Last week DC Comics and IDW announced will join together to publish a 144 page graphic novel titled Love Is Love to raise money for Equality Florida to help the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL on June 12th. This groundbreaking venture between two comic book publishers and a nonprofit was organized by writer Marc Andreyko and will be retailing for $9.99.
Let’s let that one sink in. This is an important moment in comics history. Of all the causes over the years that comics have tried to benefit, this is the first time that mainstream comics publishers have stepped up to benefit members of the LGBT community in need. This is also the second time an anthology has come out to benefit victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting as Margins Publishing put out two issues of a digital zine titled Our Hearts Still Beat where 100% of the proceeds were donated to The Center in Orlando to directly benefit the queer community.
It fills me with pride that comic publishers are working to benefit the queer community. I’m proud of all the creators that have gotten involved and have given their time and talent to help others and I’m thrilled that mainstream comics is standing by the queer community. Despite all the positives and how proud we should be of DC Comics and IDW for standing with victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, we need to demand more for the queer community and the other less privileged and underrepresented groups.
Though DC Comics is helping with Love Is Love, they haven’t had a trans writer pen a story for them in fifteen years. Of all the work that trans writers have done for DC, only Caitlin R. Kiernan has had any of her work collected, and it was only a fraction of her work on The Dreaming that she shares with other writers in the collection.
While DC Comics is helping support queer people of color who were disproportionately affected by the Pulse Nightclub shooting, DC has very few queer people of color working for them in a creative capacity. Phil Jimenez has done great work at DC and has been given opportunities to work with writers like Grant Morrison and on important titles like Infinite Crisis. Ivan Velez, Jr. penned stories at DC for some time as well, but not in the past decade. Beyond that, few have had similar opportunities.
Women creators are still not being represented in comics at DC as well as they were before the New 52. For the New 52, Gail Simone was one of the only women writing stories at first. Currently, the only all women creative team is for Batgirl and The Birds of Prey. All male creative teams are the overwhelming majority.
DC Comics still has an Eddie Berganza problem. While talk of his repeated sexual harassment of employees and freelancers has died down, he still holds the position of group editor of the Superman family books. They have yet to hire a woman to work on that editorial team since he took that position back after stepping down as executive editor.
They recently announced the people selected for their Writer’s Talent Workshop. For the purposes of full disclosure I did apply and was rejected. I was happy to see that the majority of the people selected were not straight cis white men, and that people of color including a Native American man were selected. That’s really great and that should be applauded. It was discouraging to see that out of the eight selected, only two were women and they were selected as a pair and all the men are solo writers. At a time when women in comics in particular are a focus of discussion to see a selection like this does come off as tone deaf.
Newsarama went on to say “Curiously, DC describes this group as “aspiring” writers in their press release, despite each have significant credentials inside and outside of comic books – including some which have done work for DC previously.” Using the term aspiring is certainly misleading when you have award winning writers and people working in the TV biz being selected. It seems like the high caliber of talent selected could have easily been found by traditional methods of editors scouting out talent. Women and people of color shouldn’t have to be incredibly talented award winners in their field to be extended an opportunity to take a class to one day possibly write for DC Comics (or write for them again). What makes this tone deaf is it comes off like these talents need DC Comics. The exact opposite is true.
That’s not to say DC Comics hasn’t done some great things and taken some risks recently beyond Love Is Love. Openly queer creator Steve Orlando was able to write a solo Midnighter series, the first openly gay mainstream solo superhero comic, for 12 issues. Though it was cancelled due to low sales, DC has taken another risk by bringing the comic back as Midnighter and Apollo which will be the first mainstream comic about a gay superhero couple. James Tynion IV, another openly queer creator, is writing Detective Comics, one of the biggest titles at DC Comics, with the openly gay Batwoman as an important character in the cast. Tamra Bonvillain, an openly trans colorist and rising star in comics, is on the reboot of Doom Patrol with heavy hitters like Gerard Way and Todd Klein. And Harley Quinn, an openly queer anti-hero, was the highest selling comic in the month of August selling upwards of 400,000 copies, written by the team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner with Chad Hardin on art. Dan Didio has even been cited by creators like Gail Simone as caring about LGBT issues, and all of this is powerful evidence that is the case.
Love Is Love is a great project and I’m proud of everyone involved and DC Comics as well as IDW stepping up and taking a stand here when it would have been much easier to not bother. And I really do love DC Comics. I love quite a lot of their properties, they have some great people that have worked for them in the past and currently, and they’ve worked on some great progressive things like Milestone Comics. That doesn’t mean more can’t be done, and it should be done.
There needs to be more intersectionality. We need more queer people of color and women of color. We need DC to use these Milestone characters and to reprint and make available the original runs. We need the works of Rachel Pollack, Maddie Blaustein and Caitlin R. Kiernan reprinted and trans writers new and old to be brought in. And we need less privileged people to rise through the ranks and be decision makers to help secure a future for comics in an ever changing market.
I can support DC Comics and praise the good work they do while also wanting more and wanting better. I love DC Comics, but… it’s complicated.
I am, as I have previously noted, a big fan of Jim Butcher’s long-running series about the modern-day wizard Harry Dresden, a.k.a. The Dresden Files. The stories and characters are great fun and the books just keep getting better, and more complex, and deeper overall. If you haven’t encountered the series before, I highly recommend it; and of course Wikipedia has a handy list of all of the books if you need to see where to start.
At Dragon Con in 2013, I sat down with Jim to hear more about book fifteen of the series, Skin Game. It was a delight talking with Jim and getting to learn the latest on a world I’ve grown to love. And now, fortunately, I’ve gotten to have that experience again – this time, at Dragon Con 2016 and with book sixteen, a.k.a. Peace Talks. Jim shared all kinds of great information on what we’ll be seeing in this latest Harry Dresden adventure – as well as a couple of tidbits about Dresden-adjacent character stories that will be coming our way soon. So read on to find out all the juicy details! And, if you are so inclined, you can also watch the interview here.
ESW: Jim, Skin Game left us with so many characters with potential storylines that could be the next focus. The next book is titled Peace Talks. Please tell us about how everyone sits down, holds hands, and has a little peace talk. What are we going to be seeing?
JB: For the past several years within the storyline there’s been a lot of unrest in the supernatural world, because some lunatic destroyed the Red Court of vampires, who were one of the major players in the supernatural world. As a result of that, a power that has been lying low and quiet for a long time has started asserting itself into the vacuum that the Red Court left behind.
ESW: And that is the Fomor? I was wondering when we were going to see more about what they’re doing.
JB: Yes; who are not just the Fomorians of legend; but the Fomorians got driven back into the sea long ago, so they’ve been collecting the refuse from all the other pantheons of bad guys who’ve managed to survive whatever conflicts were going on at that point. So they’ve been causing a lot of trouble, and they’re getting everyone together for peace talks. They want to establish themselves and they’ve requested a summit.
ESW: So they’re the instigators of this.
JB: They are.
ESW: Because so far from what we’ve seen of them, they’re mostly just hostile.
JB: Yes, they’ve been universally hostile and suddenly they show up and say “Let’s sit down and talk.” And everybody’s like “…Okay. We’ll do that.” So of course Harry’s going to be involved in it. Generally speaking, it’s going to be a meeting under the Accords. All these different powers, all these supernatural influences are coming to Chicago. Harry gets to see that coming and say, “Man, I feel bad for whatever city that’s going to happen in. Because nothing could go wrong with that!”
“Yeah, it’s going to be here.”
“…What?”
ESW: Of course it’s good for the storyline for it to be in his town, but on the other hand you’re going, “Hmmm, why would they pick Chicago? I wonder…”
JB: Chicago is one of the great crossroads of the world.
ESW: It’s a major hub.
JB: For all kinds of travel, for shipping, for railroads and air; so it is the place in the middle of this continent. But anyway, so they’re having the meeting there; I’m sure everything will be fine.
ESW: Hah! I’m really bummed that Harry no longer has his giant map of the city that he built, because that would be really handy to have in this situation.
JB: It would. It would be totally awesome to have.
ESW: Perhaps he could be tinkering with another one while all of this is going on?
JB: Oh, well he would, but he’s busy being a dad!
ESW: Yes! I was going to ask, because at the end of Skin Game we have Maggie, who is so precious, and Mouse (who is so gigantic), and now Harry kind of seems to be settling into his role as a dad. What’s going on, is she still with the Carpenters?
JB: The way that Harry’s going to set it up is, he’s going to keep Maggie all summer. During the school year, she’s going to go to a boarding school in town, St. Marks Academy for the Gifted and Talented; it’s sort of where the supernatural folks all send their kids. And my intention is, in the next few years I’m going to write kind of a young adult series about Maggie Dresden at the Academy. She’ll be there with Mouse; because she seriously does have all kinds of problems and issues that are challenges for her. She’s got bad social anxiety; she’s got several phobias – which are understandable given her past.
ESW: I can imagine! And does she have, also, some special talents – I would assume?
JB: Well, she’s got Mouse, who’s kind of like the super-assistance dog. But really her main talent is that when everything’s on fire and people are screaming, she’s completely normal. You know – being Harry Dresden’s daughter, it’s like, “Oh, chaos. I feel a little more comfortable and secure for some reason.” And then the kids all have this pantheon of monsters that they have to deal with, that you don’t remember after you become a grown-up. So as the kids age out of school, they forget – they can’t interact with the monsters anymore. They don’t remember that they were there. It’s just like, “Oh, that was a game that we used to play when we were kids.”
ESW: That is really cool; I love it!
JB: Well, it’s fun because there’s this culture among children that stays alive, that no grown-up attempts to keep alive, but it’s still there. Every kid knows the lyrics to “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg…” And there’s not an adult in the world who would teach their kids those lyrics. The kids teach each other, and they keep it alive, kind of in this school setting. It’s this little separate world that kids are in. As grown-ups, we kind of forget what that world is like. Because you know, we’re busy with taxes and bills and stuff.
ESW: I love the way that you, as a writer, see those things and put them into your work. There was a part where you were talking about the power of night in magic – through Harry – and Harry was saying, “Go out in the middle of a field somewhere away from the city, and sit down…” and I thought, “I bet you Jim’s done that. He has to have done that to have described it that way.” I love the way you use that stuff – our everyday observations, because at some point we’ve probably all been out in the middle of nowhere in the dark, and we’re going, “Oh, I remember what that feels like. Oh, but I never thought about it like that – in terms of magic, and how it works in The Dresden Files.”
JB: Doing stuff like that is…doing things that make you feel emotions. It is something that is absolutely critical to being a writer. Because the hardest thing to do is to get people to feel those emotions when they’re reading your work. And if you can make people feel that then you win. That’s the goal.
ESW: I think in The Dresden Files you tap into these shared remembrances that all of us have at different points. We might be all different people, but in our lives, we’ve all been children, or sat in the field, or been really scared, or whatever, and you’ve tapped into that with Harry’s character. I love the way you do that.
JB: That poor guy. That poor guy!
ESW: Talking about that poor guy – the thing about Harry is that I love when you write him from other people’s perspectives. I’ve heard there are a few short stories coming out from other perspectives, and I’d love to talk about that. But one of the things I love is – he’s so much more powerful when you see him from someone else’s view. Like when Karrin Murphy is describing him and you’re like, “Yeah, I already knew Harry was kind of a badass, but now I think, ‘holy crap, he walks into the room and you’re like – whaaat?’”
JB: Yeah, from the exterior he looks way different than he does from the interior. From his own viewpoint, he’s Charlie Brown.
ESW: Yeah, he’s this tall, gangling guy who kind of has bad fashion sense sometimes. Unsure of what’s going on sometimes. And then you see him from the outside and you’re like, “Whoooaaa.”
JB: Yeah, from the outside, he’s huge, and weird, and can do all these different things that nobody else can do. He doesn’t make eye contact with anybody…
ESW: Right, and he’ll scare you. I love the way you’ve done that because it would be so easy to just write the hero that everyone wants to be, or to marry, or to be best friends with, or whatever. But Harry is a weird amalgam of a lot of issues. It would be easy to Mary Sue him – give him more and more powers. But instead you’ve developed him. Are we going to see further interesting magical developments, and how do you keep that balance?
JB: Yes, you’re going to see more. The way I like to keep it balanced is…the big advantage that I have for The Dresden Files is that I’ve always planned for there to be an end to the story. So I know what the end is going to be like, and what I’m going to need him to be able to do, to do the big stuff at the end. So I’ve been able to sort of scale him up appropriately as I go along. Plus, he’s been scaling up into new and better villains. A higher quality of asshole for him to go up against. So that’s what we’ve been doing all along. So that sort of makes it easy, when you know what your end target is, that makes it a lot simpler, to get it done that way. I’m planning on twenty, maybe twenty-one of the casebooks like we’ve had so far; and then there’s going to be a big ol’ apocalyptic trilogy at the end. And we’ve still got all kinds of fun stuff to do, that I’ve been looking forward to for fifteen years. It’s occasionally maddening. But yeah – we’ve still got professional wrestling, and dragons, and kaiju and all kinds of cool stuff ahead of us.
ESW: Of course – as you would have! Now, are the Maggie books going to start coming out before all of that goes through, or are you working in tandem on those?
JB: Hopefully I’ll be working in tandem. I’m going to be writing them along with my sister, who has had six children of her own and knows the child interaction thing better than I do. I only have the one, so there was no cross-conflict going on there. Hopefully that will be something we can write. She’ll be able to come up and visit for three weeks, and we’ll work on the thing together and just get it done. Because the advantage of writing a young adult book is you can write it a lot shorter. It’s only about a quarter of a full length novel. Which makes it a project I can do on a fairly rapid basis. So that will be fun, doing it like that.
ESW: Excellent. Speaking of other projects, we’ve got at least three short stories I’ve heard about. There’s a book, Shadowed Souls, that’s coming out, and there will be a Dresden story in that. Is it the Butters one, or the Molly one?
JB:Shadowed Souls is an anthology of short stories. I actually edited the anthology alongside Kerrie L. Hughes. We put that together, and it’s a bunch of different authors throwing in characters from their series’ and so on. So it will be a really good sampler for, “If you like this author, you might enjoy something by this author.” So you can read it and see. That’s got the Molly story – Molly’s first mission as The Winter Lady. And you get to find out what her job actually is; and it’s not nice, what she’s gotta do.
ESW: Right, because she can’t tell Harry about everything, so we don’t get as much of that, and I would love to see it.
JB: Exactly. She’s got operational security she has to worry about now. So she doesn’t tell Harry, and there are all these things she’s hiding from him, and different things that are now available to her; and different pressures that she has to deal with as The Winter Lady. There’s a reason that her predecessor Maeve was completely bugnuts. Once she’s getting into it she’s like, “Oh. Ohhhhh.” So that’s what she’s facing, so we get to see her doing that.
ESW: I love Molly, so I’m looking forward to that.
JB: She’s such a fun character to write; because in many ways as The Winter Lady, she’s in a place where she’s very comfortable – because as the eldest daughter in a large family, it was essentially her job to be deputy mom, and wrangle all the little brothers and sisters; and that’s what she’s doing now. But at the same time, she’s got Mab as the mother figure now, instead of Charity – and Molly has issues with authority figures. So you get to see some of that conflict. It’s fun to write. I love writing the stories from the perspectives of the different characters, because they all see the world so differently. The Dresden Files world changes completely based on whose eyes you’re looking through to see.
ESW: I loved the one where it was Karrin telling the story. So is there a Butters one coming out as well?
JB: Yes; Butters’ first mission as a Knight of the Cross. He’s out doing cardio with Michael; he’s doing the Rocky thing, he’s doing his training montage. And he sees something and trips over a trash can, and Michael says, “What’s wrong?” And Butters looks at him and says, “You don’t see that?” And Michael’s like, “See what?” And Butters says, “That bum on the bench over there, there’s a big yellow exclamation point floating over him.” And Michael’s like, “No, I don’t see that.” And Butters gets to be like, “I’m not crazy. My mother had me tested.” Michael’s like, “Well what does that mean to you?” And Butters says, “Well that’s what you see over an NPC in an MMORPG any time there’s a quest that you need to go do.”
ESW: I love it! Because we’ve got the sword already being Star Wars – it’s a light saber; and so he’s seeing everything in geek.
JB: Yeah, it’s coming up as an MMORPG quest for him. And Michael’s like, “You used a lot of letters there, and I did not understand anything you said – but it sounds like that’s what the quest is.” And Butters is like, “God speaks video game?” And Michael’s like, “God speaks whatever it is you understand. So maybe you should go talk to that guy.” And that’s where it gets started; and then he winds up in all kinds of trouble after that.
ESW: That is so great! So in our very last minute I’m going to go through a few characters. Please tell me if we’re going to see any significant development of them in Peace Talks: Thomas and Justine?
JB: Yes.
ESW: Because there was the whole, “Justine is pregnant” tweet… Were you kidding? Were you trolling? Was it real?
JB: No no, that’s the first sentence of the book. “Thomas said Justine is pregnant.”
ESW: Speaking of Harry and his family – do we hear more about his mother and her background?
JB: Probably not in this book.
ESW: What about Demonreach? Is Harry still living there when Maggie lives with him, or has he moved back into Chicago?
JB: He’s living with the svartalves in Molly’s apartment. He’s Molly’s vassal, so Molly said he gets to go there, and the svartalves are like, “Yeah, fine.” And they like Maggie and Mouse.
ESW: Well who wouldn’t?
JB: Yeah, Mouse has got better people skills than Dresden does.
ESW: Of course! What about Uriel and the other angels and characters from the last book. Do they come into this one, or are they taking a backseat to the Accords?
JB: They won’t be as involved in this one. The angels can only get so involved in things that are going on, because there’s this whole issue of human free will.
ESW: Right – so about Harry’s family again, sort of – what about the spirit of intellect, whose name is…?
JB: He is calling her Bonea, because the word Bone is in the name, and Harry’s not got a sophisticated sense of humor. Bonea or Bonnie. And Bonnie is learning. She’s got enormous amounts of information at her disposal, and no perspective on how it works in the actual world. It’s the most ridiculous character. I’m having a lot of fun writing her.
ESW: I’m excited about that. We’ve talked about a bunch – and I wish I had more time. But: is there one final thing you’d like people to know about the book?
JB: I’m working on it!!
ESW: Hah, said with just the right expression. Is there a release date yet?
JB: No, there isn’t. They want me to finish writing it first!
ESW: Okay; it will be out when Jim is done writing it!
Thank you, as always, Jim Butcher, for your time and sharing all of this great information with us. I’m really looking forward to Peace Talks!
And until next time, ComicMix readers, Servo Lectio!
So yesterday afternoon I turned on the TV to watch the live Global Citizen concert and caught one of my favorite artists, Yusuf Islam – formerly known as Cat Stevens – performing songs “Wild World” and, joined by Eddie Vedder, “Father and Son,” both from one of his best albums, 1970’s Tea for the Tillerman. I was singing along and getting back into my ‘60s groove when, all of a sudden, right as he started to sing another song, fucking MSNBC went to commercials!!!!
C’mon, are you kidding me? And to make it even more frustrating, the network did one of those “little boxes” so that you could see Mr. Islam singing, but you couldn’t hear him. AAAGH! Global Citizen’s mission is to end extreme poverty around the world, so I found it extremely disturbing and in incredibly bad taste to have a concert meant to raise awareness and encourage support interrupted by “come-on’s” and enticements to buy something.
I changed the channel.
I also went by my local comic book shop to pick up my “reads” and found the door covered with “To Rent” and “For Lease” signs. I didn’t bother parking. Now I have to search out a new place, one that’s close and easily accessible. I could go over to Forbidden Planet in Manhattan (where I believe my friend and fellow columnist Martha Thomases picks up her reads); it’s not far, and it’s in on of my favorite areas of the city, just south of Union Square on 13th and Broadway and it’s a really easy commute for me. I’m really tempted to start doing that, because Forbidden Planet has what I think is the best inventory anywhere – with JimHanley’s Universe, aka JHU Comic Books, on East 32nd running a very close second. Jim’s original store is on Staten Island, and it’s still there, on New Dorp Lane, but construction and traffic make that drive a nightmare.
Just did a search, and found Carmine Street Comics on Carmine Street in the West Village, which is even closer than Forbidden Planet, a few blocks south of Christopher Street, the first stop in Manhattan on the New Jersey PATH train. Really like their website – hmm, Carmine just doesn’t sell comics, its an “interactive” store with their community. They have a storefront studio with an Artist Space for illustrators and writers (though watching a writer at work can be pretty boring, if you ask me), plus podcasts, a video talk show, and a webseries. And for comics consumers they have a deal with ComiXology so that you can reserve comics weeks in advance and then pick them up at the store. This is a really interesting place. Definitely checking it out – next weekend, fer shur!! (And I have to talk to Martha about Carmine – I have a feeling she already knows about it.)
There’s 4:00 left in the Giants-Redskins game, Giants are up by 1 (27-26); I’m getting that sick feeling in my stomach I always get with my Big Blue. (Never an easy win with them, and they tend to beat themselves.) Washington has the ball, and is moving the ball down the field with their running game. Now the ‘skins are in field goal range and we are at the 2:00 minute warning. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Defensive line held them to a fourth down. But Washington just kicked a field goal. Now they are up by 2. 1:51 left. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I gotta go watch this, guys.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Eli’s pass was intercepted.
Game over.
Ah, well. It’s a long season…
And next weekend, a visit to Carmine Street Comics. I think I’ll call Martha.
The madness that is San Diego Comic-Con gave way to the easy fun of Baltimore Comic-Con. Now Geek Culture gets ready for the last big comic convention of the year, New York Comic Con, with anxiety and anticipation.
But it’s not really as simple as that. There have been plenty of really good conventions each and every week. And there’s more being planned.
So even though I was still a little “space happy” (as Mr. Sulu once said) from the Star Trek: Mission New YorkConvention, I put on my favorite convention shoes and made my way to the Rochester Comic Con – which they call RocCon.
A little background: I grew up in the rolling countryside of the Finger Lakes. But these last few years – it simultaneously seems like both a lifetime and the blink of an eye – I lived in the metro NYC area. There I did become a little snooty and jaded. I almost went into RocCon with a chip on my shoulder and ready to peer down my nose, in classic “city mouse” fashion, to be amongst the “country mice” of Rochester.
But, you know what? It was a lot of fun. Everybody seemed to be enjoying it.
“It was the best one yet!” said Josie Walsh, a three year RocCon veteran who’s just 16 years old.
The vendors seemed to be doing well. The artists and authors seemed to do well. The fans seemed really happy. The food trucks enjoyed brisk business. And unlike other cons, I didn’t find any long lines that would discourage fans.
Guest Who?
There were some fun guests there. Talented comic artists like Mark Texiera, Mark Sparacio and Joe Orsak are fun for a fan like me, but it went beyond that. For example:
Julie Millillo is a cosplayer and author, and was promoting both skills at her booth. She also has a lovely singing voice, and thrilled fans by singing in an auditorium presentation.
Lou Ferrigno was there. In any given year, I think I see him more than I see my own brothers. But evidently, the fans haven’t tired of him. They loved him and couldn’t get enough.
Vic Mignogna is an actor who appears in Star Trek Fan-Films. That’s a fascinating geek subgenre. I was looking forward to speaking to him and learning more about how it all works. But I didn’t get the chance. As a vocal talent of many anime series, fans mobbed him throughout the show.
The Craft of Crafts
There were quite a few booths with entrepreneurs looking to create something in geek space and get a “seat at the table”. Their enthusiasm was infectious and I couldn’t help but root for them to succeed.
“Speaking with the artist/creators selling geek culture wares was inspirational. They are a welcoming community that I am proud to support,” Lisa Walsh, a sixth grade math and ELA teacher at Jamesville DeWitt Middle School near Syracuse.
But local Geek Culture didn’t stop at the Rochester city limits, or come to a halt on that Sunday night.
Buffalo Comic Con
The following week, the nearby city of Buffalo hosted its own comic convention. It’s been going on for 17 years, run by Queen City Bookstore’s Emil Novak. He’s a great guy and I love this description of him from Art Voice, a Buffalo mewspaper:
“Seriously? There’s another Comicon? Who’s organizing it? Has to be, should be, and is Emil Novak Sr., Owner of Queen City Books in Buffalo, and the most logical person in this city to do something like this…. And Novak has comic book ink running through his veins. (Seriously, Dracula took a bite of him once and spit out a mouthful of black India Ink.)”
Clearly, they respect Emil and they revel in the homegrown aspect of this convention. And in the article, Emil talked about how he works to make the Buffalo Comic Con an easy, affordable alternative to the bigger shows.
Think Globally, Geek Locally
That’s the big idea here. There’s enough Geek Culture to go around for everyone. And there’s enough fun, excitement and revenue to make it all work in these “secondary markets.”
That sounds pretty snobby, doesn’t it? “Secondary Markets” is something a big city guy says. I think we need a better adjective to describe all these fantastic mid-size and small comic conventions. There’s your homework assignment – come up with a good phrase before the experts do.
In the meantime, support your friendly neighborhood comic con.
“Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” – For What It’s Worth, 1967, written by Stephen Stills, performed by Buffalo Springfield
SPOILERS! Warning! Danger! I’m going to discuss some questions raised in Captain America: Civil War, which means some plot points will get spilled. If you haven’t yet seen the film – it’s just out on Blu-Ray – you may not want to proceed.
There are a lot of things I enjoyed about Captain America: Civil War but what I liked best was the question that was at the center of the narrative. During an action in Legos involving Cap and some members of the Avengers, there is a mistake and an explosion and innocent bystanders get killed. This, coupled with the human collateral damage witnessed in previous Marvel films, causes members of the United Nations to create The Slovenia Accords – named after the site of the massive destruction in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Now the Avengers must submit to an oversight panel. If they don’t, they will be disbanded.
This creates a split within the Avengers themselves. Tony Stark (Iron Man) believes they must accept the accords and some restrictions on how they use their powers or they would be no better than the foes they oppose. Steve Rogers (Captain America) does not, cannot, and will not agree. This compromises their freedom including the freedom to act when they see a situation calling for it. They can’t wait for bureaucratic paper rustling. Lives are in the balance. The Avengers split into Team Cap and Team Iron Man (along with some guest stars) and they will, of course, fight it out.
So… which team do we, the audience, ally with? The film is clever in that neither side is set to be absolutely right or absolutely wrong. There are arguments for both but the question at the center of the film is – can society allow masked, super-powered individuals to act without some check?
There is no right answer. Oh, my inclinations is to go with Cap; I’m a stinkin’ leftist liberal progressive pinko commie after all. FreeeeeeeDOM!
Except. . .
All these superheroes are basically vigilantes. They operate outside of the law; for the most part, the heroes are not deputized by any government or law enforcement organization (Green Lantern is an exception but that was a lousy movie). They don’t really have any authority to do what they are doing.
I do take exception to one trope in the movie. “Thunderbolt” Ross from The Incredible Hulk film returns, now as the U.S. Secretary of State and evidently liaison to the Avengers from the U.N. He cites all the collateral destruction suffered by society in both Avengers films and the previous Captain America film. He lays the blame for this on the Avengers, noting that there are others in society that feel the same way.
Except. . .
Neither Cap nor the Avengers initiated the situations in those films. Because of their actions, humanity was not enslaved or outright destroyed as would have been the case otherwise. I would have liked to have that mentioned in the film by the heroes.
However, that doesn’t change the root question in Captain America: Civil War. Can any society allow such masked, perhaps super-powered, individuals to act unilaterally? Some of them are masked and the authorities don’t know their true names. Can a society of law survive in such circumstances? It is not a simple question and, to its credit, I don’t think Captain America: Civil War presents it that way.
My heart remains with Cap but I think my brain may agree more with Iron Man. I think I have my own civil war, one that most of us have at one time or another – heart versus head. I don’t think that one is going to be resolved any time soon.
At the start of the column, I quoted a line from Buffalo Springfield’s song “For What It’s Worth.” Despite being fifty years old, the piece is remarkably suited for today. Check it out on YouTube or some such place for yourself and see.
Editor’s Note: A somewhat less subtle version was recorded by Ozzy Osbourne about 10 years ago.
Marvel recently announced a set of variant covers for its newly launching U.S. Avengersseries. As with most listicle-ized ideas in modern comic bookery, it wasn’t much of a shock to me as a stunt. It will provide local comic shops something cool to order to entice collectors with, and for the super serious collectors, there will be a future market to Pokemon Go! and just go ahead and collect ‘em all. It’s a novelty, sure, but there’s been worse ones.
What it really does, though, is cause fans to curiously align themselves to a particular hero — as jocks will take to their geographically-proximate sports-ball-teams. With that, comes that nearly indescribable urge to gain a soft-spot for a particular character… and of course then talk smack at other hero/state pairings in an effort to show one’s newfound super civic pride.
For my home-sweet-home in the south suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, comes Dr. Hank McCoy. Beast, if you’re naughty. The choice, for those in the know, isn’t too surprising. McCoy hails from the suburbs of Chicago himself (or so sayeth Wikipedia, Chicago’s Time Out edition, and countless other sources). Hence, the blue beast was chosen as the surrogate super son of Illinois.
I’ll be honest. Prior to seeing the cover and assignment, I wasn’t a fan of Beast. I don’t hate the fur ball, mind you… but even amongst various X teams and Avengers teams, he’d be nowhere close to a personal favorite. Funny enough though, seeing the cover with Hank leaping stoically off the Illinois map made me reconsider my personal feelings. Whereas California got the glitz and glamour choice of Iron Man and New York nabbed native son Luke Cage, Illinois got what I’d certainly say was a deep cut. We are home to the third largest city in the nation, and the best we muster is a guy who proclaims “Oh my stars and garters!”? In true Chicagoan spirit, my answer to that very question was a resounding “F*ck right he is!”
Beast is strong, fast, flexible, ambidextrous with four limbs, and a genius. He cured the legacy virus. He’s fluent in nine languages. He can hold up his end of the conversation with Reed Richards, Steven Strange, and Tony Stark… all while hanging upside down and teaching a class of X-babies. You see? And he’s my home state hero. It’s like we got Spider-Man and Mr. Fantastic all in one guy! And he’s the same color as our beloved Chicago Bears. Hell, he could play quarterback if he wanted!
See how quickly my opinion changed? The second they aligned my home to Hank, an affinity arose. Because he was offered as ours, suddenly there became an emotional edge to my opinion. Now when I open up my Marvel Contest of Champions mobile app, I’m more apt to hope I open up a crystal with the periwinkle protector to add to my cadre of combatants. And should people hold up their state-assigned hero as a better (“Indiana has the friggen’ Winter Solder, brah!”)? Well, I’ll be happy to scoff as I rattle off 17 ways my Dundee-native doctor can whup their candy ass twelve ways from Sunday. Curse you Marvel. What did you do to me?
It’s a cherry idea, I give them that. To turn a cash-grab novelty to in a buzzfeedesque game of proclivity is an instant hit in my book. Same way I felt when the Initiative post Civil War gave us the “Illinois Space Knights.” Same way I felt when I found out my broader home soil was home to such characters as Maria Hill, the Question (well, sort of… ask Mike Gold or Denny O’Neil), Ghost Rider, and Savage Dragon. To know that a fictional character shares the same air as you… may love a good Italian Beef — dipped, of course — and occasionally knock back an Old Style in a tallboy? Well, nothing makes me quicker to warm my icy Illinois heart.
So, it begs the question of you: What lilly-licking punk hero did your silly state get?
March, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, is the answer to every question, the solution to every problem.
Let me explain how I came to see the light.
I was at a conference for American Jews interested in increasing the opportunities for a shared society among Jewish and Arab Israelis. In attendance were representatives from various American Jewish funding organizations as well as Israeli Jewish and Arab leaders. It was heady stuff for me, and I was thrilled to see that Israeli Arabs are just as opinionated (and enjoy a good argument) as much as I do.
All of us being Semites, of course we wanted to eat. A lot. Over meals, we didn’t just discuss policy and programs. We talked about current events (oy) and our various jobs and interests. When I said I worked in comics and was writing a graphic novel, I got asked a lot of questions.
Some people hadn’t read a comic book since they were children four decades ago (or more). Some had read Maus, but didn’t know about anything else.
When I mentioned that they might enjoy March and told them that Congressman John Lewis had written this three-volume graphic novel, almost everyone was interested.
On this site, because we write about comics all the time, we know about John Lewis. And because we are rabid consumers of comics and books and movies and television, we know a lot about how comics influence our larger entertainment choices. We know that comics supply the creative content for a bunch of mega-billion dollar industries.
We know less about how comics can save the world. Specifically, March.
The third volume was published recently, and while I loved the first two, this final piece knocked me on my ass. It’s so good and so powerful and so subtle. I thought I knew the story about the March on Selma and the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. I’d watched it on television in real time. I’ve talked to people who were there. I’ve read other accounts.
Nothing prepared me.
I’m a person who frequently enjoys movie violence. March 3 viscerally demonstrated the difference between fact and fiction. I felt actual pain reading about the mobs of white people who beat people demonstrating for their rights as citizens. I also felt pain for those white people, who must have led fairly miserable lives to think that the proper response to peaceful protest is to split a person’s head.
Somehow, Lewis and Aydin and Powell convey these horrors in such a straightforward fashion that I doubt any parents will object to their children reading the books for school.
An Arab woman who is principal of an Arab middle school in the Western Galilee told me her students very much admire Dr. Martin Luther King. She said they recognize that his fight is their fight. If/when there is an Arabic edition, I’m going to donate a bunch of copies to her library.
Let’s hope those kids are just as successful using King’s tactics as he was when they attempt to achieve their goals. And, because I’m greedy, let’s hope they create books that are just as wonderful.
If you’re a fan of the television versions of superheroes, you know what I’m talking/typing about. The network that calls itself The CW has, for a while now, been advocating such daring and this is the very same the go-to corporate entity that has made itself the go-to bandwidth for costumed do-gooders. They already have, in Arrow and The Flash, a couple of established hits (provided your definition of “hit” is modest) and in Legends of Tomorrow a show that has at least enough watchers to warrant renewal for another season. And the biggie…Supergirl has, with much hype, migrated from the kind of old-folkish CBS to the youthier CW and we Maid of Might mavens are allowed a happy sigh.
But about that youthiness and that “daring to defy” business: Really? Can they possibly mean it? Since they don’t specify exactly what they want us to defy, I have to guess that what we’re asked to defy is what we children of the Sixties might refer to as “the Man.” You know – the Establishment. The necktie wearers. Wall Street. Politics. Corporate America. The military-industrial complex (a term coined by no less an Establishment icon than President Dwight D. Eisenhower.)
Well, okay, but…where to begin? A logical answer: Consumerism. A denial of, or least a vigorous questioning of, t shirt wisdom, something like Whoever Has the Most Toys When He Dies Wins. So, all you wannabe defiers, stop buying stuff you don’t need. Stop discarding clothing just because some Seventh Avenue pooh-bah has declared it unfashionable which, I think, means whatever the pooh-bahs say it means. (And rest in peace, Noah Webster.) And if this means buying clothing that’s durable instead of merely new, amen. While you’re at it, extend that policy to motor vehicles, appliances, furniture, housing, vacation sites, playthings. If you’re killing time waiting for Supergirl to come on, you can make your own list.
But whoa. Subtract the money wasted on the unnecessary and suddenly those bandwidth-borne heroes aren’t there anymore. The money we spend (waste?) on frivolities pays for the programs we enjoy. No wasted cash = no Supergirl (who, it might be said, is herself a frivolity, but we could be flirting with blasphemy here, so let’s not.)
Okay, we exempt consumerism from the list of things we defy. What else? School? Hey, I am the husband of a teacher and the father of a professor and have been known to stand at the front of classrooms myself, so you aren’t going to catch me knocking education, though some varieties of it might deserve a knock or two. Besides – big secret a’comin’ – it’s fun to know stuff.
Now, a true story. At my high school graduation the school’s principal told my mother that the good Christian Brothers never wanted to see me again. Maybe if you wore a funny collar you could spot a defier from a mile away and if they said Joe O’Neil’s offspring was a defier, well, they were the authorities. But that offspring didn’t know he was a defier.
I was going to write about comics again this week; I usually do, and I’ve got all sorts of notes on a topic that can wait a week or two. ComicMix purports to proselytize about geek culture – or, as my fellow wordsmith Ed Catto calls it, “Geek Culture” – for the broader comic book fan audience. Glenn Hauman calls us the pop culture Huffington Post. I call us the Huffington Post from hell.
There’s nothing geekier than monsters, and our culture has sported quite a few real monsters. In this regard, perhaps you think of Hitler. He’s our go-to real life monster, a paranoid drug addict who earned his place as the 20th Century’s greatest metaphor. Maybe you think of Stalin, who was quite the monster even before he sided with Hitler, which was before he opposed Hitler.
No, today I wish to talk about the Greatest American Monster, dubbed The Torture Doctor. In fact, David Franke wrote a book about the guy in 1975 and he called it The Torture Doctor. Of course I’m referring to “Doctor” H.H. Holmes, often referred to as the first serial killer. That is not true; the first serial killer predeceased Holmes by a dozen millennia; his name roughly translates into Oog, and I’m sure his fellow homo habilises didn’t care much for him. But, I digress.
If a meticulous sequential mass murdering seducing charlatan swindler can be thought of as cool, Holmes was indeed that. Damn, his real name wasn’t even H.H. Holmes. It was Herman Webster Mudgett, but he was cool enough to understand that wasn’t the name for the ages. H.H. Holmes was much more cool.
Born at the onset of the Civil War, Mudgett graduated from the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, acquiring skills that he would soon put to bad use. He moved to Chicago in 1886, adapted the more alliterative name and took a job as a pharmacist and errand boy at Elizabeth Holton’s drugstore at the corner of Wallace and West 63rd Street. When Holton’s husband died H.H. bought the operation from the widow, who then disappeared.
Three years later and three miles to the east, it was announced that Chicago had won the rights to the 1893 World’s Fair. They beat out New York; the term “the windy city,” applied locally since 1876, was immortalized by the distraught editor of the New York Sun, a one-time Chicagoan named Charles A. Dana. “Don’t pay any attention to the nonsensical claims of that windy city. Its people could not build a World’s Fair even if they won it.” Dana was mistaken. Not only did it build the truly dazzling World’s Fair, but it gave Holmes the idea of buying the block-long vacant lot across the street from his drug store and building a hotel. He called it the World’s Fair Hotel.
Clearly, he one of the most devious contractors in history. Holmes had an idea, a plan for the hotel. Only one person might have known the full plan – his subcontractors were limited to building various sections of the building with no one builder knowing the totality of the effort. Eventually the guy who acted as H.H.’s associate, Benjamin Pitezel, wound up prematurely deceased… as did his children.
Dubbed “The Castle” due to its enormous size, it was later discovered the joint was littered with secret soundproofed airtight rooms, trapdoors, and chutes that led to the basement. The hotel mostly employed young women and mostly catered to young out-of-town women who were visitors to, or workers at, the Fair. There were secret gas lines, a special second floor hanging chamber, rooms for suffocation and starvation, and hidden passageways to the basement where many skeletons were preserved and sold to medical schools. The hotel had lots of modern conveniences, including two massive furnaces and handy pits of lime and corrosive acid.
H.H. Holmes was a man with a plan. Several plans, in fact, that seemed to address his sundry lusts, his desire for money, and a general distain for the fairer sex. He was also quite an experienced insurance swindler and, eventually, he and the three Pitezel children left town for Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toronto, Philadelphia and Boston. By then the Pinkertons had been hired by the insurance interests and they tracked the Torture Doctor down, where he was arrested and ultimately convicted of Pitezel’s murder.
Holmes confessed to 27 murders, although only nine were confirmed. It is generally believed he murdered upwards of 200 people, mostly women, mostly blonde. He married some of them, but that was just a formality – one we refer to as “bigamy.”
Holmes was hanged at the Philadelphia County Prison in May 1896, at the age of 34. Amusingly, execution witnesses said Holmes was hanged improperly and slowly strangled to death for 20 minutes. By this time The Castle had endured a massive fire; two men had been seen running away from the building just ahead of several explosions. The building was rehabbed and lived until 1938. Today, the site is home to the neighborhood post office and, in several weeks, a Whole Foods supermarket will be opening a block away.
Holmes’ story was immortalized in Erik Larson’s best-selling novel The Devil in the White City. Ostensibly, Leo DiCaprio will be playing Holmes in long-in-development motion picture. I gather Johnny Depp was unavailable.
The Castle endured for three decades, but here’s the real mystery. Pretty much ever since then, the Englewood neighborhood has been one of the most dangerous areas in Chicago – even today, with the city’s notoriously high murder rate, Englewood is one of two areas where most of these murders occur.
Doctor Holmes left quite a legacy. Doctor Holmes was a genuine monster.
It fills me with pride that comic publishers are working to benefit the queer community. I’m proud of all the creators that have gotten involved and have given their time and talent to help others and I’m thrilled that mainstream comics is standing by the queer community. Despite all the positives and how proud we should be of DC Comics and IDW for standing with victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, we need to demand more for the queer community and the other less privileged and underrepresented groups.
Newsarama went on to say “Curiously, DC describes this group as “aspiring” writers in their press release, despite each have significant credentials inside and outside of comic books – including some which have done work for DC previously.” Using the term aspiring is certainly misleading when you have award winning writers and people working in the TV biz being selected. It seems like the high caliber of talent selected could have easily been found by traditional methods of editors scouting out talent. Women and people of color shouldn’t have to be incredibly talented award winners in their field to be extended an opportunity to take a class to one day possibly write for DC Comics (or write for them again). What makes this tone deaf is it comes off like these talents need DC Comics. The exact opposite is true.
