Author: Mindy Newell

Mindy Newell: Girlfriends

betty & veronica hughesVeronica Lodge: “Bring it on, Blondie. Bring it on!”

Betty Cooper: “Oh, it’s brung! It’s brung!”

Betty & Veronica #1 • Adam Hughes, Writer & Artist • Archie Comics, 2016

So I finally got a chance to read through my stack of comics, and the one that elicited the most positive reaction, the one that left me incredibly eager to read the next issue, the one that left the biggest impact on me was…

Betty & Veronica #1, by Adam Hughes.

Like so many others, I have loved those two iconic frenemies since I was a kid, which is mmpph years ago now. Sometimes I was Team Betty Cooper, and other times I was Team Veronica Lodge – there were times when I thought that Betty was just too good for her own good I and wanted her to pull off some nasty stunt to get back at Veronica… but then again, every time it seemed that Veronica’s nose was permanently up her own damned stuck-up ass, the girl would reveal her heart of 24-carat gold. I never really got the yearning both girls had for Archie; redheads have never done it for me. Besides, he was all too often incredibly mean to Betty, dumping her the minute Veronica waved her finger, and, at best, seemed to treat her like a pair of well-worn sneakers, the kind you put on when your feet are aching and tired after a long day at work.

Betty & Veronica #1Veronica’s adoration of young Mr. Andrews was a complete mystery to me, except that having a thing for the son of an ordinary “Joe” was possibly some kind of rebound complex against her rich-as-Croesus parents, especially her father. Although I seem to remember reading a story in which Mr. Lodge said he and his wife sent their daughter to the Riverdale public school system instead of to some private school so that she would grow up with an appreciation and awareness that not everyone in the world was wealthy – or something like that. Was there such a story? To be honest, I’m not sure – maybe it’s just an idea that I made up in my head to explain what the hell the Lodges were doing in Main Street, U.S.A., instead of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Then again, the only Riverdale that I knew was a leafy and wealthy conclave just north of Manhattan that was a pretty exclusive area, boasting the might-as-well-be-private Horace Mann Public School and the absolutely private Riverdale Country School, both which, if I may digress for just a moment, offer a superb education…

But to get back to and finish the original thought of the above paragraph, if Daddy Lodge wanted daughter Ronnie to mix with the peasants, then why did he object to her going out with one? Of course, there are peasants and there are peasants, he might say. He didn’t seem to object so much to Reggie, did he?

Archie’s Girls Betty and Veronica was first published by Archie Comics in March 1950, although Betty made her first appearance in Pep Comics #22 (1941) and Veronica four issues later. Although friends, their adventures pretty much revolved around the girls’ rivalry for Archie. Hannah Rosin, who authored a recent article about the blonde and the raven-haired teenagers for Smithsonian Magazine (“Why Betty and Veronica Are the Real Stars of Riverdale,” July 2016) noted:

“If the comic were a field guide to teenagedom, what did Betty and Veronica teach these girls? At best they are complementary archetypes, saucy and sweet, like Ginger and Mary Ann. At worst they are poison to the developing female mind. For decades, all those two ever did was “accidentally” spill lemonade on each other’s dresses. The duo conveyed that being an American teenage girl meant being a boy-crazy aspiring pinup who hated her best friend.”

It’s a good point, but I guess I never got the complete message. I never felt “boy-crazy,” although I had my fair share of crushes (which, like most crushes, were never really acted upon) and I don’t remember ever actually “hating” my best friend over a boy – sure, there were girls I was jealous of, but that was because I thought they were “prettier” or “more popular” than me, the two usually going hand-in-hand, and they were never girls I would say I was friends with, anyway. There was one girl who thought I deliberately stole her boyfriend, but I didn’t even know he was dating her when he asked me out to make her mad after they had had a fight, and was it my fault that he ended up liking me better than her? I only found out about this teenage guerre des coeurs (“war of hearts”) after the fact, when her crowd ganged up on me one day after school, called me all sorts of horrid names, warned me that “you’ll be sorry,” and sent me home crying. But that’s another story….

But I did love those fashion pinups, Ms. Rosin, the ones that were basically splash pages of Betty and/or Veronica in “different looks” – sometimes it was for “Fun In The Sun” with the girls modeling bathing suits (classic pinup, although rated “G”) and sometimes it was “Haute Couture,” featuring Betty in the latest fashions. Other times the page(s) would feature Betty and/or Veronica in different hairstyles – Betty with a short, chic pixie cut or Veronica in a pony tail a la Betty or both in “updos.”

But always, and always, no matter what, Betty and Veronica were friends, real friends, who always and always came through for each other. Yeah, they got on each other’s nerves, yeah, they would attack and solve problems in their own ways, and yeah, sometimes they would swear that the friendship was over for good! But it never has been and it never will be, because Betty and Veronica are forever. My daughter Alix read them, and so does the next generation of my family, my 16-year-old niece Isabel. That’s because, as Hannah Rosin said in her piece: “The idea that Betty and Veronica truly cared about boring old Archie was always comically implausible. The real chemistry, and all the fun, happened between the two girls.”

After it was announced in 2014 that the writer and creator Lena Dunham was writing a Betty and Veronica mini-series, some fans suggested to her that she make the girls lesbians. I think I understand why that would be important and an interesting, um, twist on the two teenagers, and in the right hands it could be an absolutely terrific story, but I also think it would work better outside the established Archie universe, the way that the zombie apocalyptic Afterlife with Archie is or Archie Marries Veronica/Betty was, if only because I also think it’s super important for girls (and women) to know that sisterhood is, indeed, powerful for all girls and women, and that possible to have a wo-mance while still desiring men as sexual partners. (See Dunham’s Girls or Sarah Jessica Parker’s Sex and The City.)

But maybe I’m just being an old fuddy-duddy the way some Star Trek or Star Wars fans are, resenting and rejecting any change in canon. Like making Hikaru Sulu gay, which I thought was terrific, although some others did not.

I’ll have to think about that.

Right now, as Adam Hughes has written, the girls on the outs. I mean waaaaay outs. It’s over the effort to save Pop’s Choklit Shoppe, which is about to bought out by the evil Starbucks Kweekwegs Koffee, “that big chain from out West,” Pop tells the kids. Betty is immediately on it:

“We cannot let this happen! We will not be frightened by some big, dumb corporation and their gaspacho tactics.” (I think she means Gestapo. Good one, Adam!) “If we allow this to happen, what’s next? Where will it end? Trendy eateries, fast-food franchises…Riverdale will become just another highway stop for truckers, holiday drivers and…and tourists! If we give in now Riverdale will just become like any other town. It won’t be special anymore. Not even for us. The big corporations will win…the tourists will win. If we let Pop’s close down, then the tourists already won.”

So Betty Cooper is organizing a drive to raise money so that Pop can pay off the mortgage on his Shoppe and tell Kweekwegs Koffee to go to hell, while Veronica Lodge is just tagging along, too busy sitting on her ass and texting and tweeting or whatever the hell she’s doing to say or do anything.

And then Betty finds out that Kweekwegs Koffee is owned by Lodge Industries.

The girlfriends face off.

And the world holds its breath…

Mindy Newell: Letting In The Light

Willy Wonka Pure Imagination

“Come with me and you’ll be in a world of Pure imagination. Take a look and you’ll see into your imagination. We’ll begin with a spin, traveling in the world of my creation.

“What we’ll see will defy explanation. If you want to view paradise simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it.

“Wanta change the world? There’s nothing to it. There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination.

“Living there, you’ll be free if you truly wish to be.”

“Pure Imagination”• Written by Leslie Bricuse and Anthony Newley • Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, sung by Gene Wilder

But I ramble, to turn a phrase…

It’s a tough thing, dealing with depression. It’s a selfish disease, one whose main symptom is that it makes the whole world all about you.

Turn on the television, boot up the web, pick up a newspaper, link into the world – there’s a lot of things going on out there beyond your own life that are terrible beyond anything that Dante ever imagined. I don’t have to name them; you know what they are.

In my line of work I’ve seen a lot of terrible things, things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, things that make me think, and sometimes say out loud, “just because we can, doesn’t mean we should,” things that make me wonder why this culture, this American society, fears death so much that we keep people alive even when in our brains, in our hearts, in our souls we know we shouldn’t, even when we know that we are not abiding by the first rule of healing, “primun non nocere – first, do no harm”

To be completely honest, I’m not even sure what my overall theme is this week, what my aim is – maybe it’s just to get these thoughts out of my head and into the world, because the one thing the darkness cannot abide is the light, even it is only flickering. That’s always been my weapon against the disease – what some in my life have called a big mouth – or what my father used to call “not knowing when to keep quiet.”

I am writing this to shut it up… I think.

Aloneness is the ally of the disease, or the belief of aloneness; but I don’t walk Depression Street alone. I have my family. I have my friends. I have a job that keeps me actively engaged in the world. I have this forum on ComicMix. I am lucky and I am blessed, and I know that, even when I am in the deepest shadow. That knowledge is another component of the light that scatters the darkness.

Sometimes, even though it is a complete oxymoron, I am glad that I have had this disease. It has made me a better person in so many ways – less quick to judge, more open to empathy. (See, I told you that my depression has been an oxymoronic entity in my life, go back and read that second paragraph.) It has made me a better professional, too – as a nurse, as a writer.

Anger, it is said, is depression turned inward. Well, I have plenty of anger, and sometimes it is displaced, but I have learned, or am constantly attempting to learn, not to turn it inward. Mostly it is anger that the depression went on so long, that it was so long undiagnosed, that it robbed me of what economists call the financially “productive” years, so that here I am at 62 and 10 months and I get scared when I think of the future… will I end up as one of those senior citizens living at the poverty line?

That’s not how it was supposed to be. But whose life is the way it was supposed to be? So very, very, few of us.

To borrow from Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck, “the fairy tales are bullshit!”

But the fairy tales – comics, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, all the wonderfully heroic tales, the myths and the epics from Gilgamesh to The Ugly Duckling – are all parts of the wonderfully nerdiness and geekiness of our imaginations, are also part of the wonderfully beauteous light.

Sorry, Nicholas, but fairy tales can also be not bullshit.

“Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination.”

It’s this that keeps me going when the dark is beckoning…keeps you going, too, I hope, when your own abyss is yawning before you. The ability to accept life as it is, but also, and more importantly, to keep imagining.

“If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it…”

 

Mindy Newell’s Shortest Column Ever?

wonder woman rebirth

Some of you who read my Facebook posts might have already seen this, but I think that it’s important enough to repeat the story. It’s from the “See Something, Say Something” school.

Yesterday I was walking down the block to the store and I passed a parked car with two dogs in it and all the windows closed, including the sunroof. It was 95 degrees here in Bayonne, which meant that inside the car it must have been at least 10 degrees hotter. I went into the restaurant on the corner and asked if anyone owned this car. No. So, what to do? I waited about five minutes to see if the owner came back – nope. So I called the police. I’m happy to say they showed up immediately. They went from door-to-door up and down the street, and to the storefronts to see if they could find the owner. I asked them if I should wait by the car, but they said no, they could track down the bitch or bastard who had left the dogs with the license plate if need be, and, if worse came to worse, they would open the car. So I went home, but I am still wondering – no, really hoping – that they gave the unfeeling owner a summons.

I have a bunch of comics sitting on my kitchen table that I just haven’t had time to read. They include the “rebirthed” Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka (writer), Liam Sharp (artist), Laura Martin (colors) and Jodi Wynne (letters); Liam and Laura’s work on the covers alone is just amazingly beautiful. Tomorrow I am bring this comic plus the others (Superman: American Alien by Max Landis and Francis Manapul; Betty & Veronica by Adam Hughes; Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, Ian Herring, and VC’s Joe Caramagna; The Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Guiseppe li, Cam Smith, Marte Gracia, and VC’s Joe Caramagna; and the “rebirthed” Superman by Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray, John Kalisz, and Rob Leigh) to work to read at break and at lunch…if I get a break and lunch.

I have discovered a new tactic when defending Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, thanks to the New York Times. (Again, some of you may have already seen this on my Facebook page.) It is a video from the Times’ website, and it’s called “Voices From Donald Trump’s Rallies, Uncensored.” And boy, is it! It’s more than uncensored, people, it’s downright sickening. After the various people who are against Hillary watch this, I say, “Do you really want to be associated with people like this?” And then I add, “This time it’s not about politics, it’s about love of our country.” I have gotten various reactions, from nervous laughter to “Oh, shit,” to shrugs.

Seriously, folks…check it out.

Like I said, if you see something, say something.

And before I sign off for the week, I want to give a ginormous hug to my fellow columnist and beloved friend, Mr. John (Johnny-O) Ostrander. Last week John and his bromance-for-ever main man Mike Gold attended the World Premiere of Suicide Squad in the Big Apple, where Mr. Ostrander received accolade and so-long-deserved R-E-S-P-E-C-T, as Aretha sang it. I am so happy for you, John! I am kicking up my heels! I am dancing in the streets….

Simply put, this Jewess is plotzing!!!!!!

Love you, John!!!!

 

 

Mindy Newell’s Coming Attractions

hillary wonder womanIn the spring of 1971, I met a girl. The first time I saw her, we were, appropriately enough, in a class on political and civil rights. She had thick blond hair, big glasses. Wore no makeup. And she exuded this strength of self-possession I found magnetic. –President Bill Clinton, 2016 Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lock Her Up!!! – Rallying Cry at 2016 Republican National Convention

In my not so humble opinion, the Wonder Woman trailer definitely shows a lot of promise.

But I’m not talking about Princess Diana of Themiscrya. I mean that other Wonder Woman – Hillary Rodham Clinton.

You may be thinking “What trailer? I mean the one starring Mrs. Clinton for the last 50 or so years of her life, during much of which she has been in the public eye – or bull’s-eye – and not just as FLOTUS, New York Senator, and Secretary of State. Hillary’s extensive involvement in politics goes back to 1960, when, as a 13-year old, she helped canvass for Richard Nixon, and then, four years later, she worked for the Goldwater campaign.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Hillary Rodham started her political life as a Republican.

Wonder Woman InaugerationI have never understood the incredibly vicious vitriol directed towards Hillary, or her husband, for that matter. And so much of it is not political; it’s personal. The other day a woman at work said to me that she hated her. I asked her why. She said it was (and I’m paraphrasing) “because she stayed with her husband despite his many adulteries. What woman would do that? I wouldn’t. Would you?” For the record, well, no, I wouldn’t, but, I said, “It’s her marriage, not mine, and not yours.” (And also for the record, this woman did not say anything about Hillary staying with her husband for her own personal political ambitions.) I’ve heard variations of this theme for just about forever.

Sometimes I think television itself, as a media form, just doesn’t like her, the way it didn’t like Richard Nixon when he debated John F. Kennedy back in 1960. It’s just one of the mysteries of the modern media age that some people just don’t come across well on the screen. Hillary, despite being a baby boomer – so that you would think that she would be very comfortable with the television camera – always looks, well, not nervous, but tense; and yet I have never seen a better display of pure aplomb than that 13-hour grueling Benghazi kangaroo court trial that Mrs. Clinton was forced to endure. And even then, Hillary haters, including Fox News and other right-wing media, boldly declared that the reason she was so relaxed was because she was on Valium. This claim was quickly ignored by the next news cycle.

Before I sat down to write this column, I did a bit of research and found a great article over at the webzine Slate. In “The Hillary Haters” (July 24 2016), writer Michelle Goldberg went out and actually asked some “common” folk just exactly what they have against her. Here are some of their answers:

“She strikes me as programmed and robotic.”

“She is disingenuous and lies blatantly.”

“If I could make her a profit she’d be my best friend.”

“She’s a sociopath.”

There were lies upon lies upon lies, and misquotes piled on misquotes piled on misquotes and misconceptions following misconception. But when Ms. Goldberg answered with facts, the subjects just didn’t want to listen, discounting them and/or shrugging their shoulders.

Look, I feel it too. There is “Something About Hillary” that annoys me. I know she capable, I know she’s brilliant, and I know she’s been demonized. But she lacks that something that stops me from being crazy about her. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never met her, not even to shake her hand, but there is a but there….well, let me tell you a story.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, in an enclave out on Eastern Long Island called the Hamptons, my mother’s friend noticed a big brouhaha across the street from her. She looked, and she saw Bill Clinton surrounded by people and press and, of course, secret service agents. Mom’s friend said that she never felt such a wave of pure charisma in her life, it could have knocked her over with a feather, and not only was he in a crush, a mob, but he was also at least 100 feet away from her.

She was telling this to my mother over a cup of coffee in our kitchen. I was there as well.

“Was he with Hillary?” asked my mother, who was (and is) a big fan of the lady.

“Yeah, I think so. Who cares?” said her friend.

So is it a lack of charisma or her gender that is hurting “Hill?” Many a feminist writer has argued that the two are related, that a woman cannot have that charisma-bias because of her sex, but I don’t agree. There are plenty of women with it, from Sophia Loren to Senator Elizabeth Warner, so it’s not about looks. But here’s a thought…

Sophia Loren, Senator Warren, Rachel Maddow, Princess Diana, Melissa McCarthy… all these women and many more just have that natural élan, that certain something, that charisma which draws people in, makes us like them without knowing them, makes people pay attention –

Hillary doesn’t have that inborn gift. But the woman makes us pay attention, demands us to see her, to hear her, to listen to her…

Hmm…

Maybe it’s that which so many people resent.

 

Mindy Newell: Star Trek – Beyond Tribute and Redemption

Star-Trek-Beyond-2

Kirk: We make a good team

Spock: Yes, we do.

Bones: We could be mauled to death by an interstellar monster!

Kirk: That’s the spirit, Bones.

Considering today is Monday the 25th and Star Trek: Beyond came out only three days ago, how much can I tell you about it without doing the dreaded HERE THERE BE SPOILERS dance? Hmmm…let’s see….

Did I like it?

Yes.

Did I luvvvvvvvv it?

Well, that’s hard to say. If you had asked me that last night as I was walking out of the theatre, I would have said, “No, I didn’t luvvvvvvvv it.”

Meaning that I didn’t want to turn around and immediately buy another ticket, ‘cause I’m too honest to just stay in my seat and wait for the next show, and besides, with my luck, I would have gotten caught by that one guy or gal in the whole wide world who has the thankless job of cleaning up after all us movie slobs between showings and who takes his or her job seriously enough to throw me out or hand me over to the theater manager. The way I wanted to do when I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark or the original Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back or, come to think about it, the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot back in 2009.

However, as I was talking about the movie while playing and cavorting in the pool this afternoon with grandson Meyer, daughter Alix, and son-in-law Jeff, I realized that while I didn’t luvvvvvvvv this third entry of the rebooted Trek universe, I definitely do want to see it again, because:

1) Chris Pine is simply becoming more and more handsome. In fact, before sitting down to write this I watched the Wonder Woman trailer – the one unveiled at this year’s San Diego Comic Con – just to feast my eyes on those amazing blue eyes.

Ahem No, not really. Let me try that again.

1) Chris Pine is inhabiting the character of James Tiberius Kirk more thoroughly with each film, allowing us to follow and appreciate the growing maturity of the young(est) captain who sits in the command chair of the Federation’s premier starship, all while never losing the charm of the boy inside;

2) Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban, as Spock and Leonard “Bones” McCoy respectively, still frankly fucking amaze me with their dead-on interpretations of the First Officer and the Chief Medical Officer of the starship Enterprise as we knew and loved them in the “before” time. It’s not only in their acting skills that totally get the quirks and mannerisms of the Vulcan-Terran hybrid and the “old country doctor,” but also in their spoken intonations and, yes, the very sound and timbre of their voices. How do they do that?

3) Speaking of the Euclidian – or is that Isosceles? – triangle that is Kirk, Spock, and McCoy…it’s all there. The wrangling, the bemusement, the annoyance, the loyalty, the friendship.

4) And with regards to that triangle… two sides, Spock and McCoy, are more cantankerously and crabbily thrown together than ever before, giving us the chance to revel in their ornery, and yet loving relationship.

5) Yes! Finally! Hurray!!!! The women of Star Trek get their due!!!!! Communications Officer Lt. Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana) has more screen time than ever, and she kicks ass, not only physically but also emotionally and with smarts. Not to mention Melissa Roxburgh as Ensign Syl. Yeah, she may be a “red shirt,” but she’s not simply disposable. And then there is Sofia Boutella as Jaylah, the woman who becomes the crew’s ally. Yeah, she kicks ass, too. But here’s a word that I haven’t seen in any of the media review. She’s adorable. As in, I adored her relationship with “Montgomery Scotty,” which lead me to…

6) Simon Pegg, as the Chief Engineer, is once again simply wonderful. (And by the way, he co-wrote the Star Trek: Beyond with his writing partner, Doug Jung, ably Robert Orci, Patrick McKay, and John D. Payne.)

7) Although I do have to say that John Cho, as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, does get a bit shortchanged this time around, in what I thought was a great addition to the character (not to mention to the franchise), it’s established that not only is Sulu gay but that he and his beloved are parents to a little girl. I also think it’s an absolutely wonderful tribute to George Takei, who has been in the forefront of gay rights since he first came out; Mr. Takei was one of the first to marry his partner when California finally voted in the legality of same-sex marriage. The funny thing is, Mr. Takei objected to this “change” in Sulu’s character. That seems odd to me…

As for the reasons I didn’t luvvvvvvvv STB, well it comes down to…

1) Idris Elba.

No. Not the actor. He was, as usual, pretty damn fantastic, especially – nope, not gonna go there. Not going to get all SPOILERY.

In fact, I can’t really get into why Mr. Elba, or, rather, and more specifically, his character, bothered me without getting all SPOILERY.

So I’m just going to have to drop it for now, until (I assume) Art Tebbel and/or Vinnie Bartilucci or someone here at ComicMix gives a more, uh, thorough review.

Until then, live long and prosper.

However…

One thing I did truly luvvvvvvvv, immediately luvvvvvvvved: The honor and respect and love given to Leonard Nimoy, both within the movie itself and in the credits. And the saddest thing about Star Trek: Beyond is the passing of Anton Yelchin. Stay for the credits. You’ll see what I mean, and you’ll “hate” it, too.

Finally…

Alexander Courage’s theme gets me every time!

Mindy Newell: But Words Will Never Harm Me

I’ve been trying to get a hold on what’s happened in this country, just the same as everybody who lives in the United States of America who is the least bit sane. The only explanation I can come up with is complicated…or maybe it isn’t.

Charlie Chaplin TrumpSticks and stones

May break my bones,

But words will never harm me.

Remember that little ditty? Too bad it isn’t true… because words do matter. And that’s the epicenter of this particular quake.

Back in 2008 when President Barack Hussein Obama was elected to his first term, everybody was talking about a “post-racial” society because the guy who won the presidency was black. Only, of course, he isn’t, really; not black as in ebony or inky or onyx or jet. He’s café-au-lait or mocha or brown…

But definitely not white. And to be actually white is to be affected by albinism, a genetic abnormality or mutation that affects the production of melanin, which is what pigments our skin color, and is derived from the amino acid tyrosine. Approximately 18,000 people in America have albinism. And they are all voting for Trump.

But I digress.

Another word that is thrown around with alacrity is race. In this context race is used to differentiate and more importantly, alienate people. It seems that too many goddamn people think that alien is a synonym for race. I would talk about how taxonomy of humans makes no distinction of skin color; we are all members of the genus Homo – Latin for “wise,” not gay – and the species sapiens – Latin for “man.” But I’m afraid I’d be wasting my breath. Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, medical doctor, and zoologist who invented “binomial nomenclature,” the system of classifying plant and animal life, coined the term in 1758. Um, “wise?” Carl? Maybe you should rethink that, because there are too many white people walking around thinking that a black person or a Jewish person or a Hispanic person or an Asian person or a Muslim person is a member of a different race.

And then there are the words that come out of politicians and Fox News and neo-Nazi groups and white supremacy groups that, since Barack Hussein Obama was first elected, have consistently and diligently given covert and overt permission to restrict, ghettoize, pummel, stab, and gun down. These words are Second Amendment Rights and Voting Rights and Confederacy and States’ Rights and Stand Your Ground.

Here’s a theory: Is it possible that on some deep psychological level, somewhere between the Superego and the Id (“Monsters, John. Monsters from the Id.”) Homo sapiens obsessed with words like “black” know that they could never get close enough to Barack Hussein Obama to kill him, so they bubble and boil and steam and cook until, in a horrible moment of transference and projection and all that psychobabble – words, again – they kill the next black individual they meet instead? Just to rub it in your face: they really want to kill that “nigger – yeah, I just typed that word for the first time in my life – in the White House,” but they can’t, so they kill the next best thing.

Hey, I’m just trying to make sense of it, to look for an explanation. Like historians trying to explain Adolf Hitler and his insane anti-Semitism. And speaking of “The Little Tramp”…

…There’s Donald Trump. A perpetual machine of words designed to inflame and incite who got a real chance to be standing on the Capitol steps on January 20, 2017, and with one hand on the Bible, swearing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Nobody understands it, everybody’s trying to explain it, and ultimately, no one can.

Because there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to explain it.

 

Mindy Newell: Denver, Stormtroopers, and Farts

X-Wing @ DCC, 2016

So as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by fellow columnist Emily S. Whitten calls “Convention Crud” and I called, last week, “Airplane Adenovirus”…

Me & R2I had an ABFAB time at the Denver Comic Con 2016!

That’s “Absolutely Fabulous” for those of you too young to remember the BBC show.

Overseen by the Denver-based Pop Culture Classroom, a non-profit organization whose aim is to use comics and other pop culture media to educate kids and inform the public, the con is held annually at the Colorado Convention Center, an edifice that puts the Jacob Javits Center here in New York to total shame, in downtown Denver. Incredibly yuuuge – it stretches over four city blocks – with many atriums letting in the sunlight of the Mile High City, the con never felt crowded, despite its 100,000+ attendance.

I was invited because of my connection to Wonder Woman, who was created by William Moulton Marston 75 years ago this year. I must admit to having some trepidation, because, to be completely honest, I didn’t think that my work on the Amazon Princess was remembered, and I had images of sitting alone and ignored for three days. To make it worse, I hadn’t thought to bring any samples of my work to put out on display, so my table was white and bare in comparison to my nearest neighbors, authors and artists whose work was exhibited in beautiful and multi-colored presentations.

(To be fair to myself, I actually have very little of my work here at home. Over the years I have given out 99% of my work to my daughter’s friends, to cousins and the children of friends for birthday, communion, and bar-or-bas mitzvah presents, and for Halloween treats.)

Getting Timey-Winy, DCC, 2016But those little fears disappeared immediately as I became entranced by everything at the convention. The first thing I saw when I entered the Exhibitors Hall was a “life-size” beat-up and dented X-Wing fighter, looking as if it had just returned from a rendezvous with the Imperial fleet. (I immediately took the above picture.) The next thing I saw were two Stormtroopers, and I handed my phone to the volunteer who was leading me to my table as I stepped between them; she obligingly snapped a photo.

I was, as my daughter had put it as she drove me to the airport, “with my people.”

I was on many panels, not all of them to do with “Women and Comics.” Pop Culture also features educational classes for kids and adults at the convention, and I was slated to lead “Creating a Four-Panel Comic,” which was for kids [I would say] from eight-years old and down. That experience is one of my most treasured memories!

When Alix was in elementary school I gave some “lectures” on creating a story for her English class, so I wasn’t at all nervous. I immediately involved the kids in the audience, not staying on the stage, but going into the audience and letting them talk into the microphone. The kids proved to be incredibly imaginative and involved. A young girl volunteered the superhero, named FlashDash for her super-speed. The villain was Lunchbox. This bad guy carries a lunchbox, and inside it are burritos. “Burritos?” I laughed along with audience, who were obviously enjoying themselves. “And what do the burritos do?”

“They explode,” said the young boy, who was about seven, and whose name I can’t remember, damn my menopausal memory!

“And when they explode, it smells like the worst fart ever! The smell will kill you!”

Well, I don’t know about you, but fart jokes crack me up. Just the mention of the word fart makes me go silly. So imagine the reaction of the audience and those within hearing distance – remember, me and the kids were using a microphone – when the young man said this. A gigantic Bwa-bwa-hah-hah! went up and echoed in Exhibitors Hall.

I didn’t want to embarrass the boy. “That is absolutely fantastic,” I said, still smiling and laughing a little. “Lunchbox uses the exploding burritos the way Hobgoblin uses his pumpkin bombs. That is so great.”

“So how does FlashDash defeat Lunchbos?” I asked. The creator of Lunchbox shot up his hand, and even though I really wanted to involve some other kids, everyone was looking at him, so I went with the flow.

Me & 2 Buddies, DCC, 2016“FlashDash waves her cape super-fast and blows away the fart,” he said.

I’m tellin’ y’all, this kid is going to be a comics superstar in about 20 or 25 years, or even sooner!

Meanwhile, up on the podium, my artist, a really talented young guy named Colton, was drawing all of this out on an easel in four panels. We had three, so far.

“Okay,” I said, “So FlashDash, in the first panel, meets Lunchbox. The second panel shows Lunchbox throwing the burrito and it exploding.” Colton used wiggly lines to show the farts’s uh, “waves of stink.”

“The third panel has FlashDash waving her cape at super-speed, dispersing the fart cloud. So we have one more panel. What happens?”

A little girl, a very little girl, she must have been four years old, bashfully waved her hand, and I walked up to her. “FlashDash’s dragon uses his fire breath and burns up Lunchbox’s lunchbox,” she said softly. I’m telling y’all, this child was absolutely adorable.

“Oh, FlashDash has a pet dragon?” I asked her. She smiled shyly and nodded. I turned to Colton, who was already adding a little dragon hovering over FlashDash’s shoulder to the preceding panels. I said to the audience that this was an example of a writer and an artist “editing” their work, meaning changing it to make it better.

Then Colton drew the final panel, with the dragon’s fire breath melting the burrito-containing lunchbox.

DCC, 2016“And that’s the end of Lunchbox and his exploding fart burritos,” I said. “FlashDash and her pet dragon have saved the day.”

We weren’t able to photocopy the story, but many parents and kids came up to the podium and snapped photos of the “Four-Panel Comic.”

Yep, I had an AbFab time in Denver. I caught up with old friends – Andy Mangels, Barbara Randall Kesel, Timothy Truman, Trina Robbins, Peter David – and made new ones – Cat Staggs, Yannick Paquette, LJ Hachmeister, Joe Staton, Hannah Means Shannon (a.k.a. Hannah Menzies), Marguerite Sauvage, and Jeff Hendon and his wife.

I met so many terrific people, I could fill this whole column with their names alone. I met that at the convention, I met them at the hotel. I met Jae Lee on the ride back to the airport.

I sat on panels and signed autographs and took pictures with fans. Oh, yeah, remember how I talked about my white, bare table? I found Mile High Comics, and bought a bunch of my comics, including issues of Wonder Woman (including what I consider mine and George Pérez’s best work on the title, #46, “Chalk Drawings”), “Lois Lane: When It Rains, God Is Crying,” and “Legionnaires Three.” (I then gave them as a gift to my Exhibitors Hall neighbor, the aforementioned Jeff Herndon, an amazing illustrator in the Denver area, and his wife in exchange for a beautiful painting of Gail Godot as Wonder Woman. I wanted to pay for it, but he and his wife wouldn’t hear of it, so instead we did the “barter.”)

Comics. Celebrities. An X-Wing, Stormtroopers, and R2-D2. The TARDIS.

And farts.

It was a helluva’ weekend.

Mindy Newell: Post-Denver Blues

Hey, guys, I’m home.

I was going to tell y’all about my absolutely fabulous weekend at the Denver Comic Con, but besides bringing home great memories, super inspiration, and renewed zest to write a children’s book and some comics, I also brought home…

Something not so pleasant.

It started with a sore throat on Wednesday morning—my tonsils were swollen and it hurt to swallow, but I felt all right otherwise, so figured it was from the air conditioning and popped an Advil along with my tea and usual dosages of Vitamin C and D3 and all those anti-oxidant supplements. And I felt better by the afternoon.

But it didn’t go away. Not really. I felt okay enough to visit with Alix and Jeff and my little Meyer on Thursday night (and really ate too much of absolutely delicious home-made pizza), but I awoke on Friday morning with a sledgehammer working out a beat on my head and absolutely no desire to get up. And the rest of the weekend has been just as joyful

I don’t think it’s the flu, even though I’m totally knocked out and can barely drag my ass to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and every joint and muscle is aching and I’m coughing like poor, tubercular Alex Randall in last night’s penultimate episode of Outlander, Season Two, except that I’m not bringing up blood, thank God, and not even very much phlegm, which I actually wish I could because I can feel it in there weighing down my chest like an anvil and I want to get it out of my system. But I still don’t think it’s the flu because I don’t have a fever, and that’s pretty much the single symptom that rules in flu as a diagnosis and delineates it from “just a cold.”

At least I don’t think I do—I haven’t taken my temperature because my thermometer is somewhere in my laundry closet, and I’ve been too tired to get up from the couch to dig it out.

So I’ve just been taking Advil and drinking lots of water and grapefruit juice—‘cause I don’t like o.j.—and limeade and sucking on ice cubes. And yes, chicken soup and lentil soup and tomato soup.

The consensus is that I got sick from the plane because “everybody gets sick from the plane.” Only then why didn’t I actually get sick in Denver? (Yeah, yeah, I know, incubation periods and all that—it was cooking, in other words.)

Anyway, whatever it is, whether a summer cold or a mild flu or the dread “Airplane Adenovirus,” I feel like shit.

Plus, I can’t stop worrying that I’ve infected my almost 3 years-old grandson.

So next week I’ll tell you about my adventure in the Mile High City and all the great people, pros and fans, I met and about how it was so damn hot and humid I felt like I was still in New York City. Okay?

I’m going back to bed.

Mindy Newell: Star Trek’s Commodore Donald? I Can’t Even…

doomsday machine trump

The absolute shit that is coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth is just…

I can’t even.

I’m writing this on Thursday, when I should (finally) be packing, because my daughter is picking me up at 1:30 this afternoon for my flight to Denver and the Comic Con. But this column appears on Monday afternoon and I’ll still be in the Mile High City, so I got up early, made myself a cup of tea, and sat down to talk about how I’m looking forward to the convention, my first in years…

… but I put on Morning Joe (on MSNBC) and I’m sitting here with my mouth open and my political side spinning as I watch Joe and Mika and Willie and their panel and their guest report on and talk about the absolute shit that is coming out of the Republican nominee’s mouth.

This week Trump has:

(1) Said that President Obama has “something else in mind” concerning ISIS and terrorist attack, then saying “I’ll let people just try to figure out what I said” when questioned by the press as to exactly what he meant by that… and retweeting an article from the news organization Breitbart that Obama supports terrorists. In case you didn’t figure it out, Trump has accused the President of treasonous actions.

(2) Banned the Washington Post from covering his campaign because of “inaccurate reporting.” Which news organization is next? He’s already banished BuzzFeed, Politico, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, The Des Moines Register, and others.

(3) Tweeting “i told you so!” and “appreciate the congrats” and that he is the only one who can stop “them.” after the Orlando attack. (Yeah, that’s right, it’s all about him.)

(4) Said at a speech in Greensboro, North Carolina that “Iraq, crooked as hell. How about bringing baskets of money? Millions and millions of dollars and handing it out? I want to know, who are the soldiers that had that job because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be.” (Yes, 115 U.S. soldiers were convicted of theft and bribery in Afghanistan and Iraq – but since the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, “2.5 million members of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and related Reserve and National Guard units have been deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,” according to Department of Defense data. You do the math. The man is insulting the thousands who were killed and the hundreds of thousands who will carry scars, physical and mental, from those wars for the rest of their lives.)

(5) Told his own Republican party to just “be quiet” if they can’t support it, saying that he’ll “go it alone.” In other words, butt out!

Actually, that’s exactly what a growing number of Republicans are now starting to do. I almost feel sorry for them, as Ryan and McConnell and House Republicans and Senate Republicans find themselves drawn into “The Doomsday Machine,” staring down into its monstrous maw like Commodore Matt Decker as his shuttle is drawn into the beast, like Captain James T. Kirk waiting to be beamed back to the Enterprise as the Constellation gets closer and closer to the beast:

Kirk: (on the Constellation) Beam me aboard.

Spock: (on the bridge of the Enterprise) Energize.

Kyle: (in the Transporter room) Bridge, it’s shorted out again.

Scott: (in the Jefferies tube) Och, what’s wrong with it?

Kirk: Gentlemen, beam me aboard.

Spock: We can’t Captain. Transporter is out again.

Spock: Mister Scott, twenty seconds to detonation.

Spock: Mister Scott?

Spock? Mister Scott…

Spock: Try inverse phasing.

Sulu: (on the bridge of the Enterprise) Sixty kilometers, fifty, forty…

Sulu: (voice heard on Kirk’s communicator) Thirty…

Kirk: Gentlemen, I suggest you beam me aboard.

An absolutely brilliant episode written by award-winning science fiction author Norman Spinrad. Of course Kirk is rescued at the very last second before the man-made Doomsday Machine is “killed.”

Trump is also “man-made,” by a Republican party that put power and control over everything else – including love of country. He is their Frankenstein monster, “The Doomsday Machine” that is now running amok and destroying the very thing that created him. And the Republicans have no script, no award-winning author to write the page on which the brilliant engineer jimmies the Jefferies tube and fixes the transporter to save the heroic captain at the very last second

I can’t even.

Mindy Newell: On The Road Again

Denver Comic ConMy parents were not the types to do “stay-cations.” In their lives together they travelled around the country and the globe by car, by cruise ship, or by jet, although they never did make it to China or India as a couple. My mom wanted to go there, because, I think, my dad had been stationed in the CBI (China-Burma-India) theater of operations during WWII, and he would claim he had had enough of Chinese food to last him the rest of his life. This explains why we are the only Jewish family I’ve ever met who never went to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas, but actually I think it was because he didn’t want to dredge up old memories, the rotten kind.

Anyway, I don’t remember where they were, but on one vacation they met Muhammad Ali, who was gracious enough to take a photo with them. (I wish I had that photo to post, but I have no idea where it is these days.) This was sometime in the early 70s, and the country was not yet out of Vietnam, so I was a bit surprised to find out that they admired Ali not just for his boxing, but for his stand against the war. This was because at that time I was still a rather bratty kid who thought her parents were two of those middle-aged “love it or leave it” types who swallowed every lie coming out of Washington.

That picture was my first inkling that my father and my mother were individuals, intelligent people able to see past the bullshit and form their own opinions. Did this mean they were going to go out and march against the war? No, they weren’t that radical. But that war sure pissed them off. (A decade later, I first learned of Eisenhower’s warning about this country’s “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address to Congress in a conversation with my dad shortly after they returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., where they went to the newly opened Vietnam Memorial.)

Speaking of traveling, this weekend, Friday, June 17 through Sunday, June 19, I’ll be a guest at the Denver Comic Con, put on by the Pop Culture Classroom, a non-profit organization that was founded in 2010 as the Comic Book Classroom. Their aim is to enhance kids’ education and reading ability through the use of comic books and related media.

I really, really love their mission; I know it’s hard to believe for many of the younger fans, but once upon a time reading comics was not considered by any standard to be “cool.” If anything, it was generally thought of as being a sign of moronic ability, of the very opposite of intelligence, of an early-warning system to detect juvenile delinquency and a future that would definitely include time in the Big House. I know that my own parents, although proud of my early reading skills, were worried enough to consult with my “Uncle” Max – he wasn’t really my uncle, but our families were that close to warrant the moniker – who was a principal in the then-noted New York Public Schools System (yeah, hard to believe, huh?) and who told them not to worry, “the important thing was that I was reading, not only reading, but developing a real love of the written word.” And besides, how many 5-year olds could tell you that the Earth was “93,000,000 miles away” (thanks for those Editor’s Notes, Julie [Schwartz]) or could tell what the word invulnerable meant? Or that Metropolis and Gotham were actually synonyms for the word “city.” (I remember puzzling that out and then thinking it was funny and weird that Superman’s hometown was really just called “City” and that Batman’s turf was actually named “City City.”)

So come look for me in Denver – home to Peyton, brother of Eli – and say hi. I’ll have a table in Artist’s Alley (which is kind of surprising to me, to be honest, because I’m definitely not an artist; stick figures is what you’ll get from me, and not even good stick figures) and I’m on a bunch of panels, including one dedicated to Wonder Woman, who’s celebrating her 75th anniversary this year – damn, she looks good for her age! – and one called “Superstars of the 70s, 80s, & ‘90s.” which made me laugh, because I never thought of myself as a “superstar,” and then made me look in the mirror and wonder about a facelift – or at least Botox. And five more, including “Women in the Industry Today.”

Which is kind of sad, in a way, because at my very first convention, in Chicago, which is where I met BFF Kim Yale and her hubby, Johnny O., I was on a panel about “Women in Comics,” and that was 30 years ago. As pal Martha Thomases says, when is there going to be a panel about “Men in Comics?”

But don’t worry. I still have a lot to say.

Don’t I always?

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