Tagged: Green Lantern

DENNIS O’NEIL:Continued stories continued some more…

News
June 26, 2007

Now, where were we…?

Oh yeah. We were discussing continued stories and I was telling you that continued characters have been around a long time, since the classic Greek dramatists at least, but continued stories were a pretty recent phenomena. You might recall my claim that Julie Schwartz and Stan Lee introduced them to comics, but they already existed in radio drama. One form I didn’t mention, but am pleased to do so now, were the “chapter plays” in movie theaters, which I suspect had some influence on the early comics guys. You can probably rent some examples of these at your local video store, but in case you don’t want to bother…

They were continued movies, these chapter plays, also called just plain serials, with a plot that played out over between ten and fifteen installments. Each segment ended with the hero or another sympathetic character in dire trouble, about to plunge over a cliff or be impaled on spears at the bottom of a pit or like that. (Check out the Indiana Jones films, which were partly inspired by the serials, to get an idea of the kinds of scrapes these folks got themselves into.) Then, the segment would end with the suggestion that you come back the following week to learn what happens. The idea was, you, the breathless kid in the front row, would just have to return to witness the good guy’s miraculous escape or, if you were a bit twisted, you hoped you’d watch him get offed.

If you have ever suffered through one of my comics writing classes, or were lucky enough to take a Robert McKee film writing course, you know that some professional wordsmiths set a lot of store by structure, and that the most reliable structure is called the three act structure. (For more, and better, on this, see the recommended reading below.) I’m not about to presume to teach a class here, but most briefly – the three-act structure: 1, Something happens to cause the hero to act. 2. The problem gets complicated. 3. The hero resolves the problem.

Obviously, this narrative strategy won’t work for a story that’s stretched out over a whole lot of chapters, with a lot of climaxes, so the serial guys evolved what I call the “one-damn-thing-after-another” structure. Which is: the good guy and the bad guy(s) have a lot of clashes, which end inconclusively until one of them doesn’t. The good guy wins, virtue triumphs, everyone lives happily ever after.

A story doesn’t necessarily need to be multi-chaptered to be one-damn-thing-after-another; you could probably use the construction for a 10-pager. And it’s not necessarily a bad structure; a storyteller with sufficient ingenuity might make it work, though I usually advise students not to try this at home. What, structurally, it has going for it is this: it ain’t dull. Something big and, presumably, exciting, happens at least once per chapter and that keeps things moving.

We’ll get back to this topic next week.

RECOMMENDED READING: Story, by Robert McKee

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.

The Shadow Knows

News
June 25, 2007

In the first part of our extensive interview with publisher Anthony Tollin (yesterday), we learned how a story that apepared in The Shadow Magazine some two and a half years prior to Batman’s debut, proved to me the template for the Cpaed Crusader’s debut in Detective Comics #27. This is fodder for the historians who have studied what Bob Kane and Bill Finger each brought to the table during the creation of DC’s second successful super-hero. The story will be publsihed this summer in the ninth volume of Shadwo facsimiles being publsihed by Tollin.

Greenberger: How will you celebrate this discovery in volume nine?

Tollin: By pairing it with Doc Savage #8, which showcases Doc’s utility belt (which Bill Finger acknowledged was the inspiration for Batman’s). By the way, Doc’s utility belt was introduced by ghostwriter Harold A. Davis, Newsday‘s first Managing Editor. (Davis ran the paper through its first four years, and was succeeded by Alan Hathway, another Doc Savage ghost, who headed the paper for 30 years. Will Murray also provides a dynamite article on the real-life inspiration for both Doc Savage and The Avenger—Richard Henry Savage. The real Savage was a fascinating, larger-than-life American hero, a West Point graduate who served in the U.S. and Egyptian armies before joining the diplomatic corps. In his later years, he wrote more than 40 novels, many of which were based on his own adventurous life. Street & Smith published one of them in 1898, and Henry William Ralston, a recent addition to the Street & Smith staff, never forgot the charismatic Savage. Decades later, as S&S’ circulation manager, he launched The Shadow Magazine and developed the characters for Doc Savage and the Avenger, basing elements of all three pulp superheroes on Richard Henry Savage’s adventurous life.

And The Shadow #10 will be a super-villains issue, featuring The City of Doom (the second Voodoo Master story which inspired Batman’s Doctor Death storyline), The Fifth Face (featuring a master of disguise called Five-Face) and "The Immortal Murderer," a 1944 Alfred Bester Shadow radio script which pits The Shadow against an immortal Neanderthal (and yes, it was a rewrite of Alfie’s earlier Vandal Savage story from Green Lantern #10). Along with Sax Rohmer, Walter Gibson pretty much originated the concept of super-crime, and the villains he called super-crooks. In 1933, Gibson introduced a slew of super-villains including The Red Blot, The Wealth Seeker, The Black Falcon and Gray Fist. Others soon followed including The Cobra and Dr, Rodil Mocquino, the Voodoo Master; and years later, Shiwan Khan. Early on, Gibson realized that a superhero like The Shadow needed something more than garden-variety crooks and gangsters to test his mettle, just as Jerry Robinson would later realize that Batman needed his own Moriarty when he created The Joker. In fact, The Shadow’s Dr. Mocquino appears to have inspired Batman’s first recurring villain, Doctor Death.

Greenberger: What else will be in the book?

Tollin: The Shadow #9 , our special "Foreshadowing The Batman" volume, reprints "Lingo," one of Walter Gibson’s all-time classics which inspired the Batarang, Theodore Tinsley’s "Partners of Peril" (the novel that inspired Detective Comics #27’s "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," plus a bonus Tinsley novelette: "The Grim Joker" (featuring a murderous, white-faced crime clown). Next spring, we’ll be releasing a special "Foreshadowing The Joker" volume that will reprint Ted Tinsley’s "Death’s Harlequin" and the 1940 Shadow radio script, "The Laughing Corpse." The latter, broadcast six weeks before Batman #1 debuted, featured a chemical that caused victims to laugh themselves to death, quite similar to The Joker’s original M.O. "Death’s Harlequin" was on sale the same month as Detective Comics#27 (when we can be pretty sure that Bill Finger was paying close attention to The Shadow Magazine) and pitted The Shadow against a murderous clown who like The Joker was a vision of madness: "The thin lips were drawn away from skull-like teeth. The cheeks were sunken and leathery. Dank black hair lay matted thinly on a baldish scalp the color of old parchment. A living corpse in the costume of a gay Harlequin! With a wide-muzzled gun. And a jeering laugh that made the silence in the room crawl with menace."

Greenberger: Any idea what DC’s reaction was when you made them aware of this?

Tollin: Actually, Paul Levitz was quite interested and very cooperative with my request to reprint panels from Detective Comics #27 in the historical articles. Paul recognized that his story was part of Batman’s history, and basically just wanted some copies for DC’s library.

Greenberger: Do you think this will change people’s perceptions of Batman’s origins?

Tollin: Actually, my hope is that it alters people’s perceptions of The Shadow. Finger and Kane As I observe in my supporting historical article: "The Shadow was a master of disguise. Perhaps his greatest masquerade was transforming himself into Batman, and in that guise continuing his reign as the world’s greatest detective superhero into the twenty-first century."

I find it quite interesting that at nearly the same time that DC Comics was taking legal action to eliminate Victor Fox’s Wonderman because it was an imitation of Superman, they were about to launch a new character who was a far more blatant imitation of The Shadow, right down to the plots, bat-motif, surroundings, villains and supporting players. At that time, The Shadow was still far more prominent than the recently-launched Superman, since he was featured in the only twice-monthly hero pulp as well as the weekly radio thriller, which was the #1 daytime series in the radio ratings. As pulp publishers of the Spicy line, Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz and their editors had to realize that Batman was based on The Shadow, even if they didn’t know that the plot of the first Batman story was a recycled Shadow novel.

While I want to give proper credit to Walter Gibson and Theodore Tinsley for their part in inspiring Batman, I’m certainly not out to tarnish Batman or Bill Finger. I have no animosity towards Batman. I’m actually very fond of the character, and Adrienne [Roy] and I used to jokingly refer to our New Jersey home as "the house that Batman bought." While Batman started out as a clone of The Shadow, the feature came into its own with the introduction of Robin, which added a touch of humanity to the formerly grim Batman that was lacking in The Shadow. Robin was almost certainly inspired by Junior Tracy, but it was just what the feature needed at the time. And of course, the succession of wonderful villains that began with The Joker and Catwoman in Batman #1 and continued with The Penguin, Two-Face, The Scarecrow, Clayface and The Riddler made Batman a very special feature. While Finger’s first Batman story was a blatant swipe of a Shadow novel, he quickly developed into one of comics’ greatest and most-innovative scriptwriters.

Greenberger: Are there other parallels between The Shadow and Batman?

Tollin: Certainly. I’ve recently spotted several more early Bat-stories that were lifted from Shadow novels. Readers will be able to compare for themselves when I reprint "Serpents of Siva" in The Shadow Volume 12. The Golden-Age Batman lifted The Shadow’s suction cup climbing device, autogiro, and "yellow boomerang," along with the friendship with the Gotham police commissioner. But the most lasting influence is to be found in Batman’s talent for escaping deathtraps, which started in his debut story when he escaped from the same glass gas chamber that The Shadow escaped from in "Partners of Peril." This mastery of escape was The Shadow’s most lasting legacy to Batman, a legacy from Houdini to his biographer/ghostwriter Walter Gibson and on to Bill Finger’s Batman via The Shadow.

Greenberger: How is this line performing and what’s coming after this?

Tollin: Each Shadow and Doc Savage volume has outsold the previous, and sales are still building. This is most unusual within the Diamond and comic collectors market, where sales usually drop after the first issue. This seems to indicate that our sales are actually generated by people who are actually reading and enjoying the books, and encouraging others to do the same.

The Shadow and Doc Savage reprints are available from most full-service comic stores, and also Borders and some Barnes & Noble stores. They are also being tested in double-packs at a small number of Costco and Sam’s Club outlets. They’re also available directly from me (sanctumotr@earthlink.net or www.shadowsanctum.com), with six-issue subscriptions available within the USA for $72 via first class or $66 via media mail. They’re also available in Manhattan at The Mysterious Bookshop, and in Minneapolis at Dreamhaven Books and Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction, The books are also available individually via mail order from me, and from Bud Plant, Vintage Library, Adventure House, Mike Chomko, and in Canada from Girasol Collectables,

Greenberger: Beyond Doc Savage and The Shadow, are there any other pulp figures you’re looking to resurrect?

Tollin: The Avenger and Nick Carter, and hopefully The Whisperer as well. Do you think readers would like to discover the secret life of Police Commissioner James Gordon, aka The Whisperer?

Greenberger: With Moonstone’s recently announced Spider anthology and your facsimile reprints, why do you think people remain interested in the pulp heroes?

Tollin: Hopefully. It definitely seems to be the case. But there are many pulp heroes that always seem to be with us. Don’t forget that Zorro, Tarzan and Conan all originated in the pulps, as well as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.

Greenberger: Anything else you’re working on?

Tollin: Well, two double-novel pulp reprints a month is keeping me pretty busy, and this will only increase when The Avenger and some of the other S&S characters are added as quarterlies. I am expanding a Shadow coffee table history that I wrote a few months back. And at this year’s Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention, I’ll be directing an X-Minus One cast reunion. We’re thrilled that this year we’ll be reuniting the series’ scriptwriters, Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, who haven’t seen each other in 40 years. Kinoy of course went on to win an Emmy for his screenplay for the landmark TV miniseries Roots.

The Case of the Chemical Syndicate

News
June 24, 2007

Every so often historians find something that appears to be the final piece to a puzzle. Comic book historians have certain mysteries or questions they’d like answers to. Recently, Anthony Tollin and Will Murray pinpointed the source material that helped inspire Bob Kane and Bill Finger to create the character of Batman. The results can now make people further consider how much of Batman is Kane and how much is a result of the popular culture of his day, providing fodder to be reimagined in a new medium.

Comic Mix talked with Tollin, a longtime comic book veteran, who has been producing new facsimile editions of The Shadow and Doc Savage for the full details.

Greenberger: Tony, for those less familiar with your name, give us the short hand background on your career in comics and old time radio.

Tollin: 20-year DC career, beginning as proofreader, then assistant production manager/color coordinator, then cover colorist for a decade and interior colorist of Green Lantern (15 years), Justice League of America, Superman, Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Shadow Strikes, Doc Savage, The Phantom, etc. Also co-colored Batman and Detective Comics as a team with Adrienne Roy through much of her 16-year run on the titles (190 issues of each, not to mention The Brave & The Bold, Batman and the Outsiders, Shadow of the Bat, Robin, etc.) And also work at Disney, Topps, Marvel, National Lampoon’s Sunday comic section parody, PS Magazine for Murphy Anderson. Also wrote 70-plus old-time-radio historical booklets for Radio Spirits and the Smithsonian Historical Archives, scripted Stan Freberg’s When Radio Was for six years, and co-authored The Shadow Scrapbook with Walter Gibson.

Greenberger: And what about your fascination with The Shadow?

Tollin: I fell in love with the character in junior high, after previously reading Walter Gibson’s magic books as an amateur magician and ventriloquist. Back then Shadow pulps were few and far between, so I rationed them, only allowing myself four chapters per day. This was back around the time of the Batman television series when Bats was often pretty silly. The Shadow embodies mystery and intrigue. Of course, Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams later brought Batman back to his dark and mysterious roots, but I guess I was a bit ahead of the curve. The magic of Walter Gibson’s shadowy creation is that it gave the hero the charisma normally reserved for the villain. The melodrama villain, parodied by Dudley Do-right’s Snidely Whiplash, was always the most fascinating and charismatic character in the play. Are we as fascinated by Jonathan Harker or Luke Skywalker as we are by Count Dracula or Darth Vader? Of course not! Gibson described The Shadow as a "Benign Dracula." In the conventional melodrama, the villain in black laughed evilly as he tied the girl down to the railroad tracks. Gibson turned that around, so that the menacing laughter and the arrival of the man in black represented rescue and salvation, not doom. The Shadow is a hero in black who owns all the power and charisma of the melodrama villain. That was, and still is, a brilliant innovation.

Greenberger: You’ve been researching the Shadow on radio and in print for years. How did you finally discover this nugget?

Tollin: A few months back, Will Murray reminded me of Bill Finger’s quote that his first Batman "script was a take-off on a Shadow story." (from Steranko’s History of the Comics Volume One) I kept thinking about it and it occurred to me that nobody had ever bothered to find out which "Shadow story" was lifted. I suggested that to Will over the phone one night, and with his assistance I had found the story in less than 20 minutes. Will and I each had ideas as to which stories it couldn’t be, so it became a process of elimination. We had both thought it would be a lot harder than it was. I had expected the lift to be less blatant. It turned out to be the same story with basically nothing changed. I mean, it was a chemical syndicate in both stories! Finger didn’t even change it to some other kind of business. And The Shadow is described as "bat-like" in the rooftop scene where Batman makes his first appearance in costume.

Curiously, it turned out to be the first Shadow novel not written by Walter Gibson. Neither of us recognized it as the inspiration for "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate" when we first read it back in the 1970s. And because we were both friends of Walt Gibson, we tend to spend a lot more time reading his 283 Shadow novels than Theodore Tinsley’s 27 novels.

Greenberger: What makes this story significant for comic book fans?

Tollin: Well, it clearly establishes that without The Shadow, there would be no Batman! Since the first Batman story was a start-to-finish lift of an earlier Shadow novel, it establishes that the similarities between the two characters were no accident. Bruce Wayne is wealthy young man about town Lamont Cranston. The friendship between Bruce and Commissioner James Gordon (whose name comes from The Shadow’s sister magazine, The Whsiperer) is no different from the relationship between Cranston and Weston. Batman’s talent for escapes also comes from The Shadow, since the first recorded Batman escape duplicates The Shadow’s in the same story. And the Shadow lifts continued in subsequent stories, even ones written by Gardner Fox, which gave Batman an autogiro, Bat-a-rangs like The Shadow’s cable-outfitted "yellow boomerang," and a suction-cup device for scaling walls … all Shadow gimmicks. Without the Knight of Darkness, there would be no Dark Knight.

It also raises questions about the extent of Bob Kane’s actual contributions to the feature that bears his creator credit. If Finger’s first Batman script was a blatant retelling of an earlier Shadow novel, and Finger also suggested the Caped Crusader’s bat-eared cowl, bat-scalloped cape, black-and-gray costume and utility belt, what did Kane personally contribute to the feature besides its title? And as to Kane’s claims that Douglas Fairbank’s acrobatics in The Mark of Zorro were an influence, it now turns out that it was movie-buff Bill Finger who regularly supplied the acrobatic stills of Fairbanks to Bob Kane and his assistants.

Also, Theodore Tinsley’s first Shadow novel mentions "bat-like" and "bats" on seven occasions. This is most unusual for a Shadow novel. One really has to ask, did this novel actually inspire Batman’s creation from the very start. I mean, it’s a bit of a stretch to assume that Kane and Finger came up with the idea of Batman first, and that it was a complete coincidence that the story Finger chose to imitate was comparatively crawling with bats.

Of course, comic strips and comic books back then regularly lifted from what was hot in other media. Radio’s The Aldrich Family (and its Broadway predecessor What a Life, which first introduced Ezra Stone as Henry Aldrich) begat Archie Andrews. Frank Packard’s Jimmie Dale, The Gray Seal was lifted as the Green Hornet and The Phantom (before Lee Falk changed his mind and added the jungle motif four months later), while radio’s Chandu the Magician (with his girlfriend Princess Nadja) certainly influenced Mandrake and Princess Narda. And let’s not even mention the similarities between a certain Clark who is the Man of Bronze and promoted as "Superman" in 1934 house ads, and another Clark who was the Man of Steel. And, of course, it didn’t stop with the Golden Age. I’m sure it was no coincidence that Barry Allen was a police lab scientist like the character of Ray Pinker on the then #1 TV series, Dragnet(or the police scientist played by Jack Webb himself in Dragnet’s film inspiration, He Walked by Night). There are plenty of similarities between Doc Savage’s Iron Crew and the Challengers of the Unknown, and also the Fantastic Four. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were both Doc Savage fans as teenagers. It’s probably no coincidence that the Fantastic Four are led by the world’s greatest scientist, and operate without secret identities from the top floor of a famous Manhattan skyscraper. And Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm are constantly insulting each other and picking fights just like Monk and Ham. The first generation of comic book professionals didn’t grow up with comic book superheroes, so they imitated the pulp superheroes of their own teenage years.

Greenberger: Is there anyway to know if Bill Finger and/or Bob Kane read The Shadow pulps at the time?

Tollin: Oh, yes. Bill Finger confirmed it in the Steranko History. He also admitted that "I patterned my style of writing after The Shadow…. It was completely pulp style." Kane acknowledged a Shadow influence in the text feature that accompanied "Gotham City Line-up," the 1964 "new-look" story that killed off Alfred Pennyworth. (Though of course he got better.) Bob Kane admitted reading hero pulps like Doc Savage when Finger loaned them to him, and also admitted, "We didn’t think anything was wrong with Batman carrying a gun because The Shadow used one."

Greenberger: What prompted you to begin the current cycle of reprints?

Tollin: The opportunity to bring Walter Gibson’s wonderful stories back into print, after a 22-year hiatus. And the reprints have been as successful as I’d hoped. There are a lot of others who love these classic characters. One of the nice rewards is that most of the subscription checks and renewals are accompanied with "thank you" letters from people telling me how glad they are to be getting the stories in this double-novel trade paperback format. And everyone seems to really like the historical articles too.

One thing I’m hoping to accomplish is to introduce readers to the real Shadow of Gibson’s novels. Too many comic fans and creators see The Shadow as a murderous executioner, which he certainly wasn’t in Gibson’s novels. People see the strong cover images of the blazing ’45 automatics and think that’s what the character is about. No, The Shadow is about mystery, deduction and misdirection. The Shadow’s powers of deduction are rivaled only by Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. (By the way, Gibson did know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; they were introduced by their mutual friend, Houdini.) The Shadow is certainly well armed, usually carrying four ’45 automatics into battle. But he basically treats them as a soldier or police officer would, only using them when his life or an innocent’s is at stake. The Shadow is certainly not a bloodthirsty executioner (while his imitator The Spider certainly is).

I certainly hope the availability of these new reprints well help comic book and motion picture creators to get the character right in the future, and allow them to draw inspiration from more than just the cover paintings.

TOMORROW: Tony talks about what other goodies can be found in this special issue plus some additional insights to DC Comics, Batman and the pulps’ legacy.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Continued stories (continued)…

News
June 19, 2007

(If) you’re…young; you don’t remember a time when continued stories were rare. But until Stan Lee made them standard procedure at Marvel in the 1960s, they were next to unheard-of.

Those words seem familiar to you? Certainly not, unless you read this department’s blather three weeks ago, when I began a discussion of continued stories in comics, where they – the words – appeared in a slightly different form. And in reprinting them, in a column which is – let’s face it – a continuation of a previous one, I’ve tried to deal with a paramount problem writers face when doing continued narratives: clueing in readers who either don’t remember the earlier stuff or are new to the series.

There is a difference between continuing characters and continuing stories. Continuing characters have been with us a very long time. Even if you ignore the many tales of the various gods and goddesses, those rascals, you can find a continuing character as early as 428 BC, give or take a few years, when Sophocles followed up his smash hit Oedipus Rex with a sequel featuring the same poor bastard, Oedipus at Colonus. Then, over the centuries, there have been various adventures of King Arthur’s knights and other heroes. But these were not continued stories, not exactly. An adventure or episode ended and the characters went into Limbo and reappeared to solve new problems and encounter new hassles. That kind of storytelling continued through the invention of high speed printing, which made books relatively cheap and accessible at about the same time that a lot of people were learning to read.

Which brings us to the pulp magazines, a publishing form that began about 1910 and was one with the dinosaurs by the middle 50s. A lot of these cheaply produced entertainments featured continuing heroes. (We’ve discussed perhaps the greatest of them, The Shadow, in this department earlier, and I won’t be surprised if he gets mentioned here again.) Meanwhile, over in another medium, movies were also featuring continuing heroes, ranging from that loveable scamp Andy Hardy to a legion of bad guy quellers, including noble cowpokes and suave detectives. And…in yet another medium, that newfangled radio was presenting weekly dramas about cowboys and detectives and police officers and even federal agents, like the movies only more often. And…here might be an appropriate place to mention comic strips, which began doing stories, as opposed to daily jokes, in 1929 with Burne Hogarth’s comic’s adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan, and since the introduction of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy in 1931, were sometimes stretching plots over many weeks.

Those were continued stories featuring, of course, continuing characters. But there were others…Oh my goodness, look! We’re almost at the limit of our allotted word count and we have so much more to discuss. I suppose I could go on for a couple of paragraphs more, but that wouldn’t begin to exhaust the topic, so I guess we’ll just have to – yes! – continue this next week.

RECOMMENDED READING: The Creators, by Daniel J. Boorstin

DENNIS O’NEIL: A Superman For Our Time

News
June 12, 2007

When we’re in a somber mood, which is an easy kind of mood to be in these days, we hope that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were not prophets. Joe and Jerry were, of course, the creators of Superman, and way back in 1938 they told what’s become known as Superman’s origin story.

Surely you’re familiar with it; it’s been retold and edited and redacted and emended and amended and recast in comics, in movies and books and on television, and probably video games, for these past 68 years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some earnest young writer is, at this moment, reworking it yet again. But in the event your long-term memory is gebollixed for some reason, I’ll give you the trading card version.

Jor-El, a scientist, tells the poobahs of his civilization on the planet Krypton that their entire world is soon to disintegrate. The poobahs refuse to believe him and – oops – the darn world does blow itself to bits. Jor-El does manage to get his son away in a spacecraft before the final blooey. The kid lands on Earth and becomes a mighty champion of justice, etc. etc.

If I were to rewrite this familiar story, I might consider making Jor-El an environmentalist who’s worried about, let’s say, global warming. And maybe, in this version, the poobahs are politicians who take Jor-El’s carefully reasoned and scientifically unimpeachable work, which Mr. El has presented in the form of a document, and had someone with negligible scientific credentials edit Mr. El’s writing so heavily that it’s meaning is altered.

I mean, my suggested revamp isn’t really too far from the original, is it? What’s scary is that it isn’t far at all from some recent real-life history. And that’s why, despite my great respect for Messrs. Siegel and Shuster, I hope they’re lousy prophets. Remember how their story ended? The poobahs insisted they were right and Jor-El was wrong, despite plenty of contrary evidence, and – Blooey!

If we were to redo, once again, what Joe and Jerry began with, we might consider expanding it to allow a look at the poobahs. The trick in doing this kind of thing is to ask, if these fictional characters were real, what kind of people would they be? Not conventionally “evil;” at least, they wouldn’t think of themselves as “evil;” no one does.

But arrogant, certainly: so sure of their own unchallenged superiority that they feel they don’t have to listen to, much less heed, anyone else. And prisoners of their own egos, which would not allow them to admit ever, being wrong. And not only greedy, but able to rationalize their greed, if there were a profit to be made from their acts.

All that would congeal into deep, impenetrable ignorance. Not lack of education, nor stupidity, but ignorance, which, in this context, we might define as a refusal to acknowledge the truth that’s available to them.

I’d like to read that story. In a comic book, not in a newspaper.

RECOMMENDED READING: The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Two-Fers, part two

News
June 5, 2007

All hail to thee, Pulpus. Praised be thy name.

What? You don’t know that you’re Pulpus, god of popular culture? Well, if I were you I’d get next to Shrinkus, god of psychotherapy, and do something about your identity crisis. Meanwhile – there are some questions I’d like to ask you.

I assume that part of your duties involve helping the content, as well as the venues, of popular narratives evolve. Now let’s say – we’re just blue-skying here – that there’s a cheaply published vehicle for a certain kind of heroic fiction. Call the vehicle… oh; I dunno – “funnybooks” and the central characters of the fiction… lemme think for a second – “superheroes.” Let’s further suppose that for a long time a lot of people who fancied themselves “respectable” thought that the words “funnybook” were a synonym for illiterate tripe.

Okay, carry our supposition a step further and say you’ve done your work well and both funnybooks and superheroes have become – here’s that word again – respectable. Say that the funny book-inspired kind of fantasy melodrama has become a mainstay of the world of motion pictures. So – as part of the form’s evolution, wouldn’t you want to eliminate the elements that gave “respectable” people an excuse to excoriate these funnybooks? Creative Writing 101 stuff like an overdependence on coincidences, not establishing elements crucial to the narrative, not showing and/or explaining how the good guy accomplishes what he accomplishes…

Being, as you are, the god of popular culture, you would be aware that the funnybooks were occasionally guilty of these sins against what is generally considered good fiction writing, for a number of reasons, including extreme deadline pressure; a lack of sophistication on the part of the funnybook creators, some of whom began in the business when they were quite young; the fact that funnybooks are an extremely compressed kind of storytelling; the further fact that funnybooks developed erratically, without anyone connected with them trying to really understand what they are and how they might best be employed, at least not until pretty recently; and, finally, the disrespect given them even by people whose living and lifestyle – sometimes a very handsome lifestyle, indeed – depended on them, which meant that nobody associated the word “quality” with them, not for a long time, and so nobody tried to define what quality in this context might be.

That was a painfully long sentence. But you’re a god, you can handle it.

Anyway, what I guess I’m asking is, even if certain narrative glitches have often been a part of the funnybook world, may even have contributed to funnybook charm, should they be carried forward and exported to other media doing funnybook-type material? Or would evolution demand that they be eliminated?

Beg pardon? You want to know if I’ve been to the movies recently? Matter of fact, I have. But what has that got to do with anything?

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot…All hail and praise be thy name.

RECOMMENDED READING: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig

Cockrum remembered

News
June 3, 2007

Yesterday I alluded to an item which would explain the presence, all in one room, of people like Paul Levitz, Joe Quesada, Tom Brevoort, Dan DiDio, Mike Carlin, Bob Wayne, Jim Shooter, Dan Buckley, Peter Sanderson, Mark Waid, Chris Claremont, Peter David, Steve Wacker, Danny Fingeroth, Jo Duffy, Jack C. Harris, Irene and Ellen Vartanoff, Al Milgrom, Ken Gale and Mercy Von Vlack, and Cliff Meth all in one place and not at a convention.

All these folks and more gathered in the Time Life Building’s 2nd floor conference center on Thursday afternoon for both a happy and sad occasion — remembering and celebrating the life of the late Dave Cockrum and his many wonderful contributions to comics.

Paul Levitz led off the event by recalling the first official memorial over which the comics family presided, that of Wally Wood. (The last one Robin and I attended before this was ten years ago, for Kim Yale. While I don’t actually enjoy these events, I’ve found great comfort in like-minded folk coming together to salute one of their own and thus strengthen the bonds that exist between us all.) Paul suggested the memorial tributes be done "open mike" style, where anyone who wished to share a story about Dave could come to the podium and speak about him, with Dave’s widow Paty being last to speak.

Cliff Meth, a very close friend of Dave and Paty, talked about how Dave’s love of comics shone through even in his passing (wearing his Superman pj’s under a Batman blanket) and cremation (in his Green Lantern t-shirt), and how strongly he felt Dave’s spirit still around, a feeling which would be echoed by Paty. Cliff also passed along remembrances from two Californians who couldn’t be there, Marv Wolfman and Harlan Ellison — who recorded his eulogy, the reaction to which there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and not from crying.

(more…)

Did you know Dave Sim has a blog?

News
May 29, 2007

Neither did I. The creator of Cerebus the Aardvark has his own little space on the web called the Blog and Mail (presumably a take of on Canada’s leading newspaper, the Globe and Mail) with the same sort of commentary that he employed in the letter columns to Cerebus. We link to the site here on the off chance that people thought we were knee-jerk feminists.

In fact, if you look closely around the site, you can see all the pins from the verbal grenades.

And yet, there are always gems in his stuff:

I had had an idea for some visual comedy that could be accomplished in ten minutes or less (the Challenge of YouTube!) that involved me dressing up in a Green Lantern costume and announcing that I was running for President of the United States. That was the first 10-minute clip.

Ridiculous, of course. Dave wasn’t born in the US, and so he couldn’t be president.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Two-Fers, part one

News
May 29, 2007

Mr. Robert Joy, of DC Comics, informs me that Green Arrow and Black Canary are getting married this summer. Allow me to assume a Victorian mien and sniff, “About time.”

How long have they been “going together” anyway? I guess that depends on whether we’re talking about the first Black Canary, Dinah Lance, or her daughter, Dinah Laurel. I confess: I’m no longer sure who was involved with whom, or when, which may mean that senility is knocking at my door, or that the continuity has become a tad confusing.

Well, I am sure of one bit of Black Canariana, and that’s that the hot mama, Dinah Lance, the original Canary, was an alien – even more alien than Superman or the Martian Manhunter. At least The Man of Steel and the green detective from the red planet were of this universe. Not so, Dinah: In one of Julius Schwartz’s annual teamings of the forties superheroes, whose club was called the Justice Society, and the new superheroes, whose club was The Justice League, we saw Dinah’s husband, Larry Lance, die. So grief-stricken was the Canary that she followed the Leaguers into another dimension to insure that she would be free of anything that could remind her of her late spouse. I mean, think about it: another dimension! That makes Superman’s migration from (I guess) another galaxy seem pretty paltry. And the Manhunter’s trip from Mars? Another planet, not only in the same solar system, but one of Earth’s nearest neighbors? Pah! Hardly worth mentioning.

Those annual teamings of the superdoers of different eras is what’s really interesting (and, incidentally, the point of this blather, if it has one.) The reason is this: the stories ran over two issues. If you were born before, oh, say, 1966, you might be asking, so what? Because if you’re that young, you don’t remember a time when continued stories were rare. But until Stan Lee made them standard procedure at Marvel in the 1960s, they were next to unheard-of. The reason, someone back then told me, was that publishers couldn’t be sure that just because a certain newsstand had this month’s issue of Detective Comics, there was no assurance that it would carry next month’s. Comic book distribution was a hit-or-miss affair in which those involved paid attention to the number of comics entrusted to a given retailer, but none at all to individual titles. Funny animals, superheroes, wacky teenagers – made no difference. It was all just product.

How, then, was Mr. Schwartz able to perpetrate his annual continued stories? I once asked him this and his answer was that he just did it, and no one ever complained. Stan’s answer would be different. I remember that he said somewhere – in his autobiography? – that doing continued stories saved him the trouble of having to think of so many plots – and there, my friends, speaks a true professional!

I don’t think we’ve exhausted this subject so – you guessed it! – you can consider what you’ve just read as Part One, to be continued…

RECOMMENDED READING: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens.

Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like

DENNIS O’NEIL: Dick gets his due

News
May 22, 2007

Back in the halcyon Sixties, when respectability was but a distant glimmer on science fiction’s horizon (and comics were still mired in disrepute), the editor of an SF magazine asked me to review a novel by Philip K. Dick. It wasn’t my first encounter with Mr. Dick; back in St. Louis, before I’d migrated east and gotten into the funny book racket, I’d read a roommate’s copy of Man in the High Castle and found it interesting. I told the editor, sure, be happy to. The book was Galactic Pot Healer. I didn’t like it and wrote the review accordingly.

That doesn’t quite end the story. The review never got into print. It may have been a lousy review – hey, nobody’s perfect – or the fact that the editor was friendly with Mr. Dick may have influenced his decision. No big deal either way,

Cut to a decade or so later: I am in Southern California on a mission for Marvel Comics and I have run out of things to read, and for some reason, there are no places to buy books nearby, and our expense allowances for this particular jaunt do not include car rental. Oh, woe! What is a print junkie to do? Then my fellow Marvel editor and friend Mark Gruenwald comes to the rescue with a copy of Valis, by a writer I knew I didn’t like, the same guy who’d perpetrated Galactic Pot Healer. But a writer I didn’t like is better than no writer at all – remember, I’m a print junkie – and besides Mark, whose acumen I respect, recommends him. I take Mark’s copy of Valis to my room…

And have that rare and wonderful experience of finding what I hadn’t known I was looking for. Dick was writing a kind of fiction unlike any I’d ever encountered – a fiction that dealt with the malleability of reality, the impossibilities of accurate perception, the questions of personal identity and its place in a large context.

I enrolled in the Philip K. Dick Society and delved into the author’s 44 title backlist.

A year ago, someone who shares my DNA found that tattered copy of Galactic Pot Healer on a bookshelf somewhere and I reread it. I can see why I panned it 40 years ago. The writing is only okay, the plot not terribly engaging. But mostly, the book doesn’t deliver what I think I wanted from science fiction in those days, which was closer to space opera than the introspective, sui generis stuff Dick was doing. But in my new capacity as an Ancient, whose tastes have changed somewhat, I could and did enjoy it. It will never be on my Top 10 list, but I don’t regret having experienced it.

I now know that Dick wrote what was labeled “science fiction” only because nobody, maybe including Dick himself, knew what else to call it. Writing in a genre meant that folks who fancied themselves capital L-Literary would not notice the work, and may not have been able to judge its worth if they had. Back then, the rule of thumb was If it’s good it can’t be science fiction. So Dick’s brilliantly original novels were largely ignored during his lifetime.

His reputation has gradually brightened over the years because, among other reasons, his work has inspired a lot of movies, from Blade Runner, completed shortly after his death in 1982, to Next, which I saw last weekend. Now, The Establishment, in the person of the guys who run the Library of America, have further anointed Mr. Dick by bringing out an edition of four of his novels to be offered alongside productions from Twain, Hawthorne, Melville…you know, the gents whose yarns get assigned in Lit. classes. The Dick collection is edited by the increasingly ubiquitous Jonathan Lethem, which, as far as I’m concerned, is icing on the cake.

The novels in the collection are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which became the basis for the aforementioned Blade Runner), The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and Ubik. Any one would do for this week’s Recommended Reading.

Tagged: Green Lantern

DENNIS O’NEIL:Continued stories continued some more…

The Shadow Knows

The Case of the Chemical Syndicate

DENNIS O’NEIL: Continued stories (continued)…

DENNIS O’NEIL: A Superman For Our Time

DENNIS O’NEIL: Two-Fers, part two

Cockrum remembered

Did you know Dave Sim has a blog?

DENNIS O’NEIL: Two-Fers, part one

DENNIS O’NEIL: Dick gets his due

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