Author: Mindy Newell

Mindy Newell: Ain’t No Cure For The Summertime Apocalypse

transperceneigeIn this last of meeting places
/ We grope together
/ And avoid speech
/Gathered on this beach of the tumid river• The Hollow Men • T.S. Eliot

Yesterday, Mike and Martha went to the movies in New York City to see Captain America’s Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and a host of international stars in Snowpiercer, a post-apocalyptic movie based on the 1983 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacque Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette. It’s been generating a lot of buzz here in the States while having already earned, according to Entertainment Weekly, $80 million in the overseas market. (EW profiles the film this week in an apocalyptic-themed issue – along with the cover story of the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, due in 2015). I didn’t go because I had already penciled in some Grandma time with baby Meyer on my calendar, and although a story of the remnants of humanity careening around the Earth in a train sounds right up my summer movie alley – environmental disaster brought, politics and class warfare, and some excellent visual effects – visiting with my grandson, who is already nine months old – almost a year? Already? – is a no-brainer when it comes to Mindy’s afternoon delights on a fine early summer day.

So hopefully next time, okay, gang?

Anyway, reading the “doomsday in the movies” issue of EW while sipping on my breakfast tea and inspired me to tell you about some of my favorite “end of everything” about all the great movies and television shows that have centered on the destruction of us and/or the Earth and which ones of them are my favorites.

Top of the list in making me feel true dread: On The Beach.

Originally a novel by British author Nevil Shute, written after he had emigrated to Australia and published in 1957, it is the story of people living in and around Melbourne and how they deal with the coming, inescapable annihilation of the human race as the radioactive fallout from a total nuclear war in the northern hemisphere a year earlier inexorably expands to cover the globe, slowly drifting across the equator and into the southern reaches of the Earth. (I always wondered where the title On The Beach came from; thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that it refers to a Royal Navy phrase that means “retired from the Service,” which is very apropos as the main character is a U.S. Captain in the submarine service who is co-opted into the remains of the Royal Navy fleet. It also refers to T.S. Eliot’s poem and the lines quoted above.) The book was adapted into a 1957 film written by John Paxton, directed by Stanley Kramer, and which starred Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins, along with British and Australian actors, and Shute’s story of hope mating with despair to give birth to fatalism is brilliantly enacted.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, the movie from which the phrase “pod-people” was born, is based on Jack Finney’s 1954 The Body Snatchers. It was adapted twice, first in 1958 and then twenty years later in 1978. I like both films, but I prefer the original, which starred Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, and was directed by Don Segal, which, while differing from Finney’s novel, is much more faithful. In the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, an alien invasion is taking place – people are being replaced with doppelgangers devoid of any human emotion or individuality. An allegory of paranoia in the post-WWII years about – pick one: (1) conformity; (2) Stalin, Soviet Russia, Mao-Tse Tung, China and communism in general; (3) dehumanization and isolation; and (4) McCarthyism (a bit of irony here in that Kevin McCarthy, who plays the heroic local doctor in the film, has the same last name as the onerous Joseph McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin and the instigator of the notorious hunt for communists and other “disloyal” Americans in the government and the U.S. Army.

The Andromeda Strain: Released in 1971 and based on Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel of the same name, it is one of the first stories to deal with the danger of out-of-control viruses and/or bacteria, although in both the book and the movie the deadly microscopic organism is alien in origin. In it a team of government doctors and scientists race to discover a means to stop the spread of a virus brought Earth by a crashed satellite. So far the only survivors are an elderly man and an infant. The thing that is scarily prophetic about this film is that we, the human race, us, are currently creating our own super-bugs by the insistent and pandemic use of antibiotics in everything from the food we eat to the dishwashing liquid we use to clean the plates we eat from. Combine that with the lack of new R & D by Big Pharma (not one of them is developing any new antibiotics or anti-virals to fight the increasingly resistant strains of bacteria and viruses prevalent around the globe) because they’d all rather make quick gains on the stock market exchanges producing new erectile drugs, and we’re not going to need an extraterrestrial bug to kill us all.

And finally (at least for this column):

“You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!””

Yes. Planet Of The Apes.

In 1968 I went with my boyfriend to the DeWitt Theatre in Bayonne to see a movie with a very weird title, but my parents had encouraged us because Charlton Heston was in it and because both had read the book by Pierre Boulle, who had also written The Bridge on the River Kwai, which had been made into a (now-classic) Oscar-winning film.Not really knowing what to expect, Michael and I walked out of the theatre two hours later with mouths agape.

Everybody knows the story, and of course since the debut of the original film the whole idea of a “planet of the apes” has been derailed into a cheesy franchise, a couple of really lousy remakes, and (I presume) a steady paycheck of royalties for Roddy McDowall until his death in 1998.

Because of this, the impact of the original has largely become forgotten in the mists of celluloid history, but, let me tell you, folks, that final scene, with Charlton Heston collapsed on the shore of a dead sea in front of a beached, half-buried Statue of Liberty still bravely holding her torch high above her starred tiara, banging his fists into the ground in total shock and hopelessness and anguish…

It’s a killer.

 

Mindy Newell: Feeling The Excitement

X-Men“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”  — Maya Angelou

Don’t you love getting excited and worked up about movies that you can’t wait to see or television shows that you can’t wait to watch or comics that you can’t wait to read?

You know what I mean. I remember reading everything I could get my hands on about Star Wars, especially in Starlog magazine – that’s for you, Bob Greenberger. (I also remember being incredibly pissed coming home from work that May 25, 1977 to find that my then-husband, Steven, had gone to see Star Wars with his friends while I was stuck at work, and then incredibly happy and excited because he said that he would go see it again. Immediately. And out we went.) I remember standing on what seemed an endless line three years later and worrying that we wouldn’t get in to see The Empire Strikes Back. And I remember the insanity that led me to taking 3 ½ year-old Alixandra to an 11 a.m. showing of Return Of The Jedi because I couldn’t wait to see it and I didn’t want to go to the movies alone. (She was remarkably good, too; didn’t have to bribe her with candy…much.)

I remember reserving a copy of Crisis On Infinite Earths #1 at my local comic book store (now unfortunately defunct) and still worrying that it wouldn’t be there when I got finally got there. Yes, I know that I was freelancing at DC at that time, but I didn’t want to wait for my freelancer’s pack, and, besides, I liked supporting the shop. I remember when Alan Moore took over Saga Of The Swamp Thing and I read his first issue (“The Anatomy Lesson,” Saga of the Swamp Thing #21, February 1984) not because I was into shambling muck monsters, but because Karen Berger was my editor at the time and she was raving over it. Then the time between issues seemed not a month of waiting, but years of impatience.

Do I still feel that excitement?

Sadly, these days…

Not so much.

It isn’t that there aren’t movies and TV shows that excite me; I think it’s a product of being older and being jaded and knowing that if I miss X-Men: Days Of Future Passed, for example, in the theater – and no, I haven’t yet seen it – I will be able to watch it in a few short months courtesy of Netflix or Amazon Prime or iTunes. And certainly the price of one movie ticket these days also holds me back. And I hate going to the movies alone; for me part of the joy of going to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture or any of the Star Wars movies – well, the first three, anyway – is the communal experience.

One of the best times I’ve ever had in a movie theatre was back in the 90s, when I was working at Marvel full-time. A whole bunch of us – Mark Gruenwald among them – went uptown to the Museum of Television and Radio on W.52nd St. to see a showing of two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation about time travel: Yesterday’s Enterprise and Cause And Effect. It was absolute heaven watching them in a roomful of ST geeks who were my friends, and it was absolutely joyful to talk about them afterwards.

But these days I’ve either lost touch with some fellow geeks, or they live too far away to just call up and say, “hey, let’s go to the movies tonight/today/this afternoon (that’s you, Mike and John), or as working adults everyone’s schedule is too crazed and too hard to synchronize. And when Alix, of whom I’ve proud to say may not be a total geek but absolutely gets her geek mom, and Jeff, her wonderful husband with whom I share some geek qualities, want to go out for the night, who gets called to babysit with little Meyer (which is how we distinguish him from my father and his great-grandfather)?

And of course I will gladly give up going to see The Hunger Games: Mockingbird to be with my grandchild, if called upon to do so.

The last movie I didn’t wait to see was Star Trek: Into Darkness. I went to see it by myself on a Sunday afternoon. And you know what? I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was expecting to – my biggest disappointment was the lack of imagination in that J. J. Abrams (and the studio?) decided to remake The Wrath Of Khan; I still think that retelling the Gary Mitchell story would be a home run for the rebooted series – because I was alone, and there wasn’t anybody that I could “ooh” and “aah” with during the viewing, or share the “tingles” with as Alexander Courage’s iconic theme came up, and afterwards go for a drink and dissect the film and bitch and moan about “why did they remake TWOK, the perfect ST story and film?”

Still…

There’s one movie that I’m already feeling the shivers and pricklings and quiverings of excitement for.

One movie about which I am already saying, “Fuck Netflix! Fuck Amazon Prime! Fuck iTunes! I’m going to see it now, with or without company!”

One movie that’s already got me searching the web for tidbits of information.

Mark Hamill. Carrie Fisher. And…

Oh, no! Harrison Ford broke his ankle while shooting on the set! Is he okay? Will he be able to continue? And it could screw up the schedule?

That one.

 

Mindy Newell: Truth, Justice, And The American Way

Catwoman“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” – Maya Angelou

I read John Ostrander’s column yesterday with interest. (I always read John’s columns and love them.) Then I went to the Wall Street Journal’s website and read Chuck Dixon and Paul Rivoche’s essay.

Well, John, to a certain extent I have to agree with Chuck and Paul. It’s one thing for us, as adults, to read comics with an adult slant – meaning moral ambiguity in both our heroes and our villains. But I do think that for younger readers, the children and pre-teens (and, I suppose, depending on their maturity, some teenagers), it’s important that the heroes do act ethically and morally. They (Superman, the X-Men, Captain Marvel, Batman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Daredevil, et.al.) are, not to put too fine a point on it, cultural icons…and besides, all kids need heroes to look up to – with a sense of wonder, with awe, with a desire to “be just like him/her when I grow up.”

And when their heroes fall, children are upset; they don’t understand adult haziness, they live in a black-and-white world.  I remember when Lawrence Taylor (of the New York Giants and considered the greatest linebacker in NFL history) was arrested for cocaine use. “L.T.” was one of Alixandra’s heroes, and when she heard the news – we were in the car listening to the radio – she said to me, “How could he do that, Mommy?” And in her voice there was confusion and hurt and the sound of her hero crumbling into dust.

And I was angry. At that moment I hated Lawrence Taylor. In one second he had destroyed a part of my daughter’s innocence. And I thought of all the other kids out there who had looked up to him and now, just like Alix, were asking their parents how and why and I bet those parents felt just like I did.

Now I am not one to hide the facts of life from children. I always tried to be as honest as I could be with my daughter when she asked any and all questions. And certainly, Alixandra, as a child of divorced parents, already knew that the world was not a bed of roses.

But I also believe that in a world that grows uglier by the minute – I just saw a statistic on MSNBC’s Up with Steve Koracki that there have been 74 school shootings since Newtown in 2012 – it’s more important than ever that kids have heroes.

It doesn’t matter if their heroes are fictional creations. Harry Potter, Buffy Summers, Katniss Everdeen, Percy Jackson, Matilda Wormwood, Lyra Belacqua and characters from the pages of books have captured the imagination of – and have served as inspirations to – children around the world. And it not as if their originators had fashioned perfect idols – all carry some resentment of being thrust into the hero’s role, but all also rise above their individual desires and accept the responsibility that fate has thrust upon them. Harry Potter realizes it is up to him alone to conquer Voldemort. Katniss Everdeen faces up to her leadership of the rebellion against Panem. And Buffy Summers comes to understand that “death is my gift” in her fight to save her sister and the world from the god known as Glory.

The writer has the responsibility to know his or her audience, to know for whom s/he is writing. As the cast of Buffy got older, and as the fans of the show aged along with them, Joss Whedon allowed the stories to become more complicated, to reflect the journey into adulthood that the characters, and the fans, were experiencing. Whedon also did this when he spun off Angel from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Aiming for a more mature (read: adult) audience, the show nuanced both the main character and its perspective; there was less black-and-white, and a lot more grayness, especially as the show progressed through its five seasons. On Buffy having a soul equaled good, not having a soul equaled bad – but on Angel, having a soul didn’t necessarily make the vampire “good” – in fact, as the show progressed, Angel’s goodness became more and more a matter of degrees, became more “adultly” ambiguous. The support cast, Cordelia and Gunn and Wesley (especially Wesley!!) and the others also shifted from simple classifications to complex characterizations.

As a writer I have always been aware for whom I’m writing. I like to write for what the publishing industry calls “YA,” or the young adult market – teenagers and those in their early twenties. Certainly I have written my share of “dark” stories – in fact, that’s where my story inclinations tend to take me – but I’ve always tried to put something in there that indicates hope, even if it’s only a sliver of light, i.e., the characters have progressed to a better place. In what I think is my blackest tale (Lois Lane: When It Rains, God is Crying), a story of child abuse, abduction, and murder, and one in which there is no “happy ending,” Lois learned to let down the walls she had built around herself, learned to let her friends and family in.  And in Catwoman: My Sister’s Keeper, Selena’s “sister,” the child prostitute Holly, is taken off the streets and into in locos parentis custody by Selena’s real sister.

But I’ve also written stories for younger people in which heroes have no feet of clay.  One such story was “With Love, From Superman, a back-up in Action Comics Vol. 1, No. 566 (April, 1985).  In the story, preteen Molly Richards wants Superman’s autograph and dreams that she is Supergirl and Lois Lane – until the real Superman shows up to give her a surprise.

Of course I get that the world has changed drastically even in the short time since Alix was a child. Today’s kids are inundated with 24-hour news and factoids on the television and on the web; even when their parents do their best to shield them, their children will still hear about something at school or at their friends’ houses – it just seeps into the zeitgeist. I get that the parents have to talk to their children about things that are ugly and scary and way too “grown-up” for them…

I just believe that it’s incredibly important to keep “once upon a time,” along with “truth, justice, and the American way,” in the mix, for as long as possible.

There’s plenty of time for the corruption of their values.

 

Mindy Newell: Superhorse!

Mindy Newell: Superhorse!

Craig Ferguson and Secretariat“His legs, you couldn’t see them. Not even a blur. You could see his white-stockinged feet. Like a low trail of vapor. A white wisp of flying fog.”

Secretariat.com

So no Triple Crown this year. The favorite, California Chrome, finished in a tie for fourth place with Wicked Strong, 1¾ lengths* behind the winner, Commissioner (as in Gordon, for all us comic geeks). There has not been a Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, which makes it a 32-year drought for horse racing’s supreme trophy. Affirmed was a great horse, as was his predecessor Seattle Slew (1977), but for me the ultimate thoroughbred of all time, the uber–pferd,is Secretariat.

It is hard to put into words just what I, and the rest of America, saw on June 9, 1973. Simply put, it took everyone’s breath away.

(more…)

Mindy Newell: The Comics Community

“Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”

Oprah Winfrey

Today, as I write this, is June 1, 2014. Here in Bayonne New Jersey there’s not a cloud in the robin’s egg blue sky, and from this window I can see the waters of New York City’s harbor sparkling like diamonds. It’s so clear that I can see the glint of car roofs speeding along Brooklyn’s Belt Parkway. The eastern tower of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge rises over the lush rolling hill of green… that is Staten Island.

It’s a day for being outside, not stuck here in the house writing this column. Perhaps that is why nothing is coming to me. My mind wanders to other memories of days like this, and I have to figuratively slap it to bring it back to attention. But still nothing comes.

So rather than writing about Iron Man 3 (which I watched again last night on cable and decided that it’s a pretty good movie after all), or writing about some bullshit which isn’t really where my head’s right now, I’ll just come out with it, tell you why I’m having trouble focusing…

Don’t worry; the end of the story is a good one.

I’m in what athletes call a slump. Only it’s not my batting average or my RBI’s or my pitching stats I’m talking about, it’s a financial slump. The kind that makes my stomach hurt and my muscles tense and my head ache. The kind of slump that makes it difficult to sleep. The kind that makes it impossible to think about anything else. The kind of slump that has me spilling out the jar of coins I keep on my dresser top and counting out the quarters and dimes and nickels and pennies.

Have you ever been there?

Scary, isn’t it?

I work hard and I bring home a pretty good paycheck. I don’t think I spend money frivolously; I can’t remember the last time I went shopping for new clothes or new shoes. I continuously wonder how I got here, even though I know it’s just an accident of circumstances, a – what’s it called in astrology? Oh, yeah – a conjunction of events.

Yes, in astrological speak, my planets are afflicted. I just have to wait for the next progression.

But, hell, I wish they would progress already! I mean, talk about the planets being in bad positions – Jeesh, yesterday I was supposed to be in a class for my CPR renewal, without with I can’t work, but instead of counting out chest compressions on a dummy I was stuck in traffic for three hours and never got there. Which means that I’m going to be in class on Tuesday so I’m going to be not at work and not earning the money I so desperately need right now.

I wish I had a super power that could fix this. Yeah, that’s it. A super power to coin money. I could call myself Mint Maid. Nah, that sounds like I pass out Tic-Tacs or Altoids or something. Well, at least I’m not thinking of being a super villain and robbing Donald Trump or Warren Buffet. That should count for something in my karma, shouldn’t it?

But there’s this thing about comics.

It’s a small world.

A small world with big people.

Big people with even bigger hearts.

I’m not going to say who it was who, upon hearing that I was – face it, Mindy – broke, without a moment of hesitation asked me how much I needed to get through this slump. S/he tsked-tsked at my embarrassment and my shame and opened up the wallet.

“We’ve all been there,” s/he said.

Yeah, there are lots of people working in comics today who are riding in limos, and maybe there aren’t many who would ditch the limo to ride on the bus with you.

But I know one.

 

Mindy Newell: War Is Not Healthy…But It Makes For Great Movies

“There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.”

George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

So today is Memorial Day, which is the wind-up of Memorial Day weekend, which is the unofficial start of summer. Which means that if, like me, you’re from the part of New Jersey that’s north of Exit 11 on the Garden State Parkway, you “go down the shore.” For those of you not from the Garden State, the translation of “down the shore” is “to the beach.”

This also means spending most of the weekend stuck in traffic on the aforementioned Parkway before you get to Belmar or Seaside Heights or Long Beach Island or Wildwood and places in-between, but The Boss’s Born To Run will be rocking out through your car’s speakers, so it’s cool and anyway it’s all just part of the Weekend. Capiche?

Memorial Day is also the day we as a country are supposed to remember and honor the men and women who have died while serving their country in wartime. It was started as a way to honor Union soldiers who died during the Civil War – the North “borrowed” the South’s custom of decorating the graves of dead soldiers with flowers, ribbons, and flags, and so was called Decoration Day. It was held on May 30th, regardless of which day of the week it fell. It wasn’t until after World War II that Decoration Day became Memorial Day, and it wasn’t until the Uniform Holidays Bill was passed in 1968 that it became attached to the Monday of the last weekend in May as part of the government’s desire to create three-day federal holiday weekends. However, it took another three years (1971) for all the states to universally recognize it.

War movies are a conundrum – War is hell, as General William Tecumseh Sherman said, but in telling stories of war the writers, the actors, the directors and the producers can portray great tragedy, great comedy, great conflict, and great drama. Some war movies are outright jingoistic, others are totally anti-war, but all say something about armed conflict.

Here’s a short list of some of my favorites, with dialogue and/or quotes that have stuck with me through the years:

Stalag 17 (1953): Directed by Billy Wilder. Starring William Holden, Otto Preminger, Peter Graves, Don Taylor, Harvey Lembeck, Robert Strauss, and Neville Brand. Based on the Broadway play, it is the story of American POWs in World War II Germany who start to realize that there is an informant planted within their bunk.

Memorable dialogue:

Duke: (referring to Sefton’s safe escape with Dunbar) Whadda ya know? The crud

did it.

Shapiro: I’d like to know what made him do it.

Animal: Maybe he just wanted to steal our wire cutters. You ever think of that?

The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957): Directed by David Lean. Starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa. From the book by Pierre Boulle, it is loosely based on historical fact. British prisoners of war in a Japanese prison camp in 1943 Burma are sent to work building a bridge for the Burma-Siam railroad. The British Colonel is horrified to discover that his men are sabotaging the construction, and persuades them that bridge should be built properly as a testament to British honor, morale, and dignity under the most brutal of circumstances. Meanwhile a team of Allied commandos is planning the destruction of the bridge.

Memorable quote:

Colonel Saito: Be happy in your work.

Major Clipton: Madness! Ma, madness!

Apocalypse Now (1979): Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, and Robert Duvall with a young Laurence Fishburne and a cameo by Harrison Ford. During the Vietnam War a special operations officer is sent on a mission to find and terminate, without prejudice, another special operations officer who has gone renegade.

Memorable quote:

Willard (voice-over): “Never get out of the boat.” Absolutely goddamn right! Unless you were goin’ all the way… Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin’ program.

The Great Escape (1963): Directed by John Sturges. Starring Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen, James Garner, Donald Pleasance, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson, Angus Lennie, and others. Based on the true story of the mass escape of Allied POW’s from Stalag Luft III in Germany, and adapted from Paul Brickhill’s first-hand account. All the characters are either real or composites of several POWs.

Memorable quote:

Hilts: How many you taking out?

Bartlett: Two hundred and fifty.

Hilts: Two hundred and fifty?

Bartlett: Yeh.

Hilts: You’re crazy. You oughta be locked up. You, too. Two hundred and fifty guys just walkin’ down the road, just like that?

Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949): Directed by Alan Dwan. Starring John Wayne, John Agar, Forrest Tucker, and Adele Mara. The film follows a group of Marines from basic training to the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Memorable quote:

Sergeant Stryker: Saddle up.

Coming Home (1978): Directed by Hal Ashby. Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, and Bruce Dern. The story of three people affected by the Vietnam War – a wife, her Marine career officer husband who is serving in Vietnam, and a paralyzed veteran of that war whom she meets while volunteering in a VA hospital.

Memorable quote:

Captain Bob Hyde: (Yelling at Sally after discovering her infidelity) What I’m saying is! I don’t belong in this house, and they say I don’t belong over there!

Catch-22 (1970): Directed by Mike Nichols. Starring Alan Arkin, Jon Voight, Martin Balsam, Bob Newhart, Charles Grodin, Art Garfunkel, Anthony Perkins, Paul Prentiss, Martin Sheen, and Orson Welles. Based on the book by Joseph Heller, Catch-22 is the satirical anti-war story of Captain John Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier stationed in the Mediterranean during World War II who is expecting to be sent home after completing his required number of missions until he discovers that the commanding officer is continually raising that number. Desperate to go home, Yossarian tries to get out by claiming to have gone nuts, but there’s a catch was sane and had to.”

Memorable dialogue:

Yossarian: Is Orr crazy?

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: Of course he is. He has to be crazy to keep flying after all the close calls he’s had.

Yossarian: Why can’t you ground him?

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: I can, but first he has to ask me.

Yossarian: That’s all he’s gotta do to be grounded?

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: That’s all.

Yossarian: Then you can ground him?

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: No. Then I cannot ground him.

Yossarian: Aah!

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: There’s a catch.

Yossarian: A catch?

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: Sure. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn’t really crazy, so I can’t ground him.

Yossarian: OK, let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: You got it, that’s Catch-22.

Yossarian: Whoo… That’s some catch, that Catch-22.

Dr. “Doc” Daneeka: It’s the best there is.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970): The story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Directed by Richard Fleisher. Featuring an ensemble cast including Martin Balsam, James Whitmore, So Yamamura, Joseph Cotton, E. G. Marshall, Takahiro Tamura, Tatsuya Mihashi, Jason Robards, Richard Anderson, and others.

Memorable quote:

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

Saving Private Ryan (1998): Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Jeremy Davies, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Edward Burns, and Giovanni Ribisi, with a cameo by Ted Dansen. After landing in Normandy on D-Day in 1944, an army squad is ordered to find and bring back the last survivor of four brothers.

Memorable dialogue:

Old James Ryan: (addressing Capt. Miller’s grave) My family is with me today. They wanted to come with me. To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.

Ryan’s Wife: James?…

(looking at headstone]

Ryan’s Wife (looking at headstone): Captain John H Miller.

Old James Ryan: Tell me I have led a good life.

Ryan’s Wife: What?

Old James Ryan: Tell me I’m a good man.

Ryan’s Wife: You are.

(walks away)

Old James Ryan: (stands back and salutes)

So while you’re lazing on the beach this weekend, or in the park or in your backyard grilling up some dogs and burgers, or at a ball game or just hanging around the house, try to remember, if even for a moment, those who never returned home from those bloody fields of glory.

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

Elie Wiesel

Mindy Newell’s Bug

We’re sorry to report that Mindy has been at home the past several days, in bed with a bug. And a high temperature. And the irony of knowing she’s a nurse who probably needs a nurse.

These things pass eventually, and we eagerly await her return to the word processor.

Mindy Newell: The Name Of The Monster

“Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully. 



“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; “my name means the shape I am – and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

There was a time in my life when it was my silent, constant partner. I didn’t know then what it was; this thing had no name, and no one had yet advised me to challenge it, to call it out from the shadows into the sunlight. It hid in the cold dark crevices of my psyche, curled around my thoughts and dreams like a boa constrictor, never letting go, an anonymous thing. I knew there was something wrong, but without a name to call it, I could not voice it. Without a name to call it, I could not control it. Without a name to call it, I could not reclaim my self.

Yesterday I went to a comic book store for the first time in a very, very long time.

What the hell does that have to do with my struggles with it? A good question. A legitimate question.

The first time I discovered a store dedicated to comics was way back in the early 80s, during the time when this anonymous thing lived with me day after day, week after week, month after month. I don’t remember purposely sniffing it out – IIRC I just happened to be stopped at a red light on Broadway in downtown Bayonne, New Jersey. The storefront caught my eye; the windows were full of comics and some other stuff, but then the light turned green and I continued along my way.

But for the few moments while I was waiting for the red to turn to green, the thing had let go of me, or, at least, had lessened its grip. It wasn’t an “uh-huh” moment…

But very soon afterwards I was in the store and I wasn’t feeling weird, or odd, or frightened or any of that remote, sad, heaviness of the thing-with-no name which I carried with me – well, not so much, anyhow…

Yeah, not to put it through too fine a sieve – and, yes, it’s 28 years later – I think what I was feeling was comfort.

I looked at all the covers of the comics and the colors and the artwork and all the heroes – Superman, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Green Lantern, The Legion Of Super-Heroes, and all the rest – and I felt better. Okay, not kick-up-your-heels-and-do-a-dance better, but yeah, definitely better. Probably, as my therapist would say, it had to do with being suddenly face-to-face with the little-girl-who-was-me; she who was excited, who was curious, who read comics by flashlight after Taps underneath the covers of my bunk at camp.

I remembered her.

I was her.

I don’t remember what else I bought that day, but I do remember buying Camelot 3000, the groundbreaking maxi-series by Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland, which imagines the prophesized return of King Arthur and his Round Table when the Earth is threatened by an alien invasion in the year 3000 A.D. I have always loved the story of the once and future king; it is the classic hero’s journey, told over and over again in many myths and in many cultures, the tale of the individual who is challenged to walk through the gauntlet, to vanquish the enemy, to achieve peace and knowledge even if cost is dear.

I read that first issue of Camelot 3000, and while I was reading it I escaped the hell of my life. And I kept going back to the comic book store and I kept reading C3000, and I bought and read other comics. I even wrote a “Letter to the Editor” that appeared in an issue of Green Lantern.

It was finally, and properly, diagnosed and named in 1990 as clinical depression.

And yes, naming the monster gave me power.

But I still hate it. Because it never really goes away, y’know? Even with medication and therapy, it’s always there, teasing me. “I’m still here. I had you once. I can have you again.” And sometimes it does, for a little while. The past month, for instance. But I have named it, and so its power is not what it was. And then, too, sometimes I think…

If the monster had not taken hold of me, if I had not had to struggle and walk through the gauntlet, I would have never walked into that comic book store in 1982 and started reading comics again. I would have never sat down on a rainy Sunday and written Jenesis, the story that led me to Karen Berger and New Talent Showcase and all the wonderful things that followed it. I would have never written Lois Lane: When It Rains, God Is Crying, and never would have been able to understand the pain of Chalk Drawings (Wonder Woman #46), which I co-wrote with George Pérez. I would have never gone to conventions and met so many wonderful people – this means you, Mike, John, Kim, and Mary. And you, Martha. And you, Bob Greenberger. And Karen and Len and Marv and Mike Grell and Tom Brevoort and Trina Robbins and Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner and Marie Javins. And so many others, some of who are no longer with us – Dick Giordano and Gray Morrow and Don Heck and Mark Gruenwald…

I hate you, depression.

I hate you with a passion that frightens me. You have fucked up my life in too many goddamn ways.

And yet…

I would not be here now without you.

I said once before, in a previous column, that nothing is wasted.

Even, and I hate to say it, clinical depression.

 

Mindy Newell: Mother’s Day

“I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself”

Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

Feeling very Hemingway-esque because I am sitting here in front of the computer sipping a glass of merlot and smoking a cigarette while I write – although the truth, according to the website Food Republic, is that while the Master was “notoriously fond of drinking…he refrained from indulging while writing [and] when asked in an interview if rumors of him taking a pitcher of martinis to work every morning were true, he answered, “Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes – and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one. Besides, who in hell would mix more than one martini at a time?”

Not to mention that Hemingway’s favorite instrument for writing was the (lowly?) pencil. “Writing it first in pencil gives you one-third more chance to improve it… It also keeps it fluid longer so that you can better it easier” he wrote in his book On Writing. Although he would then transcribe it to his typewriter – over his writing career he used the Corona No. 3 & No.4, an Underwood Noiseless Portable, various Royal portables – aha! My first typewriter was a Royal portable – and a Halda portable (which, according to www.myTypewriter.com, was recently sold in an online auction, although the article doesn’t state the final bid).

Well, be that as it may – and also because I never could get into Faulkner, maybe because he is just waaaay too morosely Southern for this New York Jewish chick – Ernest still lurks beside me while I work today on my Mac desktop. And the merlot is very fine, fruity and yet exquisitely dry, from a Chilean vineyard I never heard of, but I loved the name on the bottle…

Sweet Bitch. 

Oh, yeah.

Anyway, since Sunday is Mother’s Day, I wanted to write about mothers, but in a different way …

I’m currently rereading, for the thousandth time, The Mists of Avalon by the late, and very great, Marion Zimmer Bradley. Simply put, it is Le’Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, perhaps better known to you as The Once and Future King by T.H. White or The Idylls of the King by Tennyson, or the movie Excalibur, produced, directed, and co-written by John Boorman, or Camelot 3000 by Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland, published by DC Comics over three years (1982 – 1985), which makes it DC’s first maxi-series. It is the great medieval romance of King Arthur, Queen Gwenhywfar, Morgaine of the Fairies, Lancelet, and the court of Camelot and the Round Table.

Except that Bradley tells it from the point of the women.

But more than that, Bradley uses the tale to spin a story of the ancient, and original, Celtic women-as-life-bearers, Mother Goddess-centric religion of the British Isles and its battle, with a patriarchal Christianity in which women were looked on, through Eve, as the source of original sin.

It is a story of women struggling to maintain their dignity, their wisdom, their power, and their equality in a world in which masculinity is uprooting their place in it.

At the end of Mists, Morgaine, sister to King Arthur, High Priestess of the Goddess, and the Lady of the Lake, goes through the mists that hide and separate the world of the Mother (the enchanted isle of Avalon) to visit the tomb of her mentor and aunt, Viviane, the greatest of the Ladies of the Lake, which now rests on what it is called the Isle of Priests or the Isle of Glass (Glastonbury) in “man’s world.” (Avalon and Glastonbury are also symbols of the duality of nature and humankind that Bradley discusses throughout the novel, as both are the same island, separated only by the mystical planes of existence). At first distraught and bitter that Viviane’s final resting place is in the world of the patriarchal Christians that call the Mother Goddess “demon,” Morgaine comes to a statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus…

And there she realizes that the Mother she worships has not left the world of men, but only taken on a new form; forever and ever, she realizes, the Mother Goddess will live in the hearts of humankind.

I searched Google to see if anyone had adapted The Mists of Avalon into comics form, and found none, though there were many, besides Camelot 3000, that adapted the Arthurian legends in one way or another. I think it would make an amazing adaptation; two artists that come immediately to mind for it are Jill Thompson and Charles Vess. And yes, of course I would love to write it, because it is a story, I think, which is particularly relevant today in our comics world.

Martha Thomases and I have written here about the negativity, bigotry, and the outward hatred being displayed towards women in comics and its related fields (such as gaming and cosplay) and it would take little more than a quick Google search to find other articles and blogs written by Heidi MacDonald, Corinna Lawson, Janelle Asselin, Alice Mercier, and, unfortunately, too many more. But as I reread Mists, I think some of the power of the Goddess comes down into my soul, and I feel uplifted; not angry or bitter or even snide about the abuses or the abusers, but actually sorry for them; that they are so consumed with fear and jealousy, and, oh, just so much negative emotions that they are unable to allow their feminine side to come out into the light.

Because, oh yes, these men do have the Goddess within them, just as we women have the God within us. As is said so many times by so many of the players in Mists, in different words and in different ways, but all still meaning the one truth: “All the Gods are one God, and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and the one God and the One Goddess together are the Initiator, and the Initiator dwells within us all.”

May She bless you all on Mother’s Day.

 

Mindy Newell: Columnist Columnizing

Newell Art 140421“Don’t you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don’t even have to be true!” – Dave Barry

Some thoughts this week reflecting upon my fellow ComicMix columnists’ opinions…

Last week Martha Thomases felt compelled to once again write about the bullshit practice of attacking women who “o-pine” (as Bill O’Reilly says) and dare to speak “truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert puts it, in her column, Criticizing Criticism. Toward the end of the piece Martha wrote about a panel at Washington, D.C.’s Awesome Con (held just this past weekend) that she was planning on attending. The name of the panel was “Part-Time Writer, Full Time World.” All the panelists were women, and apparently they were going to “O-pine” and “speak truthiness” about balancing the demands of a full time job, of being a parent, of having a part-time job – with these women, the “part-time” job is writing – with having time for your personal life, all while keeping a sane thought in your head. She made an excellent point when she pointed out that there were no men on the panel.

Hmm…

To (mostly) quote myself in the “comments” section of Martha’s column:

“As far as the full-time job/parenting/writing/hobby balance thing, it’s not a question of whether or not men don’t do any parenting. I think a lot of men are extremely involved in their kids’ lives these days.

“But what I think what Martha is pointing out is the assumption by the con runners, or at least those who set up this particular panel, that it’s only women who are dealing with this conundrum. Or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they just wanted to do a “Women in Comics” panel and thought this would be an interesting twist on the subject. Either way, it does seem somewhat sexist–against both sexes for a change!

“The answer, btw – and I feel that I am qualified to answer this conundrum because I was a single parent, and also because I’m now watching Alix and Jeff juggle parenthood, work, and school – is, paraphrasing a certain global sports apparel company:

“‘You just do it’…

“While seeking plenty of help from family, friends, babysitters – and sometimes, if you’re really lucky, an understanding boss or editor.

“And then, when the kids are all grown up and have families of their own, you have the luxury of being a grandmother, and you can just love and spoil the kid and then hand him back when you’re tired or he get’s cranky or it’s just time for you to have some
“me-time.”

“And be proud of yourself, because you just ‘did’ it.”

Denny’s and Marc’s columns made me think once again of how Marvel is doing everything right, and how DC is doing everything wrong. As I indicated in last week’s column, Marvel’s creation of a “telefilmverse” has been just brilliant in its adaptation of its comic universe’s history, in its invigoration of old concepts and old heroes, and in the excitement and joy its inventiveness is creating in both old and new fans.

I grew up a total DC geek in its Silver Age. I loved The Legion Of Super-Heroes, Superboy, Green Lantern, Supergirl, and the “Imaginary Stories” of Julie Schwartz’s Superman. In the 80s and early 90s I was hooked on all things Vertigo (Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, to name just a few), Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s New Teen Titans, George’s Wonder Woman (even before I co-wrote it), Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen’s Legion Of Super-Heroes (before I was involved), Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, and Ernie Colon’s Amethyst, Princess Of Gemworld (ditto), Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland’s Camelot 3000 (ditto) and many more. Back then DC was a groundbreaker, an innovator, “Bold” and “Brave.”

Today when I think of DC I think of words like moribund, and mired, and morose.

Today, like Marc Alan Fishman, I say, “Make Mine Marvel!”

Paul Kupperberg’s review of  The King Of Comedy http://www.comicmix.com//reviews/2014/04/17/review-king-comedy/ is dead-on. If you haven’t seen this movie, see it.

John Ostrander: Happy, happy, happiest of birthdays! I left you a comment, but I don’t know where it went, because it’s not there now. Just know that I wish you everything you talk about in the column – to live even longer than your paternal grandfather and his continue to bang out comic series and a new novel on a regular basis. I can’t wait to read the new GrimJack series, and that brilliant novel that resides on the New York Times Bestseller list for longer than Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games ever did. I want to see Peter David green with envy (just teasing, Peter!) with your success. Hell, I want to see me turn green with envy and choleric with bitterness about your success! And I want you to remember, bro, in the words of that old poet-hipster, James Taylor…

You’ve got a friend.

 

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks