Category: Columns

Glenn Hauman: Late, As Usual

Mark Evanier has been writing and collecting stories from various other comics editors about freelancers who do or do not get their work in on time, and the motivations for why they might end up delivering late:

The artist was a freelancer who worked for many companies and editors. I absolutely sympathize with anyone in that position because that’s been my entire career for 49 years now — juggling assignments, working for several places at the same time.

By his own admission, this artist worried incessantly about not having enough work to meet the expenses of life. Even when he had a full dance card and was turning down work, he was fretting, “What if there’s nothing more after I hand in my current assignments?” When I asked him to draw the story for me, he should have said no, he didn’t have time. He was already committed to too many other jobs but on impulse, he said yes. […] He thought he was doing both of us a favor by taking on the job…and he thought he’d have more time than I said.

I’m going to throw in at least one other reason that’s related to this: occasionally, there are artists who are just too good at their job— by which I mean that there’s just not as much challenge as there used to be. After you’ve drawn 2000 pages of comic art in your time, many of the problems in doing the job go away and you get bored. How many different times can you draw the same character, after all? The challenge is the composition and breakdown of the page, but after that– eh. He knows he can finish it, and he knows what it’s going to look like when he’s done. (Think of it like a surgeon who hands off the closing to someone else.)

So in at least one case that I know of… the artist pushes the clock. He gets as close to the deadline as possible, maybe even a little beyond it, and then he starts working. The challenge is to do the job while racing against the hard limit, all while dodging emails and phone calls from people in the editorial office who are getting closer and closer to heart attacks. And by challenging himself on speed, he gets that thrill from creation again.

But… as you might suspect, sometimes he blows the timing. Something comes up, something goes wrong, someone shows up inviting you on a treasure hunt.

The question then becomes at that point… can you trust the artist again? Well, maybe. But an editor will always have that worry in the back of his mind… and from that point on, he’ll have a backup plan when working with that artist.

Image from Small Blue Yonder.

The Law Is A Ass #426: Ant-Man Doesn’t Right The Wrongs Of His Trial

I know you think you know where you are but you’re wrong. You’re 8-years old again, sitting in your dentist’s waiting room with a copy of Highlights for Children, looking at the “What’s Wrong?” puzzle on the back cover. Only this time, instead of one large picture full of things that are wrong to find, it’s 150 pictures. The 150 pictures that made up The Astonishing Ant-Man # 13.

Scott Lang, the astonishing Ant-Man eponymoused in the comic’s title, was on trial for a crime his daughter committed in an act of rebellion. Guess she had grown past the “Bad Boy” stage. In order to protect his daughter, Scott confessed to her crime and now was on trial.

I’m assuming the prosecution’s case came in badly for Scott; it usually does when the defendant confesses. But I can only assume that, because the story didn’t actually show us any of the prosecution’s case. The story started by showing a string of defense character witnesses all called to attest to the fact that Scott was a good guy.

And here’s our first “What’s Wrong?” Scott confessed, remember? Well the thing about confessions is juries tend to believe them. A lot. When the prosecution’s case includes a confession, that’s pretty much, “The state rests.” The defendant could introduce character witnesses that he’d been canonized for driving the snakes out of Ireland and inventing Triple Stuf Oreos; he’d still be convicted. Scott’s entire defense of character witnesses was pretty much the worst defense this side of, “Yes, the defendant ate his victims; but he didn’t eat them raw.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Scott’s first two character witnesses were Machinesmith – a super villain who said Scott was a good boss, but so were his former employers Arnim Zola and Baron Zemo – and Grizzly, a super villain who said Scott was the only guy who would give Grizzly a chance after he committed all those murders. Which brings us to “What’s Wrong?” deuce, there’s no advantage in calling Nazi employees or mass murderers as character witnesses.

During a recess, Scott was sitting in the hallway. A correction officer was sitting right next to him, like about a foot away. That’s when the prosecutor, Janice Lincoln, approached Scott and told him the reason she left a lucrative civil practice in New York in order to prosecute Scott was Pym Particles, those wondrous things Hank Pym, the first Ant-Man, used to shrink to insect size. See, Janice was a lawyer who moonlighted as a super villain. (Yes, there is so a difference!) She resented the fact that her Beetle identity was the only insect-named character who couldn’t shrink. She told Scott she was going to bring his Ant-Man costume into court for a demonstration and if he provided her with Pym Particles from it, she’d throw the case.

And we have “What’s Wrong?” the drei heaves. No, not that a prosecutor offered to throw a case for a bribe. It happens. What was wrong is that no prosecutor would offer to take a bribe while talking loud enough to be heard by a defendant who was four feet away when a corrections officer was within earshot!

“What’s Wrong?” may the fourth be with you happened when the prosecution presented its demonstration with the Ant-Man costume. No, not the fact that the prosecution called the defendant as a witness. I assume Scott agreed to waive his Fifth Amendment as part of the bribery deal. It’s the fact that the prosecution was allowed to do this after defense witnesses had testified. The prosecution would have rested its case before the defense called its witnesses. The prosecution wouldn’t be able to re-open its case to put on new substantive evidence.

Now this being a comic book that had gone twelve pages without a fight it was about time for the super villains who wanted revenge on Scott to attack the courtroom. Can you guess what happened on Page 13?

Nine pages of fight scene in the courtroom with the judge and jury present later, the villains were defeated and the trial resumed. Which is “What’s Wrong?” the fifth – a fifth being what I need about now. Ant-Man just saved the lives of the judge and jury from some super villains. There isn’t a judge who wouldn’t declared a mistrial and then disqualify both himself and the jury from the case for the reason that Ant-Man just saved their lives. And that would tend to prejudice them in Ant-Man’s favor.

So trial resumed. Janice Lincoln told the court that she and the defendant had reached “a perfectly reasonable, totally illegal [emphasis mine] deal” which the defendant just broke so the prosecutor wanted to get back at him by calling her final witness and convicting him. And we have “What’s Wrong?” six in the city, the prosecutor just admitted in open court in front of a judge, jury, and court reporter that she accepted a bribe.

The fact that Janice called a witnesses after the defense had put on its case is not our next “What’s Wrong?” Prosecutors can’t put on substantive evidence after they’ve rested their case. But they may put on rebuttal witnesses; that is witnesses called for the specific purpose of rebutting evidence offered in the defense case. These witnesses don’t offer substantive proof of the defendant’s guilt, they poke holes in the defense case.

“What’s Wrong?” seven come eleven (don’t worry, we aren’t actually going that high) happened when Janice called Scott’s ex-wife to rebut all the defense testimony of his good character. Janice proceed to lead her own witness by asking question after question which suggested its own answer. However, Janice soon learned she could lead her horse to the Kool-Aid but she couldn’t make her drink it. Because Scott’s ex testified about how wonderful Scott truly was and what a good father he was.

After that turn of my stomach – err events – the jury found Scott not guilty. No, that’s not “What’s Wrong? the eighth, man. I said the jury was probably prejudiced in Scott’s favor after he saved their lives from the super villains. I was right.

I mentioned in the last column that over thirty years ago “The Trial of the Flash”  storyline lasted two years and made lots of mistakes. “The Trial of Ant-Man” lasted only two issues but I’ll bet it made about as many errors in those two issues as “The Trial of the Flash” made in its two years. Any takers?

The Law Is A Ass # 425: Ant-Man’s Trial Has Character Flaws

The Law Is A Ass # 425: Ant-Man’s Trial Has Character Flaws

A long time ago in a multiverse far, far away…

The Flash went on trial for murdering Reverse-Flash in a multi-part story called The Trial of the Flash. As storylines went, The Trial of the Flash went on for…

Ever!

Okay, it went on for two years. But back in 1983 – before decompressed storytelling and multi-part stories designed to be binge-read in trade paperback collections – two years was forever. The second “The Law Is a Ass” I ever wrote was also my first column about The Trial of the Flash. Several more followed. How many more? Well let’s just say before The Trial of the Flash, and I, were finished, I had earned enough writing about it to pay off my mortgage, insure my kids had no student loan debt, and reduced the national debt to zero from the taxes I paid.

So you can imagine my trepidation upon reading Astonishing Ant-Man# 12. It was, you see, the first part of The Trial of Ant-Man. Still, a journey of a thousand columns begins with a single step, so let’s get started.

Ant-Man – the Scott Lang version, not Henry Pym or the one nobody remembers because even I had to look up Eric O’Grady – was on trial for a crime he didn’t commit. Of course he didn’t. When a super hero is on trial in a comic book you can be pretty certain it’s for a crime the hero didn’t commit. In comics the only thing more certain than that is death and resurrection.

The crime Scott didn’t commit? His daughter – and former super hero Stinger – Cassie Lang committed it. How did this one time Young Avenger go rogue? Long story short; like this. To protect Cassie, Scott took the blame. He said he kidnapped Cassie and forced her to participate in his crime. It was a noble gesture, but it had serious repercussions; as the whole “The Trial of the Ant-Man” title would suggest.

The trial started as most trials do with jury selection but as there is virtually no way to make the voir dire process visually or dramatically interesting, the story ignored jury selection and jumped right to opening statements. Starting with the opening statement of Janice Lincoln, the prosecuting attorney. Janice went for the jugular. Scott’s. She argued that the jury should ignore Scott’s good deeds as Ant-Man, as Scott had been convicted of several felonies, abandoned his family, burned his bridges with the respected members of the super hero community, recklessly allowed his daughter to be killed – but resurrected, see I told you – and kidnapped that same daughter to force her to be his accomplice in a heist. Probably the only reason Janice didn’t blame Scott for The Great Train Robbery is that Scott’s strong suit has never been silent.

There’s a name for that in the legal biz. We call it “putting the defendant’s character in issue.” We also call it improper. In a criminal trial, the prosecution is expressly forbidden from offering evidence, testimony, or even opening statements about a defendant’s bad character in order to prove that the defendant acted in accordance with that bad character. Or, in words that aren’t ripped from compelling prose that is the Federal Rules of Evidence, it’s improper for the prosecutor to prove or even argue that the defendant has been a bad person in the past so probably continued to be a bad person and committed the crime.

There are some exceptions to this rule. We won’t go into all of them, because only one of them applies to the story at hand. The prosecution may address the issue of the defendant’s bad character when the defendant puts his or her own character into issue first. If the defense offers evidence or argues that the defendant is a good person who would never commit the crime – in the legal biz we call that “opening the door” – the prosecution is allowed to walk through the open door and rebut evidence of good character with evidence that the defendant is a bad person who would commit the crime.

In her opening statement, defense counsel Jennifer Walters told the jury all about what a good person and upstanding hero Scott Lang was; ending with “I’ve seen it with my own eyes – this man is a hero.” It was after Jennifer Walters made this opening statement that Janice Lincoln made her opening statement and assassinated Scott’s character like it was that other Lincoln at Ford’s Theater. (What? Too soon?)

So what’s my problem with Ms. Lincoln’s opening statement? After all, if the defense put Scott’s character in issue – and it did – then the prosecution would be allowed to rebut that claim of good character with an argument of bad character. My problem is that if proper trial procedure had been followed – and the story went out of its way to establish that the trial judge, the Honorable Ronald Wilcox, was a no-nonsense, by the book judge who would follow proper procedure – the prosecution would not have been allowed to make the opening statement that it did, because the defense wold not have put Scott’s character into issue yet.

Proper trial procedure dictates that the prosecution makes its opening statement first, because it has the burdens of producing the evidence proving the defendant guilty and persuading the jury that the defendant is guilty. The prosecution makes its opening statement before the defense makes its opening statement. In a real trial, not one that played with proper procedure for dramatic purpose, Janice Lincoln wouldn’t have been able to attack Scott’s character in her opening statement, because she would have given it before the defense opening statement and before Jennifer Walters opened the door to Scott’s character.

Oh, I’m sure that Ms. Lincoln would have had her opportunity later in the trial. The defense’s sole tactic was to convince the jury that Scott Lang was a hero who wouldn’t commit the crime, so the defense was going to open that door eventually. Then all that other bad stuff about Scott’s character would have come in. In the legal biz we have a name for that, a bad idea.

Here’s a piece of advice to all you future lawyers out there: If you put your client’s character into issue, the prosecution is allowed to counter with proof of your client’s bad character. So don’t put your client’s character into issue when your client’s closet has more skeletons than The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Box Office Democracy: Bottom 6 Movies of 2017

6. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

If this was just about wasted potential, Valerian would easily be on the top of this list.  There are five worse movies this year but none of them have a fraction of the visual artistry displayed here by Luc Besson.  Valerian has some of the best design I’ve seen in a movie all year and two of the most inventive chase sequences maybe ever.  It also features a terrible script that meanders forever over trivial nothing and merrily skips past dense plot without a moment for inspection.  I loved watching the action but I never really understood why any of it was going on.  Toss on top some of the worst chemistry I’ve ever seen between an on-screen couple (and honestly maybe Dane DeHaan isn’t ready to be a leading man) and this is an unpleasant movie to watch at any volume above mute.

5. American Assassin

I sincerely thought that we were past making movies like American Assassin now that we’re on year 16 of the obviously never ending War on Terror.  I assumed we were past movies that seemingly exist solely to demonize and dehumanize brown people on the other side of the world.  This is a movie with no nuance or subtext or anything.  It’s predictable, dreary, and the worst kind of weighty.  It depicts a world in which people are nothing but weapons for the nation as one we should want to be in.  It also runs for 15 minutes past any events of consequence happening and expects us to sit and care about literally nothing happening.

4. xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

If you’ve ever seen those posts where someone feeds a computer a bunch of data about one topic or another and then the computer spits back an attempt at making original things of the same set, you could understand how they probably wrote the script for xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.  It’s trying to be every successful action movie of the last ten years all at once.  It has a multi-cultural cast, numerous exotic locations that all happen to be filled with parties full of white people, and a bunch of supporting and cameo roles given to people intended to draw in audience in foreign markets.  There’s nothing holding the movie together so it’s easily the most boring movie I’ve ever seen that also features trying to use an airplane to hit falling satellites.  Movies are more than the sum of their parts and XXx: The Return of Xander Cage is a great lesson in that.

3. The Mummy

I long for the days when studios would just make movies with the idea that they could make an obscene amount of money from them.  Now it seems like they don’t want hundreds of millions of dollars unless they know it directly leads them to the next 100 million.  There were fine ideas in The Mummy about a woman who would not be cast aside and wanted to seize absolute power to punish her family.  That character doesn’t get to exist on screen because we need develop Tom Cruise to be the hero of the Dark Universe and we need time for Dr Jekyll and for the people who hunt monsters.  It is needless and exhausting.  The Mummy might not be an objectively terrible movie but it is so impossibly frustrating it needs to be recognized here.

2. Ghost in the Shell

Just to get it out of the way: this movie would make it on to this list just because it’s racist and tone deaf.  Deciding, in 2017, that it’s a good idea to make a movie based on an iconic Japanese manga/film/media empire and cast almost exclusively white people is astonishing.  It’s an irredeemable failure solely from looking at the poster.  Then it’s not even a good movie.  They threw out all the stories they presumably licensed the material for and instead gave us a milquetoast cyberpunk paint-by-number.  When the studio found out the Blade Runner sequel would be released in the same calendar year they should have shelved the project until we all forgot what could be done.

1. Transformers: The Last Knight

I suppose I should have some respect for Michael Bay as an auteur at this point.  He can’t possibly be hurting for money.  Nothing would stop him from getting lazy and putting out shorter films to try and goose his grosses by squeezing in another showing.  Bay is going to make these monstrous, incomprehensible, films and they’re going to be exactly as he wants them to be and as long as he pleases.  It would be charitable at this point to call these movies pointless.  There’s definitely a point: People who know things are idiots and people who shoot things are awesome.  They’re never going to stop with these; we should all just adjust our lives to accommodate them.

Box Office Democracy: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

I think The Last Jedi is my favorite Star Wars film.  It’s hard to say, these movies need so much time and will be seen over and over again.  I’m unwittingly comparing it in my head to my more recent viewings of the original trilogy and not the dazzling first ones but I have to trust it will hold up.  The Last Jedi is ambitious, and thought-provoking and fun in a way that none of the “core” Star Wars films ever have been.  This is the kind of movie someone would make if they spent their childhood loving the material but realized as an adult that it depicted a world that would never function.  Rian Johnson makes a more functional galaxy with more authentic characters and he’s made the best big-budget science fiction movie in some time.

It’s tough to write this review after having seen the battle lines being drawn across the Internet over the movie.  People are polarized and it’s pushing opinions to the far reaches.  I believe Kylo Ren is the most interesting character in all eight Star Wars movies but that might be an overreaction.  I know that his internal struggle and strife is the only time the dark side has seemed like a real thing people would be interested in.  This is a movie that took the laughably bad Anakin Skywalker arc from the prequel trilogy and made those feeling feel real.  Here I can find the nuance and conflict that we had to paste on to the prequels with speculation and supplemental material but all here in one go.  I would say that this is probably how people thought about Darth Vader after watching Empire Strikes Back but I’ve seen that movie, there are only a handful of meaningful head tilts signaling anything at all.  For the first time I feel like I’m not being asked to fill in big gaps of narrative or run to read some tangential novel released years later.

I’ve heard people say that none of the characters changed or grew in this movie and I simply can’t agree with that at all.  If after the events of this movie Poe isn’t doing some big time soul searching, this whole trilogy is a massive failure.  Granted we don’t see him become less of a reckless hotshot but it’s certainly what I expect to happen.  You can grow and change and not have it be immediately visible.  Finn, the person who lived to be a soldier, starts to see the galaxy that isn’t in a state of constant war and starts to see the context.  His relationship with Rose is engaging and exciting.  I enjoy the look at military heroism and idealism as Rose moves from idolizing Finn for his supposed deeds in the first film and then seeing that he’s a flawed person and kind of lapping him by the end of the film.  I need more of those characters pushing and pulling on each other.  Maybe even smooching but I do not want to wade in to the intricacy of Star Wars shipping politics.

If we want to accept the premise that the entire Star Wars series is the story of the Skywalker family (and I’m not sure I do want that, but here we are) this was another smashing success for me.  Mark Hamill has spent most of his career at this point as a voice actor, and it was so apparent in his performance here.  There are lines and readings where you can still here the kid annoyed at his uncle because he wanted to go get power converters. But there’s also the person who has had to live the last thirty years in a galaxy that he didn’t change nearly as much as he thought he would.  I wish we got a little more Leia but they didn’t know they weren’t going to get another chance with her.  It’s a sad thing but it is what it is.

The Last Jedi has the inside track to become my favorite Star Wars movie because it is challenging.  It takes a universe that, for all the turmoil depicted around the margins, has been a place of very safe storytelling and shakes it all the way up.  It shows us not just the corrupt slug gangsters but the people in glittering casinos making money off of selling fighter ships.  It’s willing to show us heroes getting old and instead of being cagey or clever like Obi-Wan or Yoda, becoming kind of hopeless and despondent.  It gives us villains that are complicated and conflicted at moments before their sudden but inevitable betrayal.  I’ve never felt this excited, this alive, after walking out of a Star Wars film in my lifetime as I did after The Last Jedi.

Ed Catto: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture

I’ve loved comic shops ever since I rode my bike past Kim’s Collectible Comics and Records in the mid-70s. Kim Draheim, the owner, was one day away from opening the store.  He told me to come back the next day. I did and I am proud to say I was his very first customer.

I get that same thrill every time I visit a new comic shop. I’ve been to quite a few since then. I am always impressed the way each one seems to be on the bleeding edge of Geek Culture, combining entrepreneurial courage with personal passion.

So I was so eager to start reading Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture.  There’s a lot of great stuff in this book, and I wanted to learn more. I reached out to Dan Gearino, the author and he had a lot to say.

Ed Catto: Can you tell us a little about your comics background and business/writing? What makes you the right person to write this book?

Dan Gearino: I’ve read comics for as long as I can remember. Like many children of the 80s, my gateways were the G.I. Joe and Transformers from Marvel. I soon became a DC kid, though. I think I was hooked for life by 1985, with DC’s Who’s Who, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and my discovery of the Legion of Super-Heroes. In high school and college, I read the Vertigo books. Shade the Changing Man was my favorite, and I don’t want to reread it for fear that it may not hold up. Late in college, I found my way to DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis, and that’s when I started to read Palookaville, Eightball, Artbabe and a lot of the other great stuff that was coming out in the late-1990s.

As for my reporting background, I was an editor at my college newspaper in Minnesota. My first job at a daily newspaper was in Keene, New Hampshire, where I covered a little bit of everything, including the presidential primary. From there, I went back to my home state, Iowa, and covered the statehouse and politics. Since 2008, I’ve been a business reporter for The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, covering manufacturing and energy.

Because of my experience writing about businesses, I could see what an odd duck comic shops are in terms of the model, and I could see that the shops have an unusually high degree of difficulty. That, along with a great cast of characters, made me want to take a close look. Also — and this is a significant point — there were no books out there about the business of comic shops, and I thought that there must be people out there like me who wanted to know more about the subject.

EC: The early days of the direct comics market is getting to be “a long time ago”. How did you go about researching it all?

DG: Much of my research was through interviews, largely because there is not a reliable written record of a lot of this stuff. Unlike the things I cover in my day job, comics were not a large enough business to attract much market research or professional media coverage. The fan press was fun for me to read, especially for the ads from early dealers, but was no substitute for a good trade journal. This changed later on when the Comics Journal began in earnest, and other publications, but that wasn’t until years after the dawn of the modern version of the business. Luckily, many of the people from the early days are still around. I was thrilled to find and interview Robert Bell, an early retailer in New York, and Jonni Levas, who was co-owner of Sea Gate, the first direct distributor of mainstream comics, just to name two people.

EC: How many comic shops have you visited? What are your personal favorites and did you come across any surprises?

DG: I visited at lot of shops. It would be a project to trace my steps and count them. Suffice it to say that there are many shops I visited that informed the reporting but are not mentioned in the book. As for favorites and surprises, I have a real fondness for Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan; Legend Comics in Omaha, Nebraska; and Aw Yeah Comics in Muncie, Indiana, to name a few that I was unaware of before this project. There were several others that are well-known for being great, and were indeed great, such as The Beguiling in Toronto, Chicago Comics and Flying Colors Comics in California.

EC: What comic shops are next on your list for a visit?

DG: My list is long. There are a few stores I profiled that have moved or expanded since I last was there, plus many that I heard about for the first time after the book went to press.

EC: How would do you respond when someone says, “I’d like to open up a comic shop?”

DG: My advice would be that a new shop owner needs to be well-capitalized to be able to afford the kind of diverse inventory to have a strong start, and to weather the potential of a slow start. The amounts are different depending on the region, but $100,000 is a number I’ve heard more than once as a rule of thumb. This is very different from the 1970s, when someone could start a shop with their own collection and first month’s rent.

If you have the financing make a go go of it, my next advice would be to visit lots of stores and see what they do well. Many retailers will be eager to give advice, as long as that new shop isn’t in the same market. The best stores have a lot in common in terms of attitude and merchandising choices. Also, find a bad store or two, with disorganized stock and an indifferent staff, so that you can see how not to be.

EC: What comics are on your nightstand and from which comic shop did you buy them?

DG: My local shop is The Laughing Ogre in Columbus, which is a prominent part of the book. I have a big stack of comics and books, including recent issues of Saga and Paper Girls, a few of DC’s Young Animal titles. I also have lots of back issues that I’ve picked up all over the place, part of a seemingly unending to-read list. Lately, I’ve gotten a lot of old Jonah Hex, which I started to buy because of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez’s art, and then continued to get for the clever stories and the other great artists such as Tony DeZuniga. There’s a lot of Garcia-Lopez on my nightstand now, including some old Batman and DC Comics Presents. As for books, I’ve been reading Charlier and Moebius’ Blueberry, thanks to a great find at a used-book store. I also got some great new stuff at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, a show here in town that everyone should check out. One of the guests was Tillie Walden and I got a signed copy of her new book, Spinning, which is ridiculously good.

EC: Who can argue with someone who’s reading Paper Girls and Jonah Hex? Thanks for your time, Dan.

Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture is available at comic shops and bookstores everywhere.

So Long and Thanks for the Fish(man)

A few weeks ago, I started laying out hints. The times they are a changin’ I’d said. And then I got all mushy about my readership and spot here at ComicMix. And perhaps you’ve noted a theme with the recent bows by Michael Davis and EIC Mike Gold. Well, who am I to buck the trend?

My friends, this will be my last column at ComicMix.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I truly have loved writing in this space (and ComicMix at large) now for 7+ years. Being able to declare that I shared a blog with comic book legends is something I never took lightly. And that some of these legends have sat across from me to break bread and talk shop – all the while my inner fan boy was screaming himself hoarse – is something I still barely fathom. Let me take you all back…

In 2008, Unshaven Comics had just published our first book, The March: Crossing Bridges In America. While we were proud as hell that we’d completed it, we were terrified that presenting it on the same convention floor as cape-and-cowl comics would bury us alive in mediocrity. Enter Linda Gold. She listened to our meager pitch, and her eyes lit up. She grabbed a copy, and our business card, and vowed to return. Enter Mike Gold. He dropped his card (and plenty of names of folks he worked with), and said to “stay in touch”.

Soon thereafter, I posted in the comment section of ComicMix for the better part of two months. I tried my damndest to be witty, intelligent, relevant, and engaging. Near the holiday season of 2008, Mike sent me an email. He wanted to do lunch. The rest, they say, is history.

But it’s way more than that. It’s my history. Over the course of my columns here I have gotten married, become a home owner, and a father – twice. But I, perhaps for the last time here… digress.

Perhaps you may be asking through choked sobs “b-b-b-bu-but w-wu-why…?” My reasons are many, and cryptic. If I learned anything from my tenure here from Mike and Glenn, is to always leave people with more questions than answers. Nervous yet? I’d sure be.

I’m lying, kiddos.

As it stands, I’ve not purchased a weekly comic book in over 2 years. And I’ve literally no inclination to start again. Through TV shows, movies, and graphic novels picked up at the conventions Unshaven Comics and I frequent… I get my fix of sequential fiction just fine. But my specific loves now has grown to a much wider scope. It’s time to broaden my horizons. As Mike mentioned in his denouement, Adriane Nash’s Pop Culture Squad will soon become my weekly home for my snarky scribbles. I’ll look forward to seeing y’all there. And beyond my written words, you’ll soon be able to hear my dulcet tones on two monthly podcasts – covering Unshaven Comics’ comings and goings, and my unabashed love of professional wrestling.

So, to you all here within the sound of my keyboard, I leave you with some parting thoughts:

If I ever angered you with an opinion? I’m still right, and you’re still wrong.

If I ever made you laugh? Damn straight I did. I’m funny as hell.

If I ever made you think? Good. Do it more often.

If I ever inspired you? Even better. The world needs more creativity in it.

I’ll see each and every one of you soon. Be it here, there, or everywhere. Just keep your eyes open, ears perked, and fingers clicking when you see my name. And far be it from me to deny myself a bit of an indulgence. I take my bow citing lyrics I deem apropos. So long my friends… and thanks for all the Fish, man.

At the end of the tour

When the road disappears

If there’s any more people around

When the tour runs aground

And if you’re still around

Then we’ll meet at the end of the tour

The engagements are booked through the end of the world

So we’ll meet at the end of the tour

And we’re never gonna tour again

No, we’re never gonna tour again

Mike Gold Shuffles Off to Buffalo

“Shuffle Off To Buffalo” is a song that premiered in the 1933 movie 42nd Street, later to become a Broadway musical. Much, much later. The song was written by the legendary team of Al Dubin and Harry Warren, and the movie in which it was preformed was, very arguably, the most erotic movie Warner Bros. made while the Warner Bros. were still running the joint.

It is in that spirit that I announce that this is my last column for ComicMix. I’ve been here almost 12 years, and I have done nothing else (professionally) for such a long stretch. They say people with short attention spans are the most creative.

No, wait. “They” don’t say that. I do.

There are lots of reasons for my departure, the most significant of which is, quite frankly, I’ve been looking to leave for several years. Again, my short attention span: my professional mind wanders the same way my id does. When ComicMix chose to go in a different and largely unarticulated direction, I seized the opportunity to change my business url.

I shall be getting back to writing, and I will be expanding my podcast and publishing work. That’s what I do during those brief periods when I’m not being sarcastic. Maybe I’ll write that exposé about the comics industry; who knows?

 (Damn. I think I just caused a bunch of people to enjoy some serious insomnia.)

Adriane Nash, late of the ComicMix staff, is organizing a new website called Pop Culture Squad www.popculturesquad.com, when it goes up in a couple months) and she asked me to write and consult. That’s really cool: PCS’s scope goes well beyond our beloved world of comic book culture, and I’d like to swim in those waters for a while. Amusingly, a number of other people whose work occupies this space feel the same way. We’re not going to be getting the band together, Adriane is forming a new band. Think of it as Cream, with me playing the part of Ginger Baker. I’m very excited, which is a wonderful thing to behold but gross and icky to consider.

I will continue to do Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind, my weekly kickass on-demand rock ‘n’ blues Internet radio program on www.getthepointradio.com. I hit the ten-year mark next spring, which seems weird. People who judiciously wish to contact me can do so at mikegold@popculturesquad.com. Tell me Groucho sent you, and then go find your DeSoto keys.

Usually, in times like this the writer talks about how much he is grateful to work with such fine people. Well, yeah: running the columns here allowed me to exercise some muscles I hadn’t been using much for decades, and I have been privileged to work with many, many fine writers. The fact that most of them are also close friends made the whole enchilada all the more digestible. There are many others I wish to thank, and most of them know who they are. Of course, a few people think I’d wish to thank them, but are mistaken. I’m not going to cockblock my favorite hobby: provoking paranoia.

But I would like to single out one person: Brian Alvey, who cofounded this joint and moved on to reconquer the Internet still again. I learned a lot from Brian, and I am grateful for the opportunity to work with him.

Saying next year will be a better year for all is to invite a deathmatch between the forces of karma and the gravity of cynicism. Have a happy holiday season, unless your name is Donald J. Trump. If it is, fry in hell, motherfucker. For the rest of us, all noble in comparison, I shall part with a stanza from Dubin and Warren:

I’ll go home and get my panties

You go home and get your scanties

And away we’ll go

Mmm-mmm-mmm

Off we’re gonna shuffle

Shuffle off to Buffalo

Michael Davis: Hello. Goodbye.

This is my last ComicMix article.

Pity.

This place saved my fragile sanity on more than one occasion and that’s not a joke. I suffer from severe depression, and although I am doing well today I was doing better yesterday, and that’s why this farewell is a prelude of sorts warning young artists and writers

I’d much rather my last CM article be a warm trip down memory lane; yesterday it would have been.

I was better then. Instead, I begin a tale that will benefit any bright-eyed creator because it’s true.

Forces at DC Comics led by one man conspired to destroy my career – 25 and again 15 years ago.

It appears that same person (no longer with DC) is trying to do so again. That I can’t be sure of (second-hand information) so I won’t state the latter as a fact nor name him. I will convey every bit of cold-hearted treachery from decades ago, that I can prove.

It’s as cold as Trump is white and as easy to prove as water is wet.

15 years ago two DC Comic “witnesses” claimed I was at the DC booth at the San Diego Comic-Con calling DC racist. LIE.

25 years ago a letter was sent from DC to Motown Records saying I was under contract with DC and was prohibited from talking to Motown about running their film and television division. LIE.

Back then I let things go, I was a young man who forgave quickly. I’m no longer young.  All my immediate family is dead, and former friends might as well be.

I have little patience for most people none for those who pass judgment on me for no other reason than they can.

With depression, I can’t allow people to interfere with my mindset. I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger once.  I’ll probably do so again, but next time the chamber won’t be empty. I’d like to avoid that for as long as possible hopefully forever.

People who deem my swagger an affront to them be warned that water under the bridge guy is gone. Meet the wrong Nigga to fuck with.My time at ComicMix is done. I’ll miss it and miss those people who make up some of the best minds in comics. Bleeding Cool will run my series, The Ugly Side of Comics.

My best to all the ComicMix fans family and friends. It’s been an honor.

Joe Corallo is Late To The Party

As I’m writing this column on Monday the 27th, it’s my grandpa’s birthday. He’s turning 80 and a lot of the family is flying down to Florida later this week to see him. In the mean, I’ve been working closely with some of the ComicMix team to get Mine! out the door which is in Previews as well as on BackerKit for pre-order. I’ve also been reading some comics I’ve been way behind on!

I got to finish the first volume of Black over the weekend. The team of Kwanza Osajyefo, Tim Smith 3, Jamal Igle, Khary Randolph, and Sarah Litt over at Black Mask Studios put together a book that takes on racial tensions with a superhero backdrop and absolutely no chill. Over the course of six issues we follow a young black man, Kareem, as he discovers not only does he have super powers, but so do many other black people. And that only black people have super powers.

For me, it takes until about halfway through issue two before the story really picks up a steam. Once the story gets moving though, the pacing gets very consistent and from issue four to the end you’re not going to want to put it down. Jamal Igle’s art in grayscale is absolutely gorgeous and helps make a few otherwise slow paced scenes of people sitting in a cell or an office very engaging. While the story is more likely to preach to the choir than to get some bigot to reexamine their backwards way of thinking, it’s still a great read and since the comic has been optioned you’ll wanna read it before the movie hits so you can be one of the cool kids.

Another series I finally got to crack into was Super Sons over at DC. Now, I was a little late to the party when Peter Tomasi was tackling Damian Wayne with the New 52’s Batman and Robin with Patrick Gleason. Peter’s work on Damian is honestly the best portrayal of the character I’ve read, and I say this as a huge Grant Morrison fan. The first arch of that Batman and Robin run had me sold and I kept up with that title for quite a while after, so seeing Peter back on Damian in Super Sons put this book on my radar right away.

Joined by the incredible artist Jorge Jimenez, Peter Tomasi tells us of the adventures of young Jon Kent a.k.a. Superboy and Damian Wayne aka Robin as they try to prove themselves to be just as capable as their super parents. As excited as I was to finally read this comic, it honestly surpassed my expectations.

Jon Kent is the perfect foil to Damian Wayne. The way the two interact with each other in their playful rivalry creates a fun dynamic that I wish I saw in more comics. Jon’s youth, height, and natural abilities get under Damian’s skin, but handles it better than the less mature Jon who wears his heart on his sleeve. As the two try to a nefarious plot, we watch as the two rib on each other. Jon has taken it personally that he wasn’t asked to be in the Teen Titans despite being a ten years old. One of my favorite moments is when Jon points out a mistake that Damian has made and he responds by saying he learns from his mistakes better than anyone.

Between the fantastic story and the gorgeous, fluid artwork, I can’t possibly recommend Super Sons enough. If you’ve been loving DC’s Rebirth and haven’t picked this title up yet, get on it. If you don’t read DC Comics, you seriously should consider picking this up too. And while there is some violence, it’s definitely more appropriate for some younger readers than a lot of other Big 2 comics out there.

Look, I know I was late to the party here. Luckily with trade paperbacks and comiXology you can never be too late to the party when it comes to comics.

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