Tagged: Marc Alan Fishman

Martin Pasko: Geek Ennui

Pasko Art 130822My regular readers have figured out by now that when I sit down to write this column every week, my tongue is usually so deeply planted in my cheek that my face scares homophobes.

Which is why I come to you today with a heavy heart. And an uncharacteristically downbeat-sounding bunch of words. I have nothing to joke about – at least, not “above the cut.”

No, all I’ve got is just … flat affect.

Oh, I continue to monitor, and very discriminatingly partake, of the various expressions of Geek culture chronicled, dissected, and celebrated here and elsewhere. But I can’t seem to get as excited about any of it as do all the other too-numerous and overstimulated chatterers.

Something is missing.

Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be a big deal that John Romita, Jr. is maybe gonna draw Superman. And no one can figure out why Kick-Ass 2 was a box office disappointment. And people can’t wait to know what the Guardians of the Galaxy movie is gonna look like, or how Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who is gonna be different from Matt Smith’s. And on and on and on. But, for some reason that’s really starting to bug me, because I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, I can’t motivate myself to give a rat’s patoot about any of it.

From most of the comics and movies and video I sample, something is missing. For a long time I thought it was just that I was somehow managing to miss “the good stuff,” but now I’m not so sure.

It can’t possibly be Just Me. Not with the fistful of antidepressants I take every day. No, of course not. That can’t be it.

I suspect that what I’m really experiencing is a massive case of Be Careful What You Wish For, You Might Get It. And what veterans of the comics biz like myself have always wished for was that comics – the genre, if you can call them that; the type of content, not the physical printed product – would became a mainstream entertainment phenomenon. And they have.

Thanks more to CGI and Hollywood than to their modest printed spawning-ground, comics and related pop culture are, of course Big Business now, and have been for so long that most readers of sites like this one can’t remember a time when they weren’t. Which means they can’t remember, either, a time when all this stuff wasn’t quite as mindlessly escapist, or – at the opposite end of a spectrum that seems not to have a mid-range – leadenly, pretentiously Serious Minded.

That condition obtains, perhaps, because mindlessness sells big-time, while Seriousness of Purpose wins Eisner Awards and fanboy cred (and the occasional crowdfunding bonanza), which freshly-minted capital is then expended by the mintee on being mindless for a much bigger payday.

But something, nevertheless, seems to me to be missing.

What first got me seriously wanting to write comics instead of just reading them were things like Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’s original Green Lantern / Green Arrow series and Steve Gerber’s Howard The Duck. Titles that were a vibrant and perceptively critical commentary on the culture they arose from, but whose Creative always enveloped its core concerns with a sugar-coating of good, solid, old-fashioned fun. Fun as in slam-bang heroic-fantasy action or verbal jokes and sight gags – the stuff that allowed the less demanding readers to remain oblivious, if that was their wont, to the Big Ideas the writers of such comics were trying to explore. In so doing, these comics were hits among fans (as opposed to being successful by the casual-reader-at-newsstands-only distribution “metrics” of their day. But the industry learned, for a brief time in the ‘80s, that such content was solidly marketable in the direct-only environment.

The art of producing that kind of comic book entertainment seems to me almost lost. At least, I haven’t been able to find it – not for a few years now.

If that’s the something that’s missing, I want and need – need – to find it again. Or somehow become a force in reviving it, if not just making it more visible than it is now, if it’s even still out there. And that’s what seems to be preoccupying me this week, and will, I hope, be grist for this mill in weeks to come.

All this is why something else is missing this week: a column that tries to be itself entertaining, while “sugar-coating” with humor an observation or caution that I hope might prove thought-provoking or inspiring of debate.

Oh, well. Maybe next week.

At least I didn’t do what too many in the blogosphere are tempted to do, and write a column about how I couldn’t figure out what to write about.

Or did I?

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

Martha Thomases Loves Mark Millar

Thomases Art 130816Kick-Ass 2 opened and I’m very psyched. Loved the comics. Loved the first movie. Even liked the Wanted movie, although it isn’t as sharp and funny as the book.

You see, I’m a big fan of Mark Millar. I’ve followed him ever since he wrote Swamp Thing with Grant Morrison, and, as DC’s Publicity Manager, I had to explain to people who he was. And while I haven’t read absolutely everything he’s written, nor have I loved absolutely everything I’ve read, he always engages me with his characters, entertains me and, in places, makes me laugh.

So it surprised me when I read this.

To be sure, I’m not surprised that there is a backlash against someone who is commercially successful in a popular art form. There are always those people, desperate to be cool, who affect disdain for anything popular. There is a subset of this group, who claim to have liked the person/band/actor/director’s work before, when they were unknown. I, myself, am capable of rambling on pretentiously about the first time I saw Talking Heads, when they were a trio.

That’s not what I’m talking about here. Instead, a (reasonably) well-respected magazine, The New Republic, did an overview of Mark’s work and didn’t like what they saw. They spoke with some people who defended Millar, and with some who criticized him. Mostly, the article focused on sex, violence and rape.

Of which there is a lot in Millar’s work. To quote from the article:

“Laura Hudson, the former editor-in-chief of the popular blog Comics Alliance and a senior editor at Wired, thought that scene was deplorable, but typical of Millar. ‘There’s one and only one reason that happens, and it’s to piss off the male character,” she said. “It’s using a trauma you don’t understand in a way whose implications you can’t understand, and then talking about it as though you’re doing the same thing as having someone’s head explode. You’re not. Those two things are not equivalent, and if you don’t understand, you shouldn’t be writing rape scenes.’”

Laura Hudson is someone I admire and respect. When I say I disagree with her, it is not my intention to dismiss her point of view (and I’m aware it can sound like that in print, when you can’t hear my tone of voice or see my evocative hand gestures). Having said that, I suspect we’re having a similar problem when we read the stories. I don’t pick up a tone in the work that celebrates actual violence or rape. I see those actions being used to define characters. Unlike Laura, I don’t think women in the stories are raped solely to motivate men. I think rape is used to show how awful the person is who commits it.

Is this a comic book problem? John Irving writes books that are full of raped characters and the men who love them. Most contemporary critics consider him to be a feminist, or at least an ally to feminists.

(And this will probably be the only time anyone ever discusses Mark Millar and John Irving in the same article.)

Writing about something – even illustrating something – is not the same as endorsing it. I’ve been involved in the non-violent movement for social justice for more than 45 years, yet I enjoyed these comics a lot. I’m tickled by the cartoon violence, in no small part because I know that no actual humans are involved. This may be because of the tone I infer from the stories, or because, as Scott McCloud describes, we each supply our own interpretation of what happens between the panels.

We bring our lives to comics in a way that’s different from other popular art forms. Maybe this is why we can differ so profoundly in our reactions to what we read. In my version, Mark Millar is sort of kind of related to Chuck Jones by way of Francis Ford Coppola.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Martin Pasko: City On The Edge of Forgetaboutit

Pasko Art 130815If you follow this column regularly (in which case I apologize for the feelings of loneliness and alienation), you might remember me mentioning that I now reside in Los Angeles, which is the perfect city to move to if you’re really desperate to live in a comic book. It’s so colorful and exciting and full of funny-looking noises. Like when the valet at Jerry’s Deli on Ventura slides that new car you haven’t even started making the payments on yet into a parking space narrower than its wheel base – at 120 mph – because he thinks he’s Batman.

So I am thrilled to report I’m serene, I tell you, serene as I continue to sit around, keyboarding like this. Only now I do it for fun because the keyboard I’m using is the digital one on my smartphone, and it’s now in my lap as I write this, with the vibration intensity on the haptic feedback set to “Maximum.”

Sorry.

I am, however, finding it somewhat more lonely here than I’d anticipated.

Many of my old friends – the kind who keep insisting I refer to them on social media as “not-old-that-way” – don’t get out much. They glide about their palatial homes in motorized tricycles which have to be loaded into their very tiny cars when a group of us goes out to lunch. Whereupon the one who still has enough use of his legs to actually drive a car keeps asking the voice on the GPS to speak louder, so he can hear her replies to his inappropriate comments about how hot she sounds and what time she gets off work.

Meanwhile, the other three beg me to push their motorized tricycles out into freeway traffic while they are still in them, because their fingers are too arthritic to use a trackpad and none of them has mastered SEO well enough to Google for the guy who inherited Jack Kevorkian’s equipment.

Thus I find myself in the rather odd position of actually looking forward to inviting to lunch Stan The Man, who, as you know, lives in Beverly Hills. And is not too busy to see me because there are no animation studios or comic book companies left out here with whom he can jointly announce a project that will be completed after you and I are dead.

 (“Just came back from The Mansion and I’m way stoked, ‘cause Hef an’ I are This Close to launchin’ that whole Spider-Bunny thing.”)

I’ll have to find a way to break it gently to Mr. Man that Mr. Hefner no longer sits around all day in his pajamas and bathrobe because he needs to be ready at a moment’s notice to fuck a smokin’-hot babe, but because sitting around all day in your pajamas and bathrobe is just what you do when you’re 187 years old.

But, of course, as Bill Maher knows how to say with much better fake sincerity than I, I kid Mr. Man. I have every confidence that he really will be with us many years hence. That’s because, as he has helpfully informed us, he has a pacemaker but no need whatsoever for a motorized tricycle. I am, however, inviting Mr. Man to lunch in my home, where absolutely no effort will be made to point out that he’s standing too close to the microwave.

And, in what passes here in Hollywood for truth, Mr. Man has announced a strategic relationship with Archie Comics, for whom he will be writing Just Imagine Stan The Man Asking You To Believe He Actually Wrote This Comic Book Himself About What It Would’ve Been Like If He’d Created That Really Swell, Groovy Homo Kid We Came Up With That’s Putting Us Out Of Business Because It’s Pissing Off All Those Loudmouthed Jesus People Who For Some Reason Are Still Under The Impression That They Can Buy “Age-appropriate” Comic Books At Wal*Mart.

I, for one, am looking forward to chatting Mr. Man up about that book. I may be totally off-base on this, because I haven’t actually seen Mr. Man in the 20 years since the announcement, but I think Archie is a perfectly natural “fit” for him because, at least at that time, the back of Mr. Man’s head was orange, too.

Now, as we come to the conclusion of what I know all you reverential fanboys, with your keenly developed senses of humor, will have understood was meant as Just Jokes rather than the gratuitous and mean-spirited rant you, you hero-worshiping little cretins, you, mistook it for … I leave you with just these humble thoughts:

Apparently, here in The City On The Edge of Forgetaboutit, the way you fight ageism is by making fun of people who are even older than you are. If you can find any.

And so it is that I whistle past Forest Lawn and rage, rage against the dying of the light from my smartphone.

OK, so I’m a little cranky, too.

Some asshole just totaled my motorized tricycle, trying to park it at 120 mph because he thinks he’s Batman.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

Martha Thomases: TV Jones

Martha Thomases: TV Jones

Last Friday, in eight major television markets, CBS stations disappeared from televisions served by Time-Warner Cable. In addition, stations owned by CBS, including Showtime and the Smithsomian Channel, are also off the air.

Except there isn’t any air. And that’s part of the problem.

When television first became a business, the various stations broadcast over airwaves owned by the people and licensed by the government. Having a broadcast license was like a license to print money, and, in exchange, the owners of the license were expected to do things “in the public interest,” like news programs and public service announcements.

Because of, you know, capitalism, people learned how to make money from these forms of public service. News divisions must now be profitable. Public service ads are often underwritten by for-profit corporations, which use them as occasions to build their brands.

In other words, CBS (and the other networks) became corporate powers in no small part because our tax dollars allowed them to reach a mass market.

And then, cable.

Now, cable also depends on an infrastructure that owes its existence to public investment. Phone lines, the Internet – all came about because the government supported them. It is therefore not unreasonable to expect cable (and fiber optic and satellite) companies to do things in the public interest.

One of those things, mandated by local-carry laws, has been to carry local stations, including those affiliated with broadcast networks. In New York, that means the five major networks (ABC, CBS, the CW, Fox and NBC) as well as Channel 9, which is owned by Fox but doesn’t broadcast network programming, but does have a lot of baseball.

Several years ago, Congress, in its wisdom, decided that these poor network affiliates were being discriminated against by the nasty cable (and satellite etc.) companies. Cable stations get a fee for every subscriber, while the broadcast channels do not. Therefore, Congress allowed the broadcast channels to get a fee for every subscriber as well.

Which brings us to our current situation. In New York, CBS wants to raise its fee from $1.00 per subscriber to $2.00. Time Warner doesn’t want to pay that much. The previous contract expired in June, and, until now, Time Warner allowed CBS to continue to use its system to reach customers. However, with football season on the way, and new fall shows about to debut. They wanted to get the matter settled.

Which they are doing, in a manner that pleases no one.

If I lived anywhere else, I might consider switching providers. However, in Manhattan, satellite is not a reliable choice (skyscrapers get in the way), and not every building is wired for other cable providers. I don’t claim Time Warner is the best, but I’m generally happy with it.

I don’t get Showtime, and I don’t watch a lot of CBS. I like the first half-hour of their morning show (because they sometimes have actual news on it). I like Scott Pelley for my news anchor, but not so much that I can’t watch Brian Williams. I like Elementary, but it’s in reruns. Under the Dome is great, but I can see it on Amazon (although not until Friday and the folks at CBS are being such dicks that I can’t see it online because cable is how I get my Internet). None of this is so disturbing that I need to take extraordinary measures to survive this inconvenience. In other words, I’m not getting an antenna.

Would I pay an extra dollar a month? Maybe. However, if I’m going to have to pony up for CBS, I want to be able to decide what other stations I get – or, more important, don’t get. Of the Viacom stations (corporate cousins of CBS), I don’t need MTV or VH1, but must must must have Comedy Central, and sometimes Logo. I bet my choices would cost them more than they’d get for me to see The Late Show with David Letterman the few times I’m awake that late.

And I would really love the opportunity to get Fox News off my signal in any way, shape and form.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Marc Alan Fishman… “and now a word from my sponsor.”

Samurnauts 2Hello all. I freely admit that this week I’m in production hell. I have 11 pages of my own story to letter. 18 more to letter when I get pages in from Matt and Kyle. And then we have to make sure Matt’s beautiful sepia ink washed pages are properly flatted, and carry a steampunk look worthy of Samurnauts quality. All of this needs to be done by the time we’re supposed to be clocking in to our day jobs, come Monday morning.

This is if we’re lucky enough to have some copies of said new book in time for this week’s Wizard World Chicago. Simply put? We have to have the book done. Why? Because issue one debuted at Wally World last year. To show up literally a year later with nothing new in hand, save for a couple Adventure Time/Star Wars posters? Not our style.

So, when in need of inspiration this week to submit a column (instead of phoning in one, like Michael Davis did this week. What?)… I turned to my rock. My redeemer. The one person who above all else makes me a better man. My lovely, intelligent, not-standing-right-behind-me-feeding-me-adjectives wife. I asked her to compile some thoughts of our now 10 years of courtship-turned-marriage. So, I present to you now, my ComicMix brethren… a little sub-article action from Mrs. Kathy Fishman.

Kathy Fishman: So I Married A Comic Book Maker

When I first started dating Marc back in 2001, I wasn’t big into comics. My knowledge didn’t go beyond recognition of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. I didn’t know about the Justice League. I didn’t know there were companies called DC and Marvel. Not to say I wasn’t a nerd in my own right, mind you. I’m a big movie and pop culture nerd. I retain facts that normal people don’t. Marc likes to joke that I can name certain production people like best boys and key grips, accountants and caterers. I’m actually pretty passionate about movies and it irks me to no end when people don’t get a quote just right. But that’s me.

When Marc first told me that he wanted to make comics for a living, I won’t lie: I was skeptical. I thought he would get bored with it or completely abandon the project when things didn’t quite take off. Little did I know about Marc’s perseverance and commitment to this idea. With the help of his “brothers from other mothers”, Matt and Kyle, Unshaven Comics took a few years to really get off the ground. In 2008, they started with a commissioned piece entitled The March, which after years of attending Wizard World as fans, they were now on the other side of the table. It did decent enough and I ran after Dan DiDio to give him a copy and ask him to visit the table. I did corner him, but he never did come to the table that year. I was mortified.

Since those humble beginnings, I’ve watched Unshaven Comics come to create something that all ages can enjoy. C’mon, who doesn’t love an immortal kung-fu monkey? Each year, old fans ask when the next one is coming out, and I’ve seen first hand how each con attended by Marc and the boys garners a wealth of new fans. And each year, we get closer to San Diego, the holy grail of comic conventions. I admit it; I’m in this game for the eventual vacation to visit Michael Davis (What?).

So what has it been like for me to watch my husband try to live out his dream while juggling a day job, a wife, a toddler, freelance work, bills and just life in general? Well, it certainly has not a bowl of cherries. It’s annoying because we don’t spend a lot of time together. It’s frustrating because something will get in the way of production like an emergency freelance job which leaves poor Marc frustrated. But, at the same time, it’s awesome to watch the process. It’s awesome to watch little faces (and big faces) light up at the mention of the word “monkey”. It’s precious when our son Bennett sits on daddy’s lap, and proceeds to steal his Wacom pen, and runs around the basement to Marc’s chagrin.

If this endeavor takes time away from his family and there’s no guarantee it’ll be lucrative, then why do I let him do it? Because I like seeing him happy. Because I know he’s passionate about something. Because I promised to support him. Because I believe in the end product. Because I love him. Who am I to take away something he loves? It’s not some hobby for Marc. This is what he wants to do. It’s not my place to squash that.

To Marc, and really to all the Comic Makers out there: I say keep on keeping on. Frustrating or not, I will support you and Unshaven Comics until the day you decide to no longer make comics (Marc: which is never!). In the immortal words of Stan Lee, with whom you share a birthday: Excelsior!

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

Emily S. Whitten: SDCC Part 4 – A Note About Hannibal

Whitten Art 130801As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve watched the first season of Hannibal and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The show is fascinating and horrifying and engaging and cinematically very well done and, dammit, the food makes me hungry sometimes (which is so, so wrong, but omigawwwd, that grape gelatin dessert. I want it! Just…without the human bits, m’kay?).

The show is also not above regular and sometimes slightly terrible puns, which is why I don’t feel the least bit guilty about the title of this column (wait for it), or about saying that although I would have loved to make it to the Hannibal panel or chat with the whole cast and crew while I was at SDCC, I was happy to get at least a taste of production insight by talking briefly with Hannibal’s original music composer Brian Reitzell before BMI’s ‘The Character of Music’ panel discussion (aaaand now the title’s pun lands. Yes, I’m terrible).

We literally had just a few minutes to chat, but in that time, I managed to squeeze in several questions and learn some really neat stuff. So here’s my little amuse-bouche of a conversation with Brian!

How did you end up on the show? Were you a fan of the franchise?

Who’s not a fan? David Slade, who directed the pilot, and kind of really set the stage for everything – I had done a horror movie with him called 30 Days of Night. And that’s very much part of David’s style. I mean, music and sound design as well, you know; so he brought me in. It was his fault!

And did you know all of the Hannibal collection, or just Silence of the Lambs, or what?

I’ve only seen Silence of the Lambs. I haven’t seen the other ones. But I want to see them now; especially the Michael Mann one.

When you’re composing the music, where do you go for your inspiration? And what do you have to go on from the show?

I get the whole show. I don’t read the scripts. I like to sit down and watch the whole show, and instantly start working on it. I like to be like the audience; I don’t want to know what’s around the corner. I actually want to go there myself. So it’s very reactionary. I find that horror music is really good that way.

When you’ve got the food scenes versus the different character scenes, what is your inspiration for these different areas?

It depends on what’s going on. I love the food scenes. I used to be a chef, so I can appreciate all of the detail that goes into it.

I have to say, it makes me feel guilty, because sometimes the food scenes make me hungry.

I know! But saying that, I just keep seeing the shot of him cutting up the pig’s lungs. Those were actual pig’s lungs.

Can you tell me a quirky bit of trivia about your work on the show?

I can tell you that with the last episode, where the Will Graham character is losing his mind; David Slade had said, ‘You know, it’s like…it’s spinning out of control.’ So I thought, ‘Okay.’ And I got this thing called a bullroarer, which is – basically it’s a piece of wood on a string, that you spin around – or a bone. They’ve found one on every continent on the planet, dating back to like, 1700 B.C. And it creates this kind of whirring sound, like a Doppler. I have a few bullroarers, and I have this microphone that has four capsules on it, so it records a perfect surround sound. So what I did is, I set the microphone on the floor, and I took a bullroarer, and I spun it around my head; and it’s literally, in the show, it’s spinning, and it’s like you’re in this vortex; it sounded crazy. And we just kept upping that, so if you’ve seen it, you know, he’s in a dream, he’s in a nightmare, and then he wakes up, and he’s got blood on him, so he’s still there. The realities have completely merged.

For some reason I keep getting these jobs where people are going crazy. I’m not really a TV guy – this is my second TV thing, and the other show I did was called Boss – but in that show, the guy was losing his mind. He had this neurological disorder! And I’m always doing these psycho jobs; but that’s – I’m very proud of that.

Will there be a Hannibal soundtrack, and will it come with snacks?

Actually, there’s been demand for it, which is weird! But I’ve done soundtracks for pretty much everything. Even Boss – we did a double vinyl. And I just did The Bling Ring, so I just did a soundtrack with Def Jam, which is also weird! But yeah, there will be a soundtrack.

And what would be your preferred snack to go with that?

My preferred snack…do you know about the miracle berry? If you eat it, and then you drink lemon juice or eat a lemon, it actually tastes sweet. It takes everything sour and temporarily makes it sweet. It’s a trip. So I’d like to have a miracle berry, which is quite small, and either a lemon or something…or maybe to go even more extreme, you could do something like maybe some fish eggs. It’s Hannibal – it’s gotta be weird!

•     •     •     •     •

I totally agree; and I look forward to eventually listening to the soundtrack, and eating my miracle berry and drinking my shot of lemon juice as I listen to the bullroarer whirl and attempt to hold onto my sanity.

Thanks to Brian Reitzell for this interview, and to BMI for setting it up!

And until next time, Servo Lectio!

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY MORNING: Marc Alan Fishman… Well, actually, the woman NEXT to him…

 

Martin Pasko: The Age of Michael Jackson Comics

Pasko Art 130801Before I Do This Thang for the week: I’ve been getting messages from readers. Apparently, I do have them. Or, as Bob Hope might have said, “I know you’re out there, because why else would Dolores be propping me up in that direction?”

These messages I’m talking about are all “Why do you use so many links?” Clearly, if you’re asking this, you’re not clicking on them. Hint: Some – not all, or even most, but some – of them don’t lead where you might assume they do. They are instead meant to be weird, “disconnective,” hit-or-miss jokes in and of themselves. So, as the most celebrated member of The Hair Club For Men once put it, “’Nuff said.”

Now, on to That Thang. Meaning I have to stop vamping with jokes about what I didn’t learn in San Diego the weekend before last, and, God help me, actually come up with a third and final part of my highly speculative and putatively uninformed rant to go with the first and second parts. [I say “putatively” because Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey, writes, “Aren’t the comics selling better than ever? What should I do?” (And, no; no link this time. Get off your fat ass and Google it.)]

If you’re just joining me here for the first time, please feel free – unless your ass really is too fat to allow you to lean over and reach your mouse or trackpad – to check out those previous parts. And maybe click on some on those links you’ve been skipping over. Go ahead. I’ll wait. It’s not like I have anything better to do.

Back now? Good.

One thing Iwasn’t joking about last week: SDCC really didn’t shed much light on whether the Big Two might be incrementally but profoundly changing how they think about creating and marketing comics. Specifically, that they might have to take back total creative control from the freelance talent, to better justify their claim that comics help generate new, original movie and TV properties – titles and characters that aren’t mere spin-offs from the oldest, best-known super hero “brands.”

But I remained in the dark not, as I facetiously suggested, because of the conditions endemic to the con itself, but, rather, because the Big Two’s massive “booths” at least appear to still be doing their dog-and-pony shows in much the samo-samo way as they have been since the beginning of The Gastrotrich Super-Star era and the annual “continuity stunt.” You know – the age of what I like to call Michael Jackson Comics. As in, “We’re going to keep rearranging our face because it gets us publicity even though we don’t entertain anybody anymore. (But we do have a few pet chimps who clap for us when we do it.)”

At first, superficial glance, little seems to have changed this year. There were the same long lines of people waiting for something, but you couldn’t quite be sure what because the crowds were too dense. And there were the same old book signings by the Flavors Of The Week – those comic book “creators” who have been rocketing out of obscurity and vanishing back into it just as fast, ever since Hollywood’s “‘bankable’ star” mentality was first applied to four-color pamphlets by, if memory serves, Jenette Kahn. She was the first Big Two publisher to wonder, for example, whether Superman might not sell better if it were John Byrne’s Superman.

And it did.

For a while.

Thirty years ago.

But this year at SDCC, when I took a closer look at those exhibits, and let my eye follow carefully where that long line was snaking to, it seemed as if more and more of those people were queueing up for a chance to glimpse some “teaser” footage from an upcoming movie or TV show, and the lines to buy signed copies of Flavor of the Week’s Superman or Smokin’ Hot Newcomer’s Spider-Man were shorter. The “brand” – the property – was what was making the loudest ka-ching, ka-ching.

But the people who decide what will be presented in these exhibits seem not to notice, and persist in announcing new comic book titles whose selling point is presumably the name of the creative talent rather than the super hero brand. Meanwhile, superhero feature films continue to succeed without being dependent on major stars in their casts, a phenomenon that is a reflection of a larger, industry-wide paradigm shift.

The early warning signs might be barely noticeable, but I really think they’re there. And it’s getting harder not to wonder whether someday – maybe sooner than even cynical me suspects – Disney and Warners will have convinced themselves that they can endlessly exploit their existing brands, through reboots not unlike those in the old annual face-changing stunts, without any help from their four-color pamphleteers. And if their comic book divisions will have ceased to yield new brands they can add to the product mix as break-out hits, they might start to wonder whether all those Flavors of the Week and their pamphlets are any use to them at all.

LATER TODAY: Emily S. Whitten Returns!

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY MORNING: Marc Alan Fishman

 

 

Martha Thomases and Omaha The Cat Dancer

Thomases Art 130726Has it really been more than 35 years since the debut of Omaha, the Cat Dancer? That’s why it says in the introduction to Volume 8, the last of the collected series, just published by Amerotica, an imprint of NBM.

Way, way back in those pre-Internet days we found our comics by happenstance. I was lucky enough to live in New York City, and had six or seven different comic book stores within a couple of miles of my apartment. If one store didn’t have a particular title, it was likely another store would. More to the point, it was possible for someone like me, an engaged but not maniacal fan, to find a book that was totally new to me. I hadn’t read any pre-publication hype. I might not have heard of the creative team. But I could stumble upon something, and it could bring me joy.

Such was the case with Omaha, the Cat Dancer. I can no longer remember when I read it first, but I know I was on-board from the beginning. The artwork was so graceful, the characters so credible, that I barely noticed that they were anthropomorphic animals.

Omaha was infamous in its day for its frank sexuality. The characters had sex, often, and not only as a variety of gender combinations, but species combinations as well. Dogs and cats, living together! When a Chicago comic book store, Friendly Frank’s, was busted for selling an issue in 1988, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund was formed.

And yet. And yet. It’s hard to imagine a combination of explicit sex and character development that would be less gratuitous. The characters in Omaha have sex because they are complicated, adult characters who do things that complicated adults do. It’s part of their lives, just like sleeping, eating, going to work, taking a walk, or breathing.

There is also a fair amount of political activism in the lives of the characters. As citizens of Mipple City, they get involved in elections and zoning issues. It’s a refreshing flashback to a time when community involvement was something adults took for granted, like sex, meals, walks, etc.

Oh, I had my quibbles. I’ve never entirely bought into the perspective that strippers are agents of revolutionary change. I kept trying to figure out if the species of animal chosen for each character had any kind of racial or ethnic or class distinction. I found it awfully convenient that a lot of characters ended up being related to each other.

But, really, I meant it when I said those were quibbles. Omaha is a wonderful character, and Omaha is a wonderful series.

The new volume is the last, containing the issues that weren’t completed at the time of writer Kate Worley’s death (too soon) from cancer. Her husband, James Vance, completed her work along with Reed Waller, the artist on the series from the get-go. The transition, to me, is seamless.

There won’t be any more. That’s a shame. But we have these eight volumes, and you should get them. Now.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Martin Pasko: Your Wolverine Claws

Pasko Art 130725Yeah, I know that last week I promised you the third and final part of that earth-shattering rant that, as you know, went hugely viral and made me the new darling of the Internet.

I promised to report on what I’d have learned – evidence that supported or refuted my thesis about Mainstream Comics being unable to escape from the corner they’ve painted themselves into – at the publishers’ booths in the exhibit halls of the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con.

But I made that reckless and foolhardy promise before I’d actually been to the San Diego Comic-Con – or, at least, to what it has metastasized into in recent years. Oh, I’d heard all the stories, of course. But none of them do justice to the actual experience, which taught me that you can’t, in fact, learn anything at the San Diego Comic-Con…because can’t really hear anything over the sound of dozens of Jumbotrons trying to sell you things you don’t want, or see anything for the crush of, uhm, imaginatively-garbed bodies slowly taxiing through the Area 51-like hangar like some flying fortress of presumably human flesh.

Wait. I take that back. There are some things you can learn at Comic-Con. And, because I won’t be able to concentrate well enough to resume the serious business of earth-shattering rants until I can see and hear again – and the anti-depressants kick in three days from now – I’d like instead to share some of them with you.

1. There is a definite limit to the number of times you can tolerate bleeding from the chest because you are being poked by some asshole wearing Wolverine claws.

2. SDCC makes you grateful for word processing apps on smartphones. Mainly because there are so many competing WiFi hotspots in the exhibit halls, you can’t use the phone for anything else. I am, in fact, writing this column on my phone, during my hour-long walk back to my hotel. No prob; I love hour-long walks. Good exercise. Unfortunately, my hotel is only three blocks from the convention center.

3. Best way to deal with being poked in the chest for the third time by some asshole wearing Wolverine claws: Fling a handful of your blood in his face and chant, “Nyah-nyah, I’ve got the Hanta Virus…”

4. Always remember, when tempted to accept an invitation to the Eisner Awards, that they are not merely a new version of the old Inkpot Awards banquet, because they are no longer, in fact, a banquet. And when you are sitting through 30-minute anecdotes from dead artists’ children, reminiscing about how their dad sculpted “Eskimos” from soap bars when they were five, you will really want to be having the dinner you didn’t eat earlier because you thought you were gonna get food.

5. No one presenting or accepting an Eisner Award is as funny as they think they are, and the ones who are supposed to be, aren’t. And Doctor Who cast members who try to be are just FAAABulously embarrassing. However, this rule does not apply to Chip Kidd, who made me believe the Eisners really are the Oscars of the comics industry because now they have their own Bruce Vilanch. But only when Chris Ware wins something.

6. None of the panels or “events” is as entertaining as the looks on the faces of the guys picketing out front with “You’re a crawling piece of shit but Jesus loves you anyway” signs, while people dressed as the entire cast of Supernatural shuffle past them. Especially not the events you can’t get into without coming down with a virus by camping out on the sidewalk all night.

7. The virus you get from camping out on the sidewalk all night is very effective in dealing with getting poked in the chest by assholes wearing Wolverine claws.

8. The Eisner Awards are not, in fact, “the Oscars of the comic book industry.” The Oscars are smart enough to video, in a separate, earlier ceremony – and play back at the main event only in judiciously-edited clips – the awards for Best Translation of A Graphic Novel You Will Never Read About A Subject You Don’t Understand Originally Published In a Language You’ve Never Heard Of Before.

9. In the convention center there is one Starbucks concession for every 10 guests, and by Sunday at noon every Grande Hazelnut Frappuccino® is being spiked by 150-proof Captain Morgan’s, and you are wondering how you can find an asshole wearing Wolverine claws so you can hire him to stab you in the chest.

Please Note: The above are Just Jokes. I actually enjoyed the convention (as a guest) enormously, and the staff is terrific. Still the best show in the business, serious about comics amid all the Hideous Hollywood Hype, and everyone – guests and paid members alike – are treated well. My thanks to all the folk at SDCC for a memorably fun weekend!

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

Martha Thomases on the Zen of Con

Thomases Art 130719You are at the San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest pop-culture event on the planet. And you may feel a little over-whelmed. So many people. So much to see, so much sound and color. So many nay-sayers, such as myself a week ago.

What should you do?

Let me help. I am going to tell you how to have the best time possible.

It’s not a matter of rules (wear comfortable shoes) or tricks (there is a secret passageway between the Hyatt bar and Hall H, known only to the local Masons). It’s a matter of attitude.

Surrender.

You’ve been planning since you got the programming schedule, and you have your weekend planned out like a military assault.

Give it up.

Well, don’t give it up. Just be prepared for things to go wrong.

The best con experiences I’ve had have been great precisely because I could not have planned them. Perhaps I got locked out of a panel I really wanted to see because of an ever crowded floor slowing my progress, but on the way back, I saw a cosplay staging of all the crews of the various Star Trek series.

Or the people I’ve met, standing in line for signings.

Or the great Italian restaurant you got to through a grocery store, where I took out 15 people for not much more than $200, including drinks. Never been able to find it again. I think it’s like Brigadoon.

You are in one of our nation’s most beautiful cities, on the water, with hundreds of thousands of people who share your interests. Don’t get so caught up I what you’re going to do next that you don’t notice what you’re doing now.

Breathe out. Breathe in.

My point is, if your happiness depends on successfully completing your plans, you will fail. If you have goals, but keep yourself open to possibility, you will have stories to tell.

Stories. Ultimately, that’s what the San Diego Comic-Con is all about.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

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