Category: Columns

Emily S. Whitten: Cyberbullying Is Never The Answer

cyberbullying_introSo if you missed it, a past cyberbullying occurrence (if you can call three years of personal harassment an “occurrence”) involving two comics industry creators made its way to the forefront of comics news last week. Following this, both people involved in the original incidents have taken a few steps away from the online world for a while.

I… have mixed feelings about all of this. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I don’t have a single mixed feeling about the original harassment. Chris Sims was wrong to wage a personal, harassing vendetta against Valerie D’Orazio, and D’Orazio was right to address it in public.

What I have mixed feelings about is the, if you can call it that, “resolution” of this, which could be seen as “too little, too late,” or as “finally stepping up to the plate” to admit wrongdoing; and the attendant fallout from addressing this years down the line. Including the fact that D’Orazio, years after the original harassment, has now been put in a position where she unfortunately feels it necessary, despite Sims’ “apology,” to close her public Twitter due to further harassment – not from Sims; but from, presumably, “fans” of Sims or just generally hateful people.

Just bringing up the old harassment, for which she has been diagnosed with actual PTSD, has brought a heaping serving of new harassment for her to deal with; and that’s awful. Granted, Sims is also stepping away from some of his online presence for a while; but choosing to do such a thing is very different from being forced to in order to escape harassment, feelings of being unsafe, or whatever other terrible stuff D’Orazio has been dealing with.

I also have mixed feelings because prior to knowing about this harassment (I was not aware of it until last week), I really liked reading Chris Sims’ Comics Alliance writings and Twitter. In particular, the Smallville recaps he did with David Uzumeri have cheered me and made me laugh on many a lunch break and dull commute. And from Sims’ writings, he seemed like, for someone I’ve never met, a pretty laid-back guy. Not the sort of person who’d spend hours of his time and efforts trying to tear down somebody else. And yet, that’s what happened. For three years. How completely awful of him.

I don’t know either party outside of a passing online interaction, which could just as easily be smoke and bombast as it could be real sincerity. The interesting thing about this is that Sims, based on his recent addressing of the situation and actions, may possibly have actually grown as a person in the interim between his terrible behavior and the present.

Usually, when I see online harassment I see it in the moment, and the reflection of the harasser is pure awfulness. In that moment when someone is being a hateful human being, there isn’t any change of heart in sight. And yet, because of the time that passed between the original harassment here and the present, it’s possible we are able to observe someone who has actually become a better person since his earlier actions. If that’s true, and Sims isn’t posturing but sincerely regrets his actions (not just because of the consequences to his writing career, but because they were wrong), then it leaves me pondering some questions for which I don’t really have answers, but which deserve to be addressed in an ongoing manner.

Questions like: once a person realizes they’ve behaved badly, what can atone for it? What is the proper societal or professional “punishment” for such atrocious behavior, and is there a time limit to it? And should it be ameliorated by the fact that the person has recognized it? Does any of this help the victim of the original harassment? What would they want to see happen? And what if their harassment is still ongoing, caused by the ripples of the original harassment?

Do others, as observers aware of the situation, have a responsibility to, e.g., boycott a harasser’s creations? To continually speak out against the harasser (and does that sometimes turn into harassment in the other direction)? What if it’s a harasser who has changed his (or her) ways? What then? What is the best way to support someone who has been harassed and speak up consistently against harassment without closing our minds to the possible redemption of someone who has been the harasser? Can they grow if we don’t let them? How can we let them without letting them off the hook for what they’ve done?

I don’t know all the answers here; I really don’t. What I do know is that harassment and cyberbullying are never the answer; and that it is important to speak out against unacceptable behavior, no matter who the perpetrator is.

I also know that for me, anyway, being made aware of someone’s harassing or otherwise cruel behavior either turns me off to their creative work, or, if they are sincerely trying to apologize and atone for it (as I hope Sims is here), at the very least makes me hugely disappointed in them and puts their work into the mental category labeled, “Trust In Creator Lost: Use Caution In Future Consumption of Creative Output.” In other words, even though of course the person harassed is the most hurt, these people are also hurting themselves professionally by their behavior. It astonishes me that more people don’t consider that before they act. Or maybe they do, and their preferred audience is one full of jerks who don’t care about hurting others; in which case, I just feel sad for them. There are so many things in life more worthy of spending one’s energy on than tearing another person down.

I think it’s important for all of us (myself included, because I’m nowhere near perfect and do not claim to be) to make an effort to consciously consider the effects of our words and actions. It’s an old truth that words have power. They can shape the world; but sometimes it seems we are taught little care for them, or that we both accept that truth and then discard it when we act.

There’s a quote from Terry Pratchett’s A Hat Full of Sky that seems apropos here, in which his character Tiffany is explaining how she thinks about the world:

“First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.”

I think we could all use a little more witchcraft, in the sense that we could all do with getting out of our own heads and watching the world and our actions in it from an unbiased observer’s perspective a little more. Or even by flipping the bias and trying to imagine ourselves in the place of the person being harassed. Imagining the continual hurt, anger, frustration, helplessness, and fear that someone must feel when being attacked; and then realizing that this is what bullies choose to add to the world.

Because that’s who a bully is: someone who chooses to create pain for another human being. Someone who wreaks chaos on another life because…because they can? Because they feel small in their own lives? Because they have a grudge for some reason, and think the nuclear option is the best way to deal with it? I don’t know; there may be many reasons – but it’s important to realize that none of them justify, to steal another Terry Pratchett quote, “treating people as things.”

It’s up to each of us to consistently realize that, and to realize that we’re all vulnerable; and that any person could decide tomorrow that it’s your turn to have your life ruined by careless words. And to choose, each moment, not to be that person in somebody else’s life.

I hope this unfortunate situation with D’Orazio and Sims has at least given us all something to think about and grow from; and until next time, Servo Lectio.

 

Mindy Newell: Do Not Fold, Spindle, Or Mutilate Me!

Yesterday I ran into a friend from high school as I was leaving the supermarket. He told me that he is moving to a smaller place and so he’s trying to sell off his comics collection, which runs into the thousands and thousands. He’s going to keep some of them because he loves them, and for posterity, and for hopefully great value in the future. But he hasn’t been able to offload most of them – which I said probably has something to do with the economy, because even if the Dow is over 18,000 and the unemployment rate is under 5.5%, most everyone is keeping their Washingtons and their Lincolns and their Benjamins in their wallet or under the bed. He also told me that once DC’s two-month limited series Convergence is done in April, he’s also going to be done with comics.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because all it is now is one big cataclysmic event leading into another,” he said. “It’s boring, it doesn’t mean anything, and I’m not wasting any more money on the shit.”

Yeah. I get it.

PowBack in the eighties the comics industry was experiencing a boom in great visual storytelling that was busting down all the preconceived notions about comics. No more pop-art balloons. No more women whose only aim in life was to become a Mrs. fill-in-your-favorite-single-super-guy here. No more “*choke* *gasp* *sob* How ironic!” neatly wrapped up endings. Stories became more complex; the superheroes weren’t always red-white-and-blue American good guys who always saved the day.

Yes, Marvel had been doing this since the introduction of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15, cover-dated August 1962, but across the country there was an explosion of energy in the eighties: the independent market took root and prospered, the Comics Code Authority seal vanished from covers, the Brits launched a second pop culture invasion, and people were openly reading comics on the subways, on the buses, at work, and at school. The story ruled, man!

Comic historians can tell you when it exactly happened, but I know that it was after Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars and, especially, The Death of Superman, that the story disappeared and the event took over.

Ah, The Death of Superman – everyone was buying multiple, multiple copies and stowing them away in attics and cedar chests and shoeboxes because everyone knew they would be worth $$$$$$ someday. Only of course millions of issues were printed and of course DC wasn’t going to really ice their licensing giant and of course the public’s ability to be sucker-punched was infinite (pun intended). So of course it will be about 500 million years before a mint copy of the issue will be worth gazillions. But of course DC made money, lots and lots of money, and generated lots and lots of publicity, including a Time magazine cover.

And so of course, the people at the top of the corporate DC ladder wanted to do it again. And again. And again. And again.

And so they did.

And Marvel did it as well. I think they started (but again, ask a comic historian for the exact stats and dates) after Secret War I with the expansion of the X-Men line, which led to crossovers, which led to X-Men crossovers, which led to Iron Man and Thor, and Punisher expansions which led to crossovers and then to across-the-line events.

Oh, and let’s not forget the variable covers with Mylar and special graphics and holograms. And there were “3-D” pop-up pages, and double-page fold-outs and…

Dig it, man. These were all events.

But what happened to the story?

It went elsewhere…to the comics that nobody really noticed (and so got cancelled), to the book publishers who started graphic novel lines, and, especially in Marvel’s case, to the movies and television. (Although, as Marc Alan Fishman recently noted in his column last week, DC’s Flash is gettin’ it.)

John Ostrander’s column yesterday reflected on the wonderful world of robotic (computer) storytelling. He noted that these stories, and I’m using shorthand here, suck big time. Grammatically correct and all that, but no heart. No soul. No emotion.

But the Cylons evolved, and I’m guessing so will these programs, John.

Maybe not in our lifetime, old friend, or yours, but one day there will be an X-Men or a Superman or a Daredevil or a Batman written by a computer.

And it will be an event.

 

Molly Jackson: Fantasy Living

I’ve been sick with various colds for the past couple of weeks. I managed to pass the miserable, sniffling time by rewatching the Starz series Spartacus.

In case you haven’t watched it yet, Spartacus is a great story and bingeing it was just a blast. I basically “lived” in that world rather than pay attention to my sniffles and coughing. After watching it for hours on end, I noticed that I picked up phrases and British accents from the show. (Side note: Why is almost every accent end up as British on TV? Do producers realize Americans know there is more than one European accent?)

To be honest, this isn’t the first time this has happened. When I binge on certain series that I love, whether it be TV, movie or literature, I “adopt” phrases and inflections/accents from the show into my daily life. It’s weird but it’s true. I really get into the shows I watch and the books I read.

Every time this happens, it’s because I am invested in the story. Good stories can suck you in and let you live among them. And if I let them, they transport me right to where the action is. If the story is so good, I tend to carry it with me. Granted, it sounds weird but I doubt I am the only person who subconsciously does this.

This has gotten me into some confusing moments, like recently saying to a friend I wanted to “break words” rather than let’s talk. Or after watching Breaking Bad, I had a strong urge to add bitch to everything I said for a day. That was a bad situation I managed to mostly avoid.

I may be crazy or a little delusional, but wanting to live in a different world or time sounds fun to me. Not to mention, my imagination + binging on TV is the closest I will probably get to having a holodeck. Still, good stories are ones I always want to carry with me, in some form or another.

 

John Ostrander, WriterBot 3000

My good friend and fellow ComicMix columnist Denny O’Neil and I were talking once upon a time about the necessity of comics. The point he made was that comics, certainly as we know them, are not something that needs to exist. He pointed out that early automobiles had, on the running board, a place to hold a buggy whip. Why? Because people expected them. As time went by, the buggy whip holder and the buggy whip itself disappeared. Technology had made them superfluous.

I have comforted myself on my choice of occupations. As a writer, I can’t be replaced by a robot. That may not be as true anymore and possibly, in the future, I could become a buggy whip.

Writer robots are already at work in journalism and odds are that you’ve read one. The Associated Press uses them to generate articles on quarterly business earnings. They also generate sports stories. Granted, they are basic and dry but the kind of stories that bots generate have always been that way. The bots can do it quickly and cheaply.

The AP claims that no journalist has lost his/her job to a bot… yet. They say that using the bots frees the reporter to write more incisive stories. The reports that the bots file are drudge work and automated systems are great at relieving us from drudge work. The AP files 3,000 such stories every quarter. According to Automated Insights, the company whose Wordsmith program generates these reports, that’s ten times what AP reporters and editors produced before the program was introduced. That makes AP a lot more money.

That’s journalism. What about creative writing? The Entertainment Intelligence Lab has a program called Scherazade that generates stories. On the website they say: “We present a novel class of story generation system – called an Open Story Generator – that can generate stories in an unknown domain. Our system, Scheherazade, (a) automatically learns a domain model by crowdsourcing a corpus of narrative examples and (b) generates stories by sampling from the space defined by the domain model.”

I’ve read at least one of the stories that Scheherazade has generated and it does basic storytelling in a very pedantic way. It’s not compelling reading but it is a complete story – written by a computer algorithm.  Give it a topic and it will generate a story.

Likewise, MetaphorMagnet from the Creative Language System Group at the Department of Computer Science, University College Dublin, has a Twitter account where it generates creative metaphors such as “So I’m not the courtliest courtier in the entourage. More like the most uncouth cowboy in the posse.” @MetaphorMagnet I will admit, I like that one.

(By the way, this all came to my attention first via Science Friday on NPR.)

Most of us will have heard the theorem that a monkey hitting a keyboard over an infinite amount of time will type the collected works of Shakespeare. Will a computer algorithm? I’m not so sure. On the other hand, could it produce E l James of 50 Shades of Gray? By all accounts (I haven’t read the book myself), given the quality of the prose, the answer may be yes.

More to the point, at least for me, is could I be replaced by a computer program. If you took an algorithm and fed it my works, and it picked up on my style, my way of expressing myself, my themes, my plots, could the program detect a pattern and create a new story in my style?

My problem with the whole “computer as a creative writer” concept is that, while it’s an interesting exercise, there will be something essential lacking in its attempt to tell stories. We use stories to distill the human experience and computers lack that. (Although I wonder whether certain writers have that ability.) As humans, we are all storytellers and we use story every day to explain life to ourselves and others. Computers simply don’t have that and I don’t think you can program them to compensate.

Mind you, I think some publishers would like to try. The money-people often see writers and artists just as widgets, one being as replaceable as another. If they could get a reasonable facsimile of the plots and stories from a computer and save a shit-load of money in the process, wouldn’t they want to do it? Oh, I can see it.

And, after all, what is our brains but our own most personal computers? My brain generates stories by picking from here, from there, from this fact, that memory and piecing it all together. What do I do that eventually a computer couldn’t do? Not in the near future, maybe not in my lifetime, but – who knows?

We writers may some day wind up being the buggy whips on the running boards of literature.

Cue HAL.

This article was generated on the iJohnO 3000.

Michael Davis: Another Paige

paigeart1 peg copyDraft number one of this narrative was written not 24 hours after I met yet another amazing young lady named Paige. This draft is number 15, and at almost six months this is the longest it’s ever taken me to finish a single article.

More than two years ago, I wrote about a talented young artist whose name was also Paige.

It seems like yesterday when I met that Paige. A 14-year-old artist who so captivated me with her talent and self-possession at that young age, I wrote an entire article about her. The only other artists I’ve devoted entire articles to were Bill Sienkiewicz and Denys Cowan.

My editorial was a plea for Paige to consider comics and its related businesses as part of what will certainly be a fantastic career in art. She’s a woman, she’s black, and she’s an artist.

A Compton office for the Klan would not be as rare a combination in this industry.

What are the odds I’d meet two black girls named Paige? What are the odds that both Paige’s would be artists, beautiful, and brilliant young ladies? They even look a bit alike – although the Paige I recently met is much darker, they could fool a person or two into thinking they were related.

They have so much in common, share so much, and couldn’t be more different if one was born in outer space.

The original Paige’s story was one of a bright young artist without a care in the world. Her smile as bright as the sun, her story and future a happy one. This Paige’s story is not a happy one, her future is anyone’s guess and her smile is dim and sad.

I talk a lot of smack – some think my smack is spun hype. It’s not. Unfortunately, it’s my life. Those ‘boys in the hood’ survival stories are all true. I’ve survived some shit that people I’ve known for 30 years thought was smoke-and-mirror bluster to underscore my badass image.

Nope – all true. Where I grew up, threats to one’s life weren’t uncommon. Twice someone tried to kill me. I survived mostly by luck and a bit of street smarts.

Compared to Paige’s ordeal, my brushes with death now seem comical.

Paige was raped repeatedly for a week, brutally and without mercy, when she was eight years old. I’m sorry, there was no easy way for me to say that, lord knows I tried 14 times. The attacks were at her school and came from older kids Paige had to see every day.

I survived my brushes with death mostly by blind luck, a well-connected sister, and an incredible mother. I was helped and still just barely endured. Paige not only survived her hell, she beat the shit out of the devil in the process, and up until very recently did so on her own.

Paige, like her namesake, is a remarkable young lady. To be so young and so well put together is rare. Unfortunately, what happened to Paige is not nearly as rare. Most black women (yes, most) I know have had some type of sexual assault committed on their person. Paige fell hard into that category. A horrible and all too-common classification.

Paige’s horror, at the time, did have an uncommon distinction: kids raped her. Eight years later it’s not so uncommon. I can’t fathom in the least the nightmare her 8-year-old self lived. I’ve written about violence against women I’ve known much too often, and always at some point I rant about how I’d like to see the rapists suffer.

I’d like to hope and pray for a time machine, confront those miserable little bastards before they reached the bathroom where the attacks took place, and erase them.

Fuck the space-time continuum.

But are the kids to blame? Yeah, they sure as hell are. I don’t give a damn how liberal I am, kids past a certain age know full well what’s right and what’s wrong. I will concede they most likely lacked the care other kids were afforded, having the misfortune of being born to worthless parents.

How I came to know Paige’s story is both humbling and empowering. Paige’s mom is producing a documentary film looking at the alarming amount of sexual assaults there are on America’s college campuses. For women of color, three out of five will be subject to the violence of rape.

For more than 20 years I’ve been involved in efforts to bring attention and ultimately end widespread violence against women. I prefer smaller venues like high schools and community centers. There’s an intimacy in a smaller setting that never fails to unite the audience. It also emboldens those to seek help or counsel in the midst of a supportive group.

On occasion, I’m lucky enough to do a large event that manages to produce the same kind of closeness. Such was the auction benefiting battered women that my dear friend and idol Harlan Ellison and I co-hosted at DragonCon in 1995. It was with that in mind I accepted a speaking engagement at a large event targeting a vast, ill-informed, and unsuspecting audience.

Think about this for a second – three out of five women of color confronted with violence on a college campus where they should expect to be safe. That’s unacceptable at any level for any woman, black, Asian, white, or fucking green. That should shock every parent of a young lady bound for college.

Before the event, I got to know Paige and we became close very quickly. I’m pretty sure Paige read some of my articles on women in my life. This year I’ve written reams about my mom Jean and my sister Sharon, the real life models for Jean and Sharon Hawkins, Static’s mom and sister. Late last year I wrote a series of articles about my beloved high school art teacher, Mrs. Darwin.

All of the articles deal with loss and pain. All of those incredible women met with untimely deaths – in the case of my sister and grandmother, violent ones. I’m convinced Paige was somehow moved by what I wrote and decided to share with me what she had not shared with anyone else.

“I’m not sure how to ease into this so I guess I will just go for it. It’s taking me a long time to be able to write let alone say these words. Nine years to be exact. Its affected me physically and most of all emotionally. I am not proud of how I used to handle what happened but this is the truth.” 

“When I was eight years old, I was raped by boys at my school. It went on everyday for an entire week.”

That’s how my young friend began her letter to me. The rest of the letter is a heart-wrenching description of her torment, which succeeds in doing what I thought impossible. Paige’s account succeeds in making me cry the moment I think of it.

I thought I was cried out from my year of death and betrayal. I thought wrong.

As of this writing, Paige has told her mom she was raped. Nonetheless, she has not shared with her mom what she shared with me and I’m not sharing it here. Trust me, you don’t want to know. I’m panicking some people with my constant balling and that includes myself.

This incredible young woman lived with this gargantuan nightmare by herself for 9 years. Not just any nine years, her childhood years. It’s hard to imagine what kind of strength that takes if you’re an adult, let alone a child.

I couldn’t do it. That kind of pain? Alone? No way. I’m nowhere near that strong. I’m nowhere near that magnanimous. At eight, Paige was afraid of what to do, ashamed of what happened and confused. As she got older, her choice became clear to her: to protect her mom from the realization that would (did) knock her off her feet as hard as a Mike Tyson right hook.

Why am I telling Paige’s story here?

Fate.

This from a guy who does not (did not) believe in fate, destiny, providence or any ‘outside force’ that dictates my life on a pre-ordained path.

I have no other way to describe the ‘why’ of this and yeah, I tried – 14 times before this, I tried. Thousands and thousands of words later, fate is as accurate a word to describe the chain of events as wet is to describe water. It’s my belief fate intervened and you, dear reader, are just the latest stop on its path.

Paige’s mom starts working on a film about women of color and the epidemic of sexual abuse on college campuses. She had no idea that Paige, at 17 about to enter college, was abused. Paige and her mom were godsends during my dark days dealing with my mom’s death. Paige confides in me, when I had no strength. None.

Yet somehow her trust in me gives me strength, not just for her, but also for me.

What are the odds?

After almost 10 years Paige is moved to unburden herself and thought her mom strong enough to handle it. She wasn’t, she was floored, understandably so. But as hard as her daughter’s revelation hit her, Paige’s decision to go public with her story uplifted her.

Yeah, Paige is going public with her story. Like I said, compared to Paige, I’m a little bitch.

I sent this article to my first Paige before it was published. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t exploiting her uplifting story to try and tell the heartrending story of her namesake. She would have to be okay with it or I would not mention her. The parallels and dissimilarities between the two Paige’s are remarkable and my take on the story would suffer for sure. I know, more than a few drafts taught me that.

She said yes, as I knew she would. She’s cool like that.

She was easy – my job was hard: write, then convince myself what I wrote was worthy of a young lady’s incredible act of selflessness and generosity. Fourteen drafts later, I felt I wasn’t even close. On top of that, I imagine many of you are wondering what the hell this story is doing on a pop culture site where the primary objective is to regale you with news of superheroes. that I’ve got covered: this story is of a superhero, or more accurately, it’s the continuing story of a superhero.

The two Paige’s are as different as night is from day and as similar as Clark Kent and Superman, because the two are the same person. Like Superman, Paige hid her secret identity from her friends and family to protect them. Deciding to fight the almost decade-long battle by herself.

Until now.

I first wrote about an incredible 14-year-old girl. Then I wrote about a scared 8-year-old child and the 17-year-old teenager. I’m sure I’ll be writing about Paige again – how could I not? She’s my superhero.

All that’s missing is her Invisible Jet.

Or… is it?

 

Marc Alan Fishman: The Flash Reaches Light Speed

So I’ve gabbed about Gotham. I’ve adjudicated over Agents of SHIELD. Isn’t it time I got flustered over The Flash? After the episode debuting this week, “Out of Time”, I’m beside myself with glee. For those who saw the episode, that knowing smirk over my pun-tacular metaphor means we’re going to be the best of friends. For those who are missing out on the festivities – or don’t wish to spoil themselves having not seen the episode yet – I’ll see you next week.

OK, are the buzzkillers gone? Good. My god, what an episode! The Flash started off with a bang – melding the innocence of the silver age, with a well-rendered modern edge – and has quickly become appointment DVR television for the ole Fish-man. Whereas I boot up an episode of Gotham with tepid hope, and SHIELD with a yearning for less angst, I hit play at breakneck speeds when Grant Gustin slips in the red leather and lightning bolt ear cups. And “Out of Time” ensured that amongst all the comic-to-TV series being blasted throughout the airwaves these days, The Flash is the best one on by leaps and bound.

If I’m to ape my old Snarky Synopsis column from www.MichaelDavisWorld, allow me to sum up what all we saw this week. We callback to the very first episode wherein the Martin brothers kill Joe West’s partner and take off in a biplane. Lucky for them, Dr. Wells’ particle accelerator don’ blowed up, and the resulting storm they pilot through. It splits their plane and leaves the crappy criminals imbued with wizard-like power over the weather. But the brothers were separated by the crash, and ole Mark Martin (the older of the pair) wouldn’t catch up to his kin before Joe would put two bullets through his chest. Now, some time later, Mark returns to get his revenge (on the revenge Joe got on his brother for killing his partner, I suppose?). What follows – in between some typical CW-style love quadrilateral drivel – is a breakneck deluge of amazing exposition.

The new Weather Wizard attempts to murder Joe and nails (but doesn’t kill) the captain of the squad instead. He captures Joe and lures Barry and Iris out into the open – where a waiting tsunami begins to crest. Barry reveals to Iris he’s the Flash! Caitlin Snow preps the Flash to fight off the impending tidal wave with a wall of wind to contain it. And for the thousandth time in the show’s history, Barry asks “How fast do I need to go?” Of course the answer is always “as fast as you can, dummy!” Hence, he begins to run from one edge of the beach to the other at breakneck speeds. As the counter wall begins to rise, to subside the decimation, a smash cut lands Barry Allen mysteriously back to a familiar street-corner, literally an evening ago!

Oh, and while all of that was happening Dr. Wells revealed to the ever-curios Cisco that he was indeed the Reverse Flash, Eobard Thawne, trapped in the past after attempting to murder a young Barry Allen. And what does Cisco get for having the man who took him in practically as family, for finding out the juicy little spoiler? He gets his innards shaken, not stirred. And we’d be devastated over this… had Barry not literally traveled back in time to end the episode.

We Flash followers have known that time travel was on the horizon. Enough episodes had hinted at it to warrant more than a passing notion. And as Joe’s suspicions of Dr. Wells swallowed Cisco in just a few episodes ago, the end was nigh. But here we’re given the most dubious of double-backs. Having Barry now alter the timeline, we’re treated to the Hitchcockian allure of seeing the bomb under the table, whilst Barry be forced to save us from it. It’s the kind of storytelling that was made for the comic-to-TV adaptation. The silly psuedo-science of metahumans and speed forces are combined with well-worn characters who’ve spent just enough time with us for we, the audience, to truly care about their well being.

And at the center of it, a happy, smart, fun-to-watch hero. It’s something literally every other comic book TV show on today is sorely missing. Jim Gordon can’t smile without seething. Skye, Coulson, and their gang can’t smile without it being a smirk. And Arrow… c’mon! Barry Allen has not been without his flaws, failures, and share of doubt. But the overarching message week after week has been one of optimism and good will. The Flash has introduced us to plenty of villains of the week, but knows that there’s no use in wasting them away after a single appearance. And by being inspired by the comics that gave birth to itself, instead of feeling like it’s a burden to bear, we’re treated to serialized stories that don’t always pile on angst and guilt. By having a definitive end to the first Martin brother, we’re given the potent return of his revenge-seeking brother (who we knew must have existed, versus some damning plot device). And with Cisco getting to hear the villainous monologue of H. Wells (natch) only to have the entire story Superman: The Movie its way back to a world where it hasn’t happened yet? Well, that’s called having your cake and eating it too.

The Flash is comic book TV done well. Perhaps it’s never been done this slick, this smart, and this fun. “Out of Time” maybe the episode that proves that even the most comic book of concepts can be done sans snark. And that my friends… is a Flash fact.

 

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: TheLaw Is A Ass #350: DAREDEVIL GRANTS FRAME AND FORTUNE

2650907-nelson_2Some people just never learn.

Only we’re not talking about some people today, we’re talking about just one person. Namely Matt Murdock, blind attorney-at-law and secret identity of the super hero Daredevil. Matt’s had some run-ins with the legal process of late, run-ins that didn’t end well for him. “Didn’t end well,” here being a euphemism for New York had disbarred him after years of Matt playing fast and loose with the code of legal ethics. So Matt moved to San Francisco, because he was still a member of the California bar.

Well, he didn’t have to move, he did so out of practicality and a desire to eat. He couldn’t practice law in New York and super heroing didn’t earn Matt enough to keep him in subway tokens. So he moved to San Francisco, and not because the exchange rate on BART tokens was better.

Now you’d think after these professional setbacks, that Matt would want to comport himself strictly legit. That his path would be narrower than Twiggy and straighter than a porn star on Viagra. But if you thought that then, like the Cat in the Hat, you’d have Thing One and Thing Two.

See, while Matt was about to move his heart to San Francisco, there were still a few things he had to take care of back in New York. Chief among them was protecting his law partner, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. Foggy had Ewing’s sarcoma, a tangerine-sized cancer tumor on his hip. He was undergoing chemo, as well as specialized treatments in which Hank Pym, bio-chemist and the former Ant-Man, shrank down then went wandering around Foggy’s blood stream shooting stray tumor cells to help keep the cancer from spreading. The treatments took their toll on Foggy. Indeed, they were more taxing than April 15th and they left Foggy as weak as Johnny Manziel’s grasp of a play book.

At the same time, Matt had been forced to out himself. He’d had to reveal he was secretly Daredevil. He figured his old foes would try to strike back at Daredevil by attacking Foggy. Because of his reduced resistance, Foggy was vulnerable. And Matt wanted Foggy to concentrate on beating the cancer without his treatment being interrupted by the monthly obligatory fight scenes with vengeance-seeking costumed baddies. So Matt had to figure out a way to protect Foggy. In a flashback that took up most of Daredevil v4 #5, we learned what that way was.

Matt decided that Foggy Nelson should die.

Okay, not die, die. But comic-book die, as in die and come back later. Matt wanted the world at large to believe Foggy had succumbed to his cancer then move out to San Francisco with Matt under a new identity. Later, after Foggy had licked the cancer, they’d see what they could do about bringing him back from the “dead.”

Foggy wasn’t sold on the plan. It would bring unnecessary heartache to his family and friends. And reviving him would be a bit of a hassle. (Really, a hassle? With the way people die and come back to life in Marvel comic books, the Clerk of Courts probably has a standard “Back From the Dead” form on file. But mostly, Foggy wasn’t sold on the plan, because to the world it would just look like he had succumbed to an illness, while he was secretly living in retirement somewhere. Super heroes get to “go out with a bang.” Foggy would just be shuffleboarding off this mortal coil.

That’s when fate stepped in. Or perhaps I should say leapt in as the villain in Daredevil v 4 # 5, was that Daredevil mainstay Leap-Frog. Only it wasn’t the mainstay. This wasn’t your fathers Leap-Frog, or if you happen to be a Daredevil reader as old as me, your Leap-Frog. This was the new and improved Leap-Frog (Armour). Hey, can I help it if that – complete with the Olde English spelling – is what Marvel calls him?

The old Leap-Frog, you may remember, looked like Kermit after some bad acid. A man in a goofy frog costume that was equipped with powerful electronic springs in the scuba diver fins he wore as boots that allowed him to leap up to six stories in a single bound. The springs may have helped Leap-Frog be coily to bed and coily to rise, but they brought him less respect as a super villain than Rodney Dangerfield with bad biorhythms.

I don’t want to leap to conclusions, but Leap-Frog classic was one of the worst super villains ever. And this from a man who can actually see the merits of the Living Eraser. But, as I said, fortunately for us, this was new and improved Leap-Frog (Armour). Gone was the goofy-looking frog costume and the powerful springs. Leap-Frog (Armour) was armed with a robotic battlesuit that looked like a Transformer that had just changed from a Fiat 500 into a robotic version of Kermit after some bad acid.

Leap-Frog (Armour) wanted to establish his rep by defeating Daredevil. So he grabbed Foggy to force Daredevil to fight him. He and Daredevil fought East Side, West Side and all around the sidewalks of New York until, long story short, Daredevil defeated Leap-Frog (Armour). In only five pages. (So much for “new and improved. I think the new Leap-Frog’s fight with Daredevil lasted fewer rounds than Leap-Frog classic’s did.)

The fight, however, ended with a bang. Literally. Leap-Frog (Armour)’s armour was a time bomb which was about to explode on 5th Avenue. Daredevil couldn’t have a time bomb exploding on 5th Avenue and not because it would shower the city with crunchy peanut-butter and chocolate. Because Daredevil couldn’t see the controls to the battlesuit, he couldn’t do anything to stop the explosion. Foggy was the only person who was close enough to prevent untold deaths. So Daredevil told Foggy to get into the armour and leap into the air as high and as far away from people as he could go.

Foggy did. He sent the battlesuit into a powerful leap that took it well above the nearest sky scrapers. Then it exploded harmlessly in the air. Killing Foggy. So Foggy got to die big, after all.

Only…

SPOILER WARNING!

he didn’t really die. See, Hank Pym in his Ant-Man suit was inside Foggy treating his cancer at the time Leap-Frog (Armour) grabbed Foggy. So Daredevil had Ant-Man shrink Foggy down in size just before the explosion, and the two of them rode away from the explosion on wind currents.

Now Foggy appeared to be dead, in a big, heroic, self-sacrificing death and Matt could go forward with his plan of relocating Foggy to San Francisco in secret, where Foggy could continue his cancer treatments without interruption of super villains.

Happy ending for all. Except, of course, for Leap-Frog (Armour). Because think about how things look for him. He kidnaped Foggy, then activated a time bomb on Fifth Avenue, Then Foggy “sacrificed his life” to keep the bomb from killing anyone else. According to New York Penal Code § 135.25, when you kidnap someone and the victim dies before being returned to safety, that is kidnapping in the first degree. And according to NYPL § 125.27, causing someone’s death while committing kidnapping in the first degree is murder in the first degree.

Because of Matt’s little scheme to protect Foggy by faking his death in a glorious, going-out-big manner, Leap Frog (Armour) will be prosecuted for, and should be convicted of, murder in the first degree. There’s just one little problem with this; Leap Frog (Armour) isn’t guilty of the crime. He didn’t kill anybody, least of all Foggy. Sure Leap-Frog (Armour) is guilty of kidnapping and attempted murder and attempted arson, so he would be going to prison for a good long time. But he wouldn’t be guilty of murder.

Matt, I know you’ve been a little, shall we say, expansive in your interpretation of laws and ethics of late; but the next time you decide to fake your friend’s death, can’t you do it without framing a guy for murder?

Martha Thomases: Killing The Killing Joke

Another week, another kerfuffle. This one, involving a variant Batgirl cover for the “Joker Month” promotion at DC comics, is actually a little bit more interesting than most.

(Please note: I actually find most of these events interesting, which is why I write about them so frequently.)

In this case, the usual knee-jerk assumptions don’t apply. Artists were assigned to create a cover that featured the title character (in this case, Batgirl) and the Joker. The assignment was made, not by each series’ editor, but the marketing department. Rafael Albuquerque, the artist, decided to create an image that paid homage to one of his favorite Joker stories, The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland.

I really like that story. There are people who have issues with it, and I understand their concerns, but, to me, it is a phenomenal meditation on the nature of madness, and those who have to live with it. I wasn’t happy about how the rest of the DC editorial office reacted to the show, deciding that Barbara Gordon was the only superhero ever to suffer an injury (or death) that wasn’t curable.

(Side note: I did like the way Kim Yale and John Ostrander took what I considered to be an unfortunate editorial decision and made Barbara stronger than ever, as Oracle. I still resented that Batman’s back could be fixed, but not Barbara’s.)

Anyway, all this changed with The New 52. Barbara Gordon can walk again. Barbara Gordon can do the kind of amazing acrobatics that require usable spines and lots of training and talent. More recently, the editorial office and creative team decided to recast the character as younger, hipper, and more girl-friendly.

The creative team was not happy with the Joker cover. A lot of fans of the new series, perhaps too young to have read The Killing Joke, were not happy with the Joker cover. Rafael Albuquerque, when made aware of the reasons for the controversy, was not happy with the cover.

Finally, DC withdrew the cover. And that’s where this gets interesting.

There was also a lot of saber-rattling about censorship, which shows how little the public understands the word. The creative intent of the people creating the comic book was not supported by the variant cover, and they didn’t want it used. The only people who thought the cover was a good idea were those in marketing.

I do a lot of marketing work. I’m not opposed to marketing. That said, no one defending free speech has ever asserted that the needs of the marketing people should determine artistic expression. If anything, those of us who appreciate artistic freedom (even of work we don’t like) tend to prefer marketing people to butt out of editorial decision.

During the run-up to withdrawal, there were a lot of tweets and Facebook postings and other internet conversations about the issue. And, as so often happens on the Internet, some people got verbally abusive and threatening and there was name-calling and unpleasantness. DC alluded to this in their press release.

If you read the comments about this on the Comic Book Resources article (and I only read the first page or so, because I have a life, but not so much of one that I could stop thinking about the comments that I read), you’ll notice something unusual. After lots and lots of discussion about censorship and artistic integrity, the commenters are horrified that someone would threaten the artist. How could a difference of opinion about a piece of artwork justify such behavior? Isn’t the terrorism of an Internet threat more violent than the image in question?

Except no one was threatening Rafael Albuquerque. The threats were directed to those people (most often women) who didn’t like the cover. How could a difference of opinion about a piece of artwork justify such behavior?

It doesn’t.

It would be lovely if those who like the variant cover, who thought that it was horrible of the “social justice warriors” to threaten an artist, would 1) apologize to those they wrongly accused of making threats and 2) perhaps direct their outrage to those who actually do make threats, even if they agree with them otherwise.

 

Box Office Democracy: “Run All Night”

Box Office Democracy: “Run All Night”

When exactly did we decide Liam Neeson is the new paragon of action movies? I’m not even sure I can name the second biggest star in action movies right now in terms of output or cultural cachet. If someone anywhere in the world right now is making a joke about a hypothetical action movie I bet it stars Neeson. Run All Night is Neeson’s second collaboration with director Jaume Collet-Serra after last year’s Non-Stop, which was widely derided as “Taken on a plane”. They’re back this time hopefully not in an attempt to prove their incredible creative range as Run All Night is essentially Taken but if the child was a boy instead of a girl; it is not a lot of fun.

It has been suggested to me recently that the reason I don’t connect well with the Taken films is because they’re primarily aimed at women. That Bryan Mills is supposed to be a troubled but infallible sexualized fatherly hero saving a woman facing the oversized version of everyday fears. Run All Night is a clear attempt to bring this formula to a male audience. Gone are the imperiled female characters, in fact gone are almost any women with speaking parts, replaced with a son (played by Joel Kinnaman) who is marked for death after a mafia misunderstanding. Where Taken is violent and abrupt it is a PG-13 style of violence where people crumple quickly and the camera never lingers too long, conversely Run All Night is a gleeful R with all of the blood and the long strangling scenes that rating allows for. One strong advantage Run All Night has is a strong antagonist in Ed Harris. His version of the aging gangster kingpin is not the most original but Harris is much too good for this material and consistently knocks it out of the park. His scenes are the best in the movie and it speaks to his ability of an actor that he can be such a compelling character but I never felt drawn to root for him, that can be a fine line.

(more…)

Tweeks: Adventure Time Frost & Fire DVD

0This week we get mathematical in our review of the newest Adventure Time DVD release, Frost & Fire. Featuring 16 episodes of Cartoon Network’s most random (and therefore most awesome) show heats up with an epic battle between Ice King and Flame Princess. But what about the other inhabitants of Ooo? Are we treated to some Fionna & Cake fan fic? Is there enough Gunter? How much of a jerk is Magic Man?  Watch our review and find out.

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