Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That’s the First Amendment, in its entirety. It’s elegant, isn’t it? But did you notice what word isn’t there? Look again.
The word is “except.” There’s no “except” in the First Amendment.
That’s what makes the United States of America great. It’s where we separate the wheat from the chaff. The democracies from the dictatorships. The good from the evil.
Ask around and some people will tell you that the Supreme Court ruled the First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to shout fire in a crowded theater. If the utterer is smart, that quote will be attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. The problem is, it’s bullshit, twice-over.
Number one: in ruling on the case of Schenck v. U.S. in 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” The emphasis here is mine; those critical words are usually left out of the debate. You’ve got to be lying, and you’ve got to actually cause damage. However…
Number two: Schenck v. U.S. was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1969 in the case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, which ruled that speech could only be banned when it was likely to incite imminent lawless action, such as a riot. The majority noted yelling fire outside a building to prevent people from entering is quite different from encouraging people to stampede out.
The Constitution doesn’t say “but in case somebody figures out a way to allow people to get their words heard by a whole lot of other people all at once, a federal agency is going to appoint a brilliant comedian to figure out which seven words can never, ever be uttered, no matter how inadvertently, no matter how pointedly, and no matter how necessary or how puerile they may be – and we’re going to fine the shit out of people who ever use those words.”
Last week, ComicMix’s Glenn Hauman, a First Amendment freedom fighter of the first order and with the street cred to prove it, ran a piece about how a federal appeals court ruled against the FCC in their fining broadcasters for the dissemination of inadvertent obscenity. In his article, Glenn substituted asterisks for the vowels in the dirty words. I know Glenn; that reflects his highly tuned sense of irony. Glenn’s also a very considerate guy: he doesn’t want to get you in trouble if you’re reading ComicMix at work and your boss sees the naughty stuff. I’m not quite as considerate.
It’s Glenn’s prerogative as a writer, so I didn’t fuss with his choice. The fact is, when you see “f*ck” you read “fuck.” When you see “sh*t,” you read “shit.” When somebody indulges in euphemisms, people know exactly and immediately what the bad words are. But you’re not going to get Battlestar Galactica on the air unless you say “frakkin’.” And, no doubt, pay Yosemite Sam his royalty.
It’s ridiculous. It’s hypocritical. Even if these words had any meaning or any shock value any more, there is no reason to be so judgmental. People who think ill of those who use cuss words yet drive while on their cell phone are a much bigger threat than those who are subjected to their self-righteousness.
About 20 years ago, DC Comics’ editorial honcho Dick Giordano assigned me the task of representing the company at the redraft of the much-hated (and now completely impotent) Comics Code. Yep, Dick has a fantastic sense of humor. At the meeting, one of the first things I asked for was a list of the dirty words that can’t be used. Fair is fair, I pointed out. Marvel’s rep, the much-missed Mark Gruenwald, agreed. Since we were Marvel and DC combined, we got to assign the editors from Harvey Comics and Archie Comics the task of coming up with the list. Okay, that was sophomoric, but if you knew either Mark or me, you’d get it and you probably do anyway. A week or two later, Al Harvey and Victor Gorelick came in with a great list.
They passed the list around and we debated the merits and demerits of the words, adding a few that Al and Vic missed – the very few, actually; it was an extensive list. Then we all exploded in laughter at the astonishing bullshitness of the situation. One of the editors – I won’t reveal which – said “What’s the difference? The Code censors are going to ignore all this anyway.” Which is exactly what happened. Immediately.
We censor in the name of the Children. You know, those Children who are raised in nunneries, who, if they were never exposed to television or radio or literature or people like me, would be good, pious and safe. The kids who presently live on Earth-53. We divert everything with which we are uncomfortable into the “oh, no, we’re doing it for the Children” file. That’s a lot of crap. If you raise your kids honestly with good, sound values, if you teach them right from wrong and you show them how to be strong and the ways to stand up for those values, you won’t have anything to worry about. Stop hiding behind the kids.
There’s plenty of stuff going on to worry about. Language doesn’t make the cut.
Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.com. Be afraid, be very afraid…
Awards season is loose in comicland and I can already tell you what won’t be getting awards, this year or any other year. Anything that smacks of a licensed property. When I speak of a licensed property, I mean anything like Battlestar Gallactica, or The Phantom, or Buffy, or Conan. Or Star Wars.
And, yes, I write some of the Star Wars comics – currently my book is Star Wars: Legacy. If that sounds like a conflict of interest on my part or that maybe I have an axe to grind – so what? If there is one thing being in rotation with Michael Davis has taught me, there is no shame in saying your own name and being proud of what you do. Michael is my hero and my shining example. I intend to channel my inner Michael.
I’m as proud of my work on Star Wars as I’ve been of anything I’ve done in my career – and never more so with Legacy. We’ve jumped down the Star Wars timeline 100 years past anything that is being currently done in Star Wars, including the novels. We’ve imagined a whole new galaxy of characters and re-defined Star Wars, working from its past while making it open to newcomers.
But forget me for a moment. Wait – I’m channeling my inner Michael. Don’t you ever forget me but, in addition to me, there are other folk doing superlative work. My artist and partner in crime, Jan Duursema, is doing some of the finest work of her career and, given the amount of talent she has to begin with, that’s considerable. When a new Star Wars project is conceived, it usually takes a team of designers a year or so to come up with the look. Jan designed it herself (with Sean Phillips designing a lot of the ships) in less than a year while she was finishing work on our predecessor Star Wars title, Republic. She has a wonderful team of Dan Parsons on inks and Brad Anderson on colors and both of them contribute massively to the just straight out beauty of the books.
And it’s not just our book. Doug Wheatley does breathtaking work on Star Wars: The Dark Ages. Nor is it only Star Wars; Timothy Truman and Cary Nord have been doing stunning work on the Conan title. Nor is it only Dark Horse books; the number of books based on licensed properties is growing and coming from many different publishers. Their sales are increasing; the first issue of the new Buffy, the Vampire Slayer series cracked the Top Ten on Diamond’s list the month it came out.
So – where’s the love? Where’s the respect? Certainly, Legacy gets it from the Star Wars fans. I was out at Celebration IV about two weeks ago and it was in plentiful display. I find it frustrating that more general readers aren’t at least looking at the titles. These are just good comics, gang – good characters, good stories, lots of adventure, intrigue, great dialogue. And these are just in my comics. (Man, I’m loving channeling my inner Michael. Maybe I’ll call him John-Michael. Or is that too French?) The point is – they’re as good as or better than most of the comics out there. I’ll stand them up against anybody else’s willingly.
The Big ComicMIx Weekend Broadcast comes right out of the 2007 Book Expo in NYC and we share one of the coolest books ever, illustrated by the incredible Jules Feiffer! Plus a ton of news including new limited edition comics, what happens to Apollo after BATTLESTAR ends, and a trip back to when The Jacksons actually had important friends!
Press The Button or we’ll post that picture of you in the red vinyl jacket and the one white glove!
The producers of Battlestar Galactica announced today that the show’s upcoming fourth season would be its last.
Yesterday David Eick and Ronald Moore released a statement noting that BSG "was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and finally, an end. Over the course of the last year, the story and the characters have been moving strongly toward that end and we’ve decided to listen to those internal voices and conclude the show on our own terms."
The recent 20% decline in the show’s ratings are presumably beside the point.
Writer/producer Mark Verheiden (Smallville, Battlestar Galactica,Timecop, The Mask, My Name Is Bruce) who’s also been known to write more than a few major comic books (Superman/Batman, Aliens, The Phantom, The American), will be handling the script for the new Teen Titans motion picture.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie is being produced by Akiva Goldsman and Kerry Foster, who are also handling the upcoming movie adaptations of The Doom Patrol and The Losers. All these films will be released by Warner Bros, parent company to DC Comics, which publishes all this stuff. Warners also has The Dark Knight and Watchmen coming up, along with a Justice League film and a sequel to Superman Returns.
It has yet to be determined exactly which members of the Teen Titans will be in the movie, other than everybody’s favorite ex-Robin, Nightwing.
Gee, you’d think these superhero movies are making money or something.
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We’re in another cycle of teevee tie-in comic books. Right now we’ve got Transformers, Battlestar Galactica, several Star Treks (or is that Treks Star?), Xena, Stargate whatever, lots of Simpsons titles, Tek Jansen, and a whole lot more.
This happens every once in a while, starting from the time publishers didn’t know what to do when the superheroes stopped selling back in the late 1940s. It’s a bit of a role of the dice for them, as the licensing fees they pay are on top of their regular costs for talent, production, promotion, printing, and distribution. Generally speaking, you’ve got to sell a lot more copies to clear a profit and, on its best day, comic book publishing is not for the faint of heart.
I’m not at all critical of this. Whereas reaching for the licensed material might have been an act of desperation back in the 1950s – I mean, Marvel’s Pinky Lee comic did not fare well, running a mere five issues – today such ventures seem to work when nostalgia based: publishers are reaching for teevee properties that their readers enjoyed before, or at the same time as, they discovered comics.
Now as we all know, the Baby Boomers have a deathlock on our culture. “It was the greatest, it was the best, you people don’t have squat, your music sucks and there hasn’t been a good movie since The Godfather Part 2.” If you’re a GenXer, you’ve heard this way too much. If you’re a Baby Boomer, you’re probably a parent so please give your kids a break. Besides, they’re beginning to think The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is about the Bush Administration.
So where are the Baby Boomer’s nostalgic teevee comics? The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is about to get the DVD box set treatment. I know at least two-dozen writers (and I’m not kidding) who would give their eyeteeth to do that comic book.
What about Rocky and Bullwinkle? Oh, wait. That’s funny stuff. And we can’t do funny comic books, despite the irony of that statement.
How about Perry Mason? He’s been around forever. Books, stories, a soap opera and movies – and that was even before the teevee show that starred that guy from Godzilla.
It’s May which means, out in TV-land, it’s the final sweeps period of the season. Yeah, a few of the final shows have yet to air but I might as well look back on what I liked/disliked over the past season. This may not be what you watched, liked or disliked but, hey, it’s my column.
Battlestar Galactica. I finally succumbed and started looking in on the series. I’d been afraid that it would be too dense at this point, that there was too much backstory, to be accessible to late viewers like myself but I found I was able to pick things up as I went. Yes, it would be better if I knew more of the backstory and I plan on picking up the DVDs but I’ve gotten into the series. I’m not certain why finding Earth is such a good idea for these people or why so much of their culture seems to be very post-1940’s American culture but I’m willing to hang in and find out. Yes, I liked it overall.
Boston Legal. A tip of the hat to ComicMix head inmate Mike Gold for getting me to watch this series. Mary and I started watching late last season and it’s become one of our favorites. I was resistant because I’m not really a big David E. Kelley fan but this show causes me to laugh out loud. It makes brilliant use of some old pros – James Spader, Rene Aubenjois, Candace Bergen, and the simply amazing William Shatner – as it talks about current issues, goes consistently over the top, touches the heart and simply entertains me more than almost any other show in a given week.
Deadwood. Big fan of this show and I can’t tell you how pissed off I am that HBO didn’t let it continue. Yeah, they talked about two movies to finish it up but a) that’s not the same and b) I haven’t heard that those are actually going forward. Creator David Milch had said that the concept was the advance of civilization as seen through the focus of the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, originally a boom camp for the gold found in the hills nearby. Real historical figures intermingled with totally fictional creations much the same way real history was mingled with a lot of inventive writing (and serious profanity). It’s not a technique unknown to me; I did the much the same thing when I wrote my historical graphic novel The Kents. The show boasted some fine performances topped by Ian McShane’s incendiary Al Swearingen.
All that said, I have to confess that Season 3 turned out to be a disappointment to me. The through line was the gradual take-over of the town by George Hearst (given a dynamite performance by Gerald McRaney). Hearst was an actual historical figure, the farther of William Randolph Hearst who, in turn, was a model for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and that was both the attraction and the problem. The actual Hearst himself never visited Deadwood, so far as my researches showed, although he did wind up owning several big mines there.
The problem in Season 3, for me, was that it was headed for an almost apocalyptic showdown between Hearst and his men versus the citizens of the town who, although usually at violent odds with one another, were brought together by a common threat. The season built in tension to what should have been a staggering climax and then – Hearst simply decides to leave town. Go on to his next location. The tension dribbles away.
Variety reports that Superman Returns was top movie winner at the Saturn Awards. These awards are presented by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.
Superman Returns won as best fantasy film, best director (Bryan Singer), best actor (Brandon Routh), best script (Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty) and best score (John Ottman).
Children of Men was the best science fiction film, The Descent was the best horror film, and Cars was the best animated film.
Heroes was awarded the prize as best network television show, and Battlestar Galactica won for best cable or syndicated series. Masi Oka and Hayden Panettiere took best supporting actor and actress awards.
NBC has picked up David Eick’s remake of The Bionic Woman for the 2007 -2008 season.
Eick was best known for his work as executive producer of the remake of Battlestar Galactica, running on NBC’s Sci-Fi Network. Now he’s best known as teevee’s go-to guy for science ficiton teevee revivals.
The revisioned series stars British actress Michelle Ryan as Jaime Sommers. Eick has said that they only used the title of the series as their starting point and that the show will go in its own direction. So we know Ryan will have a chip on her shoulder – as well as everyplace else – and, well, that she’s a woman.
Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) co-stars in the pilot as the mandatory evil bionic woman. Whereas she worked on this during her brief time-off from Galactica, since Eick wrote the pilot we shouldn’t be astonished if we see her come back – certainly, after Galactica wraps its next and final season.
No word on any reappearance of The Six Million Dollar Man. Today, six mill wouldn’t buy you a used Dalek.
These are the most important words ever written:
Awards season is loose in comicland and I can already tell you what won’t be getting awards, this year or any other year. Anything that smacks of a licensed property. When I speak of a licensed property, I mean anything like Battlestar Gallactica, or The Phantom, or Buffy, or Conan. Or Star Wars.
We’re in another cycle of teevee tie-in comic books. Right now we’ve got Transformers, Battlestar Galactica, several Star Treks (or is that Treks Star?), Xena, Stargate whatever, lots of Simpsons titles, Tek Jansen, and a whole lot more.
It’s May which means, out in TV-land, it’s the final sweeps period of the season. Yeah, a few of the final shows have yet to air but I might as well look back on what I liked/disliked over the past season. This may not be what you watched, liked or disliked but, hey, it’s my column. 
Variety reports that Superman Returns was top movie winner at the Saturn Awards. These awards are presented by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.
NBC has picked up David Eick’s remake of The Bionic Woman for the 2007 -2008 season.
