the bunch. I wouldn’t mind seeing follow-ups on any of the series featured in this title, although I must give a particular nod to Jimmy and Justin’s Killswitch, a take on modern contract killers, and on Steve’s work in general. This is no light praise: I’m not a big fan of horror stories because most of them have been done before and redone a thousand times after that. Niles is quite the exception.

5. Batman Beyond Unlimited. Okay, this is a printed collection of three weekly online titles: Batman Beyond, Justice League Beyond, and Superman Beyond. But it comes out every month in a sweet monthly double-length printed comic, so it meets my capricious criteria. Based upon the animated DC Universe (as in, the weekly series Batman Beyond and Justice League, and to a lesser extent others), these stories are solid, fun, and relatively free of the angst that has overwhelmed the so-called real DCU stories. Yeah, kids can enjoy them. So can the rest of the established comics audience. Pull the stick out of your ass; there’s more to superhero comics than OCD heroes and death and predictable resurrection. These folks have just about the best take on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World characters than anybody since Jack Kirby. That’s because Jack remembered comics are supposed to be entertaining. Honorable mention: Ame-Comi Girls. It’s based on a stupid (but successful) merchandising idea but it’s just as much fun as anything being published today.

6. Batgirl. O.K. The real story here is that DC Comics mindlessly offed writer Gail Simone from this series only to restore her within a week or so after serious (and occasionally, ah, overly dramatic) protest from both the readership and the creative community. But there was good reason: Gail took a character who was in an impossible situation and, against all tradition, put her back in the costume without resorting to ret-con or reboot, which have been the handmaidens of the New 52. She brought Barbara Gordon back to action with all the doubts, insecurities and vulnerabilities one would expect a person in her position to have, and she does so in a compelling way exercising all of her very considerable talent. This title thrives despite being engulfed in two back-to-back mega-non-events that overwhelmed and undermined all of the Batman titles.

7. Orchid. I praised this one last year; it comes to an end with issue 12 next month. That’s because writer/creator/musician/activist Nightwatchman Tom Morello has a day job and the young Wobblie still has a lot of rabble to rouse. Orchid is a true revolutionary comic book wherein a growing gaggle of the downtrodden stand up for themselves against all odds and unite to defeat the omnipresent oppressor. Tom manages to do this without resorting to obvious parallels to real-life oppressors, although the environment he creates will be recognizable to anybody who thinks there just might be something wrong with Fox “News.” But this is a comic book site and not the place for (most of) my social/political rants (cough cough). Orchid succeeds and thrives as a story with identifiable, compelling characters and situations and a story that kicks ass with the energy and verve one would expect from a rock’n’roller like Morello.

8. Revival. A somewhat apocalyptic tale about people who come back from the dead in the fairly isolated city of Wausau Wisconsin (I’ve been there several times; it is a city and it is indeed fairly isolated). But they aren’t zombies. Most are quite affable. It’s the rest of the population that’s got a problem. The latest output from Tim Seeley and my landsman Mike Norton, two enormously gifted talents. Somewhere above I noted how Steve Niles is able to raise well above the predictable crap and that is equally true here: the story and formula is typical, but the execution is compelling. That I’ve been a big fan of Norton’s is no surprise to my friends in Chicago.

9. Nowhere Men. I’ve got to thank my ComicMix brother Marc Alan Fishman for this one. Admittedly, it’s only two issues old and it has its flaws – long prose insertions almost always bring the pace of visual storytelling to a grinding halt – but the concept and execution of this series far exceeds this drawback. Written by Eric Stephenson and drawn by Nate Bellegarde and Jordie Bellaire, the catch phrase here is “Science Is The New Rock ‘N’ Roll.” Four guys start up a science-for-the-people company and that’s cool, but twenty years later some have taken it too seriously, others not seriously enough, and things got a little out of hand. Sadly, I’m not certain who understands that, other than the reader and one of the major characters. Science is the new rock’n’roll, and exploring that as a cultural phenomenon makes for a great story – and a solid companion to Manhattan Projects.

Non-Self-Publisher of the Year: For some reason, I’m surprised to say it’s Image Comics. They’ve been publishing many of the most innovative titles around – four of the above nine – all creator-owned, without going after licensed properties like a crack-whore at a kneepad sale.

No offense meant to either publishers or crack-whores; I said I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: Violence and Comic Books

Are comic books too violent?

Sure, this is a question some will ask in the wake of a tragedy like last Friday’s massacre in Newtown Connecticut – and a question soon-to-be-ex Senator Joe Lieberman asks every day. But let me put aside my deep-seated prejudice against book-burners for the moment and tell you who else is asking this question right now.

DC Comics is asking this question. Actually, it’s asking the question “Are DC Comics too violent?” And that’s a valid question, as long as those asking it are aware that they’ve been continuing a trend of some decades and that there is no real evidence that there’s a causal link. But that DC name, now synonymous with Warner Bros, is right there on the cover… as well as on all those movies, profitable and otherwise. But movies are a horse of another color: for one thing, children actually go to movies.

Way back in the fall of 1976, DC Comics published Action Comics #466, pictured above. I ran it slightly larger than our usual graphics so you can see what I’m talking about. This was a somewhat controversial cover: several big-name creators found it abhorrent. They felt we shouldn’t beat up babies on the covers of DC Comics. (No, causing harm was what those old Johnson-Smith ads inside were for.) The story was reprinted in a trade paperback back in 2000.

But at that time I was DC’s entire marketing and publicity department, so publisher Jenette Kahn brought me in, showed me the cover, and asked what I thought. “Well, to be honest,” I said paraphrasing like hell, “I hadn’t noticed it as untoward when I first saw the cover several months prior to publishing. Now that you mention it, I see the point. It doesn’t offend me, but little does. Professionally, unless one of the nut-groups is having a slow day I doubt it’ll be a problem.” It wasn’t.

Jenette said it didn’t bother her either, but we had a nice conversation about limits. That’s a good thing to do from time to time, particularly if you’re in the media racket and you are dependent upon the pleasure of mom’n’pop store-owners.

But you can’t please everybody.

Given some of DC’s recent comics – and by “recent” I mean “at least since the time they broke Batman’s back” – one wonders how they will evaluate the standards. Note that the Comics Code Authority, the guardian of comic book morality and the exorciser of four-color excess, approved the above cover. Today such decisions are made where they should be, in-house.

If, by way of example, it is deemed the current Batman mega-arc “Death Of The Family” crosses that revalued line, would DC alter it for the trade paperbacks and omnibus editions? Or forgo these editions entirely? If not, well, so much for the new standards.

Which is OK by me, but it’s not my call. It’s been a while since I’ve been on their payroll and, knowing me as well as I do, were I still in editorial I’d be pushing those new limits right up to that “you’re meeting with Human Resources tomorrow morning” point. Hey, I’m a brat.

I’m not expressing concern or outrage, nor am I screaming censorship. It’s good for such concerns to evaluate and reevaluate their standards from time to time and, besides, as the great A. J. Liebling said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: The Brass Ring Melts

We used to be the bastard child of our American culture.

We were embarrassed by our public image. As we aged, we demanded our pastime mature along with us. We started to infiltrate the means of production, bringing our all-important ideas and ideals along with us. After all, the comics field skipped a generation – few could enter a business that, in the 1950s, was rapidly shrinking. Besides, the Reader’s Digest and the Saturday Evening Post were painting comic book writers and artists as child pornographers. Better to write for the torrid magazines where buff, all-American manly men were saving all-American buxom brunettes from Uncle Joe Stalin and his legion of rodent-faced S & M fanatics, leaving the comics door open for those starry-eyed youngsters who knew no better.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and publishers facing diminished profits understood that our generation worked for a lot less money than the cranky old geezers who wanted to unionize. This same generation was also entering the rest of the public media. Together, we took pleasure in the modern media adaptations of our favorite characters because at least they took our childhoods seriously.

Then we got legitimate. It’s all Richard Donner’s fault. He made Superman – The Movie, the first massive attempt to portray the American comics medium as a serious, legitimate part of our cultural heritage. It was as successful as it was straight-forward, well-produced, well-acted, and well-written. Heroic fantasy took hold of a greater percentage our culture and hasn’t let go.

Comics were taken seriously. The stuff was taught in colleges and in art schools. A decade later Batman came out, upping the ante all the more. Then the Spider-Man movies, the X-Men, the Avengers Universe… Our pastime was generating more revenue in theaters and on television in two years than it had on the newsstands in the previous fifty combined.

And then the people who owned the movie studios that always offered style over substance – style über alles – began to understand there was money to be made in them thar hills. Talent was discounted as necessarily expensive bait. Warner Bros. realized they actually owned a major comic book company, a fact that was purposely kept mostly hidden from them for decades by that very comic book company. Disney understood that the House of Mouse lacked a relevance to the 21st Century audience and their subsequent creations, as popular as they were, weren’t the cultural icons that were found at the House of Ideas. So the Mouse bought them.

And now, more than ever, its employees are being treated as cogs in these massive corporate machines. They need to be oiled and dusted and maintained for a while, but you can replace any or all of the cogs without damaging the icons, without diminishing the shine on the family jewels.

And so we grieve and we fret each time another massively talented creator gets replaced. But that’s how it works in the legit world.

Always did, always will.

The moral of the story: don’t quit your day job.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: In Honor Of Talent

Too many people in the comics racket get the tribute they deserve long after they leave the medium – if, indeed, at all. So I’m going to try to write one while the subject is still in her editorial seat; possibly before she even decides if she wants to actually leave the medium.

As you probably read – presumably right here at ComicMix – Karen Berger will be leaving her position as Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of DC Entertainment’s Vertigo line this coming spring. As Glenn noted in his news story, Karen will have been at the company for a third of a century (no, that photo on Glenn’s story is recent) and will have run Vertigo for 20 years. Vertigo, which she fostered, molded, and kept alive in the face of challenge and competition, all without adequate support from the guy who ran their marketing department at the time

Most certainly, Karen did not do this alone. She had a very talented staff, a staff she acquired and in many cases taught. She gathered an exceptionally gifted list of talent, and some of them would take a bullet for her. A couple people who otherwise spit on the ground every time DC Comics was mentioned would climb an active volcano for her.

In the process, Karen added greatly to the landscape of American comics and boldly took DC Comics into new directions. Unless you’ve been there, you cannot truly understand what a courageous and complicated undertaking that is. At the time DC was a corporation that was part of a larger corporation that was part of a Fortune 500 company. More recently DC has been part of a major motion picture studio that was part of a much larger Fortune 500 company. It’s the same company, only a lot bigger.

Like most astonishingly huge corporations, Time Warner’s omnipresent product is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation. Oh, sure, from time to time they’ll hire a few outside-the-box thinkers, particularly when they need a creative kick in the ass. But those of us who earn our livings outside of that box know all too well there’s a point when the corporation grows weary of being kicked in the ass. It flies in the face of their corporate culture. Or, as Mel Brooks famously said in Blazing Saddles, a Warner Bros movie, “Gentlemen! We’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs here!”

Karen survived all that. Not just because she was great at her job, although that probably helped at times. She survived it because of her force of will, by doing what’s right by the talent she employed both creatively and in business to the best of her ability, and tilting at that windmill of bureaucracy with an energy that would drain Miguel de Cervantes.

Loyalty doesn’t come out of a box. You have to earn it.

In the process, Karen moved a huge chunk of DC Comics into areas the stodgy company had never considered. For decades there was a DC look that was impregnable. It worked, but like all creative endeavors eventually it showed its age. Karen planted the seeds of Vertigo years before the Vertigo imprint itself was established and now, in some of the more worthy New 52 titles, you can see the impact of her labors on the DC Universe. I don’t know if she realized her work was an act of subterfuge at the time, but some of us certainly did.

For this, Karen Berger deserves to go down in American comics history as one of the medium’s most innovative forces. Karen, as a co-worker you were amazing to be around. I can hardly wait to see what you do next.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: Phantom Survivor

While we’re all busy celebrating the 49th anniversary of Doctor Who and the 50th anniversary of both Spider-Man and the James Bond movies, the daddy of heroic fantasy characters quietly turned 76 way back in February. Or, depending upon how you look at it, he turned 476.

The Phantom was the very first masked, costumed hero in comics, debuting in the pages of the many Hearst papers February 17, 1936. He wore a dark outfit – when the feature added a Sunday page, an unthinking engraver made the costume purple for some unknown reason and the color stuck. He fought piracy and other crimes and handed down his clothes, his weapons, his Skull Cave, his fortune and, most important, his legacy to his son. The current guy – most have been named Kit Walker – is the 21st. This cool concept predated Doctor Who by a generation.

One would think the locals were pretty stupid to believe this dude has been the same guy all these many years. Indeed, given the fact that the base for the Phantom’s stories is in Africa (originally, it was sort of India-ish), one might even think this concept was kind of racist. Creator Lee Falk’s liberal street-cred was impeccable and he built the myth on local folk-lore and the unimpeachable fact that criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot.

As time progressed we saw African civilization modernize as we continued to see its treasures and its history plundered by contemporary pirates and opportunist Europeans. Nonetheless, about 30 years ago I was having a conversation with the features editor of the Chicago Tribune who expressed astonishment that The Phantom polled highest among its black male readership. I told him he wasn’t reading the strip very closely.

What’s remarkable – astonishing, really – is the fact that The Phantom remains in the newspapers to this very day. This is a feat unmatched by Terry and The Pirates, Little Orphan Annie, Li’l Abner, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and just about every other continuity newspaper comic strip except Dick Tracy and Mandrake The Magician.

I should point out that Mandrake the Magician was created by Lee Falk as well… two years before The Phantom.

The original artist was Ray Moore; subsequent talent on the strip and on the comic books reads like a Who’s Who of comics: Carmine Infantino, Bill Lignante, Sy Barry, Joe Orlando, Luke McDonnell, Dave Gibbons, Dick Giordano, Don Newton, Jim Aparo, Alex Saviuk, Graham Nolan, Alex Ross, Paul Ryan, Eduardo Barreto, and Terry Beatty… to name but a few. Writers include Peter David, Mark Verheiden, Scott Beatty, Tom DeFalco, and Tony Bedard. Tony DePaul has been writing the strip for the past twelve years; he’s also written many of the comic book adventures as well. Nearly every major American comic book publisher had a turn in creating new adventures, and it remains a top-seller in Australia, Sweden, India and many other nations.

Currently, the dailies are being drawn by Paul Ryan and Terry Beatty – perhaps best known for his work on Ms. Tree – is the Sunday artist. Terry had the awesome responsibility of stepping into Eduardo Barreto’s shoes after Ed’s sudden death last year. He’s doing quite an admirable job.

I continue to be amazed by The Phantom’s enduring appeal. If your local paper isn’t carrying the feature (assuming you still have a local paper) you can read it at King Features’ excellent Daily Ink site, where they carry all of the current KFS strips, including Mandrake, as well as reprints of many of their classics, including The Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Buz Sawyer, and about a zillion others. It costs $19.99 a year to subscribe to the whole thing, and I doubt you can spend the same amount on a better mix of comics material.

Every time we read a costumed hero comic of any sort, we owe a debt of gratitude to Lee Falk, an amazingly gifted and singularly interesting man.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Holiday Gifts For Comics and Pop Culture Fans

I don’t know why they call today Black Friday. It sounds like a superhero version of Gulliver’s Travels, as published by DC or Marvel in the 1970s. And that might be the quickest digression we’ve had on ComicMix to date.

A bunch of the ComicMix columnists contributed a list of gift suggestions, all with snappy convenient links to Amazon for your shopping pleasure. Well, Mindy ran her list in her column last Monday; you’ve probably already read that but if not, click through in awe and wonder. Please note: I asked each contributor to include one item that they were directly involved in, so don’t think they’re pandering. That’s not necessarily the case.

John Ostrander suggests:

GrimJack: Killer Instinct 

Star Wars: Agent of the Empire Vol. 1 Iron Eclipse

Timothy and Ben Truman’s Hawken

Max Allan Collins’ Chicago Lightning: The Collected Short Stories of Nate Heller

Storm Front: Book 1 of the Dresden Files

And, a musical interlude, The Blue Nile: Hats

Martha Thomases recommends:

Larry Hama’s The Stranger (that’s the first of a three-volume Vampire fun-packed thriller in e-book format; Amazon will lead you to the other two)

Knits for Nerds:  30 Projects: Science Fiction, Comic Books, Fantasy, by Toni Carr

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf

Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland 

And a book Martha wrote with Fran Pelzman and Trina Robbins, Cute Guys:  All You Need To Know

Michael Davis recommends:

The Avengers movie in Blu-Ray, the two-disc set.

Watchmen

The Beatles Anthology

My Best Friend’s Wedding

And The Littlest Bitch, the not-children’s book the book Michael wrote with David Quinn and Devon Devereaux.

Emily S. Whitten suggests:

Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

Warren Ellis’s Iron Man: Extremis

Bill Willingham’s Fables

Fabian Nicieza’s Cable & Deadpool

Terry Pratchett’s Dodger

Stuart Moore’s Marvel Civil War prose novel 

Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man 

The Philip K. Dick Reader 

The Firefly Jayne’s Fighting Elves women’s tee

Blue Sun shirt 

The Britishcomedy Black Books  

Marc Alan Fishman teamed up with his fellow Unshaven boys to offer:

Crumb (the movie) (that was Marc’s pick)

Courtney Crumrin Volume 1: The Night Things  (that was Kyle Gnepper’s pick)

Witch Doctor, Vol 1: Under the Knife (Matt Wright’s pick)

And the whole group picks Samurai Jack – Season 1 “We owe so much of what Samurnauts are to this amazing series by Gendy Tartakovsky. And the performance by Phil Lamarr is nuanced and brilliant.”

On behalf of our friend Dennis O’Neil, I would like to recommend each and every item he’s recommended in the Recommended Reading portion of his weekly ComicMix column… and I also suggest when you’re at Amazon you check out his own billion or so books – you can’t go wrong with any of them. But, of course, particularly the ones I recommend at the end of this column.

And, finally, I recommend:

The Manhattan Projects, Vol. 1: Science Bad by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra

Judge Dredd: The Complete Brian Bolland  by John Wagner and (go figure)Brian Bolland

Avengers 1959 by Howard Chaykin

And, finally, The Question trade paperbacks, written by Dennis O’Neil, drawn by Denys Cowan, and edited by Ye Olde Editor. I linked the first of the series; Amazon will guide you to the rest.

Have a great shopping season, drive carefully, don’t lose your cool and start gunning down your fellow shoppers, and unless you start shooting tell ’em ComicMix sent you!

 

Mike Gold: Bite My Twinkie

Some 30 years ago DC and Marvel produced a series of ads featuring their characters (except Superman) in one-page adventures hawking Hostess products. That campaign ran forever, so when we relaunched E-Man at First Comics I thought it would be fun to get people to do Hostess ad parodies featuring their creator-owned characters. John Byrne did Rog-2000, Max Collins and Terry Beatty did Mike Mist, Lee Marrs did Pudge Girl Blimp, Reed Waller did Omaha The Cat Dancer, and so on.

A few years later I was at DC Comics where I edited (interm-ly; Marv Wolfman was moving to the west coast and had some health issues) Teen Titans Spotlight. Mike Baron wrote a story featuring The Hawk (of the original Hawk and Dove) wherein the lead character uttered the epitaph “Bite My Twinkie!” Whereas it was completely in character, one of DC’s top-most executives took great offense at this. In an act of astonishing courage, our young photocopy-kid – who later became a full editor – demanded said executive to point to his Twinkie. That, I felt, was more salacious than Baron’s original line.

Twinkies became a metaphor long ago. Those childhood memories are exceptionally powerful: we all grew up on Twinkies and Ding Dongs and Zingers and those of us who were baby boomers routinely rediscovered that ancient passion around 2 AM after giving the nation of Columbia a boost in their GNP. In fact, Chicago’s hippie district bordered a Dolly Madison thrift shop (before the company was bought out by Hostess) and, to the best of my knowledge, it was the only said thrift shop to have overnight hours. It was a great place to meet up with friends.

So it is no surprise that last week’s sudden closure of Hostess has traumatized so many people. No matter how unhealthy the product was, those childhood attachments more than compensated. Millions of us who hadn’t eaten much of that stuff in the past four decades felt a genuine loss. My daughter is upset about the prospect of having Wonder Bread-less peanut butter sandwiches and she’s right: it will not be the same.

Sure, there’s a handful of Food Nazis who have been quoted as saying “well, now people can eat vegetables and other healthy stuff.” These people are dangerous lunatics. People who think somebody who can no longer procure a Ho-Ho will now reach for broccoli should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery.

We’d like to think that in comics we’ve progressed past the nostalgia connection, and to a certain extent we most certainly have. But the power of those childhood memories is so great that it would be ridiculous to assume they are no longer relevant. I got over the loss of Ipana toothpaste, but our culture is worse off for the absence of Shinola. It is no surprise to me, at least, that we started making “serious” comics movies when those who grew up with comics as a vital part of their childhood lives started working behind the camera.

So when I went to the local Stop and Stop Saturday afternoon and noted how the joint was totally cleared out of Hostess/Drakes/Dolly Madison products, I chuckled. Loudly.

And then I went over to the comics rack to see what was still on sale.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: EC Comics Fight – T’aint The Teat, It’s The Humanity

Over at The Comics Journal website Michael Dean posted an article about how the Harvey Kurtzman Estate (represented by Denis Kitchen) and Al Feldstein filed to “regain” the copyrights to their EC Comics work.

Feldstein and the Bill Gaines estate reached an agreement – undisclosed, of course – but the Kurtzman situation is more complex. Kurtzman created Mad, he wrote it, he did the layouts for his artists and he drew a modicum of the material as well. But it’s Mad and Mad is owned by Time Warner. It’s a teevee show on one of Time Warner’s cablenets. The magazine might not be very profitable any longer, but the brand name most certainly is.

Be that as it may, I put the word “regain” in quotation marks because, well, Al and Harvey never had those copyrights in the first place. EC Publications and its sundry successors in interest always held them. And, as Dean and others point out, the exploitation value of the material has been well-plundered. But we’re saddled with a remarkably antiquated, unfair and pro-theft copyright law and I think Al and Denis deserve to get in the game.

But who really should own what? This is the sort of thing that gives compassionate thinkers migraines and earns lawyers their reputations. Lots of people contributed massively to the creation of this body of material, including a great many of the most accomplished writers and artists of the time. And, in my opinion, of any time.

Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Bernie Krigstein, Willie Elder, Al Williamson, John Severin – to name simply the first half-dozen creators to come to mind. They and their co-workers played as important a function in the creation of the EC legacy as Al and Harvey. Their work was not interchangeable. The then-current artist list of, say, Charlton or even St. John Comics could not have been dropped into their place – well, they could, but you wouldn’t have had EC Comics and I wouldn’t be writing this piece.

Then again, Bill Gaines took the financial risk. He selected and hired these people. He contributed to a great many of the stories, particularly those edited by Al Feldstein. Does he (or his estate) deserve to be chilled from the long-term rewards?

Maybe. Bill didn’t return any of the original art – but, then again, in those days nobody did. However, Bill kept and archived the original art, and decades later he had it auctioned off. When he did this, artists were getting their work back and those that had it returned whatever inventories of old art they had on hand. Bill did not do this. He gave the artist a taste of the revenue, at a price determined by him and him alone. The artists were unable to get their art back, to do with what they wish.

“Ethics” are tricky. The idea is to rectify wrongs without wronging others in the process. This is only somewhat easier than building a perpetual motion machine.

The conversation over at The Comics Journal is spirited, engaging and, in a few instances, amusingly over-the-top. These are three important elements in protracted online conversations. You might want to check it out.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: Why I Didn’t Cold-Cock Walter Simonson

There’s been a lot of high-quality books lately that reprint classic stories straight from the original. My friends at IDW do a lot of those, so they’ll be deeply depressed that I’m not going to be talking about one of theirs. And of course there’s no reason to believe a comp list wouldn’t change my attitude.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear; in this case, about two months ago. We’re at the vaunted Baltimore Comic-Con – in specific, the Harvey Awards dinner. Walter Simonson had an advance copy of Titan Books’ hardcover collection of the Alien movie adaptation, as done by Walter and the late and much, much missed Archie Goodwin. This book was the exception that proved my point that doing an absolutely first-rate adaptation of a movie is a near-impossibility.

The needs and treasures of the comic book medium are different from those of the movie medium: we have total control of time and space and we’ve got a special effects budget that is limited only by the collective minds of the producing talent. Movies, on the other hand, have going for them music, motion and the benefit of the shared-experience. Apples and oranges.

The Goodwin-Simonson Alien was one of those rare exceptions; perhaps the best of those exceptions. Either way, it was and is worthy of this new high-quality format.

So when Walter was showing off his advance copy like a proud papa before an audience of some of the most talented people in the artform (Mark Wheatley snuck me in), I thought about doing what every other red-blooded comic book fan would think of doing: cold-cocking the son of a bitch, stealing his book, jumping into my Ford Focus and driving back to Connecticut, laughing hysterically while leaving my daughter to fend for herself.

I maneuvered into position in the darkened room, avoiding Louise Simonson. While I’d take Walter on, I do not have what it takes to take on any person who could be so gifted and so nice after working for James Warren. Then, and only then, did I have an epiphany.

I’ve known Walter for decades and decades. We lived near each other on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, we played on the same volleyball team. We’ve dined hither and yon – he once drew a massive prehistoric landscape on the linen tablecloth at a Skokie Illinois restaurant in order to “illustrate” a point. I respect and admire Walter as one of the nicest human beings on the planet… with the exception of the volleyball courts.

But that’s not why I didn’t cold-cock Walter Simonson. Clearly I’ve gotten old, an aging lion gumming his dinner in the corner of the cage while the younguns are preening themselves for pussy.

No, I didn’t cold-cock him because I remembered I already ordered the book. So stealing his simply wasn’t worth the energy.

But it was worth the wait. Buy it before it sells out.

Alien : The Illustrated Story (Original Art Edition) by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson • Titan Books • 96 oversized pages • $75.00 retail

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil, who’s also a very nice guy

 

 

Mike Gold: Vote, Damn It!

Ever since we resumed our sundry weekly columns I’ve asked our writers to keep their focus on our popular culture in general and, as often as possible, on comics in specific. I have no problem linking the events of the day to our culture; indeed, that usually brings a nice contemporary perspective to our cheap thrills. At worse, it makes for a fun rant.

I commend our ComicMix columnists for their faithful cooperation and effort. And so, now, I’m going to violate my own edict. I’ve done this little rant ever since those hallowed days of the real First Comics three decades ago. Somehow, I even managed to get away with it at DC Comics. So, true to my Ashkenazi roots, I am going to maintain this tradition.

Next Tuesday is election day. In telling you this, I’m assuming your teevee set is broken. We get to pick us all of our Congresspeople, a third of our senators, a petulance of governors, a shitload of local officials, and, oh yes, a President of the United States. All are important in that each winner will have his or her foot on our necks and his or her hands in our pockets. We are given the holy right to choose our oppressors.

“But Mike,” you might say (if you’re being polite), “if they’re just going to oppress us, why should we bother?”

Because somebody is going to win. Good, bad, and otherwise – and it will be good, bad, and otherwise – as of this writing either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is going to win. You might think they are both jerks. Maybe so, but one of those jerks will be sworn in as President this coming January 20th. That’s an absolute fact.

And odds are overwhelming that the winner will be choosing the next member of the Supreme Court. Maybe the next two.

You know the Supreme Court. The folks who are the last word on all of our laws and who, for years now, have decided a great many things by a one-vote margin? Yeah, those folks. They even decide elections. Whoever wins the election next week is likely to bring about a fundamental change in our nation’s laws and procedures, one that will have an effect for decades and decades to come.

Are you opposed to abortion? How about our medical care laws? Corporations-as-people? Super-PACs? Incarceration of marijuana users? Next Tuesday is your big chance to put your left foot in, your left foot out, your right foot in, and shake the nation all about.

I do not care whom you vote for. Well, that’s a total lie; of course I do. But that’s not the point here. No matter whether you’re smart enough to agree with my politics or you’re some kind of stalking Neanderthal, this Tuesday get off your ass and vote!

If you decide not to do so, you lose your moral right to bitch. And that, dear friends, is among the greatest of all pleasures.

Next week, back to life’s more important matters.

Mike Gold is ComicMix’s editor-in-chief, and this was a bone fide editorial.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

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