Category: Columns

Box Office Democracy: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

It’s easy to kick a studio while they’re down, and a little of that seems to be happening with the reactions to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Warner Bros. has struggled mightily in bringing their heroes to the screen in recent years (recent decades if we don’t count Christopher Nolan’s work) and there’s an attempt to pile on. If Batman v Superman were a Marvel Studios film I suspect it would be getting more positive coverage as people dug to find the good things and used them to redeem the things that don’t work; instead people are endlessly picking at the numerous mistakes. Don’t get confused, Batman v Superman is an awful movie and Zack Snyder should be stopped at all costs but in the hands of literally any other director I could believe there was a salvageable property here and there’s time to right this ship.

Superman as depicted in Batman v Superman isn’t fun to watch, nor does he feel faithful to the character. I’ll be honest: I stopped reading comics on a weekly basis in the winter of 2012 and I haven’t been keeping up since then, so maybe Superman has become an extremely violent, petulant baby in that time— but I sort of doubt it. The Superman in this film is terrifying to consider. He’s quick to anger and never particularly nice to anyone that isn’t Lois Lane; more like Miracleman than Superman. The only never ending battle on display in this film is the one Warner Bros. fights for Superman to appear cool, but they’ve succeeded in creating a character that would only seem cool to an edgy teenager or the 90s comics industry. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be rooting for Batman or Superman when they come to blows, but I’m almost certainly not supposed to be thinking Lex Luthor is right about everything— and yet that’s just where I was for 80% of this movie.

The non-Superman characters were mostly pretty good. Ben Affleck should release a video where he makes it very clear he’s addressing all the people who doubted he could be a credible Batman, drop the mic, and then walk away. He’s a great Batman; I’m ready to put him in the upper echelon with Bale and Keaton (and Kilmer but let’s not get sidetracked) after seeing this movie. He’s believable physically, and he captures that kind of arrogant paranoia that I think Batman should embody. The scenes with Wonder Woman in costume are a giddy rush, and they represent her so well in the fight scenes without any clunky exposition or holding anybody’s hand. We all know who Wonder Woman is, we’ve been alive in the world. The scenes before she puts on the costume are less good; they kind of play her like an off-brand Selina Kyle, but they might have been going for an air of mystery and were betrayed by the PR team. Jesse Eisenberg has the most off-beat take of any established character, and while there isn’t a strong comic book foundation to what he’s doing, it does feel like what a billionaire megalomaniacal industrialist would look like in the modern start-up culture and he’s so unsettlingly creepy that I’m going to give him a pass.

I generally find Zack Snyder’s work to be unappealing visually, and Batman v Superman is no exception. Things are too slick, slow motion is used too much, only a handful of scenes take place in daylight. Gotham City and Metropolis look the same because there’s no room for points of contrast. I suppose Gotham’s abandoned docks are supposed to feel seedy and give the city a dilapidated edge but Metropolis has a crashed alien ship taking up a huge part of their downtown so there’s no contrast there. The contrast between Superman and Batman should be reflected in every part of their environment and instead everything takes place on the same dreary streets and rooftops.

The common refrain after seeing a movie like this is that it “destroys their childhood” of the viewer, and that’s always nonsense. No one from Warner is going to break down my door and set any of my trade paperbacks on fire or draw a bunch of bloodstains in the margins or anything like that. However, superhero movies are trading on nostalgia. If they can’t get a dyed in the wool DC Comics person like me to feel a connection to this film (and if you go back and read paragraph three of this review I desperately want to feel this connection) then I can’t imagine who does. They’ve made a misanthropic film, an ugly film, and worst of all they made a Zack Snyder film.

Mindy Newell: Being Different

wonderwoman

Part I: Wow!

“Two years ago writer G. Willow Wilson, artist Adrian Alphona and I created a story about a young woman with dreams of being ‘normal.’” Her name is Kamala Khan and she’s a Muslim American girl from Jersey City. We comic folks call her Ms. Marvel.” Kamala’s story shows how “being ‘normal’ isn’t one race, one gender, one point of view. Being ‘normal’ is being different. And being different is being American.”

Sana Amanat, Director of Content & Character Development, Marvel Entertainment, Co-Creator of Marvel Comics’ Ms. Marvel • From her introduction of President Obama at the White House Reception for Women’s History Month, March 16, 2016

I just finished reading Martha’s latest column – Wow, girlfriend! You knocked it out of the park! – and, pursuant to that, I clicked on the link in Martha’s column, which for some reason didn’t work for me, so I did some searching and found this.

Watching and listening to President Obama as he spoke to the women gathered at the Women’s History Month reception about women, and their daughters, and their sons, of how we have been, and always will be, part and parcel and participants in this country’s history, its future, and the world’s future, I was struck, yet again, by how absolutely everything about the current occupant of the Oval Office is so absolutely different from the Repugnantican men who want to take over the Presidency.

Just now, as I wrote “take over the Presidency,” I was also struck by what I can only call my Freudian slip; I could have used “inherit the office” or “win the election” or “succeed him as President,” but what automatically came out of me was those two words – take over. Because every time I see Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and, yes, even the so-called “moderate” John Kasich, every time I hear or read their latest statements, that’s exactly how I interpret their words – as a take over of this country. I have more than once lately pulled out my copy of William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to read about its financial backing by German corporations; I have pulled out my copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to reread how the United States of America becomes the Republic of Gilead, a country organized into a fanatical, patriarchal, martial, and rigidly “Christian” society in women are either Madonna or whores.

Of course I am sounding extremely paranoid, but I’m not really. The Repugnantican party and its candidates are so obtuse, so parochial, so busy attacking each other about the size of their penises that they don’t realize they’re on the Titanic. Really, I’m not worried. The Repugnanticans are done as a functioning political party in this country.

So I’m sleeping very soundly.

Except…

Before turning to a different subject, here’s a little something from Sana’s visit to Late Night with Seth Meyer.

Part II: Sucker Punched

On a somewhat lighter note – I haven’t seen The Caped Crusader Beats Up on the Last Son of Krypton (and Vice-Versa), and I really don’t want to; well, except for seeing Gal Godot as my favorite Amazon Princess/Warrior and Jeremy Irons as the butler. But I can wait for the movie to hit the streaming sites and cable and for a rainy day when I’m sitting at home bored out of my mind. Editor Mike Gold and I were talking the other night; he was being the “good cop,” waiting to see it before he formed an opinion, and I played “bad cop,” convicting the movie without benefit of trial.

“Having experienced other Zak Snyder films,” I said, “whatever Zak Snyder touches turns to destructive garbage that has nothing to do with storytelling or character development or emotional satisfaction.” And though I didn’t say this to Mike, I’ll tell you: I think Snyder’s fans are a different kind of audience, one with which I definitely don’t want to be identified. Maybe it’s my crazy writer’s mind making crazy connections again, but I think there’s a direct correlation between the audience that loves Snyder’s movies and video games and the rampaging thugs audience that go to Donald Trump stump speeches, i.e., Zak Snyder :: Sucker Punch as Grizzled Ignorant Cracker :: Protestor.

Now that I think of it, what I said to Mike about The Last Son of Krypton Beats The Crap Out Of The Caped Crusader (Or Vice-Versa) was: “It’s gonna suck.”

I told you so, didn’t I?

Have an Oxycontin. You’ll feel better.

Maybe.

Ed Catto: Time Won’t Let Me

Chrononauts 4 issues

When I applied to University of North Carolina (UNC) Graduate School of Business to earn my MBA, one of the application’s essay questions asked “If you were go back into time to the founding of this university, what three items would you bring with you?”

I imagine the purpose of this was to discern candidates’ true character based on which items were most important to them. I bet there were a lot of answers that listed items like family photos or the Bible. I took a different approach. Having grown up on a steady diet of time travel comics and stories (most notably Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court) I interpreted the question in a different way. I answered it by thinking about the three items that would have the greatest positive impact on history. One item I recall bringing back in time (in my essay) was the cotton gin. This would help me get the competitive edge on Eli Whitney, and revolutionize the labor market and possibly bring an earlier end to slavery.

Rip Hunter 19Everyone loves time travel adventures. They are everywhere. One could argue that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a time travel story (I think it’s really an alternate reality story, but that’s another column). As a kid in the sixties, so many shows would have a time travel episode (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Star Trek) and some used time travel for the entire premise of their series (Time Tunnel, It’s About Time). I grew up just knowing that I’d have an adventure with dinosaurs one day.

Today you can’t swing Shodringer’s cat without hitting a time travel adventure. Even the new iPhone6 ad ends with the admonition “Live Photos…transport you through space and time. I’m kidding, time travel is dangerous.”

But let’s be realistic – Geek Culture is leading the way, or at least is waving the battle flag of time travel adventures.

Superman and Batman always had a lot of reasons to journey through time. In fact as a teenager, Superman’s had to travel through time to visit his best friends. These vintage time travel stories were silly and fun and never really had any lasting affects or severe implications.

Rip Hunter, Time Master was one of those early sixties oddball DC comic series that never really fit in with the rest of the DC mythology. Instead of developing superpowers or fighting crime, Rip had developed a Time Sphere and adventured through the ages with his girlfriend, best buddy and his girlfriend’s pesky little brother. They’d embark on adventures ranging from solving historical conundrums to videotaping live dinosaurs for a contemporary museum exhibit!

The Rook CoversToday, of course, Rip leads a ragtag team of trademarked DC heroes through time every week on a popular CW television show. I think it’s safe to say that even the most loyal, the most devoted, the most wildly optimistic Rip Hunter, Time Master fan from 1964 would never have imagined that Rip Hunter would one day be starring in his own TV Show. And be renewed for second season.

Lately two other comic chronological adventures have shown us how much fun this concept can be.

The Chrononauts by Mark Millar and Sean Murphy tell the tale of the world’s first time travel experiment, but it’s a cautionary caper story of cocky entrepreneur-like scientists who live in our Donald Trump dominated world, where major events all too easily slip and slide into reality shows. In this tale, the protagonists do in fact change and re-change history, and their motives aren’t exactly pure. There are ramifications for these characters, both in big and in (cleverly-written) small ways.

Murphy’s art is a joy to drink in. He’s got a rock solid understanding of anatomy and composition, but renders his pages with a brisk sense of urgency. And his powerful scenes reveal an imagination that would make a movie’s budget director weep like a baby.

The Rook, from Dark Horse, is also a recent four issue miniseries. Two masters of the genre, writer Steven Grant and artist Paul Gulacy are the creative team behind this rebooted time traveling hero.

(As an aside, Gulacy is no stranger to top-notch time-travel stories. His recent Time Bomb series from Radical Comics a few years ago was exceptional – kind of like a Rip Hunter on steroids.)

“One of the most intriguing and fun comic themes I have worked on have dealt with time travel,” said legendary artist Paul Gulacy. “Time Bomb and the current Rook series come to mind.”

In the late 70s, Bill Dubay created the Rook for Warren Magazines. As an alternative to the horror adventures and sexiness of Vampirella, the character was fresh, creative and a big hit for the publisher.

Grant and Gulacy have brought The Rook back in style, and clearly are having fun hopping through time. In fact, the Rook’s ancestor was a character in H.G. Well’s The Time Machine.

And I think that’s the most appropriate place to end a column on time travel stories, the place, or one of the places, where it all began.

legendsheader

John Ostrander: Don’t Look Down

John Ostrander: Don’t Look Down

Wile E Coyote

There’s a rule for tightrope walkers: don’t look down. If you look down, you’ll fall. Focus instead on the other end of the wire, where you’re headed. Focus on the goal. I’ve always felt that’s good advice for writers as well.

Don’t look down.

If you doubt that you can write, you can’t. If asked if you are a writer, your answer has to be “Yes.” If you’re asked if you are a good writer, your answer has to be “Yes.” If you’re asked if you are the best writer that you can ever be, your answer should be “Not yet.” You not only have to say it, you have to believe it. If you don’t or can’t, then you are looking down.

Don’t look down.

This isn’t about being humble. It’s not about modesty. If you’re going to be a writer, you have to believe that you are good enough to be read. If you want to be a professional writer, you have to believe that you are good enough for people to want to pay money to read you. You have to believe it and you have to continue to believe it even despite evidence to the contrary, even if people tell you that you can’t. Margaret Mitchell was rejected 38 times before she sold Gone With The Wind. J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 publishers before finding a home. Agatha Christie was rejected for five years. Louis L’Amour got 200 rejection letters. They stuck it out.

You can’t just say you believe. You have to choose to believe. Any belief worth having must be chosen.

Can you falter? Yes. I’ve looked down a few times. I doubted. I fell. You wonder, you question, you doubt. In the end, if you’re going to continue to write, you have to look back up and choose to believe that you can write, that you are a writer. Every time I start a story, every day that I sit down at this keyboard, it’s an act of faith.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical of your own work. You just have to criticize without ego. You have to take criticism without ego. I know people whose whole sense of self-worth is tied up with their work. Writing is too slender a reed on which to place such an existential weight. It’s not about you; it’s about the work. Your objective should always be to make the work better. You must also accept that some parts will be better than others and some parts worse. Some parts will, in fact, be good. Deal with it. If you have any talent, any skill, some parts of the work should be good. It’s okay to claim that.

Your writing will never be perfect. That’s inherently impossible especially when writing on a deadline. All it can be is as good as you can make it at that moment. It doesn’t have to be perfect; Shakespeare isn’t perfect. If you doubt me, go read the climax of Cymbeline.

Whenever I’m asked what I think is my best story, I invariably answer, “My next one.” That has to be true. If it isn’t, I’m done. Might as well quit. I like writing too much to want that to happen. Well, most days I like it too much. Some days I hate it and that’s normal, too.

The best way to become a better writer is to write. We all start with a certain amount of crap in our systems and you have to write the crap out. There are no shortcuts; just accept that a certain percentage of what you do is crap and keep working. Over time, with diligence, with luck, you’ll write less crap. Don’t worry about the doubts or the fears; we all have them and we all wrestle with them. Some days they win but, as you go on, those days become fewer. So keep at it. And remember. . .

Don’t look down.

Announcing a New Monthly Feature From The Tweeks

Announcing a New Monthly Feature From The Tweeks

MarchUnboxLCDebuting on March 27th, ComicMix’s resident twin teen geeks The Tweeks will be bringing us a new monthly feature! Maddy and Anya will present their LootCrate LVL Up+ unboxing.

But the fun doesn’t stop there! Quite appropriately, the March LootCrate theme is “Versus.” Since there is only one of each LootCrate goodie but two geeky girls, it means they’ll be battling it out for each cool item each month! No, we aren’t encouraging sister on sister violence, they’ll compete in a different geeky ways for the awesome swag.

That’s where you come in dear ComicMix Reader! We are going to need suggestions for feats of geek!

Is there a game you want to see them play to decide who gets the coolness? Let us know!

Got a pop culture trivia question for the twins? Email it to me at Adriane@comicmix.com

Marc Alan Fishman: The Super Hatred for Batman v. Superman

Batman V Superman Doomsday

Let’s get this point out straight away: I haven’t seen Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Just Angry Dudes Who Like Destruction-Porn.  Beyond the trailers, I have done everything in my power to not read spoilers. I’ve put on blinders on whilst perusing my social media feeds, allowing me to catch only shreds of the shared rage boiling over amongst my closest 927 friends. So, my column this week explores the deeper issue fans are complaining about the most these days: gritty realism.

The clamber in the streets is about how DC is taking itself too seriously. How leaning into grit, grime, explosions, and death is ruining childhoods, and fans. But I beg the question: when your director previously worked on 300, and the lukewarm sepia-washed Watchman adaptations and delivered his own mighty opus in the video-game-cum-popcorn-film Sucker Punch, well, pardon me: what the fuck did you think he was going to do with Batman and Superman?! The output of Snyder shouldn’t come with a single measurable iota of surprise.

The deeper issue then gets tied back to Chris Nolan’s interpretation setting the table for what has come since. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises were once applauded for removing the kitch from the Bat-franchise. Nolan’s Knight was as real as you could get with the base-concept. The interpretation of the Joker was chilling – and not in the gutter-punk way Jared Leto appears to be aping Ledger’s performance mind you. And Bane? Well… he spoke in a weird accent, and had an appreciation for coats of the 70s. Those three Bat-films begat what we’re getting now. And that includes the popcorn fart that was the spectacular – Trump-level – Green Lantern movie.

So why is Marvel so beloved? As we’ve seen the table set for Civil War… for all the fun we had laughing at SHIELD agents playing Galaga, and Ant Man cracking wise, we’ve been privy to just as much world destruction. New York? Invaded. Washington D.C.? Had helicarriers dropped on it. And that fake-sounding country in Avengers 2? Well, it done went and turned into a low-grade meteor. Pair that with a few Hulk-smashed cities, and all those dead goats in Ant Man, and you have plenty of grit to chew on.

The difference being the actual plot and characters in service to it.

Man of Steel, much like The Avengers featured the destruction of a city (and maybe a few suburbs). Iron Man, Cap, and pals were lauded as witty-brilliant. Kal-El was deemed a dour dolt by the very same folks. One movie was held up in reverence. The other, kicked to the dollar bin with a sigh. For the record? This is as it should be. The Avengers took the time to showcase their heroes making attempts to save the people of New York. Superman was basically shown punching for the last 40 minutes of his film; subsequently followed by the murdering of the villain, a quick bit of snark, roll credits. It would seem, based solely on the 10-20 sentences I’ve half-begun to read on my feed… BvS is much in the same vein. And not a surprise either… I saw the trailers, and can put one and one together.

Spoiler-free knowledge of BvS dictates that Batman was in Metropolis during the Kryptonian scuffle. And true to his comic-counterpart (to whatever degree you agree with me), he sees an unchecked level of power on display and finds need to be fit to control it. Superman is the gun that took Bruce’s mom and dad until he can prove it otherwise. What follows – I’ll safely assume – is 90+ more minutes of fighting, yelling, and teeth gnashing. And Wonder Woman is there to make girls happy or something.

Don’t get me me wrong. I believe we need to look to our ComicMix cohorts Mike Gold, Denny O’Neil and John Ostrander when we talk on the topic of grit and realism. Pick nearly any yarn spun (and edited) by those gentlemen, and you’ll see how the heaviest of topics can be touched on without leaving a fanbase in ruin. Hell, check out the very first issue of Wasteland, and ask how the material could be covered within its pages and still leave you with a bit of a smirk.

When it comes down to it, I will see the new Batman and Superman movie. I’ll do my best to withhold judgment until the last frame is projected. I’ll do whatever I can to suppress expectations to anything higher than a whisper. I’ll give credence to the filmmakers, writers, and producers to prove to me they have a way to bring the heroes and villains of their catalog to life in direct completion to the House of Mouse.

But, at the end of the day, the devil is in the details, not the CGI decimation of untold thousands. So, I’ll just guess there won’t be a need for any follow up review, kiddos. No worries: Civil War is just around the corner.

Martha Thomases: Comics’ Ambassador

Sana Amanat

Comics in the White House!

My esteemed colleague, Mindy Newell, recently noted that our current president is a big ol’ comic book nerd. We knew that. Way back when this site started up, we ran the photo of Obama in Metropolis, Illinois, striking an iconic pose next to the Superman statue.

superman obamaLast week, as part of its celebration of Women’s History Month, our Geek-in-Chief invited Marvel Comics’ Sana Amanat to the White House to celebrate. Amanat presented the President with a copy of Ms. Marvel.

While this is not the first time super-heroes have had an official White House Moment (indeed, I was there for the launch of the anti-landmine comic DC created for UNICEF, and if I could find it, I’d post the picture of me with Hillary Clinton), it is perhaps the most heart-warming. To have a person who is not only female but also Muslim and Pakistani-American with the President to represent comics is an enormous change.

It helps that Sana does brilliant work on great comic books. I mean, really, look at how cool she is. Still, I think that she could have been every bit as talented twenty years ago and never received the attention she has, or been able to take advantage of the opportunities she deserves.

So, just when I was feeling like my beloved comics community was growing up, I read this announcement that the Comics and Cola blog was shutting down. I confess that I didn’t tune in there that often. The woman who ran the site, Zainab Akhtar, is an English Muslim, and her perspective (check this out for a taste) is quite different from mine, which I love. I should have tuned in more.

Apparently, the last straw for her was best expressed in this post by Kim O’Connor. O’Connor saw her work dismissed by a white male comics critic based on nothing more than his entitled perception that her opinions didn’t matter. He’s a white man in his 20s, so obviously no one is qualified to reasonably disagree with him.

(That is much too simplistic an analysis, I know. Read the link. It’s great.)

As a straight cis white woman, I’m very much aware that I miss a lot of subtle bigotry. I can watch an entire night of television with stories about white people (who might have sassy black friends) without noticing how skewed that is. When a protagonist’s race and gender are not specified, I often assume that person is male and white.

It’s a habit from my 60+ years in the culture. It’s a bad habit, and one I struggle to change. Not only is it wrong ethically and morally but, more important, it limits my enjoyment of the world.

The President gets this, even if 20-something white boys don’t. But then, we no longer assume that the President can only be a straight cis white man.

Tweeks Hit Silicon Valley Comic Con 2016

We took a road trip up to San Jose last weekend to check out the first ever Silicon Valley Comic Con. This was Steve Wozniak (of Apple fame) & Stan Lee’s venture. As we should have guessed by the location alone, this wasn’t the kind of con we’re used to. It was nerd on nerd (tech meets comics) and way more male-centric than the cons we usually go to. There were some great guests though like Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Renner, William Shatner, and a Back To The Future reunion. Watch the video to see how it all went down.

Also, interesting to note, there were far fewer Deadpools (our count was barely in the double digits) and instead Marty McFly & Spider Man cosplay were every where we turned. And also we only saw one Spider Gwen, but tons of girls wearing Spider Man and Spider-Woman costumes. This says something about SoCal vs. NorCal, we just don’t know what.

Dennis O’Neil: Return With Us Now To Those Thrilling Days…

Justice Society

The Second World War had not yet started, at least not for the United States, when I drifted through a wall and into office space in one of the Manhattan business buildings. Anyone seeing me would assume that I was a man in his thirties, but actually I was less than a year old. Astral reality, as you might know, proceeds via different reality routes than Other reality, particularly as regards time, which would explain everything, if only you could understand it. I should also mention that I’d done a Chronological Slurp, jumped ahead a half century or so and spent a nanosecond – your time, of course – acquiring knowledge I wouldn’t learn for – your time – decades.

jsaI was in a conference room the likes of which were in dozens of New York offices. Long wooden table, chairs, little else. A meeting was in progress. I recognized none of the men present – they were all men – but the guy over near the door might have been a very young Sheldon Mayer and the man at the far end of the table could have been Vin Sullivan. Sullivan, or whoever he was, glanced at me, paused, and returned his gaze to the yellow legal pad in front of him. My guess is, he saw me, immediately repressed the fact that the back of my chair was plainly visible through my body, and maybe thought I was a newcomer who belonged there. After all, this was a new company plying a new product and there were probably strangers continually wandering in and out.

I listened to the editors (for surely that’s what they were) discussing the success of Superman comics and the forthcoming Superman radio program, and the newer Batman, another winner. Then a bald guy asked about All-Star Comics, just that week making a newsstand debut. I gathered from the ensuing conversation that All-Star was a comic book anthology: short stories, each featuring a different hero. The bald guy seemed to think that All-Star’s multi-heroed format had no staying power and was doomed to early extinction. The rest of the group didn’t seem to know what they thought.

“Why not have the heroes all working on the same problem?” I asked everyone. “Fighting the same villain or group of villains. Make it a team effort. Don’t Americans love teams?”

“If they’re the Brooklyn Dodgers,” somebody muttered.

“It’d be a production nightmare,” the bald guy said.

The guy who may have been Sullivan said, “No, we could make it work. Interesting idea.”

That started a fresh dialogue that may have lasted until Christmas.

A few months later, All-Star Comics #3, featured The Justice Society of America, with a bunch of heroes, some of whom appeared in their own comics, gathered together to battle evil. Wonder Woman didn’t join until issue #8, but she was just a girl.

By then, my astral self was long gone. While the editors were still deep in discussion, I drifted away, into the Clutchesphere, where my astral self morphed into a neutrino and joined the cosmic dance.

My other, one-year-old self, wet his diaper.

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