Category: Columns

Box Office Democracy: The Big Short

I probably don’t need to explain bubble economies to anyone reading this website.

In the mid-90s following a boom period, fueled by the idea that all comic books were guaranteed to increase in value, the comic book industry suffered a collapse that closed two-thirds of comic book stores nationwide. If it weren’t for their bankability as movie and TV properties, it might have forever pushed comic books to the fringes of the American consciousness. I don’t need to explain the volatility of an inflated market to a comic book fan, but if you’d like to see why the financial collapse of 2008 was the same kind of thing magnified 1000x by greed and fraud, I think you’d enjoy The Big Short.

My degree is in economics and I’ve always felt I had a good handle on the 2008 collapse (in fact, despite some of the claims in the film it wasn’t the complete surprise it’s portrayed as) but I’ve struggled to explain it to people, and The Big Short does an amazing job making complicated topics accessible. Director Adam McKay doesn’t hesitate to have characters break the fourth wall to explain the more complicated financial terms, and even brings in celebrity guests to do little vignettes demonstrating more complicated concepts providing clever and offbeat opportunities to bury some clunky exposition. That along with some healthy repetition makes the whole thing easy to understand. The Big Short is a masterful breakdown of a terrible time that I sincerely hope makes filmgoers good and angry.

Everyone in The Big Short seems to be acting as if they think every scene could end up on their Oscar reel. It’s good, but it’s good in that way where you can kind of see how much effort is going in to the performances. Steve Carell is hitting his accent just as hard as he can, and his righteous indignation burns smoldering hot. Christian Bale is playing is playing a character with Asperger’s, and his commitment to nail all the associated eccentricities is admirable but sometimes the seams show. Ryan Gosling is charming and funny and gets a higher laugh per line ratio than anyone else, and honestly probably speaks more than he has in his last three movies combined. It feels a little strange to want to ding a movie for everyone acting so well, but there was such a strong feeling of effort that was just a touch off-putting in an otherwise excellent film.

I suppose I was also a little uncomfortable with the insistence of playing so many of these characters as heroes for their role in the financial collapse. While none of them created the bubble or did anything specifically unethical, there doesn’t seem to be a herculean effort undertaken to stop it. They see something wrong, some of them make a token effort to stop it and then they make staggering amounts of money off of being right. Even Brad Pitt who seems inserted in to the movie solely to provide indignation on behalf of those who will be hurt when the economy collapses, doesn’t do anything to stop anything. If this is supposed to be a real takedown of the excesses of the system that almost destroyed the world less than a decade ago I wish it were a little harsher on the people who were simply willing to claim a slight moral high ground while pocketing nine figure sums for their trouble.

Emily S. Whitten: The Twelve Days of Deadpool

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Merry Christmas (or other winter holiday of your choice) and Happy Almost New Year! I hope everyone has been having a wonderful time with family and friends (and food. Ohhh, that holiday food!).

In case you missed it, the Deadpool movie advertising folks have also been having a wonderful time, posting fun “12 Days of Deadpool” featurettes to different news outlets and to their social media.** And because I know the holidays are busy and I am your Deadpool Guru, I am rounding them all up for you here. So, to begin:

The Announcement: Check out the video from Deadpool, explaining the whole thing.

Day 1: Entertainment Weekly debuts a new Deadpool poster.

Day 2: People shares pictures of Ryan Reynolds sitting on the lap of his Deadpool movie theater standee (Which is pretty cool, as I can attest because my friends and I posed with him after seeing Star Wars.)

Day 3: Deviant Art shares Deadpool’s Battle Plan.

Day 4: Empire shares Deadpool’s Christmas wish list and hints at his upcoming appearance in their magazine.

Day 5: Fandango gives us another new Deadpool movie poster, featuring a sweater I would totally wear (after all, who wouldn’t wear a sweater that Ryan Reynolds says is like wearing “a coffin made entirely out of adorable”)?

Day 6: JoBlo shares Deadpool’s notes from a page of the film’s script.

Day 7: Ryan Reynolds encourages us to join Deadpool Core. (Yes, of course I joined.)

Day 8: Mashable gives us Deadpool emoji, which are so popular that they ostensibly crashed the servers. (I got them to work! Finally.)

Day 9: We get another awesome new poster via IMAX. (Also, if you see an IMAX movie, Deadpool will appear before the trailers to tell you to go see his movie in IMAX. Truth. I have seen it.)

Day 10: You’ve heard of Yule Logs? Ryan Reynolds gives us a Pool Log and I am very, very happy it’s only a video.

Day 11: On Trailer Eve, the Deadpool movie folks remind us of why we were so excited after seeing the original trailer.

Day 12: Day 12 is Trailer Day, and that means the new Deadpool trailer!! Yaaaaay!!!!!

And there, dear friends, are your Twelve Days of Deadpool. Although I’m sure we’ll be seeing more Deadpoolian shenanigans from Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool, and those ad folks, even now that Christmas has passed. After all, there’s still New Year’s!

And speaking of New Year’s – maybe this year Deadpool will finally get around to all of those New Year’s Resolutions he made last year – after all, as far as I can tell, the only one he managed to keep was the one about becoming Really Truly Friends with Ryan Reynolds. Oh well. At least that one went well.

And we’ll see just how well on February 12, when the Deadpool movie debuts. Until then (or next time), Servo Lectio!

*  *  *

*P.S., ad folks – You missed us over here at ComicMix! *gasp* Someone forget to inform you that I am the World’s Biggest Deadpool FanTM (before everyone else TM’d it, honest!) and that I wrote an article advocating for a Ryan Reynolds Deadpool movie way back in 2010? I mean, Deadpool and I have been best buds (one might almost say of one mind) since 2008. And of course I’ve written about the Deadpool movie and Deadpool stuff many a time on ComicMix. But hey! Who’s complaining? (Me. Totally me. Also Deadpool, Bob, Sandi (who broke the news of the Deadpool movie on Ask Deadpool yea, these many moons ago), and the rest of Agency X. Except for Agent X. He’s still snacking, and will be unto eternity.) It’s okay, though, ad folks. You can totally make it up to me. Just send along two tickets to the premiere, and all will be well. Muchas gracias and may all your chimichangas be not beyond their expiration date.

Side note: The Ask Deadpool archives: also the only place you can read about that time Thor decided he liked women with spurs on and dated Outlaw. Really: it happened.

Joe Corallo: Comics’ Queer Year?

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If you celebrate Christmas, merry belated Christmas. And a happy early New Year.

Now that I got that out of the way, the New Year coming up has me reflecting on this past year. We’ve seen some interesting things diversity wise. We saw at least a couple of firsts in comics, we saw some steps forward as well as some steps backward, and overall we may have ended up not too far from where we started. But I do like to think we did get a little further than we did in 2014.

I don’t want to go over every little thing that happened in detail, as I’ve already covered most of those in my other columns the past few months. So here are just the highlights.

We saw an increase in bi visibility with DC Comics clarifying that Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman are all bisexual. We saw bi erasure with Constantine being portrayed as straight in his NBC series and Marvel’s Hercules being straight in his current iteration.

We’ve seen two different Icemans come out as gay over at Marvel, and Midnighter get his own series at DC as an openly gay superhero. We also saw Northstar and Batwoman fade into the background, and still haven’t heard too much from Rictor and Shatterstar, or Hulkling and Wiccan. I know Hulkling and Wiccan are in New Avengers, but that only came out toward the end of this year and they don’t have the same of attention they did in Young Avengers and the book has been met with mixed reviews.

We also saw the first trans woman get married in a mainstream comic without actually having a single active trans superhero.

One of the more interesting phenomena towards the end of this year has been fans projecting queer relationships into franchises where they just don’t exist. Yes, Marvel’s Jessica Jones did have a lesbian relationship in it, but it wasn’t with Jessica Jones. Despite that, some fans were projecting that notion on Jessica Jones, as seen in this opinion piece.

The most recent example of this, just making the cut off for this year, has been the outpouring of online hopes and rumors that in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the real love story is with Finn and Poe. Here is just one of the many pieces speculating that they will be lovers. Personally, this frustrates me.

There is absolutely no indication in the movie that this happens. Yes, they hug each other. They’re polite to each other. Hell, they even care about each other. None of that indicates a desire to have a sexual relationship.

Finn also makes it very clear he’s interested in Rey. He’s not only being protective of her from moments after he meets her, he lies to make himself sound more impressive to her, and he flat out asks her if she has a boyfriend. How does all of that somehow invalidate his clear interest in her? Yes, Finn could be bisexual. However, he doesn’t express any interest in anyone outside of Rey, including Poe.

It makes me wonder if some of the same people that watched this also watched Star Wars: A New Hope. Luke and Han have their disagreements, but they also compliment each other, hug, and clearly care about each more through the movie. Han even saves Luke’s life at the end of the A New Hope. How’s that for romance?

Yes, I know that the Han and Leia relationship wasn’t really fleshed out until The Empire Strikes Back. I get that. However, they did lay the groundwork in A New Hope. They lay it on you really think. Han even speculates about it with Luke. And I almost forgot the part where Han asks Luke to run away with him on the Millennium Falcon right before the Death Star trench run. When you think about it that way, nothing in The Force Awakens between Finn and Poe even comes close to the romantic implications between Han and Luke, huh?

All of this is indicative of at least two larger problems. The first of which I mentioned before when discussing Jessica Jones. Many people are absolutely starved for LGBTQ representation. Gay, straight, and everyone in between are looking for it. People are so starved for it, they’re inventing elaborate, implausible theories just to reach the level of representation they feel we should have. Sure, we can point to slash fiction as the start, or one of the starts, of the contemporary push for this. However, slash fiction was never the topic of discussion in the same way as the examples I’ve just mentioned.

The second part of this larger problem is the culture that’s been cultivated. Up until very recently, queer characters have had to be hidden in pop culture. Nothing too overt. The comics code authority didn’t even allow openly queer characters until the very end of the 80s. Characters like Mystique and Northstar could only have hints at their sexualities. Never anything open. Between rules and regulations like that, and TV and movies in many ways taking even longer to catch up, that we cultivated a culture that overanalyzes characters and their actions to unveil hidden queerness. Even though we no longer need to hide queerness to get stories out there, people still look long and hard to find any semblance of it around a story because we’ve been trained to and many of us are starved for it.

And even though we’re starved for it, publishers, networks, and movie studios are more often than not dragging their feet to put queerness out there. Don’t get me wrong, we’re way better off than we were even ten years ago. That said, the powers that be are still reluctant to change things too drastically. You would think Star Wars would be a natural place to explore queerness. Why would all of these different races and cultures that have never even met us mimic our heteronormative customs? Why would they have marriage? Why wouldn’t they have something else?

Science fiction has had this problem for a very long time. Star Wars didn’t cause this, but it could help end this if it wanted to. Though I think that many people are reading too deeply into Finn and Poe’s relationship, it does give me hope for the future of queer representation. My new hope is that all this clamoring for queer representation in a franchise like Star Wars will help move us all in that direction, and that our lack of queer diversity in comics and science fiction will soon be a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

 

Mindy Newell: It’s A Wonderful Life 2 – The Feds Awaken!

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George Bailey: I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…

Uncle Billy: They did, they did it, George, they voted Potter down. And they only had one condition, and that’s the best part. They want you to run the Building and Loan.

George Bailey: No, no, this is my last chance to get away from here. Harry Bailey is your man, he will run the Building and Loan.

Uncle Billy: But George, they’ll vote with Potter otherwise…

Mary Bailey: George Bailey lassos stork.

George Bailey: Mary…you…you…you…Mary, are you on the nest?

George Bailey: Why’d we have all these kids?

— It’s A Wonderful Life, Directed by Frank Capra

There’s a moment in It’s A Wonderful Life that always nails the character of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart).

George is at the train station, eagerly awaiting return of his brother Harry from college. Harry is supposed to take over the running of the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan Association so that George, who sacrificed his own college education to take over running the family business after the death of the boys’ father, can finally get his chance to leave the “crummy little town” of Bedford Falls, NY and change his dreams into reality. But Harry arrives with a surprise – a wife.

George Bailey: What’s a pretty girl like you doing marrying this two-headed brother of mine?

Ruth Dakin Bailey: Well, I’ll tell you. It’s purely mercenary.

Ruth: My father offered him a job.

George: Oh, he gets you and a job? Well, Harry’s cup runneth over.

Harry: Uh, George, about that job, Ruth spoke out of turn.

The newlyweds walk off stage and the camera zooms in on George. It’s maybe three seconds of screen time, and yet it’s all there. Rage and jealousy, personal dreams vs. responsibility and familial duty, recognition and realization and resignation.

I watched It’s A Wonderful Life for the thousandth time on Christmas Day. Well, due to the standard of truth in this column to which I hold myself: I started watching the film at my daughter’s mother-in-law’s house after a scrumptious dinner, but I finished it on my DVR when I got home. And yeah, I got weepy for the thousandth time when Clarence got his wings.

But today, for some reason, Cynical Mindy took over, or maybe it was just me being the writer thinking “what happened next?” I started wondering if George would have gone to jail anyway. Yes, thanks to the townspeople emptying out their piggybanks, he could, in theory, cover the loss. But the original money is still missing – and it’s the money that was held in escrow by the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan Association for the company’s investees and mortgagees and debtors, i.e., the very people who gave George more money.

So, in effect, didn’t they just double their loss? In other words, my landlord has my security deposit in an escrow account. That money, plus whatever interest it has earned, is supposed to be returned to me when I move. But what if my landlord lost that escrow account. If I gave him the equivalent amount of cash to keep him out of jail for embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, then he would still owe me at least my original security deposit plus interest, right? (It could be argued that the second amount of cash was a gift.) Or would the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which was created by F.D.R. under the Banking Act of 1933, cover the losses of the citizens of Bedford Falls. Perhaps this is a question for Bob Ingersoll, ComicMix’s intrepid interpreter of law.

And wouldn’t Ernie the cop and the Bedford Falls Police Department still be under the obligation of investigating just what the hell happened to the $8,000 that Uncle Billy lost? Or would it be the New York Treasury Department, or the FDIC? Hey, maybe they would, and the trail would lead to Mr. Potter, and the bastard would be the one to go to jail.

But, Cynical Mindy thinks, Potter would probably pay off the judge, or threaten him with the political consequences of the judge bringing Potter to trial – I’m sure Potter has a million politicians in his pockets – and walk away clean… or set it up so that Uncle Billy went to jail.

And then maybe Mary would get tired of George talking about angels and ringing bells and leave him – and George would try to commit suicide again, only this time everybody “up there” already has their wings and the townspeople think he’s nuts or fed up that he never paid them back for that time they pulled his ass out of the fire, or decide that George is a scam artist after all, so they would turn their backs on him, too… so George dies.

Or maybe Mary, convinced that her husband has gone off the deep end talking about an alternate reality in which he never existed and in which she ended up a spinster librarian – “Really, George, that’s what you think would happen to me if I had never met you? Have you forgotten Sam Wainwright?” – would commit him to a mental institution.

And there George would sit, talking about an angel named Clarence and rereading, over and over, an old, battered copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Merry Christmas, everybody!!!!

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Ed Catto’s Person of the Year

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It’s that time of year to pause and look back at the best of and the coolest stuff of the year. It’s always fascinating to compare and contrast what you feel was more important with what everyone else feels what was important. It doesn’t really matter what the topic or industry is – there’s bound to be disagreements. I was especially amused when the roundtable on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show was criticizing Time magazine’s choice for Person of the Year. So naturally, I started thinking about who should be the Person of the Year in Geek Culture. And the more I thought about it – the more I was convinced this was the time for one of those high concept pronunciations. So for Geek Culture Person of the Year – I choose The Cosplayer.

The Cosplayer embraces and exemplifies so much of pop culture. Its almost as if cosplayer collectively are playing another role – the proxy hero for Geek Culture.

bombshell-ww-1Convention Growth

Cosplayers, by definition, dress in costumes at comic conventions. Oh, sure, we saw a lot of cosplay during Star Wars’ opening weekend, recently on Back to the Future Day and a slightly different flavor of it all at the various Santa Con pub crawls. But by and large, cosplayers cosplay at comic cons. And that’s where so many of the big stories have been this year. In 2016, there were more comic conventions than ever before. And there were more high quality conventions. And there were more fun small conventions. And more international conventions. Attendance records were routinely shattered and the convention season now stretches to cover the entire calendar from January to December.

But with this growth has also come some growing pains. The mix of attendees, and their reasons for attending conventions, is changing dramatically. Geek Culture at comic conventions now means so many things beyond comics. At some conventions, some dealers of old comics struggle to find their place in the new order. New, often unexpected, exhibitors are always jumping into the fray. Even the traffic patterns of convention aisles is changing, especially as taking photos is now a much bigger part of the experience than it once was.

And the Cosplayers aren’t the only reason for these changes – but they are a big part of it. Their goals at a convention might not include shopping, treasure hunting or snagging artwork from a favorite artist. On the other hand they bring a level of enthusiasm and creativity that’s not seen in any other gathering. So many gatherings of super-passionate fans, everything from the US Open Tennis Championships to the National Dog Show, encourage fans to be there as spectators – not participants.

Diversity and Acceptance

Baked into the idea of today’s cosplay is a wonderful non-judgmentalism. If you cosplay as Superman, you don’t have to be tall and muscular. You don’t have to be a man or white. You’re even applauded for stretching the original character’s concepts into something new and different. And that’s whey we may see a steampunk Superman or a Stormtrooper Superman.

Diversity BCC Cosplay GLC Shazam
So you don’t need a super-physique to cosplay super-characters. Sure, there’s some shallow, judgmental lunkheads out there, but the wonderful overwhelming mindset that cosplay brings is a celebration of all different body types. And in today’s hypercritical social media atmosphere, so often based on passing judgments via “likes”, it’s an important cultural counterbalance.

CA_BatmanOn-Ramp for New Fans

Back in the day, there were always a few blowhard know-it-all-fans (cough, cough) who took great pride in their knowledge of trivia and backstory about certain comic characters. New fans often felt condescension when these fans, the industry’s culture version of Wine Snobs, looked down their noses at the rest of fandom.

But Cosplaying has worked to change that. If someone wants to cosplay as a certain character, but doesn’t know all-there-is-to-know about a character, it’s fine! There have been reports of the old guard shaming new fans when they cosplayed “incorrectly” (i.e., not getting their characters’ details correct.) But lately, it seems that this unfortunate paradigm is flipped on its head, and now cosplayers are applauded for trying new things and celebrating them in the costumes.

Green Arrow New DelhiIt’s a Family Affair

How wonderful it is to see the way that Geek Culture now embraces families. I’m a second-generation comic fan. Both my mom and dad read and traded them back in the way. And my dad would flip through my new comics stack and enjoy the latest Jonah Hex or Master of Kung Fu.
At conventions today, it’s wonderfully common to see families cosplaying together. Usually, it’s a dad who’s introducing the kids to his favorite hobby. But at the recent New Jersey Comic Expo (it was a great show), I was thrilled to see two brilliant cosplayers dressed as Captain America and a female Red Skull bring their parents, portraying a Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers. 

Cosplay Knows No Borders

Like Geek Culture, it’s a worldwide phenomenon. Cosplay is now a part of every major Comic Convention. In fact, this morning I was sent a Buzzfeed link showcasing “27 Cosplayers from Comic Con who are Absolutely Nailing this Costume Thing”.

Mike Gold and Blackhawk Cosplay BCC* * *

So here’s a holiday toast to the creativity and passion of all 2015’s cosplayers. Congratulations on being voted as my “Geek Culture Person of the Year”. Now start planning for next year.

(Note: The Editor is profoundly embarrassed to note that it is he who is standing to our right of Blackhawk, in a photo taken at the ComicMix booth at this year’s Baltimore Comic Con.)

John Ostrander: Origins

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As I mentioned in a previous column, I’ve been on a Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe reading/re-reading jag as of late and have been enjoying it greatly. As other commentators have noted, the pleasure in the Nero Wolfe novels is not so much the plots, which have been noted as serviceable, but in the characters, especially the rotund and eccentric genius, Nero Wolfe, and his wise cracking legman and assistant, Archie Goodwin.

(Sidenote: when I first met the late and great comic book writer/editor, Also Archie Goodwin, I meant to ask him about Wolfe but decidedly, I think prudently, that he had probably gotten enough of that in his life. End digression.)

Stout had written 33 novels and 39 short stories on the pair between 1934 and his death in 1975. After his death, his estate authorized further Wolfe and Goodwin adventures by Robert Goldsborough who has written ten books, one of which was Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, a prequel to the Nero Wolfe stories telling the tale of how the two first met.

That’s a story Rex Stout had never told and I’m enough of a fan to have wondered in the past about it so, of course, I ordered the book.

Pastiches can be hit and miss; the author is trying not only for the style of the original author but for the voice of the characters. There’s been a lot of different pastiches over the years for different literary creations; Sherlock Holmes has them, there are Conan the Barbarian pastiches, and more recently Robert B. Parker’s characters have come back to life with various writers of different abilities.

I read Archie Meets Nero Wolfe and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t Stout but it wasn’t bad. It hit all the clues about the characters’ backgrounds that Stout had sprinkled through the Wolfe canon. Goldsborough has caught Wolfe’s “voice” pretty well although I felt his Archie was a bit spotty. However, my biggest reaction after reading the book was “Why?”

Rex Stout never gave a full “origin” of the Wolfe/Goodwin partnership. Do we really need one? Yes, I bought the book because I was curious but I didn’t learn anything new about the characters. It got me to thinking: do we always need an origin?

When I started writing my GrimJack series, we joined John (GrimJack) Gaunt in the middle of his doing something. Sometime later, we did an “origin” which the late columnist and critic Don Thompson said was his second favorite origin story of all time, next to Superman’s. In it, Gordon, the bartender of Munden’s Bar which Gaunt owns and is his hang-out, offers to share Gaunt’s “secret origin” with a patron. It goes like this: Papa Gaunt. Mama Gaunt. A bottle of hootch. Wucka wucka wucka. Nine months later – Baby Gaunt.

The point of it was that Gaunt was born and everything that had happened to him since then is what makes him into GrimJack. I differentiate between “origins” and “backstory”.

An origin is the starting point from which everything else flows. Backstory fills in and explains different aspects of a given character. Sometimes there may not be any single starting point.

I wrote some stories with Del Close, the legend who directed and taught at Chicago’s Second City for many many years and then went to form the ImprovOlympics (now simply called “I/O”). I took some of his improv classes at Second City myself; they were extremely valuable to me as a writer and very liberating. One of Del’s rule was to start in the middle of the story and go on past the end. He used to say, “I get bored with all that exposition shit. Get on with it.” If it was a fairy tale, he wanted to know what happened beyond the “happily ever after”. For him, that was what was really interesting in the story.

One of the big questions Del made me ask myself was “Just how necessary – really necessary – was all that exposition?” What was the minimum that reader had to know in order to follow the story? The answer usually is: a lot less than you think. A writer may want to be clear about everything so s/he may overexplain.

I remember one of the first Spider-Man stories I ever read began with Spidey in the middle of a pitched battle on a New York street with the Rhino. I didn’t know anything about either character but the writer, Stan Lee, assured us in a narrative caption: “Don’t worry, effendi. We’ll catch you up as we go.” And damned if he didn’t. That also taught me a lot.

One of the rules that has been devised for comics is that Every Comic Is Someone’s First Issue. Therefore, it was obligatory to be absolutely clear about it all. Someone’s rule was that within the first five pages, the main character’s name had to be said, the powers demonstrated, and what’s at stake made clear. That’s important for the writer to know, certainly, but how much does the reader need to know? Usually, less than you think.

With GrimJack, Timothy Truman (the book’s first artist and designated co-creator) and I knew a lot about John Gaunt’s backstory but we decided to only tell it when it was pertinent to a given story. The reader sensed that there was more story than we were telling and that created some mystery about him but, at the same time, there was trust that we knew what we were doing.

The writer also has to trust the reader and to assume they are intelligent enough to fill in some blanks. It doesn’t all need to be spelled out. You can imply a lot and trust the reader to get it. That trust creates a bond between creator and reader and that’s when magic happens.

For me, that was the main problem with Archie Meets Nero Wolfe. It gave me the incidents of how the two met, the what, but not the why. How did that relationship start? Was there a chemistry from the start? The book was very prosaic but it needed a touch of poetry; there needed to be something between the lines. There needed to be a touch of mystery because in all the Rex Stout stories about the pair, that was there. The biggest mystery in every Nero Wolfe story, the one that is never solved but always there, is the relationship between Wolfe and Archie. That’s what keeps me coming back. Over and over.

Marc Alan Fishman: Thank You, Star Wars

Force Awakens

I’m not writing a lot this week, and what I am writing may be slightly spoiler-ish. So, if by chance you haven’t seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet and you intend to, read my title, nod ever so slightly, and come back next week. For the whole lot of you otherwise… ahem.

Thank you, Star Wars.

Thank you for taking nearly everything great about A New Hope and using it to create something both post-modern and inherently original in its own right.

Thank you for giving us villains who act as villains; not in service to pure chaos alone, but to greed, hatred, and layers of inner conflict.

Thank you for giving us heroes who earn their heroism; not in service to the plot, but in service to their (and our) conscience.

Thank you for committing to the use of practical effects as much as possible. You gave the franchise the dirt under the fingernails I’d assumed we lost with the old VHS tapes.

Thank you for lightsaber fights that felt real. No kung-fu wire acts. No bushido stoicism. Just people wailing on each other with laser swords. That hurt. A lot.

Thank you for that one counter-lightsaber Storm Trooper. And actually, thank you for showing that they can in fact shoot things and hit them.

Thank you for making only one CGI alien feel like a terrible ethnic stereotype. Seriously: I expected way more, so, just the one was barely noticeable at all.

Thank you for introducing us to new characters living in a universe still populated by the old ones. Thank you for hinting at their connection to one another without feeling the need to hit us over the heads with it.

Thank you for making General Hux a capable leader who could stand next to Kylo Ren and not feel like a set dressing.

Thank you for making BB-8 adorable… and for knowing when to turn it off. Cute has a line, and you took us right to the edge.

Thank you to the First Order’s weapon architect… who really dug into his personal aesthetic.

Thank you for Finn’s wit, charm, and innocence. Thank you for Rey’s vulnerability, immense skill, and curiosity. Thank you for making Poe… Hal Jordan.

Thank you for helping your original creator learn to let go, when he finally found the artisans capable of bridging the gap from what was once great to what is great again.

And lastly…

Thank you, Star Wars, for reminding me why I really did love your universe when I was 12. And while I will never (ever) forgive you for Episode I, II, and III… I can now look beyond it. I can look up at the sky again…

And wonder again… with pure appreciation.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll The Law Is A Ass #377

MINDING OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS

Now if you or I had said what Detective Erickson said of a previously non-violent person who suddenly snapped and committed a vicious assault in Scarlet Witch #1; “He claims to have no recollection of his actions, which is the first step to an insanity plea;” we would have been correct. But unlike Detective Erickson, you or I don’t live in the Marvel Universe. Or the DC Universe, we don’t even live in the slightly more mundane Dark Circle Universe. We live in the completely mundane Life As We Know It Universe.

The Life As We Know It Universe is a universe where there aren’t mutants, aliens, freaks, supernatural beings, master hypnotists, and Stan knows what else out there that are all capable of mind control. We don’t live in a world where any one of those beings could take over our minds or bodies and force us to things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. (At least, I don’t think there are but I did watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo once.)

Seriously, if you do a search on the term mind control in the Marvel Comics Wiki, you’ll find eight pages each with sixteen entries and then ninth page with another thirteen entries of characters who exhibit the ability to control minds. And those entries didn’t even include Maynard Tiboldt, who just uses good old-fashioned hypnosis to force others to do his bidding. Or demonic possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonic_possession, walk ins such as Deadman, or other plot devices.

The point being, in the Marvel Universe, where mind control is as prevalent as halitosis in a garlic festival, how does a simple prosecutor ever get a conviction? Even when a perp was caught red-handed, said perp could claim that he or she didn’t want to do it, someone like Kilgrave or Puppet Master took over his or her mind and forced him or her to commit the crime. Would even one hundred eyewitnesses all of whom saw the defendant commit the crime and positively identified the defendant in court be enough to get past the reasonable doubt raised by a literal “The Devil Made Me Do It” defense?

The problem wouldn’t be any better in the DC Universe. The same mind control search in the DC Comics Wiki yields eleven pages of sixteen entries, plus a twelfth page with one entry of mind controllers. If anything, the problem would be even worse there.

And it’s not just mind control. What about shape shifters? Again, you could have one hundred eyewitnesses all say, “We saw D. Fendant kill Mr. Boddy in the Library with the wrench,” and Mr. Fendant could argue it wasn’t him the eyewitnesses saw, it was Mystique or Clayface or a Skrull  or a Durlan who changed their appearance to look like Mr. Fendant for their own nefarious reasons. Or going back one step, maybe one of those 198 mind controllers, one hypnotist, assorted demonic possessors, other assorted walkers in, or abundant plot devices we were talking about earlier used their powers to make the eye witnesses think they saw Mr. Fendant, when he had nothing to do with the crime.

Either way, it could shove so much reasonable doubt into the case that it would turn what was once a slam dunk into a hard-to-swallow turducken.

What’s a prosecutor to do?

I don’t know.

Maybe the prosecutor could convince a jury that none of those very possible possibilities had happened. After all, juries in our Life As We Know It Universe are extremely reluctant to accept the insanity defense. The Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity plea is only used in about one percent of all felony trials and fact finders return a verdict of N.G.R.I. in only one-quarter of the cases where the defense is even raised. Maybe juries in the Marvel or DC Universes would be equally reluctant to find a defendant not guilty by reason of mind control, shape shifting, possession, walk in, or other plot device.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Again, I don’t know.

I do know this: the prevalence of mind controllers and shape shifters in our comic-book universes would make life for the Harvey Dents and Blake Towers of those worlds interesting. But interesting in the “May you live in interesting times” is a curse kind of way.

Oh, I also know something else: I haven’t finished wrapping my Christmas presents yet. Hell, I haven’t finished my Christmas shopping yet. So, while I can to raise the questions and point out the problems, I don’t have enough time to analyze them more fully.

In fact, all I do have time for is to say, “Merry Christmas, everyone.”

Martha Thomases: A Yuletide Call To Action

PTO_072

Merry Christmas!

I don’t celebrate, of course. Well, I do, sort of. I volunteer at the hospital, helping Santa deliver gifts to the kids who are in-patient. My Santa is Jewish. His wife (and elf) is Jewish. So am I. We are the Shabbos goys of Christmas.

Just because it’s not my holiday doesn’t mean that I ignore the season of comfort and joy. Coming so close to the New Year, it makes me think of how to improve myself and the planet for the next twelve months.

It is possible for me to get discouraged when I think about these things. There are so many important problems to be solved – climate change, income inequality, terrorism, racism, sexism etc. etc. I don’t have any ideas that are big enough to solve these. I can’t do it all by myself.

(Aside: Thinking I have to do it all by myself is a form of grandiosity.)

So, the challenge, as I see it, is to find a finite problem and a community that might be able to solve it. I think I’ve found the problem, and I think we, as the comics community, are up to the task.

A while ago, I read this story about the growing and unmet demand for story-hours for children, especially pre-school children. Research shows that the single most important thing contributing to a person’s success is having access to books as a child.

We are comics-lovers. We love to read. We should find a way to connect with under-served communities and read to their kids.

Here are some of the challenges:

  1. We will need to find locations that are open to the public and safe for children under the age of five.
  2. We will need to find a stash of appropriate books.
  3. We will need to learn what laws cover activities like this, and take steps to be in compliance with them.

Here are some of my first thoughts, by number.

  1. Some of the bigger and better comic book stores have reading areas. Perhaps they would donate an hour or two each week for this purpose.
  2. There are excellent books for children in this age group in our medium. We might be able to raise money to purchase them, or contact the publishers for donations.
  3. Perhaps there are lawyers who are comic book fans who could advise us.

These aren’t all the problems we would face, nor are my suggestions necessarily useful. It’s not a way to reach every child in need. If anything, the kids who need it most are the hardest to involve, since they are most likely to have parents who work several jobs, don’t speak English, or are just plain apathetic.

Still, it’s a start.

What do you think? Is this something we could do? Should we start in one space, and see if it works? Do you have other ideas?

Let me know in the comments. If you really want to get involved, send me an e-mail Martha@comicmix.com

A Very Tweeks Christmas Eve

Merry X-mas ComicMixers!  Spend Christmas Eve with us, as we review our Christmas lists and give some suggestions on what to binge-watch, read and listen to over Winter Break.  You even get to watch us open our first present!

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