Hello, everyone! After last week, I figured it’d only be fair that I give Wizard World a little hand up, since I was so quick to toss them into the gutter. Suffice to say I saw a ton of responses via Facebook, Twitter, etc. in support of my disappointing feelings at this past Wizard World Chicago. So, with all eyes from their ivory tower now squarely pointed at me*, I shall make an epic journey for Wizard, giving them the laundry list of things I’d like to see them do to reclaim their former convention glory.
Remember what started this whole shebang – comic books. Just because you can’t lay claim to the publishing giants does not mean with some delicate planning, you can’t land the amazing creators behind said publishers. Suffice to say, if you bring them, the fans will come. People love Marvel and DC. But they don’t come to the convention just because there’s a chance to see DC Direct action figures and snag some Marvel posters. More often than not? The mainstay of your crowd – the real comic fans – want a chance to meet the creators behind their favorite book. Whatever Wizard did to shun so many artists and writers? Well, it’s time to send out some apologetic gift baskets, and comp the way for the names that will draw in the most people.
And if you should be so lucky to entice a gaggle of cool creators, the next step is simple: plan a convention that celebrates the medium through intelligent discussion and good old-fashioned fun. What this means? Programming. Even in the larger convention halls, your crowd can peruse the show floor in about two hours, if they take it slow. This means that there is time in every show-goers’ schedule to enjoy something more than just spending their money.
In my youth, I recall amazingly fun panels: the Silver Age Trivia Contest, hosted by Mark Waid, the CBLDF Sketch-off, where top names like Jim Lee and Phil Hester jammed on audience suggestions for charity, as well as countless “how-to” panels where small gatherings of 50 or so fans got live demonstrations on everything from digital inking to script writing. At their core, the conventions are here to celebrate comics, not (just) corral all our cash.
Next up on the list? The non-comic stuff. Hey, I freely admit that these shows have grown to encapsulate all of Nerdtopia. And it’s cool if the show plays well with others. Comic geeks are also Trekkies, Jedis, Whovians, Vampires, and Otaku. So bring on the D-List Sci-Fi Channel celebutaunts. Bring on the retired WWE wrestlers. Create a dais of former Starfleet Captains and Wookies. Just don’t make them the sole reason to come. And better yet? Find a way to reduce the gouging. No need to pay for a show floor ticket, if you’re only there for some pictures. In the past, there was a nice area off the main floor where photo ops and autograph seekers could assemble. Do it again and you can bring back something all good shows have… a laid back traffic flow, instead of a jam of fanny packs and unwashed masses.
The last bit I’d like to touch on is something I yearn for: the promotion of the little guy. For a company like mine, these conventions are the single best way for us to gain a following. We sell books, hard, and do our best to connect to every fan that walks past our table and makes eye contact. With just a little help from show promoters (ahem, Wizard World…) we “indie guys” could have access to the fans en masse. And that could make all the difference in the world. Back when Wizard was huge, tickets came with a grab bag of materials. Offer the opportunity for indie creators to make samplers to place in these bags. Offer up panels to unknowns, who can help lead discussions, debates, tutorials, and demos. Con attendees interested in the content alone might then be converted into legit fans.
In short, Wizard World is well within the grasp of greatness. A few apologies, a few comps, and a few good planners could help take their show from the doldrums their in right now, and slowly rebuild them to be what they once were. The first step though is to admit there’s a problem. As the industry slowly crawls towards the advent of creator-owned content, the convention circuit will quickly become the single best way to connect fans to the industry. Don’t lose sight of that just because you can nab Sookie for a few autographs. We’re the reason these shows started, and dag nabbit, we’re the ones who can make them great again.
* I’m safely assuming that Wizard scours the net for mentions of their cons, and have no doubt flagged me as a ne’er-do-well on their hit list.
Doctor Who fans don’t have to hold it anymore. The Great Question has been answered. No, not the one about Life, The Universe and Everything, or even the one that will be asked on the Fields of Trenzilor at the Fall Of The Eleventh. The BIG question – “When will Doctor Who premiere?”
And the answer is, September 1st. And it’s the SAME answer whether you live in America or the UK, with only a slight variance in detail. In the UK, the premiere episode Asylum of the Daleks will broadcast at 7:20 PM, and in the states at 9 PM, EDT.
The episode has already seen its premiere in the UK via a gala celebration, and will see its US premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City on August 25th. Tickets for the NYC event sold out in under half an hour, the rush of hopeful fans crashing the Movietickets.com website.
Over and above the welcome news of the premiere, the big surprise was that the premiere will be preceded by a five-part webisode mini series. The story, entitled “Pond Life”, will feature Amy and Rory PondWilliams attempting to live a normal life, outside the TARDIS. The synopsis of Asylum suggests that said normal life may not be going too smoothly. Series stars Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill discuss the mini-adventure on the BBC Website.
The episodes, written by Chris Chibnall, will be released one day, starting Monday, August 27th on the BBC website. They’ll also be made available in the UK, via BBC’s interactive “Red Button” service. Plans are proceeding on how the episodes will be released by BBC America— look for an update soon.
These webisodes are a continuation of the episode prequels from the previous season, each of which featured a brief extra scene from several episodes of the series. These prequels were included on the later video releases, it’s presumed this mini-series will also appear in this season’s set.
In honor of this surprise, Your Humble Reporter has crafted a suggested logo for the mini-series, inspired by a popular Britcom which starred a number of actors who later appeared on Doctor Who:
(Update: yes, 9/1, not 8/1 as we originally had in the headline. We’re dumb.)
Inspector Spacetime is a self-paradoxical anomaly, which makes perfect sense. It’s only existed for a few months, but has also apparently been on television for nearly fifty years. Actor Travis Richey has played him for all of that time, for a grand total of less than two minutes of footage, and yet 11 actors have played the role, including Stephen Fry and Christopher Lee. As Travis explains it, “The best part is, NOTHING is canon, and EVERYTHING is canon”.
After the character made its debut as a brief Doctor Who parody on NBC’s Community, the Internet got right to work fleshing out his history and adventures. A Tumblr feed was quickly created to serve as the main repository of the work, and photos from past episodes were quickly “discovered” and shared.
Travis Richey had a very good time at Gallifrey One, the country’s biggest Doctor Who convention. At a panel dedicated to Inspector Spacetime, he announced plans to produce an independent web series dedicated to the Infinity Knight and his continuing adventures.
“Tony Lee (writer for IDW’s Doctor Who comic) reached out to me to do a video for Chicago Tardis (the Midwest DW convention) back in November” Travis explains. “I did that, and the greeting went over so well that Tony put me in touch with Shaun (Lyon) who does Gallifrey One.”
The panel was filled with fans and the panel “reminiscing” about their favorite moments of the show, including past Inspectors, and of course, the death of Jeffrey. “There were jokes people were making that I hadn’t heard, like ‘Horse-Bot 3000’, and I was ‘ Huh? What’s that?’ But I do improv all the time, so I just accepted it, gave it a ‘Yes, and…’ and went with.” He shouldn’t have been surprised; as is traditional the people starring in the sci-fi show don’t know NEARLY as much about the show as the fans.
What was amazing is that everything they discussed in the panel was all created from whole cloth on sites like the Tumblr blog, in a world wide improv session. Fans across the world agreed which jokes were funnier, went with the stronger material, and the mythos became cohesive amazingly quickly. “One example of that was the word DARSIT, for the the Inspector’s vehicle,” Travis recalls. “I have to admit, I never really liked it; I thought it was too simple of a joke, from TARDIS. But someone on the ProBoards came up with BOOTH, and everybody liked it, and not only did the change get made in the “canon”, but they have, I hear, retconned things so that “Darsit” is now an Infinity Knight curse word. And they’ve already started folding Boyish the Extraordinary, our bad guy, into the canon, so by the time we see him, it’ll be his return.”
The ability for fans to so easily collaborate on such a mad undertaking, couldn’t have existed only a few years back. “It’s really extraordinary. I admit that I saw the potential, but my vision was so far from what actually happened, and how much it means to the fans. And I think part of it is for fans to be able to actually have a hand in creating something new. A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to create something new, so to be able to write something on the Internet, or submit a photo to the tumblr blog…it’s an easy way for the fans to be engaged, and I think that’s something that has been lacking. So in that respect, this is something totally new.
Travis saw the potential in the character while he was still filming that first episode. “I wrote the script [for the web series] with my writing partner after I shot the first episode, but before it even aired. We knew it was gonna be pretty big” Travis recalls. “I’m a pretty forward thinker; I’m never happy just waiting for things to happen. So my thought was, Hey, I’ll write this, and if there’s a second episode, I’ll tell them you should do this for the DVD or for web content. Especially after the first weekend, when it just EXPLODED, so I knew that it was going to be something the audience wanted.”
“So I wrote this, and I brought it with me when I did my second episode, and the word on set was ‘We can’t just look at it’. So I went back to my agent and said to submit this, because this is really huge, and we understand the character and the meme, and the world that the fans created’. And he sent it in, but never got any response, one way or the other. I certainly didn’t get a ‘no, don’t do this cause we’re doing it’, nor did I get a ‘yes’, or even a ‘Hey, this is good, but no thanks’.”
“But like I said, I’m not a person to wait for things to happen. I did wait, actually – I wasn’t going to anything while they were still working with the character. As long as they had things to do with Inspector Spacetime, I was just, ‘Let that happen’. But after the Christmas episode, I knew they were shooting the rest of the season, and they weren’t using me. And then the status of the show coming back at all was in question, and I thought, ‘At the very least, this’ll get some buzz, for Community, at least. Plus, it was a case of me being prepared to take advantage of opportunities presented to me.”
Considering the reaction that 15 seconds of footage got, it’d seem somewhat surprising they didn’t want to do something more with the character, but Travis has a theory. “I think it’s more just how Hollywood works. It’s very difficult to get a piece of writing into someone’s hand. And I’m not sure why that it is, because Star Trek did it. Some of the best names we know in Sci-Fi today, from Jane Espenson, to Ron Moore to Rene Echevarria , they all got their start because they sent in spec scripts to Star Trek: The Next Generation. I don’t understand it.”
Like air rushing in to fill a vacuum, fans stepped up and created a full 50 years of history for this character, and hasn’t stopped. “It was less than two or three weeks to form the basis of it, but over the last few months, it’s just continually been adding and adding and adding. It’s astounding the amount of creativity that exploded over the Internet, base on all of this three-line joke. And it was wonderful to see. And that’s exactly the kind of person I am – I was a fan, at one point. I wrote Star Trek scripts in my bedroom, I wrote Doctor Who stuff.”
With all that creativity already in place, one has to wonder how much material did Travis plan to cull from the communal pool, and how much would be brand new? “When we started to write the first episode, it was before the fans even knew it existed. Eric [Loya, Travis’ writing partner on his other video work, including Robot, Ninja and Gay Guy] and I spent hours going through the mythos and creating a rudimentary character bible. We had to understand how it spoofed Doctor Who. Cause the Community people didn’t really do anything. They showed that Blorgons were Daleks, and they showed the red phonebooth. So we had to invent everything else. And then the fans came along and started doing their thing, I was actually involved in some of the fandom – I was on the ProBoards, talking to people about what was what. “Infinity Knight” was mine and Eric’s invention [compared to the “Space master” term the fans have been using], the name of the home planet is fan-created, like that. What we have in the web-series is, I believe, 100% original. We invented a new Associate; we’re not going to use Constable Reggie, and we have a new arch-nemesis we invented, Boyish The Extraordinary. We’re making a quick reference to the Circuit-Chaps [the fan-created Cybermen-spoof]. We took out the Blorgon reference in respect to the Community team.”
Science-Fiction shows are well aware of the fannish community, and know when to turn a blind eye to fan-made fiction, and even merchandise. Travis thinks Community is aware of that as well. “There are people posting mash-ups that use clips from the show; people are posting actual clips of the show,” Travis notes. “The merchandise that people produce – not only for Community, but for Inspector Spacetime. And nobody has told the t-shirt companies that they can’t produce the shirts. And I want to be clear, we’re not selling [the series]. We’re going to make it, and it’s going to exist for free. We’re not going to make DVDs, we’re not going to do ads on it on YouTube, nothing like that.”
Sony and NBC did decide that an outside entity producing an Inspector Spacetime series was a bit offsides, and sent Travis a request to shut down. Luckily Travis had a backup plan just in case someone in the legal field got uppity. “Except for the name ‘Inspector Spacetime’, everything we have in the script is invented by us. So there’s no reason this can’t get made. And you can’t copyright a title…and they haven’t trademarked the name; I did a trademark search. Cause I want to be careful. So hopefully they’ll let this happen. And more hopefully it’ll create some buzz for Community. Cause even though it’s coming back for the rest of the third season, there’s no guarantee it’ll be renewed for a fourth.” The series will be titled “The Untitled Webseries About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel In Time”. So we’ve got an unofficial adaptation of a parody show that only exists in the mind of its fandom…that sound you hear is reality folding in on itself.
The Kickstarter campaign, which made its $20,000 goal and them some, will cover the cost of the production. “Frankly, I don’t have the capability to make it look and sound as good as it deserves to,” says Travis. “If you look at the stuff I’ve produced so far, it looks…okay, but you can tell that it was made with no budget. But here the writing and the acting is so strong, it really deserves to be be complemented by good equipment; a decent camera, lights and stuff.” Travis schedule is pretty accelerated. He’d already posted a better-quality animatic of the first episode through the folks at io9, the same episode he did a live read-through of at Gallifrey One. Principal photography is complete, and Travis is looking for a sound designer now.
NBC has also seen the potential in the character. It was announced at San Diego that an episode of the new season Community would center around an Inspector Spacetime convention. And the show (both Community and IS) has one other big fan – Karen Gillan, AKA Amy Pond on Doctor Who. She’s already gone on record as saying that she’d LOVE to appear on an episode. The irony is that in the continuity of the show, it’s her on-screen husband that would be a more logical fit. According to the history, the character Rory Williams (played by Arthur Darvill) is the only one to appear on BOTH shows, moving from Inspector Spacetime to Doctor Who.
It seems that The Inspector’s possibilities are, rightfully, infinite. It’s not WHERE he’ll pop up next…but WHEN.
If you get off on anticipation and you also happen to be a Doctor Who fan, these are amazing times. We-all have so much to get excited about. To wit:
1) The beginning of the next half-season, which will start in England any day now. The BBC likes to wait until the last minute to make their announcements; the show debuts in the United States, Canada and much of the rest of the world shortly thereafter. As of this writing, the season premiere is not on this Saturday’s schedule, so the August 25th rumor is likely untrue… unless the Pirates of the Caribbean movie presently in the Doctor Who slot is bunkum.
2) The exiting of the two current companions at the end of the half-season, which may or may not involve killing one or both off.
3) The Doctor Who Christmas Special, which is likely to be aired on or about December 25th and will feature the introduction of the Doctor’s new companion. The show will also feature the “return” of Richard E. Grant – he voiced the Doctor in the animated “Scream of the Shalka” and joined Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, and Joanna Lumley in Steven Moffat’s debut Who, the satirical “Curseof Fatal Death.”
4) The 50th anniversary of the show’s debut, which happened mere moments after the BBC announced the death of President John F. Kennedy. Talk about your dramatic lead-ins.
As hyped-up as we may be about the first three items on the above list, I’m far more amused by all the folderol around the 50th Anniversary. Writer/producer/showrunner Steven Moffat has been having enormous fun jerking the fans and media around, teasing the hell out of the event and roughly expanding our enthusiasm to apocalyptic proportions. Previous Doctors Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy and David Tennent have all publically committed to return “if asked,” and Christopher Eccleston has actually stopped saying he wouldn’t return under any circumstances, although his work on the next Thor movie might interfere with scheduling. Similarly, John Barrowman’s work on Arrow might mitigate his availability. Colin Baker noted he might have grown, ahem, a bit too big for the part. To me, that sounds like something Moffat can have fun with.
If Moffat is to be believed, there likely will be several or many 50th Anniversary events next year. My question is “will there actually be a regular 50th Anniversary season?” There will be a dramatic made-for-teevee-movie about the creation of the original television show, being produced by Moffat and written by his Sherlock partner Mark Gatiss. There’s quite a feminist hook in this tale, as the show’s original producer, the person who actually got the show on television, was Verity Lambert, one of the very, very few women in such a position at the BBC back in 1963.
Of course, we’ll see all sorts of Doctor Who comics from IDW – we already see all sorts of Doctor Who comics from IDW, including reprints of Dave Gibbons’ beautiful work on the feature – and there will be tons and tons of merchandising and convention thrills. I suspect Community and The Inspector will have something to say about it all as well.
So the rumors will continue to grow in mass, time and space, and the resultant brouhaha will keep the rabble at fever-pitch. Perhaps there will be TARDIS-themed Depends being marketed to those who can’t hold it in.
That’s right, guys. It’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil waiting on shadowy rooftops.
Although closeted in the interim report of the 1954 comic book hearings, race was not an issue that America really wanted to deal with and perhaps that above all is why race had been given little more than a nod in the hearing.
Race was however one of the major reasons that 2.5 million black Americans registered for the draft between 1941-45. Hoping that by helping their country win the war the United States would at last make the “Four Freedoms” a real part of their lives and not something they had to aspire too. Freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and fear were offered to every American by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in one of the greatest speeches in the history of the United States of America.
Black people were well aware that those freedoms were not being offered to us, not without some serious mind changing by many in the country. Enlisting and fighting in World War II was going to change those minds that at least what a great many black people believed or wanted to believe. During WW II Japanese propaganda ridiculed America’s so called great society by pointing out the hypocrisy that existed therein. They pointed to the exclusion of black players from baseball, the national past time, as proof of that hypocrisy.
And they were right.
The great society that was America where “all man are created equal” and where “land of the free, home of the brave” originated was anything but to black people in the United States. Other American ideals such as opportunity, rights, liberty, democracy and equality were a rallying cry from America to the world. Baseball has been the national pastime almost since the first ball was thrown out at the first game. Nothing says America like Baseball.
Japan’s propaganda aside, WW II saw the best of America. The war produced many heroes and many more books and films based on those heroes which trilled the American public.
During World War II there were plenty of black heroes, but even today those heroes are slow to be recognized. As late as 1993 there were no black Medal of Honor recipients. That was rectified in 1997 when Bill Clinton awarded the medal to seven African American World War II veterans. This only after an Army commissioned study that showed clear racial discrimination in the awarding of medals.
Perhaps with an acknowledged black hero from the war the civil rights struggle would have been given the push that could have garnered patriotic pride in the county. That push may have given way to needed awareness that blacks were just as American as the next guy. Unfortunately, the war was not to be the event that would level the playing field for black people.
Perhaps the playing field needed to be an actual field.
Baseball had that black hero that would be recognized. Hell, he had no choice but to be recognized. He was the only black man playing in the major leagues.
That hero would be Jackie Robinson and 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of Jackie’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Jackie Robinson was the first black player to play professional baseball.
Wrong. If you believed Jackie Robinson was the first black player to play professional baseball, and after Robinson it was easy for blacks in the majors, then you are in for a bit of a surprise.
In 1867, just two years after the end of the Civil War, organized baseball made its first attempt to ban blacks. The National Association of Baseball Players refused to allow an all black team from Philadelphia to join the league.
In what was the brave new world of Post Civil War America it’s puzzling (at least it is in retrospect) that the great state of Pennsylvania where the railroad system, iron and steel industry, and its vast agricultural wealth contributed greatly in the North’s victory did not protest this snub.
Maybe, now that I think of it, it’s not so puzzling after all since there are currently some funny voter restrictions going on in the once great state of Pennsylvania. But (Peter, I love you dude) I digress…
Bud Flower is the first known professional black baseball player. He played on an integrated team in 1878. During the next twenty-five years, more than 50 blacks managed to play on white teams and John ‘Bud’ Fowler was the first when he joined a white professional team in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1878.
Being able to “play” was clearly a double edge sword.
Making a living as a black man playing a game must have surly been a dream come true in an era when having a career and not just a job was a dream realized by very few in the days following the Civil War. To many, having any income and not just trying to live off the land was a godsend.
However, post Civil War America after blacks were freed was anything but the Promised Land that blacks thought it would be.
In the south, lynching black people was not only a possibility but in some areas it was an assurance. Blacks had little to protect themselves with while playing a game that was ripe with racism and danger for most if not all of them. Some players made it a habit to carry a bible as a way to comfort them. It’s not known if Bud carried a bible, however, what is known is Bud is credited with inventing the first shin guards. White players were spiking him so often that he began to tape pieces of wood to his legs to protect himself.
Religion to many African American slaves was sometimes the only saving grace that could be embraced with little fear of outrage from their masters, when freed, African Americans continued to embrace their faith for the strength they would need facing Jim Crow America.
Upon his entrance to the game many blacks considered Jackie Robinson a savior of sorts. Jackie’s arrival on the world stage, lifting them out of the bondage of separate but clearly unequal treatment at least in baseball.
Jackie Robinson was the first black player in the modern age. The end of the golden age of radio and the advent of the age of television helped usher in this ebony knight in shining armor. Much like the early days of baseball, an African American making a living in the beginning of the comic book or related industries would have been a dream come true.
What, pry tell does this have to do with comics?
This…
Baseball, with its barriers to entries, talent, skill and perseverance to name but a few mirrored the comic book business regarding race. Baseball has moved on and so has comics but there still exists a great many who think those obstacles are still in full effect for blacks in comics.
America during the 50s and Jackie Robinson’s story is a perfect parallel for African Americans in the comic book industry even today.
Too many fans of the great American pastime there was nothing more offensive than a Negro ball player. When Jackie broke the color barrier in 1947 there were organized revolts around the country as well as within baseball. By 1954 Jackie had pretty much won over baseball fans and a great many Americans. In spite of the fact that victory was being waged and won on the baseball field, African Americans were still fighting on many other fronts.
Some of those battles were public, a great many more private and some in utter secretly.
Like Jackie Robinson and his journey but deep in the background so far off the radar of anyone black or white was the battle over blacks in comic books. Utter secretly may even be an understatement. It’s safe to say that in 1954 people concerned about civil rights be they black or white were not giving any thought to comic books as a tool for social change.
Except there were a few people in comics who were fighting the very fight that Branch Rickey had fought for Jackie Robinson. At the forefront of that battle in 1956 was the two-year old Comics Code Authority on one side and EC Comics on the other.
The Code tried its best to stop EC from publishing a particularly offensive (to them) comic book. The book they were trying to stop was an issue of Incredible Science Fiction the story was called “Judgment Day.”
What was objected to was not a gory scene of a space monster under orders from a criminal ripping to pieces an earth girl who, clad in scant bra and panties was an obvious sexual tease for young 50s era boys.
What was objected to was the main character, an astronaut, was revealed on the last page in the last panel to be a black man.
Before I get started – or let’s pretend that I have just stopped time – just want to say regarding Martha Thomases’ column of last week:
Shit, Martha, why the fuck didn’t I think of writing that?
• • • • •
See, about two months ago I hurt my middle finger at work. It got caught between a stretcher and a door. The noted and very adorable Dr. Christopher Doumas used the C-arm to check it out. Nothing was broken – be thankful for small miracles, right? – but there was plenty of soft tissue damage, meaning I bruised the fascia, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Plus broken capillaries and such. Which caused my ahem middle finger to swell up and turn several shades of purple.
But you know how they say that soft tissue damage hurts worse than a broken bone? – well, maybe you don’t, but trust me, they do say that – so believe me when I tell you:
Goddamn, it hurt!
Anyway, I had to write an incident report, which meant I had to go to the boss’s office. The boss is from the Midwest, and, imho, the outfit that owns my ambulatory surgery center reflects that what’s the matter with Kansas? mentality. So I’m sitting there trying to write, which was extremely difficult because said middle finger was on my right hand, and I’m a “righty” – the only thing about me that is.
Just trying to use the keyboard was a pain in the ass – or finger – and I muttered “Fuck, that hurts.”
My what’s the matter with Kansas? boss looked very disturbed. Did she say, “I’m so sorry, Mindy.” Did she say, “Do you want an Advil?” Did she cluck and coo and offer other bromides?
Nope.
She said, “Don’t use that language. It’s not professional.”
I looked at her. I thought are you kidding me?
And I said:
“I’m from New York.”
• • • • •
I will now allow time to resume its normal linear course.
I have always, always loved time-travel stories.
Last night I was watching The Timey-Wimey Of Doctor Who on BBC America when, all of a sudden during a commercial break, I remembered a Silver Age Superboy story in which the Boy of Steel discovers the origin of Cinderella’s glass slipper – all of which inspired me to write about time travel today. Anyway, I was sure the Cinderella story was featured on the cover. But guess what I discovered when doing my due diligence?
The Cinderella thingy was only a “side-trip” in a very famous and critical-to-DC-mythology story written by Robert Bernstein and penciled and inked by George Pepp. The story was “Superboy’s Big Brother” (Superboy #89, June 1961), featuring the introduction of Mon-El – whom I’ve also always loved, but that’s a topic for another day and another column. Leaving Mon-El to hang out at the Kent home with his parents, Clark goes to school ‘cause he has a test he can’t skip. I guess it was an English class, or maybe history, or maybe even creative writing because one of the questions on the test is about the origin of fairy tales and uses the Cinderella story as an example. Clark remembers meeting the real Cinderella in the past. I guess to jog his memory – although since Superboy has super-memory I don’t know why it needs jogging – he decides to revisit the past to make sure he’s got the details right.
Clark asks permission to get a drink of water. (The teacher says okay, which means allowing him to leave the room during a test. Try doing that these days, kids!) Changing into Superboy, he flies through the time barrier to Egypt, circa 4,000 B.C. He takes a drink of water from the Nile – ‘cause, you know Superboy never tells a lie, and this way he can honestly tell the teacher that he got his drink of water. While getting his allotment of H2O, he sees an eagle steal a sandal from a girl putting a bassinet made from reeds into the Nile. There’s a baby inside. It floats down the Nile to where the Pharaoh’s daughter is bathing. The Pharaoh’s daughter finds the baby in the bassinette, and names him Moses….
Strike that.
Superboy is about to go after the eagle when that super-memory of his is jogged once again, so he does nothing. Instead he watches as the bird drops the sandal in the Pharaoh’s palace. The Pharaoh searches for the woman whose foot fits the sandal. He finds her and makes her his queen. Aha! thinks Superboy. This is the Cinderella story he came back in time to see. Now it’s time to go back to school and finish that test.
So Clark writes up the story, but the teacher says he has no proof, so only gives him an 89. (Guess it wasn’t a creative writing class after all.) And Clark isn’t unhappy, because if he had aced it, the teacher might suspect he’s Superboy because Clark is so smart. (Huh?)
Meanwhile, suspecting that Mon-El is lying about being his brother – um, excuse me, but aren’t you the one who assumed that he was, Clark? – Superboy exposes Mon-El to a meteorite that looks like Kryptonite but is really made of lead.
Oops. Your bad, Superboy.
Mon-El is really Lar Gand, a native of the planet Daxam. And Daxamites can’t handle lead. In fact, it kills them. Like the Roach Motel: once they check in, they don’t check out. Swearing that one day he will find a cure to the fatal lead poisoning, Superboy has no choice but to send Mon-El to the Phantom Zone in order to save his life.
Leading in a timey-winey, butterfly effect way to the other time travel story that added-to-the-DC-mythology big time, the introduction of the Legion of Super-Heroes (Adventure Comics #247, April 1958, by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino). And if I have to recount that story, you shouldn’t call yourself a comics fan! J The Legion traveled through the time barrier by means of a “time bubble,” which maybe was inspired by the bubble in which Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, travels to Oz. Only they don’t ask Superboy if he is a witch. They also don’t think Krypto is a witch.
It was Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Super-Heroes who, in “The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire” revealed that he had discovered a permanent cure for Mon-El. This happened in Adventure Comics #330, March 1962, by Jerry Siegel and John Forte. This is only a year for us poor Earth-Prime Homo sapiens who are cursed to experience time in a this-way-forward linear manner, but it was about twenty centuries as a phantom for poor Lar Gand.
When BBC America teased Wednesday that tickets would be made available for New York City Premiere of this season’s premiere episode of Doctor Who, there was little doubt they would be highly coveted. But when the link was released shortly after 2PM on Thursday, it was not expected that the rush of fans would crash the channel’s link forwarding service. A direct link to the sales page at Movetickets.com was hastily released, and the crush of eager purchasers quickly brought that website to its knees as well.
In a mini-repeat of recent bottlenecks for the San Diego Comic-Con, the ticket purchase system slowed to a crawl, and access was severely limited almost immediately after the links were announced. The site’s customer service number was jammed to bursting for several hours after tickets sold out as people attempted to see if aborted transactions resulted in a sale or not.
Those who could snag a connection and hold onto it for a full purchase session were able to secure ticket to the premiere of Asylum of the Daleks for the princely sum of eleven cents. The site would not allow them to give the tickets away for free, so the micro-fee (plus the website’s one-dollar service charge) was their way of tipping the hat to Matt Smith, the eleventh Doctor, while still granting almost free admission to the fans.
The site sold over 800 tickets in approximately twenty minutes, selling out New York’s Ziegfeld Theater, the largest theater they were able to secure.
BBC America has made it clear they’re very thankful that the event was so zealously accepted by the fans, and apologized that the process didn’t go as smoothly as it could have done. While there’s been no reports of a second showing, the site will be offering contests throughout the week to win tickets. Announcements will be made via their popular Twitter and Tumblr feeds.
During the information feeding frenzy of the (still unannounced) broadcast premiere of the show, BBC America has also been undertaking a massive publicity blitz for its first original series, the period police series Copper. Produced by Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, it tells the tale of one of New York City’s honest policemen in the wild and chaotic year 1864. Copper premieres this Sunday, August 19th, at 10PM on BBC America.
The Doctor Who premiere will be on August 25th at 6PM at the Ziegfeld Theater. It is presumed the line has already started.
I discovered the Time Lord back in the late 1970s (I think), when WNET, the New York PBS station, started running the Tom Baker episodes. Baker’s Doctor, with his floppy-brimmed hat, outback duster, and loonnnng, multi-colored, scarf – did Granny Who knit it for him? – was the itinerant cosmic hobo. Only instead of hopping the rails, he “tripped the light fantastic” across the universe in the TARDIS. Companions Sara Jane Smith (the late Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) were – seen with the advantage of hindsight –sort of “Mulder/Scully” prototypes, with Sara Jane as the believing Mulder and Harry as the skeptic. I can’t say that the British military operations called UNIT – Unified Intelligence Taskforce – was the FBI, although Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart did sort of act like the Assistant Director Walter Skinner, walking the high-wire tightrope between helping the Doctor and answering to his superiors.
Like every other Whovian, I mourned – and was really pissed off – when the BBC stopped producing the series.
And like every other Whovian with Cablevision, I watched the relaunch of Doctor Who on Sci-Fi, with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billy Piper – the call girl of The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl on Showtime – as his companion, Rose Tyler. I really got into Eccleston as the Doctor, and was incredibly disappointed when he chose to leave the role after only one season…until David Tennant took over the controls of the TARDIS and the wielding of the sonic screwdriver. Like Rose, I fell in love with Tennant’s Doctor.
And I was deeply upset when, after five years, Tennant left. The love story between the Doctor and Rose added new and deep emotional resonance to the series and I didn’t want their tale to end. So I was stubbornly anti-Matt Smith as the as romanticism and emotional I was not prepared to like Matt Smith as the Doctor’s eleventh reincarnation. I thought his introduction was stupid and boring, not funny, going though young Amy Pond’s refrigerator and kitchen pantry, tasting everything, spitting out everything.
But then….
Bow ties are cool. So are fezzes.
The absolute brilliance – imho – of Smith’s first season as the Time Lord, and the introduction of Amy Pond as, first, a young girl, and then as a grown woman (Karen Gillan), with the addition of Amy’s fiancée-now-husband Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) won me over by the second episode.
Last night I watched The Science Of Doctor Who, which, like its predecessors The Science Of Star Wars and The Science Of Star Trek, explored how the show has influenced the scientists of today in making the science fiction of the Doctor science reality. Today I trolled BBC America’s Doctor Whoweb pages, watching sneak previews and reading about catching up on all things Whovian. Including the news that Gillan and Darvill will be exiting the show, and that it may have something to do with the Weeping Angels – to my mind the scariest and creepiest aliens to ever appear on Doctor Who. Yes, much more than the Daleks or the Cybermen.
But I do have one question.
Can someone please, please tell me when Season 7 starts?
Doctor Who star Mary Tamm, who played companion Romana alongside Tom Baker, has died aged 62.
The actress, who was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, fought a long battle with cancer and died in hospital in London.
Agent Barry Langford, who confirmed the news, said she had a “zest for life”.
“She was a darling companion and wonderfully witty and kind,” said Tom Baker, who played the fourth Doctor. “I’m so sorry to hear of her death.”
Colin Baker, who played the sixth Doctor, wrote on Twitter: “Shellshocked to hear Mary Tamm is gone. A funny, caring, talented, lovely and down to earth lady.”
We’re still writing up all of our San Diego Comic-Con coverage, but this may already be the crowning event of this year’s convention, and it didn’t even happen at the convention center. This comes from the Nerd HQ “Conversations for a Cause” featuring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill.
And if you can’t believe what the Doctor prescribes, who can you believe?
Hello, everyone! After last week, I figured it’d only be fair that I give Wizard World a little hand up, since I was so quick to toss them into the gutter. Suffice to say I saw a ton of responses via Facebook, Twitter, etc. in support of my disappointing feelings at this past Wizard World Chicago. So, with all eyes from their ivory tower now squarely pointed at me*, I shall make an epic journey for Wizard, giving them the laundry list of things I’d like to see them do to reclaim their former convention glory.
