Category: Columns

Box Office Democracy: Blade Runner 2049

I often cite the original Blade Runner as my favorite movie.  I also think having one favorite anything is kind of silly so it’s always been less of a true answer as it’s been an indication of what I like.  I like cyberpunk, I like hard-boiled detective stories, I like being asked to think about things, and I like a movie that can spawn a conversation 30-some years after it came out.  I don’t know that Blade Runner 2049 has the legs for that last part but it hits all those other bits and so I have to say I liked watching it a great deal.  It’s a challenging movie and it makes some colossal missteps along the way— but it’s been fun to think about and talk about so far.

Denis Villeneuve is quickly becoming my favorite director.  I’ve spent a lot of time both here and in my personal life gushing about Arrival and this is such a big departure from this.  Arrival felt like a quiet movie and is practically art house next to the unending spectacle at play here.  This is a stunningly beautiful and well-composed movie.  You can see all the money they spent on this movie on the screen and you can see that someone with an actual eye for cinema was composing the shots.  The urban landscapes evoke the original film while borrowing from all the cyberpunk things that movie itself inspired in a ouroboros style self-inspiration.  The baseline test they subject Joe to are an incredibly harrowing cinematic experience and that’s incredible when you think that it’s really just a white room and a skewed perspective shot.  I could talk about different things I loved about the movie all day from the images of a blasted out Las Vegas to the flyover of a Los Angeles that is so overbuilt it almost looks like farmland but the thing that most consistently got me while watching it was the view from outside Joe’s apartment window.  It’s hard to explain but between the color and the proximity of his neighbors and the way it looks like my childhood window and also most definitely the far future proved this was good science fiction.

I don’t think it’s worth getting too far in to the plot because it’s a twisty winding kind of plot and it’s best experienced in person.  Also I feel like it would take forever to recap, and I would read it back and think I was a crazy person.  It feels overly complicated and subplots start and stop seemingly at random and some of the more interesting ones are just discarded never to come back.  There are countless screenwriting books that advocating putting your story beats on index cards to get a better map and it sort of feels like Blade Runner 2049 had seven cards they knew they wanted to hit and the rest of them didn’t matter and were just made as quickly as possible.  I want more from the plot, but a lot of the individual scenes work so well.

I don’t know what Ryan Gosling does differently than other actors when playing quiet roles but he’s on a whole other level.  He doesn’t have a ton of dialogue in this but he makes every word count and the work he does with expressions and movement is superb.  It’s like he took the quiet menace from Drive and turned it in to something that works all across the emotional spectrum.  Gosling is perfect for this role, for this movie.  I’m honestly not sure any other actor could have made this movie work but he does it.  He’s better than Harrison Ford in this.  He’s better than Ford was in the original.  It’s an amazing performance that will never get the attention of a movie like La La Land but shows so much more technique.

The gender politics in Blade Runner 2049 leave an awful lot to be desired.  Every woman in the movie seems to be trying to speak to some thesis about the commodification of women and their sexuality.  This is a fine point to make a movie about but it’s not what this movie is about, so it’s an observation with no critique which ends up looking an awful lot like just doing the thing you imagine they’re against.

I don’t know that Blade Runner needed a second chapter.  I don’t know that this movie needs to be so stuck in the past; it would probably be a better film if Deckard never showed up.  I wish so much that they had done more interesting things with basically every character.  This is a beautiful movie filled with missed opportunities, but for an almost three hour movie I was almost never bored.  There’s a lot to think about, there’s a lot to look at.  I appreciate that this is an attempt to make a deeper movie instead of a quick cash-in.  I look forward to watching this movie grow in time (and seeing the inevitable director’s cut) and seeing how I think about it in a few years.  If we had to revisit this world I’m glad we got as complex a take as this and one that pushes so many visual boundaries.

Mike Gold: Make Mine Marvel Maybe?

If a comics publisher falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound effect?

Marvel Comics has been facing growing dissatisfaction over their sundry practices (both alleged and real) regarding their minority characters, their massive event stunts, some questionable actions by sundry staffers and freelancers… even the less-than-beloved reception to their new Inhumans teevee series, which premiered last month. Long-time Marvel fans – and I’m one of them myself – have never seen Marvel receive the stinky end of the stick before; certainly, not like this.

If you were on Marvel’s staff in some marketing or promotion capacity, you might have looked at last weekend’s New York Comic Con as a great opportunity to shine a light on all the groovy new stuff the House of Idea has in its pipeline. Buff up the shine on the corporate engine, so to speak. After all, New York City is Marvel’s home turf and the Comic Con claims (perhaps correctly) that they attract more visitors than the annual San Diego cluster-kerfuffle. This magic opportunity couldn’t have come at a better time.

Ahhh. Sadly, that didn’t work out so well.

First – and through no fault of their own – Marvel had to cancel the NYCC promotion for their new Netflix Punisher series. They even had star Jon Bernthal ready to entertain what was very, very likely to be a standing-room-only crowd. Unfortunately, Stephen Paddock decided to murder some five-dozen people in Las Vegas with a number of his 47 reimagined semi-automatics, and Marvel, like others in the entertainment business in a similar position, canceled the panel. For those who are unaware, The Punisher has been one of the most violent heroic fantasy characters since The Spider, back in the 1930s. It’s completely proper for Marvel to show its respect in this manner.

Still, it was a blow to their promotion campaign.

Almost immediately after that, Marvel found itself getting an overwhelming amount of criticism from just about every conceivable corner of our own personal Bizarro World for climbing into bed with Northrop Grumman, one of the world’s largest defense contractors. This bothered a lot of people, even though the campaign supposedly focused on Northrop Grumman’s aerospace activities.

Lots of folks – fans, retailers, comics professionals – pointed out that Marvel has spent a lot of time and energy bragging about how war profiteer Tony Stark abandoned his munitions business for moral reasons in their comic books and, now, their movies. If you conflate Northrop Grumman with Stark Industries (in all its names), you’re left with the reality that, unlike Stark, Northrop Grumman is all too real. In other words, they really make a lot of stuff that kills people. Sort of like Stephen Paddock, but without the profit incentive.

So Marvel killed that campaign, removed all presence from its online activities, and cancelled that NYCC panel as well. I feel their pain; nobody enjoys watching Daffy Duck get cheered on by the crickets.

Typically, one would think the only way Marvel can work its way out of their deep promotional hole is to produce better comic books. But, really, comic book sales are so low that the bad press exceeds the positive impact of better stories – even if anybodymreally knew what the general public considers “better comic books.” Besides, it takes a long time to produce comics stories – particularly when one has to consider the four-dimensional domino effect that comes along with being faithful to current continuity.

One would think that, 20 years from now, Spider-Man and the X-Men and the Hulk will still be around and all this would be on the level of a fart in a blizzard. I certainly hope that’s true, but being a Geek Culture historian, I am reminded that damn near everybody in America used to be quite familiar with The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Saint and Nick Carter… characters that have been revived frequently (and, often, bizarrely) but achieved little or no traction. It can happen to every commercial product. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to buy Burma Shave.

I hope this does not happen. I’ve been a comics fan since Eisenhower was president; I wouldn’t know what to do with my time.

Besides, I miss The Fantastic Four.

 

Mindy Newell: Single Jewish Woman?

Mindy Newell: Single Jewish Woman?

“Mindy Newell (veteran of Wonder Woman, Daredevil, and just about everything else) noted that she originally thought ‘SJW’ stood for ‘Single Jewish Woman.’” • Comics for Causes: Planned Parenthood at the New York Comic Con • John Odum • Bleeding Cool, October 7, 2017

At my family’s celebration of Rosh Hashanah – Food! Lots and lots of food! And much imbibing of the alcohol of your choice! – shortly after 9/11, the conversation that we all had been avoiding finally arrived with the dessert and coffee. A lot of anger, a lot of sadness, a lot of fear, but no historical context until I opened my big mouth:

“This is what happens after nearly 100 years of the West treating the Middle East like pieces on a chessboard.”

Silence. My father is shaking his head.

“Hello,” I said. “The break-up of the Ottoman Empire? The Sykes-Picot agreement? Ignoring, discounting, millions of people with their own history, their own ethnic and religious and tribal identities?”

“You’re not excusing what they did, are you?” someone said in astonishment and horror.

“No fucking way! But, and I’m sorry, guys, we are not innocent in any of this, either.”

A fight was about to start, but someone, I think it was my cousin, quickly changed the subject.

Later on, driving home in the car, everybody else fast asleep in the back seat, my dad said, “When are you going to learn to keep your mouth shut?”

“You don’t think I’m right?”

“You were absolutely right.

“So?”

“Just don’t say it at work or anywhere else. People don’t want to hear it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

I’d like to say that I listened to my dad, who was a very smart man, but *sigh* I guess it’s still a work in progress. I have a very hard time “keeping my mouth shut,” even at work, especially when I get fired up.

And, oh, boy, was I fired up on Saturday at the NYCC, where I was part of the Comics for Causes: Planned Parenthood panel to inform and also celebrate the coming publication of the Mine!: A Celebration of Freedom and Liberty anthology put into production through fellow ComicMixers Joe Corallo and Molly Jackson to benefit the Planned Parenthood organization, which is now being attacked more brutally than I can ever remember, and is in very serious danger of being defunded by “you-know-who” and “you-know-who”’s administration and the Repugnanticans. (Just a week ago today, Tuesday, Oct 3, the Repugnantican-controlled Senate passed this, ignoring the law of the land that Roe vs. Wade has become.

Nobody counted, but my use of F-bombs might have set a record at this NYCC, and quite possibly every other comics convention on record. John Odum of Bleeding Cool even made note of it here. First time I’ve ever made it into Bleeding Cool… as far as I know.

I’m not apologizing. I meant every single one of those F-bombs. I meant every single thing I said.

My dad must be spinning in his grave. But I also know that he’s also proudly thinking:

“That’s my Mindela.”

Joe Corallo: Mine! Attack!

This past Saturday was our NYCC panel “Comics for Causes: Planned Parenthood and ComicMix.” On hand, in addition to myself (the center of the three-shot photo, surrounded by Molly and Mindy) were our editor-in-chief Mike Gold, my co-editor on Mine! Molly Jackson, Mindy Newell, Martha Thomases, and Glenn Hauman. The panel was made up of Mike, Molly, Mindy, Gabby Rivera, and myself. The panel was moderated by www.Geek.com managing editor Sheilah Villari; at the last minute Sean Von Gorman joined us as well.

We were humbled by over two hundred people that showed up for the panel, including at least half a dozen more Mine! contributors including Adam McGovern, Alice Meichi Li, Dave Kelly, Keith DeCandido and Tom Daly. Mindy spoke passionately about health care as both a comics writer and a nurse, Gabby addressed the importance of sex education and queer youth outreach, Sheilah talked about her and many other freelancers’ experiences having difficulty accessing affordable health care, Mike talked the current need for political activism, and Sean did an impression of me that was so spot on that someone assumed I had said something that he in fact said.

There was a question asked at the panel about discussing the different stories we’re contributing. I didn’t get a chance to answer that question at the time, so I’d like to use my column to talk about that now. Hey, it is my column after all.

 

One night some months ago a friend and I were talking over drinks. Mine! had come up in conversation, which lead to her sharing a story with me. Years ago she had been out at a club with a guy and that guy had given her something so strong the next thing she knew she was waking up in his bedroom. The next thing she did was go to a Planned Parenthood.

We talked about it further and decided that this was an important story to tell for the anthology. Unfortunately, it’s not important because it’s such a rare and unusual story, but rather that it is far too common. For many people in that situation, Planned Parenthood is their only option. I’m collaborating with artist Kristina Stipetic on this and made sure my friend approved the script before handing it off. I filled in some details and took some liberties, but the core of the story is all there. It was honestly one of the more emotionally draining things I’ve written. I can’t say that I hope you enjoy it exactly, but I hope all of you that pick up Mine! will come to this story and have a better understanding of how these situations often play out.

There are so many other great stories in Mine! too! Mindy is talking about a time before abortion was legal, Gabby about her Catholic upbringing, Mike about a couple that desperately needs health care but you don’t find out which one of them needs it until the end, and Keith came up from the audience to talk about how he and Tom Daly are doing a story about learning self-defense. Sean even made Keith show demonstrate a karate move!

You can preorder Mine! now on Backerkit, and you can preorder our t-shirts as well, if you so desire. Please go check it out if you haven’t reserved your copy yet, and spread the word!

 

John Ostrander: “A Legacy Of Spies”

A Legacy Of Spies by John LeCarréI’m a huge (or as our president would say, YUGE) fan of John le Carré, the English writer specializing in espionage stories. le Carre’ is the pen name for David John Moore Cornwell, who was a member of the Secret Intelligence System or MI6 so he brings a great deal of first hand knowledge to his work.

le Carré’s agents are far more realistically drawn than James Bond or Jason Bourne. Don’t get me wrong; I loves me some Bond and Bourne but, honestly, I’m far more drawn to the very morally murky world that le Carré depicts. You can see that influence in GrimJack but especially with the Suicide Squad. This is particularly true with the first multi issue Squad arc, “Mission to Moscow”. Bureaucratic screw-ups result in the mission’s failure with one dead and a member of the team captured while the rest barely escape. The feeling is meant to be realistic and the morality dubious. Very le Carré and that was by design.

le Carré’s most famous book, I think, has to be The Spy Who Came In From the Cold which was his third book, first published in 1963. Like much of le Carre’s work, it’s rather bleak but its success enabled le Carré to devote himself full time to writing.

le Carré’s latest book, A Legacy of Spies, revisits the events around of that earlier tome, giving us new background and insights to its characters and events. The legacy deals with the consequences of those acts as the offspring of two of the main characters, Alec Leamas and Liz Gold, bring a lawsuit against MI6 and some of the people involved, especially our narrator, Peter Guilliam, and George Smiley, Peter’s superior and le Carré’s spymaster and protagonist through a series of books.

As always, the book is suffused with feelings of regret and betrayal and not just in the matters of espionage. Smiley’s wayward wife, Ann, regularly betrayed him with affairs, one in particular having terrible consequences. Loyalty is important but more on an individual basis; the Service does not always share that loyalty to those who serve it, usually at such great cost. The story is set long after the events of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and there is serious doubt if the whole thing was worth it. The participants, and the reader, now see things in context. What was achieved, and at what cost, and was the cost worth it?

As I noted, Peter Guillam is the narrator of the story but it is also told through official reports and documents of that earlier era, like extended flashbacks. I’m not sure that always works; flashbacks can take the reader out of the “now” of the narrative. In this book, it can sometimes get a bit dry. However, it can be argued that it also serves the storyline and the themes.

le Carré is an old master and this is the work of an old master; assured, in full command of the material and his own gifts. Does the new reader need to have read The Spy Who Came In From the Cold or the other two le Carré’s novels – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Smiley’s People? Technically, no – all the information you need to understand A Legacy of Spies is in the book itself, which is as it should be.

However, it is filled with “spoilers”. The book reveals things that the reader perhaps really should experience first hand for themselves. If you haven’t read the other books, I recommend doing that first. They’re very worthwhile in their own right and, IMO, makes the full experience in A Legacy of Spies far richer. That said, the book is well worth reading on its own, the work of a master still showing his mastery.

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Catto: Returning to Riverdale

Riverdale returns to the CW Wednesday night. The second season promises more of the guilty pleasures served up in this surprisingly fun take of the Archie gang. It’s been wicked fun and I’m encouraged that it’s such a big hit.

Archie has had success in media beyond comics before Riverdale. There was an Archie radio show in the 40s and 50s. It’s a tough one to sit through, even for an old-time radio buff like me. Filmation Studios provided year after year of Archie cartoons for Saturday mornings, starting with The Archie Show and continuing with many spin-offs and sequels. And there have been several TV and movie fits and starts over the years, most notably the early 90s Return to Riverdale.

I graduated from UNC’s Business School about that time, and although I would embark on a traditional marketing career, even then I was looking for a way to blend my traditional marketing skills with Geek Culture. It wasn’t until years later, when I co-founded Captain Action Enterprises and the Bonfire Agency, that I would successfully do it. So while I was interviewing with Lever Bros., P&G and Kraft for traditional MBA marketing jobs, I also arranged an interview with the Chairman of Archie Comics.

I was invited to Archie’s Mamaroneck headquarters. In hindsight, I now know that my interview was about ten years too early. In those days, few could envision how important the business of Geek Culture would become. But one of the big topics we discussed was all about making the brand bigger with a made-for-TV-movie called Return to Riverdale. There were a lot of hopes and dreams dashed as a result of that tepidly received show.

So it’s all the better that the new CW Riverdale series show is such a hit. I’ve enjoyed watching it so far. I was very surprised, when sorting through my pal Freddie’s comic collection (more on that here) to come across one particular letter in a tattered copy of Archie Annual #15 from 1963.

As you can see, one of the cast members of an Archie pilot engaged in a little promotion, combined with pleading for swag from the Archie Comics powers-that-be. Wayne Adams, the actor who would play Reggie, is almost in character.

It’s a crazy look back at how things were done in the early days of what would get labeled transmedia. Today folks would try to accomplish the same thing with a well-orchestrated mix of social media and PR.

Which Witch is Which?

Beyond the clique of Riverdale High’s most popular students, it’s been reported that Sabrina may be joining the gang on the small screen. I think that’s great. I’ve been enjoying the very creepy Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comic series by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack, upon which the show is reportedly based.

I was introduced to this platinum beauty when she was cast as the “love interest” in what was essentially the Sugar, Sugar music video. We didn’t really call them music videos in those days but all the cool cartoons would feature chase scenes or spotlight songs within the framework of the larger cartoon. As I got older, it always seemed to me that all these quick-cut montages were an outgrowth of Richard Lester’s Hard Day’s Night.

Sabrina has had many incarnations over the years, but she debuted in Madhouse #22 along with her familiar Salem and her supporting cast. For years she was sort of a Bewitched type character with one foot in Archie’s neighborhood. She’d later leave the Archie style behind to become a stylized young girl and even an anime-esqe heroine. Sabrina was most widely seen in the long running ABC series starring Mellissa Joan Hart, of course.

But I’m really interested in Sabrina’s earlier walk on the wild side. In 1972, Archie Comics tepidly introduced the Red Circle line with a comic called Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina. Here Sabrina played the role of the spooky narrator. In comics, there is a rich and long tradition of horror hosts introducing macabre tales. During the first two issues, Sabrina would dutifully introduce watered down ghost stories. They were essentially EC comics by way of the Archie line’s house style.

By issue #3, it all changed. Each issue featured genuinely spooky stories, in the classic horror comics traditional, by top talents like Gray Morrow and Alex Toth. The Archie house style was thrown out the window, unfortunately along with Sabrina.

But the precedent was set. I’m leaving the lights on when CW does introduce this spooky Sabrina show.

Emily S. Whitten: Psych The Movie – A Christmas Miracle

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Psych. And while I understood that maybe the TV execs felt that after eight seasons it had run its course, still I was sad to see it go.

Everything about the show appealed to me – the goofy premise and the quick-witted humor of main character Shawn Spencer; the unshakeable best-friendship of Shawn and Gus, a loyal companion who didn’t always approve of Shawn and sometimes needed his own space but still accepted Shawn for who he was; the Sherlockian vibe of the show’s formula (and I’m always a sucker for an interesting police procedural); the running gags and nerd references (who would think spotting pineapples could be so much fun?); and the romance that bubbled in the background.

I also appreciated that the show was unafraid to feature a cast of essentially good characters – even hard-boiled Lassiter had a softer side. And I liked that Shawn’s light-hearted shenanigans also revealed his deep understanding of people – his teasing of Lassie, for one example, also served to show Lassie that it was okay to open up a little and trust that not everyone would hurt him because he was vulnerable. From the Chief to big, innocent Buzz, the characters were real without being unnecessarily harsh.

And yet, Psych had a darker side, too. I’m not just talking about the murders. You don’t get to be so good at observing human behavior without an early reason to do so. And while dad Henry’s extreme insistence on young Shawn being observational about details could be looked on as a parent’s attempts to prepare his child for the world, or hone a recognized unique ability; his harsh attitude probably played as much of a role in developing Shawn’s gifts (and stunting his emotional growth) as his actual “training” of Shawn.

The difficulties that Shawn has in maturing – from his hopping from living space to living space and job to job, to his discomfort with anything getting too serious, to his actual and obvious relationship issues with his father as an adult – are directly correlated to both Henry’s parenting in flashbacks and also to his parents’ divorce. I always appreciated that the lightness of the show and of Shawn also grew from those darker roots, and that it wasn’t afraid to reference them.

Yet, while the show acknowledged the emotional damage that Shawn attempted to hide behind humor, it also called out the harm it was doing to his prospects for a fuller life – from his inability early in the show to have a real relationship with a father he couldn’t forgive, to the ongoing frustration of his love interest Juliet with his ability to artfully avoid real intimacy. Not only that, but it explored the growth of all characters, but particularly Shawn. Amidst the treasure hunts, planetarium adventures, and petting of baby bunnies, it showed how Shawn’s eventual emotional maturing (what Steve Franks himself called being “an actual, self-realized human being”) and willingness to face those serious issues for love and be a responsible adult finally allowed Juliet to trust him with her heart.

That’s some heavy lifting for a show that also made a habit of using silly nicknames, throwing out pop culture references, and having its main characters ride around in car nicknamed The Blueberry. And it’s a show where you’re sad to see the end of all the great characters involved.

That’s why I’m so excited that this December, we are getting to hang out with those great characters again – in Psych: The Movie, which will also be starring a favorite actor of mine, Zachary Levi, as a villain. I’m really looking forward to it.

So is the Psych cast and crew, with whom I discussed the movie at SDCC. They spilled about what it’s like to be back together after some time away from the show, where the movie is going to pick up in the threads of everyone’s lives, how Shawn and Juliet are doing, Henry’s new fashion choices, working with Zac Levi, and a whole lot more!

After our chats I’m super excited to see the movie on the USA Network this December. I’m sure you will be too after you check out all of the fun interviews below!

Interview with Producers Chris Henze and Kelly Kulchak

Interview with James Roday (Shawn Spencer)

Interview with Dule Hill (Burton Guster)

Interview with Maggie Lawson (Juliet O’Hara)

Interview with Kirsten Nelson (Karen Vick)

See you around, Psych-Os! And until next time, Servo Lectio!

The Law Is A Ass: Aquaman Has Problems With His Immunity System

The Law Is A Ass: Aquaman Has Problems With His Immunity System

Aquaman has seen better days. He was king of Atlantis and his subjects actually liked him. He was married to Mera and his wife actually liked him. His villains were so lame not even Jesus could make them walk. Even the Fifth Dimensional imp that appeared in his book was an ally named Quisp and not a prankster that would make Aquaman Quake in his boots. Why, Atlantis even got along with the United States of America.

Now, Aquaman’s life is like a bad cover of a Bob Dylan song, the times they are a changin’ but not in a good way. He and Mera were never married. He’s been deposed as king. Quisp’s now named Qwsp and is malevolent. Oh, and the United States and Atlantis were at war, meaning Aquaman’s life wasn’t just a changin’, it was a changin’ into Sub-Mariner’s.

And for the better part of last year, Aquaman was in one of those Asian bootleg versions of a Pixar movie, because he spent his time finding N.E.M.O.

What’s N.E.M.O.? The Nautical Enforcement of Macrocosmic Order was a clandestine organization of rich people that’s been secretly trying to rule the world through control of the oceans since 1872. Which means it’s the Court of Owls but with bad mortgages; cause it’s under water. After all, what’s a comic book series without a super-secret shadow agency that’s operating right under the very nose of the super hero who should know about it?

(Seriously, Batman didn’t know the Court of Owls was operating in Gotham City? Maybe the New 52 Batman, but the Batman I grew up with would have infiltrated the Court before its second board meeting. And Aquaman one-ups Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon; he talks to the seas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn8YubD01sk. Not one fish in the entire world noticed the increased activity of surface dwellers dating back to the 19th century and reported it to Aquaman?)

N.E.M.O. knew it had to deal with Aquaman so it sent operatives pretending to be Atlantian soldiers to attack a United States war ship, the U.S.S. Ponchartrain. Result: Aquaman was arrested under the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act for crimes against the United States. (Crud! I think I just wore out the period key on my computer.)

Yes, in Aquaman # 3, the United States arrested Aquaman, the King of Atlantis. Hey, there had to be some law in the story somewhere to justify my writing about it. This is it.

Back in the day, the day being back when Marvel was allowed to print Fantastic Four comics, there were Fantastic Four comics in which they fought Doctor Doom. Lots of them. And, because Doom’s appearance on a cover could spike sales, there were also stories in which the other heroes in the Marvel super heroes fought Doctor Doom in their books. Many of these stories ended the same way; the heroes stopped Doom’s plan, but wouldn’t be able to arrest him, because Victor von Doom was also the king of Latveria. So Doom claimed diplomatic immunity to prevent his being arrested.

While I’m not sure diplomatic immunity works in real life quite the same way it works in comics, it is real. It gives diplomats safe passage in the countries they visit and renders them not susceptible to either lawsuits or criminal prosecution under the host country’s laws. The concept of diplomatic immunity dates back centuries. Then it was codified into international law in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and has been ratified by all but a handful of nations. And if you think diplomatic immunity isn’t real, just ask New York City how much fun it’s been having trying to collect the almost one million dollars in unpaid parking tickets it has from countries like North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Russia.

So when I saw the scene of Aquaman being arrested, my first thought was: As king of Atlantis, wouldn’t Aquaman have diplomatic immunity from prosecution, just like Doctor Doom had? Then I found the answer to the question in the place where I find the answer to so many of life’s questions, Columbo.

Yes, the TV show starring Peter Falk. That Columbo. There was an episode of the show called “A Case of Immunity” from October 12, 1975 – so almost exactly 42 years ago; god I’m old – where Hector Elizondo  played a chief diplomat from the Arabian nation of Suari. As part of a plot to usurp power, he killed an embassy security officer. Columbo knew Elizondo was the murderer, but couldn’t prosecute him, because Elizondo enjoyed diplomatic immunity. You’d enjoy it, too, if it meant you could get away with murder. Ultimately Columbo prevailed because Columbo always prevailed. Oh, and because he goaded the diplomat, who had no fear of being prosecuted, into confessing to the crime.

But Columbo had arranged for the new king of Suari to be in the next room. The king heard the confession and ordered Elizondo to be taken back to Suari and tried for the murder. As Suari had the death penalty and in 1975, America did not, Elizondo waived his diplomatic immunity so that he would be tried in the United States.

So, as I learned from Columbo, diplomats and kings can waive their diplomatic immunity if they so choose. Aquaman chose to do just that so that he could prove that Atlantis did not attack the Ponchartrain and make sure that US-Atlantis relations were not damaged any further.

See, Columbo is good for giving you the answers to your questions. Unfortunately, not for important questions. He’s mostly good for getting the answers to just one little thing.

Martha Thomases: Hef

Hugh Hefner died last week. I have mixed feelings.

Not about him personally. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know anyone who hung out with him, not for any significant amount of time. Since a lot of his business seemed to involve throwing parties at his home, I probably know people who went to a party or two. You probably do, too.

No, I want to talk about Playboy magazine and its legacy.

Playboy began in 1953, just as I did. From the very beginning, it challenged then-current ideas about how people should live (something I didn’t do for another 15 years or so, and not with such great effect). And from the beginning, it made me uncomfortable.

The women in Playboy were beautiful, but that is all they were. And they were beautiful in a very limited way. For decades, they were almost exclusively white, and mostly blonde. This was Hefner’s type, and he’s entitled to it, but, as a kid trying to figure out her place in the world, the Playboy ideal of beauty was just another club that wouldn’t have me.

Even if it did, there wasn’t much for me to do. A woman in Playboy was an accessory to a successful life, just like the cars and stereo equipment and furniture and liquor and clothes. Her placement next to these other accoutrements were a testament to a man’s taste, not affection.

But wait, you say. Nobody forced these women to pose for the magazine (or work in the clubs, or hang out at the Mansion). That is, technically, true. Some worked for Hefner because it sounded like a kick. Some thought it would get them attention from studio executives and therefore help their acting careers. And some (maybe most? I have no idea) did it because it paid better than other jobs they could get.

It says a lot about our society that, during much of Hefner’s tenure at Playboy, the highest-paying jobs available to most women were limited to those genetically blessed and willing to be naked in front of millions of men.

Hefner took great pride in the fact that he published some of the best (mostly male) writers of his time. He also contributed millions of dollars to free speech issues. Therefore, I found it amusing that, when they published an excerpt from Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, he felt it necessary to bowdlerize a sex scene. These are editorial standards, not censorship, and it was absolutely within Playboy’s rights. But it does suggest that they weren’t as uninhibited as they pretended to be.

Feminists didn’t like Hefner, and the feeling was mutual. Some said his support of free speech and reproductive rights made him an ally. Others said his support of those issues merely made him money. Some said the nude photographs were demeaning to women. Some said that criticism of the nude photographs infantilized the women who posed. There were many different kinds of feminist objections to the magazine, and looking at the variety is an interesting history lesson in feminism, intersectionality, and the marketplace of ideas.

Another publishing giant died soon after Hefner. S. I. Newhouse  inherited Conde Nast from his father, and acted as a publisher, not an editor. However, as the person who hired the editors for the various magazines, he had immense power in the perspectives they presented. It is only fair to point out that the Vogue magazines of my youth were as intimidating and shaming as Playboy, glamorizing another body-type I would never match. Conde Nast, however, also published the late, lamented Mademoiselle (where Sylvia Plath worked as an intern!), Glamour and lots of other titles that presented a lot of other points of view and models of behavior.

More recently, Teen Vogue has expanded its coverage far beyond fashion and make-up, into the kinds of informative features I wish I had available to me when I was the target audience (although there was no Teen Vogue then).

I think that Hugh Hefner was a complicated human being, just as I am, just as I suspect you are, Constant Reader. He was not purely good and he was not purely evil. From the outside, he looks like a narcissist who only liked individual women if they had sex with him, were his children, or followed his orders. In that, he is a lot like our current president. Unlike our current president, he actually created something original and made a business out of it, one that supported a lot of people, including writers, including cartoonists, including Harvey Kurtzman.

Which wins him points from me.

Tweeks: Supernatural SDCC 2017 Interview Part 2

Here’s Part 2 of our Supernatural interview from San Diego Comic Con — and it’s a good one! We talk to show runners Robert Singer & Andrew Dabb about what to expect in Season 13 (which starts NEXT WEEK! October 12th on The CW)! They tells us what they can’t wait for us to see, talk about Charlie’s potential return, John Winchester’s hopeful eventual return, an animated Sam & Dean working with the Scooby Gang, how an Arrow cross-over might work, Wayward Sisters, and more!

Don’t start Season 13 without watching this interview (& if you haven’t seen part one with Jared, Jensen & Misha — go watch that too!)

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