Tagged: Alan Moore

Mindy Newell, Jessica and Kara

Superman Supergirl Dave Gibbons

So it turns out that I maybe I do have a TARDIS, because I was able to finish watching Jessica Jones and to catch up on Supergirl.

You remember that basically crappy review of Supergirl I gave a couple of months ago? Well, the show is getting there, though, im-not-so-ho, they aren’t taking advantage of what could be some great story arcs. Except for Alex Danvers. And Cat Grant. And Hank Henshaw. But more on that in a bit.

I watched “Strange Visitor From Another Planet,” an hour that really could have called “Why Did You Abandon Me?” Hank Henshaw, a.k.a. J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter, struggled with the personification of survivor’s guilt and abandonment in the appearance of a “White Martian,” a member of the “other” Martian race responsible for the Martian holocaust – a literal “Strange Visitor.” And while the psychological voices from beyond the grave – including his wife and two daughters – chastised J’onn J’onzz for abandoning them by not joining them in death, Cat Grant dealt with her own, different kind of survivor’s guilt and abandonment issues when her “Strange Visitor” turned out to be the child she had chosen to abandon in her drive to become a professional success, now all grown up and wanting to know why she hadn’t loved him enough to stay. “Bizzaro,” a twist on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, borrowed – well, stole – the origin of the sad creature from DC’s New52 reboot, only instead of Lex Luthor creating the “monster” from splicing Superman’s DNA with human DNA and injecting it into a teenager, it was Maxwell Lord splicing Supergirl’s DNA with the human DNA of comatose young women who “resembled” Kara Zor-El. I thought the show sorta fell down on this one – it was essentially a “monster of the week” episode with Bizzaro Supergirl dying at the end and Maxwell Lord becoming “The Man in the Glass Booth,” kidnapped and imprisoned – for now – at DEO headquarters. Which is rather illegal, and I assume will lead to further ramifications down the line.

One immediate ramification of Max hanging around the DEO, though, is that he just happened to be handy when the alien chest-hugging flower called the “Black Mercy” dug its tentacles into Supergirl’s rib cage and inflicted her heart’s desires upon her in a hallucinatory mind-game. Many of you will recognize this as an adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1985 Superman Annual #11 story, For the Man Who Has Everything.

It’s not a bad adaptation, but if you remember FTMWHE, it’s not quite up to par in comparison, especially in the Krypton sequences. Granted, the show’s budget had to be a serious factor in producing this episode, but in Superman’s dream world, we really become invested in Kal-El’s life on Krypton and in Kryptonian society. Kara Zor-El, however, never leaves her home. She just sits in the “living room” talking with her parents and Aunt Astra, who was never banished to the Phantom Zone. Oh, yeah, and we also meet a prepubescent Kal-El, though there is neither mention of nor a visit from Jor-

El and Lara. And though there is mention of a serious boyfriend, we don’t meet him nor do we see anything else of what Kara’s dream life if Krypton had not exploded entails.

In Superman’s dream state he has no memory or sense of anything wrong – well, the dream does start becoming increasingly disturbing – but Kara’s immediate reaction when waking up in her bed on Krypton is one of confusion and a sense that something is definitely wrong. But as the Black Mercy continues its psychic invasion, Kara starts forgetting, and by the time “virtual reality” Alex shows up she has accepted her life for what it is and does not recognize her “Terran” sister.

It’s a good attempt, but not one for the ages. For one thing, for a story about Supergirl’s lost dreams, it’s a fantastic showcase for Alex, who totally steals the scene(s). Alex’s quest to save her sister, her devotion to her, is really what this episode is about – and I don’t know if that’s what the writers had in mind. In fact, lately it almost seems that the title should be Supergirl’s Sister, Alex Danvers. She has become the most well developed character on the show (with Cat Grant coming up behind and Hank Henshaw/J’onn J’onzz nipping at Cat’s heels). It’s too bad, because this could have been a real showcase for Supergirl/Kara Zor-El.

And, again, wasn’t it convenient that Max Lord was on DEO premises so he could help develop the “virtual reality” psychic connection thing-a-ma-jig that got Alex into Kara’s dreamland in the first place?

However, Melissa Benoist did a bang-up job in displaying Supergirl’s anger and rage and hurt and sorrow when she woke up. Echoing Moore’s words, she spits out “Do you know what you did to me?” and then “Burn” as she lashes out with her heat vision against Non, the evil – and oh so incredibly boring – Kryptonian who’s Aunt Astra’s husband, and who exposed her to the Black Mercy in the first place.

There’s a lot more plot about Non’s plan to destroy Earth (or something – I’m not quite sure exactly what he wants to do), but there’s a twist at the end that really disappointed me, which now means that it’s 

Astra is killed by Alex.

This is right up there with the whole “fooling Cat Grant and convincing her that Kara isn’t Supergirl” storyline. I mean, Boo! Hiss! Really, Bernanti, Adler, et.al., killing off what could have been a fascinating character and story arc? Again, Boo! Hiss!

And as for JJ – it left me shaken and stirred, with that uncomfortable feeling you get when you’ve had a horrific nightmare which stays with you all day, or after you’ve made the mistake of watching a double feature of Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb) on Turner Classic Movies.

SPOILERS HERE FOR ANYBODY WHO HAS ALSO BEEN LATE TO THE PARTY!

What really got me was the straightforward and uncomplicated denouement of David Tennant’s Killgrave – a simple twisting of his neck, a quick dislocating of his cervical vertebrae, a horrific rupturing of the right and left common carotid and vertebral arteries, and he’s as dead as the Tyrannosaurus Rex that King Kong killed using the same method – only with a lot less fight than in that epic battle. It was so straightforward, not what is usually expected when dealing with the gifted, as the show’s super-powered individuals and others called them; in comic-book land fights are usually a chance for the artist to strut his stuff, consisting of many panels and sometimes many pages of balletic and brutal brawling. What I thought, as Jessica approached Killgrave, was that she was going to rip his tongue out, which would certainly, I think, have been an apt Sisyphean punishment for him – King Sisyphus of Ephyra was punished by Zeus for his hubris, lying, greediness, and self-aggrandizing by being condemned to push a gigantic boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom before reaching the top, repeating this pattern forever and ever and ever.

Killgrave with his tongue is essentially powerless, and as I said, it would have been a fitting punishment; but Jessica said she was going to kill him and she did. But though it looked simple it wasn’t; Jessica Jones literally killed her demon. But the question is: Will it be enough? Stay streamed.

I am in no way dissing Krysten Ritter or anybody else in the cast of this superb show – Krysten Ritter was nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award, but I think it’s sin that no one else was nominated (Jessica Jones was ignored by the Golden), especially David Tennant.

I now have an even bigger crush on appreciation of David Tennant.

He’s getting handsomer and handsomer and handsomer.

His acting chops just keep getting better and better and better.

Mindy Newell is Just Ramblin’ On

Swamp Thing

Sometimes a writer can sit in front of the computer screen for hours, fingers poised on the keyboard, and – nothing happens. Not a word, not a syllable. Not a random thought, not a brainstorm. There’s not one single idea that can be expanded upon, not a hint of anything that seems at least remotely interesting.

Hmm, here’s something.

Did you read Denny’s column last week, the one about the Mighty Marvel Method? This writer came late to that particular game; in fact, I didn’t even know it existed, and the first time I heard the words “Marvel style” – another way to describe the “method” – I didn’t have a clue, though I was familiar with what a “script” was, having read numerous plays, including a whole lotta Shakespeare, in high school and college. I do think that, for novices, the best way to learn how to write a comic is by the “full script” method, which helps (forces?) the writer to understand pacing, hone dialogue, and think visually, because in the full script the writer is describing the artwork in each panel. This can be pretty easy to do in an action scene, but what if it’s basically just two people talking? Then the writer has to think like both a director and a cinematographer, and keep the “camera” moving and the “light” interesting, because otherwise a “talking head” interlude, no matter how important it is to the plot, how crucial to moving the story forward, is just plain b-o-r-i-n-g.

Either way, as in a football game, it’s a team effort. The writer may be the quarterback, but without a trusted receiver – Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Peyton Manning and Demarylius Thomas, Tom Brady and Julian Edelman, Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson, Eli Manning and Odell Beckham, Jr. – he or she won’t reach the playoffs, much less the Super Bowl. I’m thinking Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette on The Saga of the Swamp Thing, Marv Wolfman and George Perez on The New Teen Titans, Frank Miller and David Mazzucheli on Daredevil, our own Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams on Batman. Neil Gaiman and Sam Keith on Sandman. And, of course, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, Captain America, et.al. Of course, these are all classic pairings; YMMV.

Did you read John Ostrander’s column yesterday? John is rightly furious. What’s happened in Flint Michigan is a fucking disgrace. Oh, and one thing John didn’t mention. The fucking Republican Ohio Governor Rick Snyder wouldn’t ask for federal aid or for the President to declare a federal emergency because, you know, Obama’s a Kenyan Socialist Muslim Anti-American Democrat. And he’s black. Thank God for Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore, and the Detroit Free Press. And above all to Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Flint pediatrician who blew the whistle.

Yesterday I finished semi-binging on The Man in the High Castle on Amazon – semi-binging because I didn’t watch all 10 episodes at once, but divided it up into two “showings” – so I wasn’t aware of the release of the American prisoners from Iran until about 5:30 or 6 p.m. MSNBC and CNN were both covering the story. I turned to FOX, because I was wondering what they were saying about this windfall from Obama’s policy on Iran; no matter what you think about the nuclear deal with that nation – and I’m still on the fence about it – our people have been released. Would Fox, the bastion of fair and balanced reporting” at least celebrate that? Nope. They just kept replaying and replaying the Republican debate from Tuesday night until the other stations turned to other stories. So fucking typical. Meanwhile, the sixth prisoner, Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who allegedly was in Iran on a covert CIA mission (according to ABC News) and who disappeared in March 2007 is still missing. I told Mike Gold that I think he’s dead.

By the way, The Man in the High Castle is a brilliant and engrossing adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel. I heartily recommend it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Ostrander: Savaging Barbara Gordon

Barbara Gordon

Warners has announced that they are making an animated feature of Batman: The Killing Joke, the 1988 one-shot by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Central to the storyline is The Joker shooting Barbara Gordon at point blank range with a large caliber handgun, then savaging her (she is later seen with welts and bruises all over her face), ripping off her clothes, possibly raping her, and photographing her. Some consider it a classic. Others are asking how they can make an animated feature that’s true to the story and more are asking why they are doing it.

The “why,” I think, is pretty obvious – the book made money, evidently continues to do well on the backlist, and the powers that be are presuming it will sell well as an animated feature. They are probably not wrong.

I’ve read many comments on the idea online including female members of the comics community and all the comments I’ve read are disgusted with the idea of the comic as well as the announced animated feature.

At the time that Batman: The Killing Joke was released, I was co-writing Suicide Squad with my late wife, Kimberly Yale. Don’t get me wrong; I was and I remain a big fan of both Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Individually and together they have done stunning work. Moore is one of the giants of the comic book industry. He is, IMO, a better writer than I am and I don’t say that about many other writers (I have a very healthy ego and opinion of my own work, thank you very much). That doesn’t mean he can’t go wrong and I think that Batman: The Killing Joke went wrong.

In the controversial scene, there is the ring of a doorbell at the apartment of Commissioner Gordon. Barbara, all smiles and virtually going “tee hee,” goes to answer it. I should mention there is no chain on the door, no peephole to check who is in the corridor. There is evidently no policeman on guard duty in the hall. This is Gotham City, home of costumed psychopaths, and needs a vigilante dressed up as a bat to control the criminal population. James Gordon is the Commissioner of the Police and there are no safety measures where he lives?

Barbara opens the door. Barbara has been Batgirl and faced some of the costumed psychos inhabiting Gotham. She’s a grown woman who, in her own continuity, had been a congresswoman for at least one term. And yet she just flings the door wide open like a silly ninny.

There stands The Joker and he has a large caliber handgun. He shoots Barbara somewhere below the middle. From the angle, Kim and I thought it was the spine although others think he actually shot her in the uterus. He then rips off her clothes, beats her, takes pictures of her (while her father, off panel, is held motionless by The Joker’s henchmen), and possibly rapes her. Kim and I felt that was strongly implied but, to be fair, it was not directly shown.

I know women who have been assaulted. I know women who have been raped. That’s heinous enough but can you imagine what it would be like to have been shot, to have your spine broken, and then to be sexually assaulted? The pain, the horror – I can’t dwell on it too long.

Kim and I discussed it. To have been shot at the close range, to have your spine shot out, should have killed Barbara. If not, Kim thought severe sepsis would have set in and Barbara would not have survived. However, in the story, she does. That’s a given.

I should point out that the cover has a close-up of the Joker aiming a camera at the reader and saying, “Smile.” In that context, the only possible interpretation I can conceive is that the reader, the viewer, is Barbara as she lay on the floor, after she had been shot, presumably after she had been violated.

How does that feel?

The Bat office was done with Batgirl at that point. Barbara no longer fit into their plans. Kim and I asked if we could have her and we were told that. So we re-created her as Oracle. To us, it was important that the act have consequence. We didn’t want Barbara to magically recover. Given the violence she had endured, we felt she would be paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. However, we felt she could still be a hero.

It was a given in Barbara’s continuity that she was also a computer wiz. I mean first class. So we gave her banks of computers and made her the info wizard of the DC Universe. It started in Suicide Squad with her advising Amanda Waller, although we didn’t reveal Oracle’s true identity at the beginning. We left clues and, eventually, we showed it was Barbara.

Kim and I felt that, if we did the job well, Oracle could become an important part of the DCU. It solved writing problems for other writers; how did their protagonist learn a necessary plot point? They went to Oracle. She went on to become a valued member of the Justice League and led the Birds of Prey in their own book.

The last story that Kim and I worked on together before she died was Oracle Year One, drawn by the wonderful Brian Stelfreeze. We showed that year as Barbara made the transition from broken hero to dynamic Oracle. She became a strong and much loved icon for the disabled community. In making her a hero again, Oracle allowed others to heal with her. The reader healed with her.

Eventually, DC returned Babs to Batgirl status. Her spine was healed. Gail Simone was offered the job and she took it; she knew they were going to restore Barbara whether she wrote the series or not. She could, and did, make the events of the Killing Joke and Oracle a part of Barbara’s backstory; it wasn’t just forgotten.

It has been suggested that someone else could become Oracle but, to my mind, that wouldn’t work. You can’t just put anyone else into that role. It was the fact that she had been Batgirl, that she was Jim Gordon’s daughter, that she had her own long history, that she suffered the events of The Killing Joke – however heinous – all contributed to who she was. I don’t think anyone else but Barbara could be Oracle for the character to have any meaning.

I don’t know how all that gets fitted into an animated feature. I’m also not sure what parental response will be. It’s Batman, it’s Joker, it’s a cartoon. Great for the kiddies, right? Except this sure won’t be Frozen. If they change what happens to Barbara, I’m not sure it will be The Killing Joke either. If it’s not, why bother?

Oh, right. It’ll make money.

 

 

Comics Reviews (June 24, 2015)

From worst to best of what I paid for.

E is for Extinction #1

You can’t go home again, and certainly can’t by just hiring some Grant Morrison collaborators and hoping for the best. Perfectly adequate, I guess, if all you want is nostalgia. But you know what’s better? The Grant Morrison run on New X-Men.

Crossed Badlands #79 (aka Homo Tortor #5)

Not a bad comic, to be clear, but one that’s spinning its wheels a bit. There’s no new concepts to introduce, it would seem, but plot to resolve before the end, resulting in an issue that’s functional. I suspect coming out at the same time as the other “Crossed in a different time period” book is not doing Gillen any favors here, not least because the other one is written by Alan Moore. Really, one kind of has to pity Gillen; he must have assumed, starting his career when he did, that “having your book come out alongside an Alan Moore book with which it is inevitably going to be compared” was a fate he’d be spared.

Batgirl #41

Competent, fun, but man, Convergence killed the momentum here. I like the dynamic introduced for Batgirl by Gordon becoming Batman, though. That should be a fun story. And the scene where Gordon reveals his double identity to his daughter is delightful. Basically, a book I look forward to being excited about again.

Daredevil #16

Waid makes a slick turn into his final arc, setting up a suitably epic Daredevil/Kingpin showdown that doesn’t feel like any we’ve seen before. I admit, I’ve not sat down and watched the Netflix series, but I really do hope that Waid’s approach here reinvigorates the character in the long-term and gets him away from the banal and repetitive noir take that he’s been stuck in for decades.

Where Monsters Dwell #2

Garth Ennis at his hilarious best. This is not a complex or subtle comic, just a very funny one with lots of monsters and a ruthlessly mocked protagonist. The final twist caused the sort of intensive laughter that gets you weird looks at Starbucks.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #15

Pleasantly, this is increasingly obviously just ignoring the actual Secret Wars aspects of the plot and just sort of doing a side Norse apocalypse in which they react to Hickman’s. Verity’s life story is delightful in a classic Al Ewing way, and the cliffhanger’s solid. Going to enjoy the final lap here, I think.

The Infinity Gauntlet #2

Very glad I forgot to drop this, as this is absolutely wonderful now that it’s successfully trained the audience in how to read it. Ridiculously inaccurate cover, or, at least, one that ignores what most of the comic is. But family Nova Corps is a brilliant take. Is Zigzag the best new character of 2015? I think she is.

Annihilator #6

This frustrated me through much of its run, and I suspect that Morrison could have made it work better in four issues than six, but no matter; the finale is a triumph. LA noir bleeds into epic science fiction and a meditation on the craft of writing in the way that only Grant Morrison can do it. Funny, touching, exciting, and full of very pretty Frazer Irving art. Delightful, delightful issue.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

Comics Reviews (June 17th, 2015)

Comics Reviews (June 17th, 2015)

Old Man Logan #2

Well this went off the rails fast. After a first issue long on potential, this is a chain of scenes, all of them interrupted before anything interesting is allowed to happen so that Logan can be dragged to some new potentially interesting scene that won’t play out. Sorrentino’s art is very pretty, but it’s unclear as all hell, and Bendis is in his “let the artist do most of the storytelling” mode, a mode he puzzlingly only ever takes when working with abstract and hard to follow artists, as opposed to when he’s working with Bagley or someone who draws pages so that you can tell what’s going on.

Blackcross #4

A rarity: a Warren Ellis book I’m just not digging at all. None of the characters stand out to me, I don’t know the superheroes being referenced, and this is mostly vague implications in search of a plot for me. Not only do I not remember what’s going on month to month, in the three hours between reading it and writing this review I’ve already forgotten most of this book.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #13

The plot advances, and there are some very good Eleventh Doctor monologues, but this is a resolutely average issue of this comic. Still, we’re into the “I actually enjoyed reading this” segment of the list.

Stumptown #6

The start of a new arc. I’m not entirely sold – the start was awkward as we have to sit through an explanation of civet coffee, which is on the one hand something that probably does need exposition and on the other feels a bit cliche and overdone. Still, Stumptown is a PI book, not a mystery book, so the setup isn’t the interesting part, and this has enough funny bits to be an entertaining way to spend five minutes, albeit a bit steep at $3.99. But what comics aren’t these days.

Thors #1

A Thor cop book. Aaron proves good at writing this, which is nice – he’s hit and miss for me, to say the least. But the procedural suits him, apparently, and the sheer absurdity of it wrings out a smile at least one every few pages. Throg, in particular, is a delight to see. And with the last page, it even gives a sense that this will matter when we get back to the main Thor book. The only pity is having to go back to that book eventually, really.

Ms. Marvel #16

Wilson makes the smart decision to keep this focused on Kamala and on her plots, picking up heavily from the last arc. The final page is promising. It is in places predictable, but this book always has been – its charm is its ability to find new spins and perspectives on things. Such as a school/refugee center defended by weird turquoise monster things created by Loki. (“To be pwned by Loki is a great honor,” one says, in the week’s best line.) As I said, I have low hopes for these Last Days books, but this is quite good.

Lazarus #17

Rucka returns to his strengths in many ways here: political intrigue, well-done female characters, and a general sense of things kicking off. Not a jumping on point, I suspect, only because there’s a lot of worldbuilding already done and this doesn’t necessarily sell its own stakes well. But it’s exactly what one wants out of a creator-owned Rucka book.

Trees #10

The indiscipline of this book remains considerable. In one plot, it’s utterly unclear what the main character is doing. In the other, nothing seems to happen. The cliffhanger is not one. But at this point these are all clear stylistic choices, and despite long since having lost the plot on this series this issue picked up and read well. Love the bits about the NYPD in the first half. This remains one of the most daring books on the market, and I’m glad that Ellis is content to use the magnitude and guaranteed sales of his name to recklessly fuck with people.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

“Watchmen” Described for Screen Reader Users

watchmen-trade-paperback-200x300During a 1940’s newspaper strike, New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia would read the comics over the radio so kids wouldn’t miss out on the funnies. In a similar vein, Liana Kerr is reading Watchmen for people who can’t see it:

Watchmen is a classic comic book written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, published in 1986. It’s set in an alternate history where the existence of superheroes changed American politics, culture and everyday life. I’ve described it panel-by-panel for blind and low-vision readers, including the supplementary material at the end of each chapter. Text within asterisks indicates bold text.

Source: Watchmen: Described for Screen Reader Users | Liana’s Paper Dolls

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Ed Catto: The Old Order Changeth

There’s a certain comfortable absurdity that an activity that is most likely enjoyed on a solitary basis – reading comics – kicks into high gear every day at comics shops and just about every weekend at comic conventions and every minute in social media. Recently at a comic convention, I was surrounded by some old friends who really like comics, and by a bunch of new faces who do too. And the new faces look so different from my familiar compatriots.

First a little background. I’m ComicMix’s newest columnist, and although a basic fanboy at heart, I come at it with a little different perspective. I’m an advertising and marketing guy. Yes, you could say I’m kind of like a character from Mad Men, but without the coolness, glamour and skinny ties. So when I worked at Nabisco I brought Marvel heroes to Oreo and ChipsAhoy! for a marketing team-up. I developed a “Spot Spidey” promotion for a candy company. At the world’s largest trade show company, I helped grow New York Comic Con in its sophomore year. And now at my own agency, we help brands connect with geek culture.  Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out how to have afternoon cocktails in the office like they did at Sterling Cooper.

It’s natural for me to try to understand who the audience is for a product, what type of people make up the most engaged consumers for an industry and how it’s changing and evolving. Call me crazy, but I find that fascinating.

So with the convention season upon us, I’m fascinated by the changing profile of convention attendees, and by extrapolation, how the comics industry is changing. How do the 87 million millennials fit into it all ? Last month, I didn’t go to Emerald City Comic Con, although I heard it was (another) great one, but instead was at a small local show in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. It’s part of a network of rotating comic shows that an energetic guy named Jon Paul runs and has been running for the past 24 years. And the most interesting thing is – there’s a new crop of attendees! They aren’t just all the same people who have always gone to these shows.

Oh, sure, there’s a certain band-of-brothers element amongst the dealers and faithful fans. They’re close-knit communities who have developed relationships over the years “one Sunday at a time”.  But thankfully, like all good hosts, they also are very welcoming to new faces and fans.

This time around, I think the “gods of comics marketing” arranged to send perfect examples of some the new fans to this show for me to meet. Without exaggeration, these folks could have all come directly from central casting.  I’m not sure if there are any big, new ah-hah moments though. It was more a validation, and a personification, of the recent trends that the geek press has been chewing on.

Promethea Girl

There’s been a lot of talk about women in comics, but one young woman this weekend summed it all up for me. She was enthralled by a Promethea action figure for sale. DC Direct had created this figure a few years ago, based on Alan Moore’s brilliant Promethea and Sophie characters. This young woman proudly displayed her Promethea Tattoo, as well as her depth of knowledge and passion for comics. When she introduced us to her boyfriend (who was quickly dubbed “Promethea Boy”) I curiously asked who collected comics first. He shamefacedly admitted that even though he read some comics as a kid, it was his girlfriend’s passion that re-ignited his interest in comics.

New Kid On the Block

carls-comix-newsOne of the coolest fans was also one of the most impressive. Carl is a man on a mission. Or should I say, a young man on a mission. He’s only 8, but Carl knows comics and has a keen eye for what’s cool and what he likes. And he blogs about it on his Carl’s Comix blog. A polite and energetic kid, Carl was refreshingly optimistic and upbeat. And he’s blessed with one of those super-supportive dads, the kind of guy who watches out for his boy, but provides support, encouragement and long leash. Or maybe I should say a “long runway”, because it’s obvious that Carl is going to take off to great heights.

A shuffling iZealot

Larry's ComicsAnd then there was that type of selfless fan who’s looking to bring more folks to the party.  One fan bought a dozen copies of Roberson & Allred’s recent iZombie comic series for his girlfriend. She had enjoyed the first episode of the new CW series. Years ago, when I was dating, I always dreaded that moment when I had to tell a girl my dark, horrible secret – that I bought comics every week.

That doesn’t seem like such a horrible secret any longer. Now, there are so many ways to enjoy this slice of pop culture (movies, TV, comics, apparel, merchandise) and there’s so many ways to share it with those we care about. And this type of fan is anxious to spread the word about comics, not to just keep it to himself.

As a side note, I saw a banner on a Larry’s Comics email that said, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Junk.”

So I left Sunday’s comic show with a positive sense of who’s enjoying all this stuff, and how they’re all enjoying it. There are more roads into it than ever, and more ways to enjoy it than ever, and that’s pretty cool. I just hope I can keep up with all these new fans.

One last note – I always associate the title of this week’s column “The Old Order Changeth” with shakeups to the line-up of heroes in the Avengers, but it goes way back and I think it’s from an old Tennyson King Arthur poem. Those classics always get in the way of my comic book trivia.

Martha Thomases: Killing The Killing Joke

Another week, another kerfuffle. This one, involving a variant Batgirl cover for the “Joker Month” promotion at DC comics, is actually a little bit more interesting than most.

(Please note: I actually find most of these events interesting, which is why I write about them so frequently.)

In this case, the usual knee-jerk assumptions don’t apply. Artists were assigned to create a cover that featured the title character (in this case, Batgirl) and the Joker. The assignment was made, not by each series’ editor, but the marketing department. Rafael Albuquerque, the artist, decided to create an image that paid homage to one of his favorite Joker stories, The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland.

I really like that story. There are people who have issues with it, and I understand their concerns, but, to me, it is a phenomenal meditation on the nature of madness, and those who have to live with it. I wasn’t happy about how the rest of the DC editorial office reacted to the show, deciding that Barbara Gordon was the only superhero ever to suffer an injury (or death) that wasn’t curable.

(Side note: I did like the way Kim Yale and John Ostrander took what I considered to be an unfortunate editorial decision and made Barbara stronger than ever, as Oracle. I still resented that Batman’s back could be fixed, but not Barbara’s.)

Anyway, all this changed with The New 52. Barbara Gordon can walk again. Barbara Gordon can do the kind of amazing acrobatics that require usable spines and lots of training and talent. More recently, the editorial office and creative team decided to recast the character as younger, hipper, and more girl-friendly.

The creative team was not happy with the Joker cover. A lot of fans of the new series, perhaps too young to have read The Killing Joke, were not happy with the Joker cover. Rafael Albuquerque, when made aware of the reasons for the controversy, was not happy with the cover.

Finally, DC withdrew the cover. And that’s where this gets interesting.

There was also a lot of saber-rattling about censorship, which shows how little the public understands the word. The creative intent of the people creating the comic book was not supported by the variant cover, and they didn’t want it used. The only people who thought the cover was a good idea were those in marketing.

I do a lot of marketing work. I’m not opposed to marketing. That said, no one defending free speech has ever asserted that the needs of the marketing people should determine artistic expression. If anything, those of us who appreciate artistic freedom (even of work we don’t like) tend to prefer marketing people to butt out of editorial decision.

During the run-up to withdrawal, there were a lot of tweets and Facebook postings and other internet conversations about the issue. And, as so often happens on the Internet, some people got verbally abusive and threatening and there was name-calling and unpleasantness. DC alluded to this in their press release.

If you read the comments about this on the Comic Book Resources article (and I only read the first page or so, because I have a life, but not so much of one that I could stop thinking about the comments that I read), you’ll notice something unusual. After lots and lots of discussion about censorship and artistic integrity, the commenters are horrified that someone would threaten the artist. How could a difference of opinion about a piece of artwork justify such behavior? Isn’t the terrorism of an Internet threat more violent than the image in question?

Except no one was threatening Rafael Albuquerque. The threats were directed to those people (most often women) who didn’t like the cover. How could a difference of opinion about a piece of artwork justify such behavior?

It doesn’t.

It would be lovely if those who like the variant cover, who thought that it was horrible of the “social justice warriors” to threaten an artist, would 1) apologize to those they wrongly accused of making threats and 2) perhaps direct their outrage to those who actually do make threats, even if they agree with them otherwise.

 

Martha Thomases: A Whale of A Comics Story

What do whales have to do with comics? I’m glad you asked.

According to this study, in times of trouble, whales turn to the post-menopausal females to lead them. They trust these elderly females to know where the food is.

Besides humans, whales are the only other mammals to live after menopause, sometimes decades longer. Males tend to die at 60, but it isn’t unusual to find a female whale at age 90 or more.

(For the record, but without any evidence whatsoever, I like to think whales would also respect a male who lived to be 90. Just saying.)

There’s a lot of money going into comic book companies lately. Valiant just entered a partnership rumored to be worth nine figures. That means at least $100,000,000. Another company, Black Mask plans to grow its audience, not just with comics, but with videos and movies. That kind of outreach isn’t cheap.

Reading these articles, I was once again struck by the way popular culture equates graphic storytelling with superheroes. Yeah, lots of comics have superheroes in them, but so do a lot of prose novels (like this and this for example). And there are successful movies based on graphic novels that have no superheroes, like this and this, again, just as examples.

But superheroes are considered to be a film category now, with seepage onto television (where it is often more successful, in my opinion), so the big entertainment money is looking for comic book properties to buy. And there are lots of graphic stories out there, in a variety of genres, that would make terrific movies. The challenge is going to be finding the best ones.

Which brings us to the post-menopausal whales.

Like other forms of popular entertainment, comic book publishers and fans are always looking for the next great thing. Historically, sometimes the next great thing is terrific, like the way the Beatles shook up pop music in the 1960s, or Alan Moore opened up comics in the 1980s. Sometimes, the next great thing is terrible, like Justin Bieber.

Most often, we don’t know which new thing is truly great until it has a chance to stand the test of time. A by-product of looking for the next great thing is that, too often, these same people fail to consider the possibility of failure when making their decisions. A few years ago, Jerry Ordway wrote about being overlooked despite the hundreds of millions of dollars his work had earned, either directly or indirectly, for Warner Bros. At any comic book convention, if you go to Artists’ Alley, you’ll see lots of other professionals, all successful at one time and still possessing awesome skills, who can’t get work.

Like the post-menopausal whales, these folks know how to find food in tough times. They know the difference between a good story and a bad story, and how to make a so-so plot into something thrilling.

If I were a Hollywood investor, in addition to my nine-figure deals, I’d hire a couple of these old pros.

(Ye Ed notes: The art, above, is of Black Lightning villain Tobias Whale. Get it? Whale! Look, trust me, you wouldn’t want to see my first choice.)

Mindy Newell: Je Ne Suis Pa Charlie Hebdo

SoBigYesterday I had a thought – which I do have on occasion.

I have always considered myself a “socially conscious” comics writer. This means that, if you look over my body of work, you will notice that I have told stories that, in one way or another, reflect “real world” events and the consequences of those events on my characters. Notably, of course, in my 1986 Lois Lane mini-series about child abduction and abuse, “When It Rains, God is Crying” (coincidentally edited by ComicMix’s Robert Greenberger when we were both working for DC, he an editor and me a freelancer), but also as far back as “Moon River,” my first story in New Talent Showcase, an admittedly tyro effort to portray the outcome of a closed, dictatorial society on an individual. And of course there was “Chalk Drawings,” which I co-wrote with George Pérez for Wonder Woman, which was a story about suicide.

These efforts do not make me Edna Ferber (a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of renowned and influential New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits who gathered at the Algonquin Hotel every day for lunch from 1919 to 1929), whose “socially conscious” novels include, among others, So Big (1924), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, Show Boat (1926), which was adapted into a musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, and Giant (1952), which was made into a movie directed by George Stevens and starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean – his third and last role before his death by car accident – who did admirable jobs in a no-way-was it-as-good-as-the-novel script adaptation. So Big was about the war between art and finance, Show Boat was about the racism between black and white and its price, while Giant dealt with the racism between brown and white, the antipathy between cattle ranchers and oilmen, and, as well, the clash between liberalism and conservatism. All are issues we face today.

Nor am I Laura Z. Hobson, whose 1947 Gentlemen’s Agreement attacked post-World War II anti-Semitism in the United States. It was made into a film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who, according to Wikipedia, was approached by Samuel Goldwyn and other Jewish filmmakers. They asked him not to make the film because it could “stir up trouble,” and feared that Hays Code enforcer Joseph Brown would not allow the film to get by the censors because of his openly known anti-Semitism. But Zanuck essentially said, “Fuck him,” and the film went on to be nominated for eight Oscars and to win three – Best Picture, Best Director (Elia Kazan, no stranger to controversy), Best Actor (Gregory Peck), and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm). Just a brief aside here: in my not-so-humble opinion, John Garfield should have won a Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dave Goldman, a Jewish WW II vet and best friend to Gregory Peck’s main character, journalist Phil Schulyer. Oh, and young Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap’s Admiral Al Calavicci and Battlestar Galactica’s Brother John Cavil) played Schulyer’s son.

But, getting back to my original sentence, in which I said I had a thought…

Am I still listed in the phone book?

Of course it sounds silly. I mean, who uses a phone book these days?

But the point is, how easy am I to find?

And the answer is: All too easy.

So what if I offended someone out there? Certainly in these past two and so years I have stated my opinions loudly and frequently. And I’ve done the same on my Facebook page.

Is it that inconceivable some one could decide to meet me in the parking lot at work, or in front of my apartment building, or even in my apartment? Some one with a pathological chip on his or her shoulder and a knife or a Luger or a Kalishnikov?

Or maybe while I’m shopping at the Jewish deli?

No, I’m not inflated with self-importance.

No, I am not Edna Ferber or Laura Z. Hobson. Neither am I Lawrence Wright or Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein. I’m not Maureen O’Dowd. I’m not Rachel Maddow. I’m not Chris Matthews or Ed Schultz. I’m not Megan Kelley or Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter. I’m not Jon Stewart. I’m not Steven Colbert. I’m not Louis Black or John Oliver or Bill Maher.

I’m not Thomas Nast. I’m not Art Spielgman and I’m not Jules Feiffer. I’m not Nigar Nazar of Pakistan.

I’m not Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman or G. Willow Wilson.

I’m not Mike Gold or Denny O’Neil or John Ostrander or Marc Fishman or Martha Thomases or Michael Davis or Emily Whitten or Bob Ingersoll.

I am Mindy Newell.

Je ne suis pa Charlie Hebdo.

But I could be.

We all could be.

And so could you.

 

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