There’s a big year ahead in Geek Culture with lots to look forward to. Upon reflection, I feel like should have more clearly defined plans.
Cosplayers are the best at looking ahead and especially planning their convention attendance. The inherent creativity and creation of cosplay demands disciplined convention selection and scheduling. Cosplay entails developing elaborate timelines so that cosplayers have the necessary time to envision, plan, purchase materials and sew and/or assemble their cosplay costumes. And of course, so many cosplayers create multiple costumes. The finished products are impressive, and the work it takes to get there is impressive.
I’d like to attend several conventions this year and have my favorites. But in general, I find myself really looking forward to the smaller ones. That might be just because I’ve had so many great experiences at the big ones. And as a very impatient guy, I hate waiting in lines but I kind of like those big crowds at big shows.
But I think there’s something else going on.
There are many small shows that are very professionally run. They serve as a counterbalance to the chaotic frenzy of the larger comic-cons. Maybe their growth is part of the emerging “shop local” or “homegrown” trends. So, for me, shows like Ithacon, NJ Comic Expo, Salt City Comic-Con and Awesome Con are all on the radar this year.
There also bog two centennial birthdays to celebrate this year.
March marks the annual Will Eisner Week. Danny Fingeroth and The Eisner Foundation organize of series events nationwide at Comic Shops and libraries. I’d like to get one going locally, in fact. I never tire of Eisner’s work and we can all continue to argue about the validity or obsolescence of the term “graphic novel.”
Jack Kirby, the King of Comics, was born 100 years ago too. The more we understand the vast tapestry of comic creators, the more we can appreciate the many creators who contributed to comics. In fact, sometimes I’m surprised when speaking to industry professionals or historians, and they’ll casually categorize Kirby as a creator, just like any other. That’s probably a rational way to approach the man and his work, but…
I was part of the generation that was taught to revere all his work. We believed all the hype. “Don’t ask: Just Buy It!” was a command we eagerly obeyed.
One event I’m looking forward to is the clever Kirby-themed issue of Back Issue! just announced, even though it’s not scheduled for publication until 2018. Back Issue! #104 is all about “The Fourth World After Kirby,” and the articles will be focusing on all the series and creators that followed in Kirby’s huge footsteps.
And there’s one other artist that I’m definitely going to have to learn about this year.
Two weeks ago, Disney and Warner Brothers artist Tyrus Wong died at the age of 106. The New York Times reported his passing on the front page.As a Chinese American, Wong suffered great hardships and bias throughout his life, but somehow he managed to become the guiding creative force behind Disney’s Bambi. He worked in the Warner Bros animation division for years after that. His artistic vision was so great that he even contributed to live action films like Rebel Without A Cause and The Sands of Iwo Jima.
Wong has been given overdue credit, most notably in major exhibition at the Disney Family Museum and in a documentary called Tyrus. But most of his life seemed defined by enduring racial prejudice while producing incredible artwork. I’m looking forward to learning more about this fascinating artist.
These are my shoot-from-hip plans for Geek Culture in 2017. What are yours?
One of the nice perks of being a pro is that the companies send you complimentary copies when they publish your work. Recently, Marvel published another volume of Star Wars Legends that included some of my Star Wars work originally published by Dark Horse. Although no longer considered “canon,” they’re still in print which is cool by me and gives me an excuse to leaf through them and talk a little about the thinking behind them.
This particular volume is dubbed “The Clone Wars – Volume 1” and has work by several different creators in addition to myself and my artist and collaborator, Jan Duursema. Our editor, Randy Stradley, came up with a thought around the time Episode II came out – having started the Clone Wars at the end of Episode II, George Lucas was going to skip to the end of the Clone Wars at the start of Episode III. Randy proposed to Lucas Film Licensing that we do the Clone Wars in the comics since Uncle George wasn’t going to go there. This, of course, was a long time before there was any talk of doing an Animated Series of the Clone Wars.
Jan and I at the time were the regular team on Star Wars Republic but we left shortly to do a continuing series of oversized bimonthlies under the heading Star Wars: Jedi. Each issue would focus on a given Jedi from the films. We did four of them before going back to the monthly book. While we enjoyed the extra pages of the Jedi series, we liked weaving our storylines in and out with each other and the monthlies provided a better platform for doing that.
We focused a lot on the character of Quinlan Vos, who we had created for our first SW story. Quin was not your usual Jedi – he had been given amnesia, he had troubles with the Dark Side, and could be something of an anti-hero which we would explore even further with Cade Skywalker when we did Star Wars: Legacy. With Quin, we could explore some of the same territory that Anakin Skywalker covered without being tied to one outcome. Everyone knew Anakin fell to the dark side and became Darth Vader but Quin’s fate was undetermined.
I had fun with lots of little touches that show in this volume – I named a character after a good friend, I had prisoners being pressed into service on an impossible mission a la Suicide Squad, and I created a Jedi based on Sean Connery. We called him Shon Kon Ray and he lasted all of one page in Jedi: Shaak Ti before getting blowed up real good. The fans are a sharp bunch and spotted the Connery allusion and, strangely enough, I got a lot of mail and email and chatter lamenting his coming and going so quickly. There was a lot of potential in him, I’ll admit, but that underscored the reality of war, even one as unreal as the Clone Wars. Characters/people that you liked, even if meeting them only briefly, suddenly died.
That also underscores one of the questions and themes that ran through almost all of the stories that Jan and I did in this volume. Are the Jedi on the wrong side in this war? It’s a given that the Republic is corrupt. The Jedi themselves are meant to be peacekeepers and in the Clone wars they are dragooned into being generals. They are supposed to revere life above all and yet they send soldiers to their deaths. War being war, innocents suffer and there is a lot of destruction. In every story, someone who is a Jedi wonders what the Order is doing.
In the Mace Windu story, Samuel L. Jackson. . .err, Mace Windu. . . rationalizes that the Jedi support the principles on which the Republic was formed and not what it’s become. But that is debatable and, in the Count Dooku issue, the Count challenges the notion. Dooku, of course, is a Sith and the Sith are playing both sides against one another in order to weaken and destroy the Jedi. The Republic ultimately votes to transform itself into an Empire and a Sith becomes the Emperor.
When you get right down to it, it’s all rather dark and I found the stories in this volume perhaps more suited for this age than the one in which it was written. I claim no foresight; it was simply a question I felt worth exploring. Can you be a hero if you fight for something that is wrong?
So is my brain, at least as far as this column is concerned. Usually, when I am faced with no new ideas I travel the Internet, looking to see what other people in comics are talking about. Usually, this works.
Unfortunately, a lot of media doesn’t publish much new in the week between Christmas and New Year. Journalists write things in advance (this is why there are so many “Best of” features) so they can take time off to celebrate holidays with their families.
Instead, I found some sad lists and happy lists, but I didn’t find a lot of news.
I have, however, found a new comic series I love, not from the Internet, but from my friendly neighborhood comic book store. As you might remember, Constant Reader, I try to buy at least a few books with which I’m unfamiliar on Wednesdays, when I shop for my superhero fix. I try to challenge my assumptions about what I will and will not like. This means that I sometimes have to try something that doesn’t fit my preconceptions about what an entertaining book might be.
This was the case with A.D.: After Death. Although it is written and drawn by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire, two creators whose work I’ve enjoyed, it didn’t look at all like something I would like. There was a lot of text, and the art, while beautiful, did not seem exactly action-packed. Still, the premise (there is no more death) sounded enough like one of my favorite books that I figured I could risk one issue.
The second issue just came out. I can’t wait for the third. If I tell you details of the story, I will miss the point. This is moody and sweet and cynical all at the same time. It goes very well with the gray, rainy winter’s day I’m having as I write this.
And because I really really really dislike gray, rainy winter gloom, I would like to share this from my fellow Buckeye, Tony Isabella. He made a list of things that made him happy last month, and the last one was this: “DC and Marvel Comics. They don’t always get it right, but they keep trying and there’s no denying the big hearts of the people who work at those companies.”
We forget that, sometimes.
Decades ago, at an American Booksellers Association convention, I saw Frank Capra interviewed. Someone asked him what was the worst movie he had ever seen. He said (this is not an exact quote), “I never see bad movies. No one sets out to make a bad movie. When I’m watching something that doesn’t work, I try to see the film they wanted to make.”
We sometimes forget that this is true of comics, too. There are lots of comics I don’t like. There are lots of creators trying to tell stories that don’t interest me, or that have a worldview with which I disagree. And that’s fine. No one can make me enjoy something against my will.
What is not fine is to ascribe evil motives to people whose work I don’t like. I need to remember that they are trying to do the best they can to entertain and, maybe, if they’re lucky, illuminate their readers.
All right now, settle down. Here it is, already the new year and we haven’t even started yet. Started what? That’s just about the kind of question I’d expect from you, mister smarty pants!
We can begin with a gripe, follow with a premature digression and then maybe segue into a topic. Ready for the gripe? Here goes: Geez, a lot of stuff sucks!
But let me tell you about my early days in the writing dodge. When I was groping through the universe, certain of very little, a person or persons whose identity I’ve forgotten told me that clarity was of high importance. Or maybe even crucial. I believed him/her/them and conducted my professional life accordingly, and it seemed to me that the perpetrators of the novels and comic books and films and plays and short stories I was absorbing mostly did the same. (Poems? Maybe not so much. That Ezra Pound can be pretty rough going.) Murkiness was, by and large, not considered a virtue.
But murkiness – lack of clarity – comes in diverse forms. There’s plain old bad sentences and bad plotting and bad acting and unfocused photography and bad editing and inconsistency and showing off at the audience’s expense – for example, sticking in obscure allusions or foreign phrases. And let’s not forget the obvious, bad printing. We’ll end our incomplete catalogue with this: not giving the audience what it needs to understand the action.
Let’s glance, sideways, at some items that really scorch my grits.
Credits, titles and production info – words on the screen – that use white or light colored lettering against white or light background.
Credits and so forth that don’t remain visible long enough to be read.
Actors who mumble lines
Credits shrunk so small, usually to accommodate some kind of advertising, that they can’t be read.
Credits that don’t stop running until the show’s a quarter over. Okay, maybe that one’s more mine than yours. I want the damn things shown and then I want to forget about them instead of perching on the edge of my seat waiting to find out who directed the thing
The assumption on the part of the creative folk that everyone in the audience knows the backstory and the characters as well as they do and so that info doesn’t need to be established on later appearances. (A novelist friend once said that every important element of a novel should be established three times in three different contexts. Sound advice. I wish I followed it.) This is especially pertinent these days when here’s a lot of long-form drama happening on television. And by the way: the sins I’ve just mentioned aren’t are seldom committed by the creators of these shows, though maybe they could work on the credits a bit.)
Okay, does that end the griping? Not likely. But it does end the griping for now. Stay braced for further bitchery in the future. We can assume there will be some.
It’s true that 2016 was kind of a dumpster fire, but thought we’d think really (really, really) hard about it & come up with the best things of 2016. And after like an hour, we realized that there were some great moments.
Like we started high school at OCSA, went to Hawaii, got into Club 33, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened at Universal Studios, we were extras in Hairspray, saw Hedwig, Book of Mormon, Beautiful & Newsies, had some great times with our friends, got to interview some of our favorite writers & actors, went to a bunch of cons, and took in some amazing memes, TV, comics, books, & movies. Things were really good when they weren’t bad and we’re grateful.
So this week, we give you the best of last year….and look ahead to more good stuff in 2017.
It’s a New Year, a new me, and another 361 days of geekdom to look forward to! I started off this New Year by cruising the Internet and catching up on some geek updates and what caught my eye was the convention news. Usually, December/January is slow for cons, so I was shocked to find multiple stories that really caught my attention.
Some were positive, like diversity and inclusive Universal Fan Con getting fully funded. It looks awesome and needed and you should check it out. I’m a backer and I’ll see you there in April 2018. Others were sad, like the complete collapse of con company Geek Expos after they unsold their Marvelous New Year’s Eve Con with Stan Lee. It was a cool concept, but ultimately poorly promoted in a city that just couldn’t support it. And then I saw this next piece of news, which just pissed me off.
Phoenix Comic Con announced a new way for fans to apply for the volunteer army that works their convention each year. They want them to pay a yearly fee of $20 for the chance to apply. Amongst other things, I am not really sure that they understand the meaning of the word “volunteer.” It’s not a refundable fee either. This is going straight into the con’s pockets. PCC stated that they are doing this to ensure that volunteers do not just take the badge and not complete their volunteer shifts.
Here are the flaws with that plan. People bailing on their volunteer hours is still going to happen, even with paying. A $20 weekend pass isn’t as good as a free one, but it’s still cheaper than the full $55 price. But wait, they say. They will ban volunteers who do exactly that! But what was stopping you from doing that before??? If you want more reliable staff at your con, then hire people like ReedPop does. Or overbook your volunteer staffers so you have plenty of people. See who shows up for volunteer training and who doesn’t and keep records. Use the new popular tap system so many conventions are using so that you can deactivate badges from wayward volunteers, or only give them a badge for the day they are working. Do anything but forcing them to pay for the ability to apply to volunteer with no guarantee of getting the spot.
A good chunk of volunteers are people who don’t have the disposable income for tickets or for fees. I know this first-hand, as at one point I was one of them. I volunteered and I had a great time, meeting people and hanging out. So much so that I kept volunteering at that con, just for the experience. Volunteering is great and I highly recommend that everyone try volunteering at least once for the experience.
The thing that keeps making the story worse is that the convention is now getting into public fights. The con director and a former volunteer/vendor have been duking it out in comments. It’s a petty he said/she said fight. It became such a big comment war that Bleeding Cool even published an article about what happened in their comment section. What happened to the unwritten rule to not read the comments?
Volunteers are usually a convention’s biggest and most dedicated fans. Treating your fans with respect shouldn’t be a stretch for a business. It’s true, some people wrongly try to game the system. Those people should be banned, with no question. But don’t use the few bad apples as an excuse to abuse the rest. Cherish your fans or they will eventually abandon you.
David Gerrold, the writer best known for his script for the Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”, for creating the Sleestak race on the TV series Land of the Lost, and for his novelette “The Martian Child”, which won both Hugo and Nebula awards and was adapted into a 2007 film, contributes a guest column about the trainwreck that was Marvelous Nerd Year’s Eve. For more, read the coverage at The Beat.
I was an invited guest at the “Marvelous Nerd Year’s Eve” Comic-Con held in Dallas over New Year’s weekend.
Apparently, it was a disaster of biblical proportions. Not just dogs and cats living together, but suing each other for palimony and custody of the kittens.
The convention organizers over-promised, under-budgeted, over-extended, under-performed, and committed what I consider acts of “criminal incompetence.”
Why do I use the adjective “criminal?”
Because people were hurt. Not just by the incompetence, but by the deliberate incompetence.
Many of the guests — not necessarily the A-listers — depend on the sales of autographs and photographs as part of their income between gigs. They are not all millionaires. Many actors and celebrities, especially those from TV shows of yore, have some income from royalties and residuals, but often depend on convention appearances to give them a little bit of a cushion — or even cover the mortgage.
So when a convention signs a contract, makes a commitment — such as, “We guarantee that you will make $5000 in autograph and photo sales, or we will make up the difference” and then fails to provide enough attendees to make those sales and then fails to cover the guarantee as well — that’s criminal incompetence.
Even worse, the company formed to put on the convention is dissolving itself, so there will be no one to sue.
Most of the other guests had their air fare covered and meals covered by a per diem. So at least their basic travel expenses were covered.
I drove.
After four days of promises, I had nothing but four days of promises. My travel expenses were never covered.
Based on their promises, I had expected $2500 and travel expenses as the bare minimum, and I budgeted for that.
Instead, I’m out my travel expenses. Nearly $800.
Did I sell enough books and tribbles and scripts to make it worthwhile? No.
Because first, they didn’t have a dealer’s table for me, and the woman who was supposed to arrange it was more interested in talking about how busy she was than in actually making arrangements for the table. Not a bad person, but not really focused on the job.
When I finally did get a sales table, it wasn’t in the dealer’s room, it was in a second room that was carefully hidden from most of the convention membership. I did not sell enough to cover my expenses.
I am particularly angry at the CFO of the convention who lied to my face, three times — that he had a check for me for my travel expenses (I’d already turned in my receipts) — when he already knew damn well that the convention was so far in the hole that the hotel was about to lock all of the guests out of their rooms because the convention couldn’t cover the lodging bills.
Any other convention, I would have made enough to justify the effort. Instead, I have a hole in my budget that is going to create a problem for the next month or two. I had planned to spend the money on paying for the kids’ wedding pictures. Now I have to generate that cash somewhere else. (January book sale starts momentarily.)
So yes, “criminal incompetence.” People were hurt. Not just me — but every celebrity guest (over 40 of them) and every vendor (at least as many) who invested his or her weekend on the promises of this criminally incompetent group of people.
I’ve had nearly a half century of convention experience. Most of the cons I’ve attended, whether professional or fan run, have been managed well enough that fans and guests were taken care of. I have never been caught up in a disaster as big as this one. (Which is why I didn’t recognize my personal alarm bells when they went off.)
I would hope that the individuals responsible for this particular train wreck have enough class and courage to issue a public apology — but more than that, I hope they get out of the convention business, because, based on the evidence, they are a danger to the well-being of everyone who trusts them.
The other bad news coming out of that cluster-fuck in Dallas is that after a celebrity gets burned by one convention, he or she is a lot less likely to say yes to the next few conventions who invite.
So both the celebrity and the fans are deprived. The fans lose the chance to meet the star, the celeb loses the possibility of income.
Therefore: Seven lessons that a certain con-committee should have learned ahead of time.
1) First, don’t call it a Comic-Con if it’s not about comics and comic artists. Call it Okla-Con or Dallas-Con or something that identifies it for the specific region.
2) Don’t over-promise. You only need one or two big name celebs. And maybe three B-listers. Then, as you get more pre-attending memberships, enough that you know you can afford more celebs, you can add more. Being able to announce that you’ve just added another special guest builds momentum.
But don’t start by promising 40 with the expectation that the fans will come flocking. They won’t. Because fans have a loyalty to existing conventions. They’re not going to come to a new convention, just because you promised it’ll be great. They’re skeptical and they’re already saving their pennies for the cons they attended last year.
3) If you don’t have enough money up front to pay your bills, cancel the con. Be honest with everyone. That’s a lot better than the disaster of bankruptcy and embarrassment.
4) Be honest with your guests. If you know you can’t afford them, tell them so before they get on the airplane. Have enough class to treat them like people, not commodities to be marketed.
5) And for those who drove — COVER THEIR FUCKING TRAVEL EXPENSES, send them a check ahead of time — or tell them not to come before they waste their time.
6) MOST IMPORTANT — get people on your committee who have been part of successful conventions and listen to what they have to tell you. They will be your best asset.
7) Train your volunteers to do something more than suck up oxygen. Most volunteers are happy to be on staff. Most are eager to help. Most are competent enough to get the job done. But don’t hand out those “volunteer” T-shirts to people who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.
BONUS HINT — most of your celebs view cons as a specific kind of job. Sit, be pleasant, sign autographs, pose for photos — and be paid for each autograph and photo. Make sure they have opportunities.
Most of your dealers are there to make money too. Set up the fucking dealer’s room so that fans are exposed to as many dealers as possible. Set up the dealer’s room so that dealers are exposed to as many fans as possible. You’re not doing anyone a favor putting dealers in a place where there is no traffic. Those dealers won’t come back.
SECOND BONUS HINT — If you bring in writers and artists, they are likely to be overlooked as the fans rush to meet the A-list actors. You need to find ways to bring them to the attention of the great majority of fans, so they don’t end up sitting alone at a table or speaking to an empty room with only three attendees. (Despite all the creebing about Creation Con, they are set up to make sure that writers and other behind-the-scenes people are speaking to a full house. And they pay their bills.)
THIRD BONUS HINT — Don’t lie to anyone. Tell the truth to your guests. Keep your promises. Especially the ones that are on your signed contracts. And if you can’t keep your promises, be honest about where you fucked up. Take responsibility like a grownup.
(If the Con Chair will send me a cashier’s check for my travel expenses, I will delete this post. Otherwise, you are all invited to google the various news reports about who else got stiffed in Dallas.)
Before I go into this week’s column, I wanted to acknowledge the passing of Carrie Fisher. Mere hours after my column went up last week it was reported that she had passed. It was truly tragic for her family, friends and legions of fans whom include myself. Rest in peace, Carrie Fisher.
Last week I picked Love Is Love, the joint DC Comics and IDW publication to raise money for Equality Florida benefiting the victims of the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting. I had written about this book’s announcement back in September and how it filled me with pride that this was happening, but that comics still has more to do towards creating stronger queer inclusion. Now that the trade is out and I got the chance to read it, I have more to say.
This charity project organized by Marc Andreyko was originally a joint project with DC Comics and IDW. As of last month, Archie Comics added itself to the mix and included two separate Kevin Keller stories for the anthology, one by Kevin Keller’s creator Dan Parent. We get a short comic featuring Chalice from AfterShock’s Alters. The Will Eisner estate even gave permission to use The Spirit for a comic in the anthology as well. All of that combined with an introduction by director Patty Jenkins and you have an anthology with more star power and support for a cause than I, at least, have ever seen before in comics.
Love Is Love opens with an “In Memoriam” page with the names and ages of all 49 victims from the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting. It’s then clarified that this is an IDW publication with editorial and related services provided by DC Entertainment. Following that is Patty Jenkins introduction then nonstop one or two page comics and illustrations, followed by Marc Andreyko’s afterward and a plug for Equality Florida.
While I was aware of quite a few of the people who were working on the project, there were plenty in the book I had no idea were in it up until I read their contributions. Stories from people like Dan Didio and Brian Michael Bendis. Dan Didio is someone whom members of the queer community were upset with after his mandate that characters including Batwoman could not get married. While I personally wasn’t as upset by this decision as some people were, I did understand it.
Brian Michael Bendis is someone who I’ve met, admire, and is at least somewhat responsible for getting me back into comics with the launch of Ultimate Spider-Man back when I was in high school. One area I’ve been critical with him on is his handling of Iceman being retconned as gay. While this was out of ignorance and not malice, it still made it hard for me and others to get interested in Iceman again. Now with Sina Grace on board, a queer man and another contributor to Love Is Love who contributed a great personal two page comic, I’m more than happy to give Iceman a shot again.
Two other contributors I were aware of who have had mixed responses from the queer community as of late are Paul Jenkins and James Robinson. Paul Jenkins is the creator and writer of the AfterShock comic Alters with Leila Leiz and Tamra Bonvillain. For his contribution to this anthology, Paul did a two-page story about the trans character Chalice with Tamra Bonvillain and Robert Hack illustrating instead of Leila Leiz. It’s a two-pager about how irrelevant those oppressing the queer community are becoming and it’s a positive message. The series at AfterShock has received some criticism from people in the comics community, including myself, concerned with trans representation in comics and how the character could potentially have a negative impact.
While I had qualms with the first issue in particular, Paul Jenkins has since been using the back of each issue to have a conversation with a trans person and to stress how important using proper pronouns are and other topics people in the cis community need to be more educated on.
James Robinson is a writer whose previously been nominated for a GLAAD award for his thoughtful portrayals of queer characters in comics and has been writing queer characters in his comics since the 90s. Back in the summer of 2015, James had gotten backlash over his treatment of trans people in his pseudo-autobiographical comic Airboy with Image comics. After a couple of days of online onslaught, James Robinson released a thoughtful apology. Further reprints of Airboy #2 have been edited to make it less offensive.
What do Dan Didio, Brian Michael Bendis, Paul Jenkins, and James Robinson all have in common? That despite the fact that in their long careers they’ve had at least one instance where readers questioned their portrayals and handling of queer characters, they showed up to volunteer and dedicate their time and talent to help the queer community during what’s easily one of the communities darkest times in modern American history. Allies are important, and actions do speak louder than words. And although they may have had missteps, they showed up when it counted the most and that needs to be recognized and celebrated.
While it is important to highlight allies, I would feel horrible if I discussed this anthology without highlighting more of the queer contributors. Mainstream queer talent like Phil Jimenez, Sina Grace, and James Tynion IV offer us autobiographical looks at their life and how being queer impacts it. Although Howard Cruse isn’t a contributor, he’s the subject of Justin Hall’s comic along with Howard’s beloved husband Eddie Sedarbaum. Steve Orlando gives us a touching one page comic about a queer family. Trans comics creator and journalist Emma Houxbois, an important voice whom I admire, has a touching one page comic about how important places like Pulse are to the queer community.
There are far more queer contributors in this book and I wish I could spend time talking about all of them. Two other allies I’d like to mention, Jeffrey Burandt and Sean Von Gorman, created a one page comic with public domain superhero Rainbow Boy where they save Rockbar from a bunch of Spider-Haters. Rockbar is a bar here in the West Village that I frequent fairly regularly and it’s great to see them being represented.
Love Is Love is not just an important milestone in comics history and a loving tribute to the queer community that will help benefit them, it’s also just good comics and a fun read. It took a great deal of time and a saint’s patience for Marc Andreyko to get this book from a desire to see the comics community come together after the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting and the over six months that followed for it to hit the stands. We should all be grateful for Marc’s kindness and generosity as well as the dozens and dozens of contributors that made this book possible.
At $9.99, there really is no reason not to pick up this full-length trade paperback. If you didn’t pick it up last week, please pick this up when you grab your comics this week.
6. Captain America: Civil War – There are so many fantastic moments in Civil War. The easy one is the fight at the airport where we finally get that big super hero battle we’ve seen in a thousand different comic books (and acted out with action figures at least that many times) put on the silver screen in all its glory. The three-way fight at the end might be even better because it’s a crisp action beat full of emotion that is rare anywhere these days, and is honestly pretty uncommon even in print. It’s not a perfect movie, but it might be the perfect application of fan service. Every other Marvel movie has to either top this in terms of fan service (and they honestly probably shouldn’t try) or do something new and exciting. The gauntlet has been thrown down (this is not an Infinity Gauntlet pun I swear).
5. Moana – This is the pick I am most concerned is recency bias messing with me. I saw Moana recently, and while it completely delighted me, I’m concerned in a few years time I’ll look back at this pick and think it should have been The Accountant or Kubo and the Two Strings or really anything else. I loved Moana, it’s a sweet movie with a good heart, a great set of characters, and a soundtrack that I can’t stop humming to myself. When we spend the next two months marching towards the Oscars falling over ourselves to talk about what a historical accomplishment La La Land is, I hope people remember it wasn’t even the best musical released within two weeks of its release date.
4. Rogue One – This might seem a little high for a movie I reviewed two weeks ago and was kind of hard on but while it was easy to harp on the stuff that didn’t quite work I’m still quite fond of the stuff that did. Rogue One brings a bunch of new stuff to the action vocabulary of the franchise and while it might not have wowed us as an independent sci-fi film, as a Star Wars film it feels like a revelation. There’s an honest-to-goodness war happening in Rogue One for the first time in eight movies with “War” in the title. Weak central characters may keep Rogue One from joining the top tier but in a soft year for movies overall a compelling B+ can make the top list.
3. Zootopia – Zootopia is a great movie. It’s funny, touching, and with a decent bit of intricate noir-inspired plotting for a kids movie. It is worthy of being a standard bearer in the Disney Revival era and standing next to Frozen and Wreck-it-Ralph. That would probably be enough to get it on this list but what makes me actually proud is that Disney decided to use their giant influence on the youth of America and make a movie about institutionalized prejudice. They’ve done “don’t judge a book by its cover” movies before but Zootopia is about how the whole system can be against people because of what they look like and that makes it a more special movie and one that I would be proud to show my own children.
2. The Nice Guys – I did not review The Nice Guys for ComicMix this year (I watched The Angry Birds Movie that week) and it’s rare I go see a new release movie on my own anymore— but for Shane Black I was willing to do it and it was worth it. The Nice Guys is very funny, certainly the best comedy of the year, but more than that it was so inescapably fun. That’s a strange thing to say about a movie that is sort of about a string of murders in the seedy world of the 1970s porn industry. The chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe is delightful— I would watch that pair do seven buddy movies like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. I think a premium cable network should commission a junior detective show staring the daughter character. I want to live in the world of The Nice Guys as much as I can, and that’s such a fantastic thing to get from a movie.
1. Arrival – For the second year in a row my top movie of the year is a non-franchise science fiction film with a third act that’s a little out of left field. I guess we all have a type. Arrival is a movie that establishes a high degree of difficulty with its concept and then crafts a simply perfect film to go with it. It’s tense and thought provoking and beautiful and cripplingly sad. I went in to Arrival with no idea what I was getting or what to expect and then spent the next three weeks recommending it to literally every person I spoke to. In 2017 I would consider myself beyond lucky if I saw another movie that completely delights me like Arrival did; I would settle for the new Blade Runner being a passable attempt.
I am in an incredibly shitty mood. My mom had a stroke—well, not technically, but the results are the same and she ain’t doing so good. My dad is a soul trapped in a useless body lying in a nursing home. On top of that wonderfulness, last night I couldn’t get the pizza I wanted because my favorite place closed and my two fallbacks were closed—huh? Isn’t New Year’s Eve one of the busiest nights of the years for pizzerias?—so I ordered one from what seemed to be the only one open and it totally sucked, but I still pigged out on it. Pigging out on something you enjoy is one thing, but pigging out on something that isn’t really that good? Dumb, dumb, dumb. And also, unlike some people who eat when they are upset, I’m one of those who don’t, so why I wasted $10.00 on something I really didn’t want in the first place I can’t answer.
And then there’s the reality that in 19 days a man who is the most incompetent, the most dumbest (and please, no letters on my grammar), a man who is treacherously close to crossing the line to treasonous behavior—just what the hell does Putin have on him?—will become the 45th President of these United States. We are about to go from the classiest to the assiest.
Happy New Year?
I don’t think so.
Im-not-so-ho, we’ll be lucky to get to 2018 with our skins still intact.
In other news, I recently finished watching Season 2 of [[[The Man in the High Castle]]], brought to you courtesy of Philip K. Dick (whose original book was published in 1962), Frank Spotniz (The X-Files), and Amazon Studios. For those not in the know, the premise of both the book and the series is: “What if the Axis powers had won World War II?” Well, that’s a simplification—there’s a lot more in there, particularly concerning not just alternate realities, but the nature of reality itself—but for the purposes of this column, it will do.
What is interesting—and somewhat depressing, as if I needed any more help in sliding down the ladder—is the reaction of some to the series, which, to tie it up with a bow, is: “Who needs a fictional fascist dystopia when the reality is already here?” I get it. Doing some research for today’s column, I came upon author (The Name of The Rose) and philosopher Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay, “Eternal Fascism,” in which he lists 14 “properties of fascist ideology.” I won’t list all of them—I suggest you look them up, if you have the stomach for it—but there’s enough here to make me shiver:
Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class: Fascism uses the fear of economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups. Watch any of his campaign or “victory” rallies.
Fear of Difference: Fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate this…in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants. Muslim registry. A huuuuuge wall on the Mexican border.
Selective Populism: Fascists use thisconcept todelegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer representing” the Voice of the People. “The media are scum.”
Machismo: Fascists hold disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality. Grabbing some pussy, Trump? Or is she too fat?
Contempt for the Weak: Remember when Trump made fun of the reporter who has a physical disability?
Newspeak: Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning. Hello, Twitter, and a 40-character limit.
And here’s an example of some of the tweets that The Man in the High Castle elicited, courtesy of The Huffington Post:
Jack Shafer of Politico on November 21, 2016:
Donald Trump living high atop the Trump Tower or Man in the High Castle?
And my personal favorite, from Indiana University School of Public and Environment Affairs PhD candidate and Brookings Institute alum Dave Warren, on December 22, 2016:
Just got to that episode of Man in the High Castle where Donald Trump is elected President of the United State of America.?
So the way I figure it is, that you should watch TMITHC on Amazon if you love Donald Trump because it will reinforce your faith in the marriage between politics and corporatism, or that you should watch TMITHC on Amazon if you’re scared of Donald Trump because it will reinforce your faith in the…what? The “It Can’t Happen Here” ideology? The “invulnerability” of our Constitution? The “It’s just a really good adaptation of a Philip K. Dick book” reassurance?
There’s a big year ahead in Geek Culture with lots to look forward to. Upon reflection, I feel like should have more clearly defined plans.
There also bog two centennial birthdays to celebrate this year.
One event I’m looking forward to is the clever Kirby-themed issue of Back Issue! just announced, even though it’s not scheduled for publication until 2018. Back Issue! #104 is all about “The Fourth World After Kirby,” and the articles will be focusing on all the series and creators that followed in Kirby’s huge footsteps.
