Category: Columns

Emily S. Whitten: Adventures in Costume-Making, Halloween Edition

Hot TopicHappy post-Halloween, everyone! I hope it was spooooky and fun and sugar-coma-tastic. Man, I love Halloween. And this year I had a big party to go to, so I decided to go all out on my costume, a creepy “broken doll.”

Even though this year’s costume was not specifically geek-related (unlike that year I went as Black Canary and everyone thought I was Lady Gaga… sigh), I had a great time putting it together, and since putting together a good costume is part of the fun for me at some conventions, and I haven’t done a costume how-to (Emily-style!) in a while, I thought I’d give it a whirl with my Halloween getup.

I am unashamed to admit that this year’s costume idea came from an email Hot Topic sent out advertising their Halloween costume pieces. (And FYI, if anyone else is remembering the days when Hot Topic mostly contained black things covered in spikes, you are now on notice that these days it also contains a lot of awesome geek and pop culture clothing and collectibles.) Although I do like to try to come up with my own spin on costume things, my starting point was definitely the Doll Leg Tights on the Hot Topic site. I saw them and just thought, “A life-sized doll. What a cool, creepy idea.” Especially since I have a weird fascination with the idea of dolls (and other toys) coming to life (wherein depending on the toy, you either wind up as one of the humans in Toy Story or in Chucky and who can say which it will be until it’s too late? See also: the evil doll in the new Ash vs. Evil Dead show, which is hilariously cute-evil).

Unfortunately, by the time I realized I wanted to do a creepy doll costume the tights were all sold out. Undeterred, I thought, “How hard can it be to make doll legs?” Well. Not as easy as you’d expect, actually, but then again, nothing ever is in costuming. That’s what makes it fun! (And after all, it’s not Emily-style costuming unless you attempt to make something you’ve never made before from scratch with little idea how and almost no time to spare.) I decided to give it a go, and ran through the options of drawing them on with makeup, creating some custom temporary tattoos as I have for previous costumes, or using permanent marker (either directly on my skin, or on tights).

I nixed the idea of makeup because I didn’t want to have to worry about it smearing and coming off on things, and I decided against the temporary tattoos because I didn’t have time to properly fit and scale them in Photoshop. A friend informed me that drawing on yourself with ink or permanent marker is bad for you (oops for all those years I waitressed at the Arts Center and doodled on myself in between orders). So I decided to try permanent marker on light-colored hose. It…did not go well. It turns out, permanent marker is not actually permanent on hose. Instead, it gets all over everything. Ick. Fortunately, at that point I remembered my cache of fabric paint (d’oh!); and in the end, that’s what I used. (I have been informed that Michael’s also has fabric markers, so that might be an option for other DIYers, but I didn’t have time to go buy any).

The fabric paint worked pretty well, considering. It’s not super easy to paint on your own legs, but in the end, and using some photo references, I managed some acceptable doll ball joints. Given I was going as a broken doll, I then added a bunch of cracks, which was the fun part. It was kind of like painting lightning; and I also discovered that making some of the cracks really black in the center gave them a more realistic look, for added creepy brokenness. I then managed to create arm-hose by cutting apart a pair of regular hose and then cutting finger-holes in the toes (pro tip: because hose stretch so much, the finger-holes can be only a few millimeters across when you cut them; and you can then use a thin line of clear nail polish around the cuts to stop runs). And then, of course, I painted on them, too.

I was pretty happy with the end result for a first attempt, although as a fair warning to anyone else who wants to try this, some of the paint does bleed through and will thus have to be scrubbed off afterwards, and also touched up on the hose before a second wear. But the Tulip brand of fabric paint I used wasn’t hard to get off.

Once I had the arms and legs out of the way, the rest of the costume wasn’t too challenging; although I did also do some fancy-schmancy nails in one of my favorite greens to match, and those took some time. But fancy dolls have to have fancy nails! (For my fellow nail polish addicts, that’s China Glaze Smoke and Ashes from the Hunger Games line, Wet N’ Wild Spoiled in Correction Tape, and Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine in Glow.) As per the Emily-style costuming method, I love to repurpose costume pieces I’ve used before. Therefore I decided that this doll was going to be a sort of dark harlequin/ballerina-style doll, and pulled together the green corset and fluffy black skirt that originated in an Absinthe Fairy costume, a black lace shirt with puffed sleeves that’s played its part in my Discworld ensembles, and ballet flats that, quite honestly, are part of my regular work attire.

That just left hair, makeup, and accessories. For whatever reason, despite my hair’s inherent general inability to hold any curl whatsoever, I discovered recently that it will stay naturally in simple curled pigtails (weird!) so I opted for those, helped along by hair spray for a little extra staying power, and accented with black ribbon bows. The necklace was actually a Hot Topic purchase I’d never found anything to wear with before, but it set this ensemble off perfectly; and the earrings added a nice additional pop of green to a fairly dark outfit.

The makeup job was a bit tricky, I’ll admit; but it had to be right to pull the costume together. Fortunately, the set of colors I usually use for Harley Quinn could be repurposed for this (and can be acquired at your local CVS). For anyone who wants to replicate the look, I started with circles of Maybelline’s “Dream Bouncy” blush in Plum Wine, which is a cream blush that stays put and shows up well under powder. The powder went over my whole face and is Manic Panic’s “Virgin” Pressed White Powder, which is of excellent quality. I then drew on dark, fairly thin eyebrows with a black brow pencil to get that more doll-like look.

Next up were the eyes – with white around the outside on the bottom, and on the upper lids, to make them look unnaturally large and doll-like (Milani’s Runway Eyes in Backstage Basics has a pearly white that I used). Under the eyebrows I used the basic brown in Revlon’s Illuminance Cream Shadow set, with a touch of the shimmery brown on the inside areas, to make the eyes look like they were more deeply-set. Once I had the basics done, I drew the shape of the bigger doll “eyes” and eyelashes underneath in black liquid eyeliner, and filled in the lower half of my upper lids with the same, getting wider towards the outside of the eye. I finished the eyes with some fake eyelashes on the upper lids to add to the blinking doll effect.

The black eyeliner was also what I used to draw the “cracks” on my face, and worked very well for that because of the liquidity and fine tip on the eyeliner brush. I finished off the look with a lipstick base of Maybelline “Bare All” (originally acquired for my Orphan Black Helena costume) to get rid of my natural lip color, then drew on a smaller, rounded pair of doll lips using Milani Easy Liner in Sugar Plum, Revlon Ultimate ColorStay Liquid Lipstick in Brilliant Bordeaux, and Revlon ColorBurst Lipgloss in Bordeaux. Et voilà! Creepy broken doll face, and Creepy Broken Doll.

After that, all that remained was to go hang out at an awesome house party with the likes of Rose Quartz and Miss Fisher and Daredevil and to happen upon some great settings like this pumpkin-filled alleyway or this old trunk and stone wall in which to take some super creepy doll photos.

So there you have it, folks! A Halloween how-to. Hope it’s helpful to any fellow costumers out there; and until next time, Servo Lectio!

…Because if you don’t? I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL.

 

Joe Corallo: Batgirl and that Wedding

Batgirl 45

As many of you may know, last week was the release of Batgirl #45, the issue in which Barbara’s former roommate/good friend Alysia Yeoh gets married to her lover, Jo. The resulting wedding was the first time in mainstream comics that a transgender woman got married. Googling this will lead you to a slew of articles and blog posts covering the groundbreaking nature of this issue. How important is this event though, and will this have any impact on mainstream comics? I picked up a copy so I could try to figure that out.

Like many a comic book wedding before it, it’s a filler issue. It’s about Batgirl at this wedding. This is an important point. It’s about Batgirl. It’s not primarily about Alysia and Jo. They’re the B plot of the issue. With the way the wedding has been hyped this past week, the cover for this issue, and thinking back not too long ago to Northstar’s wedding in Astonishing X-Men #51, it’d be easy to see how one might think that Alysia and Jo would be in the A plot. So if you haven’t read it yet and that’s what you were anticipating, I hope I helped you to avoid going into it with that mindset.

The fact that they weren’t the A plot shouldn’t be a bad thing. Yes, it would be great for diversity in comics if they were. However, the book is still about Batgirl, and not Alysia. Batgirl #45 is a twenty-page story. Six of those pages feature Alysia, and she has six word balloons throughout the comic. Her partner, Jo, is featured on three of those pages and has one line of dialogue, which is “And I love you.” Batgirl has ten times the dialogue that Alysia has, and the story is mostly about Batgirl and her relationships with Luke Fox and Grayson with the wedding as a backdrop.

None of that takes away from the fact that Alysia Yeoh is a long overdue representation in comics, and that she had an important moment in her life that Barbara got to be a part of. Current trans representation in mainstream comics is nearly nonexistent outside of Alysia. We do need trans representation outside of the heroes themselves as part of having a world more reflective of our own, and Alysia has been a step towards that. It’s not ideal, but this is where we are.

I encourage everyone who wants to see more and better representation to pick up this book if they haven’t yet at their LCS. If it’s sold out, ask them about ordering more. If we can show that trans representation can help sell comics, we will get more of it. That’s just how it works.

At the end of the day, both DC and Marvel, and nearly every other comics publisher for that matter, is a business first and foremost. They may be willing to occasionally take a risk, but when all is said and done they need books that sell. We could have a discussion about how we don’t necessarily know some of the sales potential more trans representation could have over time, and how maybe expanding that quicker could lead to great things for the publishers and the readers, but if we don’t buy and support the offerings they’re already trying to give us, than they’ll just stop where they are and potentially take years to try again.

This does not mean you can’t also demand more and demand better. Social media alone isn’t going to necessarily bring about the kind of characters and story lines you want, but it does have power. Earlier in this Batgirl run, as I mentioned last week, the same team that worked on the first trans wedding in comics wrote an issue with a story and dialogue that was considered transphobic. It was public outcry through social media that got us an apology and changes in the reprints of that issue.

People and companies can learn and adapt to changing demands from their customers. By both buying comics with queer characters like Batgirl and Midnighter, and speaking up through social media and other outlets available about these issues and what can be improved upon, we can assure a bright future for mainstream queer comics.

Glenn Hauman: Today’s Gateway Drugs

bizarroOne of the things they’ve been doing during this World Series – and every one, really – is comparing them to series contenders of years past. This year, the references to the ’85 Royals and the ’86 Mets have come fast and furious, and while it’s great to talk about Gary Carter, Darryl Strawberry, and Dwight Gooden again, it’s not like anybody under the age of 30 saw them play in their prime. More to the point, no one is becoming a baseball fan today from watching those guys from back then.

Sadly, to me, I think it’s the same with superheroes.

Nobody is becoming a fan of superheroes today if their first exposures are comics from 30+ years ago. I’m not talking about the characters and concepts, I’m speaking only of the works themselves. There are a lot of young kids who fell in love with Supergirl this week, but if I handed them stories by Otto Binder and Jim Mooney as the first things they read, I’d turn them off to comics forever. I’d hand them a copy of Squirrel Girl or Ms. Marvel or Paper Girls or A-Force or Batgirl or even Mark Waid and Fiona Staples’s Archie.

This is not a knock on the old comics; they’re great after the initial infection has happened. Nor is this a knock on creators who have careers that span decades. And I’m certainly not denigrating fans who are getting on in years – aren’t we all? But there really has to be a feeling of currency, of contemporary creation, and attitudes have changed over the years. There’s no reason new readers today should be caught up by what got us as 10 year olds, whether that was in 1963, 1985, or 2000 AD.

Luckily, we also have one other gateway for people to get into superhero comics, and it’s our old frenemy television. From the days of The Adventures Of Superman in the 50s, more people got into comics from superhero TV over the years than any other medium. The Green Hornet, Super Friends, Shazam/Isis, Spider-Man (with or without his amazing friends), Plastic Man, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, Electra Woman, and the more recent Swamp Thing, Batman and X-Men animated series, Lois & Clark, Smallville, Human Target, and Heroes. Yes, much as comic fans are loath to admit it, even the Batman series in ’66 brought in new readers.

And with the current explosion of TV shows based on comics (what is it now, twelve?) that are targeting whole swaths of audiences across demographic lines (to say nothing of the movies and webcomics) we might finally be able to say that we are getting new comics readers from anywhere and everywhere. Across all ages, races, and genders.

Yes, they aren’t sparking to the same things you latched onto when you started. Maybe an ex-boyfriend gave them Sandman, or they heard something about this Ra’s Al Ghul fellow. That’s cool. You get to show the world of comics to today’s 10,000. And that keeps you young.

But remember: with great power comes great responsibility.

Ed Catto: Geek Culture Grows … and Grows!

Cosplayers at Long Beach comic Conjpg

You don’t have to explain what a comic convention is to most people anymore. They know that these conventions are a celebration of geek culture, that they are places to sell comics and collectibles, and that a lot of people attend these things. Some people might know that the San Diego Comic-Con is the grand-daddy of them all, and generally considered to be biggest and the best.

But that standing is rapidly changing. Recently, New York Comic Con published some astonishing attendance numbers. As it has been each year, this was another record-breaking year as they counted 167,000 attendees. That’s a lot of people.

NYCC10crowdGeek Culture business analyst and author Rob Salkowitz sees different strengths for each. “NYCC strikes me as a great way for brands to reach influential audiences in the New York area (including a lot of media and publishing elites), whereas SDCC is still the only truly global fan event in North America.”

So while every major convention might have a distinct flavor or purpose, I feel the strong attendee and revenue growth across the board seems to speak to both the rise of Geek Culture and changing consumer habits.

Remember just a few years ago when Target was a “cool” place to shop? Everyone even pronounced the name as “Tar-jay” with a half-jokey attitude. Since then, big box retailers like Target and Wal-Mart (for the first time in ages) find themselves struggling and falling short of expectations. So many Americans feel that if you just have to “buy something,” it’s easier to just order it online and have it delivered.

MK-CI051_TARGET_G_20131121200203But if there’s an experience involved, it’s a different story. If you need an expert to help you plan your bridal registry, for example, you definitely want to go to visit a retailer. Or if you want to meet a favorite author, you’ll visit a bookstore for an autographing event. And if you want to celebrate your fan passion, you probably want to visit your comic shop every Wednesday or attend one of the country’s many comic conventions.

That’s where you can see you’re part of something big and exciting. There’s so much to see and learn about – it’s not only about acquiring stuff. Now it’s about acquiring stuff and experiences.

And with the rising tide of Geek Culture and comic cons, everyone seems to have a vision of how they should all work.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to read Alisha Grauso make her case in The Wrap (a news portal that covers entertainment news with a generous dollop of Hollywood insider insights) that movie studios should focus their efforts on promoting at New York Comic Con. For the industry, it’s been “understood” that Hollywood likes to participate in San Diego Comic-Con because it’s fun and it’s an easy economical trip. In her article, Ms. Grauso pointes to several important economic reasons to consider shifting Hollywood’s marketing focus away from thw San Diego Comic-Con and to the New York Comic Con.

I’ll admit it, in my role as a marketing guy we were recently suggesting to a client that they focus their efforts on other conventions rather than San Diego. And this choice makes sense for that particular client, and it also makes sense for more and more brands.
“Fan events… are big business,” said Lance Fensterman, senior global VP of ReedPOP. “It is where brands and media companies can connect directly with fans… passionate, passionate fans. These guys are rabid consumers of content, they have heavy social media presence, and they’re savvy. These are people that marketers want to reach. With that in mind, an important part of our job is to ensure this is done the right way and isn’t too overwhelming or distracting to the fan experience.”

The reality of the situation is that there are now so many venues for marketers to choose from. And that’s great for fans and great for brands.

Long Beach Comic Con

John Ostrander: The Spectre – What Was I Thinking?

spectre

Halloween was yesterday (if you’re reading this on Sunday); a time of ghosts and ghouls and little children strong arming adults for candy under the threat of “tricks.” Oh, also when the Great Pumpkin rises from a really sincere pumpkin patch to bring toys and presents to good little children all around the world. Or so I have been told.

And, of course, it’s time for ghost stories and horror stories and tales of things that go bump in the night and I’ve told a few of those myself, notably Wasteland. My most successful foray into the genre, though, probably was the run I did on The Spectre with Tom Mandrake for DC Comics back in the 1990s.

The Spectre was an interesting amalgam of both supernatural and superhero. Created in 1940 by Superman creator Jerry Siegel and artist Bernard Baily, the central character was hardnosed plainclothes detective Jim Corrigan who falls afoul of mobsters and is murdered. He’s sealed into a cement filled oil drum and dumped in the river. His soul, however, is unable to rest and an entity called “The Voice” sends him back as a vengeance-seeking ghost, a.k.a. The Spectre.

As the Spectre, Corrigan has unimaginable powers and abilities. And therein lay the problem. The only being more powerful than the Spectre would be God and only on days when God had been eating his Wheaties. How do you mount a credible threat to someone like that? If there is no risk, there’s no suspense and no story. The bad guy does bad things and the Spectre shows up and dispatches him, usually in a grisly fashion.

The Spectre never lasted long in his own series, although there were several attempts. The common wisdom was that you had to reduce the Spectre’s power to make a story. The problem with that was, in so doing, you lost some of the spectacular visuals that made the Spectre what he was. Why bother?

Tom Mandrake and I had been partners for a while, working on GrimJack and then on The Fury of Firestorm. The latter series was ending and we were looking for something new to do together. Both of us were long time fans of the Ghostly Guardian (as the Spectre was known) and campaigned to get to play with him. DC was leery; a recent attempt at doing a Spectre ongoing had been cancelled only a relatively short time before.

“Give him to us,” Tom and I told DC; “We know how to make him work.”

Editor and friend Dan Raspler took up our cause and got DC to agree based on our past track record together and how we pitched our concept for the relaunch.

It wasn’t the Spectre that we changed so much as it was his human counterpart, Jim Corrigan. Different versions of the story resurrected Corrigan and even set him at odds sometimes with the Spectre persona, which had taken up residence in Corrigan’s body. I felt that Corrigan himself had become something of a wimp. So, first of all, Tom and I declared that Corrigan was dead and had been dead since the 1940s. That was his tragedy. Sometimes, he fooled himself into thinking he was alive but he was, in fact, dead.

Second, Corrigan had been a plainclothes police detective back in the 40s. He was hard-boiled. Go back and watch the police movies from back then; hell, go read the early Dick Tracy strips. Hard, tough, and not afraid to use violence and even death to achieve justice. This, we felt, was why he was given the power of the Spectre and informed how that power was used. The Spectre may have had the power of a god but he had the perspective of a mortal man, a very flawed mortal man.

We decided that “The Voice” was short for The Voice of God and the Spectre himself became the Wrath of God. In a way, he was an aspect of God, specifically of Jehovah – and a very Old Testament Jehovah at that. The Spectre had been the Angel of Death that had culled the first born of Egypt. At one point, the Spectre entity rebelled against mercy and so it was decreed it that it had to be united with a human soul in order to walk the Earth, the theory being that the human could temper the Wrath of God. However, when you had a human as liable to rage and outrage as Jim Corrigan, that wasn’t always true.

This enabled us to keep the spectacular visuals and outrageous stunts, the iconography that gave readers a reason to come to the Spectre in the first place and still allow us to construct stories. The Spectre wasn’t vulnerable but Corrigan was.

Corrigan was also weary; since the 1940s he had tried to eradicate evil and the world had only gotten darker. He was very near despair and facing an existential crisis. That also gave us a platform for our stories; we asked questions on the nature of punishment, despair, and redemption. We posed ethical and theological questions. I was less interested in giving answers to those questions, which I felt the readers could and should provide for themselves.

This is all very cerebral. I know. What really made the book sing was Tom’s artwork. This is the character that Tom Mandrake was born to draw and over and over again I looked for situations that played to his myriad strengths. Hey, as they said in The Producers, “When you got it, flaunt it, baby, flaunt it!”

What added to the run were the covers; each issue had a different artist and each artist presented their own interpretation of the character, often telling their own story in one image. Likewise, the letter page (helmed by Peter Tomasi who started as the assistant editor on the book and later became the book’s editor) also delved into the topics raised by the story, creating an interesting discussion between Pete and the reader. All in all, it was quite a package.

We went on for five years and we learned that our run was nearing an end. We were given a year’s notice and permission to wind up the story our way. This is really rare. Corrigan had grown during the run of issues we did and, in our last issue, he gave up being the Spectre to go on to his final reward. That’s also unusual. With that ending, we were able to tie up our entire series and make it all one story. It completed what Tom and I were doing in a way that one rarely gets to do.

Tom and I are playing with the horror genre again as we work on Kros: Hallowed Ground. We’re both very excited by it; this is the first time we’ve played with the horror genre together since The Spectre. Expectations may be high; The Spectre was one of the high-water marks in both our careers. We feel confident but not cocky. The Spectre was very much of its time and where we were in our careers but I think it also stands up today. Two TPBs have been issued from DC gathering some of the early issues; I hope they go on to collect the others as well.

All false modesty aside, I think it’s worth it.

Marc Alan Fishman: #DarkSideMatters

han solo star wars episode 7

By the time you read this, there will only be 46 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, and 7 seconds until Star Wars: The Force, Black to the Future debuts. OK, I’m not even sure if that time calculation is right. I mean, who knows when you actually read my article, right? The point should not be missed though: the hype train is in full force for the next installment in Mickey Mouse’s epic empire. And boy howdy, could I give two poops less about it all.

Forgive me, Star Wars fans. The force is so very, very weak with me. My generation didn’t grow up with Star Wars, unless we had older brothers or sisters. Return of the Jedi debuted when I was two. And by the time I was old enough to even absorb any of the original trilogy, video rental was still only a rare occasion in my household, although Voltron was the singular entity that was a must. When Lucas re-released A New Hope and its brethren, I was deep within the heart of my own adolescence; so I eventually came to understand and appreciate the fandom. I won’t lie: I bought myself a lightsaber. I owned more than a few of the franchise video games, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter being the crown jewel. I even spent a summer enjoying the collectible card game. But all of this was at an arm’s length.

When Phantom Menace debuted, I recall the insanity that swept the nation. Star Wars permeated every available licensing opportunity in every retail establishment as far as the eye could see. And then the movie actually came out. I remember the apologists extremely well. Sure, look past the overused CGI. Ignore the banal plot circling around trade negotiations. Pay no attention to Jar Jar Binks, Watoo, or any of the other obvious stereotypes that apparently caused no undue stress for the focus groups. But we all knew it. As good as the original movies were, the next generation of Star Wars felt hollow. When they made A New Hope, you could feel the … well… hope. By the time we’d reached Jedi, Star Wars was more machine than man. The prequels never had a chance.

Time heals all wounds … and J.J. Abrams heals all franchises. At least enough to please Disney and Lucas to pass the reigns over to him. And well they should. I happened to catch his Star Trek on basic cable the other night (I’d seen it in theater, but not since), and truly it held up. Not that any previous Trek movies were ever Star Wars in terms of mass appeal and profit, but the concept remains the same: Abrams is handed the keys to the castle, and is left to accentuate what we love, and maybe shine it up a little bit. But mark my words, we’ll be one misplaced lens flare away from instant satire.

But that isn’t why I’m ranting today.

Amidst the ramp up for The Force Awakens a few tidbits have permeated my news feed. Amongst them was the odd rise of a few bad apples calling to #BoycottStarWarsVII, via a Twitter campaign. Their argument: the new lead, John Boyega, is black. No, I couldn’t believe it either. I mean, sure, boycott Star Wars because Phantom really was that bad. Boycott it because the Hateful Eight will be coming out close to it and Tarantino has never steered us wrong.

To have a few trolls even insinuate that the placement of a black actor, or female in the lead of a major franchise was reason to save one’s shekels is laughable to me. So much so, that upon seeing it being mentioned on my news feed made me initially believe it to be the brainchild of a viral marketing campaign. Want to fight social injustice? See Star Wars. Tell me it’s not brilliant. But alas… there truly are still openly racist idiots throwing stones at an impenetrable fortress, in hopes of toppling a giant they can’t even comprehend. I’d like to think the franchise got it’s fill of minstrel tap dancing after Episode III ran final credits.

Far more disturbing to me than a few errant racists with Twitter accounts are the baby boomers with Facebook. I’ve seen more than a handful of reposts already calling for the “Spoiler Free” sharing of elation for one week after the film debuts. Because people aren’t capable of just avoiding Facebook until they see the movie. Or just as scary, the celebration of Star Wars Day at K-Mart (or Toys R Us, or Target, I think), wherein fans waited in line for hours for the opportunity to buy some toys. Or frightening me down to my core… the news that Fandango and AMC crashed like the Titanic over people preordering their tickets to opening night. That night well over a month and half away. I couldn’t even get a show time next week for Trumbo without consternation. Egads.

Look. I get it. Star Wars is to many of us, the literal gateway to our eventual geekdom. It’s what lay-people and nerdlingers can unite in mutual love for. The gentle hum of a lightsaber brings men to their knees, and boys to their feet. And to know that Han, Chewie, Luke, and Leia will once again be in our lives? Well the only thing that could make that better is if a soccer ball was a droid. Wait. It is?! Great googly-moogly, kiddos…

How can we just sit here and wait? Oh yeah! Patiently. At the end of the day, it’s only a movie. Even if it turns out to be as amazing as we’ll all hope (note: it won’t be, but it’ll be great), Episode VII will always miss the crucial ingredient that A New Hope had a long time ago. In a galaxy far away, The Force Awakens won’t have the magic of being something we haven’t seen before.

 

Martha Thomases: Thanks For The Mammories

Woody Allen

The doctor was over an hour late for my mammogram appointment this morning. The only magazines in the office were about decorating and polo, and my phone was being wonky, so I had a lot of time to think.

As you might expect, I thought about breasts. A lot.

Too much.

Specifically, I wondered why, despite our culture’s obsession with breasts, especially among the adolescent man-children who make so many of our commercially artistic decisions, no one (to my knowledge) had ever considered what a super-powered breast might be like.

Even without fictional help, breasts have a lot of power. As mammals, we use them to feed our young. Our patriarchal culture judges a woman’s value (in part) by the firmness, size and perkiness of her tits. While some people (including a fair number of women) think this gives women power, I have never perceived it this way. Instead, in my experience, men think the mere fact that I have them means they can remark on how much they do or do not like them.

I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t had a stranger say something about her breasts. While there may be some women who make similarly unrequested comments to men, I’ve never heard about any and must suppose it to be a much less common phenomenon. Telling me what he thinks about my body parts is one way that a man can tell me that he thinks I exist for his appraisal and approval.

What if my breasts could actually be a source of physical or metaphysical power? What if the more than 30-years exposure to radiation charged them up to affect me the same way that radioactive spider affected Peter Parker?

Would they shoot out webbing like Spider-Man does from his hands, but from the nipples instead? Would the webbing be edible, like Twizzlers?

Or would they shoot out death-rays?

Perhaps they would be malleable like Mr. Fantastic’s body, able to change shape and size to rope in criminals, or cushion a fall.

They might turn rock hard, like The Thing, and make my rib-cage impenetrable, so that no one can shoot me in the heart.

Or perhaps they could jiggle at super-speed, creating veritable earthquakes to knock my antagonists off their feet or allowing me to vibrate through walls.

Or they might grow massively in size and strength, like the Hulk, when I get angry, allowing me to use them to smash any cat-caller who gets in my face.

Alas, none of this happened to me.

I did get a clean bill of health, which is a good thing. I urge you to do the same.

Tweeks: Supergirl Review

Supergirl premiered on CBS Monday night setting a Fall series record of 14 million viewers. It was an undeniable teen hit with both boys and girls. And of course we watched it too.

But as critical fans of all things being superhero-y while female, did we enjoy it? Duh. But was her costume Tweeks Approved too? How does this show stack up against Agent Carter? Considering the middle school pressure to blend in would we keep their superhero powers a secret? Watch our review to find out the answers.

Dennis O’Neil: What Is Star Wars?

Heinlein_Waldo&MagicIncWe ended last week’s dissertation by asking if superhero stories are science fiction. You remember? Good. I cherish your acuity. And, acute citizen that you are, you have already broadened the question to include pulp stories and entertainments like the Star Wars franchise.

Let’s focus on that, for surely we are all familiar with it. The Star Wars saga has spaceships, ray guns, bizarre aliens and even a girl who is clad in a harem costume for no other reason, apparently, than that she’s awfully cute: all stuff that used to be staples of science fiction, especially the pulpy kind. But I don’t recall those words – science fiction – being used to describe anything Star Warsian. And the stories themselves contain no references to real world (universe) science or extrapolation from current reality. In fact, the storytellers go out of their way to deny any such connections: the first movie begins with the words “Long, long ago in a galaxy far away…” In other words, dear moviegoer, you can hunker back in your seat and forget about measuring what’s happening on the screen against what’s possible. Dammit, just enjoy!

But here a conundrum puts us in mud. If something looks like science fiction and acts like science fiction, don’t those qualities, in fact, make it science fiction? You’re asking me? (Perhaps I should have tried harder not to doze during those eight a.m. philosophy classes, though I don’t know if Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics would contribute much to our discourse.) As noted above, a conundrum, and one with no ready solution.

We know that civilization would be well-nigh impossible without classification, codification, grouping the chores that absorbed Linneaus and Aristotle and their ilk. We have to know what things are and we have to have names for them if we want to talk about them, which we do. Let us unequivocally approve of calling things names and giving those names precise meanings. None of which tells us what Star Wars is.

I’m hardly the first to address this problem. A few decades ago, around 1940, well before Star Wars, someone coined the term “science fantasy” for Robert Heinlein’s novel Magic Inc. Maybe that’s as close as we can come, right now. As the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction tells us, “science fantasy” has never been clearly defined. So maybe we’re stuck with it.

But...bleech! Generally I feel kindly toward oxymorons and that’s what I believe this is, but something about it irritates me. It’s clunky, right? Can’t we do better by Star Wars? Find a new classification? Or… hmmmm maybe we’re in the process of evolving past our need to classify. And wouldn’t that be interesting, and significant, and just possibly scary?

Maybe they’ve already done it, those inhabitants of a long ago in a galaxy far away.

Molly Jackson: Time for Treats!

Time for Treats

It’s a fun week in NYC, with everyone getting into the Halloween spirit. At my day job, I was chatting with some of my co-workers about the upcoming festivities. They were talking about taking their kids trick-or-treating. Since this is city living, they were talking about the trick-or-treating event at their local mall.

Growing up in the suburbs, I always had tons of houses to hit up for candy. Going out on Halloween wasn’t a special event, it was serious business. I wasn’t really in it for my costume, it was all about the trick-or-treating. Getting all that candy require planning and dedication. I loved every minute of it. Because, free candy. If it were socially acceptable for a 32 year-old, I would still go trick-or-treating today.

However, different locations mean something different for Halloween. City kids go to events either at stores or a building that sets hours. It all seems so weird to me. As you can probably tell, I have such fond memories of demanding candy from strangers. That sounds wrong but that is exactly what trick-or-treating is: politely demanding candy from strangers.

I did make it a point to let them know about Halloween Comic Fest. This is the fall’s answer to Free Comic Book Day, where stores hand out some free, Halloween-inspired comics to kids of all ages. This event is usually a smaller affair than FCBD but still just as fun. Plus this year is extra-special because it actually lands on Halloween. The majority of the books are usually all-ages, which makes it an even better event for all those trick-or-treating city kids going to stores.

Trick-or-treating has evolved and adapted to fit the needs of every community, so it is interesting to learn about how it has changed. Still, I miss my days of walking for miles and obtaining a gold mine of candy. At least I have Discount Candy Day (a.k.a. Nov. 1st) to look forward to!

Until next week! Enjoy your tricks, treats, and forthcoming cavities.

 

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