One last Harry Potter spoiler
You’d think, months after the last Harry Potter book had come out, that there wouldn’t be any more surprises.
You.
Were.
WRONG.
Spoilers ahead…
Tagged: fan
The Boys Goes To Star Trek
Variety reports that, among those cast in J. J. Abrams’ new Star Trek movie is Simon Pegg, star of Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. He’s slated to play Scotty, the role made famous by James Doohan. The same story says John Cho (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) will be Sulu. The film is scheduled to go into production next month, with a Christmas 2008 release date.
(For those of you who don’t get the image at the right, Darick Robertson based the look of character Wee Hughie on Simon Pegg. So even if you haven’t seen Shawn of the Dead or Hot Fuzz or even that Doctor Who episode he did, you know what he looks like. Simon also did the introduction to The Boys trade paperback, and is a big comics fan.)
The Star Trek movie, co-starring Leonard Nimoy, has been fully cast with one important exception: the role of James T. Kirk. William Shatner holds out hope.
DENNIS O’NEIL: Plugging No-Face
Imagine me jumping up and down and pointing to myself and waving a book and yelling, Buy this you gotta buy this it’ll make you happy and rich and solve all your problems and give you Jessica Alba’s phone number it’s the greatest thing since similes…
Now imagine me reverently kissing the hem of George Bush’s garment.
One event is as likely to occur as the other.
I tell you this because soon I will mention a collection of stuff I wrote before some of you were born and I wouldn’t want anyone to think for a nanosecond that I was recommending you buy it. We Missourians who have attained a certain degree of maturity do not so demean ourselves. (We sip our tea and doze in the afternoon sun instead.)
With that caveat…
Yesterday a Santa’s helper from Brown dropped an early Christmas (or Halloween) present on the front stoop, a box of graphic novel-format volumes titled Zen and Violence. Now, somewhere on the space-time continuum between my typing these words and you reading them, they will be inspected by Mike Gold, who is the editor of this department and also edited the aforementioned collection of comic books. Let us pause to consider that maybe the space-time continuum is, indeed, curved, and then enter a timid demurral regarding that title, Zen and Violence.
Not mine. Not Mike’s, as far as I know. My first problem is this: there isn’t much Zen in those pages. A smidgen, maybe, but when I did the stories I may have thought I knew more about Zen than I did. I’m not sure how the series came to be identified with Eastern thought, but it did, and if it does for someone else what the works of Kerouac and Ginsberg did for me – point to the Something Else out there – then maybe I should shut up and smile and bow and retire.
My second problem: Yes, there is plenty of violence in the stories, or action, as some prefer to euphemize it. These were, after all, published as superhero comics in 1986-1987 and nobody back then was buying superhero comics to study philosophy, nor should they have been; violence…er – action was part of the package. Nor do I want to be snooty about it; violence has some valid dramatic uses (and I guess action does, too.) But I don’t want anyone to think I recommend violence as an all-purpose problem solver, and putting the word in a book title might give that impression.
Okay, okay, I’m being paranoid…
RECOMMENDED READING: You want to know something about Zen? Brad Warner’s your man. Warner is a musician, monster movie fan and Zen priest and that, my friends, is a resume a lot of us would be proud to call our own. His latest book is called Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, Good, Truth, Sex, Death & Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye. The title, for once, says it all.
Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
BIG BROADCAST: John Ostrander Goes To The Bar!
There is no better way to end a week than a little trip to the local bar – and in comics the bar "local" to EVERYwhere happens to be Munden‘s! For about 70 issues of GrimJack, Munden’s Bar was a fan favorite and now its coming back – and FREE – to ComicMix on Friday, October 5th. The Big ComicMix Broadcast sneaks you in the back door for a peek at the bar’s Grand Reopening as we talk with writer/co-creator John Ostrander and ComicMix rabble-rouser and editor-in-chief Mike Gold, plus offers a wake-up call for 24 Hour Comic Day, tells you how Nancy Drew (!) solves the DS (?), what Paul Dini’s up to, where Death Note is going, and how Daredevil sells out!
Pour us a cold one and PRESS THE BUTTON!
Price Performs At Ammons Benefit
If you happen to be in Chicago this coming Saturday (September 22nd), you can watch and hear musician and ComicMix writer Michael H. Price along with a legion of music stalwarts in tribute to Albert Ammons, one of the very best boogie-woogie pianists. But I’ll let his granddaughter Lila give you the low-down:
"Albert Ammons was a gifted musician who helped spark the boogie-
If you’re a blue, jazz, roots and/or rock fan, this is the place for you. For more information, check out their website. It’s gonna be kickin’.
Meyer-Briggs for fans
The Myers-Briggs Personality Sorter was intended to be a general, universal personality ID that divides people into one of sixteen distinct personality types, along four axes for Introverted (I) or extroverted (E), Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N), Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
That said, these folks have applied it to the way we look at personalities:
ENTJ: The Evil Overlord
The ENTJ is best characterized by his charisma, his ability to grasp complex situations and to think flexibly and creatively, his keen and active intelligence, and his overwhelming desire to crush the world beneath his boot. ENTJs are naturally outgoing and love the company of other people, particulalry minions, henchmen, slaves, and the others they rule with ruthless efficiency….
ISTP: The Psycho Vigilante
ISTPs are quiet, unassuming people, who tend to be mechanically gifted but withdrawn and reserved. ISTPs often need a great deal of personal space and "alone time," which may give others the impression that they are aloof; in reality, this time is necessary to hide their secret identities….
ENTP: The Mad Scientist
The ENTP, like the ENTJ, is charismatic, outgoing, and intelligent. ENTPs are often quickwitted, clever, and genial; they typically display a highly organized, rational cognitive ability which makes them natural scientists and inventors….
Now if they can just come up with a conversion chart for comic book professionals, I’m golden.
It’s the BIG COMICMIX BROADCAST for September 5th!
Want to start a lively discussion with your comic fan buddies? Ask them who has the best costume and watch the sparks fly. Get the heat started when we fire up the Big ComicMix Broadcast and tell you where to find the list of what some fans call "the best" — plus the holiday is over and it’s back to the comic racks for a run of new titles out this week, and a great line up of DVDs, too, especially if you are a TV fan.
You know – a really cool costume would have a BUTTON like this YOU CAN PRESS!
TV REVIEW: Flash Gordon
Okay, I’ll get this over with real fast. Sci-Fi Channel’s new Flash Gordon show really sucks. I sat through the 90-minute pilot, and I sat through the next episode. No more. Life is too short.
Here’s the first tip-off: Flash Gordon
Second tip-off: No rocketships. Rocketships are not “dated.” In fact, we launched one into space with a whole bunch of people in it right when this show debuted. Doing Flash Gordon without rocketships is like doing The Lone Ranger
Third tip-off: They only refer to Dr. Zarkov by name once in the 90-minute pilot and once in the subsequent episode. That’s crazy. Dr. Zarkov is to Flash Gordon what Dr. Watson is to [[[Sherlock Holmes]]].
Mind you, if there were a real Hans Zarkov, he’d sue. The real Zarkov was a genius; this guy is a bumbling fool. The real Zarkov was driven mad by the fact that he could save the Earth from destruction but had no way to do it; once Flash appeared on the scene and they got to Mongo (in their rocketship!) he got better.
Fourth tip-off: No longer merciless, Ming is a dick. He’s about as threatening as [[[Garfield]]] after a place of lasagna. I understand they wanted to update the character – these guys should have taken a cue from the way Russell Davies updated The Master on Doctor Who
So here’s my question. Why the hell did these people pay King Features for the license? They could have saved themselves a bundle and called this limp and lame pile of fly-feed “Bill Jones.”
If you’re a fan of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon or of the 1930s serials, avoid this teevee waste like Chinese toothpaste.
Artwork copyright King Features Syndicate, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
D2DVD REVIEW: The Film Crew
Okay, I admit it. I’m still a fan of [[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]], the long-running teevee series that featured four robots and a loser riffing on a couple hundred B-flicks… if you’re feeling particularly generous about that “B” part. Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy were among the show’s writers and producers. They were also performers – Corbett with the eighth season, Murphy with second season. Nelson, who was head writer from the start, played odd parts for the first four seasons and took over the lead when creator Joel Hodgson left the show at the beginning of season five. The show ran from 1988 through 1999 and begat a feature film.
And I miss it a lot. Particularly after a presidential press conference.
So it was with missed emotions that I popped the first D2DVD by The Film Crew, [[[Hollywood After Dark]]], into my machine. This can’t possibly be as cool as Mystery Science Theater 3000, I thought. And I was only barely right. Nelson, Corbett and Murphy did what they do best: use a contrived reason to sit in a darkened theater and make jokes about a really horrible movie… but without the trademarked silhouette.
If the phrase “sexy Rue McClanahan” sounds like an oxymoron, Hollywood After Dark certainly provides the proof. It is perfectly horrible; it was made for Nelson, Corbett and Murphy to eviscerate. They were fully up to the task, and since the three were also the voices of the featured riffers in MST3K’s last three seasons, if you close your eyes it seems a lot like the original. They only have about half the number of writers, so the material isn’t quite as sharp.
The presentation was bisected by one studio bit, and here’s where I’m having a hard time shaking off MST3K. The ‘Bots had wonderfully wacky and occasionally evil personalities; the Film Crew enjoys its work and is perfectly fine with their environs. No tension, at least not in this first offering.
Shout! will be releasing three more Film Crew D2DVDs this year, and I suspect they’re already looking at their orders and deciding if there will be more. I have great confidence in the Film Crew, and Hollywood After Dark was a good if not great first offering. They will settle comfortably in their new roles.
I recommend this to my fellow MSTies. Yeah, there’s no ‘Bots. Deal with it.
DENNIS O’NEIL: One Upon A Time
Once upon a time, way back, I was just a tiny bit afraid that the stepchild of American publishing wherein I labored, comics, would not be properly documented – that the right people weren’t being interviewed, the right information preserved. I needn’t have worried. Thanks largely to an army of scholars-without-portfolios – we called them fans – I think comics are likely to be the best documented art form in history. These people, and more recently the academics that involve themselves with popular culture, must have found sources of information completely unknown to me, and I applaud them for it.
Among my current sprinkling of projects is writing introductions for a collection of essays concerning what I guess we can unblushingly call the Batman mythos. More documentation and, I’d like to believe, welcome. The next intro I’ll do will be for a piece by Paul Lytle on Arkham Asylum. That name – Arkham Asylum – is familiar to Batman devotees and maybe to some folk not quite so devoted because it played a prominent part in the last mega-budget Batman movie. It is, for you who are not devotees and those who weren’t paying attention while you watched Batman Begins, the place where the criminally insane of Batman’s rollicking home town, Gotham City, are sent for incarceration and rehabilitation though, judging from results, the staff of the institution aren’t very good at either task.
But – here comes our big reveal, and I’m mostly addressing devotees, though the rest of you can stay – have you ever wondered where that distinctive name came from? Oh sure, the better read among you will recognize the word “Arkham” from H.P. Lovecraft’s tales – Arkham was the spooky burg where Lovecraft’s things went bump in the night. But who had the inspiration to associate it with the residence of Gotham’s host of loonies? I was pretty sure I knew, but, as you may remember, a couple of columns ago I trusted my memory and erred. So I sent an email. Here, in part, is the reply:
Our original conversation regarding where criminals such as the Joker and Two-Face should be incarcerated took place in March of 1974, when you and Len Wein were guest speakers at Jim Dever’s and my comics history course at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts). The first mention of Arkham was in your Two-Face story that appeared in Batman #258, which was cover dated September, 1974.
– JCH
The JCH that signs the letter stands for Jack C. Harris, a veteran writer, editor, historian and, for the past decade, give or take, a comics writing teacher at the School of Visual Arts in lower Manhattan. Credit where it’s due – where it’s long overdue.
If Jack were here, I’d ask him to take a bow.
RECOMMENDED READING: Awareness, by Anthony de Mello. Those of you who look at this blather every week may have guessed that I’m not a huge fan of organized religion these days, largely because of the misuses to which it’s currently being put, and the book recommended above is by a Jesuit. Well, if the Jebbies who presided over my university years were like de Mello, I might lay some bucks on the alumni fund once in a while.
Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
