We would like to get ahead of the curve and start the first official campaign to keep Joss Whedon’s S.H.I.E.L.D. on the air and avoid premature cancellation.
We don’t know how it will happen this time. It could be a remade pilot, or a pilot put in at the end of the season. It could have its budget cut. It could be put on Friday night, always a favorite. It could have the network shot out from under, but it’s unlikely that could happen to ABC (although not impossible). It could be a combination of all of them.
But this time, we can get a head start! Because we know that people are going to be trying to strangle this show as soon as humanly possible, we can prepare months, nay, years in advance. We can create cool social media campaigns! We can start making t-shirts, and buying up eyepatches in bulk for the inevitable mail-in to executives claiming that if they’re so blind as to cancel a show as brilliant as this, they should have Nick Fury’s eyepatches! (However, threatening to pluck out network executive eyes, while fun to contemplate, should be saved for later when we start sending telegrams.)
So we’re calling on you, faithful ComicMix reader. Retweet this post! Like it and share it on Facebook! Digg it! Put it on Reddit! Use StumbleUpon! Heck, even use LinkedIn, even though it’s supposed to be for work! There’s no time for work! This is important! This is your new job now! Click all those buttons below this article! Joss Whedon’s vision depends on you! If you don’t do it, he won’t be able to take your favorite characters and emotionally torment them… and mess with their heads… and then gratuitously kill off your favorite one, just because he was in a bad mood that day…
…nah. Joss wouldn’t kill off S.H.I.E.L.D. agents just for the heck of it, would he?
O.K. This is the wiseass editor typing. Emily’s not here today.
Something about near-complete exhaustion from something called “work.”
Do not fret. Emily will be back next week, no doubt because we’ll hire Deadpool to either find her or ghost her column.
And Emily will be at the Baltimore Comic-Con September 8th and 9th, joining fellow ComicMixers Marc Alan Fishman, Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, and Mike Gold (who always enjoys writing about himself in the third person), and artistic ComicMixers Timothy Truman, Mark Wheatley, Andrew Pepoy, Robert Tinnell and Marc Hempel. We’ll mostly be terrorizing the masses at the Insight Studios booth and at the Unshaven Comics booth.
Yes, I just used poor Emily’s exhaustion to plug a comics convention. Any port in a storm.
I’m the New York Giants’s Lawrence Tynes. I’m the place kicker here. I’m the one who gets the game going. Yeah, that’s right. Monday is the start of the week here at ComicMix. The calendar week may start with Sunday, but Monday is the real start of the week, isn’t it? As in first day of the work week and first day of the school week.
(BTW, what y’all thinking about the Giants first-round draft choice, running back Dave Wilson? I’m liking him. Yeah, that’s right. Football season is just about here. Deal with it. Go Giants!)
And here it is Monday, and I’m sitting here on Sunday afternoon without a thing to write about.
I was going to write about Superman and Wonder Woman sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g in a tree. Except that my pal Martha beat me to it. And superbly, I might add.
Then I was going to write about how life imitates fiction, even when events are too strange, too scary, too twisted, too cartoony to be believed. Except that my buddy John got there first. With an A+, of course.
This happens sometimes when you’re a writer.
Great minds thinking alike.
Okay, you can stop snorting in derision now.
But Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion (great book, btw, highly recommended) gets beaten to the punch. So then what do you do?
Panic is the best – and first – reaction.
Going to the gym to clear out your mind (and burn off the fight-or-flight adrenaline) is the second thing you do.
Read all the comics that have been piling up in the kitchen in one sitting, praying that one of them will spark an idea.
Look at the clock and realize the deadline is looming and curse yourself for not writing the column earlier in the week when all the hub-pub hit the media, thus beating out Martha and John.
Panic again.
Cut open a vein and watch yourself bleed.
Or sit down in front of the computer and start writing from fear of Mike whooping your ass.
I love you, Mike.
Oh, and by the way:
Regarding Diana and Kal-El. I still maintain that Diana, considering her upbringing, would most likely look to her own sex for an adult relationship before venturing into anything heterosexual – meaning she needs to discover just where her sexuality lies. Hey, is that where Geoff Johns is going with this? Not that I believe for a second that DC and its corporate papa, Time Warner, would ever let Wonder Woman be gay.
Regarding Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri), Judge Tom Head of Texas, and State Senator Stacey Campfield (R). They only prove that the Repugnanticans have become truly asinine, ignorant, bigoted enemies of truth, justice, and the American way.
If only they were characters in a comic book.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis and More Milestones
We’ve been pretty grim, these last couple of weeks, so I thought maybe I should lighten up. What I thought I’d do, last night, was take my place at the computer and spin some wordfluffle suitable for submission to ComixMix and then…what? Continue existing? But before I could get to it, I saw the news window on the screen and learned that some lone gunman – anything familiar in those words? – had killed six Sikhs in a Wisconsin temple before being himself gunned down by police. We don’t yet know why. We probably won’t be too surprised when we do.
The politicians – no surprise here – beat me to the fluffle. The same dreary litanies we hear so often: hearts and prayers going out to and deep sadness and troubled days ahead… Democrat, Republican, independent all saying the same thing and in so doing actually saying nothing.
Look: I get ritual. I don’t much like it and I’m no good at it, but I think I understand it. Somebody dies or gets married or gives birth and you recite some variation of a limited set of sentiments and it’s not the words that have meaning, it’s the act of saying them. We use these formulae to console and rejoice and lament because, really, language isn’t up to these primal needs and so we let the clichés act as signifiers to express what resists expression. And that’s all good.
But when ambitious strangers say the words? When they claim that a tragedy that happened to strangers makes their hearts heavy? Allow us, please, to doubt. Allow us to at least suppose that the ambitious ones are using tragic occasions, at the very least, only because the recitation of the words is expected of them or, even less admirably, to further their own agendas. The word for this is hypocrite.
Let’s agree that hypocrisy stands pretty far down in the catalogue of major transgressions, and I’d have no serious quarrel with it if it were followed by action of some kind. Any kind. We’re not advocating anything draconian here. We’re not even advocating a program of legislation and, to be honest, I doubt that any single law or even set of laws will solve the problems that lay deep in the senseless acts of violence that are happening again and again and again.
But shouldn’t we start? Somewhere? As Jon Stewart pleaded, let’s agree to discuss everything, openly and honestly, with nothing withheld from consideration. Then maybe the hollow words will begin to have meaning.
FRIDAY: Martha Thomases and the Fanboy Politicians
Here’s a sucky way to spend one’s birthday: voiceless with a serious summer head cold. Bitch, bitch; moan, moan. Okay, I had a great day-before-my-birthday in Manhattan lunching with Danny Fingeroth and dinnering with fellow ComicMixer Martha Thomases. Nine hours of fantastic conversation in the best thing in life with your clothes on.
Sadly, as the overly-breaded but otherwise tasty General Tzu’s was being presented to me at our Greenwich Village dungeon of culinary delight, I was starting to sound like a frog in a blender. By the time I was on the subway back to Grand Central Terminal, I was grateful somebody bothered to invent texting. The gifted Miss Adriane picked me up and dragged me home. That was birthday-eve.
On birthday day, we first had to ransom my car back from the shop – I can’t complain; 100,000 miles on one battery is pretty damn good and I guess you really do need functioning breaks. After a quick stop at Walgreens to clean them out of toxic chemicals and chocolate Twizzlers, we returned home. As Miss Adriane procured the prerequisite chicken soup, I retired to celebrate the anniversary of my mother’s major inconvenience in a time-honored way: I picked up my stack of comic books (e-comics; I’m nothing if not hip and trendy in my dotage) and commenced to read.
As luck would have it, there wasn’t a winner in the bunch. Only one or two sucked; the rest were poignantly mediocre. This is not to say that I hadn’t read some worthy stuff while on the train to Manhattan – I consumed all the good stuff as a matter of fate and ill-planning. But you’d think that out of a dozen or so hand-picked titles, there’d be at least one that reaffirmed my fannish enthusiasm. Let us remember: I was under the weather, and my cockles needed to be warmed.
There were three New 52 titles in the electronic pile. All 12th issues. None motivated me to pick up the 13th, two months hence. There are a number of New 52ers I really enjoy: Batgirl, Batwoman, All-Star Western, and everything with the words “written by James Robinson” on the credits page. These weren’t them. The most enjoyable of the DC books was, oddly, the only Before Watchman mini I’m reading: Night Owl, and that’s because I’d read prescription warning labels if Joe Kubert drew them. Reading Kubert, for me, is a lot like drinking chicken soup. You might have to be Ashkenazi to fully grok that.
The Marvel titles were okay; slightly better in that none chased me away. But, damn, why is it that each and every good Marvel “event” series has four times as many issues as necessary? Okay, we know the answer to that one. Still, the Avengers Vs. X-Men series was established to put Marvel on a somewhat different course for a while and it’s doing its job. It’s not a reboot, it’s just your standard dramatic shuffling of the Marvel deck. But it should have been over by now.
The so-called indies were all over the map as they are supposed to be, so my luck of the draw was simply a bad hand. No, not bad. Just mediocre. Too many unnecessary middle-issues in overly long story arcs. I regret the day publishers decided to put six solid pages of story in each 24-page issue, and I look forward to our next GrimJack series to once again prove you can actually put 28 pages of story into a 24-page issue… without being Stan Freberg, and, yes, that was just to see if Mark Evanier’s paying attention.
Okay, all that sucked. On the other side of the scale, I got more than 200 emails and Facebook shout-outs from friends old and new. That’s great anytime, but after a speechless day of aches and not-breathing and a dozen mediocre comics, all that made be feel on top of the world. And not in the Cody Jarrett sense, either. To one and all, my deepest thanks.
Daughter Adriane and I finished the day watching Paul, a genuinely funny and essentially heartwarming movie written by and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I’m a sucker for anything with Jane Lynch that doesn’t involve high schoolers spontaneously combusting into song, and Pegg and Frost have never disappointed me.
Moral of the story: when you’re feeling low, reach for something positive and funny. Tomorrow is… another day.
Thursday: Dennis O’Neil… Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?
It was 1978, and the electric current going through DC Comics’ offices could have lit Times Square. Vice-President and Production Director Jack Adler was strutting around like a proud papa. For the first time in what seemed like a millennium, Marie Severin was paying a visit.
If you were from outside the donut shop, you’d think the President was in the house. Work came to a complete stop. Everybody swarmed to the production department to meet, or to see once again, the famed artist and gifted humorist. That she toiled for the company’s competition and yet received this reception is an acknowledgement of her talent and abilities.
The masterful colorist of the legendary EC Comics line, Marie worked at Marvel Comics for decades as an art director, a penciler and an inker. Her credits read like a Who’s Who at the House of Ideas: Doctor Strange, the Incredible Hulk, Sub-Mariner, and Robert E. Howard’s Kull the Conqueror. That’s quite a range, but she was best known for her satirical work in Marvel’s underrated Not Brand Echh, a book worthy of Masterwork edition if there ever was one.
She was even better known within the industry for her sense of humor. I have never met a person who wasn’t a fan of her work – and a fan of hers, personally.
174 pages of analysis, history, interviews, photographs and about a zillion examples of her work, including a healthy amount of unpublished work – much of it in-house stuff reflecting her breathtaking sense of humor. Tributes abound: Marvel and EC honchos Stan Lee and Al Feldstein, Jack Davis, John Romita, Mark Evanier, Tony Isabella, Roy Thomas and maybe a dozen more folks, all fronted by a foreword from ComicMix columnist and comics luminary Denny O’Neil.
Marie has been one of the most important and most creative people in the history of this medium. Marie Severin: The Mirthful Mistress of Comics tells you why. If you’re already a fan of hers, you either have this book or it’s on your short list. If you’re not all that familiar with her legacy, you need this book.
After staying up for the better part of a week, or perhaps the worse part of a week, meeting his Unshaven Comics deadlines Marc has no printable words for us this week. Just some groans, moans, twitches, and a lotta snoring. All this is for the benefit of those attending next week’s Chicago Wizard World or the Baltimore Comic-Con September 8th and 9th, and you can see the results of their labors and actually meet the entire Unshaven Comics crew in person, in the respective Artists Alleys.
Warning: Several other ComicMixers will be at the Baltimore show as well. We will have you surrounded. Surrender Dorothy.
It was an interesting party. Held in a Mason lodge, I got to hang out with The Point’s Mike Raub, former ComicMix columnist and book writer and moviemaker Ric Meyers, and Adriane Nash, the one woman condemned to be both a ComicMixer and an employee of arrogantMGMS. And a whole bunch of old friends, about 72 of which used to be in the comic book retail business.
It’s not that I would be friendless if not for the comics racket. Since I spend a healthy amount of time in politics, social services, broadcasting and more dubious endeavors, I know a few folks who couldn’t tell the several dozen current Spider-Men apart – and politely couldn’t care less. They humor me nonetheless.
But it is safe to say most of my enduring friendships are comics-related. I’ve known Mr. Raub for, damn, three-dozen years. Glenn Hauman and I met when he was a “small” child hiding in DC’s darkroom, back when the Earth was still cooling. John Ostrander and I have been buddies since before Watergate; we met through Chicago theater connections and were both herded into a corner at a party in those ancient days because, as comics fans, we “had something to talk about.” Ah, those days when geeks were treated like… geeks.
The list goes on and on. I’ve had the privilege and honor to work with my friends and that has worked out wonderfully more than 99% of the time. There are maybe only two or three people I regret working with – I’ve mended fences with others; creative egos are a mixed blessing and I’ve got one that’s louder than a Sousa march. There’s only one person in comics I actually wish to murder; I’ve spent less time and energy in broadcasting and that list is both longer and older.
So this comics donut shop, to paraphrase Chico Escuela, has been berra berra good… to me.
I’m all backward-looking because this Saturday is my birthday – I turn real, real old; I mean, Mel Brooks old – and seeing all these old friends in one room was a heady event.
Despite its massive expansion (says the man who refers to the San Diego convention as the “black hole of media shows”) and the generational differences and the public’s near-acceptance of geekdom, there remains a closeness in the comics community that, to my experience, is unparalleled elsewhere. Even people who truly hate each other are on a first name basis.
I highly recommend it. This is one hell of a donut shop.
From the second I saw the original Batman television show I was hooked.
Just that quick, Batman had replaced Spider-Man as my absolute favorite superhero. Bruce Wayne replaced Peter Parker, Dick Grayson replaced Gwen Stacy and the Joker replaced Dr. Octopus.
When the TV show became corny to my friends, I was still a fan. I didn’t care that they had all switched to the Green Hornet. Yeah, Kato was cooler than Robin and the Green Hornet was just, well he was just cool, but Batman was still my guy.
When Michael Keaton was cast in the 1989 film I was all in. When people started bitching that Mr. Mom was going to play Batman like a joke I didn’t care. I just wanted to see Batman on the big screen. Batman the movie was one of the first DVDs I ever brought and this was when DVDs cost a lot more than they do now.
I’ve seen every episode of every Batman animated series. I own hundreds – maybe even more than a thousand action figures. Without a doubt the single action figure I own more of is Batman.
I write this in my office under a framed 1966 Batman movie poster. To the left of the poster is a cabinet full of porcelain and bronze action figures, of the 18 figures in the cabinet there are four Batman’s and that is the only figure that is represented more than once.
I was very close once to buying a replica of the 1966 Batmobile. How close? I was filling out the paperwork when I realized I was buying a fucking Batmobile.
What kind of asshole buys a fucking Batmobile when he lives in Manhattan and rarely drives the car he already owns? Hell, what kind of asshole buys a fucking Batmobile anyhow? For about two hours I was that type of asshole and a few years later I regretted not buying the car and yes, on occasion I still think I’m that type of asshole.
I own every single Batman movie on DVD and some even on VHS. I’ve watched and own every single Batman TV episode. On many occasions during late nights in my studio I watch from episode one until I stop working. I once did more than 24 hours of watching the show. I was high on coffee and Adam West and loved it.
There has not been one Batman movie I have not seen the opening weekend. In most cases I’ve seen the movie the day it opened, except for the current one. I had every intention of seeing The Dark Knight Rises the opening weekend. I wanted to go to an all day screening of all of the Christopher Nolan Batman films with my dear friend and business partner Tatiana El-Khouri that would climax with The Dark Knight Rises but I was too busy.
I missed that boat and with it I think I missed my one chance to see the film I’ve been waiting well over a year to see. I hear the latest Batman may be the greatest yet. I fear I may never know because I have no intention of seeing it.
I was unable to write my column last week and it’s most likely a good thing that I didn’t. Undoubtedly because of the Aurora shootings and my personal experience with violent crimes my article would have been a hate filled call for revenge against the shooter and his friends and family.
Yeah. His friends and family also.
I’m well aware (now) that makes no sense, but in my initial rage it made all the sense in the world. My piece would have been filled with all sorts of reasons to just beat the living shit out of the crazy motherfucker who committed this sick act.
My heart goes out to the victims of the massacre. There is nothing and I mean nothing that can prepare you for the news that someone you love has been murdered. Trust me. I know.
Because of my history and the way my stupid mind works I simply cannot bring myself to go see The Dark Knight Rises.
I hope and pray that I’ll get over this but I fear that is not to be. I have issues and as much as I love my ComicMix audience I’m not prepared to give you the low down on the details of those issues that prevent me seeing The Dark Knight Rises because of that revolting motherfucker’s actions.
Alas, the people the madman killed and their families are what is important and what we should be thinking about. On a much and I do mean much lesser note that coward with a gun also killed Batman for me. My favorite superhero has now been corrupted in my mind.
To many I’m sure it seems silly for me to give that asswipe the power to corrupt one of my favorite things but unfortunately I have no defense over how I feel. If I associate something with something that’s bad I’m powerless to stop it as much as I try to do so.
I take some comfort in the knowledge that America has rejected the bastard and the hold he has over me is insignificant for America has made The Dark Knight Rises a big hit.
Bravo America. USA!! U S Fucking A!
My demons are mine alone and I rejoice in the fact that the film is doing well in spike of the doings of a limp dick psychopath.
I stop people from telling me about the movie. Not because of my issues but because I’m going to make every attempt to see it. If I don’t manage to see it on the big screen then I will endeavor to watch it when it’s available on pay for view if not then I’ll try and see it on DVD. If those efforts fail I’ll try and watch it on HBO.
Somehow, somewhere I’ll see that movie. That sick motherfucker may have won the battle in his demented mind, but America has already won the war and as for me, I’m determined to win my personal battle.
I don’t know a lot but I do know this, crazy sick assholes do not make the rules, they just make noise. Today that bastard may have killed Batman for me but everyone knows that killing a superhero is just temporary.
I’m sure that Batman will be back in my life and I’m just as sure that the shooter will be forgotten and his victims remembered at the same bat time on the same bat channel, forever.
There’s an old maxim that says “God is in the details.” So is a story and especially in comics.
I’ve said and I believe that a good writer can write any character. I don’t have to be African-American to write an African-American character; I don’t have to be female to write a good female character. Gail Simone, for example, writes terrific male characters. So did Kim Yale. Our own Mindy Newell does a terrific job as well with this. What you have to be able to do is have empathy and to understand what is universal – the common humanity. If you don’t connect with your characters, neither will the reader.
All that said, there is a need for what is called the telling detail. Something specific that helps the reader feel the story you’re telling is based in some kind of reality. You can do research and come up with a ton of details but not all of them are necessary for the story. It may be necessary for you as the creator to know them but they’re not necessary for the reader to understand the plot or the characters.
It’s what I call the “iceberg theory.” The bulk of an iceberg is underwater. That bulk is necessary for the part of the iceberg that shows. In the same way, you need to know a lot about the characters, the setting, the story but only a certain percentage of it needs to show. So you select which details help make the story real and convincing to the reader. Those are the telling details.
A writer needs to be able to describe the scene to the artist; likewise, the artist needs to pick the details that he or she will draw. An example is what the character is wearing. That is how the character chooses to present him or herself to the world and that says something. What Peter Parker chooses to wear as Peter Parker says something about him just as what Bruce Wayne wears as Bruce Wayne says something about him. They shop in different places. The look, the texture and the drape of an Armani suit is going to be different than something from Wal-Mart. The reader may not be consciously aware of those changes but, if those details are not there, if everyone dresses the same, the reader is going to pick up on that as well. It will feel false.
What we choose to wear says something about us. You may think that doesn’t include you; many guys – and sometimes I am one of them – will say they just pick what is clean, or cleanest. That, however, does say something about that person and how they wish to be perceived. Do you have a power tie? Do you wear something special when going to meet someone important? What are you projecting about yourself? How do you want to be perceived? It’s true in our lives and so it should be true in our stories as well.
In the past few decades, many people have opted to become walking billboards for a particular brand. It might be a cola company or a sports team or even a comic book character or comic book company (be sure to buy your GrimJack stuff at the ComicMix store, btw – end of shameless plug). By wearing that apparel, we claim a tribal affinity. Stuff like that used to be given out as free advertising; now you have to pay real bucks for them – and sometimes its not cheap – to say you belong. It becomes part of the wearer’s identity. Details like that matter.
When I taught classes at the Joe Kubert School, I tried to make the students think about character design, the costume. It’s not just a matter of what “looks cool” or is easy to draw. The character is telling something about themselves when they choose what they wear. It is a choice they make that says something about themselves and what they are trying to project. At least, they should.
When Jan Duursema, my partner of many Star Wars stories, draws the martial arts fights or sword or lightsaber fights, there is an authority there because Jan herself has studied martial arts, including swordplay. Jan thinks out her locales as well and includes all kinds of information in the background.
When I first met My Mary Mitchell and she showed me her portfolio, I was floored by the amount of telling detail in the panels. Her heroine’s bedroom looked like someone’s bedroom – there were details in the pictures and what the woman hung on the wall that made me think of her as a person. A few panels later, when the woman was walking down the street, there were all kinds of people in the panel, all different body shapes, all wearing different clothes. The clothes reflect what the weather is as well.
Mary also was conscious of the buildings in the background; like any real city, there will be different types of buildings one against another. It gives a visual texture. Too many artists draw a generic background and that makes the story a generic story. Cities are characters in the story; New York is different from Chicago which is different from Memphis or Detroit or Los Angeles or Portland. I’ve been in all those cities and you can tell.
It all matters. The storytelling needs to be universal and, at the same time, it all needs to be specific. It may sound like a contradiction but I’ve found throughout my life that truth lies in the seeming contradictions. God is a contradiction; he/she is in the details and so is the story.
We would like to get ahead of the curve and start the first official campaign to keep Joss Whedon’s S.H.I.E.L.D. on the air and avoid premature cancellation.
