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Mindy Newell: The Day Of The Doctor

Newell Art 131125 “Great men are forged in fire.

It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.

Whatever the cost.”

The Warrior Doctor (John Hurt), The Day of the Doctor, November 23, 2013

After all the press, after all the hype, after a week of BBC America’s Doctor Who Takeover, I was really afraid that actual episode was going to suck, that I was going to be miserably let down, wretchedly disappointed.

I. Was. Absolutely. Completely. Totally. Utterly. Positively.

Blown. Away.

The whole wide world became the whole wide Whovian world yesterday, as the BBC simulcast The Day Of The Doctor in over 75 countries – Angola, Australia, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde Islands, the Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, the Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Taiwan, Tanzania & Zanzibar, Thailand, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

I mean, seriously, has the United Nations ever been able to bring about such a coalition? I mean, seriously, I think the last time so many countries and their citizens came together to celebrate and raise a glass or two as they did on Saturday was for the end of World War II 68 years ago.

I mean, seriously, think about it, people. So many of these nations are embattled and torn apart by violence and terror and war—and yet the Doctor, fictional character though he may be, hits such a powerful chord of hope and peace and unity among the peoples of this Earth, is it possible that even in places like Somalia and Myanmar and Colombia and the Congo that a truce was called for one hour and twenty minutes on Saturday, November 23rd, 2013?

Once before has the world been stopped on this date. 50 years ago President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot dead in Daley Plaza, Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, and the world held its breath for the next four days as his body was returned to Washington, where it laid in state, first in the White House and then at the Capitol Rotunda, to finally come to rest in Arlington Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia – and so in England no one, or very, very few, saw the BBC’s debut, on November 23rd, 1963, of a science fiction television show about a grandfatherly man and his niece and her two teachers adventuring in time and space in a contraption called the TARDIS, which was an acronym, the niece informed us, for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, and which looked like an English 1950’s police box.

But the BBC reran the premiere episode of Doctor Who and its ratings took off, and when William Hartnell, the first actor to play the Doctor, became too ill to continue, an innovative idea was born to explain the introduction of Patrick Troughton as his replacement—regeneration.

And now Doctor Who, the series, has regenerated.

I won’t go into depth, so as not to spoil it for those who were unable to see The Day Of The Doctor this past weekend, but I will say this – the driving force behind the Time Lord has been changed.

It was quite a day.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

John Ostrander: Time and Space and Remembrance

Ostrander Art 131124An unusual convergence of historical dates of different emotional resonances for me occurred this weekend – the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and what would have been the sixtieth birthday of my late wife, Kimberly Ann Yale.

Like many Americans, I remember where I was when I heard the news of JFK. I was in my history class at Quigley Preparatory Seminary North near downtown Chicago. The word that the President was shot came over the loudspeaker used for school announcements, followed a little later by the news of his death. I was stunned, in denial. I remember little else of that day. I think school was closed and we were sent home.

Kim’s dad was a Navy chaplain and they were living on-base at the time. She later told me how she was at school off-base and had to hurry back. The base was going into lockdown after the assassination and if she was outside when the gates closed, she wouldn’t have been able to get home. That was her tenth birthday.

For me, I place the days of my youth between two sets of gunshots – the ones that killed JFK and the ones that killed John Lennon on December 8, 1980. I was 14 for the former and 31 for the latter. Both gave me a slightly darker sense of the world around me and the country in which I lived. Both events inform my writing to this day.

The day after Kennedy was killed, a new TV series was launched over in the UK – Doctor Who. The series tells of the adventures of a time-traveling alien Time Lord and his (usually) human companions through time and space. When William Hartnell, the original actor playing the part, became too ill to continue the series, the producers came up with a key concept to the longevity of the series: when a Time Lord faced the death of his mortal body, it can “regenerate” into a wholly new form and, even more significant, a different character. Most important, there’s a whole new actor with a new interpretation of the main character. That, I think, has been key to keeping the series fresh and vital.

I met Kim through Doctor Who. I loved the Doctor and wanted to be the Doctor. I also knew that the odds, then or now, of an American ever playing the part was virtually non-existent. However, I was an actor in Chicago and a sometimes playwright and less often a producer. So I conceived of an idea of getting the rights to put on a play version of the Doctor in Chicago.

I managed to arrange a meeting with show runner John Nathan-Turner during a combined Chicago Comic Con and Doctor Who Convention (sometimes referred to as the Sweat Con since the hotel’s air conditioning unit proved inadequate to the number of people attending and outside it was a 106° Chicago August day). John Nathan-Turner brought along Terry Nation (creator of the Daleks for Doctor Who) and Mr. Nation brought along a lovely young woman with big eyes, curly hair, and a megawatt smile who was his assistant for the Con. That was Kim.

To describe Kim as a Doctor Who fan doesn’t begin to describe it. She was also very knowledgeable on all things Time Lord and I used her an a consultant as I developed the script. Nothing else developed at the time; Kim was married and I don’t fool around that way.

We became a couple only later, after the play project had folded and her marriage had broken up. My romantic life at that point was, if anything, even worse than my theatrical career. I’d given up dating; I hadn’t seen anyone in almost two years. It just seemed too painful to try. Kim and I had kept in touch and she was also a big fan of my work on GrimJack, the comic book I had created for First Comics.

I should note here that Doctor Who was an influence on creating GrimJack. It might seem that the two couldn’t be less alike but one of the things I loved about Doctor Who was that you could do any kind of story. They did horror, they did Westerns, they did everything and I wanted to do that with GrimJack. In that sense, he was my Doctor. Later, we showed he could even reincarnate. There is a darkness to the series that I can, in part, trace back to the assassination of Jack Kennedy.

Kim wrote to me about a specific issue of GrimJack that had affected and resonated with her; I found it a little strange that she would write since we lived less than a mile apart and she had my phone number. I told her this and she replied that some things were best expressed in writing. What can I say? I’m a writer; I understood that. Kim was a writer as well. That night was the night our relationship changed. That was the night we started to become a couple.

It’s just coincidence, I suppose, that the three dates are in such proximity to one another. We assign meaning to dates, both as a people and as individuals. It’s an accident that the significant anniversaries of the assassination, Kim’s birthday, and the launching of Doctor Who are in conjunction this year. The connections that I see, that I feel, among them are mine. We are all the results of the various events that have happened in our lives and none of them occur in a vacuum. This weekend, I remember and honor three that were significant to me.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

Mindy Newell: Computer Glitch

newell-art-131117-150x137-5821016“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”

George Bernard Shaw

“Back to Methuselah” (1921)

President Barak Obama is a visionary. Which is great. It’s important for the President of the United States to be a visionary, to be able to inspire. That’s how Barak Obama became President in 2008.

But once elected, it’s not enough to be a visionary. You need to know how to put that vision into effect.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy knew how to do that. Ronald Wilson Reagan knew how to do that.

President Barak Obama – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – does not.

The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, is in real trouble. The website is a disaster – where is Oracle when we need her? – and those who have been able to sign up are finding that their personal health care providers are not participating and that only a limited amount of hospitals are participants. A woman speaking to Brian Lehrer on NPR a couple days ago told him that the only hospital she can go to under the ACA is Lenox Hill in Manhattan, and while Lenox Hill is a very fine institution, the woman lives out on the Island, as in Long. (And for those of you not in the metropolitan New York City area, trust me, when you are sick enough to need hospital care, you do not want to drive on the Long Island Expressway as your life is ticking away and you are crawling along the asphalt at as much as 10 miles an hour.) Meanwhile insurance companies are happily cancelling policies because they don’t measure up to the ACA’s parameters because the premiums for ACA approved policies are more expensive.

(Once again the insurance companies have figured out how to make a buck off of people’s miseries – I can just hear the board of directors of Horizon, Aetna, Oxford, Cigna, and all the rest at their meetings: “Okay, no more lifetime caps, no more pre-existing condition bans, but here, look at Paragraph IV for example – everyone has to have maternity care in their plan, which means we can charge the client for that even if the client is male. And that’s just Paragraph IV. Yes, no worries, we can make up for any potential losses and we have the ACA and the President to thank for that.”) And the Repugnanticans are having a field day, gleefully attacking our Marxist, Maoist, Socialist, Kenyan Muslim President every which way they can. And though you, my faithful readers, know that I am a staunch Democrat and supporter of the man currently living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I gotta say…

What the fuck, man!

You go and approve the hiring of a Canadian tech company to build the web site? And to make matters even worse, it’s a company that has a botched record! To quote from the Washington Times (granted, a very conservative paper, but they are right in this):

“Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned.

“CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry.”

For someone who is about jobs, jobs, jobs for Americans, I just don’t get it. Why didn’t the President just go to Microsoft or Apple? Why didn’t he call up Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (before he died, of course) and ask them for advice, i.e., give me the names of the best and the brightest in the IT biz. I want them to build what I believe will be the most important website in American history.

That’s what I would have done.

Seriously, man, what the fuck?

Now I hate working for a micro-manager. You know the type – he or she has got his or her nose in your face every second of every hour of the workday, and just won’t leave you alone to get your job done.

But the President of the United States has to be, in so many ways, a micro-manager. A hands-on guy. He – or she? Go, Hillary! – has to know what’s going on, has to have his – or her. Go, Hillary! – nose in your face every second of every hour of the workday. The President always has to be one step – or a hundred yards, or a million-zillion miles – in front of the crowd.

Because ultimately, as that plaque on Harry Truman’s desk read – The buck stops here.

And it doesn’t do any good to admit to that after the fact, as Obama did last Wednesday.

Oracle, we need you.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

John Ostrander: The Chicago Pizza Way

ostrander-art-131117-150x101-7084733Ordinarily, I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. However, on last Wednesday’s night show, he took almost the whole second segment to castigate deep dish pizza, also known as Chicago-style pizza or just Chicago pizza. The whole flippin’ middle segment.

I’m from Chicago.

I love Chicago pizza.

I’d like to refer Mr. Stewart to Sean Connery’s speech in the Untouchables where he talks about “the Chicago Way.”

I think it’s time to get all Rahm Emanuel on your ass, Mr. Stewart.

The main component of New York pizza is grease. There is more grease on a single slice of New York pizza than a school of teen-agers with severe acne who have just eaten New York pizza. New Yorkers act as if grease was one of the basic food groups. There is enough grease in a NY pizza to fuel Willie Nelson’s biodiesel tour bus twice around the country. There is so much grease on a slice of New York pizza that it will pass through your intestine without stopping. In Chicago, if you poop your pants it’s referred to it as laying a NY pizza.

BOOM!

The proper way to eat a slice of NY pizza is to fold it in half lengthwise. That way you don’t have to look at it. It’s also the only way to keep the cheese and sauce or whatever else they want to throw on it from sliding right off the slice onto your shoes. Hold it folded in one hand and hold your nose with the other and slide it into your mouth. Ah, that’s a good New York pizza!

BOOM!

Every place that sells pizza in New York City has to be named Ray’s – Original Ray’s, Famous Ray’s, Original Famous Ray’s. Famous Original Ray’s. Spam Spam Original Ray Ray’s and Spam, and on and on. It doesn’t make a bit of difference – they all taste the same.

You can make NY pizza at home. It’s easy. Get an unsalted cracker, squirt some ketchup on it, add some toe cheese, warm it under your armpit, and there ya go.

BOOM!

Chicago pizza you sit and eat and it’s a meal. One pizza can feed a family. It’s food. NY pizza is a lubricant.

and

Not content with defaming Chicago pizza, Stewart then went after Chicago hot dogs. Seriously? Those Anthony Weiners they serve from a sidewalk vendor’s cart? First, they dredge the East River, then put the dogs in that for three days, and then add a lukewarm stale bun, something yellow that’s vaguely like mustard, and a healthy dose of salmonella. The only place you should eat hot dogs in NYC is at Nathan’s and then only at the original stand at Coney Island and even that doesn’t quite stand up to a Chicago dog and you know why? Vienna Hot Dogs. The best places in Chicago use Vienna Hot Dogs with natural casings. Nothing else even begins to compare. Certainly not a NY alleged hot dog,

One area I think we can both agree. California so-called pizza is an abomination. Pineapple on a pizza? Really? No red sauce of any kind? Why even bother? So. how about a truce, Jon Stewart? I’ll hold down a California pizza lover and you can kick ‘em.

BOOM!

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

John Ostrander: That Time of Year

ostrander-art-131110-150x108-3720871The other night, My Mary and I were looking for something to watch on the tube. She had recorded Fly Away Home, the 1996 film by Carroll Ballard, starring Jeff Daniels, Dana Delaney, Anna Pacquin and Terry Kinney. We’ve watched it many times and I think we even own a copy of it. It’s wonderfully acted and beautifully shot; if you ever watch it, try to see it in wide screen. Some of the shots of Canadian Geese flying are breathtaking.

One of the things that struck me (again) was Mark Isham’s soundtrack and the haunting song that opens and closes the film, 10,000 Miles, sung by Mary Chapin Carpenter. (You can find it on YouTube, along with the lyrics.) It was one of the pieces of music that I played over and over again during that year of grieving after my wife, Kim Yale, died. Music was, and is, one of my coping mechanisms in life and hearing that song brought me back, not to Kim’s life or death, but that time of grieving, of learning to live without her, of starting my life again. Not to the grief itself but to the memory of that grief.

It’s that time of year. Here in the Midwest, the leaves fall from the trees, the days get shorter and darker, it’s colder as we head towards year’s end. Labor Day comes, signaling an end to summer. We lurch towards Halloween and All Saints Day (or Day of the Dead) with its skulls and ghosts and reminders of mortality. The harvest comes in and the fields look bare even as we celebrate Thanksgiving. Christmas is coming, yes, but so is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. The cycle completes as the old year dies and a new one begins.

It’s not grief I feel now but a rise of melancholy. It’s always a part of me and, I think, always has been. I’m not sure of its origins – I went to many wakes and funerals as a boy, seeing people in caskets who I had known when they were alive, and I know it made an impression on me. I wouldn’t say that I treasure my melancholy but I do value it. I’m aware of death as part of life and that, I think, has informed my work as a writer. I enjoy life immensely and I don’t wallow in melancholy. It is simply there, a constant, and it makes me value those who are there and the joys and pleasures of life. Knowing they will all pass doesn’t make me depressed. Shadows help define an object and my melancholies help define my joys.

Every morning, I see a photo of my Dad sitting atop a shelf that he made for me and my brother when we were boys and I say, “Hi Dad.” I remember him and I miss him and I still love him just as I remember and miss and still love my Mom and Kim and friends and relatives and even pets. I miss places that are no longer there. They all still live in my mind and heart and I still know their stories. They all still have a value to me and are still helping to shape me into who I am.

It’s that time of year to remember and feel, to harvest our emotions, and value what we have. That’s what I’ll be thankful for as we approach Thanksgiving – the shadows as well as the light.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

Mindy Newell: Go West, Young Man

Newell Art 131104“Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country”

Horace Greely

Editor, New York Tribune

July 13, 1865 Editorial

The New York Tribune, established in 1841, was the most progressive and influential newspaper of its day. Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the paper, was a notable social reformer and political activist and through his leadership, the Tribune advocated for abolition, the legal protection of unions, protectionism (known today as anti-globalization or anti-free trade), and against nativism, the political position of demanding a favored status for certain established inhabitants of a nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. (In modern America Greely would be considered a leftist liberal Democrat, though in the antebellum, Civil War, and eras those beliefs belonged to the Republican nee Whig Party.)

Today a statue of Greeley sits at 33rd Street and Broadway in Greely Square, directly across the street and south of Herald Square, home to Macy’s and the end point of the Thanksgiving Day parade where the Rockettes do their famous line kick dance every fourth Thursday of November.

I know that statue well, for Greely Square is also across the street (and above) from the 33rd PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) terminus. And the PATH train was the way I commuted into New York City whenever I needed be at DC Comics, back when the company “lived” at 666 Fifth Avenue.

Last week – Tuesday, Tuesday, October 22, to be exact – Diane Nelson, President of DC Entertainment, sent a memo to DC employees. You might have seen it already, but here it is:

Dear DCE Team,

As I hope you know, I and the entire DCE exec team work hard to offer transparency about as much of our business plans and results as we possibly and responsibly can. In an effort to continue to do that where possible and to ensure you are hearing news from us, rather than a third party, I am proactively reaching out to you this afternoon to share news about our business.

I can confirm that plans are in the works to centralize DCE’s operations in 2015. Next week, the Exec Team will be in New York for a series of meetings to walk everyone through the plans to relocate the New York operations to Burbank. The move is not imminent and we will have more than a year to work with the entire company on a smooth transition for all of us, personally and professionally.

Everyone on the New York staff will be offered an opportunity to join their Burbank colleagues and those details will be shared with you individually, comprehensively and thoughtfully next week. Meeting notifications will be sent tomorrow to ensure the roll out* of this information and how it affects the company and you personally.

We know this will be a big change for people and we will work diligently to make this as smooth and seamless a transition as possible.

Best,

Diane

My first reaction when I saw it was “Oh, maaaaaan.” My second reaction was “knew it was going to happen.”

My third reaction was sadness, and, surprisingly, since it’s been thirty (!) years since I first stepped onto the PATH train in Jersey City (New Jersey) and took it to 33rd Street and Greely Square to walk up the Avenue of the Americas and west on 53rd Street to 666 Fifth Avenue and the offices of DC Comics, a feeling of dislocation. I felt cast adrift, even though 99% of my friends and co-workers no longer work at DC, and, in fact, the office itself has long since moved to 1700 Broadway, across from the Ed Sullivan Theatre, home of the David Letterman Show.

Many people on various websites have commented on the move. The news media picked it up, including a rather stupid, no, correct that, very stupid piece on WPIX Channel 11 (CW-NYC) while on break at work on Wednesday. I suppose the segment producers thought they were being clever, because they tied the news into some guy who wants to start a “superhero” school in the city, although actually it looked more like self-defense classes for kids. As far as the DC thing, they showed animated Superman and Batman, etc. on the screen, and then the reporter signed off and “flew off.”

But no one thought of the history behind the thousands of four-color pages produced by DC. No one thought of interviewing Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel that chronicles the rise of the comics industry in New York City though thinly veiled characters based on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and dozens of other early comics professionals. No one thought to interview those writers and artists who made their name at DC.

And no one thought of the history behind the hundreds of thousands of four-color adventures that started out as a way for those writers and artists to earn a living during the Depression and became the mythology of the 20th century, a doorway into imagination for generations, for hundreds of thousands of dreamers who grew up to become artists and writers and police officers and f, refighters and astronauts and astrophysicists because of those four-color pages, those adventures of Superman and Batman and the Flash and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter and so many, many more, inspired them.

Yes, Marvel Comics is still here. (But for how long?) Yes, many of those who created those adventures never lived in New York City or its surroundings, originally mailing in their work, then faxing in it, then e-mailing their pages over the internet. Yes, Marvel Comics is still here. (But for how long?) And, yes, New York City will always be the city of dreams for the millions who come here to start or restart their lives.

But the citizens of the great metropolis will never again look up in the sky and cry, “Look! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?”

No, it was DC Comics, home to the supermen and superwomen who lived here, if only in the imaginations of those who loved them.

*By the way, Diane, there’s a typo in the memo. It’s “rollout,” not “roll out.”)

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

John Ostrander: The New Breed

  • News
  • November 3, 2013

ostrander-art-131103-150x140-7201015Last weekend I was at the Detroit Fanfare (which is why I wasn’t here) and I enjoyed myself immensely. It’s a good Con, well organized, and they took good care of me. I had a chance to say hello to old friends like Bill and Nadine Messner-Loebs, Paul Storrie, Howard Purcell, Norm Breyfogle and others and make new friends like Whilce Portacio. And, of course, talk with fans and sign books and stuff which, for me, is the main reason I go. I love meeting and talking with fans and having a chance to say “thank you” for their support.

I was ferried there and back by my cohorts in Unshaven Comics – Marc Alan Fishman (my esteemed fellow ComicMix columnist), Matt Wright, and Kyle Gnepper (the cute one). Marc drove and we blathered together in a wonderful fashion.

Da Boys (as I refer to them and, being from my home town of Chicago, they’ll understand) are indie comics creators, notably of the Samurnauts (which you can learn about and buy at their website here and they make the rounds of Cons, setting up shop, and hawking their wares at their booth. They do nearly a dozen a year and FanFare was the last one for 2013.

They were in a separate but adjacent ballroom to mine so I would touch base with them throughout the show and we had eats together. At the end of the Con, I wandered over while they broke it all down and packed it up. I was really struck with how organized they were and how compact it all became. Da Boys really know their stuff. Their book is wonderful but they also have a better business sense than I did at that time or have even perhaps now.

They sell their books, sure (and go buy them at the site) but I saw buttons and posters and cards at the table and they did (and do) sketches and so on. I looked around the room, which was mostly Indie folk, and this was a trend. My friend, Paul Storrie, who was nearby, also has a very professional set-up.

I don’t know but I suspect this is a trend among the younger creators. I suspect they wouldn’t sneer at work from the Big Companies but they have their own creations that they own and that they are hard at work selling.

You should also read Marc’s column from yesterday. Yes, I’m very flattered by the kind words directed at me – although if they eat with me a few more times I suspect they’ll get over the novelty – but what I was really struck by was how they evaluate which Con to go to. They know the numbers in terms of what they sell, of the costs of going to a certain con, the bottom line of each venture. They factor in the time away from family and having to go to their day jobs. They – and I suspect the other Indie creators – know their business far better than I did when I was their age. Hell, I’m not sure I had started writing comics when I was their age.

I salute them and I intend to support them. This is the future of comics, boys and girls. This is where the really good stuff, the fresh and exciting stuff, is coming from. So I’m going to urge you, next time you go to a con, to seek out Unshaven Comics and the other Indie producers, look at what they’re doing, sample the books, get the buttons, and be a part of something that is alive and vital in the comics industry.

As another innovator in the field was known to remark, ‘Nuff Said.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

Mindy Newell: 60

newell-art-131028-150x143-5027895Yes, this past Thursday I hit the big 6-0. Yeah, yeah, I know a woman isn’t supposed to reveal her age, but just who the hell would I be fooling? Not my family. Nor any of my friends. Not even those who read my comics back in the 80s and 90s and care to do a little homework and math – IIRC, the New Talent Showcase issues included bios by all the tyros whose work appeared in that book. Mine lists my birthday. And as long as I talking about that bio, for the record I was not particularly inspired by Star Wars or – with absolutely no disrespect intended, and I’m not saying I don’t love their work – to George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Gerry Conway, or Doug Moench. This is how I remember it happened.

Joey Cavalieri (who wrote the bios) asking me who my favorite writers were. “Edna Ferber, Herman Wouk, James Michener, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser… “ I said off the top of my head.

He laughed a little and said something about readers not getting that or caring or not knowing who they were. (Which I still find hard to believe.)

“How about Gerry Conway and Doug Moench?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “They’re good, too.”

“How about movies?”

Again off the top of my head. “Oh, The Searchers. Bridge On The River Kwai. Sunset Boulevard. Casablanca.”

Joey didn’t seem too happy.

Oh, wait, I get it, I thought. And wanting to please, being the good little Jewish girl, I said,

“Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Alien.”

So after thirty years, I’m glad to get the chance to correct that little bio. Although if it was happening now, I wouldn’t be the “wanting-to-please good little Jewish girl.”

By the time you get to 60, you just don’t give a crap.

Oh, I still give a crap about a lot of things. This country and its future. (It doesn’t take a writer’s imagination to think that a second Civil War is not exactly out of the range of possibilities.) This Earth and its future. (Whether you want to call it global warming or climate change there is no denying that we, the population of this planet, have majorly bug-fucked Mother Gaia.)

And when I think of the future, I think of my niece Isabel and my grandson, Meyer Manual (who was five weeks old on Saturday) and I really give a crap.

And then I get really scared.

But then again…

We Baby Boomers have lived through temptuous times when many believed the end was nigh. The Bay of Pigs. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The assassination of Martin Luthor King. The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. The social revolution of the 60s. The Vietnam War. Richard Nixon and Watergate. Jane Fonda workouts. Disco.

So fuck the Tea Party and fuck Ted Cruz and fuck all the racists who can’t believe a nigger is our President.

Yeah, I can’t believe I wrote that word either, but that’s the damn truth of it, that’s what’s really driving those bastard ignorant asshole Confederate punks and you know it as well as I do, only you won’t, but I will because I’m 60 and I don’t give a crap.

And if you think I’m feisty now…

Well, like a certain Whovian told me recently:

“60 years is nothing for a Time Lord. Just look out for Daleks.”

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

John Ostrander Lurking In Detroit

ostrander-art-131027-150x130-7753841Nope. This isn’t John Ostrander. Sorry. 

John is in Detroit, specifically, at the Detroit Fanfare. Yep, a big ol’ comic book convention. He’s there with fellow ComicMixer Marc Alan Fishman and Marc’s shadow-government, the Unshaven Comics crew. Signing autographs, talking with fans, getting slapped in the head by back-packs… the usual convention thrills. 

It’s Sunday, so if you hurry you can get there (that’s why we’re running the link). Lots of great guests, probably some cosplay, cold hot dogs… the usual convention thrills.

We believe John had to chose between his ComicMix deadline and his Star Wars deadline. And, since just about everybody has missed at least one column – including the vaunted editor-in-chief – he shall get no grief for missing today’s post.

Not this time.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell!

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten!

 

Martha Thomases: Sexual Assault and Cosplay

thomases-131025-150x225-4578334My colleague, Kate Kotler, has assembled a list of articles about the continuing harassment of women at comic book conventions and other gatherings of fans. I’m late to this party, but that’s because I’m conflicted.

There are many more cosplayers at conventions than there were when I first started to go. There are many more women and girls at conventions than when I first started to go. As one would assume, this means there are many more female cosplayers.

And here’s my problem. I don’t really get this. Maybe for Halloween, I’ll pull something together for a party or to answer the door for trick-or-treaters. I have no desire to make costumes, nor to wear them around thousands of strangers.

Let me be clear. This is my problem. The people who cosplay are clearly enjoying themselves, and I have no desire to deprive them of that joy. If anything, it’s my loss that I can’t be less self-conscious when I’m out in public.

And yet, there are many who can’t let cosplayers enjoy themselves, especially not female cosplayers. Some guys think they are entitled to go up to women and say repulsive things to them. Some guys (sometimes the same guys) think they are entitled to assault these women physically as well as verbally.

And some people think this is okay, because if those women didn’t want the attention, they wouldn’t wear costumes.

Because an admiring glance or a respectful compliment, the kind of attention the cosplayed might appreciate, is exactly the same as a guy who rubs his erection against you while describing how much he wants to rape you.

If there are other parts of modern life where men think this kind of behavior is acceptable, I do not know what they are. I would guess that, if they exist, they are other events where men consider women to be interlopers, invading their secret clubhouse, and this is how they let women know their place.

Comic book conventions contribute to this problem in the way they program. Although the female attendance at the recent New York show was estimated to be around forty percent (and looked like more than that from my unscientific observation of the floor), the guest list was less than two percent female. At the recent Harvey Awards in Baltimore, only one presenter was a woman, although Fiona Staple won a respectable percentage of the prizes. It would be easier for women to be taken seriously by convention goers if they were taken seriously be convention planners.

I don’t think we should sit back and wait for others to fix the problem. I think we need to fix it ourselves. Every time we see bad behavior, we should say something, loudly. Every time a convention or industry event ignores women, we should ridicule them for their lack of knowledge about our industry and its future.

This isn’t for my convenience. This is how we save the world. Women are not objects of prey. If, today, we tolerate sexual assault “because look how she’s dressed,” then, tomorrow, they can feel entitled to shop for us on the street, like groceries.

We’re better than that.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: More Emily S. Whitten!

SATURDAY MORNING: Marc Alan Fishman!

 

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