Category: Columns

John Ostrander: So How Was It For You?

We’re now well into the new TV season and there were a number on new shows to which I was looking forward as well as some returning ones. I’ve now seen at least one of each and have formed some opinions. Since that’s what this column is all about, off we go.

On the returning shows, let’s start with The Blacklist. I was wondering if it could maintain momentum but so far it has, anchored by James Spader’s mesmerizing performance as Raymond “Red” Reddington. Terrifically charming, utterly lethal, ready with a quip, a story, or a bullet, Spader gives a wonderful performance.

I also wondered about Castle and the “cliffhanger” with which they left last season. They aren’t explaining things right away, making what happened part of the overall mystery for this season. It’s working. It feels as if there’s new steam in the engine and I’m enjoying the ride.

Arrow remains a little sudsy for me. I mainly tune in to see if Amanda Waller shows up; no sightings so far but she’s mentioned a fair amount. They’ve made Green Arrow (here just called “Arrow”) very dark and grim ‘n’ gritty. It’s like it wants to be Batman, without having Batman.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a show I came to enjoy last season and it’s better this year. It’s throwing in some supervillains and characters known from the Marvel Universe and I look forward to it each week. There are some characters I would drop (buh-bye Sky) but it’s a good series.

On to the new shows. Let’s start with Gotham, the other non-Batman Batman show. I’ve long felt that the city is as important a character in the Batman mythos as any of the other characters but I don’t know if it works as the central character. It’s not helped by Ben McKenzie’s performance as Detective James Gordon. He plays everything stone faced and one note; he’s the only one who is like that in the show. Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot {the Penguin) is far more animated, almost over the top, and more fun to watch. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be sticking with this show.

I was really looking forward to Constantine and, by and large, I’m pleased. It looks right, it sounds right, it keeps largely to the mythos in the comic book. My main caveat so far is that Matt Ryan’s John Constantine is a little too guilt ridden and tortured. He could use more snark and be a bit more of a bastard. It’s as if the show runners want to make sure that we like Constantine and find him sympathetic. They should take a look at Peter Capaldi’s Doctor on Doctor Who or, again, James Spader on The Blacklist. You don’t have to love them but it’s hard not to watch them.

And then there’s The Flash, my fave among the new shows. DC seems to be about gloom, doom, and grim in order to show how serious they are. The Flash is light, bright, has fun, and makes good use of the comic’s backstory and the Rogues Gallery while adding their own characters and adding new slants on so much. It makes everything feel fresh.

I like Grant Gustin as Barry Allen/The Flash. His Barry is younger than in the comics but I think that works to the series’ advantage. The character is learning how to use his new found ability – its limitations and applications. And he enjoys being The Fastest Man Alive and he wants to be a hero. That is also refreshing in this day and age of tortured, self-doubting characters.

He also has a good supporting cast and some are stand-outs. It’s a pleasure to see John Wesley Shipp (who played The Flash in the earlier TV version) cast as Barry’s Dad who is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit: the murder of Barry’s mother. It’s a nice tip of the hat by the producers; they didn’t have to do it but they did and that’s classy, in my book. And Shipp does a good job.

The other stand-out in the supporting cast is Jesse L. Martin as Detective Joe West, father of Iris West, Barry’s great love and wife in the comics and here just a friend… so far. Martin has always been a good actor; I remember him especially on Law & Order where he was a favorite of mine among the cops, right behind Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth. Here he’s a mentor and father figure to young Barry. I hope they keep him around.

So – that’s my scorecard so far this season. I don’t know how they’re doing in the ratings but I hope most of them stick around. There will be more comics related shows a-coming on both the big screen and the little one until it exhausts the genre and maybe goes the way of the Western.

Or the vampire.

 

Marc Alan Fishman: Gotham Is Close, But So Far Away…

… from being what it could be. In short, they’re uncertainty is palpable, and it’s sickening to watch week to week.

For the uninitiated: Gotham creates a timeline in which a young James Gordon arrives in the titular city right as Bruce Wayne’s parents are murdered. The city that will one day be protected by a dark knight is at present a cesspool incarnate. Corruption is common and even embraced by the police force. Politicians are mob-owned. And the mob itself has its nightclubs, contractors and restaurants littering the yellow pages. Impending war between Don Maroni and Carmine Falcone is discussed as much as the local sports scores and the weather (the Knights won, and it’s always going to rain). And literally crammed into every visible orifice on screen, a future commoner of the caped crusader’s cadre of kooky criminals lays in waiting.

Look, kiddos. I don’t have an issue with starting the show with Bruce Wayne’s orphaning (yeah, I’m coining the term). It’s a pivotal moment with plenty of roots into the budding season’s serial storyline. What I take umbrage towards is how desperate it all feels. It’s truly as if the writers, producers, and executives behind the show are compelled to scream at the viewing public “People! It’s Batman! This is the Batman show! Don’t you like Batmaaaaaan!?” I know this is a common thought that’s traveling amongst the blogosphere, but, seriously, why can’t DC and Warner Bros. just take a page from Marvel’s handbook?

When the House of Mouse announced Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., comic book fans largely held their breath. By anchoring their TV presence with a concept that could play in their cinematic sandbox but seemingly not require our favorite Avengers to drop by for a cameo… it took the better part of a season to truly win over the public at large. And when the words “Hail Hydra” were whispered, everyone rightly lost their marbles over the cleverness of it all. In contrast, Gotham has been obsessed with planting seeds that are so obvious they might as well just be trees already. Instead of trying to build a DC Universe, or even just a plausible setting, Gotham would rather be another Elseworlds tale. And were DC to have the smarts to tell us in any way that was the actual plan, maybe I would have happily declined even setting my DVR.

That’s a point I’d like to repeat for posterity. For Geoff Johns to drop even the inkling of a hint that the DCU-on-TV (Flash and Arrow clearly being coupled, Gotham, and potentially Krypton) could each exist in a parallel dimension to the movies, et al, is just dumb-dumb-doodle-dum. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. To think that the pencil pushers at DC Entertainment will eventually have to sell us a compendium guide to the Multiverse just so we can officially know where each damned show is in relation to one another is just sad to think about. Can you hear it now off in the distance? “Yeah, that Batman in Batman v. Superman isn’t the Batman from Gotham. No, I know that makes no sense [person who doesn’t understand Multiverse Concept].” Sigh.

As I’m prone to do at junctures like this, I’m apt to celebrate a few small victories the show has for itself. The cast – while anchored with pretty hammy dialogue – are all perfect fits. Our young Gordon is a proper police detective to Donal Logue’s lazy Harvey Bullock. The mobsters are all perfect caricatures we’d expect. And for what it’s worth, the Penguin is pitch perfect when he’s not going all kinds of Patrick Bateman on people wearing shoes he covets. The look of the show is also a small saving grace. Every edge is crammed with garbage and sepia toned grime. While it leaves little to no room for levity, the show is heads and shoulders above S.H.I.E.L.D. when it comes to environments… what little we’ve had to explore. And even young master Wayne is one of the better child actors I’ve seen cast. While (again) the script has called for less-than-stellar set-pieces for him to chew on (near suicide off the roof much, Brucey?), David Mazouz delivers a credible sell when he’s trying to be the rich kid forced to grow up too soon.

Beyond those points, Gotham is just too heavy fisted for its own damned good. With Edward Nygma posing poignant puzzles at every possible point he can, or Selena Kyle practically walking on all fours and meowing when she wants to be called Cat, it’s not as clever a turn as the showrunners seem to think. The public at large knows enough about the Batman mythos; few know about the brilliant shades of gray that exist in his world outside of the well-known rogues gallery. Why force feed us proto-Riddlers and Penguins when you can flesh out lesser-knowns like Mr. Zsasz, or Calendar Man who could tie to the mob war so much better than the current gaggle of goons being bum-rushed towards the credit roll. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. taught us that you need not depend on the name brands to be entertaining or credible. Don’t think so? Two words: Phil Coulson.

There’s still plenty of time for Gotham to turn things around. But the question to ask yourself is this: even if the show is successful, how will they find a way to not end up with fully developed supervillains straight outta Bat’s belfrey… all while he’s still having Alfred picking up Oxy at the Rite Aid? If the folks creating this cacophony could just take a deep breath and believe in Jim Gordon and solid police drama set in a slightly exaggerated world, Marvel might actually look up from their continuously growing pile of money and pay attention.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

 

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: THE LAW IS A ASS #332: SHE-HULK’S SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS TRIALIN’ ERROR

She-Hulk_Vol_1_8_TextlessSorry, but if your bucket list included “Read a comic book that has an explanation of the dying declaration exception to the hearsay rule on Page One,” you can’t cross it off your list yet. Because, despite what you read in She-Hulk v 3 # 9, you still haven’t read a comic book which has an explanation of the dying declaration on Page One.

She-Hulk v 3 # 9 is the middle chapter of a three-part story about Steve (Captain America) Rogers being sued for wrongful death in Los Angeles over an incident that happened on the L.A. docks in the year 1940. Cap was represented by Jennifer (She-Hulk) Walters and the Foglers, the family suing Cap, were represented by Matt (Daredevil) Murdock. Chapter One in issue 8 was the set-up. In issue 9, the middle chapter, the trial is about to begin.

So there on Page One Matt was giving his opening statement to the jury and defined the dying declaration exception to the hearsay rule for them. He told the jury that ordinarily a person may not testify about “what they heard someone say,” because it’s hearsay. Which isn’t accurate. I mean, come on, Matt used a simple sentence composed of only one- or two-syllable words. When has the law ever expressed anything with a simple sentence using only one- or two-syllable words?

The California Evidence Code defines hearsay in Section 1200 and it’s more complex than Matt let on. California defines hearsay as “a statement that was made other than by the witness while testifying at the hearing and that is offered to prove the truth of the matter stated.” In order for a statement to be hearsay, it must 1) have been made by someone other than the witness, 2) must have been uttered outside of the courtroom, and 3) must be offered into evidence in order to prove the truth of the fact contained in the hearsay.

Let’s see if I can’t translate that into some simple sentences that use words of only one or two syllables for you. First, the statement must be an out-of-court statement. That’s easy, if a witness says something in court than it isn’t hearsay, it’s testimony.

(Damn! “Testimony.” Four syllables. Okay, I can’t use words of only one or two syllables. Some polysyllabic words will sneak into my explanation. But I promise they’ll be simpler polysyllabic words than polysyllabic.)

Second the statement must have been made by someone other than the witness who’s testifying. If Linus is a witness, he can testify as to what he told Lucy even if he said it when he wasn’t in the courtroom, because he’s the witness. But Linus can’t testify as to what Lucy told him.

The reason for this second prong of the hearsay definition is because if the person who actually made the statement isn’t testifying, that person’s demeanor can’t be seen and evaluated by the jury and the person can’t be cross-examined. (By the way, we call the person who made the statement the declarant in the law game and consider ourselves as having been pretty straightforward for using only a three-syllable word.) So, if the witness, Linus, testifies as to what the declarant, Lucy, told him, Lucy, isn’t subject to cross-examination and the statement is excluded as hearsay. But if Linus is testifying as to what he told Lucy, then Linus – the declarant – is available to be cross-examined and the statement isn’t hearsay.

The third and final prong of the hearsay definition is that the statement is being offered for the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. If Lucy and Linus were in a car accident then, later, Charlie was talking to Linus and said he saw the accident and that Lucy ran the red light, Linus could not testify as to what Charlie said in order to prove that Lucy ran the red light. That would be using the statement to prove of the matter asserted; that Lucy ran the red light.

Matt may have given the jury an over-simplified version of hearsay, but that wasn’t the worst of his sins. Matt next told the jury that he was about to offer testimony about a dying declaration, which is admissible because dying declarations are an exception to the hearsay rule.

Okay, that much is true. The hearsay has lots of exceptions. California wrote something like 18 exceptions to the hearsay rule into its evidence code. One of those exceptions, found in Evidence Code § 1242, was the dying declaration exception. Matt was correct when he said that dying declaration is an admissible exception to the hearsay rule. Had he stopped there, all would have been fine. Matt didn’t stop there.

Matt went on to explain that a dying declaration is, “when a person makes a statement believing they are about to die … that testimony is admissible, because of a long-held belief that people cleave to the truth on their deathbeds.” Wrong!

In the aforementioned California Evidence Code § 1242 – Aforementioned is a simpler polysyllable than polysyllabic, isn’t it? – a dying declaration is defined as a statement made by a person who believes he is about to die, “respecting the cause and circumstances of his death.” So not every statement a person makes on his or her death bed is a dying declaration. To be a dying declaration, it must be a statement made about the cause and circumstances of the person’s impending death.

For example, if Linus comes upon Charlie, who’s lying on the ground near death, and Charlie tells him, “I”m dying because Lucy pulled the football out from under me and I broke my neck,” that would be a statement made about the cause and circumstances of Charlie’s impending death. It would be a dying declaration and would be admissible as a hearsay exception.

If, on the other hand, Charlie were to say, “I’m dying, and Lucy’s stupid psychiatric advice wasn’t worth five cents,” it would not be a statement about the cause and circumstances of his impending death and would not be admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule.

This becomes important in our story. In the middle of Matt’s opening statement – after he gave the jury legally incorrect definitions of both hearsay and dying declarations but before he explained to the jury that the case was a wrongful death case – Matt called his first witness.

And I move into a brief aside, before I can move on to what’s “important to our story.” I know of no court which allows a plaintiff’s attorney to call a witness in the middle of his opening statement. The attorneys give their opening statements covering what their case is about and what they expect the evidence will prove and then they present the evidence. I don’t think even the allegedly uber-liberal of Los Angeles County disrupt normal courtroom proceedings by letting witnesses testify in the middle of the opening statements. But that, as I said, was an aside. Let us hie ourselves back to what’s important to our story.

What’s important to our story is that in order to introduce his dying declaration, Matt called police officer McKinley, who was in the hospital at Harold Fogler’s bedside as Harold lay dying. McKinley testified as to what Harold Fogler said from his death bed.

He shouldn’t have been allowed to, but he did. As we saw in She-Hulk v 3 # 8, Harold died sometime in 2014, three weeks before the trial in this story started. She-Hulk v 3 # 8 also informed us that Harold died of old age and natural causes while he was in his nineties. Harold’s deathbed statement was about how his brother Sam died on the docks of Los Angeles sometime in 1940 and how Steve Rogers was responsible for Sam’s death.

Harold’s deathbed statement wasn’t a statement about the cause and circumstances of his impending death, it was a statement about the cause and circumstances of his brother’s death some 74 years earlier. It was not a dying declaration as defined in the California Evidence code, so would not have been admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule.

You’re probably wondering exactly what Officer McKinley did say about Harold Fogler’s statement, how Cap caused the death of Sam Fogler, and why Harold’s grandchildren are suing Cap for the wrongful death of their great-granduncle. I’m afraid you’ll have to wonder a little longer. This column is already long and I’ve only covered what happened on Page One. I’m going to need another column to cover the other 19 pages of the story. But before I leave you in the To-Be-Continued limbo, I did have one more thought.

One more thought: as I explained the last time I wrote about this story, Cap has repeatedly told She-Hulk that he doesn’t want to win on a technicality, so he probably wouldn’t have let She-Hulk object to the not-really-a-dying-declaration-so-not-actually-an-exception-to-the-hearsay-rule on the grounds that Harold’s statement wasn’t a really dying declaration so wasn’t actually an exception to the hearsay rule. Personally, I don’t think that’s a technicality, I think it’s a lawyer doing her job. But what do I know? I’m not the lawyer who wrote the story, I’m just the lawyer who’s trying to make sense of it.

I’ve got the harder job.

Martha Thomases: Funny, You Don’t Look Booish

Boo!

It’s Halloween today, when we laugh at death and taunt ghosts, witches and demons. Traditionally, we dress up in costume as something that scares us, exorcising our fears through make-up and disguise. If this was still a barometer of what we are afraid of, most women (and girls) are terrified of sex. And of nurses, police officers. And of sexy nurses and sexy police officers.

Which brings us to comics. Of course.

There have been a lot of scary comic books over the decades. Some were so scary that Congress felt the need to step in. Some scared me and didn’t scare you, and some scared you and didn’t scare me. That’s why there is room in the comments.

Alan Moore has written the most comics that scared me the most. From all the bugs to vampires that figure out how to be out in the daytime (stay underwater where the sun can’t reach you) to menopausal werewolves in his Swamp Thing, to super-powered conspiracies in Watchmen and assorted creepy Lovecraftian monsters in various one-offs, Moore’s work regularly freaks me out.

Most of us don’t believe in Lovecraftian monsters, werewolves, vampires or other tropes of the horror genre. I’m not even really afraid of bugs or conspiracies – although please keep both out of my kitchen and bathrooms and, actually, my entire apartment, thanks.

Most literary critics consider that classic monsters of horror to be metaphors for the things that are really able to hurt us. Frankenstein is about men who want to create life without a womb. Dracula is about the dangers of desire. Zombies reflect our fear of infectious diseases.

You know what’s scary right now? Sugar and the people who sell it.

And fundamentalists.

And Ebola.

These are things that can’t be fixed with a stake through the heart or a healing crystal. These are things that can still kill you when the masks are off, and the candy is all gone.

They are also not things that will inspire a single noble hero, or a small group on a quest. Instead, to fight them we will need an educated and engaged citizenry acting together to do the right thing. It means putting down the remote. It means getting off the couch.

That’s the thought that scares me the most. Not the ghouls on the street tonight, but the ones elected next Tuesday.

 

Tweeks: Comics Squad Recess!

61h2oMNqD0L._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_Hey Middle Grade Readers!  When you unload some of your trick or treat candy to the local orthodontist this weekend for cash, you might be looking for something to spend it on.  Well, since this time of year reminds us of the Scholastic Book Fair and rainy day recesses spent inside reading, we suggest: Comic Squad: Recess! It’s an anthology featuring some of the best in kids’ comics writing and drawing about the best part of school: recess!  There’s a super-secret Ninja club, a magic acorn, kickball, cupcakes and more!

Dennis O’Neil: Trick Or What?

65846We haven’t gotten visits from trick-or-treaters for quite a few years now. We live at the top of a pretty steep hill on a block that has only two houses facing the street, no businesses, not much light. Not a lot here to attract apprentice ghosts and goblins. If any do show up, we’ll give them comic books.

None of what a friend of mine calls “sugary treats” – and when she uses the term, she isn’t being complimentary. Time was when we did hit the drugstore and stock up on slimy and gooey stuff, your chocolate bars and your jelly beans and gummy bears and gum drops and all the rest of the Willy Wonka wet dream. Our consciences may have a protesting yip or two, but the yips weren’t loud and we could pretty much ignore them. Oh, okay… we knew that what we were putting into the kids’ bags wasn’t good for them, or anyone else, but, well, surely a little toxin wouldn’t do any harm, or at least not much harm, and if the young’uns parents didn’t mind, why should we be old grumpy-heads and anyhow, passing confections to the young and innocent is a tradition.

You gonna argue with tradition, grumpy-head?

Probably not. We’re pretty big on tradition ‘round these parts, and so is every other civilized society that I know of. We won’t even guess at the reasons here. We’ll only note that we humans seem to take comfort and maybe a sense of security from repeating rituals at prescribed times and places and anything that bestows comfort and security will get a smile from me. Hey,, it’s a tough life!

But… can traditions outlive their usefulness? Have some of them already done so? Can they be replaced with something more appropriate?

About this sugar/candy problem: Let us begin by making the painful admission that all but the most diehard smokers had to make a decade or two back – tobacco is very bad for the human body. (The guy in the corner, the one who’s gasping and wheezing and turning red, is shaking his head and trying to say no! I’ll assume that the rest of you are giving me permission to continue.)

Tobacco is bad for you and so, alas, is sugar. A quick rundown of some of your components that can be hurt by it:

  • Teeth: consumption of processed food containing sugar cost Americans 54 billion dollars in dental bills every year.
  • Heart: sugar raises levels of triglicerides and cholesterol, both of which are enemies of your heart.
  • Liver: sugar stresses this important organ.
  • Obesity: sugar is full of empty calories and encourages users to eat more.
  • Addiction: the stuff creates abusers.

It won’t be hard for you to find other information on this topic. Go get some.

So, Halloween night: Do you really want to give some neighbor kid a substance that is harmful in so many ways and might be the beginning of a life-long and possibly lethal addiction?

Maybe we should begin shopping around for another tradition.

 

Michael Davis: The Great New York Con

I’m from New York.

I’m a New Yorker who has lived the last 20 years in Los Angeles or LA, as it’s commonly called. LA is where my life is now; driven here quite literally by an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Despite the often-racist policies of City Hall and its Choke-An-Unarmed-Black-Man-to-Death police force, NYC will always be my home. Every New Yorker will tell you that the city becomes part of you. There’s something about growing up in New York that taints your view of any other city. When New Yorkers leave New York, they may move, but they don’t relocate.

My body may live in LA, but my heart and soul still reside in New York.

When the towers fell, I spent the entire day on the phone with Denys Cowan. We were both in LA less than 10 minutes from each other, yet we were so shocked and heartbroken about our city that neither one of us could muster the brainpower to think to go to the other’s home.

The offer I couldn’t refuse was made by Motown, who left Detroit in 1970 and has operated from Los Angeles ever since. I made a case to keep my main offices on the east coast and Motown agreed. I so loved my city, I endured a weekly flight to LA, and I absolutely hate to fly. After a year I was told to move the business to Los Angeles.

I did, but kept my NYC residence and have that still. I was not happy leaving my cherished city and made no secret of my dislike of all things Los Angeles when I arrived.

My New York egotism is seldom, if ever, modified. Undoubtedly a wise thing to do in many situations, but I can’t seem to make that leap no matter what the setting. I once proudly wore a New York Knick hat during a game between the Knicks and the Lakers played in Los Angeles. Not a big deal – any die-hard New York fan would do that. However, I wore my Knick hat to a Laker game while in Magic’s Johnson’s suite.

But wait, there’s more: I did this during the time I ran a division of Magic Johnson Entertainment.

I worked for the most famous Los Angeles Laker of all time, yet there I sat wearing my Knick hat.

You can’t get much more New York or more stupid than that.

20 years after LA made me leave NY, my answer is the same now as it was then when I’m asked to compare New York and Los Angeles. New York is the greatest city in the world and LA stands for Lower Alabama.

New York is also home to the New York Comic Con (NYCC), billed as the largest pop culture event on the east coast. I’m sure that’s true. It’s a huge and impressive show to be sure. Held at New York’s Javits Center, the convention sold out this year doing “San Diego Comic Con numbers” according to Business Insider.

That’s extraordinary.

What’s even more extraordinary is that NYCC has been around just nine years, and SDCC more than forty. It’s no wonder-people are comparing NYCC to SDCC. When you throw up those kinds of numbers in that short amount of time, you’re a major playa, no doubt about it.

Before, during, and especially after this year’s show, the word coming out of the Big Apple was that SDCC is done.

The king is dead, long live the king!

My dear friend Lucy Valerio, who knows full well of my doings at SDCC, told me a good friend of hers said, “San Diego Comic Con has jumped the shark.”

I wondered two things: had this expert on all things pop culture ever been to Comic Con? Secondly, was Lucy high? I bet her friend was, or he was drinking the Jim Jones Kool-Aid hype social media is selling.

Most don’t know I also have history with NYCC, and believe it or not, I had a small hand in helping them established themselves when they started. Long story short, they reached out to me and I put them in business with two major companies they were unable get to.

After doing so, I was asked to bring The Black Panel to NYCC and I did. So imagine my surprise when the next year, I’m told The Black Panel did not fit the criteria, although I had an open invitation to bring it back anytime I wanted.

The Black Panel has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly, to name but a few. The panel been invited to major universities, film festivals, and just recently Japan.

Damn, that must be some fucking criteria.

The woman from ReedPop, the NYCC promoter, who informed me could not have cared less about my open invitation to bring the panel back, nor did she care about what I had done for NYCC.

Fast-forward seven or eight years and the NYCC has put up some extraordinary numbers, but were not really SDCC numbers. They count ticket sales as people. In other words one person buys two tickets that counts as two people. Nevertheless, their numbers were damn impressive and they did sell out.

That sell out and those ticket sales are going to be the first thing ReedPop, the company behind the NYCC, will show future strategic partners, investors, advertisers, exhibitors, and attendees, and they should – those numbers are an incredible achievement, and as any CEO in corporate America will tell you, numbers don’t lie.

Those numbers are reason enough people are listening to the loud voices proclaiming NYCC as the new king of pop culture events.

Numbers don’t lie, but those voices are. Those voices are lying like any husband when asked, “Does this dress make me look fat?”

“No honey bunny.” That’s the lie hubby will tell his spouse.

“No Porky, you’d look fat in any dress.” That’s the truth he’s smart enough to keep from his wife.

The NYCC is a well attended comics and pop culture convention. SDCC is a world-famous pop culture event on a whole other level. Put another way, it’s akin to comparing Jay Z and your cousin Sal who likes to rap.

The numbers NYCC put up this year are undeniably great numbers for attendance to their show. However, the selling out SDCC is assured, not to take anything away from New York, but those are easy numbers to put up for San Diego. The show has sold out completely for over a decade and is still growing in ticket requests.

But, being the new king of pop culture is about a lot more than ticket sells.

More than attendance revenue, SDCC is a pop culture mecca, a place fans from all over the world must visit at least once in their life. Like any Super Bowl city hundreds of thousands of people come to San Diego without tickets. Some hope to somehow attain tickets once there, but for most, just being in the city where Comic Con International is being held is the goal.

The City Of San Diego is number 11 on the 20 most visited cities by international visitors and number 10 on the Forbes list of America’s most visited city. Clearly New York is on both those lists, but I’m damn sure the City of New York will not build new hotels and new convention centers (plural) to keep the NYCC show there.

Undoubtedly, because of Comic Con’s financial impact, San Diego would want to keep them happy by any means necessary. By comparison New York is much bigger and has much more to offer than just one event, True, but just as true, long before SDCC became the monster it is now, San Diego was already one of America’s top tourist destinations.

The economic significance of the SDCC on the city is not measured just in yearly revenue boost but in future investments and growth in the city. The worldwide importance of SDCC is not just a boon to San Diego, but to America as well. SDCC more than any other event in the 21st Century has cemented America’s place as the pop culture capital of the world.

That kind of clout is not what puts SDCC at another level. I was just pointing out the difference between Jay and cousin Sal.

NYCC is a for-profit business. Nothing at all wrong with that… except, in my opinion, in the world of geeks. To look at geeks simply as paying customers at a geek convention is no way to build a pop culture dynasty the likes of SDCC. A recurring issue to many fans and pros is the less than pleasant way convention personnel deal with fans.

To be fair, ReedPop is not running the Javits Center and has little or no control over how Javits security talks to and otherwise deals with fans. But Reed picked the venue, and year after year this seems to be a recurring topic.

SDCC is a not-for-profit educational organization run by a bunch of geeks, and in the world of comic book conventions, geeks rule. The people at SDCC are in the business of conventions, but they are not a convention business.

SDCC Mission Statement:

Comic-Con International: San Diego is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular art forms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.

Regardless of my past dealings with the convention, I want NYCC to succeed. It’s in my city and they are good for the industry. They and every other pop culture event have a ways to go before they can claim to be on a par with SDCC. For my money, Stan Lee’s Comikaze is the convention with any hope of ever doing what SDCC has.

The SDCC show is a pop culture worldwide happening generating much more than revenue and at its core are the fans, geeks, nerds and growing the industry.

This above all else is why Comic Con International: San Diego is on a different level.

A level that the New York Comic Con is, as of yet, nowhere near.

 

Mike Gold: More Movies, More Movies, More Movies

Now that both Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. have released their slates of movies-to-come, I offer a question of deep concern.

How much … is too much?

Over the next six years or so, we are supposed to get (take a deep breath) Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse, Suicide Squad, Doctor Strange, Sinister Six, Venom, Spider-Verse, Wolverine 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Wonder Woman, Fantastic Four 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Justice League, Amazing Spider-Man 3, The Flash, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, Captain Marvel, Aquaman, The Inhumans, Shazam, Avengers: Infinity War Part 2, Justice League 2, Cyborg, and Green Lantern-certainly-not-2. There’s another Superman solo movie floating around, and Fox might interject one or more Fantastic Four and/or X-Men universe movies into the above schedule.

Of course, hard as it may be to believe, there are superhero properties published by other outfits as well. Will we see another Hellboy movie? How about The Mask? IDW has their own movie division now.

Seriously. I’d love to see each and every one of these movies be amazing as well as amazingly successful, but I know the odds are overwhelmingly against it. How many flops within this relatively short period will it take for Disney (Marvel) and Warners (DC) to think of their stockholders’ wrath and then think about protecting, as Mel Brooks put it, their phony baloney jobs?

And I’m not even beginning to count all the superhero television shows – broadcast, cable, and streaming.

Again I ask: how many turkeys will it take to tank the ship? How many superhero movies in such a relatively short period of time do we get before the vast movie-going public decides enough is enough?

I don’t know, but I do know this: many billions of dollars in production budgets are at stake. Many careers are at stake.

And, since Disney makes movies and owns Marvel Comics, and Warner Bros. makes movies and owns DC Entertainment, how many cinematic failures will it take before either or both companies see their comic book divisions as sink holes?

I’ll take them one at a time. I’m looking forward to Age of Ultron.

Box Office Democracy: Avengers trailer, Constantine (TV)

Box Office Democracy: Avengers trailer, Constantine (TV)

Hi everyone,

I’m moving this weekend and didn’t have a lot of spare time to spend doing activities that weren’t packing so we have something a little different for you this week.  Here’s a review of a much shorter cinematic experience and a TV show based on a comic that once had a movie based on it.  It all comes back to movies, it all still counts.

Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer

 

Making a trailer for a movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron is a tricky proposition but one with absolutely no stakes. Everyone is going to see the film practically no matter what. This trailer would have had to be crudely drawn stick figures instead of CGI effects to have a negative impact on the gross and that’s probably underrating the drawing power of Robert Downey Jr.

Unfortunately, none of the stuff in this trailer is going to be what makes this movie special. Any major superhero franchise could produce a trailer with most of these shots. Massive destruction, iconic symbols shattered, big explosions. None of that is what makes The Avengers franchise special. What separates The Avengers is the wonderful character work and the exceptional dialogue. None of that makes for a particularly compelling trailer. If they are going to give me nothing but snippets of action shots and brief shots of people looking anguished or menacing I would have appreciated much more Hulk.

Everything they gave us looked great. I want to see more Ultron, I want to hear more James Spader doing Ultron, and I’m especially enthusiastic to hear Ultron dialogue that doesn’t feel like Marvel is using these movies as a backdoor plug for their old animation catalogue. I’m excited to see more from the characters that get the short end of the stick in the Marvel movies that have come since the first Avengers flick. It’ll be refreshing to see more from Hawkeye and Nick Fury. Black Widow got the closest thing to a punch line in this trailer and as long as Marvel stubbornly refuses to give Johansson her own movie I’ll have to take what I can get.

The characters I was surprised to see get so much screen time, probably as much as any Avenger not named Stark, were Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. I guess you need to energize the geek base without showing too much of your big Ultron effect but is this connecting with anyone else? Those are fringe characters at best and they eat up a ton of this preview. It almost felt like they were putting as much footage out as possible as leverage is Fox decides those are X-Men after all and want to sue closer to the film’s release. It was a fine trailer but those parts felt a little more like notes from a future deposition.

 

Constantine

 

I’m so glad that DC/Warner Bros. finally decided to make a TV show starring John Constantine. Sure it was easier to just keep collecting those payments that Grimm, Once Upon a Time and Hemlock Grove kept forking over for taking the basic concept from the Hellblazer books but it’s so noble of them to give that money up and compete on their own. What’s that? No one was paying Warner any money for those? They just let one of their established franchises sit on the shelf while other people ate their lunch using a strikingly similar idea? How very latter-day Warner of them.

Constantine is a good pilot with a big problem: they do a ton of work establishing a character they wrote out of the series. Liv Aberdeen is the focal point of the entire episode, the lens through which we view the fantastic world of John Constantine, and she seems to be riding the beginning of a long narrative arc. Somewhere between pilot and series they decided they had no use for the character and hastily wrote her out in the last two scenes. I’m still very much interested in watching the show, they’ve hooked me that much, but unless every week they plan to introduce and overdevelop another temporary character they’ve given me no clear perspective on what I’ll be watching every week. I appreciate that it’s very expensive to reshoot an entire pilot but it feels weird.

I do like the bits of the show they plan to keep. Matt Ryan makes for an excellent John Constantine and I liked the way they did Chas although I’m sure they plan to take a lot of liberties with the source material there. The score seems a bit like they’re aping the sound of BBC’s Sherlock and while it stood out like a sore thumb the first time they used on of those cues by the end I rather liked it like that. Both shows benefit from that bit of musical whimsy. The show feels a smidge too Catholic for my tastes but that might just be the way shows about angels, demons, and magic have to feel and I should just get over it.

I don’t watch a lot of network dramas but I am a dyed-in-the-wool Hannibal partisan so know that it means something when I say this show impressed me with both its disturbing imagery and its slickness.  The cockroach scene at the asylum kicks things off especially well being unsettling without going too far.  Constantine is painting with a brush of the grotesque and rather than coat the walls the way a CSI or a Criminal Minds does it instead uses it just around the edges and that’s so much more compelling to me.  I’m not entirely sure this is going to make for an exceptional TV show over a 22 episode season because I find those too long in general but I’m excited to give this one a shot and am thankful I was forced to sample it for this review.

Mindy Newell: B Is For Bondage

Wonder Woman BondageWonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world. There isn’t love enough in the male organism to run this planet peacefully. Woman’s body contains twice as many love generating organs and endocrine mechanisms as the male. – William Marston Moulton

When I saw Wonder Woman being constantly put in positions where she’d get tied up with her own rope, or held hostage, even as a kid, my reaction was ‘C’mon, she’s too smart for that. – J. Michael Straczynski

Last week both Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times reviewed The Secret History Of Wonder Woman, written by Jill Lepore, a professor of American history at Harvard and a staff writer for The New Yorker. Lepore’s Book Of Ages, about Benjamin Franklin’s sister, came out last year.

I vaguely knew some of what Lepore writes about, so the reviews weren’t entirely an eye-opening “holy shit!” read for me, but I am confident that the book will surely engender that reaction for those fans of Diana who think of her as the comic book version of Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem, as well as (unfortunately) eager browsing of the more libidinous pages by those who get off on thinking of the Themiscryan as a “Score!” on Superman’s yellow belt. And yes, that is a reference to that infamous t-shirt. See my column on ComicMix, along with that of Martha Thomases, of a few weeks ago for enlightenment, if needed.)

Here’s a short course on William Mouton Marston:

  • Harvard graduate
  • Psychologist
  • Inventor of the polygraph, i.e., the lie detector.
  • Creator of Wonder Woman.
  • Married to one woman, but his mistress lived with them fulltime. Both women (Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olivia Byrne) served as templates for the Amazon princess.)
  • Serial liar.
  • Sadomasochist in love with bondage.
  • Hypothesized that the masculine concept of “freedom” is violent lawlessness, while its feminine counterpart is based on what he called “love allure,” which leads to idyllic submission and a love of authority.

Bondage, i.e., “idyllic submission,” is a common theme in early Wonder Woman stories; in nearly every one she is tied to a chair, or forced into a strait jacket, or manacled and fettered, or chained, or gagged, or caged, while her fellow Amazons, when they appear, engage in wrestling and bondage play. And while we all know about Diana’s “golden lasso of truth,” which she was not above using as an instrument of bondage against her enemies, did you know that her belt is actually the “Venus girdle,”    Marston’s allegory for his theory of “sex love” training, i.e., embracing submission through eroticism?

Marston believed in female submission, calling it a “noble practice,” and was not shy about its sexual implications: “The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound…only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society…giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.”

Oh, by the way, I left out this out:

  • A feminist. (?)

 

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