Hey girl we’ve got to get out of this place, there’s got to be something better than this
I need you, but I hate to see you this way. If I were Superman then we’d fly away.
I’d really like to change the world and save it from the mess it’s in,
I’m too weak, I’m so thin, I’d like to fly but I can’t even swim
Ray Davies, (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman
Several years ago, I read a poll that asked if we could have any one superpower, which one would we have? Unsurprisingly, the ability to fly won hands down.
Never mind the “fact” that super-speed would be the most powerful super-power. Think about it. If we could travel as fast as The Flash, we could prevent a lot of bad stuff from happening, put out fires, save kittens from trees, and pretty much cover the entire second reel of Superman – The Movie. But, no, we want to fly!
Me, too.
In certain circles, such as ComicMix staff meetings, it is well-known that I do not like to fly in airplanes out of airports. It’s not that I don’t like to fly per se – I’ve jumped out of airplanes for sport until my daughter and my chiropractor and my surgeon told me to stop. I just don’t like being treated like shit, and I’ve already had my share of physical encounters with the Chicago police, thank you (there are better ways to fly united than on United). But the fantasy of flying sans aircraft remains compelling.
I don’t know if flying is the most popular ability given to superheroes. It appears it is, particularly if your character is only able to leap tall buildings in a single bound – like the Hulk does. Or have a strange hammer that, if you hold onto it really, really tight, will allow you to fly without wrenching your god-like arm out of your god-like shoulder socket.
It’s always silly to compare superhero comics to “real” life, even if there truly was such a thing. Besides, superheroes are escapist fantasy, so no matter how often Spider-Man punches out Doctor Octopus while enduring a very bad cold, let’s not confuse the two… except, of course, for the purposes of the remainder of this column.
Flying would be a hazard to air traffic. If everybody could fly – and this also applies to those flying cars Julius Schwartz promised us 60 years ago – rush hour would be indistinguishable from a total eclipse of the sun. I don’t think we’d be able to breathe while flying. I know this wouldn’t bother Clark Kent, but the rest of us weren’t born on a doomed planet only to come to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men… well, Clark… and Kara and Krypto and Beppo the Super-Monkey and the infinite number of Phantom Zone denizens, extant and yet to come.
I have a hard time with the floating-in-the-air thing. Sure, it’s cool and it allows for remarkably dramatic poses in all relevant media, but if it’s part of the ability to fly, I don’t understand how that can be so. Well, except for the “because the writer says so” axiom, which always trumps logic in both storytelling and in mathematics. Our pal, fellow ComicMix columnist and genuine comics legend Denny O’Neil, in his guise as a comics editor, used to advise writers “it might be phony science, but it’s our phony science.”
And what happens if said flying superhero (or dog, or monkey, or villain) gets the poo beaten out of him (or her, or it) while airborne? This happens all the time, at least in comics. Said flying being instantly becomes a meteor ready to create a crater the size of Nebraska or open a fault line or a tsunami that likely will be a hazard to nuclear power plants and fish.
Last week I read X-Men Gold #1 and, controversy aside which I won’t be getting into as you have gone above and beyond to address the issue properly and professionally, it really invoked a lot of strong feelings in me. Because of that, I’d like to talk about the X-Men and what they mean to me.
I first discovered X-Men on television when I was in elementary school. I remember watching the first episode and immediately being sucked in. To this day, the Sentinels are still menacing to me and I’ll always have a fondness for Jubilee, Rogue and Storm. I remember the time between Saturday morning after the episode finished to the next Saturday felt like an eternity. I was a shy kid who knew he was queer, but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t have a lot of friends, didn’t enjoy sports and couldn’t really connect to other kids on a lot of things, but one thing I could talk to the other kids at lunch in the cafeteria was about cartoons like X-Men. That meant a lot to me.
I was lucky to have parents that did well enough to get a lot of those action figures. It was very confusing to me, and I’m sure my parents as well, how they had action figures based on the cartoon as well as ones based on the comics. Why did my Storm action figure have a black costume when it was white on the show? I remember some of the times very clearly of being at Toys R Us in Levittown, NY with my parents specifically wanting X-Men action figures. It’s a DSW Shoes now. I really pushing hard for the yellow and blue costume Wolverine and how exciting that was for me to get it. Or how it took my mom more than one attempt to get a Phoenix action figure for me.
My parents also got me the VHS of the pilot that never took off, Pryde of the X-Men. I watched it over and over again. I once used all my quarters allotted to me to beat the X-Men video game based on that unsold pilot at the arcade in Bayville, NY. I’d got to beat it again in Walt Disney World a decade before Disney bought Marvel;the only character that worked was Dazzler. I’ve been obsessed with Dazzler ever since. I also had played that Sega Genesis X-Men game where it almost all takes place in the Danger Room – it was definitely harder than it needed to be. I was even in an AOL chatroom X-Men role playing game for a bit. I played Cyclops.
The first X-Men movie came out while I was in high school and watched some of the resulting X-Men Evolution cartoon. I saw that first X-Men movie opening weekend, and have seen each X-Men movie opening weekend ever since. College brought about a lot of nostalgia for the 90s animated series. Covered in scorpions was a running gag. A guy I met while in college, Jake, was the first openly gay X-Men fan I befriended. It was when Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon and John Cassiday was coming out. I’d pick him up and we’d go to Fourth World Comics, our local comic shop. We’d go back, read it in silence, then discuss. We also went together to pick up X-Men Legends 2 the day it came out and played it as late as we could into the night.
Since then I’ve befriended people in comics, other LGBT fans of the X-Men, and have had all sorts of long philosophical and meaningful conversations about these comics. I’ve waited on long lines to get signatures at cons from people like Chris Claremont, Louise and Walter Simonson, Mike and Laura Allred, Peter David, John Cassiday, and Frank Quitely because of the work they did in the world of X-Men and have gotten original comic pages, con sketches and commissions of the X-Men.
I’m telling you all of this not to brag or claim that I’m a bigger fan than anyone else because it’s honestly no astonishing feat. I’m saying this to let you know how much the X-Men has meant to me over the years, how it’s impacted my life for the better, made me more social, and is one of the biggest reasons I’m writing about comics at all. I’m also telling you this because I read X-Men Gold #1 and it left me so frustrated I that I had to write this.
I think it’s fair to say that as an X-Men comics reader I’m within your target demographic and would take that one step further and say I’m likely be perceived as low hanging fruit. I have to be completely honest and say that there is something wrong here with this book. It’s not the writing, and controversy aside it’s not the artwork. It’s not even the editing. Marvel put together an impressive team to work on this book, and it shows. The problem I’m talking about runs deeper and doesn’t necessarily have an easy fix.
The weight of the X-Men falls heavy on this book. Because of the decades and decades of continuity, this debut issue spends so much time trying to explain what happened before this started that it’s basically all we get. We get reference after reference, explanation after explanation, and we are left with little story. And despite all of the references and explanations we still get six full pages at the end of the comic to further explain everything leading up to this issue. If you need six pages at the end of your comic to explain your comic then we have a problem. A big problem.
Writer Marc Guggenheim talks in his letter at the end of the issue about how this is going to be more of a throwback to an older time in X-Men history when it was fresh and new. This is also a problem. Nostalgia has been driving these books for a long time and it has to stop. It needs to stop or you’re condemning the X brand to never grow its audience.
I’m 31 years old and the X-Men has been a part of my life for well over two decades. I for one am absolutely sick to death of nostalgia, and I’m not the only one. I fell in love with X-Men when I saw the animated episode Night of the Sentinels Part 1 because it was inviting, explained enough of what was happening so I could follow it, and told an engaging story. Had that cartoon been a bunch of characters making references to things they did 30 years previous and took so long to set everything up that the first episode ended a few seconds after something started to move the plot forward, I might not be the X-Men fan I am now. Nostalgia has its place, but it is not why we fall in love with stories and it is certainly not what will grow an audience.
I certainly do not mean to diminish the works of everyone at the company. Marc Guggenheim is a wonderful writer whom I’m embarrassingly not as familiar with as I should be and will be rectifying that in the coming weeks. Daniel Ketchum is a great editor who took the time to chat with me after a panel at NYCC a couple of years back encouraging me to keep giving the Iceman storyline a chance and it’s really paying off now as I’m most excited for Sina Grace’s Iceman #1. Jay Leisten is an incredible inker whose work I first got into with Peter David’s run on X-Factor that is one of my favorite chapters in mutant history. Cory Petit is great letterer and a friend. Axel Alonso with Peter Milligan and Mike Allred put together what is easily to me one of the best things that ever happened to the X franchise with their run on X-Force/X-Statix.
These are amazing people doing spectacular things, and I honestly believe they are doing the best they can with what they have to work with.
As a long time fan I want to tell you that I acknowledge that X-Men has become too old, too bloated, and is crippling itself under its own weight in continuity. As a long time fan I want to tell you that it’s okay to let it loose, cut it free from its continuity and start fresh. It’s unsustainable how it is right now. Let it have that new fresh start it needs to survive.
I felt a certain magic when I first picked up X-Force/X-Statix, Grant Morrison‘s New X-Men,Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, Peter David’s X-Factor, and Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. I want to feel that magic again in an X book, not because they’re going back to what works, but because they’re trying something new and daring and they aren’t getting caught in the current of continuity and dragged under. I didn’t feel that magic in X-Men Gold #1.
That’s not to say it won’t ever come. I’m picking up issue 2. I’m going to be picking up the rest of the X books coming out in this new wave and I’ll see what sticks. However, the flagship title of a franchise relaunch should be blowing a reader away, and that wasn’t the case here; at least for me. Maybe I’m wrong and I’m the odd man out in this situation. Maybe my love of the franchise has set the bar unreasonably high and that’s not fair of me.
I just want the X-Men to continue to succeed well into the future. I want the queer kids in school like me who maybe didn’t understand they are queer and what it is to have a team of heroes to look up to, because they need a team of them. They need to see a world where there are a lot of people like themselves and they can work together and be special no matter how the rest of the world perceives them. They need to see a world where these characters who sometimes have vastly different philosophies and strategies on how to keep themselves safe can come together to protect each other because taking care of each other is most important thing. They need Northstar, Iceman, Rictor, Shatterstar, Mystique, Destiny, Karma, and more.
I know this was long, yet I have so much more I could say. Please don’t let the X-Men crush themselves under their own weight. I’m still going to be a fan, and I’ll keep giving these books a shot over and over again, but I’d love to have some of that magic back.
“This is my country, Land of my birth, This is my country, Grandest on Earth
“This is my country, Land of my choice, This is my country, Hear my proud voice.
“I pledge thee my allegiance, America the bold, For this is my country, To have and to hold”
This Is My Country (1940), Dan Raye – Lyrics, Al Jacobs – Music
Wow!
The sixth season of Homeland ended last night with an absolutely bang-up twisting cliffhanger and a final shot of Carrie staring at the Capitol building, mirroring the opening montage of earlier seasons that ended with Nicholas Brody staring at the White House.
Showtime did not give Homeland much publicity this year; the network instead focused on Billions – which stars Damien Lewis, who played the conflicted, and ultimately very lost, Sgt. Nicholas Brody. But after six years Homeland continues to stay relevant; this season it delivered hard punches to topical issues, with brilliant extrapolation of real world news stories and events by the producers and writers. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, so I won’t go into details except to say that this year’s story arc revolved around a President-Elect whose distrust of the nation’s intelligence services leads her to distrust the entire American political system – as Dar Adal tells Saul Berenson, “There’s something distinctly un-American about her” – and the manipulation of not just the public but the government itself through fake news, deep state conspiracy theorists, and paranoia.
There has been much ado about “diversity in comics” lately. Almost at the same time the Marvel Retailer Summit and Senior Vice-President David Gabriel made waves – tsunamis – over “female superheroes” (please read Mike Gold’s ComicMix column here), Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool posted this . I think the former is basically a tempest in a teapot and is really about Marvel sales – Saturday’s New York Times (April 7) had an article by George Gene Gustins in its business section – “Marvel Comics May Have Slumping Sales, But Don’t Blame Its Diverse Heroes” which takes a closer look at what’s going on in the Bullpen:
“While ‘Marvel Blames Diversity’ makes for a juicy headline, the issue is more nuanced.
“As Brian Hibbs, the owner of the two Comix Experience stores in San Francisco, said in an interview, Marvel has recently been experiencing a “massive sales slump” because of more basic factors: the frequent restarting of series with new No. 1 issues; fan fatigue over storylines that promise changes but fail to deliver; and the introduction of a deluge of new series. There is also the expense of comic collecting.
“This month, for instance, Marvel began rolling out a revamped lineup of X-Men titles, which will result in seven new series – two of which will publish twice a month, the other five monthly. That’s a lot of comic books, and they run an average of $3.99 each.
“The first issues will undoubtedly sell well thanks to the multiple covers and the collector’s tendency to buy them all. But subsequent issues are expected to follow the industry pattern of lower sales over time.
“’Marvel doesn’t have “more than one or two comics selling 60,000 or 70,000 copies,’ Mr. Hibbs said, adding that this trend has virtually nothing to do with ‘this diversity canard.’”
However, the later article is about anti-Semitism and anti-Christian (and by inference, anti-any religion except Islam) sentiments hidden as “Easter eggs” in the first issue of X-Men Gold by its artist, Ardian Syaf, Author G. Willow Gordon, (Marvel’s Ms. Marvel, Vertigo’s Cairo and Air, and the novel Alif the Unseen, along with other works) addressed Mr. Syaf and the controversy on her blog site (Here is What Quran 5:51 Actually Says).
All I can say is this:
If that’s truly how you feel, Mr. Syaf, then why do you work in an industry whose roots are firmly established in Judeo-Christian beliefs and mythology? Do you know that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were born Stanley Leiber and Jacob Kurtzberg? That Superman was created by two kids named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster? That the very first “comic book” was the brainchild of two men named Max Gaines (nee Max Ginzberg) and Harry L. Wildenberg?
I believe that the upswing in overt and covert bigotry and intolerance in this country is directly related to the man who sits in the Oval Office at present. A man who cries about the women and babies killed in Syria, but won’t lift his ban on Syrian refugees. A man who decries the use of sarin gas – a weapon of mass destruction – but told Chris Matthews during the campaign, “Why do we have nukes if we’re not going to use them?”
I recently covered a mini-trend of fascinating and well-researched books lovingly that looked back at goofy super-heroes here. Now that we’re on the cusp of the debut of one of these books, Hero-A-Go-Go, it’s time to take a deeper dive. I cornered author Michael Eury and asked all those questions that I’ve been dying to ask him:
Ed Catto: You reminisce about Jill St. John’s role in the debut episode of the 60s Batman TV series. Isn’t this really the start of the Camp Age?
Michael Eury: Well, as I wrote in my introduction: “No, Batman did not create the camp movement of the Sixties. Yet Batman was its zenith, its very poster child. And from my perspective, it was a wonderful way to go-go.” I can’t pinpoint an exact beginning of the Sixties camp age (I doubt there was a single moment, but instead a growth, an evolution)… but as your question suggests, the premiere of Batman was its most visible moment.
EC: You’ve included some wonderful interviews in Hero-A-Go-Go. How did you decide whom to pursue?
ME: I wanted to add some celebrities to the mix for their behind-the-scenes insights, then targeted some folks whose work was fundamental to the Camp Age but whose stories are not as visible as, say, Adam West’s Batman anecdotes.
I loved the album Jan and Dean Meet Batman when I was a kid, and spoke with Dean Torrence for a couple of wonderful hours. Very nice guy and an incredibly frank interview.
I was also determined to give Bob Holiday, the Superman of Broadway, his due, and he was genuinely moved by my interest. Another great interview! Sadly, he passed away while the book was going to press, so he didn’t live to see this, his last interview, in print.
There are a lot of other interviews, including some comics artists, throughout the book. They add a valuable insider’s perspective to my essays.
EC: As a kid, I remember being so confused by Dell’s Dracula. Now, I love him and all the Dell monster heroes. What was the deal with these guys?
ME: Dell’s monster-heroes (Dracula, Frankenstein, and Werewolf) became my sleeper favorite from my Hero-A-Go-Go research (which consisted of roughly a year of reading campy comic books and watching tons of Sixties’ cartoons and TV shows – in other words, reliving my childhood).
They were, at heart, a great idea: merge two things kids love, monsters and superheroes, into one concept. Essentially, Dell’s Dracula was Batman-meets-Dracula, the other titles being Superman-meets-Frankenstein and James Bond-meets-the Wolf Man.
Unfortunately, the comics themselves were haphazardly produced at a breakneck pace, and even the writer and artist, D.J. Arneson and Tony Tallarico, shrug off the final results.
EC: Being a marketer, I was especially interested to reach about the licensing deal for Batman Milk. In my hometown (Auburn NY) we always asked mom to get the Hogan-Souhan All Star Milk cartons featuring Superman! Was there a lot Superman and Batman milk out there?
ME: Definitely a lot more Batman than Superman, but both were represented.
The Batman All Star Dairy essay is one of my favorites in the book, not simply because it’s a story from my childhood, but because it tells a tale of the universal small American town.
EC: Your section on super hero paperbacks was a lot of fun. Why do you think there were so many and which one is your favorite?
ME: Remembering that kids were only half of the camp movement – with adults being the other – these paperbacks were an effort to get superheroes into the hands of readers older than the standard comic-book demographic.
My favorite? It’s a tie between the first Signet Batman volume and Bill Adler’s Funniest Fan Letters to Batman.
EC: Archie Comics is experimenting with several reboots of their classic characters, in both comics and on TV. In Hero-A-Go-Go, you discuss some of the 60s Archie reboots. What were they like?
ME: As I note in the book, Archie Comics as a publisher has never been shy about capitalizing on current trends. During the Camp Age, there was an Archie for everyone – the standard teen fare, an Archie for superhero fans (Pureheart the Powerful), an Archie for spy fans (The Man from R.I.V.E.R.D.A.L.E.), and an Archie for Monkees fans (the Archies). Funny how a small community like Riverdale attracted so many supervillains back then…
EC: I recently picked up an old copy of Charlton’s Go-Go (complete with Miss Bikini Luv and some Jim Aparo artwork) and it was bats*t crazy fun. Can you tell us more about that series?
ME: It was a weird but wild book, editor Dick Giordano’s MAD-meets-Tiger Beat hybrid. Charlton was publishing music fan magazines back then and had access to teen heartthrob pinups and such, and those shared pages in Go-Go with parodies of TV shows, superheroes, and fairy tales, in comics form.
Jim Aparo was the break-out star from Go-Go – and who’d have thought he was such an amazing humor cartoonist? His Miss Bikini Luv work was fabulous!
EC: You know I’m a big Wally Wood fan, and in this book, you have fascinating sections on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Miracles, Inc. and more. What do you think of those properties and Wood’s 60s contributions?
ME: Well, if anyone could’ve elevated the so-called lowbrow camp movement to a highbrow art form, it was Wally Wood. He was just amazing.
I knew little of Miracles, Inc., Wood’s oddball superhero team spoof, before beginning my research. His first Miracles tale was short but sweet. Too bad he left the strip, as it floundered afterward.
EC: Your animated heroes section is very robust. Any surprises in your research?
ME: There was a lot of material in that section, wasn’t there? What a fantastic lineup of TV programming we had to choose from back then!
Most of the material I write about, I knew from my previous readings and studies, but I was surprised to discover from Ralph Bakshi the behind-the-scenes issues with Krantz Films’ Rocket Robin Hood. Also, before my research I didn’t know that the King Kong cartoon had two movie connections!
EC: Whose vinyl records are best to listen to when reading Hero-A-Go-Go: The Modniks or the Maniaks?
ME: Well, since they were both patterned after the Monkees, I’d say, listen to the source material! Actually, I did – through Hero-A-Go-Go, I developed a deeper appreciation for my two favorite bands from my childhood, the Cowsills and the Monkees. The Monkees, in particular, had a diverse range of music outside of the bubblegum pop hits that everyone remembers, and rediscovering them was a joy. Plus, I got their reunion CD, Good Times, and nearly played it to death!
* * *
Hero-A-Go-Go will be released April 19th by Twomorrows Publishing – look for it at your local comic shop or neighborhood bookstore! And remember, they can always order it for you. My bookstore gets books in for me so quickly –oftentimes the next day!
Oh, and by the way, our good pals over at the 13th Dimension are exploring 13 different sections of this book each Saturday too.
My Mary will sometimes pop into the office to chat a bit. If I’m just goofing off (a lot of my work day consists of goofing off), that’s fine but if I’m actually working she has to leave. She understands and doesn’t take offense; she can get the same way when she’s creating.
I don’t want anyone looking over my shoulder when I’m working, especially with the initial draft. I get self-conscious and everything freezes up and goes away. Oddly enough, Kim didn’t always understand that. It bothered her that there was a private place inside me to which she was not invited. She felt a couple should share everything and, for the most part, I agree – except when I’m writing.
I suppose that, with most couples that’s also true to some degree. Perhaps it’s even desirable that the person with whom you’ve spent a good long time can still surprise you, hopefully in positive ways. I once wrote a Wasteland story in which the husband challenges his wife when she claims she knows him completely. He suggests that he could, in fact, be the serial killer they’ve heard about. The claim that he could be eats away at his wife and, by the end of the story, she’s ready to leave him because she realized that the doubt she is feeling indicates she doesn’t really know her husband at all.
It is a big question. How much do we really know another person – even someone that we know intimately? We start off the relationship by being attracted to someone which may lead to falling into what we think of as love. I would suggest that, in fact, what we’re really falling in love with is our construct of the person. Someone we’ve invented that’s based on the other person but is as much or more really based on us as it is them. Hopefully, as time goes by, our perception deepens as we see more of the actual person and, again hopefully, fall into more of a true love.
That gets chancy. As you wind up really seeing more of the other person, you have to let them see more of the real you. Brrr! Pretty scary, boys and girls! It does necessarily involve opening up.
However, when you’re doing something creative – writing or art or what have you – the process can be very private. It’s a mysterious business to begin with; you don’t always know where the initial impulse comes from and you may not want to know. For a long time, I resisted any idea of going to a therapist because I felt that, if I knew more about my creative instinct, it would vanish. In reality, therapy turned out helping quite a bit. I understood why I did or thought some things and that understanding actually helped me creatively.
Still, I don’t want someone watching me create. I may need to dig around in parts of my psyche that can get a bit dark. (Those of you familiar with my work can probably appreciate that.) Nietzche said in Beyond Good and Evil: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Kim and I used to describe the creative process as bungee jumping into the abyss and pulling out something. Usually it’s squirming.
I don’t need observers when I do that.
I do wind up revealing aspects of myself in my writing; you have to. Every character you write must in some way be you. However, you’re in disguise; you can always claim a given aspect of a given character is that character and not you. Keep in mind, as I’ve warned some people in the past, that I may appear to be a nice guy but GrimJack comes from somewhere in me.
How do we earn new fans of comic books? Not comics characters, mind you. Long before he could recognize them immediately on a page, my son learned about the Avengers via movies, Batman via cartoon shows, and Spider-Man via his pajamas. As he and my younger son grow up, they will no doubt be immersed in comics culture. It helps when daddy is chained to his desktop computer and/or iPad Pro every day making his own comics, but I can easily imagine how their generation — with more content in more available mediums that I would have in my own childhood (which in itself was fairly diverse all things considered) — could lose comics in the shuffle so easily.
While he was joking, my good friend and comic retailer Shawn Hilton (of Comics Cubed in Kokomo, Indiana), was quick to make his request to save the industry at large. “Destroy all devices with “I” in the title, get rid of cell phones, and destroy the internet. Minecraft and YouTube have to be wiped out as well.”
He makes a point. The ubiquitous market of video games and streaming video compete with pulp and paper in the most unfair of fights. Find me a kid who chooses prose to pixels, and I’ll show you a diamond in the rough. I’m not here to pat myself on the back. I personally didn’t find a love of comics specifically until I was in middle school, and even then my initial liking of them was tied specifically in with wanting to have more in common with my-soon-to-be brother-from-another-mother, Unshaven Comics’ own Matt Wright.
Another friend of mine, mother to an bright and amazing nine-year old girl, was quick to denote the barrier to entry in the subculture. When I asked her if she ever took her child to the local comic shop, her reply broke my heart.
“We have. She always grabs a few at Free Comic Book Day, and she purchased a Donald Duck comic once. The store intimidates her though, even though she knows on of the staff (our next-door neighbor and friend works there one night a week to pay for his books). Dan Mishkin belongs to our synagogue as well, and she enjoyed a comic book workshop he taught recently, and she’s “writing” her own book now too, but she doesn’t like the comic shop. She feels more comfortable at a traditional bookstore. Comic shops are not generally welcoming places for nine-year old girls.”
Let’s dissect that a bit. Her daughter is one of the good eggs, the kind we strive to hold amongst our ranks. The lure of Free Comic Book Day clearly has worked a bit. The local community hosting a comic book workshop helped too. But twice in her response my friend is clear: “the store intimidates her.”
In the war to win the hearts and minds of the next generation of comic book fans, I am of the opinion that it will begin and end with the local comic shop. While Shawn may do battle with smartphones, tablets, and YouTube, I am apt to defend those distractions to the death. It can never be us vs. them. There is room for both electronic and paper entertainment. Marvel, DC, and the industry writ-large is holding up their end of the bargain — saturating the market with high quality adapted works for TV, movies, and video games. They’re introducing the next generation to their characters and storylines right where that next generation is looking. The local comic shops must find the way to build the bridge from those screens to their doors.
I should note that the publishers bear the burden of offering comics that keeps kids coming back. I freely admit I got event-comic’ed to death. The continual need to collect books I didn’t want to ensure I got the whole story felt (and was) a cheap ploy to ply my money from my hands. The tail wagged the dog too much, and I was forced out of weekly books — opting instead to seek more backing of Kickstarters and artist alleys at comic conventions to satiate my need for sequential art. The devil is always in the details.
I know that without my own hometown always have a comic shop nearby, I would have never found myself rifling through a long box for a back issue. Without a (mostly) friendly staff there to hold my books weekly, make excellent suggestions and jabber with me when I wanted to vent, I’d never have become a subscriber. To save printed comics, we must save small businesses in our communities. In turn, those businesses must do what they can to attract all manners of customers and serve them. I don’t profess to know that specific secret mind you; it’s why Matt and I turned down the chance to own our own comic shop about a year ago.
Inevitably, I’ve ended up as a snake eating its own tail here. The comic shops must be all-inclusive. The publishers must produce meaningful work at an affordable price. Kids have to see the value in the printed comic being physically in their possession over dropping bitcoins into Candy Crush. Inevitably many comic shops wind up catering to the older generations with more disposable income and they don’t care about kids coming in for some all-ages books. The publishers produce the cash-grab-friendly crossover event comics because time-and-again it lands them predictable revenue in an ever-growing marketplace with hot competition. And the kids are lured away by Minecraft. Ce la vie.
But I remain a vigilant optimist. The next generation of comic book fans are out there. The only way we’ll earn their fandom is to do the work to earn it.
So… what have you done to keep our medium alive today?
Between the Law & Orderfranchise, the Chicago franchise, and the ill-conceived, even ill-advised, attempt to revive Dragnet without Jack Webb, Dick Wolf may be responsible for more hours of television that I haven’t watched than Susan Lucci. I know he’s created and produced some of the most popular shows on TV, but I think his collected works are oeuvre-rated. So when I watched the first episode of his new show, Chicago Justice, I wasn’t expecting much. But even I wasn’t expecting so little.
First, there was the problem that the first episode of Chicago Justice was the third part of a three-part cross-over event that started in Chicago Fire and continued in Chicago P.D., neither of which I had watched.Fortunately, television still does something comic books seem unwilling to do nowadays, give recaps. So I was able to pick up the story’s threads as easily as a seamstress with agile fingers.
Someone set fire to a warehouse that was being used for a rave. Thirty-nine kids died and dozens more were injured. In Chicago Fire, they put out the fire. In Chicago P.D. they tracked down the arsonist/mass murderer, Dyan Oats.
One of the main officers on the case was Alvin Olinsky. Not surprising, Olinsky is one of the main characters on Chicago P.D. What was surprising is that the Chicago P.D. allowed Olinksy anywhere near the case.
See, Olinsky’s daughter was one of the victims who died in the fire. I don’t care what kind of “I deserve justice” heartstrings Olinsky pulled, the Chicago P.D. would never let an officer who was so emotionally involved in such a high-profile case be personally involved in the investigation. They have rules about that sort of thing. But this is Dick Wolf television so excess drama co-opting express police procedure is part of the show’s procedure.
Finally in Chicago Fire, Oates stood trial. Which is where we come in.
As is usual in a Dick Wolf show, things didn’t go well for the prosecutor. Assistant District Attorney Peter Stone had an eyewitness who saw Oates start the fire. But her eyes were damaged in the fire so she was now blind. She couldn’t see Oats to pick him out in a line-up or to identify him in court.
Still, she could, and did, describe his height, eye color and hair color to the jury. And she described the brown cargo coat with the distinctive shoulder patch he was wearing and the even more distinctive silver skull ring he was wearing — both of which Oates was still wearing when he was arrested and were exhibits in the trial.
Pretty damning stuff, right?
But defense counsel pointed out that at the rave she had consumed two whole beers and a half tab of Ecstasy. And the rave had loud music and flashing strobe lights to distract her. So, naturally, she couldn’t be a reliable witness, now could she?
Well, not in a TV show, anyway. Honestly, eyewitnesses are discredited so easily in TV shows, I’m surprised that TV DAs ever bothered to prosecute cases with eyewitnesses in them.
Stone also had a confession mentioned in a police report, but he had problems believing it. The two officers who included the confession in their police report were series regulars, the aforementioned Olinsky and Hank Voight. So they were the officers the viewers have watched over the years and formed a bond with. Officers the viewers are supposed to trust. Stone, too. But Stone didn’t buy it.
Stone thought Oates never confessed and that Olinsky and Voight added a nonexistent confession to buttress the case. (Although I didn’t see the episode of Chicago P.D. where the arrest and confession allegedly happened, I got the impression from the episode of Chicago Justice I did see that the confession was bogus. So much for that whole officers the viewers can trust thing.) Stone was hoping some other police officer — any other police officer — could come in and corroborate the confession. When no other police officer corroborated it, Stone didn’t even bother to oppose the defense motion to suppress the statement. So out it went.
Stone had physical evidence. Voight testified that he found metal wedges in Oates’s apartment which matched exactly — as in same dimensions, same metal, and same manufacturer exactly — the metal wedges the arsonist used to wedge the doors of the warehouse shut so no one could escape. But defense counsel was able to discredit Voight by asking him about the confession mentioned in Voight’s police report. “It’s curious, don’t you think, that the People haven’t introduced that statement into evidence?”
ADA Stone quite correctly objected to this question. The judge quite incorrectly overruled his objection. So defense counsel got to ask the detective why the jury should trust the detective, when the prosecution didn’t even trust him.
Bunk. That question would never have been allowed in an actual trial, you know one operating under the Rules of Evidence and not under the need to go into commercial break on a strong story beat.
The same judge presiding over the trial also presided over the suppression motion. She knew that she had suppressed the statement, so it couldn’t have been introduced into evidence. I don’t know of any judge who would allow a defense inquiry into why a suppressed confession wasn’t introduced into the trial. And in my many years of practice, I knew many, many judges.
Now that’s a lot of legal poppycock for one story, but here’s the thing. I’m only just getting started. I’m almost 1,000 words in and I haven’t even gotten to the biggest problems I had with this episode of Chicago Justice.
Unfortunately, while I’m just getting started, I’m also finished. If I go on any longer this week, the column will take up more band width than the horn section at fat camp. So come back next time when I finish up with the first episode of Chicago Justice. It’s where we’ll get into things so outrageous that you won’t believe it until you see it. Hell, I saw it, and I don’t believe it.
Vivek Tiwary has been my friend for more than 15 years. We met through mutual friends, and bonded initially over rock’n’roll and cancer. Immediately, I thought he was one of the coolest people I’d ever met. These are some of the things Vivek has done: Broadway producer (of A Raisin in the Sun, American Idiot, among others), a tech entrepreneur who used his music industry chops to help talent deal with the business, and co-founder of an amazing non-profit that, among other things, helped soothe my husband as he was dying.
You can imagine my surprise when I found out that he is also a huge comic book nerd.
We don’t have quite the same roots – he’s a Marvel fan, I’m a DC girl – but we bonded over our love of the form. In fact, when he was having trouble finding a way to get a movie made about Brian Epstein, I convinced him to adapt his screenplay to a graphic novel script. The resulting book, The Fifth Beatle, won tons of awards and sold a gazillion copies, and will soon be on your TV.
Thus, I have tried to take credit for his success, including the things he did before we met, and his fabulous wife and his adorable children.
Recently, Vivek wrote a story for IDW’s Star Trek: Waypoint. This seemed like as good an excuse as any to talk to him about what he’s working on these days.
MT: I read your Star Trek story. It’s so different from The Fifth Beatle!
VT: I guess it is.
MT: The Beatles and Star Trek are, pretty much, the Sixties.
VT: I suppose so. I was born in 1973. To me, these are just two things that I’m passionate about. I don’t know that there is any pop culture connection between the two tied to why I like them. I’m a sci-fi kid and I’m a music kid. As you probably saw from reading the story, while it is a Star Trek story, really, at heart, it’s a boy-and-his dog story. As a writer, I lean towards those kind of human interest stories. It’s a story about loyalty and childhood dreams. It’s about how that child learns and carries those lessons throughout his life and applies those to leadership.
MT: I’m not familiar with Star Trek: Enterprise, although I love Scott Bakula. Is there time travel?
VT: There is. The last season of Enterprise revolves around what they call the Temporal Cold War. That stuff at the end is all very squarely part of the Enterprise last season continuity.
MT: Is the dog in that?
VT: Oh, yes. So, Porthos, Captain Archer’s dog, is a main character in the entire series. I may be biased because I am a fan and I am a bit of a Trekkie myself, but I believe it’s not just me saying he’s a beloved figure in the Star Trek universe in general. When I posted that I had done a Star Trek story that was, in a lot of ways a Porthos story, there were a lot of fans who were excited. A lot of people said, “Oh, does he get to have a piece of cheese?” There’s an on-going story where Admiral Archer gives him cheese, but it does a bad number on his digestive system. There’s a scene where Archer, in one of the episodes, goes away on a mission and is worried he’s not going to come back. He tells one of the crew members, “Look after Porthos. Give him a piece of cheese for me.” Even in the first Star Trek reboot that J. J. Abrams did, when Chris Pines’ Captain Kirk meets Simon Pegg’s Montgomery Scott, Scott had been doing early work on the transport. Scotty says “So, I tested it out on Admiral Archer’s prized beagle.”
And Kirk, “Wait, I know that dog!”
MT: Is Porthos related to the dog in your story?
VT: I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead. I would doubt it. They’re both beagles, obviously. It’s possible, I suppose, that the Archer family keeps breeding beagles such that maybe Porthos is a descendant of Maska. Certainly he’s a spiritual descendant. To answer your question in geeky Star Trek speak, there is no continuity to suggest that they would be related. In fact, I could claim to have created Maska. He doesn’t appear anywhere else. One of the things I’m most proud of is that the Star Trek story is the first time a Star Trek: Enterprise has been written in a comic. I have the honor of saying I wrote the first. We’ll see what other comic writers working in that universe decide to do with Masca.
MT: Do you have dogs?
VT: I most certainly do!
MT: I noticed the dedication. I wondered if they were current dogs.
VT: Well noted! Laika is the first animal in space, and Sukhi Sioux is my pet papillon, It’s dedicated to a space dog and a dog that is close to my heart who is a fearless adventurer in her own right.
MT: What else are you working on in comics? In your life?
VT: In comics, I’m at the early scripting stages of my follow-up to The Fifth Beatle. The tentative title is A Mess of Blues: Colonel Parker and the Un-Making of Elvis Presley. Those readers who read The Fifth Beatle have had a taste of how I feel about Colonel Parker. I respect what he accomplished but I don’t respect him much as a human being. This book will continue that overall feeling about Parker, but I believe that there’s no such thing as ultimate evil or ultimate good, so one of the challenges for me is doing the research and finding the human side. While he exists in the same world of artist management, these unsung characters who are the architects of pop culture history behind the scene, he and Brian are polar opposites.
MT: Do you have an artist?
VT: There are a number of artists I’m talking to. We don’t have that nailed down. I’m doing that in tandem, working on the script while I talk to artists. I suspect I’ll be able to announce that before the script is done. The Colonel Parker story, to my mind, has three distinct elements. He was born in the Netherlands. His real name was Andreas van Kujik. He fled the Netherlands when he was a young man for shady reasons that aren’t entirely clear. He may have murdered someone. He had to flee the country. He stowed away to make it to America. He arrived illegally. He gave himself the name, “Tom Parker,” partially because it’s a generic name. He joined the carnival in large part because he loved it. He was a carny, a huckster. But also, in the American carnival, everybody has something shady in his past. It was a way to protect himself. What he should have been doing in the carnival was laying low, but his ambition, the chips on his shoulder, he couldn’t do that. He had to become an impresario. In those days, carnivals were very tied to fairs and country music. Which is how he found himself intersecting with Elvis. There’s no question that his carnival marketing skills helped him market Elvis as not just a country star but as a heartthrob and pop culture phenomenon. There’s no question that Parker was in large part responsible for the superstar that Elvis became. Parker also always treated Elvis like an “attraction.” Those are his words, not mine. Elvis fans argue that it is because of that attitude that Elvis never became the artist he should have become.
In Parker’s later years, he prevented Elvis from ever touring outside of the United States. The reason for that is because Parker wasn’t a U.S. citizen and Parker might have murdered someone. He couldn’t leave the country because if he did, he might not be able to come back. Parker didn’t like the idea of Elvis touring without him. There are all sorts of other crazy things that all tie back to Parker being this nomad. For example, at the very height of his career, Elvis was the largest single individual tax payer in the country. Elvis just paid his taxes. What he should have done, like every human being has done, you hire a smart accountant so that you pay as little tax as possible while being legal. Elvis just paid. There were business managers and bankers saying, “Parker, why don’t you have people going through his taxes? Why don’t you set up tax shelters?” Part of the reason was that he didn’t want the authorities looking into Elvis because he didn’t want the authorities looking into him. If you follow him to the end of his days, you find out that it did come out, and he ended up with all these lawsuits.
MT: He wouldn’t let Elvis go on tour without him?
VT: That’s exactly right. It wasn’t unusual for artists’ managers to go on tour whenever they could, but it was incredibly unusual for it to never happen. Brian Epstein went wherever the Beatles went as much as he could. He wasn’t at every single date. When it’s not possible, you let the tour manager handle it. That’s why you have tour managers.
Parker had these three distinct periods of his life. He had life in the Netherlands, which in a lot of ways is a noir murder mystery. He had his early Dust Bowl carnival days and the discovery of Elvis, which is real Americana. Then you have latter-day Elvis, when Elvis is a huge superstar. That’s a downward spiral of Elvis and Parker. That’s Vegas and Seventies and pop culture. So there are three distinct parts of the graphic novel. The plan is that it will be serialized in a way that The Fifth Beatle wasn’t. Whether this means several issues or three issues or something else, we don’t know yet.
MT: Speaking as a consumer, I’d prefer the whole book at once.
VT: I hear you, but for my fans, I think that would take too long. My instinct now is that it would be three parts. I’m also toying with the idea that maybe it’s three artists. The styles can be different.
MT: I’m sorry Ralph Steadman isn’t around to do the third part.
VT: I’m happy to say that through the success of The Fifth Beatle, I’ve gotten to know some amazing artists who are interested in working with me, but the best artists are busy. It’s easier to get wonderful, in-demand artists to do 30 pages or 40 pages than to ask them to do 120 pages.
MT: What else are you working on?
VT: While I’m working on the Parker book, who I’d like to do is do more of these one-shots, these short stories. I’ll do a Star Trek story, I’ll do a Marvel story, I’ll do a DC story. I want to work on licensed properties in a one-off capacity. For many writers, it would be a dream to work on a high-profile character, to do be a series writer. The fanboy in me agrees that would be amazing. But that’s not what I aspire to do. I want people to do what you did, to look at the Waypoint story and say, “Wow, this is so different.” I want people to know that, yes, I adore the Beatles. If you look at my resume, I worked at Mercury records. I produced American Idiot and The Addams Family musical. I produced A Raisin in the Sun and cast a hip-hop guy, Sean Combs, in the lead. I’m a music guy. But I’m also a Star Trek guy. I want to do more of that. I’m talking to a few editors at a bunch of companies about doing one-off stories. I hope those stories will be a surprise, too. Part of the reason why I’m doing things like the Star Trek story is because, as you know, it took about ten years to get The Fifth Beatle published. It’s not going to take ten years for the Parker story, but I want there to be more for my fans.
MT: Most of us contain multitudes.
VT: If people pick up the Star Trek story, they’ll see that, yes, it’s Star Trek, but there’s not a lot of technology in it. The technology is there to set up the story, but it’s not really used to tell the story. My favorite science fiction is like that. The science fiction is the engine that sets up the story, but it’s the human story that I love. My story is about a boy and his dog, about friendship and loyalty. At the end of the day, that’s what the world needs now, to stick together. If you think the world is under siege, you need to get together with your friends who also care about the issue and speak up. And the Brian Epstein story was about a gay, Jewish kid from a random town who changed the world. With LGBTQ rights being attacked, the world needs to see if it wasn’t for a gay man, we might not have the Beatles. I hope you’ll see that these are human stories that are connected to global social and/or political issues. That’s the connective thread between all my work.
MT: Who would win in a fight, the Beatles or the crew of the Enterprise?
VT: That’s a good question. The Beatles were pacifists, so I would like to think that they would talk their ways out of the fight. I think there would have been Beatles fans in the crew. Brian Epstein said the Beatles music would stand the test of time. So the crew of the Enterprise would be Beatles fans. I think all you need is love and somehow the fight would have been averted and they would wind up hanging out. There would not have been a fight.
WonderCon is Anya’s favorite Con, so even though we were previously committed last weekend to attend the California State Thespian Festival, we made sure to at least stop by the Anaheim Convention Center on the way home.
We had to turn down a bunch of interviews and couldn’t even attend any panels (not even the Voltron one!), but we did, however get 3 hours on the floor before closing. This is what we did and what we saw during those 3 hours.
We also have an offer from you from Comic-Con HQ (which we talk about in the video). You can use Promo code: WonderCon30 for a free month of their programing! Promo code is available to first-time members of Comic-Con HQ only. Valid through April 31, 2017. US Only. So, if that’s you, enjoy!
Before we mention Invisible Scarlet O’Neil, let’s expend a few words on an ethereal being – maybe that should be Ethereal Being – who dwells in some vast realm beyond the clouds: Zion. The Ethereal Being I refer to is called an editor and he is a veritable creature of Gold. Last year, when Americans were in a colossal fuss over who was to be elected to their presidency, the EB told us, my colleagues and I, that maybe we should take it easy on the political stuff because this – this, what you’re reading – is not a site devoted to politics but, rather, to pop culture. Being made of gold, the EB must be obeyed and so he was and is, even as I type.
I did mention Invisible Scarlet O’Neil somewhere up there, didn’t I? The snarkier among you might ask why I mentioned her in the first line and then ignored her for the rest of the paragraph. Snark not and instead ask yourself this: Doesn’t every column have to have a first line? The answer? A resounding yes! (Trust me on this; it’s a rule.)
And is there any reason Invisible Scarlet shouldn’t be mentioned?
I don’t know how or when I learned of her, but I can probably guess pretty accurately. When: sometime around 1945, when I was six. Where: Well, my parents rented a flat in St. Louis and I didn’t go anywhere much – certainly not out of the city – so that’s where Scarlet and I encountered each other.
And the how? That’s a bit of a puzzler. Invisible Scarlet O’Neil was a newspaper strip and that’s where and how I must have become aware of her, by looking at what we then called “the funny side” in St. Louis’s morning paper, The Globe-Democrat. Problem here is, my family read the afternoon paper, still publishing, The Post-Dispatch, and never, in my memory, ever picked up the Globe. Okay… seeing my family name in print would have certainly given me pause and maybe prompted me to investigate further. But I was also aware of two other strips carried by the Globe, Dick Tracy and Smilin’ Jack. No familiar names there.
I also went to the movies, usually a small theater, The Pauline, a couple of blocks away, but sometimes pretty far astray, to shows I had to reach by riding the bus! (By myself!) I saw things that never made it to the Pauline. Same kind of entertainment – cowboys, Three Stooges, detectives, the occasional cartoon – but with different stars. Somehow I knew about these pictures and was curious enough to cadge bus fare from my mother and trek into alien precincts.
How? How did I know about the pictures and about the comic strips? And yes, it’s a question not to be avoided: how did I know about Invisible Scarlet O’Neil?
Hey girl we’ve got to get out of this place, there’s got to be something better than this
Me, too.
Flying would be a hazard to air traffic. If everybody could fly – and this also applies to those flying cars Julius Schwartz promised us 60 years ago – rush hour would be indistinguishable from a total eclipse of the sun. I don’t think we’d be able to breathe while flying. I know this wouldn’t bother Clark Kent, but the rest of us weren’t born on a doomed planet only to come to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men… well, Clark… and Kara and Krypto and Beppo the Super-Monkey and the infinite number of Phantom Zone denizens, extant and yet to come.
