Category: Columns

Marc Alan Fishman: Justice League Unblemished

Justice League UnlimitedJustice League Unlimited was recently collected into a single Blu-Ray disc and, while I happen to own its on DVD – as well as literally everything else Bruce Timm and his menagerie created – it still stirred up a sense of unbreakable joy and nostalgia in me.

I use the term nostalgia in spite of the show itself being broadcast during my early to mid-twenties, mind you. I use it because we all know that nostalgia indicates that sentimental longing for a better time. And while we’re living in a veritable gilded age in terms of comics-to-TV live action adaptations, the animated realm is devoid of any direct counterpart to serious pulp storytelling. Sure Teen Titans Go! is on, and a handful of Marvel properties as well. But none of them hold a candle to Justice League. The absolute best episode of Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes – now over five years old – couldn’t shine the boot of the worst episode of any of Timm’s League.

I dare you to disagree.

What made the show so amazing, amongst countless reasons, would be its scope. With an unrivaled cast that built from the solid foundation of the holy trinity of DC (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, in that order), and then peppered in perfectly distilled amalgams of dozens upon dozens of characters, they truly communicated to the world at large what the DCU encompassed.

No other cartoon has come close to the depth of the presented roster of heroes and villains. Beyond the bench though – and trust me, we’re gonna hit on that in another column soon – the actual storylines we got to follow held sway as mature tales that balanced wide-eyed action with well-focused moral debates.

Take perhaps the Cadmus arc, wherein Superman ultimately learned the potent lesson that he may have adopted Earth as his home, but his home wouldn’t turn a blind eye to the sins of his past. This was, of course, a nuanced and layered issue. The secret projects erected in the name of self-defense came only after Supes had inadvertently become the pawn of Darkseid. While we comicsphiles might have given the Big Blue Boy Scout a pass for succumbing to the plot-of-the-week, we couldn’t have expected all people would share in our leniency.

To see episode after episode building the case for the world being all but backed into war with the heroes that swear to protect it… in the name of being proactive? Well, ain’t no episode of Pokemon that’s coming anywhere near that neighborhood. From the birth of Galatea (Power Girl, by way of cloning Supergirl), through to the tet-a-tet between Batman and Amanda Waller, Justice League Unlimited proved that cartoons could be more than a series of punches and CGI set-pieces. They could be compelling prose that live action movies and TV shows are still too afraid to touch. It helps when the networks just think cartoons are for kids, eh?

And what of the merging of Brainiac and Lex Luthor! What was first presented as a delightful nod to the villain tag teams of our pulp and paper (or perhaps the stop-motion, animatronic, special effect laden action films of Generation X), soon grew into an apologue on addiction. Beyond an excuse to let Flash say the words “Speed Force” without so much as a quip, the arc cemented Lex Luthor as somehow a more complex beast than our beloved Batman. Here was a man, self-made as the Dark Knight, given his ultimate prize; infinite knowledge and power. And when it was ripped away from him? We were given a long-running serialized epic as Lex chased what could only be described as the ultimate high. In the end, Luthor even saved humanity by offering Darkseid the Anti-Life Equation (oh, you didn’t know? Halliburton invented that). Simply brilliant.

So, yes, I long for the days where a Saturday morning cartoon could strike to tell the most complex stories in the lexicon of comic lore. While the world of today has Gotham, The Flash, Supergirl, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Arrow, Teen Titans Go!, and Walking Dead…

my heart belongs to Bruce Timm’s Justice League. Because that, my friends, is how cartoons were meant to be made.

Martha Thomases: So This Is Thanksgiving

Bugs Bunny“When I’m worried and I can’t sleep

I count my blessings instead of sheep

And I fall asleep counting my blessings”

“Count Your Blessings” by Irving Berlin

Next week is Thanksgiving, and so I’m trying to remind myself that I have many reasons to be thankful. First, of course, I am grateful for my family and my friends (human and otherwise) who make my life so entertaining.

But you didn’t come here to read about how fabulous my life is. You want to read about comics. And so, I present to you, Constant Reader, those things about comics for which I am most grateful.

  • Image Comics. Back in the 1990s, I agreed with the founding principles of Image (creator ownership and control) but didn’t really like what they published, which to me looked like a lot of scratchy drawings of women with gigantic tits and tiny little ankles. Now, however, I find myself buying a few Image titles every week. Was I wrong in my original impression? Maybe. Are they publishing a more diverse list now? Definitely. In any case, they provide me with more joy.
  • Boom! Studios. I confess that I originally mostly picked up the Boom! titles when Mark Waid worked there, because I strive to be loyal. He is no longer editing their books, but they publish a lot of things I like. I told you how much I like Americatown. I started Last Sons of America and that looks promising, too. They publish lots of cool stuff, including Last Sons of America, Adventure Time, Lumberjanes, and Mouse Guard. You could do worse.
  • Forbidden Planet. I am fortunate enough to live in a place where there are many different comic book stores near my home, and a high percentage of them are excellent. However, for more than three decades, Forbidden Planet has been the one I go to most often. A lot of that is location (they are near the subway station that goes where I need to go on Wednesdays), but I also like the vibe. When I go, I’m greeted by name. The folks at the check-out know I want a paper bag, not plastic. They recommend books they think I’ll like. Some people have a favorite bar where everybody knows their names. I have Forbidden Planet. I hope you have a local comic shop that makes you feel just as special.
  • Kids. Every day, there are opportunities to turn kids on to the fun of comic books. After I get my stack on Wednesdays, I go to the hospital where I volunteer on the pediatric floor. I’m there to teach knitting, but there are some kids who don’t want to knit. If I have a Simpsons comic or another age-appropriate title with single-issue story, I’ll often give it away. Every child, even those without hair or with a port in his chest, lights up in beauty with a glorious smile at the sight of a new comic.
  • The revenge of the nerds. Sometimes I wonder if comics are really mainstream now, or if I simply live a life in which that can pass for truth. But, really, there is at least one television show based on a comic book on prime time just about every day. “Superhero” is now a movie genre, one taken (mostly) seriously by respected film critics. The New York Times Book Review publishes best-seller lists for graphic novels in hardcover, paperback and manga formats. Comics are now so respectable that parents try to make their kids read them.
  • Comics! Let’s not forget how great they are. Even when I’m irked by some current controversy and what it means about our sociopolitical climate, I still love the feeling of sitting down to a fresh stack of comics, with my cat purring next to me on the armrest.

And, as always, I’m thankful for you and your indulgent attention. Happy holidays, folks.

Tweeks: Maddy’s Spoiler-free Review of Magnus Chase & The Gods of Asgard

This week we review Rick Riordan’s latest book, Magnus Chase & The Gods of Asgard.

Wait, who are we kidding…this is Maddy and this is my review. Anya hasn’t even finished the first Percy Jackson book yet (but if you would like to talk about BuzzFeed & Scream Queens, she’s your girl).

The first book in the Magnus Chase series has Mr. Riordan taking on Norse Mythology as we follow a 16 year old homeless Boston boy on an adventure after finding out his dad is the god Frey. This is a spoiler-free review, so instead of spilling the plot details, I compare this Loki to Tom Hiddleston’s version in the MCU and I tell you about what this Thor likes to binge watch.

Dennis O’Neil: Green Arrow For Mayor?

Green Arrow…and when I’m mayor I’m gonna build a big high wall all around the city to keep the bad criminals out and what’s more I’m gonna make the bad criminals pay for it. • Excerpt from Oliver Queen’s stump speech.

Well… not really. I haven’t heard Ollie’s speech yet (and perish forbid that I’d use this as an opportunity to lampoon a real office-seeker) and as far as I know, Ollie hasn’t perpetrated any campaign oratory yet, but it’s only a matter of time, right? Because he is running for public office. Wants to be mayor of the town. Hmph!

The venue where this is happening is a television show titled Arrow and this season it’s been edging closer to its comic book progenitor. The lead character is now calling himself Green Arrow just as his comics iteration has been doing since his introduction in More Fun Comics #73 (1941). These Wednesday evenings, when the show airs, he has taken to wearing a mask, just like his comics counterpart. How this affects the concept of his having a secret identity, I don’t know – didn’t a lot of citizens get looks at his maskless self in earlier seasons? Maybe not. It’s possible – dare we say “likely?” – that I missed a plot point or two.

Finally – and this may be news even to you comics folk – the comics GA also ran for mayor. If memory serves – and won’t that be the day! – the story appeared in the 70s and was almost certainly written by Elliot S! Maggin. (He likes the “S” followed by an exclaimer, and what the heck, it’s his name). Elliot was, and probably still is, a follower of politics who twice went to far as to be a Democratic candidate.

Now, we’re not in the draconian rules business here, so you won’t catch me decreeing that superheroes should never seek public office. Because I don’t absolutely know that to be true and if I did make such a pronouncement some wretch might come along and prove me wrong.

But it seems to me that superheroes and politicians occupy different, and maybe irreconcilable, domains. Politicians are, almost by definition, men and women of the people who work within the system and deal mostly with human-scaled problems. Superheroes, again by definition, are not of the people; they are differently abled and what’s superhuman about them causes them to attack problems beyond the capabilities of our uniformed public servants. Look at the early Superman stories: as his powers grew, so did his foes. It makes no dramatic sense for a chap who, at his mightiest, wrangles planets to chase jaywalkers.

So conflating superheroics and politics seems to be cognitively dissonant – two ideas occupying the same cerebral turf and bumping into each other. And that might be compromising the superhero essence more than is desirable.

Or it might not.

Maybe Elliot Maggin could clarify this for me. I wish I hadn’t misplaced his phone number.

Box Office Democracy: “The Peanuts Movie”

I was a huge fan of Peanuts when I was a kid. I can vividly remember staying up late in bed reading collections of the comic strip until I could barely keep my eyes open. This should make me the ideal audience for The Peanuts Movie, but instead it just serves as a reminder of how far this franchise has fallen. I have this hipster-esque longing for a time before Peanuts became so damn commercial (a time that never existed in my lifetime, mind you) and back before the Schulz estate seemed locked in a nefarious race with Jim Davis of Garfield to see who can make the most money with the least amount of artistic effort. The Peanuts Movie is a soulless movie stitched together from the corpse of a very soulful comic strip.

The script for The Peanuts Movie feels like it was stitched together from three episodes of an abandoned TV show. There are definite segments (Charlie Brown wants to learn to dance, Charlie Brown is a genius, Charlie Brown prepares for a talent show) and these segments build to a conclusion, are broken up by a Snoopy vignette and are then largely forgotten about by the rest of the movie. It never feels like a story worthy of a feature film, and the story doesn’t feel unique to the Peanuts characters or universe. I also despise how much they’ve sanded down the characters so that they barely feel evocative of the characters from the comic strip. There’s no philosophy or nuance; every character is just the first two adjectives you would use to describe them at the very best. These were characters with a rich history, and to see them basically reduced to catchphrases and rote characterization is sad. (Also, and this is an incredibly nerdy nitpick, having Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Marcy, and Peppermint Patty in the same classroom is a flagrant violation of canon and it makes the world feel smaller. This is not a complaint worth seriously considering.)

I didn’t much care for the visual style either. The 3D models look ok and the characters are unmistakable but the trademark narrow eyes tended to bleed on to the noses and looked weird. The hair was textured a little too realistically for the cartoonish feel of the rest of the world. I don’t know how easy any of these problems are to fix, but they both led to moments where instead of focusing on what was going on in the film I was taken with how disturbing this character or that looked in the moment. Like the script, the animation feels like it would have been good enough for TV and just never got the upscaled treatment for the silver screen— except that’s not the origin of this movie and it just looks cheap for no discernable reason.

Ultimately, I don’t think the goal of The Peanuts Movie is to entertain children so much as it is to appeal to the nostalgia of their parents. Between It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Christmas mid-November is peak awareness of the Peanuts characters, assuming we aren’t getting a blitz of MetLife ads. This is a movie designed to bring up warm fuzzy feelings in parents while pacifying their children for 90 minutes, but there’s no artistry in this film… just a simple boring regurgitation for the sake of a quick buck. This would be antithetical to the comic strip as it was in the 1960s, but seems par for the course for the latter-day commercialism and exploitation of the brand that dominated Schulz’s later life and his heirs. I’m not always fond of Bill Watterson being so inflexible with people wanting to let Calvin and Hobbes branch out in to merchandise or other media, but if it means I’ll never have to watch anything as dreadful as The Peanuts Movie starring those characters I’ll have to accept it.

Emily S. Whitten: Looking With the Heart

the-little-prince

“People where you live,” the little prince said, “grow five thousand roses in one garden… yet they don’t find what they’re looking for…

They don’t find it,” I answered.

And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water…”

Of course,” I answered.

And the little prince added, “But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”

The Little Prince has always been a favorite of mine. It was the first book I read in French, and I still prefer to read it in French, despite being a little rusty on the language. It is also particularly appropriate to quote as I think about what happened in Paris last week. Not only did the book engender in me a fondness for the French language and culture, but it also contains an important message that I feel we should remember in times like this.

There are a lot of reactions to what happened in Paris. Appropriately, there is mourning, and outrage, and sympathy for Paris and for those who have lost people (and I extend my sympathy to them as well). As appropriately, but also somewhat obscenely in the face of such destruction, there is posturing and arguing and debating about the root causes of the attack and the best responses.

People are blaming political policies, organized religion, and entire cultures for what happened. And while in the smaller sense we know who particularly has claimed responsibility for the attacks, in the larger sense, these people are not all wrong. There may be elements of all of these things and more at work in what happened; and even though it sometimes seems to me that ego is as much a part of why certain people step into the limelight to try to address the impetus for the attacks and the best way to respond to them and try to prevent them from happening again, of course it is also necessary to do so.

Today, I don’t feel like doing so. What I feel like doing is reminding myself and everyone, instead, of the importance of looking with the heart. There is so much hatred, violence, and destruction out there; and if we let it, it can consume us. But there is also a lot of beauty to be found; in individual people, in nature, in art and our creations.

I think it can be very easy to lose sight of this, in the face of such sadness and destruction and hate, and of devastating events with global impact; but it is imperative that we remember. Because while geopolitical issues, and religious disagreements, and what-have-you are very important and shape our world; so too are all of the individual lives we touch each day and the care we take over our own actions. These things are what make us who we are, and what make us, in a way, more human. And while I can’t always control what angry, hateful, misguided people choose to do, I can at least control my own reactions and state of mind.

There are a couple of concurrent interesting themes that run through another favorite book of mine, Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. In it, it is shown how a character named Vorbis is evil not only because of what he does, but because of what he makes other people into – in other words, how he influences them to start thinking and behaving like him, in part through his assumptions about what all of humanity is like. At the same time, the protagonist Brutha influences The Great God Om (in Discworld books the gods are influenced by their interactions with humans) to realize that humanity can’t only be looked on as a whole, because each individual life is as important as all of them. Or, to quote from one memorable scene in which Om storms Dunmanifestin, the home of the gods, and in the process converses with a somewhat lesser god who is still learning about the value of numbers (P’Tang-P’Tang, who looks like a very large newt and has a whole fifty-one followers):

“Is one less than fifty-one?” said P’Tang-P’Tang.

“It’s the same,” said Om, firmly.

“But you have thousands,” said the Newt God. “You fight for thousands.”

“I think,” [Om] said, “I think, if you want thousands, you have to fight for one.”

I can’t imagine the mindset of people who think that a point being made by killing random people is more important than the people themselves. But I can see that these are clearly people like Vorbis, who have lost sight of the importance of the individual, and that in order for us not to be turned into something like them in our reaction to their heinous actions, we need to remember it. We need to remember that each person out there is unique, and is someone’s parent, child, lover, or friend; and that our care for others is what makes us human. After all, as the little prince observed, “To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown−ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures…”

We are so lucky to live in a world of endless variety, and the most endless of that variety is the sea of humanity we swim in. I can’t fully comprehend why some people choose to disregard this and instead work to destroy it. All I can choose is to recognize it myself, and act accordingly. Because even in a world where there are terrible people; or even annoying people, or people you might not choose to interact with on a daily basis, the alternative to being surrounded by this sea of diversity is frightening. Again, a concept Pratchett conveys so well in Small Gods, when Vorbis has died, and is alone with Death on the black sand of the vast desert that he must cross to reach judgment:

“Don’t leave me! It’s so empty!”

Death looked around at the endless desert. He snapped his fingers and a large white horse trotted up.

I SEE A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE, he said, swinging himself up into the saddle.

“Where? Where?”

HERE. WITH YOU.

“I can’t see them!”

Death gathered up the reins.

NEVERTHELESS, he said. His horse trotted forward a few steps.

“I don’t understand!” screamed Vorbis.

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.”

Indeed, what would we be without everyone else out there? We should remember how lucky we are to be a part of humanity, and act accordingly, and with the remembrance that everything we do is our choice, and changes our world in ways that can’t be undone. Because after all, as Terry (through The Great God Om) once said:

“I. This is Not a Game.

    II. Here and Now, You are Alive.”

My sincerest condolences and sympathy to everyone who has been affected by the Paris tragedy, which is all of us; and let us always remember that this life is not a game, and that each choice we make matters, and that each person in our world is very, very important.

Until next time, Servo Lectio.

Molly Jackson: John Scalzi Got Me Again

The End Of All ThingsAuthors go out of their way to provoke emotions. I understand that. And authors do an amazing job of balancing that impact. However, they aren’t writing for automatons, so each person’s reaction is different. That reaction is where it can all go wrong.

Some authors just have a way of getting to me but John Scalzi in particular. Have you ever read his work? He has a great conversational tone that can suck a person right into the story. After reading his book Redshirts, it ruined TV for me for at least a few months. Over a year later, I yelled at him at Book Expo America. It’s true. I have witnesses. Afterwards, I realized how cathartic it was. I felt unburdened and relaxed. Which brings me to my point. He did it to me again.

While at NYCC, I had a chance to pick up a copy of his new book, The End of All Things, which is in the Old Man’s War series. (Read the first book and you will be hooked.). It is a collection of short stories following the political turmoil in this universe. While I was getting it signed, I made a point of telling him about how traumatized I was from Redshirts. At that point, I was still a little upset but mostly I was over it.

Fast forward to last week. I had finally picked it up to start reading (still struggling with my reading list) and well, I had to stop reading because way too many feels. He sacrificed an important character in a way that was too emotional for me. I really wish I could go into details but I can’t without spoilers! Safe to say, this rocked me once again. They don’t give time off for emotional scarring from books.

Now, I know this all might seem like I’m angry at the writer. I’m not, really. Scalzi is one of my favorite writers. Look at the emotion he invokes in me. The impact his writing has had on me and now all of you. I willingly go on this roller coaster. And yes, sooner rather than later I will finish reading The End of All Things.

So think about the books that have made you so emotional. The writers that still impact you long after the book is finished. Hunt them down; seek them out. Let them know that their writing affected you. I yelled at Scalzi. He was happy that his writing made a lasting impression. Let your writers know how you feel. Yell and everything.

Mike Gold: Super-Puberty!

bud-collyer-superman

I was walking through Grand Central Terminal yesterday on my way to one of our more entertaining ComicMix senior staff meetings. Grand Central is my favorite place in all of New York City – the massive cathedral ceilings, the stunning pre-Great War architecture, the clean and open lanes for pedestrian traffic… It’s really very inspiring, and, indeed, I was inspired to write this particular column.

For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I started thinking about Superman’s adolescence. Oh, I was influenced by the first issue of Max Landis’s Superman: Alien American, a solid and worthy start to the mini-series. But that, in turn, reminded me of some of my favorite Superboy stories from my ancient and decrepit youth – those where Pa Kent patiently taught his son how to manage, deploy and exacerbate his Kryptonian powers.

SuperboyThose were sweet stories with which most members of its target audience could identify. Our parents were busy teaching us how to ride our bikes, build model planes and monsters, and make decisions based upon common sense and not on impulse. Learning how to fly was just one step beyond.

We already knew that young Clark would make it into adulthood, but discovering the hows and the whys was quite comforting. However, given the Comics Code Authority as well as the marketing sentiments of the time, there were areas undocumented in Superboy and in Adventure Comics.

I am speaking of the dreadful but necessary curse of puberty, and I am addressing this subject from the perspective of boys in the very early Sixties. Girls had their own crosses to bare, but neither Clark nor I are in any position to comment from experience. I’d say something like “but I can only imagine” but that would be really creepy.

Obviously, Clark would start growing hair in places previously barren of foliage. Being smart than the average bear, he would have understood this and probably feel he was becoming a man. But those are super-hormones kicking in. That would be particularly messy, and it could have been rather dangerous to his family, to the farm animals, and to the buildings on the Kent Farm property. We’re better off not knowing. For one thing, the cover shot would be against Code.

As puberty intrudes, Clark’s voice would start to change. To be specific, it would crack. I do not know what sort of impact such cracking sound would have on nearby windows, champagne glasses, eardrums… think of the Grateful Dead using a chalkboard as a heavily amplified musical instrument. Before long, his voice would settle down into a nice adult groove, but I think Clark might “keep” his pre-puberty voice for Clark and his post-puberty voice for the Man of Steel. Hey, it worked for Bud Collyer (pictured above), the first actor to play the role on radio and in the Fleisher cartoons.

He’s also go through rather amazing growth spurts that would wreck havoc with Clark’s civilian clothing and the Kent family budget. All parents go through this, but not on a Kryptonian scale. He’d shred his clothes and shoes, and probably confuse the hell out of Krypto.

Of course, if Clark was a typical American Earthling entering adolescence – and he was raised to be just that – that X-Ray vision would help him get though many a dark night. No need for him to smuggle in copies of Playboy and Caviler. But, being raised in Kansas by caring members of society, I would think that Clark would quickly understand that with great hormones comes great guilt.

At least I’d hope so.

A few years later, The Who would record “I Can See for Miles.” Well, Clark could do that already. Would his concern for his secret identity stop him from reacting to Lana Lang slipping out with Pete Ross? I doubt it.

Being of that age, Clark would quietly use his powers to turn that date into the road show for Carrie. He’d stop Pete and any other potential suitors cold. If Clark Kent were Reggie Mantle, Archie Andrews would be a priest.

Thankfully, Clark Kent is not Peter Pan. I’m sure he would endeavor to do the right thing. But, puberty is a bitch… and high school is worse. All this is in preparation for one single event.

Losing one’s virginity.

Losing one’s super-virginity.

Joe Corallo: Comics and Bi-erasure

Angela_Queen_of_HelAs promised in my last column, this week is about bi-erasure in comics. It’s come up too often as of late and deserves its own column rather than being crammed into an already dense essay on critiques of Iceman’s coming out. It’s a problem that extends beyond the comics themselves, and has reached the TV adaptations as well.

Before diving in, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page. Bi-erasure is varying levels of denying bisexuality truly exists, whether intentional or not. In comics, this manifests itself in rewriting bisexual characters as being straight or gay, having characters tell other characters they’re definitely just gay and not bisexual despite many decades being written as straight and refusing to even entertain the idea that maybe that character would be bi, using shapeshifters to skirt around the issue of bisexuality, and that’s just a few general examples.

Marvel has recently given us two examples: Hercules and Angela. Hercules, a historically bisexual demigod, will definitively be straight according to editor-in-chief Axel Alonso. He did address that Hercules was in a relationship with James Howlett in X-Treme X-Men at one point, but that was outside the main universe and doesn’t count.

With Angela, despite her being intimate with Sera in the first issue of Angela: Queen of Hel, Axel makes it a point that he doesn’t want to put any labels on these characters to let the readers decide. Angela’s actions with Sera make it clear to the reader that she is bisexual, pansexual, or possibly a lesbian. Sera herself is even considered a trans character at Marvel, as she was assigned male at birth. Her being an Angel of the tenth realm and not someone of earth makes me a little hesitant to consider her Marvel’s first trans superhero. Axel saying that Hercules is definitively straight, then saying with Angela he doesn’t want to put labels on these things within a couple of months of each other will make just about anyone scratch their head in wonder.

On a positive note, the director of the Deadpool movie has said that Deadpool will be depicted as openly pansexual. I’m cautiously optimistic about this. It could be great, or it could be using Deadpool’s pansexuality to make lazy homophobic jokes where the entire joke is it’s funny because he’s hitting on a guy! We’ll have to wait and see.

Over at DC, they’ve made some very positive strives towards bisexual representation. They’ll have four ongoing series with a bisexual lead: Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, and Constantine: Hellblazer. Granted, all but Constantine are very recent revelations, but this is a great step forward. All the characters are fairly well known to general audiences, have had some suggestions in the past of their bisexuality, and now it’s just been confirmed. And with Constantine, since the latest reboot, his bisexuality has been more prevalent than ever.

On a negative note, one of the larger missteps in bi representation lately was NBC’s decision to make Constantine straight for their TV adaptation. From NBC’s perspective, Constantine’s bisexuality was rarely delved into in the comic, that it wasn’t important for the adaptation. This is probably one of the best/worst examples of bi-erasure as of late. Unlike Axel Alonso, the excuse of “That’s a different version of the character!” isn’t even viable here. It was NBC flat out stating they were perfectly aware of the character’s bisexuality, but it wasn’t important enough so it got nixed. That might not have been a factor in the show getting cancelled, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t something in all that happening that wasn’t at least kind of satisfying to see.

It’s easy to see how bi-erasure comes about. We live in a society where the end goal for most people is to find a partner to maintain a monogamous relationship with. When someone is coupled off in a monogamous relationship, others view you as being actively straight or gay. If you aren’t perceived as being actively with both men and women, it’s easier for people to assume you’re just one or the other, regardless of what you tell them.

Part of that also comes from the antiquated idea that gays and lesbians used the label of bisexual as a transitioning term, being unsure or afraid to commit to the labels of gay or lesbian. When I was a teenager I didn’t come out as gay at first, I came out to a few people as bi before identifying as gay. And to be entirely honest with you, bisexual, pansexual, or queer are probably more accurate labels for myself, despite being far on one end of that spectrum. Perhaps I’ve been unintentionally adding to bi-erasure. It’s something for me to think about. In the meantime, I’ve decided to update my bio here to queer rather than gay.

With more openly bi leads in comic books at the big two, we are starting to combat bi-erasure. However, it’s still rampant throughout comics because of the mentalities of some of the people working on them, even though it’s usually unintentional. If we’re going to push for an end of bi-erasure, we need to support books with openly bi leads, let them know about other bi characters we’d like to see more of, that we want more representation, and make our voices heard every single time the comic industry gets it wrong.

Mindy Newell: Eat, Drink, And Be Merry, For Tomorrow…

Isis ParisThis is the real world, and it will take more than Peter Capaldi’s breathtaking performance and a great, great episode of Doctor Who to change the minds of radical splinter groups bent on war to realize that the box – both of them – is empty.

That’s what I wrote in my column last week. And my words proved too Goddamned prophetic just four days later, when Paris was attacked by ISIS.

The official death toll as I write this on Sunday afternoon at 3:39 is reported as “129, with 352 injured and 99 in critical condition.”

But that doesn’t take into account the psychological and emotional injuries suffered by the parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and fiancées and boyfriends and girlfriends and college pals and the citizens of Paris, France, and the world.

Like clockwork, some of the Repugnantican politicians jumped in to take advantage of the carnage.

Ben Carson: “If we’re going to be bringing 200,000 people over her from that region – if I were one of the leaders of the global jihadist movement and I didn’t infiltrate that group of people with my people that would be almost malpractice.”

Rick Santorum: “ISIS is a creation of a political decision by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to abandon Iraq – against all of our generals’ recommendations, against all of the policy recommendations…Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, on her watch, decided to put politics above the security of our country…and from that was born ISIS.”

Donald Trump: “When you look at Paris  –  you know the toughest gun laws in the world, Paris  –  nobody had guns but the bad guys. Nobody had guns. Nobody,” Trump said at a rally here. “They were just shooting them one by one and then they (security forces) broke in and had a big shootout and ultimately killed the terrorists…You can say what you want, but if they had guns, if our people had guns, if they were allowed to carry, it would’ve been a much, much different situation.”

Chris Christie: He [sic] called ISIS the JV and just hours, just hours, yesterday before they struck in Paris he told ABC News that his strategy was containing ISIS…All of these statements were a lie…He sees the world as he likes to see it; as a fantasy…I see the world as it really is, and it’s time to have a president who sees the world as it really is, not how he wishes it would be.”

Carly Fiorina: “I am angry that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared victory in Iraq in 2011, abandoned all our hard-won gains for political expediency and contract to the advice of our generals, thus leaving vast swaths of territory and too much weaponry to be gobbled up by ISIS,”

And former Republican Governor of Ohio John Kaisch proved that he doesn’t have a chance in hell of becoming President, when he said, “Today is a much different day. It’s a somber day. It’s a tougher day. And for me it’s really not a day of politics or promoting a candidacy,” as was Carlos Lopez-Canteria (Lieutenant-Governor of Florida) who said it was “not the day” for criticism.

Okay, you can accuse me of being a major hypocrite here, as I am certainly full of slanted political criticism today. But I am just so sick and tired, so absolutely fed up, just so fucking pissed off about the total inability of this country’s so-called leaders to sit down together and figure out what the fuck! we are going to do? about the biggest threat to sanity and civilization since Adolf Hitler and World War II engulfed the world.

Yesterday, John Ostrander mirrored my emotional reaction to Paris in his column. And the only thing I will add to his brief history of how we got here is that none of this started with President George W. Bush and his “Project for a New American Century” administration cronies. It started after World War I, with the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the division of its territory into make-believe countries by the winners without regard to the social, political, or religious needs of the indigent peoples of those regions.

I said this same thing 14 years ago, a day or two after 9/11, to my father, essentially calling out the West.  “We’re paying now for what they did,” I said to him.

He said, “You’re right, but keep your mouth shut.”

I can’t, Dad. Never could.

I wish I didn’t think so much. I wish I didn’t have a mind that constantly plays “connect-the-dots.” But I do.

And I keep thinking about how it is said that the “final battle” will start in Syria, and end on the plains of Megiddo (from whence the word “Armageddon”), which is in modern-day Israel.

And, like John, I too keep singing “it’s the end of the world as we know it.”

Only we don’t feel fine.

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