When circumstances prevented me from attending a comics convention in my hometown this past weekend, I felt a little guilty. These are my people. My clan. Don’t I have just as much of an obligation to attend these gatherings as I have to attend Thanksgiving dinner with my family?
(Side note: Just like when I miss a family dinner, I worry that everyone was talking about me.)
And then I found out about this happening the same weekend, a cat convention in Los Angeles. Not a convention attended by cats (which would be awesome, if only for the bar scene), but an assembly of cat lovers, cat fans and cat nerds.
That is amazing.
Because I wasn’t there, I don’t know how much CatCon was like the San Diego Comic Con. I mean, there were panels and people selling merchandise to fans, and even some celebrities. No one dressed up like their favorite cats – at least not according to the article – but lots of people wore t-shirts and socks and probably other items with pictures of cats on them.
Lots of people wore cat-ear headbands. So I guess it was a lot like the San Diego Comic Con ten years ago or so.
Naturally, I wondered if other geek communities had their own gatherings. Not conventions, really, because usually a convention is an industry event, not a recreational outing. Comic conventions have expanded to include other pop culture fandom, such as movies and television and animation and even radio, sometimes, so I’m not wondering about pop culture cons.
I know that we knitters and fiber nerds have places to go, and there are antique auto shows for people who like antique autos. There are garden shows for people with lawns, or at least decent window boxes.
There are certainly political conventions, but those are mostly for professionals, not fans. Some political activities (like LGBTQ Pride parades and NRA conventions) have street fairs or indoor marketplaces for fans. I’ve seen ads for festivals extolling environmental issues and vegan lifestyles, but I’ve never seen any news coverage of them.
What other kinds of conventions could we have? What subjects attract enough of an audience to profitably sell merchandise, to allow for fun assemblages and room for geeky outbursts?
I collect lenticular, and I sincerely doubt there are enough of us to support a marketplace, because otherwise lenticulars would cost too much and it wouldn’t be fun to collect them anymore. More people collect cookie jars and salt-and-pepper shakers, but I’ve never seen a show for them.
And what would the panels be like: What kind of cookies maintain the value of your collection? Pink Sea Salt: Design Choice or Sexual Preference?
I think we need more events like these. I think every sub-group should find a way to get together and celebrate their quirky affections. Here’s a smattering of some I might consider attending:
Silly Putty (can be combined with any comic book convention as long as it doesn’t mar vintage books)
Bass Weejuns (panels can include discussion of which coins are coolest in penny loafers, and which bandages work best on heels during the break-in period)
Soap (Bar or Liquid — which is most authentic; New Trends in Smells)
Umbrellas (Threat or Menace?)
The more we celebrate our individual passions, the more people will share them. And the more people who share them, the more we’ll look for other things to enjoy together. It’s not impossible to think that we might achieve peace in our time over a mutual affection for the new Airboy.
Last summer at San Diego Comic Con, we got to sit on the bridge of the Enterprise and learn a little bit about the concept for the Hollywood Science Fiction Museum. Just in the beginning stages, it sounded pretty cool, but when we caught up with the Huston Huddleston the museum’s founder at WonderCon to talk about the progress we were blown away.
Set to open later this year at an existing Los Angeles museum, the Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum has plans to open its own location eventually. This location will feature a space ship restaurant, as well as a museum that will house a hall of cars, a hall of space ships, a hall of robots, and a ginormous store where you can buy everything from Harry Potter wands to Sonic Screwdrivers. It will also have sections for all the movies and shows in the genre. And there will also be an education component (you know, real space stuff & STEM) so it would totally be field trip worthy. Plus, being in L.A., you’d have to imagine all the studios would want to have exhibits for their movies coming out and that sort of thing. Are you sold? Are you planning your vacation already?
In this week’s episode, we feature conversations we had with Huston Huddleston, museum board member and sci-fi art designer Tim Earls (Babylon 5, Serenity, Star Trek), and Farscape actress and museum supporter Gigi Edgley. More information on the museum can be found at www.hollywoodscifi.org or if you are going to ComicCon in July, they will have booth full of cool exhibit photo ops & more info there as well.
You! Yeah, you over there… you as sick of seeing pictures of Caitlyn Jenner as I am? I mean, they’re all over the place and the media are riding the story – paltry little story – like a merry-go-round unicorn.
What? You’re not sick of Jenner pix? Well, go dump your bumple – while I try to elide the above into something at least remotely appropriate for this column, which is supposed to be about comic books or pop culture or something. Here we go. I’ll assume for an as-yet undetermined amount of bandwidth that you have for the past month been on your bi-annual Zen retreat up there in those mountains, far from screens and speakers and media in general (which might explain why you’re not sick of Jenneriana) and so you don’t know that one-time Olympic medal winner Bruce Jenner has become an almost-transexual, posed for a magazine looking hotter than any 65-year-old, of any gender, ought to look, and in the process did a name-change: Bruce, look in the mirror and meet Caitlyn. Caitlyn apparently hasn’t had surgery – hence my labeling her “almost” – but in all other ways the transformation is a fact.
I commend her. Hers could not have been an easy decision to make. Let’s believe what she says – I have no reason to doubt her sincerity – and assume that all these years, from her winning Olympic glory in 1976 through semi-stardom in the Kardashian reality TV ventures after Bruce married Kardashian matriarch Kris, right up to her present notoriety glut, Jenner was hiding her real identity behind an assumed identity. “Bruce” was a mask; Caitlyn was the real person.
Claiming one’s truth is a noble act. But I can’t help wondering why it was done so publicly. The Vanity Fair cover, the television interviews, all the spangly show-biz… it’s almost as though she’s plastering a new mask over the old Bruce one. (Norma Jeane Mortenson, meet Marilyn Monroe.) And basking in the fleeting warmth of the spotlight? Again?
Some of this may seem familiar to comics fans. Ever heard, or even participated in, a debate over which is the real person Bruce Wayne or Batman? Clark Kent or Superman? Part of the appeal of the double identity trope, which isn’t limited to superheroes, is that it acknowledges and delineates basic human reality: we all present different faces to the world depending on the occasion. The you who has pizza with pals is different from the you who has dinner with grannie – and many of us, I suspect, feel that the individual society sees is not the real us. (And it probably isn’t.)
Part of me chooses to believe that Caitlyn is moving toward something valid that’s not just her ego finding another way to demand attention. (Is Batman an exhibitionist, despite his penchant for shadows?)
Now, your turn. Go and get a mask and put it on. Then find somebody who might want to look at it.
This past weekend I took part in the Black Widow #WeWantWidow flash mob that swept through the world. If you happened to spend the past few days hiding under a really big rock from news sites and Facebook, here are the details about what happened.
This was cosplaying for a cause. Kristin Rielly, of RiellyGeek and formally Geek Girls Network, organized this event as a fun protest to the treatment of Marvel’s Black Widow, in terms of exposure in movies and merchandising. When I asked her the why of doing this event, she stated “After seeing Age of Ulton and Black Widow’s lack of character development (or her abrupt back story scene), and writing several posts for Fashionably Geek about the new Avengers line this and that – almost all missing Black Widow images, I just had enough. And then then to top it all off, Hasbro and Mattel both released action figures of Captain America and Iron Man on Black Widow’s motorcycle in her most badass AoU scene, instead of a Black Widow action figure.”
People from the US, Canada and Australia took part, dressing as Black Widow or in merchandise for the character. I was one of them, participating in the NYC demonstration outside of ReedPop’s Special Edition comicon. At least, that was the plan. The standard rule for most New Yorkers: if you are running late, the subway will make it worse. So I missed out on the big group photo shoot by a few minutes.
However, I lucked out that another late person and a few other Black Widows were out front when I arrived. So I still got my group shot! (I am weirdly proud of the belt buckle that I made. Never underestimate the power of twist ties!)
As I walked the floor of the comicon, some exhibitors remarked to me about the sheer number of Black Widows in attendance. I came to realize that this flash mob was sending a message to the people in the room that we want to see a change. I am so proud that I took part in it, even if I was late. I made a difference in that room.
The truth is that this really applies to all female and minority characters in comics. If DC had done the cinematic universe building first, we probably would have been tweeting We Want Wonder Woman instead. (That outfit would have been harder for me to make though.) I can hope that the industry heard us and saw the aftermath of supporting coverage.
In case you were wondering what to do now, I did ask Kristin how she thought we should continue. Rielly said “Let’s keep talking about it until we can make a difference. Keep sharing the hashtag, keep posting photos online of Black Widow images and cosplay. Maybe Marvel and Disney will see that they really do have a demographic ready for more female superheroines on screen and on the shelves.”
So, it is now in your hands. Go tweet #WeWantWidow. Go tell Marvel, Mattel, Hasbro and any other licenser that you want to see more Black Widow. Or go tell DC that you want to see more female coverage. Go use your voice to make sure that change happens.
This may be hard to believe, but every once in a while the good folks at ComicMix L.L.C. act as though we really are a corporation. Yeah, it’s hard for me to believe that, too.
Last Sunday, our “senior” staff (a phrase that has nothing to do with age, until August 4th) met at Martha Thomases’ plush Greenwich Village condo. Adriane Nash and I were there right on time, but Glenn Hauman was caught in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel, an all-too-common experience for those trying to escape the land of Christie. Not a problem; Martha’s kittycat Selina (yep; Selina – fangirls, go know) was making a rare public appearance. The conversation turned to this week’s comic books. I started out bitching about Bizarro #1 and Martha defended it nicely. No, I did not complain about internal consistency. I stopped doing that around Adventure Comics #285. Then Martha asked:
“What did you think of Airboy #1?”
“I haven’t read it yet, but it’s at the top of my pile” I lied. Everybody knows I read my comics on my iPad. “I love the character, but I’m annoyed Chuck Dixon didn’t write it.”
Martha was about to say something like “Yes, but James Robinson did” but it is even better known that my opinion of James’ work is so high that if he were writing the back panels of milk cartons I’d sell my cow. So, instead, Martha said “Chuck Dixon could not have written this book.” Then she smiled that smile that would make the Cheshire Cat jealous.
Chuck Dixon has been writing Airboy off-and-on for 30 years for at least three different publishers. IDW has been Omnibusing it lately. Obviously, I like it. Indeed, I like the original Golden Age character. It was Dick Giordano’s favorite as a kid and we used to talk about it on the commuter train after leaving DC for the day, much to the chagrin of our fellow travelers who really didn’t care to eavesdrop on a couple of extreme fanboys.
I told Martha I was really looking forward to it, and she repeated “Chuck Dixon could not have written this book,” this time with a sort of Lauren Bacall delivery.
“Fine,” I replied. “You don’t have to ask me twice to read a James Robinson comic book.” Or a James Robinson milk carton. “I’ll give you a call when I’m done, probably around one in the morning.” Martha goes to sleep when the sun goes down, and she knew I was kidding. She knew I’d email her at one in the morning.
And I did. I sent her a screen dump of just one panel of the issue. I sent her this one.
The naked guy is James Robinson. The clothed guy is Airboy artist Greg Hinkle. That was my review.
Martha was absolutely right. Chuck could not have written it.
I mean, he still could write Airboy and James even explains why in that very issue. But this one is something else. It reminds me of the script and layouts to the unpublished Sonic Disruptors #11, but only about three people would know that and one of them is dead.
I wonder how many excellent movies we’ve been cheated out of by Melissa McCarthy’s commitment to Mike & Molly. I understand the appeal of a regular paycheck and the success of the show has led to McCarty being the highest paid actress in Hollywood but Spy is such a good movie and couldn’t she be doing two or three of these per year instead of one and a season of bad television? Spy is the funniest movie I’ve seen in years and it isn’t close. I laughed so often and so hard I’m sure that I laughed over important dialogue and even other jokes. It’s the kind of movie that can shift the paradigm of movie comedy in the way the Judd Apatow movies of the early 2000s did and it can even be the movie you throw in your idiot friend’s face when he starts going on about how women just aren’t funny.
It is easy to praise McCarthy’s work in Spy. She’s effortlessly funny, she hits her dramatic moments, and she has an amazing physicality. I think she’s literally perfect for this role and I’m still worried I’m underselling her here. I’m also impressed at how competent they were willing to let her character be, it’s very easy to get cheap laughs out of someone being bad at their job but Susan Cooper is a good spy because she’s smart and because she’s trained very hard. A weaker movie would have been a string of pratfalls and idiot bungling. This movie doles out the bungling much more sparingly and is much better for it.
The buzz I had heard going in to this film was that Jason Statham was the breakout comic performance of the film and I didn’t think that was possible. I knew Jason Statham was funny, I had seen his work with Guy Ritchie, I has enjoyed his work in the Crank films, I thought he couldn’t surprise me in this way and I was 100% wrong. Jason Statham is funny for pretty much every second he’s on screen. I don’t think he has more than a couple lines that aren’t punchlines. His delivery is impeccable. I can’t decide if I think this is just incredible direction from Paul Feig, or if working with McCarthy brings out the best in people, or maybe we’ve all been deprived of years of work from the most unlikely comic star since it turned out Channing Tatum could steal 21 Jump Street from Jonah Hill.
I could write a gushing paragraph about every actor in Spy, the cast is so consistently amazing, but I don’t really have the space or inclination so let’s cover a bunch of people right here. Rose Byrne is terrific, between this and Bridesmaids I would be quite content to have her, McCarthy, and Feig just do movies together forever. She doesn’t have the most original comedic voice in the world but she does what she does so well. I was not familiar with Miranda Hart’s work in the UK so it’s an awful lot like a fully mature talent just sprung up at me from the ether. She’s a scene-stealer and, this might not seem remarkable, but a very big out-of-the-ordinary character that I’m never unhappy to see on screen. Jude Law looks great in a suit and is very handsome and that’s all this movie asks of him. Bobby Cannavale should really work more because I’ve never not liked him in something. I was very sure Morena Baccarin was going to be an important part of this movie when she was introduced and was very sad when she was used only sparingly.
There were a few things I thought worked less well. They go to the “You look like” joke construction a few times too often. It seems to be a McCarthy staple at this point and in a vacuum they’re all funny but at the end of a two-hour movie they aren’t hitting as hard. Peter Serafinowicz plays an aggressively flirty Italian agent that I thought was deserving of maybe 20% of the screen time he was allotted and I ended up cringing through most of his work. There are a couple jokes that use slurs for seemingly no reason other than to shock and that’s not a style of comedy I prefer. I thought a moment at the end where Cooper and Rayna Boyanov make nice was unearned and is just trading on the fact that we know the two actresses have a history. These are very small marks on an otherwise fantastic movie and nothing is ever going to connect with all of their jokes.
Paul Feig is on quite a roll with his third consecutive very funny McCarthy-led hit. In a more cynical time I would wonder if one or the other of this pairing is leaning too hard on the other, if perhaps the success of one is a smokescreen created by the supreme talent of the other but that’s just not how I want to think about things anymore. This collaboration is something special and we ought to cherish it before one of the nefarious forces in Hollywood that destroys all good things comes for this one. I thought I couldn’t be more excited for Feig and McCarthy’s Ghostbusters remake but it appears I was wrong. Hell, Spy was so good you might even be able to get me to see The Peanuts Movie, God help us all.
As I mentioned last week, I got to interview some fantastically talented folks while at Awesome Con DC 2015; and now I get to share the first of those interviews with you. I started off my weekend by talking with the wonderful, warm, and funny voice actor and singer Jess Harnell, who graciously took time out of his busy convention schedule to chat with me behind the scenes; and let me tell you, it was a treat!
If you’re not familiar with Jess…well, you probably only think you’re not familiar with Jess. Because if I mention, oh, say, Wakko Warner of Animaniacs, Captain Hero of Drawn Together, Ironhide of the Transformers movies, Chilly of Doc McStuffins, Grim of The 7D, the Sewer Urchin of The Tick, or one of the other 274 credits on Jess’s IMDB page, I’m pretty sure you’ll realize you’ve heard this man in all kinds of TV shows, movies, and video games. And if you somehow haven’t…you really should. He’s immensely talented, and a super nice guy to boot.
But why spend time here with me when you could be watching and listening to the man himself? If you want to see Jess do a few of his famous voices (and all four of The Beatles!), and learn more about his early days in show biz, how he got into voice acting, his cool convention and fan experiences, what it’s like being a voice actor in Hollywood, how he came up with the idea for his band Rock Sugar, and more, check out our video interview right here!
(And if you can’t watch video for some reason but would like the audio version, it’s here.)
And if you watch the video or listen to the interview and don’t come away knowing that Jess is super talented, and a really cool dude (seriously, I love this guy. Can you tell?) then I’ll eat…um…I’ll eat…um…Jess’s hair!
Well, okay, maybe not. That would truly be a feat of epic proportions. But I will be very surprised.
So go forth, be amazed by this awesome dude, and until next time, Servo Lectio!
“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator – and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap – will be the leap home…”
Quantum Leap • Donald P. Bellasario, Creator • NBC, March 1989 – May 1993
I was cruising the channels on the Sunday before Memorial Day – which I still think of as May 31, not the last Monday of the month – when I discovered a marathon of Quantum Leap airing on Cozi, an obscure cable network which is broadcast as one of those extra local channels. (I’ve also discovered that it airs episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show on weekday afternoons.) Being a rabid fan of the show back in the day, I sat back and enjoyed the view.
I’m obviously not well versed in quantum mechanics, but here’s an explanation of the term “quantum leap” by Jim Loy in 1996:
“Some people think that a quantum leap is a particularly large leap. This is incorrect. In fact, in quantum physics, where the expression came from, a quantum leap is usually a very tiny leap indeed, often smaller than the diameter of the nucleus of an atom. So what is a quantum leap?
“A quantum leap is a leap from A to B, without passing through any of the points between A and B. Imagine that you enter a train in A-ville. You sit in your seat, and the train is instantly transported to your destination of B-ville. You just made a quantum leap. The train didn’t pass through any point between A-ville and B-ville.
“A train on tracks is essentially a one-dimensional system. The quantum leap idea works just as well in 2 to 3 dimensions. Something performs a quantum leap if it goes directly from some point A to some other point B, without passing through any other points from the time it left A to the time it arrived at B. Cartoon characters can perform quantum leaps, very easily. In fact, the art of cartooning is mainly involved in making the characters seem to move smoothly from A to B, instead of in leaps.
“Outside of cartoons, we don’t see quantum leaps in real life. We only see quantum leaps at the sub-atomic (or quantum) level. A sub-atomic particle (an electron, for example) can often go from A to B without passing through any other points. This is counter-intuitive. But, it happens. Besides leaping across a distance, sub-atomic particles can change by leaps in other ways. An electron can change energy from energy-level A to energy-level B in a leap, without having any of the intermediate values of energy. In fact, this is where the term “quantum” comes from. At the sub-atomic level, energy is created and used up in well-defined amounts called “quanta.” “Quanta” is plural, “quantum” is singular.
As you can now see, the quantum leaps in the TV series, Quantum Leap, were true quantum leaps. The main character did indeed leap through space and time, without passing through any of the intermediate space and time.”
Pretty cool, huh? And I bet all you professional and aspiring sequential storytelling – i.e., comics and cartooning – artists didn’t know you were quantum physicists, leaping your characters from panel to panel in your own bubble universe.
But can you and I experience a quantum leap in the real world? Maybe the answer is yes. Oh, I don’t mean the way Sam Beckett does – his theory is that “a person’s life is like a length of string; one end represents birth, the other represents death. If one were to tie the ends of the string together, their life becomes a loop. Next, by balling the loop together, the days in one’s life would touch one another out of sequence. Therefore, jumping from one part of the string to another would allow someone to travel back and forth within their own lifetime, thus making a “quantum leap” between each time period” – but have things ever happened to you that suddenly bring you to another level, another reality, another existence?
Like…you come home from work and the phone rings and you pick it up and there’s a man on the other end of the phone, and he asks you out, and you say yes, and as you hang up the phone you suddenly realize that you have “quantum leaped” into a new life.
Like…you sit down and write up a story because you’re bored and you mail it off and in a few weeks you’re sitting across the desk from the editor of a comics company who wants to publish your story and when you get on the elevator to go home just like that you suddenly realize that you have “quantum leaped” into a new life.
Like…you’re at work and your husband calls you and he tells you that he’s leaving you and the world goes upside down and inside out and just like that you suddenly realize that you have “quantum leaped” into a new life.
Like…you’re in the car with your daughter and son-in-law and they start to laugh and they tell you that you’re sitting on something and you move your tuchas and you have been sitting on a photograph of an ultrasound of a baby in utero and just like that you are a grandmother and you suddenly realize that you have “quantum leaped” into anew life.
Like you’re visiting your parents for a holiday and you offer to go food shopping for them and you leave them laughing and talking and dancing and when you get back from the store your father is acting strangely and you think he is having a stroke and as you call your brother and 911 you suddenly realize that you have “quantum leaped” into another life.
Yeah, quantum leaps do happen and they happen all the time. Sometimes they’re great and sometimes they suck, but like electrons in the sub-atomic universe, our lives can jump from point A to point B in an instant…and like Schrödinger’s cat, our experiences shape our reality.
It’s still astounding to me how an art form like comics can, on the one hand, celebrate the creative contributions of individuals while, on the other hand, leave behind a tragic history and rotten track record for its treatment of these creators. The debates on this topic continue to rage on. Recently the appropriate level of recognition for a particular creator, who has long since shuffled offstage, dominated the online comic conversation.
As part of an ongoing series exploring today’s creators’ reactions to their comic creations’ successful crossovers into other media, I caught up with Mike Allred, who along with Chris Roberson co-created Vertigo’s iZombie. It’s a hit series on the CW network and has been renewed for a second season. Fans of Allred have always been delighted with his rich body of work: his brilliantly independent Madman, his innovative, genre-busting X-Statix, and more recently, his quirky FF series and Batman 66 covers. In this interview, I explore his involvement in and thoughts on the popular iZombie series.
Ed Catto: Comics has a sad history of many creators not fully sharing in the economic success of their literary creations. Fans know the tragic stories of Siegel and Shuster, Gerry Conway has discussed issues concerning creator credits of certain DC characters, and Wally Wood’s contributions to the Daredevil character and mythology have been debated. Given today’s realities, do you think current creators are better prepared to protect their own rights, or is it still the same old story?
Mike Allred: Everyone always tries to make the best deal for their own interests. On all sides. It will always be that way. But it’s up to the individual to protect themselves. Despite all the history to learn from, there will always be bad deals. I was lucky with my first major success being something I completely created and own myself.
I couldn’t get a gig with the “big two” starting out, so I was content to create my own worlds. That brought me opportunities and the freedom to choose where, when, and how I play in the wonderful world of comic books. I’m as big a fan as anyone, so I get a big kick out of playing with established company-owned characters, but I do so with eyes wide open knowing that I’ll have to fight for ownership of anything original I bring to the table. I balance that with my own creations. It’s always been clear to me what is mine and what rights I have to my sole creations. Collaborations get a bit more complicated and every contract has its own challenges.
I’m keenly aware of the shoulders I’m standing on and how I’ve benefited. Thankfully, so far, I have very little to complain about personally.
EC: Back when you were developing iZombie and the look of the comic series, what were you trying to create and what were some of the challenges you found working on a zombie/horror story?
MA: Chris Roberson and I were wanting to do something different, something askew. We were eager to do contemporary takes on classic monsters. Priority one for me was to make an attractive, appealing lead character who also happened to be a zombie.
EC: Were you pleased with how the comic series turned out? And what would you have done differently if you could go back and do it over again?
MA: I’m extremely proud of it. There were two paths. One was sticking with the “brain of the day” template and have each new brain become a new storyline, and the other was going epic and blowing out our world, which obviously is the path we took. There was a part of me that kinda wished we’d stuck with the more intimate stories involving the people whose brains were eaten, but since the TV show picked up that baton I’m completely satisfied on every level.
EC: How did you find out that your iZombie concept was going to be a TV series? How long did it take to reach network television and can you tell us some of your reactions and thoughts along the way?
MA: I’m pretty sure Shelly Bond at Vertigo told me first. She was very much a collaborator in every way on the series. It simply wouldn’t exist without her. Geoff Johns gave me a call too around the same time. He had all the details. It all happened very quickly.
Initially I was a bit perturbed with the changes. Most especially Gwen’s name change to Liv. But I’m a big boy and know that there is no such thing as a completely faithful adaptation of any entity from one medium to another. My immediate concern was that it was good and something I’d be proud to have my name on. Once I saw that Rose McIver was hired as our zombie girl and how the production bent over backwards to make her look how I designed her, my fears started dropping away. When I saw the completed pilot it felt exactly like falling in love. And now I’m thrilled with virtually every creative choice that has been made. Rob and Diane and are the best. All the writers are killin’ it in the best way. Every cast member is the coolest. And Rose is a dynamo rocking a showcase of personality quirks. I feel crazy lucky. This could have gone bad in so many ways and it’s done the exact opposite.
EC: The opening credits of iZombie showcase your artwork. Can you tell us a little about how that came to be and the process behind it?
MA: Rob and Diane thought it’d be cool and wrote it up. I’ve always loved the animated opening titles to the 60’s Batman TV show, so I jumped in with both feet. I drew all the images that they asked for and more, wanting to make sure they had more than needed. I even drew the spiral by putting a piece of paper on a turntable and moving my brush from the center out. Laura (Allred, Mike’s wife and an award-winning colorist) then colored all the illustrations and various layers separately which were then edited to the theme song and… Ta-Dah!
EC: What’s your involvement in the TV series now? What’s your reaction to what they’ve done and what they’re doing?
MA: At this point I’m simply sitting back and enjoying the show for the most part. I’ve never been busier so it’d be difficult to increase my involvement, but I have a nice rapport with everyone and may throw in more if we score a third season.
EC: Are you pleased the show has been renewed for a second season?
MA: Over the moon!
It’s not lost on me how difficult it is to get anything at all produced. My Madman property has been optioned and in various degrees of production since 1995.
So, we leapt the first major hurdle of getting it produced, then on the air, then well received. Lots of great stuff doesn’t find an audience, let alone get a second season. We’re very, very happy.
EC: On Free Comic Book Day, the fans at one of the stores I stopped by started raving about your work on Silver Surfer. The fans collectively said they enjoy the new character you and Dan Slott created, Dawn Greenwood. But is there a different thought process that now goes into creating a character for a company?
MA: There is and there isn’t. I know going in that Dan and I will always have bragging rights on what we’ve created to support a legendary Marvel character. Here it is largely about compensation. I go in knowing that I’ll have little to say in what happens with my creations after I walk away. So it’s important for me to feel creatively satisfied, which I am. I hold no illusions that I’ll be self-publishing a Dawn Greenwood mini-series. It is what it is. I get a sweet paycheck and get to play on this big wonderful stage I’ve loved my whole life. If I want to work on purely creator-owned material I can do that too whenever I want. It’s how I started out, so I’m completely aware of all the circumstances.
EC: What’s coming up next for you, Mike?
MA: I’m having a total blast working with Dan on Silver Surfer, so I’m gonna ride that wave all the way to shore. I’m always planning and working on the next Madman special, where I do my most personal work, as Frank Einstein is pretty much me. And I’ve co-created an all-new Vertigo series, which will be announced at the San Diego Comic-Con.
EC: Last one: Who would win in a fight: iZombie or X-Statix’s Dead Girl?
MA: They would never fight. They’d have a nice lunch and then go to the movies.
There’s a lot of attention focused on the Suicide Squad, what with the movie being filmed right now and coming out next year, and, yes, it’s based on the version of the Squad that I created back in the 80s and, yes, I should see some money for the use of Amanda Waller (not the Squad per se since it already existed in another form in the DCU) and that’s all pretty cool. Might as well tell my version of how this all started and give some credit where credit is due. You may have heard/read some of this before but I’m at the age where repeating stories is de rigeur so let’s do this.
My first shout out goes to Robert (“Bobby”) Greenberger who was our first editor on the Squad. I had met Bob at several conventions and while waiting in airports afterwards for our respective planes. I was working only for First Comics at that point; I hadn’t yet moved up to the major publishers. Bob and I got along really well and he broached the idea of my doing some work for DC. I was perfectly amenable and we started talking what I might do.
I loved the title “Challengers of the Unknown” which was lying fallow at the time. I considered, then and now, that this was one of the great titles in comics. All by itself, it conjured up possibilities. Really cool.
Unfortunately, someone else had already grabbed it for development so it was off the table. Then Bob suggested “How about Suicide Squad? It only appeared for five issues of Showcase a million years ago and nothing is being done with it.”
My first reaction? What a stupid name! Who in their right minds would belong to a group that called itself Suicide Squad? And just as I was dismissing the whole thing, an answer struck me: the only ones who would join would be those who had no other choice. Who doesn’t have any other choice? Folks in prison. Supervillains who’ve been caught. How do they get out of prison so fast? The Squad.
I thought about the Dirty Dozen and Mission: Impossible and The Secret Society of Supervillains, a DC title that teamed up loads of supervillains. I loved that. So the idea was to have a team of supervillains, rogues, enrolled by the government to take on secret missions deemed in the U.S. national interests. If caught they could be disavowed easily; they’re bad guys running around doing what bad guys do. If they die, who cares? They were bad guys. If they succeeded and got back alive, they would have time shaved off their sentences or outright freed.
It would also give us a chance to see the villains as competent and even deadly in their own right. Make them dangerous. For the missions, I’d comb newspaper and magazines for real world ideas. In fact, our first issue had a super-powered terrorist group attacking an airport while Air Force One was landing. I doubt I could get away with that today.
Bob suggested we also have some superheroes in it as well; not A list or maybe even B list. I was resistant at first; I wanted it to be all bad guys. Bob was insistent and it turned out he was right.
I wanted B-listers because I wanted to be free to kill any of them off. I wanted the missions to be dangerous; in all other comics, you knew the heroes were coming back alive because they had to be there for the next issue. Not with the Squad. We could kill them off with impunity. And we did. Always added to the suspense of the story – you never knew who was coming back alive.
To run the group I created Amanda Waller, a.k.a. The Wall. Tough as nails, heavy set, middle aged, bad attitude, African American woman. Why? Because there had never been anyone like her in comics before (and there hasn’t been since). Actually, she was based on my paternal grandmother who scared the bejabbers out of me when I was a kid. One glare and that was it; whatever I was doing, I stopped, even if I wasn’t really doing anything.
Bob also brought in Luke McDonnell as our artist; Luke had just finished some Justice League and was looking for another gig. Luke had (and has) great storytelling and real good character skills. Not flashy but that suited the stories we were telling. Bob also added Karl Kesel as our initial inker. Karl was a hoot; he was brimming with ideas and I’d get what I would call “Kesel Epistles” where he would share his notions. I used some but always encouraged the participation; I figured that was the best way to make a good team. Let everyone have a say if they wanted it.
We picked our members and I wanted the ones that no one else wanted. Deadshot had a cool name, a really stupid costume when he first appeared that Marshall Rogers later revamped and made really cool, and only a few background facts. He was technically a Batman villain but the Bat office said they didn’t want him so I was free to give him a backstory and a bit more of a character.
Captain Boomerang was a Flash character but the Flash had also just been revamped as a result of Crisis on Infinite Earths and, at that point, the Flash office was no longer using the rogues. Bob suggested we use him and, at first, my reaction was, “What a stupid character.” (I really needed to learn not to do that.) However, I decided to make him like the character Flashman in the Flashman series of historical novels by George McDonald Fraser. Boomerang was an asshole but he knew what he was and liked it. Every time you thought he could sink no lower, he’d find a new level. He quickly became one of my favorites.
Bob also got us an issue of Secret Origins for the same month as our first issue so we could use background material; and reference the original Squad(s).
This is when Mike Gold stepped in, Mike is an old old old friend, my former editor at First Comics, and the one who gave me my first shot as a comic book writer. (Yes, it’s all his fault – unless you like my stuff in which case it’s all due to me.) He had gone over to DC and was intent on taking some others with him, including me. Mike got me a shot at plotting the first company wide crossover since Crisis, which we called Legends. Mike felt it would be a good idea to include the Squad in it for their first appearance since lots of attention would be drawn to the series. Among other things, John Byrne would be drawing it – his first work at DC after leaving Marvel.
Of course, I wasn’t sure. (Notice a pattern here?) I didn’t want the Squad getting lost in the shuffle. They weren’t, and we had a great launch.
At some point into the Squad’s run I brought in my wife, Kim Yale, as co-writer. Kim was a very good writer in her own right and she complimented and completed my work with the Squad. To say it wouldn’t have been the same book without her seems obvious and trite but it is also true.
Bob eventually moved on to other work at DC and new editors took his spot although none could take his place. His love of the Squad and his enthusiasm for it shaped the book from the beginning and it would not have existed without him, or Mike, or Luke, or Karl, or Kim. Did it change comics? Beats me but we told some damn good stories and now they’re making a movie out of it.
Not bad for a series with such a damn stupid title.
