Author: Mike Gold

Mike Gold: Hogan’s Weirdos

hogans-heroes-2We could spend the rest of this year debating which American teevee show has been the weirdest, but Hogan’s Heroes has got to make the top 10 list.

The high-concept: Hogan’s Heroes is the story of a group of Allied prisoners-of-war who operate a highly effective spy and sabotage operation from a bunker beneath their prison building during World War II. Okay, that’s kinda weird. It’s also kinda in bad taste. Its weirdness is abetted by several additional factors, not the least of which is… there’s some truth behind the laughs.

There really was a WWII POW named Robert Hogan who did time in a place called Stalag 13. He was Lt. Robert Steadham Hogan, a B24 pilot who was shot down on January 19, 1945 in while on a mission over Yugoslavia. Because he was an officer, Hogan was incarcerated in the Oflag 13 camp outside of Nuremberg because the Stalags were for enlisted men only. However, Oflag 13 was next door to Stalag 13, or, to be overly specific, Stalag 13D. He and his fellow prisoners had a contraband radio that was discovered by the Germans… but they were allowed to keep it because that’s how the Germans got their unfiltered news as well.

HOGAN'S HEROES, Bob Crane with thermos, lunchbox and comic book all product spinoffs from the show,Given that it was 1945, Hogan was a POW for a “mere” six months. The television show ran for six years, which, for you young ‘uns out there, was longer than the American participation in the War. Then again, Sgt. Rock fought that same conflict for about 35 years, give or take.

After the war, Hogan became a doctor in the Birmingham Alabama area. He enjoyed the teevee series, and, with his sons, met Bob Crane in 1966. However, the producers – obviously – maintain that all of this is a mere coincidence, albeit a fantastic coincidence.

Perhaps. But Hogan’s Heroes is weirder for other reasons as well.

Werner Klemperer, who played the notoriously bumbling commandant Col. Klink, fled Nazi Germany along with his father Otto, a famous orchestra leader in Germany. Werner also was classically trained, playing violin and piano and leading the Buffalo NY orchestra. Klink wasn’t Werner’s only Nazi role: he was a Nazi judge in the movie Judgment at Nuremburg, and he played the lead role in the movie Eichmann. According to IMDB, his last role was as the voice of Col. Klink in a 1999 episode of The Simpsons.

hogans-heroes-2-clipRobert Clary, who played Cpl. Louis LeBeau, was a French Jew (original name: Robert Max Widerman) who was incarcerated in the Nazi concentration camp at Ottmuth and was later sent to Buchenwald. Twelve other family members died in the camps. Like Klemperer, he had no problem performing in the Hogan’s Heroes series.

However, Leonid Kinskey did. He appeared as Russian POW Vladimir Minsk in the show’s pilot. When the show was picked up by CBS, Kinskey bailed. Upon reflection, he thought there was nothing funny about POW camps. He had a long and rich career in both movies and television, and is perhaps best known for his performance in Casablanca.

Finally, Hogan’s Heroes was so successful it fostered a Dell comic book of the same name. The artist on many issues was the co-creator of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and many other great comic books.

Yep. Steve Ditko drew Hogan’s Heroes!

Mike Gold: Our Greatest Ape

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You’ve probably seen the second Superhero Fight Club by now; if you haven’t and you’ve got four minutes to spare, go give this a click. It’s great fun, not necessarly part of The DC-CW continuity, and it brings Supergirl in to play with the boys. And Felicity, of course.

SPOILER ALERT! (I’ve always wanted to say that!) From this point forward, I’m going to write stuff that presumes you’ve seen Superhero Fight Club 2, although as spoilers go, I’ve already spoiled it with my choice of graphics and my headline. Sue me.

grodd-cwEasily, the coolest part of the short is the “surprise” appearance of Gorilla Grodd, who already has been established in The Flash teevee series. But, let’s face it, Gorilla Grodd usually is the coolest part of damn near everything he’s ever appeared in, dating back to his introduction in early 1959. I’m sure you’re aware of the common belief that, at least in the 1950s and 1960s, putting a gorilla on the cover of a comic book guaranteed higher sales. I’m sure you’re aware of this because I’m one of the wags who has spent the past several decades sharing that observation at every possible opportunity.

Of course I found Grodd amazing at the time of his introduction, in the second issue of the silver-age Flash, #106 (DC Comics didn’t have the auto-renumbering algorithm built into their reboot program way back in 1959). I was eight years old. The fact that John Broome and Carmine Infantino did one hell of a great comic book story helped a lot, and to put it in context Grodd came as a complete surprise to us at the time because he was not cover featured! It was the Pied Piper who on the cover. I realize this flies in the face of the “putting a gorilla on the cover of a comic book guaranteed higher sales” theory, but damn, you open the comic book and there’s this big gorilla frying The Flash with “deadly thought waves.” By the time I got to the Pied Piper story, that villain was – please forgive me – an also-ran.

Editor Julius Schwartz knew he was on to something. He usually was those days, but on page 15 of “The Menace of the Super-Gorilla” he captioned “In the next issue of The Flash – another Super-Gorilla thriller!”

However…

Grodd was not on the cover of that second appearance, either. The cover was all about some guy who could outrun The Flash by running backwards. Where’s the damn super-gorilla?

Right there on page one. On the final story page, Barry Allen is reading the newspaper and hoping he never sees Grodd again. Fat chance, Barry. Julie ratted it out in the last caption, stating the smart ape would return “in a forthcoming issue.”

And there Grodd was. In the very next issue, #108. And, for the third time in three issues, he was not on the cover. After that I’d have an attitude problem too!

flashgrodd1For the record, our great ape didn’t return for another seven issues. The Mirror Master came back in the following issue, and Wally West was introduced in the issue after that. Grodd didn’t make it back into The Flash until #115, September 1960…

… and he wasn’t on the cover of that issue either!

Gorilla Grodd didn’t make it to the cover until #127. By that point, Jay Garrick had been brought back, the Elongated Man, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, the Trickster and several other important rogues were introduced, and The Flash clearly was the most exciting comic book on the racks at the time.

Although by then The Flash was in for a run for the money. A few months earlier we saw the debut of the Marvel Universe. The Fantastic Four encountered their first ape villain – three of them, in fact – in 1963.

And they didn’t appear on the cover, either.

Mike Gold Has Seen The Future

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Back when I was a waddling comic book fan, I loved all those little spy cameras that Doctor Doom had floating around the planet. I figured that was the source of his obvious wealth – he sold them to other evil-doers such as, say, Haliburton. It titillated my sense of wonder, which always is a wonderful experience.

Technology has progressed exponentially in the ensuing half-century, and today we have so many spy cameras that last week’s unsuccessful bombings in Manhattan were so well-monitored the authorities were able to see the bomber, identify him with speed and efficiency that would have been impressed Felicity Smoak, and bust his ass within hours. Not only that, but other “security” cameras found the other bomb he placed four blocks uptown – below Neal Adams’ studio, no less – and they saw the thieves who stole the luggage the bomb was placed in, leaving the bomb in the dumpster where it was placed.

I love New York, but that’s not the purpose of my rant today.

Cars used to be a major part of our popular culture. Back when Doctor Doom was still in the spy cam biz, my friends and I could identify passing cars a block away from our school playground.

To a considerable extent the car culture remains part of our American fabric – even though there’s only about a half-dozen different looks and each are changed significantly only when some executive decides he has to keep his phony-baloney job. And now, Doctor Doom-like technology is deeply imbedded in our cars.

All sorts of outfits – Tesla, Apple, Google, and the more common car companies – have driverless cars well in development. Prototypes already are on the street, and Uber is experimenting with driverless car pickup service. An aside: If Uber (et al) is making the taxi driver redundant, Uber is even more rapidly making the Uber driver redundant.

Personally, I enjoy driving… probably too much. I’ve driven between New York and Chicago so many times I’ve named each tree along I-80 in Pennsylvania. I’d drive to Hawaii if I could hit critical speed before I hit the Pacific. So I doubt I’m the type of person “they” have in mind for the driverless car, although I’m not getting any younger and neither are my eyeballs.

The problem is, nor is anybody else. When it comes to new tech, I am not a naysayer and I am not saying nay now. I’d just like to point one out one small fact.

Minolta DSCIf you’ve ever driven at or below the speed limit on any of our interstate highways, you have been subjected to more middle fingers than Mr. Carter had little liver pills (yeah; even I am too young for that line). We love to get where we’re going as fast as possible. The police count on it, particularly in troubled times when tax receipts are lower than the needs of the municipal budget… or, in other words, all the time.

It stands to reason that, like some rental cars, driverless cars will be regulated to meet but never exceed the speed limit. That will mean two things: we will get to the pizza place five minutes later, and our municipal budgets will go to hell.

I don’t think your average American will stand for this. Moreover, it will be extremely dangerous as long as speed-regulated driverless cars have to share the road with human drivers who possess the tendency towards lead-footedness.

On the other hand, much of our population lives or works in areas that really have run out of room for highway expansion. Regulating everybody’s speed will allow for more cars and might even result in an improvement in driving times during “rush” hour.

I think of driverless cars as the home version of NASCAR… with the possibility of the same results.

 

Mike Gold: The Real Monster

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h-h-holmes-imageI was going to write about comics again this week; I usually do, and I’ve got all sorts of notes on a topic that can wait a week or two. ComicMix purports to proselytize about geek culture – or, as my fellow wordsmith Ed Catto calls it, “Geek Culture” – for the broader comic book fan audience. Glenn Hauman calls us the pop culture Huffington Post. I call us the Huffington Post from hell.

There’s nothing geekier than monsters, and our culture has sported quite a few real monsters. In this regard, perhaps you think of Hitler. He’s our go-to real life monster, a paranoid drug addict who earned his place as the 20th Century’s greatest metaphor. Maybe you think of Stalin, who was quite the monster even before he sided with Hitler, which was before he opposed Hitler.

No, today I wish to talk about the Greatest American Monster, dubbed The Torture Doctor. In fact, David Franke wrote a book about the guy in 1975 and he called it The Torture Doctor. Of course I’m referring to “Doctor” H.H. Holmes, often referred to as the first serial killer. That is not true; the first serial killer predeceased Holmes by a dozen millennia; his name roughly translates into Oog, and I’m sure his fellow homo habilises didn’t care much for him. But, I digress.

hh-holmes-murder-castle-1If a meticulous sequential mass murdering seducing charlatan swindler can be thought of as cool, Holmes was indeed that. Damn, his real name wasn’t even H.H. Holmes. It was Herman Webster Mudgett, but he was cool enough to understand that wasn’t the name for the ages. H.H. Holmes was much more cool.

Born at the onset of the Civil War, Mudgett graduated from the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, acquiring skills that he would soon put to bad use. He moved to Chicago in 1886, adapted the more alliterative name and took a job as a pharmacist and errand boy at Elizabeth Holton’s drugstore at the corner of Wallace and West 63rd Street. When Holton’s husband died H.H. bought the operation from the widow, who then disappeared.

Three years later and three miles to the east, it was announced that Chicago had won the rights to the 1893 World’s Fair. They beat out New York; the term “the windy city,” applied locally since 1876, was immortalized by the distraught editor of the New York Sun, a one-time Chicagoan named Charles A. Dana. “Don’t pay any attention to the nonsensical claims of that windy city. Its people could not build a World’s Fair even if they won it.” Dana was mistaken. Not only did it build the truly dazzling World’s Fair, but it gave Holmes the idea of buying the block-long vacant lot across the street from his drug store and building a hotel. He called it the World’s Fair Hotel.

Clearly, he one of the most devious contractors in history. Holmes had an idea, a plan for the hotel. Only one person might have known the full plan – his subcontractors were limited to building various sections of the building with no one builder knowing the totality of the effort. Eventually the guy who acted as H.H.’s associate, Benjamin Pitezel, wound up prematurely deceased… as did his children.

tribune-holmes-300x341-8084818Dubbed “The Castle” due to its enormous size, it was later discovered the joint was littered with secret soundproofed airtight rooms, trapdoors, and chutes that led to the basement. The hotel mostly employed young women and mostly catered to young out-of-town women who were visitors to, or workers at, the Fair. There were secret gas lines, a special second floor hanging chamber, rooms for suffocation and starvation, and hidden passageways to the basement where many skeletons were preserved and sold to medical schools. The hotel had lots of modern conveniences, including two massive furnaces and handy pits of lime and corrosive acid.

H.H. Holmes was a man with a plan. Several plans, in fact, that seemed to address his sundry lusts, his desire for money, and a general distain for the fairer sex. He was also quite an experienced insurance swindler and, eventually, he and the three Pitezel children left town for Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toronto, Philadelphia and Boston. By then the Pinkertons had been hired by the insurance interests and they tracked the Torture Doctor down, where he was arrested and ultimately convicted of Pitezel’s murder.

Holmes confessed to 27 murders, although only nine were confirmed. It is generally believed he murdered upwards of 200 people, mostly women, mostly blonde. He married some of them, but that was just a formality – one we refer to as “bigamy.”

Holmes was hanged at the Philadelphia County Prison in May 1896, at the age of 34. Amusingly, execution witnesses said Holmes was hanged improperly and slowly strangled to death for 20 minutes. By this time The Castle had endured a massive fire; two men had been seen running away from the building just ahead of several explosions. The building was rehabbed and lived until 1938. Today, the site is home to the neighborhood post office and, in several weeks, a Whole Foods supermarket will be opening a block away.

Holmes’ story was immortalized in Erik Larson’s best-selling novel The Devil in the White City. Ostensibly, Leo DiCaprio will be playing Holmes in long-in-development motion picture. I gather Johnny Depp was unavailable.

The Castle endured for three decades, but here’s the real mystery. Pretty much ever since then, the Englewood neighborhood has been one of the most dangerous areas in Chicago – even today, with the city’s notoriously high murder rate, Englewood is one of two areas where most of these murders occur.

Doctor Holmes left quite a legacy. Doctor Holmes was a genuine monster.

Mike Gold: Moore Than You’ll Ever Know

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When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do • William Blake

jerusalemLast Thursday, the Guardian – last real newspaper on Earth – carried a story by Sian Cain revealing Alan Moore was retiring from comic books. I guess Alan was promoting his William Blake-inspired novel, Jerusalem in a unique manner.

Being a professional cynic, my initial thought was “hadn’t he done that already?” No, Alan has quite publicly left the services of various and sundry publishers – DC Comics, Marvel, IPC – because he is a man of principle, and I mean that with the highest respect. And a reading of the piece reveals he hasn’t double-locked the door behind him, telling Cain “I may do the odd little comics piece at some point in the future, (but) I am pretty much done with comics.”

That saddens me, as I’m part of the rather formidable horde of readers that feels Moore is about as good as it gets. His current work in Cinema Purgatorio, one of the most interesting anthology comics I’ve seen since the debut of 2000 A.D., meets that standard. But I totally understand his point about what superhero comics mean to him and why it’s time to move on, and it is simply the rock-solid truth:

“The superhero movies – characters that were invented by Jack Kirby in the 1960s or earlier – I have great love for those characters as they were to me when I was a 13-year-old boy. They were brilliantly designed and created characters. But they were for 50 years ago. I think this century needs, deserves, its own culture. It deserves artists that are actually going to attempt to say things that are relevant to the times we are actually living in. That’s a longwinded way of me saying I am really, really sick of Batman.”

alan-moore-2Damn, Alan. That’s right on the money. Including that last bit.

I’d said Alan Moore is a man of principle. In some ways, his behavior reminds me of Steve Ditko, another important comics creator who stands up for his beliefs. And like Steve, this behavior has bewildered some of his fans, promoted criticism well before the Internet made that totally defatigable, and even caused people to doubt his sanity because he wouldn’t simply take the money and run. I don’t have to agree with all or even most of Moore’s views to respect his stand, and I say the same about Ditko. Hell, I’ll say the same thing about me – I change my mind from time to time. I like to think of that as keeping an open mind, but it’s also the result of a short attention span.

Nonetheless, in this time of massive political turbulence in both the United Kingdom and the United States, Alan Moore’s most important contribution to our shared culture is that he has always been the real thing. If he were running for office… well, I might move if he won, but I think he would as well. However, unlike those who actually do run for office, I’m absolutely certain I know where he stands.

Alan is a man of principle.

I welcome to see his future works that he will be doing because they are outside of his comfort zone. But as far as his comics work is concerned, well, Alan Moore, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

Mike Gold: The Comic Con Can-Can

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This weekend, a whole bunch of us ComicMixers will be making our annual trip to the Baltimore Comic-Con. For the record, that’s Martha Thomases, Adriane Nash, Evelyn Krite, G.D. Falksen, and myself. Glenn Hauman and Robert Greenberger  will be in New York at a big ol’ Star Trek convention, Emily S. Whitten will be at Dragon Con, and John Ostrander will be at several Michigan theaters watching Suicide Squad again. Glenn, Robert and Emily also are regulars at BCC, but this year the show shares Labor Day weekend with these other two east coast shows.

Baltimore ArchieYes, life is truly one long and never ending comic book convention. I’ve been going to the “big” ones (big as relevant to its time) since 1968. That’s 48 years, which is longer than most of today’s convention-goers have been alive. That’s about five years longer than KISS has been together, and, like former comics fanzine contributor Gene Simmons, I have long grown incapable of distinguishing between shows.

I’ve done fewer shows this year than I have in decades. That is, in part, a coincidence, but it’s also symptomatic of burn-out. I’m thinking that if I’m still alive in two years, I’ll make it a full half-century by sitting in front of some massive convention center and burn a copy of Superman #1 (the 1938 version) in protest.

And what would I be protesting? Well, to me that rarely matters but in this case I would be publically mourning the lack of comic books at these massive comic book shows. I’m a comic book fan, damnit, and the rest of you should just get off my lawn.

That’s why I go to the Baltimore Comic-Con, and in this I think I speak for my less jaded cohorts. Despite its size and its longevity, the Baltimore show remains focused on comic books. Sure, there are media guests and sure, there’s a lot of cosplay and gaming and such, but the love for comic books and the desire to meet up with others with similar affections permeates every aisle of the show. Kudos to Mark Nathan and his experienced and gifted staff.

As usual, ComicMix will be assaulting the Insight Studios booth – that’s booth #118 – once again proving that Mark Wheatley is the nicest, kindest, and most emotionally tolerant person in the time-space continuum.

Dredd BollandComics as a genre have never done better, but this is entirely because of the flock of movies and television adaptations. The average sales of the traditional comic book sucks and sucks badly, even though such low sales have been balanced somewhat by trade paperbacks, hardcover books, and electronic editions. These days, much of the fun comes from the endless parade of toys and merchandising tie-ins that dominate book stores and convention aisles. If you’re a Harley Quinn completest, your head is going to explode long before you run out of space to store all that stuff.

I still meet lots of people who have never been to a comic book convention and who are anxious to go to one of the bigger shows just to see what the hubbub is about. I envy these folks; that initial sense of wonder is a wonderful feeling.

It can also be overwhelming. We had actor/comedian Margaret Cho set up for an interview at the San Diego Comic Con several years ago. She showed up early (there goes another Hollywood stereotype) and, after scoping out the room, Margaret started to take on the appearance of an agoraphobic. I walked Margaret around the vicinity of our table and made small talk while pointing out the wacky stuff we encountered. That worked: funny appreciates the funny, and there’s lots of that at your average comics show.

I completely understood this feeling. Chester Gould was guest of honor at one of our Chicago Comicons and the turn-out at his booth was intense. Chet declined to returned to the show on Saturday and Sunday. And before he drew a single line for any American publisher, Brian Bolland was convinced nobody would have heard about him. I told him Judge Dredd was bigger here than he thought, and Titan Books had just come out with their first reprint trade – entirely of Brian’s work. As it was with Chet Gould, the turn-out at his booth was intense and Brian opted to stay in his hotel room until he could adjust to the love and enthusiasm of the western hemisphere.

WildcatBut the best part is watching the faces of the small children who are brought there by their fan parents, usually dressed up as the cutest superhero in the universe. They hadn’t had so much visual stimulation in their lives; clearly, they were having great fun. But I strongly suspect that, like Margaret Cho and Brian Bolland, they get overwhelmed and retreat to their portable hidey-hole: napping in the stroller.

Rarely have I heard a small child continuously bawling at a comic book show.

48 years is a long time to do anything, but of course the opportunity to meet up with my friends and to talk with the fans and sign some books and tell some stories is irresistible. I am reminded that first-generation comics pros such as Jerry Robinson and Irwin Hasen regularly attended comics shows until they stopped walking the Earth.

You know, I totally get that.

Mike Gold: Holy Geriatrics, Batman!

Batman 66 Blu-Ray

Bear with me once again as we step into the “borrowed” WABAC machine to visit another era – one fraught with its own cultural peccadillos, its own world-view, and its own sensibilities.

You’ve probably heard that WB is extending their never-ending line of direct-to-disc DC-based animated features this fall to include a new, original, and undoubtedly awesome story set in the world of the 1966 Batman teevee show. In order to do this effectively they needed to procure the services of the sadly few surviving series stars, so they wisely put Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar in a recording studio to belt out their performances as Batman, Robin and Catwoman-the-first, respectively.

None found this a new experience. West has been voicing all sorts of stuff – most notably, Family Guy, although he returned to Gotham City in several of the subsequent animated Batman teevee series. Ward voiced Robin in numerous animated shows, and Newmar voiced Catwoman in the Arkham Asylum video game. She also played Martha Wayne to Adam West’s Thomas Wayne in The Brave and The Bold. And good for them; I’m glad they’re still around and still working.

But, wait. Let’s take that stolen borrowed WABAC and zot on down to January 12, 1966, the day the original live-action Batman series debuted. ABC promoted it heavily, stoking up the crowds to a fevered pitch with shots of sundry stars in action and of the greatest teevee car ever built. “People” were awaiting that debut with great curiosity while “comics fans” were looking for entertainment and validation. Many comics fans at the time felt they received neither.

The show was a joke. A sitcom in the classic “Hi Honey I’m Home” sense of the term. I enjoyed it, although my friends did not. I was a big fan of comedian/actor Frank Gorshin, and he was brilliant as The Riddler. I also enjoyed Burgess Meredith as The Penguin, both Newmar and Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, and Victor Buono as absolutely everything he ever did anywhere. And the show was funny – unfortunately, before too long we had seen everything they could offer and Batman the Phenomenon grew boring.

But not before the mid-summer debut of the wonderful movie version, which offered us all four main villains and a slew of fabulous toys (to quote a Joker of another mother) and a decent story, written by the teevee show’s developer, Lorenzo Semple Jr. Remember that name.

jujubes-theater-boxI think the reason why so many of my fellow comics fans of the time disliked – well, make that hated – the teevee series was because it was too close to the comic books. Not the Julie Schwartz-edited books of the time, but the Jack Schiff run that preceded it. Julie took over in 1964, around the time the teevee show started pre-production. Still, Julie did heroic work in restoring Batman to its historical glory, and this new… sitcom… seemed to undermine that effort.

Case in point: Around 1980 I was editing a magazine called Video Action and I pulled from my mini-horde of comics friends to write for the magazine. Marv Wolfman, he of enormous and well-earned comics fame, reviewed the movie Flash Gordon – a decent adaptation of the classic comics strip, except for the actors who played the male and female leads (yeah, that’s a problem). Marv started out with a condemnation of the movie’s writer, the aforementioned Lorenzo Semple Jr., as the man who ruined Batman. To be fair, Marv handled all that with his usual laser-like wit and affable charm, but he made it clear that he didn’t want to be invited to any dinner parties that Semple might attend.

That was then, and this is now (and so is the next moment; but I digress). Baby boomers love to talk about how great rock and roll was back “in our day,” but a lot of the most popular stuff heard on the radio sucked and we-all condemned it. But as both we and the music aged, we’d hear those tunes on the car radio and we’d find ourselves singing along.

I think, so it is with Batman 1966. It’s part of our childhood, our kids think it kinda ridicules our childhood and they like that, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to see the intended humor in the series when you contrast that approach with the almost psychopathic Batman we’ve seen over the past two decades. As an unintentional parody of these more “serious” times, the 1966 show can be kind of fun.

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders is due to be released on home video in mid-October and I’ll probably see it. It won’t get the same reception that the 1966 theatrical received when I went to see it at a Saturday matinee filled with 11 year olds, but that’s because it’s less likely that the younger movie-watchers will be hurling lethal Jujubes at one another.

But, of course, I’m not speaking for Marv here. To the best of my knowledge, Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders is not based upon a script by Lorenzo Semple Jr.

 

Mike Gold on Insanity and the Creative Process

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Are all creative people insane?

By “creative people,” of course I mean writers, artists, musicians, movie makers, actors of all types… the whole enchilada of people who wake up – sometimes in the morning – and face a blank piece of paper or an empty stage or studio and have tasked themselves with filling that space up in some interesting and maybe entertaining way.

There’s a simple answer to this question: yes, they are.

If you’re not part of the creative enclave, and from time to time most people are, you might think my answer is a bit cruel. Not in the least. That blank slate is the beginning of the creative process. It’s usually starts as a solitary experience, a person with his or her guitar, or script, or computer or drawing board. That artist might have an idea where to start and/or maybe where to finish, but working out the details and polishing the nuances in a way that communicates to the world at large is a draining experience. It is not unlike severe constipation: you’ve got to get it out. Hopefully, the end result isn’t shit.

It’s not unusual for a creative type to be kind of awkward in social settings. They don’t live in the real world; they only visit it when time allows. And many are in a state of arrested development. I like to tell people I’m immature, but I’m immature for a living. As I have aged I have learned how to fake adultness, but it’s only a mask. It’s my inner-eight-year old who pays the rent.

When my daughter was a lot younger, I gave her my sage advice about dating – not that she was obligated in any way to follow it, or even likely to do so. We all need to make our own mistakes and learn from those mistakes. And if we ignore said advice and things work out anyway, we love to indulge in the most basic of human emotions: the urge to turn to the advisor and sing “nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.”

So I “suggested” there were three types of men she probably shouldn’t date. The first was rock and roll drummers. That guy in the Muppets, Animal, isn’t just based on real life. He is real life and he reflects the impact of the creative process quite effectively. The second was hockey players. That should be self-evident. By the time they’ve left the frozen fiords for the big show, they’ve already taken too many pucks to the head. It’s a living.

The third was comic book artists.

Not for the reason you might think. Yes, some – many – are batshit. That’s not a disqualifying factor: you’ve got to be batshit to face that blank slate every day. No, it’s because comic book artists have no life. They chase deadlines all day long. Their idea of a vacation is to go to a comic book convention, sit behind a table for three days and sketch Scooby-Doo, Batman, and/or costumed characters with ludicrously proportioned body bits.  Yep, it’s a living.

For those creators who have family, there is at best a serious disconnect between their vocation and their parental need to know their child is going to be financially and emotionally secure. In response, many young creators who are approaching their college years get inwardly violent every time they hear the phrase “have a degree to fall back on,” as if their failure as a creator was preordained.

The problem is, the odds are against the creator. For every Buddy Guy or Joan Jett or Eric Clapton out there, there are hundreds of even more skilled guitar players who never get out of the garage. Every young creator knows this. The conflict between the creative compulsion and the need to have a meal and a bed can drive you crazy.

So the next time you see an artist of any stripe in any medium, show some sympathy and some taste. If you don’t understand the nature of their game… just accept it. The world would be impossibly boring without them.

 

Mike Gold: Do YOU Collect Comic Books?

Phil SeulingI endured another birthday last week. This is not a big deal, I’ve had a lot of them. Of course, I never get tired of my daughter fussing over me and preparing a dinner of unimaginable excellence, but there’s a point in our lives when such an occasion prompts a review of random elements of our past. Perhaps because my birthday is smackdab in the middle of the heaviest part of convention “season,” this year my thoughts turned to the evolution of the comic book store.

The comic book store evolved from those strange stores that sold old magazines and/or were “white elephant” shops. They hardly are of recent vintage: America’s first nationally-known serial killer, H.H. Holmes, murdered dozens if not hundreds of people in his specially-built World’s Fair Hotel that had secret passageways and trap doors and sealed ersatz gas chambers. One of the few shops on the ground floor of his palace was leased to a back-issue magazine store. This happened back in 1893; the hotel was conveniently located about a mile from the blockbuster World’s Columbian Exposition. Many future shops were located in less comfortable neighborhoods.

There weren’t any comic books in 1893, but the concept of back issue comic book retailing came onto its own in the post-Wertham late 1950s. These places paved the way to what we might think of as the “comic book store.”

I say “might think” because those original comic book stores only sold back-issue comics. There were few media chachkas. After a while several cut deals with their local independent magazine distributors to get new comics in through the back door, but if a local drug or candy store complained the new comics rack in the old comics store disappeared.

New York Comic Art Convention Program 1969Then Phil Seuling happened. Phil was the lynchpin to many very important events in the evolution of comic book fandom. He started selling old comics in 1958; ten years later he hosted the first New York Comic Art Convention. In those sainted days of yore, comicons offered fans guests, panels, some movies, and a large room full of people standing behind card tables with a mass of sometimes-organized old comics, filed in all sorts of file boxes that, at the time, were not specifically manufactured for that purpose. Today, those dealers look exactly the same as they did in 1968, only older.

People came to these shows to fill in the holes in their collections while socializing with similar addicts. Eventually some of them mated, but I digress. Long-box diving became a ballet, one that also played out in those comic book shops in the low-rent neighborhoods.

Then Phil Seuling happened again. In 1972, Phil made arrangements with the comic book publishers of the time (Marvel was a bit late to commit, but only a bit) to sell brand-new comics directly to comic book shops through his East Coast Seagate Distributing company. They started out in increments of 25 and Phil said they were selling to “comic book clubs” to avoid pissing off the legitimate retailers (ha!), but the comic book medium had forever changed.

Both publishers and product grew like Topsy, and eventually some smartass revealed the “true” cost to retailers in keeping, maintaining and selling back-issues. It was a very labor-intensive vocation, at least for most retailers, and before long they needed space to sell more profitable new comics, toys, tapes, costumes, prints, cards, and, of course, POGs.

World's Fair HotelSo old comics became harder to find. No problem; the publishers were thrilled to help those who actually wanted to read their wares by reprinting those stories in books – the kind with spines. These had the added advantage of being salable in “traditional” book stores (you know, like Borders) and on that new “Amazon” thing.

Today I walk through the convention floors – they used to be called “huckster rooms” – and through comic book stores and I see a vastly diminished presence of the back issues that put fans and fandom in business. I don’t necessarily miss them, no more than I miss those great old buggy whip factories. But it makes me wonder if fans still collect old comics for the purpose of reading.

Sure, graded and entombed comic books abound, but I have no doubt that someday somebody is going to disinter one of those vacuum-sealed copies of Action Comics #3 graded at 5.8 and valued into six figures and discover the guts of Planet Terry #7.

Yep. That screaming sound you just heard came out of the guts of a couple dozen of my good friends who possess innumerable sealed rarities.

Time marches on, and I’m okay with that as long as it swiftly marches across the backside of Donald Trump. But, yeah, there’s another habit that goes as we age. It’s called “Hey, kids, get off of my lawn!”

 

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