ARCHER returns this a week for a new (4th) season on FX, and the cast tells us that they are going even farther than before – plus the new time travel drama, CONTINIUUM, debuts on SyFy tonight and we have the star, Rachel Nichols, giving us a sneak preview. Also, comics end the year with more big $$ales and the idea of a Wonder Woman TV pilot rises from the dead.
Also, check MORE of our exclusive interview with AISHA TYLER of ARCHER right here!
Getting a film like GANGSTER SQUAD into theaters has had it’s issues, and we bring in in actors Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling to talk about the challenges they faced, plus more on the new season of JUSTIFIED with Timothy Olyphant and goodbye to THE COMIC BUYERS GUIDE.
Show of hands: who here works the New York Times crossword puzzle? Okay, put ‘em down. Those of you who raised your hands, and you know who you are (though I don’t) might have a definition for the word “olio,” which has been known to appear in the puzzle now and again, and nowhere else that I’ve ever seen. The rest of you? Well, maybe I just shrugged. (How can you ever be sure?)
Anyway, today’s blatherthon will be a bit of an olio.
Which we’ll begin with an item about, yes, a crossword puzzle. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart enlisted the puzzle’s editor, Will Shortz, in helping him propose to the lady who’s now Mrs. Stewart. Together, they concocted a puzzle that contained the proposal and gave it to the object of Jon’s affections. You can guess the rest. And is this not one of the coolest proposals ever?
Had lunch Saturday with my old pal/colleague Carl Potts, who informed me that another one-time colleague, Bobbie Chase, has joined her old boss, Bob Harris, in the enchanted precincts of DC Comics editorial suite. I knew both Bob and Bobbie when I worked for Marvel Comics long ago. The comics biz thus continues to be a revolving door kind of enterprise with many creative and editorial serfs going from one company to the other and maybe back again. Yet both companies have managed to retain their identities. Curious, huh? Any business majors looking for a thesis topic? Or do you disagree? Could I be wrong? Did I just shudder? (How can you ever be sure?)
Notice the italicized word in the previous paragraph? If not, maybe it isn’t there and Crankus, the evil god of technology, has struck again! Italics were absent from a sentence in last week’s blatherthon, spirited away somewhere between this computer and your screen. Gone! Pfut! And does this mean that some did not get the joke the italic was supposed to serve, and did legions weep?
Notice the exclamation point in the previous paragraph? You did. Ah, Crankus is napping. But did you know that when I crept into the comics business 47 years ago, give or take, we writers were instructed to end (here comes another italic) every sentence with an exclaimer? Enough to make a (punctuation-loving) grammarian gag, isn’t it? Newly minted young snot English major that I was back then, I bristled, but so slightly that no one noticed and besides, the guys in suits (italics alert!) did have a reason for the rule. We were told that the printing was so crude that ordinary periods might not transfer onto the page.
About those guys in suits: that was pretty much everyone who had a desk job. First day, I got my orders: suit and tie, though maybe nice jacket and tie might have eked past muster. Bit of a problem for me because, though I was used to wearing ties, I didn’t have a suit. Roy Thomas took me to Macy’s and I dropped a fast thirty bucks or so on new haberdashery. At last, the big time…
Tomorrow night, FX rolls out the start of season four of JUSTIFIED. Series star Tim Olyphant tells us about the changes in his role both on and off screen, plus PSYCHO gets a prequel on TV and The Batmobille gets pulled into court.
We wrap our look back at 2012 as Ric Meyers (ricmeyers.com) covers TV drama, the good and bad, and how the movies of the year fared, too. Meanwhile, it seems everyone watched DOCTOR WHO, and which network TV action show is trying a “choose your own ending” trick on Twitter?
New Year’s Resolutions aren’t for me. When I was a kid, my parents would sit my sister and me down with paper and have us write some. I suppose it helped their hangovers. Since I had to do it, I hated it.
For most of the last decade, my only resolution has been to drink more water. If that.
Still, there is a new year ahead, and that means twelve months of possibilities. It would be foolish not to have a plan to take advantage of them. So here, for better or worse, is what I want to do. We’ll see if I have the resolve to follow through.
• Try new things. When I go to the comic book store on Wednesday morning (hi, gang!), it’s easy to just pick up my usual. But just as that’s a boring way to go to a restaurant when there are so many other choices, it’s no way to approach the rack. Last year, for one example, I took great joy in Resident Alien. If you didn’t see it, I highly recommend the trade. As for me, I’m going to look for more than a DC bullet in the corner.
• Don’t support what I don’t like. As I said above, I have a tendency to just look for the DC bullet. And while I’ve expanded my repertoire over the decades I’ve read comics, I tend to add titles more than subtract them. Why do I do this? Am I afraid I’ll miss something? The Internet means I can always catch up. In the meantime, I’ll save myself time, money, and indicate my displeasure to publishers.
• Proselytize. When something is good, I’ll say so, especially if that thing isn’t getting enough attention. For example, American Horror Story: Asylum is the best television show I never hear anybody talking about. It has everything you could want in an entertainment – Nazi doctors, serial killers, demon-possessed nuns, crusading lesbian reporters, aliens from outer space – and it’s from the guys who bring you Glee, so you know everybody looks good.
• Shut up, occasionally. It’s easy for us Baby Boomers to talk incessantly about how much better we had it, back when rent was cheap, there was no HIV, and there were no rating systems. We had great movies, great comics and music that still moves us. But most of us forgot our ideals, and sold out our legacy. Patti Smith is doing Levi ads. We are in no position to tell younger people what to do.
It’s my fondest hope that I can stick to these, at least through Groundhog Day. And to keep my water bottle handy.
We begin our look back on the Pop Culture that was in 2012 as Media Mogul Ric Meyers (ricmeyers.com) runs down the vast array of great TV comedy from the year. From CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL to HAPPY ENDINGS to SUBURGATORY, it’s been a damn good twelve months. Plus what show was downloaded illegally the most in 2012 (we are talking millions here) and how iPads are killing the toy business.
It’s the end of the year, so it’s time for still another mindless list of favorites – maintaining a cloying, egotistical annual tradition throughout the media. Once again, here are my self-imposed rules: I’m only listing series that either were ongoing or ran more than six issues, I’m not listing graphic novels or reprints as both compete under different criteria, I’m not covering Internet-only projects as I’d be yanking the rug out from under my pal Glenn Hauman, and I’m listing only nine because tied for tenth place would be about two dozen other titles and I’ve only got so much bandwidth. Besides, “nine” is snarky and when it comes to reality, I am one snarky sumbytch – but only for a living. On Earth-Prime, I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.
Having said all that, let’s open that hermetically sealed jar on the porch of Funk and Wagnalls and start.
1. Manhattan Projects. If I had to write a Top 9 of the Third Millennium list, I’d be hard pressed not to include this title. It’s compelling, it’s different, it’s unpredictable and it’s brilliantly executed by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra. It turns out the scientists and the military leaders behind the creation and the execution of the Atomic Bomb had a lot more in mind than just nuking Japan… a lot more. And their plans run decades longer than World War II. Based largely upon real-life individuals who are too dead to litigate, each person seems to have his own motivations, his own ideas for execution, and his own long-range plan for how to develop the future. Yet the story never gets bogged down in political posturing or self-amusing cuteness – the latter being a real temptation for many creators. Each issue gives us the impression there’s more than meets the eye; each successive issue proves there most certainly was. If the History Channel spun off a Paranoia Network, Manhattan Projects would be its raison d’être.
2. Hawkeye. If you’ll pardon the pun, Hawkeye has never been more than a second-string character. An interesting guy with an involving backstory and enough sexual relationships to almost fill a Howard Chaykin mini-series, this series tells us what Clint Barton does when he’s not being an Avenger or a S.H.I.E.L.D. camp follower. It turns out Clint leads a normal-looking life that gets interfered with by people who think Avengers should be Avengers 24/7. He’s also got a thing going with the Young Avenger who was briefly Hawkeye. Matt Fraction and David Aja bring forth perhaps the most human interpretation of a Marvel character in a long, long while. Hawkeye might be second-string, but Clint Barton most certainly is not.
3. Captain Marvel. Another second-string character. Despite some absolutely first-rate stories (I’m quite partial to Jim Starlin’s stuff, as well as anything Gene Colan or Gil Kane ever put pencil to paper), the guy/doll never came close to the heritage of its namesake. This may have changed. A true role model for younger female readers and a very military character who uniquely humanizes the armed forces, Carol Danvers finally soars under writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy – both as a superhero and as a human being. DeConnick doesn’t qualify as “new” talent, but this certainly is a breakthrough series that establishes her as a truly major player… as it does Marvel’s Captain Marvel.
4. Creator-Owned Heroes. Anthology comics are a drag upon the direct sales racket. They almost never succeed. I don’t know why; there’s usually as much story in each individual chapter as there is in a standard full-length comic. I admire anybody who choses to give it a whirl (hi, there, honorary mention Mike Richardson and company for Dark Horse Presents!), and I really liked Creator-Owned Comics. Yep, liked. It’s gone with next month’s eighth issue. But this one was a lot more than an anthology comic: it had feature articles, how-to pieces, and swell interviews. The work of Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Steve Niles, Steve Bunche and a cast of dozens (including swell folks like Phil Noto and Darwin Cooke), there wasn’t a clinker in the bunch. I wouldn’t mind seeing follow-ups on any of the series featured in this title, although I must give a particular nod to Jimmy and Justin’s Killswitch, a take on modern contract killers, and on Steve’s work in general. This is no light praise: I’m not a big fan of horror stories because most of them have been done before and redone a thousand times after that. Niles is quite the exception.
5. Batman Beyond Unlimited. Okay, this is a printed collection of three weekly online titles: Batman Beyond, Justice League Beyond, and Superman Beyond. But it comes out every month in a sweet monthly double-length printed comic, so it meets my capricious criteria. Based upon the animated DC Universe (as in, the weekly series Batman Beyond and Justice League, and to a lesser extent others), these stories are solid, fun, and relatively free of the angst that has overwhelmed the so-called real DCU stories. Yeah, kids can enjoy them. So can the rest of the established comics audience. Pull the stick out of your ass; there’s more to superhero comics than OCD heroes and death and predictable resurrection. These folks have just about the best take on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World characters than anybody since Jack Kirby. That’s because Jack remembered comics are supposed to be entertaining. Honorable mention: Ame-Comi Girls. It’s based on a stupid (but successful) merchandising idea but it’s just as much fun as anything being published today.
6. Batgirl. O.K. The real story here is that DC Comics mindlessly offed writer Gail Simone from this series only to restore her within a week or so after serious (and occasionally, ah, overly dramatic) protest from both the readership and the creative community. But there was good reason: Gail took a character who was in an impossible situation and, against all tradition, put her back in the costume without resorting to ret-con or reboot, which have been the handmaidens of the New 52. She brought Barbara Gordon back to action with all the doubts, insecurities and vulnerabilities one would expect a person in her position to have, and she does so in a compelling way exercising all of her very considerable talent. This title thrives despite being engulfed in two back-to-back mega-non-events that overwhelmed and undermined all of the Batman titles.
7. Orchid. I praised this one last year; it comes to an end with issue 12 next month. That’s because writer/creator/musician/activist Nightwatchman Tom Morello has a day job and the young Wobblie still has a lot of rabble to rouse. Orchid is a true revolutionary comic book wherein a growing gaggle of the downtrodden stand up for themselves against all odds and unite to defeat the omnipresent oppressor. Tom manages to do this without resorting to obvious parallels to real-life oppressors, although the environment he creates will be recognizable to anybody who thinks there just might be something wrong with Fox “News.” But this is a comic book site and not the place for (most of) my social/political rants (coughcough). Orchid succeeds and thrives as a story with identifiable, compelling characters and situations and a story that kicks ass with the energy and verve one would expect from a rock’n’roller like Morello.
8. Revival. A somewhat apocalyptic tale about people who come back from the dead in the fairly isolated city of Wausau Wisconsin (I’ve been there several times; it is a city and it is indeed fairly isolated). But they aren’t zombies. Most are quite affable. It’s the rest of the population that’s got a problem. The latest output from Tim Seeley and my landsman Mike Norton, two enormously gifted talents. Somewhere above I noted how Steve Niles is able to raise well above the predictable crap and that is equally true here: the story and formula is typical, but the execution is compelling. That I’ve been a big fan of Norton’s is no surprise to my friends in Chicago.
9. Nowhere Men. I’ve got to thank my ComicMix brother Marc Alan Fishman for this one. Admittedly, it’s only two issues old and it has its flaws – long prose insertions almost always bring the pace of visual storytelling to a grinding halt – but the concept and execution of this series far exceeds this drawback. Written by Eric Stephenson and drawn by Nate Bellegarde and Jordie Bellaire, the catch phrase here is “Science Is The New Rock ‘N’ Roll.” Four guys start up a science-for-the-people company and that’s cool, but twenty years later some have taken it too seriously, others not seriously enough, and things got a little out of hand. Sadly, I’m not certain who understands that, other than the reader and one of the major characters. Science is the new rock’n’roll, and exploring that as a cultural phenomenon makes for a great story – and a solid companion to Manhattan Projects.
Non-Self-Publisher of the Year: For some reason, I’m surprised to say it’s Image Comics. They’ve been publishing many of the most innovative titles around – four of the above nine – all creator-owned, without going after licensed properties like a crack-whore at a kneepad sale.
No offense meant to either publishers or crack-whores; I said I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.
NBC kicks off the new year by launching a new comedy from the producers of MODERN FAMILY. It’s hijinks in the White House on 1600 PENN and we talk to stars Josh Gad, Jenna Elfman and Bill Pullman on why critics have already elected this one a hit. Plus WALKING DEAD has a win and a loss, digital comics are red hot and we’re celebrating a birthday!
The popular podcast HOW STUFF WORKS moves to a new medium early in 2013 when the Science Channel launches the HSW television series. We talk to the guys behind it on how they are creating a hybrid reality show/situation comedy, plus doing an episode dedicated to comic book movies. Meanwhile, KOJACK gets closer to a reboot and DC says goodbye to THE SPIRIT.
ARCHER returns this a week for a new (4th) season on FX, and the cast tells us that they are going even farther than before – plus the new time travel drama, CONTINIUUM, debuts on SyFy tonight and we have the star, Rachel Nichols, giving us a sneak preview. Also, comics end the year with more big $$ales and the idea of a Wonder Woman TV pilot rises from the dead.
