Category: Columns

Joe Corallo: A Superhero Mockumentary


Before I jump into this week’s column, I wanted to touch on Iceman #1 since I’ve mentioned it so many times prior to its release last Wednesday. It was a solid first issue and I really love how Sina Grace handled the dynamic between Bobby Drake and his parents. Give it a shot if you haven’t already!

Moving on… There is currently a Kickstarter up for a superhero mockumentary, Zero Issue. It’s being run by the New York Picture Company – Matt Cullinan, Zach Bubolo, and Jim Fagan. They have a little over a week left and have nearly reached their goal.

I got the chance to chat with Matt, Zach and Jim about Zero Issue, what inspires them, and where they got the tuxedos they wear in their Kickstarter video!

Joe: Thank you for taking the time to chat with me about your short film project, Zero Issue, Matt, Zach, and Jim! To start things off, can each of you give me a one-sentence pitch for Zero Issue?

Matt: Sure! Zero Issue is a superhero mockumentary about a loser hero trying to make a name for himself, and when his plans fail he has to figure out what lengths he’ll go to achieve fame.

Jim: I think mine would be “take every crippling fear of failure you have, mix it with your love of comic books and comedy, and watch them make a beautiful baby.”

Zach: I like that. Mine is “imagine if The Office, Chronicle, Avengers, and Best in Show were mashed into one movie, and you’ve got Zero Issue”.

Joe: You all list a lot of inspirations for this story in the Kickstarter which are great. How did this idea come to be though? Did one of you share the begins of an idea with the others, did you all have a eureka moment watching a movie together, or was it something else entirely?

Matt: Development was actually a long process.

Jim: Yeah, we were doing a lot of pitch creation for other people and we felt “hey, we need to go back to doing our own thing again…” we all knew we wanted to make a short film, share our voice with new people, connect to new parts of the industry… we just had to figure out what we wanted to say.

Zach: To generate ideas we actually use this collaborative process called “Design Thinking” and after rounds of brainstorming, cutting up magazines, writing ideas on post-it notes, we had a eureka moment in this coffee shop in Queens.

Jim: We were talking about genres we loved (and maybe it helped we were in Spider-Man’s home neighborhood of Forest Hills and next to a comic book shop) and we said: “what would our version of a superhero movie be?”

Joe: This is a superhero mockumentary. How did you decide that this was the best way to approach this particularly story?

Jim: I love the genre – it’s the reason I work in film and TV – that kind of story is the kind I’ve always wanted to tell: unfiltered, raw access to your characters. It takes any subject matter and makes it feel real and insanely funny. As far as the three of us go, it helps we have a shared obsession with the IFC show “Documentary Now” – once we knew Dale’s story and the story of this Superhero Festival we started thinking about an episode of Doc Now that shows you a whole world of an Al Capone Festival in Iceland in 22 minutes. It’s a perfect fit.

Zach: We also loved Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows (about vampire roommates in Wellington, New Zealand). That proved you could make a hilarious and compelling sci-fi story as a mockumentary.

Matt: Plus, early in our careers, Jim and I cut our teeth making reality and non-fiction television so as a genre we had a lot of experience executing it for networks.

Joe: The main character, Dale Dinkle, has super powers and wants to be famous. Can you tell us a bit more about Dale? What kind of things can we expect from Dale over the course of the story?

Zach: Dale is a bit of all three of us – he has a little bit of talent, he was told he’s special his whole life, and now he’s a 30-something and decidedly not special. He is desperate, confused, and disappointed that he hasn’t made it to the big time.

Matt: His power is that he can move objects with his mind – which is cool – but he’s not super powerful. He can’t float the Golden Gate Bridge like Magneto.

Jim: His mind-moving power is probably like Yoda in Empire. He could move an X-wing, but it would take a lot of effort… and he doesn’t tap into that until he gets a little dark side in him.

Matt: Ohh, is that a tease?

Jim: Maybe.

Matt: Over the course of the story expect of lot of him scrambling in desperation to prove how special and important he is.

Joe: What other kinds of characters and super powers can we expect to see in Zero Issue?

Jim: Another hero we’re excited for is Sarah Smith. If Dale represents the 90’s era superhero movies with ill-fitting nylon suits, she’s the Netflix-Snapchat era hero. No costume, just a cool attitude, and deadly powers.

Zach: She’s like Jessica Jones, but with the power of Phoenix.

Matt: But she gives no fucks. Which is awesome. Another aspiring hero is Hoover, a teen with a lot of social-anxiety. We thought that kind of character would be an original addition to the superhero genre.

Zach: He can literally suck the life out of a room, like Rogue, but he doesn’t absorb any powers. And like Sarah, he’s scared to fully use his powers.

Jim: The Zero Issue Universe is how our brains feel when we think about all the characters from all the decades of comic books we love. It’s like when you’re a kid and you take out your action figures from 12 different sets – X-Men, HeMan, Batman – they don’t care they’re from different “worlds” they just wanna kick some ass. Only in our movie, they attend symposiums on getting a superhero talent agent.

Zach: There’s the leather clad, machine gun wielding Miss Mayhem and Sir Chaos from the 80s, there’s Lady Marvelous, who is an aging Golden-Age hero from the 50s, and Hercules, the original superhero, who is literally from 200 BC.

Joe: Switching gears for a minute, there are a lot of Kickstarters out there lately and people like knowing that they’re pledging to accomplished professionals, which you all are. Could you each name one or two professional projects you’ve worked on that you’re particularly proud of?

Jim: Yeah, and we think that’s something special we bring to the project. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve made shows for networks and brands – I’m particularly proud of my work running a show for ABC called People’s List and my work on PBS’ Danny Elfman’s Music From the Films of Tim Burton.

Matt: A lot of my work is in the documentary television space. I probably peaked when my childhood dreams came true and I worked with Mark Hamill on a piece called Raiders, Raptors, and Rebels: Behind the Magic of ILM. I also recently wrote and produced When We Rise: The People Behind the Story for ABC.

Zach: As an actor I loved working on the video game Grand Theft Auto V, and as a producer, I’m actually going to say that I loved our work on NYPC for Cooking for One with the Crying Chef.

Matt: Plug!

Joe: Whenever comic book fans hear about someone doing a project about superheroes, they like to hear about the comic books that inspired them. What comics have you read over the years that gave you an appreciation for the superhero genre?

Zach: My dad was a comic book collector in the 80s, and he loved showing me the milestone issues of the comics he collected: like Silver Surfer #1 or when Spider-Man got the symbiote suit, or the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Eastman and Laird, or The Phantom. Recently, I’ve been really into Faith and the Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Panther series “A Nation Under Our Feet”.

Jim: I think my introduction was through Saturday morning cartoons. The X-Men show was pretty influential to me. Everyone hum the theme song to yourself, I’ll wait… good. And when the New 52 came out I was obsessed with the new spin on Aquaman. And in the past year or so, I’ve really liked the Star Wars comics, specifically the Darth Vader run.

Matt: Honestly, I feel like early on in life a lot of my exposure to the world of comics came through the world of video games. So X-Men was huge for me. I spent a lot of time playing those games on the Sega Genesis (shoutout to Nightcrawler). Even more than video games, movies have always been my gateway to comics: the Burton/Keaton Batman films, TMNT, and later Hellboy, Blade, and Spawn. And graphic novels. Oh, and Y: The Last Man. I’ll stop now.

Zach: Other non-comics, but books we love and that give us a deep appreciation of comic lore are Soon I Will Be Invincible and Grant Morrison’s Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human.

Joe: In the Kickstarter video you’re all wearing tuxedos. Did you rent them or do you own them?

Jim: Mine is my dad’s! It’s ill-fitting!

Matt: Yeah, I bought mine when I was a best man for a wedding. I give a helluva toast.

Zach: I ordered mine from Amazon. Only ninety dollars!

Jim: Less if you return it after!

Joe: Though the initial goal is to raise $30,000 you have a stretch goal of $100,000 to produce a full-length feature film instead and the script is already written. Can you tell us more about what we can expect in a feature film and why it’s so important that you make it to $100,000?

Matt: Yes, the dream is to make a feature. But to make a movie with lots of special effects and lots of locations, characters, and cool costumes you need a whole lot of cash.

Jim: The feature would focus not just on Dale but other aspiring heroes. In this short, we introduce you to Sarah and Hoover but in the feature, they take over a bit more. The short is Dale’s story, our story… the feature is a bit larger in terms of story. You would also see a lot more of the “normal,” the townsfolk, and how the divide between the two groups would become irreconcilable. Christopher Guest is a master of creating a movie with several leads that you’re all cheering for.

Matt: The short would be the first third of a larger story. We’d move past the point where our movie ends and follow these three characters as they develop beyond the competition and intersect when their powers have all matured.

Zach: We think the short is incredibly strong – we tell a compact story, with one lead and a huge supporting cast, in twenty-two minutes. It’s going to have everything you could want from a superhero story: powers, humor, characters you care about, and a climactic battle.

Joe: Thanks again for taking the time to chat with me about Zero Issue! Before we wrap this up, anything else you’d like to say about Zero Issue and where can people go to follow you on social media and follow Zero Issue and your future projects?

Zach: The best place for people to go right now is the Kickstarter page – no matter how much you give, whether it’s one dollar or one thousand, you’ll get on our mailing list and get all of our updates. Last week we released some insanely cool concept art early to our backers.
Matt: Plus you’ll be supporting the creation of a brand new superhero movie!

Jim: After the Kickstarter, the best place for all our news and updates is our Facebook page.

Mindy Newell: Wonder Woman? Okay, I’ll Chime In!

Well, everybody else here is talking about Wonder Woman, so I guess it’s my turn. Caution: there may be S-P-O-I-L-E-R-S ahead! (Especially my sixth bullet, below.)

  • It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again. Gal Gadot is to WW as Christopher Reeve was to Superman. Her portrayal of the Amazon leaves an indelible print upon the character; it’s as if Zeus did indeed exhale, not upon a figure of clay, but upon a two-dimensional comic book form drawn of pen and ink, allowing her to step off the flat page and into the three-dimensional world, granting her life and all the depth and breadth of humanity.
  • Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is not some ineffectual weenie who somehow got through basic training, nor is he some steroid-enhanced muscle-bound moose. Nor is he the male version of a 1950s Lois Lane, mooning after love. Nor is he the callous male hunk in love with his own reflection. And though he opens Diana’s eyes to what is going on “out in the world,” his piercing blue eyes are not the reason she leaves Paradise Island.
  • Etta Candy got short shrift, but it’s clear that she’s not some Woo-Wooing sidekick. Yes, she’s a secretary, but she’s no slave; secretaries do get paid, y’know. To even be a working woman in 1918 was pretty daring, and to work in military intelligence means that she’s no slouch when it comes ability. World War I was the start of a new social order in England, as those of you who watched Downton Abbey know, and I’m pretty sure Etta votes Labor and has marched for woman’s suffrage.
  • I loved the portrayal of Themiscrya. Of course I immediately thought of George (Pérez) as I looked upon the architecture and facades of the city; and I also thought of my own work and remembered how, as I wrote, I would picture Diana’s home in my head. (I also thought of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, another book that also features a mystical island of women.) But it wasn’t just George or my own work or Bradley’s; it was also a callback to my childhood, when I would look at the clouds piling up on the horizon as the sun set, and see castles and waterfalls and NeverNever Land and magic.
  • The battle against Ares: eh. Not so much. Almost anti-climatic in my book. The battle of the Amazons against the Germans invading Themiscrya? Yes! Yes! Yes!
  • Diana’s realization that killing Ares did not stop the war, did not stop the violence and destruction was like watching a child who is told numerous times to stay away from the oven because it’s hot, but still reaches out when Mommy’s not looking to touch it, and…wow, it hurts! I guess, sometimes, you just have to let the kid learn for herself.
  • What was with the woman in The Phantom of the Opera mask? No back story, nothing. Who was she? We understand why the Queen gives the poison apple to Snow White; we get why Maleficent put the curse on Sleeping Beauty. I thought that perhaps she was an Amazon who had left Themiscrya because she was “bored now,” or something; but nope. Nada. Unless she shows up in some future sequel – maybe she’s Circe?
  • Referencing Mike Gold’s column of July 7: Are you fucking kidding me? Fox News will do and say anything these days as their ratings sink and their Orange Führer sinks even lower.
  • Gal Gadot is Israeli and Jewish. (There are Israeli Christians and Muslims, y’know.) Apparently this bothers some people:

Washington Post: How the Jewish Identity of ‘Wonder Woman’s’ Star is Causing a Stir

Comicbook.com: There IS a Person of Color in the Lead Role

The (Jewish) Forward: ‘Wonder Woman’ Sparks Debate About Jewish Identity

Slate.com: Why So Many People Care Wonder Woman Is Israeli

Do these people know that Jesus Christ was Jewish? Do they realize that the odds of a Middle Eastern man born approximately 2,017 years ago on being blonde and blue-eyed and white are considerably less than the odds of winning the Powerball lottery?

And, sure, Cleopatra looked like Elizabeth Taylor – who converted to Judaism, by the way. Liz, I mean.

Fucking assholes… Welcome to the Age of Trump, people.

 

Ed Catto: Fight Like a Girl

It’s a good time to fight like a girl. The new Wonder Woman movie is a big hit. Everyone from Billy Tucci to my mom seems to like it. Fox News managed to complain about the level of patriotism in the movie, but whatever; every party needs a pooper.

I thought it was great fun, and yesterday’s Biographic strip in sundry newspapers taught me something I didn’t remember. It turns out Wonder Woman’s first animated appearance was on an episode of The Brady Kids. It predated Superfriends by one year! This show was a spin-off of the Brady Bunch series. Even as a young fan, I remember watching this cartoon was pretty painful. At that time, I preferred Marcia Brady to Wonder Woman… but, hey, it’s still cool that it actually happened.

Wonder Woman is very busy in comics right now. Beyond her regular “Rebirthed” series and her DC Super Girls adventures, the Wonder Woman ’77 version of the character has been on a tear with Batman and Bionic Woman team-ups. I was really surprised how much I enjoyed the Batman ’66 crossover in particular. Jeff Parker is adding onto the TV mythology in clever and unexpected ways. Batfans shouldn’t miss these.

Beyond the Amazonian Princess, currently there’s quite a few top-notch comics where the protagonist is fighting like a girl… because she is one… including:

  • Mother Panic – This wonky DC/Young Animal series about features an unlikely, and unlikable, female protagonist. But I really enjoy it and art by Tommy Lee Edwards and Jon Paul Leon has been gorgeous and inspiring.
  • Velvet – Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s excellent 007esque series just ended, but Batwoman is a consolation as Epting has continued onto this series. His art is just superlative there too.
  • Lazarus – Greg Rucka and Michael Lark deliver a world-building drama that continues to ratchet up the tension in each issue. It’s been quite a ride and show’s no sign of stopping.
  • Invisible Republic – Produced by the super-talented, and super-likable, team of Gabriel and Corinna Bechko, this Image series is literally a world-building story. It tells the tale of Maia McBride and her involvement with and efforts on behalf of a revolutionary establishing a society. It’s great creepy fun. A mystery wrapped in an adventure wrapped in an enigma wrapped in social commentary.

While The New York Daily News carries Biographic (I really buy this paper each Sunday for the full page Prince Valiant), The New York Times offered readers a surprise this weekend too. What a treat their all-comics version of the Sunday magazine was! Hope you were able to snag a copy of that, but if not, check it out here.

Their New York Times Book Review section also reviewed The Spectacular Sisterhood Of Superwomen: Awesome Female Characters from Comic Book History by Hope Nicholson.  This looks to be a fun book by a passionate author with an impressive pedigree. Published by Quirk, this is another one of those books in the mold of Craig Yoe’s Super Weird Heroes or Jon Morris’s The League of Regrettable Superheroes: Half-Baked Heroes from Comic Book History.

In fact, if vintage super heroines are your thing, I really must be sure you are aware of Mike Madrid’s The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and The History of Comic Book Heroines, Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics. He even gave the “bad guy women” their due in Vixens, Vamps & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of Golden Age Comics.

And this all leads me to another Fangirls Lead the Way Panel. I’ll be moderating this one at Syracuse’s Salt City Comic Con on the first day of the show, June 24th. This is looking to be an engaging convention with wonderful guests. I’m expecting some cool discussions and insights at this panel, mainly because this one always brings out the best in the panelists and the audience.

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering – we can’t announce any panels for San Diego Comic-Con quite yet… so stay tuned.)

My panelists in Syracuse include Sally Heaven of Fangirl Shirts. This entrepreneurial apparel company will be exhibiting on the show floor, and I’m excited to have her on the panel. Sally’s a spitfire and comes to every comic-con with passion, energy…and really cool T-shirts! Connie Gibbs, of Black Girl Nerds always has good insights to share and brings so much to the party. it will be great to see her again. And we’ve got a few surprises too.

This one will be at 2:00 in the “Hall of Justice” on the Saturday of Salt City Comic-Con. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

•     •     •     •     •

For more info on all the panels at the Syracuse show check out their schedule!

John Ostrander: Crossed Lines

So, Bill Maher crossed the line and got himself into hot water. Given the nature of his HBO show, Real Time, and his own proclivities as a satirist, maybe he should just have a hot tub on stage instead of a desk. It would suit him in many ways.

Recently, as part of an interview, Maher jokingly referred to himself as a “house ‘N’ word.” No, I’m not repeating the actual word here for a few reasons. A) I don’t want to pull a Maher; B) I don’t like the word. I won’t pretend I’ve never used it; I threw it around a bit as a kid in 1950s Chicago along with the “c” word, the “f” word, the “mf” and others of that ilk because I knew they were bad words, naughty words, and I was trying at those moments to pass myself off to my self and my friends as a naughty boy, as a bad boy. Didn’t use those words around my family, my parents, or the nuns; I would have been a dead boy if I had. I haven’t used the “n” word as an adult; not since I learned the history of the word, the harm in it.

I know that the “n” word is used by African-Americans and I know that’s different; there’s a cultural aspect to the use that doesn’t work with someone who is white. There’s a menace when that happens; a whole history of racism and bigotry packed into it.

However, I do have a question. Can I, as a white male writer, ever use it in the context of a story? When I was writing The Kents (my historical Western featuring the ancestors of Clark Kent’s adoptive family), I had characters who could have and perhaps should have used that word. I couldn’t bring myself to do it so I adopted a similar word as a replacement only to learn later that this word was perhaps more offensive.

I ran up against the same problem with Kros: Hallowed Ground. It’s set during the Civil War and the word would have been used. At first, I was inclined to use it but I had long talks with my partners, Tom Mandrake and Jan Duursema. They made the point that the word was jarring when you came across it and that it might well offend some of our backers, black and white. In the end, I agreed we shouldn’t use that word and didn’t.

The question still remains for me; can I as a white male writer justifiably use such a loaded word?

There’s the Mark Twain example who made prolific use of the “n” word; one of his great characters in Huck Finn is “N” Jim. I know there are versions of the book in which all the “N” words have been removed. I’m not nuts about that. There is a term “Bowdlerize” which denotes going through a text, especially a classic, and removing words and/or terms deemed offensive or not suitable for children and people easily offended. That raises my writerly hackles.

Still, the question persists – can a white male writer legitimately use the “n” word or the “c” word or any other words of that ilk? I don’t know. I’m still searching for that answer and I suspect I won’t find a definitive one.

Maher, for his part, realizes he went too far and did apologize for it. He devoted a considerable part of his show this week in a discussion of the term, repeating his apology. Ice Cube, among others, explained why the word is objectionable in ways that might expand our understanding of the situation.

However, there have been those who have called for him to be fired. I understand that Sen. Al Franken canceled a scheduled appearance on Real Time this week. Franken was formerly a comic, sometimes an edgy one, but he’s cutting no slack here.

Both Maher and Kathy Griffin (who got herself in trouble with a photo holding up a severed head of Trump) make edginess part of their routines. The edge, however, is not well marked and at times the only way you know where it is is when you’ve gone over it. And, at times, you’ll go past it at 100 mph.

To say the “N,” if you’re white, is never right. As a writer, as a white male writer, can I ever write it? I don’t know and until I have a clearer answer, I won’t. I may never get that.

Life would be simpler if it just came with a clearer book of instructions. Something simple and easy, in clear black and white.

Marc Alan Fishman: It Ain’t Over ‘Till The Fat Guy Sings

I’m half the man I used to be.

OK, more like 2/3rds, but that’s being picky, no? Let me be blunt: as much as I shamelessly self-promote Unshaven Comics, The Samurnauts, and any wares for which I am able to shill, patting myself on the back honestly is uncomfortable territory. This week, I’m letting my guard down in a way that frankly I’m afraid to. There’s no use in hemming and hawing over it here in the preamble though. And spoiler alert. I get a little long in the tooth this week, but I’m hopeful you’ll find it… inspiring? Avante!

My name is Marc Alan Fishman, and I am a fat, fat man. Or perhaps it’s better to definitively declare it: I am, after a year’s work… a less fat man. If you particularly care about numbers, I’m fairly certain, to date, I have dropped a bit more than 80 pounds. Some people would dare say it’s closer to 90. I’m not one of those people, but hey, it’s a good rumor to spread.

My personal health has been a boring-as-hell roller coaster ride in reverse; plummeting in a freefall of increasing fatness from middle school ending at some point around 2011. For those playing at home, that included college, dating and then marrying my wife Kathy. In 2011, I was hospitalized due to kidney stones – truly a pain comparable to reading issues of Flashpoint. Whilst my body expelled sharp rocks out of my nether-bits, I was met with the trifecta of diagnoses: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type II diabetes. The best part of it – it didn’t come as a shock at all.

I never knew my Grandpa Meyer Fishman. He died of a heart attack. My own father had one himself, survived, but wound up with a quintuple bypass in his mid-forties. The writing had long been on the wall, and I figured why fight the universe? This lead to a life of fast food, bad choices, and an aversion to physical activity akin to the Hulk’s aversion to normal-colored trousers.

But you see, the story only truly begins in 2011. For the next year, I righted the ship. I ate according to strict rules. I took my blood sugar twice a day. I logged in food and personal data religiously. And I dropped a considerable amount of weight. I purposely never found out how much I’d tipped the scale at when I was hospitalized. I figured it never did me any good to quantify being one foot in the grave. Then, in 2012, a new-lease-on-life Marc Alan Fishman received his fair share of cat calls and back-pats. But they truly felt hollow. The work I’d done was merely to eat less crap. Nothing more. The new state of being was medically-sound, but empty in the soul. And so, slowly, I gave up the good fight.

One bad decision here, one little cheat there, and slowly over the next four years I’d put back on nearly everything I’d lost. I gave myself every excuse in the book. My day job was stressful. We’d had a kid. Unshaven Comics and freelance designing rendered my work day as 18 hours on the clock out of every 24. Flashpoint sucked. It was hot out. That guy over there looked at me funny. The McRib was still not a menu staple.

Like I said: I had excuses.

May 8th, 2016. My pants – which came with the fat-guy-secret-shame elastic waist band – were pulled to their limitations. My wardrobe consisted only of stretched-out henleys, and graphic tee-shirts that had seen better days. Going to restaurants became secret panic-attacks in anticipating being sat in a booth. And, like the unnamed narrator in Fight Club, somehow, I reached bottom. I typed a letter to myself. An op-ed directed solely at myself, you see. And in it, I pulled no punches:

I know the truth: I fell off the wagon HARD, for no real reason. I succumbed to temptation because no one I know is comfortable calling me out on it. But I don’t blame anyone; I’m my own worst enemy. I’ve always been it. I’ll always be it. Cold hard facts: My lifestyle has gifted me gout, diabetes, and most recently… the reminder that I’ll only request seating at a “table,” as I don’t fit in the booths anymore. It’s embarrassing, and I need to quell it.

And with that, I made the commitment to change. My mantra was – and still is – very simple. I vowed to make small, significant changes to the way I live. To capture the food I eat, the mood I’d been in, and the exercise completed each day, without fail. To commit to completing some kind of exercise every day, without fail. To eat better food, in better portions… and to never think of food as a reward or punishment. And to commit to all of this knowing that unlike before: this wasn’t a sprint, nor a marathon; this was to be the way I’d strive to live until my brain could be successfully transferred to a cyborg body in 2039.

Over the course of a year (and change, natch), each little change begat another, and then another. I started taking walks outside last summer. When daylight savings hit, I bit the bullet and bought a gym membership. When I realized I was (and still am) far too embarrassed to lift weights next to other actual humans, I built up a collection of weights and such at home. I started out completing very small workouts a few nights a week. Then it grew to a nightly routine. Paired with my one hour of TV before bed, I force myself to complete a little workout during commercials. A few sets a night have seen me reach personal lifetime best numbers that have continued to rise. I even hired a wellness coach to help me fill in the gaps where I’d continued to stumble.

And here I am. On the path to 190 pounds by mid-July. I’ve truly never felt as good as I do now, in my lifetime, ever. Yeah, I’m even counting grade school – the last time I was ever truly able to run, jump, or play.  I am now, at 35, better than I was at 25. And my beard is a hell of a lot nicer looking then when I was 15.

And so, I end on an inspiring note not to you, my friends and fans reading this. I end on an inspirational note to myself: It took a year to completely change who I am outside and in. With that same determination, the same successes can translate to Unshaven Comics and The Samurnauts. To be the better Marc Alan Fishman means to give the best back to the world. If I want to see my products be what I know they can be? I need only continue to make small and significant changes to how I work. Nothing comes to those who wait for the world to change. Make the change yourself, do the work, and reap the rewards when you’re finally able to lift your head up.

Be well.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #412

FLASH DRINKS SOME MILK OF AMNESIA

How do research labs in comic book or science fiction universes or, in this case, the TV show The Flash stay in business? Given that their experimental default setting seems to be catastrophe, how can they afford their insurance premiums?

To no one’s surprise, an experiment in the Central City branch of S.T.A.R. Labs went wrong in the Flash episode “Cause and Effect.” The result – other than one of those marking time episodes that crop up when the season has three more episodes but the season-long arc only has two episodes worth of story – Barry (The Flash) Allen got amnesia. It also resulted in the world’s most unnecessary SPOILER WARNING.

By the end of “Cause and Effect” Barry got his memory back. And if you didn’t want to know that, you should have stopped reading two sentences ago.

The A plot of “Cause and Effect” doesn’t concern us now. (It didn’t even concern me while I was watching the episode. I knew Barry’s amnesia would be more temporary than a henna tattoo in a car wash.) It was the B plot that prompted me to get anal-retentive and anal-lytical.

There was this pyromaniac named Lucius Coolidge AKA the Heat Monger, which is a silly name. Mongers sell things. Heat Monger set fires for free so he was actually giving heat away. Coolidge was caught largely because of the forensic investigation of Barry Allen. Unfortunately, some judge had a hole in his schedule and unilaterally moved Coolidge’s probable cause hearing up to that afternoon on the very day that Barry Allen, unlike Cats, had no memory.

Without his memory, Barry couldn’t testify. Well, he could testify, but he wouldn’t be able to say anything more useful than my one-year-old granddaughter could. And he wouldn’t be nearly as cute saying it. If Barry didn’t testify, the judge would find there was no probable cause to bind Coolidge over for trial and dismiss the cause. Coolidge would go free.

Team Flash gave Barry a pair of glasses equipped with a heads up display in the lenses and warned him not to let them get wet. Barry took the witness stand while his supervisor, Julian Albert, sat in the courtroom. Julian typed the answers to the DA’s questions on his laptop which were transmitted to the lenses on Barry’s glasses so Barry could read them in court.

If I said that the scene then played out exactly as anyone could have predicted, I’d be selling the word “exactly” short. Julian used emojis which Barry read out loud. Julian typed too fast so Barry had to tell him to slow down. Barry started to sweat and shorted out the glasses. Barry couldn’t continue testifying and the judge dismissed the case. Coolidge was released.

All in all, a three-minute scene played for comedy relief – it’s funny because Barry perpetrated a fraud upon the court – that ended with a dangerous sociopath being released. Don’t worry about the sociopath, he celebrated his victory by setting fire to an office building in front of eye witnesses who identified him for the police. Worry about that preliminary cause hearing. It may not have been funny like the show intended, but it was laughable.

Did the DA never consider asking the judge for a continuance, because the key prosecution witness was ill and not able to testify? After all, the judge created the problem by unilaterally rescheduling the PC hearing for later that day just because he had a hole in his schedule. (Note: judges don’t normally do things like that because it doesn’t provide the parties with adequate notice to prepare for the hearing.) Heaven forbid that the judge use his free afternoon to read the motions filed in the other cases before him or an article on how to avoid judicial intemperance.

And if the judge denied the continuance? There’s still a solution that’s a lot simpler than creating makeshift and volatile Google glasses. Have Julian Albert testify, for crying out loud!

Julian was Barry’s supervisor in the Central City CSI division. He would have overseen Barry’s work. He would have been familiar with Coolidge’s file. He could have testified with as much authority as Barry.

But if Julian was testifying based on Barry’s notes, wouldn’t Julian’s testimony have been inadmissable hearsay? No. Barry’s test results were records kept in the ordinary course of business. As such, they fell under the business records exception to the hearsay rule; one of the many hearsay exceptions. As long as Julian authenticated the notes, he could have testified about them.

But what about Coolidge’s ability to cross-examine Barry, the person who performed the tests? Wouldn’t having Julian testify instead of Barry deny Coolidge his right of confrontation?

Not according to the case law.

In Crawford v. Washington https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/541/36/, the U.S. Supreme Court held that admitting out-of-court statements that fell under one of the hearsay exceptions violated the defendant’s right to confrontation, if the statements were “testimonial” in nature. If the statements were not testimonial, then standard hearsay rules would apply. If the statements were testimonial, then the Sixth Amendment superceded the hearsay rules and precluded admission.

The Crawford case also said that business records were not testimonial. So having Julian testify wouldn’t have violated Coolidge’s Sixth Amendment rights. Moreover, Coolidge’s attorney could cross-examine Julian as to the procedures that were performed, the test results, and Julian’s expert opinion as to what the business records meant. Coolidge would have been able to exercise his right of confrontation, so no harm.

Anyway, that’s what the case law holds. See how simple it is? Julian testifies and Coolidge is bound over.

Here’s the thing about all that case law, I think it’s wrong. I think its reasoning is flawed and it’s conclusion incorrect. Doesn’t matter. No matter how much I might not like it – and I don’t like it a lot – it’s still the law. And I can’t ignore the law no matter how much it would suit my needs.

And here’s the other thing about that case law; no matter how much it might have suited the show’s needs, The Flash can’t ignore it either.

Martha Thomases: The Wonder Woman Recognition

The Wonder Woman of my youth was a fairly ridiculous character, whose adventures included less fighting and more romantic entanglements, not only with Steve Trevor but also a merman and a bird boy. She was no more a feminist icon to me than Supergirl, Betty or Veronica, but then, I was a child and there was no feminist movement at my elementary school in Ohio for me to know.

I still loved her. I wanted to be able to fly by catching a wind current. I wanted to be able to make people tell me the truth, especially if I could tie them up, too. To be honest, I probably also wanted a merman for a boyfriend.

This is a long, roundabout way of saying that while Wonder Woman influenced my feminism (breathing influenced my feminism), she didn’t create it. I did not expect a movie about her, especially one from a major studio, to make much difference to me.

I was wrong.

All over the world, women went to see Wonder Woman and cried. These were tears of relief, of gratitude, that someone had finally put their hopes and fears and experiences onscreen, without the filter of a male gaze. We saw a woman who defined herself by her goals and her purpose, not her dress size or men’s approval.

Was the movie perfect? Of course not. I can pick nits with the best of them. Still, it was the most high-profile, big budget movie to show women doing heroic things that we have not seen women do in other high-profile, big budget movies. The director, Patty Jenkins, knows how women see the world, and what women think is heroic, and filmed accordingly.

I didn’t go to a women-only screening. They sounded like a lot of fun, but they sold out quickly and were not at a convenient time or location for me. Instead, I went to one of the hundreds of other available showings, with a group of friends of differing genders.

Wow, did I have a good time! I loved watching Diana grow up, mischievous and scrappy and eager to be alive. I loved seeing her fish-out-of-water reaction to man’s world, during which we saw both curiosity and determination on her face (and also, well, wonder). Gal Gadot captured more emotion in her face than any other actor in a superhero film, except, possibly, Mark Ruffalo.

Perhaps because I’ve been reading superhero comics with an appreciation for their socio-political subtexts, I did not cry when I saw Diana go into battle. I cheered. The only time I came close to tears was at the end, when a wall of photos of fallen soldiers reminded me of so many similar walls in New York after September 11.

However, as a straight cis white woman, I see more examples of people like myself in popular culture than anyone else besides straight cis white men. I appreciate how people who don’t fit the default assumptions could find themselves overcome by the recognition this film provides.

One way to tell how effective the movie was at reaching its target audience is by the reaction of those who felt threatened by the content. The Alamo Drafthouse, a small theater chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, decided to hold a few women-only screenings, one in each of their six theaters. They had done similar promotions in the past, such as veterans-only screenings and senior-only screenings.

For some reason, no one had any problems with those. But for Wonder Woman, the crybabies came out en masse. The whining from their butthurt was deafening. In my favorite example, one wrote to the mayor of Austin to protest this heinous discrimination. His reply is not only spot-on, but hilarious.

I hope Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot return for the sequel. I hope they find a way to bring back Etta Candy and Antiope. I hope they all go shopping together again. I would watch that movie.

Tweeks Discuss Wonder Woman

Warning Spoilers! It’s more than a review this week because we just have so much to say about Wonder Woman. Not only is it Tweeks Approved, but we had to reorder our Chrises.

Dennis O’Neil: The Sensation and Me

As I sit here, Wonder Woman is wowing ‘em about a mile away to the north, at the Palisades 21-Plex where you can see a movie (or 21 movies?) and then visit the

lots and lots of stores nearby in the five-floor mall and shop until your brain congeals. I guess that if I were a real comics geek I’d be there too because here we are, five days after the flick opened and I have not as yet seen it. Haven’t even seen a preview.

Shame?

Well, shame is too strong, especially since we plan to see it, and soon, especially if the guy who’s coming to fix the microwave arrives early enough for us to catch a showing. (“Our service provider will call at your home sometime between noon and infinity.”) We won’t have to grit our teeth and force ourselves into the theater, either. We want to see the movie.

A few reasons: We thought the WW sections of Superman vs Batman were much the best things about it (and if you want to say that I’m damning with faint praise I can’t stop you). Then there’s this: WW and I go way back. I can’t say that I was an avid WW fan when I was taking my first timid steps into comics at about age six, give or take. It’s possible, maybe even probable, that I saw one or two or a few because if it was a comic book, I wanted to read it. But WW didn’t have the staying power in my psyche of… oh, say Batman and Robin. She came and she went.

And I didn’t really meet her again until I was an editor at DC Comics and she was part of my work package. By then I knew that I didn’t much care for her, though I might not have been able to say why. And I fancied myself a feminist. So, weren’t the planets aligning? Wasn’t our girl due for a makeover? Off with the costume and the lasso and the bracelets and especially, ye gods, the invisible plane. Give her a chic jumpsuit. Have her learn martial arts. Make her hip and contemporary.

Ugh. What I didn’t realize, what I didn’t understand, in my male-who-thinks-he’s-a-feminist myopia, was that WW was a symbol of feminine empowerment, the only female character in comics who was the equal, in strength and prowess, of the numerous male heroes. To her female readers, she was unique and, arguably, important and I had dumped qualities that had shaped her identity and, while I was at it, a costume that served as an instantly recognizable icon. Mea culpa.

But my changes didn’t last long. WW reverted to her old self, survived and, if what I read is true, stars in the superhero movie we’ve all been waiting for.

Box Office Democracy: Baywatch

The best part of Baywatch was that everyone on screen seemed completely invested in making it a good movie.  It isn’t a good movie— it isn’t even particularly close to being a good movie— but the cast is willing to push as hard as they can to make it better.  Baywatch is elevated from the train wreck I’m sure it is on the page in to a simply bland, kind of mediocre, film.  Baywatch is a reasonably charming medley of punchless comedy, unintelligible story, and a generous amount of scantily clad pretty people.  It’s the kind of movie to see on an exceptionally hot day, or if your first choice movie is sold out and you’ve already put in so much effort to park at the mall.

I paid careful attention to the story in Baywatch and I’m still not entirely sure what was going on.  There’s Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra), a new-in-town rich person who has some kind of scheme to buy up a bunch of property and create some sort of massive private beach club.  She’s also a drug kingpin, but no one for the entire movie seems to care about the drugs at all so they end up being white crystalline breadcrumbs that just serve to tie things together.  Because of civic corruption/incompetence, the only people who can stop this nefarious scheme are the local lifeguards led by Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson) and joined by pretty boy newcomer Matt Brody (Zac Efron), attractive newbie Summer Quinn (Alexandra D’addario), attractive veteran CJ Parker (Kelly Rohrbach), attractive veteran with fewer lines Stephanie Holden (Ilfenesh Hadera), and not-so-attractive local wannabe Ronnie (Jon Bass).  They are an elite cadre of small town lifeguards who also excel in detective work and infiltration techniques.  They do an awful lot of meta-commentary on how insane it is that they all wear so many hats but it is never quite a substitute for having actual narrative justification.

I could forgive the flimsy plot if Baywatch was outrageously funny, but it just isn’t.  Most of the humor is Johnson dunking on Efron in some capacity or another and you’ve seen that relationship a million times, probably half a dozen times where the dunker was The Rock, and most of those times it was being done better.  There’s a fantastic sequence about someone getting their penis stuck in a wooden chair but you can probably get to most of that joke just from reading this sentence.  It’s not that I never laughed or that the charm of the cast was never strong enough to deliver some average material— but the stakes are higher now.  21 Jump Street was a legitimately hilarious movie adapted from a reasonably irrelevant old TV show and it came out five years ago.  You can’t do this much worse this much later and expect to get a pass.

One of the more fun moments in the 21 Jump Street movie is when Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise make cameos as their characters from the original series.  It’s a cute nod and a bit surprising, especially considering Depp’s latter-day star power, and then they move on to finishing up their movie.  They try to recreate this in Baywatch with David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson and fail on just about every level.  To start with, both characters have identically named analogues in the movie and they bring this up so the Mitch Buchannon has a mentor who is also named Mitch Buchannon, and our Mitch works with a CJ Parker and then at the end we’re introduced to former employee Casey Jean Parker.  I know we’re not supposed to be thinking too much about this movie but that’s bizarre enough to leap off the screen and smack you in the face.  They also take all of the surprise out of the cameos (including one that’s the closing joke of the movie) by giving both Hasselhoff and Anderson prominent billing in the opening credits.  Instead of being a cute surprise, it’s something you’re waiting for and trying to figure out during the slower moments.  If Johnny Depp can set aside his ego to do something cute, you would think Hasselhoff and Anderson could too.

Baywatch the movie ends up feeling an awful lot like Baywatch the TV show.  It’s a movie that doesn’t feel the need to hold itself to the same standard of production and narrative nuance because they have a bit of tawdry sex appeal and the charisma of The Rock.  There’s enough charm here to pull through the stuff that doesn’t work, but not quite enough to feel like a movie worth the price of a ticket.  Much like the original show, Baywatch is the perfect movie for a gap in a TV schedule or to randomly catch on a plane… but it isn’t quite ready for prime time.

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