Category: Columns

John Ostrander: Suicide Squad Rogues

suicide_squad_2

Sorta Spoiler Notes: Today I’m discussing the latest Suicide Squad reprint, Rogues, and I’ll disclose some plot points. The stories were originally published in the late 80s so a spoiler shouldn’t be needed, but just in case you didn’t read them back then and are considering catching up now, you been warned!

One of the nice side-effects of the upcoming Suicide Squad movie is that DC is pushing into TPB print my original run. The latest volume comes out April 12 and is entitled Rogues and it’s maybe my favorite one so far. It reprints issues 17 through 25, including the Annual and a Bronze Tiger solo story by Larry Ganem and Peter Krause.

A quick rundown on the Squad. The Original Suicide Squad was created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru and debuted in 1959 in The Brave and the Bold #25. They were pretty much a version of Challengers of the Unknown and featured three guys and a gal. They appeared for five issues of B&B and then… nothing.

I revived the title in 1987 ands re-invented the group as a cross between the Dirty Dozen and the Secret Society of Super-Villains. Incarcerated bad guys were sent on covert missions for the U.S. and got time shaved off their prison terms – if they survived. Not all did.

In this latest TPB, we were getting into our second year and really hitting our stride. The book was constantly changing (I liked to try and keep things fresh) and one of the big changes was that my wife, Kim Yale, came on as co-writer. Kim had been itching to get into comics and I wanted to spread out my burgeoning workload. She loved the whole idea of the Squad and brought a lot of herself and her energy into the book.

Kim and I usually had different work/sleep schedules. I was a morning person and Kim always felt that there was nothing wrong with the morning that sleeping until noon couldn’t fix. We each had our own Mac but they weren’t connected. In those days, to share you had to put things on a floppy disc and then exchange them. (Millennials, go ask your parents  or Wikipedia what floppy discs were. We’ll wait.) I was the senior writer; I had the most experience and I had guaranteed the quality of writing with our editor, Bob Greenberger. If Kim and I had story or script disagreements (and we did) that we couldn’t resolve, I had final say. Kim didn’t always like that but she agreed.

When scripting, we would divide up the issue, work different scenes, and then exchange them. Kim would do a re-write on mine, I did one on hers, and if we disagreed, we’d work to resolve it. Today I couldn’t tell you which part was Kim’s work and which part was mine and that’s as it should be.

Two key things happened in this group of stories. First, we introduced Oracle who, originally, was just a voice coming from a computer. At this point, Oracle was an outside hacker who got into the Squad’s computers. It would be a while before we revealed who it was to the readers. Spoiler: it turned out to be the former Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, after she had been crippled by the Joker in The Killing Joke. Yeah, they said it wasn’t really in continuity but all the fans thought it was and so did we.

We also introduced the running joke of the pie-in-the-face gag. Starting with Amanda Waller, every so often someone would get pied; the mystery of who was doing it wasn’t revealed for a long time. I can’t believe how long we pushed it. For a book so grim and gritty, we did classic slapstick every now and then. Keep things shaken up.

Also for humor, we added the characters of Punch and Jewelee. Kim and I never did use the Joker and/or Harley Quinn in our version of the Squad. Too many strings attached to really get to play with them as we would have wanted. Punch and Jewelee were fun loving sociopaths in a similar vein to the Joker and Harley. They were married and over-sexed as well as homicidal. “Now I’m going to make you eat this salami!” One of my favorite lines. I continue to deny that Punch and Jewelee were in any way based on Kim and me and our married life. Deny deny deny.

We also added Killer Shrike to the line-up. She had sonic abilities and “accidently” killed people but, as we wrote her, she had “found Jesus” and was working her way to the Lord by serving with the Suicide Squad. That girl just wasn’t quite right in the head but fun to write.

This series also had one of the best twists we ever did. Senator Cray and his political associate, Derec Tolliver, were trying to blackmail Amanda Waller into doing dirty work for them by threatening to publicly reveal the Squad. This is a case of two dopes thinking they are smarter than they are. Waller, of course, found a way to reverse the tables on them but she didn’t bother to tell the Squad’s leader, Rick Flag, who decided to take matters into his own hands and kill the two.

Waller finds out only after (Spoiler) Flag kills Tolliver. She then sends the rest of the Squad out to stop Flag from killing Cray “by any means necessary.” She would have cause to regret those words.

It was Deadshot, Floyd Lawton, who found Flag just as Flag was about to shoot the Senator. Deadshot had just returned to the Squad after the tragic events of his own miniseries and mentally was not very stable. He found a unique way to keep Flag from killing the Senator (Spoiler) – by killing Cray himself.

A lot of stuff happens in this volume – characters come, characters go, characters die. The usual unusual stuff with the Squad. We get a touch of the personal lives as well; we even get to see Waller deal with family and you get very much the sense she’s rather deal with the criminals and sociopaths that make up the Squad.

It’s interesting to me (at least) that, in the beginning, I wasn’t even sure I could write a team book. I found it to be terra incognita. By this point in the run, I felt a lot more secure. The blend of personalities really clicked for me and getting to work with Kim was just an additional pleasure. Most of the time.

DC is going to release another volume of our Squad stories in July, just before the movie comes out in August. That makes sense. Get ‘em out while the interest is there. I’m hoping that they’ll continue to collect the Squad afterwards as well; they’re almost half the way through the run now and it would be nice to have the whole thing gathered.

Now, if I can just get them to collect Wasteland…

Marc Alan Fishman: No Half-Measures Here, Folks!

Better Call Saul

As everyone hopefully saw last week, my wife and I welcomed our new son into the world. Joining his bigger brother Bennett Reed now comes Colton Mikel Fishman. I couldn’t be any more proud of my wife, nor happier for our li’l family. Kathy and I grew up as only children, so with a pair of boys under our roof we’re sailing in uncharted waters. Suffice to say we’re nervous, elated, and perhaps a bit sleep deprived even thinking about it. But we venture forward.

And before I do much the same here in my column, I’d be an ass if I didn’t stop any further blathering before I thank you the readers of ComicMix, as well as my editor and co-columnists for all the well wishes since I missed my deadline last week. Ten points if you were just about to ask when I’d declare: But I digress.

This week, I’m in a Better Call Saul kind of mood. The show is one of the best on television today. Breaking Bad was revolutionary in its murky trek into the abyss of a man’s soul. Saul in contrast is more or less a stumble and fall down the stairs towards nothing more than a manager’s pin at the Omaha Cinnabon. In the season one finale our titular esquire retorted to himself (and I guess to a lesser degree, Mike Ermantraut) that his life would no longer feature half-measures. I find myself at much the same conclusion.

Now Saul – who was still Slippin’ Jimmy McGill of Cicero, Illinois – was in effect declaring to the universe he would no longer look an opportunity in the face and retreat. If the universe dropped a sack of cash in his lap? He wouldn’t look for the owner of it. He’d spend it, and deny it to his grave should it ever be contested. Now I’ve no intention on thievery, or anything uncouth. I, instead, will take to heart the deeper meaning of Mr. McGill’s words. Here, with an infant son, and a toddling young buck at my side, I strive to do more with my life with the lesser free time I’m allowed.

You see, as I’ve detailed often, making comics independently is a beast to bear when you have a full time job and family to take care of. And with a wife who will now be allowed to take two months off of work unpaid, suddenly my inclination to take every freelance gig waving past my face rises exponentially. And what stares at me every night on my cloud-based to-do list from hell, The Samurnauts looms with a grey cloud above it.

Our Kickstarter successfully funded in November of 2015. Our thinking at the time would be we’d (we, being the Unshaven Lads) hunker down and churn the remainder of the material out in time to put books into people’s hands right about now. But that grey cloud has begat a book still 14 pages (give or take) left to pencil and ink… and the entirety of the final issue to color and letter. In short, it’s not even close to done.

And sleeping two floors above me, as innocent as can be, is the most wonderful excuse why I barely give a damn. I should note as well that Unshaven Matt Wright and his amazing wife Amy brought Molly Wright into the world only a few days ago. And to answer you… no, Matt and I didn’t plan it this way.

Back to the topic at hand. No half-measures. You see, the words have never rang more true. I could dump out my freelance clients and pour myself into finishing our first graphic novel. I bet if I really tried, we could have it done in a month or less. But that’s never been the way we’ve worked. Unshaven Comics, for better or worse, has stuck to the ideology that our passion is best served proudly. And we’ll never publish a book until we’re damned proud to do so. And if that takes more time because our lights need to stay on, and young tuchuses need to be diapered? So be it. The Samurnauts when it is completed (the first graphic novel, I should say), will represent the absolute best work Unshaven Comics could produce together.

So, to you Colton, Bennett, Molly, and Aidan… know that your fathers (and Uncle Kyle!) may take forever and a day to put out their comics. But they waited their whole lives for you to be here with us now. So… what’s a few more weeks really mean?

No half-measures, kiddos. It’s just not worth it.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll The Law Is A Ass #382

CAPTAIN AMERICA DIDN’T TAKE A CONSERVATIVE APPROACH

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.

It was all over the news. Well, all over Fox News, anyway. Captain America was targeting conservatives.

Which he wasn’t.

What happened – as best I can fathom, as even Quentin Tarantino would have had a difficult time following the nonlinear storytelling in Captain America: Sam Wilson #1 – is this. Some weeks back, super villain the Iron Nail neutralized the Super-Soldier Serum in body of Steve Rogers, the original Captain America. Without its effects, Steve Rogers, who was born in 1920, found his body rapidly aging to that of a 94-year-old man. (Question: did the story explain why Steve’s body rapidly aged to 94? Sure Steve was born on July 4, 1920, or 94 years ago, when he lost the Serum. But he spent all the time from early 1945 until The Avengers #4 in suspended animation. Marvel says Fantastic Four #1 didn’t happen in 1961, it happened 10 years ago. That’s Marvel Time. So in Marvel Time, The Avengers# 4 happened a little bit less than 10 years ago. Meaning from 1945 until a little less than 10 years ago, Cap’s body was in suspended animation and didn’t age. Cap went into the iceberg as 24-year-old and came out still 24 years old. Since then, 10 years have passed, Marvel time. So it doesn’t matter what year Cap was born, physiologically he should have the body of a 34-year-old man, not a 94-year-old man. How, then, did Cap’s body age to an age it had never been? Inquiring minds want to know. And even if they don’t I do.)

Because Steve couldn’t meet the physical demands of being Captain America any more, he turned his mantle and shield over to his partner Sam Wilson, formerly the Falcon and now Captain America. Sam promptly got a bunch of people mad at him by taking public stands on several partisan issues. What stands and what issues the comic never told us, but I think we can safely assume it wasn’t whether the President should be pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys.

4805178-sam_wilson_captain_america_1_acuna_variant

Things got worse for Sam, as his actions caused a strain in his relationship with the super spy organization S.H.I.E.L.D. Suddenly Sam was on his own and without resources. So he set up a national hotline that people could use to tell him about injustices or wrongs that needed to be righted.

One of those hot line calls was from Mariana Torres. Her grandson Joaquin left water, medicine, and food out for people who were walking through the desert to cross the border from Mexico into America. Mariana also told Sam that Joaquin didn’t come back from his last mission. She claimed that he had been kidnapped by the Sons of the Serpent, who were patrolling the border to stop the undocumented from entering. (It should be noted that the Sons of the Serpent is a long-time white-supremacist and racist hate group in the Marvel Universe; basically Marvel’s version of the KKK.)

Sam-tain America promptly went down to Sonoita, Arizona and confronted the Sons of the Serpent, who were about to capture some border crossers. And that’s where we came in.

Came in with Fox News criticizing the new Captain America and his comic for vilifying, “an American who has misgivings about unlimited illegal immigration and the costs associated with it,” Fox’s commentators said that writers should “keep politics out of comic books” or should be telling positive stories about, “the people who are working the border to keep us safe.” Fox News went on to say that the Sons of the Serpent are only stopping people from coming over the border illegally and Captain America wanted to keep them from doing that.

Now I admit the people who were entering the country were doing so illegally and Joaquin was breaking the law by helping them. If all that was happening was that the Sons of the Serpent were apprehending people who were entering the country illegally then turning them over to the Border Patrol and Captain America wanted to prevent them from doing that, Fox would have had a legitimate story. Problem is that Fox’s interpretation of the comic was simplistic.

And inaccurate.

See what Fox News conveniently forgot to do was tell its viewers the real reason the Sons of the Serpent were apprehending border crossers. The Serpents weren’t patrolling the borders and turning undocumented aliens over to the Border Patrol. They were grabbing people and selling them for $5,000 a head to Dr. Karlin Malus, an evil scientist,  so that he could use them in his genetic experimentation. The Sons of the Serpents were kidnapping people.

Kidnapping is a crime. Even Fox News’s Research Department should be able to confirm that fact. Assuming Fox News’s Research Department is capable of doing something more extensive than digging up talking points.

For all the furor Fox fomented, turns out that Captain America wasn’t targeting conservatives. He was going after kidnappers. You know, criminals. And that’s what Captain America is supposed to do, isn’t it? Go after lawbreakers. Because, you know, bananas are bananas and not cumquats.

I admit that Captain America: Sam Wilson # 1 could have done a better job of showing that the Sons of the Serpents were kidnappers. While that information was strongly implied in issue one, it wasn’t until Captain America: Sam Wilson #2 that the comic explicitly told us the Sons were selling the people they grabbed to Dr. Malus.

Might have been nice if that explicit kidnapping information had been in issue 1 so that even a simplistic reading of the comic would have shown Captain America was going after kidnappers not conservatives. Maybe then Fox News would have done a fair and balanced story.

Or not. After all, bananas are still bananas.

Martha Thomases: Well, We Do Need Those Stinkin’ Badges, So…

The DisciplineReedPOP has done it again. They messed up the Emerald City Comicon. It’s not permanent damage (at least, I hope not), and they’ve taken steps to fix things, but I suspect that they still don’t entirely understand what happened.

I don’t know anyone at ReedPOP, nor do I have a source who clues me in on their inner workings. Everything I say is speculation, nothing more.

Last week saw the release of the first issue of The Discipline from Image Comics by writer Peter Milligan and artist Leandro Fernandez. I have loved Peter Milligan for more than 20 years, and eagerly bought the issue. I’ve read it, don’t entirely understand what’s going on, and look forward to more story.

Image is holding its Expo, formerly a free-standing event, at Emerald City this year. As a result there will be a lot of Image creative talent at the show, and I imagine a fair amount of cross-promotion. One of the elements of this marketing concept is to put Image art on the badges for attendees.

And that’s where the problem began. The Sunday badge sports the cover image from The Discipline #1, a woman in shadow, her blouse being opened by a monster’s hand. If you read the actual comic, you’ll see that this is a complicated situation, unsettling but consensual. On the badge, with no other context, it just looks creepy and rape-y.

Social media blew up, and many women said they found the artwork offensive, even triggering. As a comic book cover, they have the option to walk away and read something else. As a badge to get into a convention they already paid for, the choice is to throw away the admission price or suck it up.

ReedPOP admitted they had a problem and offered a solution. To quote from the link, “We would like to extend the offer to all Fans who are concerned that they may exchange their Badge on Sunday at Will Call for a different Badge that does not feature that art.”

I’m not sure I like this solution. It means that, if I have on the replacement badge, I’ve identified myself as a person who was abused, or a feminist, or some other political position that I might not want to discuss on a day when I just want to look at comic books, meet creators and other fans, and maybe dress up like my favorite super heroine.

Who am I kidding? I’m always delighted to be identified as a feminist. Still, I would like it to be my choice, not ReedPOP’s.

This could be chalked up to a simple misstep if ReedPOP hadn’t made almost the exact same mistake two years ago. And they responded in almost exactly the same way.

It’s not as if ReedPOP isn’t trying. They have an excellent anti-harassment policy that demands respect and consideration for everyone. Even better, that sentiment is echoed in the convention’s general rules. Both of these documents demonstrate an understanding of what fans want and need in their convention experience.

And it’s also interesting to see how far ReedPOP goes to show their customers they get it. This article illustrates how they are bending over backwards to celebrate cosplay and cosplayers on their own terms.

So what can we do about the badge business?

I don’t think they do these things maliciously. To paraphrase Chris Rock, this isn’t Boko Haram sexism, it’s sorority sexism. It’s an attitude that is so entrenched in our society that, unless it affects you directly, you might not notice.

Therefore, the solution, it seems to me, is to collect people who will notice. Form a committee and, before finalizing these kinds of decisions, run it by them. I’m not saying that victims of sexism (and racism and ableism and homophobia and xenophobia and holy crap we have swallowed a lot of hate in our society) should have a veto over creative content. Instead, I’m suggesting that they might notice a message ReedPOP doesn’t intend to send before it is sent. The committee would not act as censors who ban things, but as copy editors who improve clarity.

Yeah, you heard me. I’m saying that Fowler and Strunk & White are important tools for radicals.

And marketing geniuses.

And allies.

The Tweeks At Target: Superhero Girls, Black Widow & Socks

This week we took a little trip to one of our favorite places in the world…

Target to check out the new DC Superhero Girls dolls and the new Black Widow doll (action figure, if you wish) from Marvel.  Maddy also explores the choice of geek socks made for women that somehow forgot to include women.

Dennis O’Neil: Can You Teach Writers How To Write?

Typewriter Keys

It was a pretty doggone swell affair, last Saturday night at the Garnerville Arts Center – the best kind of swell affair, the kind that doesn’t require abnormal behavior or unusual threads.

Remember Thoreau? “…beware of all enterprises that require new clothes…”?

Well, nobody needed to beware at Garnerville. But I think we all enjoyed ourselves.

After the program had ended, I was approached by a young woman carrying some papers. She said she wanted to be a writer and wondered if I had any advice for her. You scriveners out there may have heard similar questions a time or two.

How did you answer?

I’d really like to know. I’ve been fronting classes with titles like “Writing for Comics and Graphic Novels” off and on for more than twenty years and I hereby aver and proclaim that I have never, ever taught anyone to write.

I’m not sure anyone ever taught me to write, either. though I have an academic minor in “creative writing.” (You could look it up. St. Louis University, Arts and Sciences, Class of 1961.) What I did to earn this credential was, essentially, to take the same course six semesters in a row. We wannabe writers were required to produce a thousand words of (sparkling? awesome?) prose every week. The professor would choose one of us to to read our work aloud and when that person fell silent the rest of us critiqued. What else? Not much. I can remember only one bit of instruction and one assignment in all those hours of sitting at a table perusing typed pages or listening to familiar voices speaking unfamiliar sentences. All in all, not a bad way to pass an hour.

Any benefit there? Yes. The discipline of producing those thousand weekly words was, I think, useful. If you’re going to write for a living, and maybe if you’re not, you’re going to have to get chummy with deadlines. I think they have value in and of themselves, but whether they do or not, they’re a part of most writing lives. I’m glad I made their acquaintance early.

And what did we do to fulfill the thousand word requirement? Little bit of whatever. Short stories. Essays. A nun who was, I think, auditing the class read from a work-in-progress about her stay aboard a Japanese ship. Poetry? Maybe, a little, though verse would probably require fudging those thousand words. I do remember handing in a bunch of haiku one week – far from a thousand words worth – and not being scolded so I guess some fudging was okay. And one student began thinking he’d be a short story writer and has become, in the fine ripeness of maturity some of us are privileged to share – that means we didn’t croak early – has become a much-published poet. Don’t know if he fudged as an undergrad.

And here we are at the end, not having answered an implicit question: If I can’t teach writing, why did they pay me to teach writing?

Next week.

Box Office Democracy: Zootopia

I’m sure everyone has the movie they watched almost every day when they were little. Mine was Ghostbusters and I’ve been wondering how much that was because I liked the movie (I still do) or because my parents had so much influence at that point in my life that they could essentially force me to like whatever they wanted. Maybe kids don’t work like that, but if they do I hope I can make mine like a movie like Zootopia. If I’m going to watch a movie untold hundreds of times out of a love-fueled obligation I hope it’s something as sweet, funny, and complex as Zootopia. If my future child instead prefers the work of Adam Sandler I hear you can abandon a kid at a fire station, no questions asked.

It’s tempting to say Zootopia is a non-traditional Disney effort but perhaps that’s not accurate anymore. The last Disney Animation (read: not Pixar) film was Big Hero 6 and we’re only three feature films removed from Wreck-It Ralph so maybe it’s the princess-style of movie that is becoming the aberration but this still seems so fresh. If you look back on the years Disney was struggling in this field it was because they weren’t taking enough risks. Although it might be helplessly naive to think a movie about talking animals (in a year where that is certainly the trend) co-directed by Byron Howard (responsible for Bolt and Tangled) and Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph) is all that risky.

Zootopia is a neo-noir cop drama and I’m not even kidding. Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is an idealistic young cop with no support from the system who teams with con man with a heart of gold Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to tackle a missing person case that exposes institutional corruption that goes straight to the very top of this nebulously defined animal society. It’s basically Chinatown with a bunch of cute animals. It isn’t the most complex mystery or anything but the mystery is never the most important part of a noir film, it’s about seeing the characters struggle. Zootopia is also an effective, hilarious, buddy comedy but who didn’t expect that from this team.

I’m proud of how well Zootopia handles the important real world issues without making them too blunt. Judy is the first rabbit member of the police force and no one trusts her because she’s a diversity hire, no one trusts Nick because he’s a fox and foxes are sneaky, predatory animals are a feared minority with an undercurrent of tension they could go “savage at any moment. All of these obviously share traits with things we experience all the time but they all resist being translated one-to-one with any groups, and it helps the story immensely because it lets it all feel more fictional. You could see any number of struggles in this film if you wanted to and it makes it a powerful teaching tool without feeling overwrought or too fixed in time. There are so many wonderful moments of quiet vulnerability in this area played fantastically by Goodwin and Bateman and I assume a small army of animation staff.

Zootopia was the kind of movie that was always going to have to earn its acclaim. The pitch line of “It’s about a world where animals walk around like humans and a bunny becomes a cop to team up with a fox” was never going to be exciting in the way “A video game bad guy decides he wants to be a good guy” is. Fortunately it’s a brilliant film; easily the equal of Wreck-It Ralph or Inside Out or whatever animated film has tickled your fancy this decade. The only problem Zootopia faces as it marches in to history is being lost in this exquisite renaissance of animated films we’ve lucked in to in recent years, and it might not be as commercially viable as Frozen or as daring as Big Hero 6. It deserves to be a treasured classic, and if I have to show it to my future child a thousand times to get it there, I will.

Michael Davis: Cosplay & Vampires & The Brotherman Revelation

comicmix2day

Most may think my creative output over the last few years has been little more than bitching about that company that must not be named. Not true. Not true at all.

I have been busy creating some of the best work of my career…only to have them stolen.

Stolen I say! Taken from me by those who have duped you all into thinking it was they who created such masterworks.

My first creation, the Overstreet Guide to Cosplay says on the cover it was written by Melissa Bowersox, Eddie Newsome and Carrie Wood.

Ha! I say ha! I’ve been cosplaying since I was a young boy growing up in the south back in the 1930s. I remember when I came up with the idea to cosplay; I was around oh I don’t know some age when I said out loud; “I have invented cosplay.”

Melissa Bowersox, Eddie Newsome and Carrie Wood were walking by the Trump Plantation where my family had worked for decades teaching the Trumps’ real estate at just that very moment.

They heard me and started being nice to me. They picked my brain of all my cosplay knowledge and once I told them I was going to write a book they made sure I told no one but them of my brilliance. And brilliant it is! With well over 200 pages of just about anything and everything you want to know about my invention, Melissa Bowersox, Eddie Newsome and Carrie Wood have stolen. A great book indeed!

Alas, I wish I could say they were the only people who ripped me off but, no, my genius has been pilfered yet again!

While vacationing in Cuba in the 1950s after realizing the mistake my family made teaching the Trumps real estate (which we only did as a way to teach them to read), it occurred to me I should create a black superhero that would set the standard for all black superheroes.

I was some age at the time and remembered, first I would create the “graphic novel,” then I would create Brotherman, then I would combine them using my talent to write, draw and color.

I did so and the result was Brotherman Revelation.

This massive volume contains a long awaited return to Big City and continues the saga stolen from me by Dawud Anyabwile, Guy A. Sims and Brian McGee. I can’t tell you how I trusted those three believing them when I was told they just wanted to “…hear what I had in mind…”

What I had in mind was a graphic novel truly worthy of the the medium and I achieved it only to have it ripped away from me as if I had nothing whatsoever to do with it!!

They cleverly waited 50 plus years to release my work under their names. My original work was set to be published in 1954 but was not to be. The House Un-American Activities Committee prevented my ground breaking work by blacklisting me!!

So hurt was I by this it took me until 2016 when I was this age to once again venture into my creative mind. But this time I would be smart. This time I would tell some friends my idea and they would work with me to protect it!

So, I created A Vampire in Hollywood! An incredible romp through the world of Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd lawyers to monsters! Genius! I know, I’m a genius!

This time I’m going to get my due! I told no one but Batton Lash and Jackie Estrada…

Molly Jackson: Loud Voices

/opt/books/Bitch-Planet-4.pdf

I’ve spent the past week or so in a bubble, apparently hiding from the news of the world. Which is why I was startled by the influx of posts yesterday announcing it was International Women’s Day. A day to recognize all the inspirational women in our lives.

It seems odd that I would miss such a day but it is a funny thing to have a single day dedicated to all women from the planet Earth. Women still make up half the planet, and there are similar days on the proverbial calendar. Still, the necessity of such a day is irksome. The year is filled with days where I can laud women from all walks of life.

Being torn on how to move forward with this column, I decided to err on the side of not nitpicking yesterday’s recognition and to try to enjoy the moment.

Truth be told, women have made strides in comics, both in the industry and in the stories. A few decades ago, I doubt Kamala Khan would have made it to the page. Even if she had, I doubt that she would have the same depth that she does now. The same could be said for one of her creators, Sana Amanat, who is an editor at Marvel Comics. But now we have a character that resonates across cultural and gender lines as a role model to the young and old.

The same exact excitement could be applied to Bitch Planet. Could we have had that book years ago? Of course. Would it have received the same praise it receives now? I doubt it.

However, this is still a small percentage of the comics pie.

Female characters still lead fewer books than male characters. Female creators still make up a small portion of the industry. Now, it is a point of conversation and an area of development. Companies are looking for ways to expand as they realize that courting the opposite sex is a growing market. It will continue to be as long as we look towards the future and remind them that we women are still here and will not be ignored.

On this site, we have amazing women who broke barriers in comics for my generation. For starters, Martha Thomases and Mindy Newell both worked in the industry, creating female-driven stories as they worked in a male-dominated industry. Emily Whitten has written for multiple sites about geekdom, something that isn’t easy as a woman. All of them have been an inspiration as well as a source of encouragement.

So, on this random day, I want to thank all the women who made it possible for me to be recognized as a voice to be heard. Everything you’ve done is helping move us to an equal future.

 

Mike Gold: Bizarro – Who Am Him?

Bizarro Strip

One of the most enduring DC Comics creations, Bizarro has been with us since 1958 – either debuting in the Superman newspaper strip, according to editor Mort Weisinger, or in Superboy #68 according to where most baby boomers first found him. Either way, that original Bizarro was quite a different being than he is today. In fact, the personality, appearance and modus operandi of Superman’s brother-in-harms seem to differ with just about every use.

Bizarro 1Originally Bizarro was a sympathetic character, the result of an experiment that didn’t quite work. Half-Frankenstein’s monster, half-Quasimodo; he was a manufactured man who grew the most human of hearts over the course of his initial appearance in both the Superman strip and the Superboy story.

That Superboy story sold like a sumbych. Editor Weisinger started putting him in every Superman family title he could – cross-editor crossovers didn’t exist in 1958, except for the Superman/Batman stories in World’s Finest. In less than three years Adventure Comics cover-featured an ongoing Tales of the Bizarro World series.

In this series all the pith was removed and the creature and the stories were played for laughs. That wasn’t hard, as Bizarro’s superpower was to be and do the opposite of what the “normal” did. By now he had his own planet populated by equally imperfect duplications of other beings from both the reader’s universe and DC’s. Bizarro even introduced the Bizarro President Kennedy to the Bizarro Marilyn Monroe. This happened years before we found out that the real Kennedy and Monroe were making the beast with two backs right there in the people’s White House.

bizarro01Weisinger was a very, very well-connected man and he had many friends in high places. In 1976 I asked Mort if he had inside information at the time. He glowed, looked at me and said: “You know what they say.” I replied “Ummm… If I told you I’d have to kill you?” and Mort said “That’s right.”

The Tales of the Bizarro World stories lacked tension and the type of heroic action one associates with superhero comics, and because gravity does work it was necessarily lacking in internal consistency. After a little more than a year, Tales of the Bizarro World was replaced with Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and that ran for about seven years.

You can’t keep a good creature down, and Bizarro has reappeared with a frequency exceeded only by The Joker. But, as I noted at the outset, there was no external consistency to the character. He was a goofy monster, he was a confused construct, he was (most frequently) a monster who acted as a super-villain but with the motivation of a guy who simply does the opposite of what Superman would do. Maybe.

Bizarro 2I wish somebody would sit down and read Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein, published in the 1940s by Prize Comics. Many reprints abound; to start I’d recommend the one Yoe Books and IDW did in 2010. If you’ve never heard of it, it may very well be the best American comic book you’ve never heard of. Briefer is in the same league as Eisner, Cole and Toth, and he managed to tell a great many stories without tripping over the concept. Frankenstein was sympathetic and heroic, pithy and funny, and always a joy to read.

I like Bizarro, particularly that original newspaper comics story. And I like many of the various interpretations of the character that have come our way in the subsequent 58 years. Some are truly brilliant.

Despite DC’s multi-purpose guardianship over the decades, Bizarro has become an accepted term in the English language. The term “Bizarro World” is often used as a metaphor. It’s even in most computer spell-checkers.

And, really, who among us can’t identify with a character is constantly misunderstood?

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks