Category: Columns

John Ostrander: Star Wars – The Trouble with Quibbles

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Spoiler Alert: This column will deal with some plot points in Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens. It’s possible that you may not have seen it yet although I think just about anyone who has any real interest in seeing it has seen it. If you are one of those who haven’t seen it and want to avoid plot revelations, avoid this column. Likewise, if you just don’t give a hang about Star Wars, you might want to avoid it as well. It’ll just bore the life out of you. Fan geek stuff. You know.

I’ve seen the new Star Wars film, Episode VII The Force Awakens a couple of times. Twice at least in the IMAX theater and now on Blu-Ray. Basically, I really enjoyed it. It makes up for the prequels and does what I always wanted in the next Star Wars film – it tells me what happened next.

That said, I do have some quibbles. I don’t mind, as some fans do, that the movie seems to replicate plot points from the first SW film, a.k.a. Episode IV. They had the Death Star, Episode VII has the Starkiller Base. The planet Alderaan gets blowed up real good in Episode IV; the planetary system that included Coruscant got blowed up real good in Episode VII (which, by the way, I think was a mistake). Both films have the mentor figure killed off by the villain dressed in black who wears a helmet. Skywalker males are whiners in all the trilogies. Anakin was a big time whiner in the prequels, Luke whined at least at the start, and now Kylo Ren whines just before he commits patricide. Leia never whines. Han doesn’t whine. Just the Skywalker boys.

Some of the similarities annoy me. Why is it, when the Jedi suffer a set-back, they go off somewhere to pout… excuse me, “meditate”… while the galaxy falls apart? Yoda and Obi-Wan could have found and rallied the remaining Jedi (or created new ones) to go after Darth Vader and Darth Sidious. But no. The remaining Jedi lie in hiding while terrible things happen to the galaxy and the planet Alderaan gets blowed up real good while the remaining Jedi pout. I mean meditate. In the new film, it’s a big plot point that the galaxy is waiting for Luke to come back and save it. The bad guys are hunting for his location so they can kill him and wipe out any possibility of the Jedi really returning. That’s a given. Where’s Luke? Off pouting. I mean meditating. And the flaming Coruscant system gets blowed up real good.

I suppose it could be argued that Luke, after his first attempt to make more Jedi goes spectacularly bad, decides to go look for the first Jedi Temple since he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. However, that’s speculating without any real proof.

In the earlier Star Wars films, it is said that Darth Vader, a.k.a. Anakin Skywalker, still had some good in him. I’ve argued this before: I don’t see it. He killed children, he betrayed the Jedi Order, he helped hunt down remaining Jedi, he was complicit in the destruction of the planet Alderaan but it’s okay because, at the end, he turns on the evil Emperor because the latter is electrocuting Vader’s son.

Now, in the latest film, the new Man In Black, Kylo Ren, a.k.a. the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, kills people, wrecks Luke’s nascent new Jedi Club, orders the destruction of a village, is complicit in the destruction of a whole planetary system and he commits patricide. Yes, this a-hole kills off his Dad, Han Solo, who is one of the favorite characters in Star Wars, who is trying to help him at the time. Kylo does lots of other nasty stuff but we know he will be around for the next film and probably the one after that. If the other films follow the pattern of the earlier films, we may see a desire to redeem the little bugger as Vader was redeemed.

Let me repeat. Kylo (Ben Solo) Ren commits patricide. Throughout history in Western Civilization, that is considered an unspeakable crime, an unforgivable sin. I loved Han Solo and, before he buys it in this film, we’re given some great moments that reminds us all why he’s such a favorite character. And his little snot of a son kills him.

I suppose in the next film or so we’ll get some of Ren’s backstory and maybe understand him better. As it is, I feel no sympathy, no empathy for him. I don’t think he is redeemable any more than I think Vader/Anakin was redeemed. IMO, he needs to die as soon as the plot can arrange it.

However, as I said before, these are quibbles. I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t like the new Star Wars because I enjoyed it immensely. I found it satisfying and a great return to a galaxy far, far away. I think the female lead, Daisy Ridley playing Rey, is a wonderful addition to the saga. At recent conventions I’ve attended, I’ve seen a lot of young girls cos-playing Rey and I think that’s great. It invigorates Star Wars with new energy.

But they can shoot Kylo Ren any time.

Tweeks: LootCrate’s March 2016 PetCrate Unboxing

Maddy & Barkely team up to unbox the March Pet Crate from Loot Crate. This month’s theme is Versus, so Maddy tried to figure out if her best friend is Team Cap or Team Iron Man…and if his favorite item is the plushy Bat Man or the box he came in.

For those who don’t know, Loot Pets is a monthly crate of geeky gear and goods for your dog. You get apparel, accessories, toys, treats and more of over $50 value in every crate….plus they donate $1 to a local, national, or international animal welfare charity on each crate purchased. You get more info at lootcrate.com. #LootPets

Marc Alan Fishman: How to (Re)Become a DC Fan (Again)

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Last week I tore DC Entertainment a new bum-port over their recent efforts to entertain the masses. If you didn’t read it, let me sum it up for you.

I was, and I still am, butthurt over how terrible Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Martha as well as Justice League: War! Huh! Good-God. What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing! But I digress.

As I’d been buried in freelance work this past week, I’ve found that firing up Netflix on my second screen helps me focus. Headphone blaring quality programming on demand whilst I graphic design my way out of the hole I dug has been very fruitful as of late. I was able to binge-lance my way through season 4 of House of Cards, rewatch the first season of Better Caul Saul, rewatch the entirety of Breaking Bad (because, how could I not?), and watch the entirety of Orange is the New Black. With basically all the greats consumed, I flick-panned down the categories suggested to me by the ancient and powerful mystic algorithms of metadata and ended up on a gem I’d honestly forgotten about: Young Justice.

Oh, DC… why can’t I quit you?

I just completed my consuming the epically long first season. Upon revisiting the show – once a staple of appointment-TV in my home some six years ago when it debuted – I’d come to remember how insanely amazing it was. And presented against a still fresh pair of donkey turds DC delivered to me merely a week or two ago… YJ is a bloomed rosebud poking out of nuclear soil.

Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman delivered an animated epic that proved you could have an action-focused plot bolstered by naturally angtsy protagonists and not end up decimating whole cities, crying, in the pouring rain. Instead, they chose to remember the lore and continuity that exists over decades of comic books, and be inspired to give us thinking heroes who understand that you can’t save the day by just punching harder. Hell, they even dedicated an entire subplot about that very point with Superboy!

When the first season reached it’s emotional climax – where each subtlety crafted sub-plot was unraveled at the feet of the titular team? We got no kicking, screaming, crying, or pouting. Instead we got three-dimensional characters willing to hear one another out before the punching, and we got catharsis, reciprocity, and a commitment to camaraderie. Somehow after all that gooey, hard-to-handle plotting? They delivered with an astounding third act of pure action without batting an eye. In contact, David Goyer and Zach Snyder just bashed their action figures against each other while a team of overworked CG animators called home to tell their loved ones they wouldn’t be released until they’d figured out a way to add hate to the blood spatter effects.

And remember… one of these pieces of media was meant to be marketed to children. The other has seemingly been adopted by petulant children. Natch.

I titled my ramblings this week “How to (Re)Become a DC Fan (Again)” as Young Justice doused the fire that torched my love of the company and characters a week ago. It reminded me that beyond the now-obvious battle plan to simply angst their way to financial success, DC once allowed creators who truly love their deep bench of heroes and villains… and allowed them near free-reign to tell great stories. Young Justice, Teen Titans, and Legion of Super Heroes, did just that. Taken in stride alongside Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, Justice League: Unlimited, and Batman Beyond (with an honorable mention to Batman: Brave and the Bold) I am assured that even if the next decade is drowned in dreck, I am not far removed from happier times.

Oh sweet baby Jesus. I’ve just become that old guy who says “They don’t make them like they used to, damnit!”

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #385

ANT-MAN’S PLAYED A HENCH

So are we sick of talking about Serpent Solutions yet? Yes. Then let’s talk about its older brothers, Power Broker  and Power Broker, Inc .

Later.

First, there’s one more thing about Serpent Solutions, that corporation of super villains which would hire itself out to other corporations that needed illegal things to be done. Serpent Solutions did the illegal things and the corporations paid Serpent Solutions for doing them. My recent thrashings of the reasoning – or lack there of; and I think we’ll go with the latter – behind this premise failed to address one important question; how did Serpent Solutions find its clients?

Did some masked serpent villain appear on a TV screen asking, “Do you know me?” then shill their skill on the premise that because Serpent Solutions was were a group of unknown super villain, they were the perfect people to hire to do what ever illegal stuff potential clients needed to be done? Did Serpent Solutions send out mass-market e-mails which they hoped didn’t end up a spam filter nestled between entreaties from Nigerian princes? Craigslist?

Well, the same question could be asked of Power Broker and Power Broker, Inc. Not just could be. In a little bit, will be. But first there’s another question: Who is Power Broker?

I don’t know. That is I knew once but I don’t know now.

The original Power Broker was Curtiss Jackson, a professional criminal who, along with Dr. Karlin Malus – yes him, again – founded Power Broker, Inc. Power Broker, Inc. had a fairly simple business plan; for a price, it gave its customers superhuman abilities using Dr. Malus’s experimental genetic manipulation techniques. Many became wrestlers in the super-human-only Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation. Others just became straight-out super villains.

The second Marvel villain called Power Broker is whoever took over Power Broker, Inc. after Jackson disappeared and maybe died. We don’t know this person’s real name. All we know is that Power Broker II wears a battle suit and probably used the company’s augmentation process on himself, because he can project energy bolts from his hands.

The second Power Broker kept Power Broker, Inc’s original business plan. For a price, usually a hefty percentage of whatever the clients earned with their super powers, he gave super powers to people. In the case of those who wanted to compete in the UCWF, it was what they earned as wrestlers. In the case of the customers who wanted to become super villains, “earned” was a euphemism for whatever ill-getting means got them their ill-gotten gains.

Then Power Broker II branched out. In The Astonishing Ant-Man #1, Power Broker II introduced his newest business plan; the Hench app. The Hench app is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, despite the fact that what it sounds like is silly.

Hench is a smart phone app that uses a proprietary algorithm to match up super villains with jobs. Super villains, either ones that already exist or new ones who got their powers from Power Broker, sign up with Hench to become providers. They offer their services as independent contractors available for hire and are stored in the Hench database. Then customers who need crimes committed use the Hench app. The app would algorithm and algomusic and then suggest the perfect super villain from its database for the customer’s job. Who could ask for anything more?

antmanHench is Uber for the ubermensch. An invaluable service for those who have crimes that need to be committed. However, the Hench business plan begs a question. Begs it more than a terrier taking tables scraps. That question, which I asked before, is how does Hench find its customers?

I imagine it could find its super villains by posting one of those photostated “take a number” ads on the bulletin board in either location of the Bar With No Name, the infamous bar catering only to Marvel super villains that has franchises in New York City and Medina, Ohio. But how does Power Broker, Inc. find potential customers who want crimes committed or link them up with the criminals stored in the Hench app database?

Again, as with Serpent Solutions, Power Broker, Inc. can’t exactly advertise its services or the Hench app. At least not without drawing at least a modicum of unwanted attention from the local constabulary. Then there’s the question of how does Power Broker, Inc. get the Hench app onto people’s smart phones?

Apple screens apps before it allows them access to its App Store. Google does the same before it allows Android apps into the Play Store. I can’t imagine either of these corporations would accept apps whose sole purpose was to help people break the law and get the corporations prosecuted as aiders and abettors.

Yes, Power Broker, Inc. could set up its own web site where people could go to download the Hench app. But that process is not without a significant problem. It’s a very public way for conducting business that absolutely no one would want to be public.

So I’m just stumped. I don’t know how Power Broker, Inc. could attract any sort of client base without revealing itself to the authorities.

You see, I can think up the question, how could anyone actually do these criminal things without getting caught, but I can’t think up the actual ways that anyone could do these criminal things without getting caught. Guess it’s a good thing I became a criminal defense attorney and not a criminal.

Martha Thomases: Poetry In Comics

IMG_0071Once again my editor has suggested a topic for my column. Since I can wax pretentiously about all sorts of literary and aesthetic issues, he thought this round-table discussion about “poetry comics” might interest me.

And it did.

To me, art is something that makes me see the world in new ways. I frequently judge the quality of a work of art by how it deals with its limitations. For example, paintings (and photographs) are static objects each of a specific and unchanging size. Films are two-dimensional. Dance is non-verbal. Theater takes place on a stage. Yada yada yada.

Poetry is verbal and, in my head at least, each word is essential.

When it comes to poetry comics, I don’t entirely understand the concept, but it is an intriguing one. Is the artwork an illustration of the words, or an equivalent to a line of verse or a stanza? If the poet removed the artwork, would the poem be incomplete? Would the illustrations make sense without the words?

Can pictures rhyme?

In my opinion, a good graphic story-teller already treats each word as essential, editing out those that are not absolutely necessary to move the plot or illuminate character. As a writer who can’t draw, I find it incredibly challenging to write a script that lets the art carry the action, to trust the artist to convey the mood with images, not adjectives.

(I assume artists have parallel frustrations. Especially with me.)

IMG_0069Despite the assumptions of the article in the above link, poetry comics are not a new thing. In 2003, Norman Mailer published Modest Gifts, a collection of poems with drawings. My copy is signed by him, and he describes it as “my comic strip.” Norman’s ambitions as an artist were just about as lofty as his ambitions as a writer, although his skills as an artist were infinitely more limited.

It’s my opinion that the artwork in this book is absolutely an asset to the words. I don’t think the poems fail without the scribbling (which is pretty much how I would describe Mailer’s art style), but they are certainly more fun and more insightful with it.

Mailer was already 80 years old in 2003. No one looked to him for new and cutting-edge art forms. I think he’d be pleased to know that he was so far ahead of his time.

Now if only we could get that Ancient Egypt graphic novel happening…

Tweeks: Wynonna Earp Cast & Crew at WonderCon 2016 Part 1

At WonderCon, Anya got the chance to sit down with the cast and crew of the SyFy channel’s newest show, Wynonna Earp. Based on the Wynonna Earp comics by Beau Smith, the show follows Wyatt Earp’s great great granddaughter as she carries on the burden family curse…and also gets to kill evil things.

The show is a bit different from the comics as Wynonna is younger and just gaining her powers. There is also a sister dynamic that has been explained as a little like Frozen meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets X-Files.

In this first set of interviews, Anya talks to Michael Eklund (who plays the show’s baddie), Tim Rozon (Doc Holliday), and Dominique Provost-Chalkley (Wynonna’s little sister, Waverly).

One of the coolest things about this interview just might be how much of a comic nerd Tim Rozon turns out to be!

In parts 2 & 3 of the interview Anya will be talking to show runner Emily Andras, comic creator Beau Smith, and stars Melanie Scrofano and Shamier Anderson….so make sure to come back to watch those.

Wynonna Earp airs on SyFy on Fridays at 10pm. It’s also on CHCH in Canada. The show started on April 1st, so quickly….go catch up. It’s a 13 episode series, so you have time!

Dennis O’Neil: Superheroes in Three Dimensions

Kara Danvers

Back when days were yore and the sun was yet in the sky and I had a shining splendor of a job – could any job be better than editing Batman? – I didn’t always go film versions of comic books. Not sure why. Fear? Of disappointment? Of being shown that others were better than I was? Of just needing to get away from my day job and watching actors portray the characters who lay on my desk was not exactly getting away from them. All of he above? None of the above?

Not that I missed all the superhero flicks, but I still haven’t seen the last Christopher Reeve Superman and I caught only a few minutes, on television, of the Ben Affleck Daredevil. There may be others I’m forgetting.

Now, though, I catch ‘em all, even the ones that reflect my comic book labors, and I tend to like them, even those that are darker/grimmer than they might need to be. The most recent Daredevil – the unAffleckian version – and the quite similar Jessica Jones are not exactly jolly entertainments. In a few minutes, when I leave this computer and get in the car, I’ll be off to see the much discussed and maligned Batman vs Superman and tonight I’ll probably tune into FOX’s Gotham while recording what is, I think, the lightest and brightest of the teevee superdoers, and of course we’re talking about the lovely Kara Danvers – Supergirl.

I accused Ms. Danvers of lightness and brightness and that’s true only if you can ignore the Maid of Might’s backstory which, like her cousin Superman’s bio, involves the destruction of an entire planet, including friends and relatives. Many of the other costumed heroes have grim pasts too. Batman, of course, seeing his parents killed in front of him and Spider-Man, responsible for his beloved uncle’s death, and Daredevil whose father was killed and who owes his powers to a nasty accident and the Thing, changed into a monster by radioactivity and Iron Man and Nightwing and and and…

Are we dealing, here, with modern fairy tales? Well, there’s Bruno Bettelheim, of the renowned psychologist Bettelheims, who said said that scary fairy tales, with all those dark woods and evil witches, are developmentally healthy because they allow youngsters to face and acknowledge fears, and then reassure the kids that they will survive. And I’ve read very few, if any, comics that did not end with the good guys triumphant.

Batman vs Superman, currently playing at a theater near me, has a happyish ending. I know this because somewhere/when in the last bunch of words I went to a theater near me and saw the movie. Then I came home and checked the email and

had dinner. Oh, and did I like the movie? Well, that might be a topic for another time. Or not.

Mike Gold: Do Comics Belong In Comics?

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I am not a sociologist, although I’ve known a few. But let’s assume the fact that “superheroes” (in the broadest sense) fill a need in our lives. They started out in folk lore, they appear in most if not all bibles, they were popularized in the “penny dreadfuls” which evolved into pulp magazines which evolved into comic books.

Blackhawk movieTarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Zorro and others helped populate the movie theaters going back to its earliest days back to the silent era. When talkies came around, superheroes became the backbone of the short movie serials that were geared to bring patrons back week after week. Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman, Blackhawk, Captain America, Spy Smasher and others joined Zorro and Tarzan in this venue. When network radio came along, comics characters from older media (Superman, The Shadow) joined original creations (The Lone Ranger, Green Hornet) and flourished in the just-home-from-school time slots.

And television – well, television saved the superheroes’ collective ass. The Adventures of Superman, produced by what is now DC Comics, hit the boob tube before most families had teevee sets. At that very time, comic books were branded by the media as a source – perhaps the source – of juvenile delinquency. Comics outlets were disappearing, either from clerks no longer handling the product or from being squeezed out by chain stores and shopping strips and malls.

Captain Marvel movieBut Superman was right there in our living rooms every week using his cape as a placeholder for 75 years of tradition. Over a decade later, as comic book sales were at a comparative low, the Batman teevee series kept the print medium alive. In 1978 Superman led the way into high-budget motion pictures, not only proving a man can fly, but an old man can extend his life by deploying whatever “new media” is burgeoning at the time. Radio, television, motion pictures – Supes was there first.

Today we have more superhero movies and television series than the average person can absorb. Even the average comics fan: most of us do triage. Their popularity is massive, perhaps 20 times bigger than the comic book audience. This has been going on for about a decade and there’s no sign of it slowing down. It will, of course, but history tells us the cinematic comics universes will never go away. Not completely.

(Probably. There haven’t been a lot of successful westerns in the past several decades.)

So I think it is reasonable for me to infer that for most people the superhero story fills a need, probably an emotional, cathartic need.

But there is no washback onto the mothership. Average comic book sales have never been lower, even with the supplemental release of trade paperbacks and hardcovers. The latter has helped, but, you know, Borders went blooie and it’s not as easy to find good general bookstores anymore. It’s even harder to find a well-stocked magazine rack. And harder still to find one that carries more than a handful of comics, if that many.

Back in the day, that day being an hour before the release of the first Star Wars movie, we in the comics business could produce stories where, for example, we can destroy an entire universe on one page, do the Greek chorus bit on the next page, run a full-page cosmic ex Machina on the third, and restore that destroyed universe on the fourth page. Movies simply could not do that.

Well, not only can they do so today, but computers and artistic technicians have brought their gifts to the television screen in a cost-effective manner. And to home computers.  And tablets. And smartphones.

So I humbly ask this question: has the comic book outlived its usefulness?

As you consider this, keep in mind that since the turn of the century Warner Bros. and Disney, two of the largest media empires, took control over DC Comics and Marvel Comics, respectively. They are best known for making movies and television shows. They are not known to have a major presence in the lumberjack game.

Will there always be a comic book publishing industry? Of course not. There won’t always be anything. But will comic books live another ten or twenty years?

Ask me after Warner Bros. and Marvel each release a couple of big-budget superhero bombs.

Box Office Democracy: Midnight Special

Midnight Special

At the theater I see most of my movies at, they sometimes run interviews with filmmakers after the credits. These are never particularly hard-hitting affairs, usually filled with variations on the question “just how is it you came to do such brilliant work on this movie” and so on. After Midnight Special, they ran an interview with writer/director Jeff Nichols where they asked him what it was like to be a writer who only wrote films he was going to direct and a director who only directed films he wrote. Putting aside that this isn’t nearly as uncommon as this interviewer seems to think, it kind of brought in to focus the nagging problem I had during the film; it’s a wonderfully directed movie and only an okay script. There are fantastic, compelling acting performances holding up a script that thinks it’s too clever for context, and a third act that feels utterly without consequence. A movie can go a long way on gritty atmosphere, tension, and a pervasive sense of intrigue, but it can’t quite get all the way to the finish line— and so Midnight Special is a frustrating good instead of a dizzying great.

Midnight Special is about a boy, Alton, with some kind of powers. They’re never made particularly clear, which becomes awfully convenient when they need him to do just about everything to make the story come together in the end. It’s also about his parents who love Alton so much that they’ll give up their lives and endanger innocent people to rescue him from a cult that might not have his interests at heart, but when it becomes clear they might not see their child again they never once tell him they love him or that they’ll miss him. It’s all tight-lipped stoicism and meaningful glances. It’s also about a manhunt to find him both by the government and by two agents of this cult, but the methods of the pursuers are vague and the cultists seem to give up very easily considering they think the boy will bring about biblical judgment. Midnight Special is a movie where nothing feels particularly weighty because nothing makes all that much sense.

There’s a pleasing depth to the world of Midnight Special, and while they drop us right in to the middle of the action it all feels lived in and real. The problem comes in because, while I don’t want more exposition per se, I can’t help but wonder if some of the stories we don’t see on screen aren’t more interesting than the one we’re seeing. The story of an established rural Texas cult refocusing itself around a precocious young boy and rewriting their scriptures, or the story of the NSA discovering that said precocious cult child is spilling national secrets, or even a 20-minute short about how the world would react to whatever the hell happened at the end of that movie. A movie should always try to leave the audience wanting more but Midnight Special left me wanting something completely different and something I’ll never be offered, and that’s slightly less pleasant.

Michael Shannon was seemingly created to be in movies like Midnight Special. He’s quiet, he’s intense, and he can convey an incredible amount of information with his expressions. He’s needed in this movie because while the information might seem thin or a little nonsensical, he can instantly ground it by wordlessly conveying to the audience what it means to his character and how we’re supposed to feel in the audience. He isn’t angry at Alton when the crashed satellite destroys the gas station, he’s afraid— stuff like that. Joel Edgerton and Kirsten Dunst are also very good and they’re acting against the type I have for them in my head, which is nice. They both feel like such substantial presences on the screen and while that might seem like damning with faint praise, it isn’t— their tiniest reaction or mannerism feels gigantic in this film.

I’m unhappy to admit that I was probably wrong about Adam Driver. I didn’t like him for a long time and it seems like he’s a real actor. I didn’t like him in Girls, I still don’t understand why people think he’s so incredibly good-looking, but he was good in The Force Awakens and he’s great here in Midnight Special. He’s firmly in my McConaughey Zone for actors that are going to take me a while to get past their so-so starts to appreciate their good work, but at least the newest inductee has a name I don’t have to look up every time I need to write it down.

It’s great for science fiction that Midnight Special exists. It’s a nice, slower, less special effects intensive kind of sci-fi that has a really good vibe (Alton reading 1980s Superman and Teen Titans comics in the back of the car was an especially nice touch). It’s an emotional film and its an effectively tense film but it never feels particularly clever; it’s a well-decorated house that’s collapsing into a sinkhole. It’s the kind of movie I would stick with if I ran across it on cable but would be not paying attention at all by the end.

John Ostrander: They Grow Up So Fast

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I’ve been watching DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow over on the CW. Among the characters that have been appearing on the show are Firestorm and Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Well, not so much Hawkman any more, maybe. I didn’t create those three characters but I certainly played with them a lot and, for a while, left my sticky fingerprints all over them. So it’s interesting watching manifestations of them in other media.

I’ll be experiencing that big time come August when the Suicide Squad movie hits the multiplexes. I created Amanda Waller and I defined characters like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang and it will be exciting to see how they translate for the screen. I hope.

None of the character portrayals will translate directly from the comics to movies or TV. I’m okay with that; none of them have so far. Different media have different needs. That’s why they’re called adaptations. The material is adapted from whatever the source was. My only question about any given adaptation is – how true is it to its roots? Did they get the essence of the character or the concept right? If you’re going to do Captain XYZ Man, there should be a resemblance to what makes up Captain XYZ Man. Right?

OTOH, I haven’t always done that and Suicide Squad itself is a good example. The comic was originally created for DC by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru; my version shared the title, a character or two, and some history with the original and not much else. Of course, as buddy Mike Gold pointed out in his excellent column this week, Kanigher may have gotten the title (and not much else) from a feature in a pulp magazine called Ace G-Man. What goes around comes around?

Amanda has appeared several times, including the TV show Arrow, lots of animated series, the Green Lantern movie, video games, the TV series Smallville, and probably more. I may need to double check my royalty statements. Any number of actresses have portrayed her and voiced her. She doesn’t always look the same. In Arrow and some of the comics, she’s built like a model. However, in all the variations I’ve seen there have been certain aspects that are kept – she’s female, black, and she’s ruthless as hell.

Even with other characters, I don’t always keep to how they were conceived. My version of Firestorm changed (evolved?) throughout my run. At one point when we decided he was a Fire Elemental (the Elemental idea was popular for a while starting with Alan Moore making Swamp Thing the Earth Elemental) and Ol’ Flamehead’s look was drastically altered, not always to universal approval.

Still, I think I kept to the essentials of the characters and, when I changed things, I kept within continuity as established although sometimes I picked and chose within the continuity.

All that said, I (mostly) enjoy seeing the variations and permutations of these characters. It’s like watching your kids grow up and moving away and seeing what they become. It’s not always what you expected but, hopefully, you can still see your DNA in them.

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