Tagged: Michael Davis

Mindy Newell: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Mythic Complications

Newell Art 140127

So my fellow ComicMix columnist Marc Alan Fishman doesn’t have a problem with the idea of Wonder Woman being a descendant of Kryptonian colonists in the next installment of the Superman cinematic universe. Yes, I know that this may be just one of those wild Internet rumors, but I gotta tell ya, ever since The National Enquirer broke the story of Al Gore, Rielle Hunter and their love child, I don’t easily dismiss stories that are far off the media mainstream path. And besides, Warner Bros. has, to quote another ComicMix correspondent (Vinnie Bartilucci) “gone on record how ‘complicated’ a story Wonder Woman has.”

Complicated?

Wonder Woman’s origin is based on the myths of the Hellenic culture, the same culture that gave The Iliad and The Odyssey, the two Homeric mythic sagas that are considered epics of the imagination and central to modern Western literature. Not to mention that during the Hellenic period Athens was the center of philosophy, or that the Library of Alexandra is believed to have contained over 700,000 volumes before it was burned by Julius Caesar’s troops, or that the Isle of Rhodes harbored universities that taught politics and diplomacy. Not to mention brilliant thinkers whose names escape me – oh, now I remember: Plato and Socrates and Pythagoras and Socrates and Aristotle and Euclides.

The Percy Jackson series is based on the Hellenic myths. The BBC is currently airing Atlantis, based on the Hellenic myths. Battlestar: Galactica (both series), Xena: Warrior Princess, the video game God of War – all based on Hellenic mythology. I even read that Moulin Rouge!, which starred Nicole Kidman and Ewan Macgregor, was based on the Orpheus myth. You know, the story about that guy with the lute who attempted to rescue his beloved wife Eurydice from Hades.

I think that when Warner Bros. uses the word “complicated” in describing Wonder Woman’s story they are really saying that they believe the American audience is ignorant and dumb.

I think they are looking in the mirror.

•     •     •     •     •

While I’m on the subject of the Amazon Princess, many of my sister writers who are involved in comics either as authors or critics are dismayed that Wonder Woman has been relegated to “Superman’s Girlfriend”; hell, I ain’t so that happy about it. But I’ve recently fulfilled one ambition for 2014 and have read the four issues of Superman / Wonder Woman that are available on www.Comixology.com – in fact, I subscribed to the ‘zine. In all honesty, I don’t think it’s badly written at all; I especially like the relationship between Diana and Hessia.

I do have two major complaints, though. The first (and most important, since this is a book that is about the relationship of two people) is that so far the heart-to-heart conversations are not taking place between the two lovers, who seem to be struggling to get past their (understandable) physical desire for each other in establishing a real relationship. The honesty and heart-to-hearts are not between Kal-El/Clark and Diana, but between two other couples: Diana and Hessia, and Superman and Batman.

My second complaint is that, for right now at least (after all, the series is only four chapters in), the book seems to be a Justice League of America / The Brave and The Bold hybrid. It seems more like a team-up book than one exploring the dynamics of the relationship between these two great DC icons, with all the “guest appearances” of other heroes.

What I’d like to see writer Charles Soule do is “borrow” from Marvel’s great superhero romances – Jean Grey and Scott Summers, especially. I hope he has the “writer’s balls” to do this. If he does, he’ll be on track to writing a really great comic, imho, of course. But if the book’s pairing becomes simply a veneer of a relationship, it will just disappear into the great void that has swallowed too many comics with great promise, but which ended in boredom and cancellation.

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

 

John Ostrander: A Fair-to-Middling Earth

ostrander-art-140126-150x113-4909151Different media have different demands, and adapting work done in one medium for another can be problematic. Comics, especially super-hero comics, used to be very difficult to make into films. We did not believe a man could fly; we believed he was lying belly down on a table with a fan blowing over him. However, CGI and other technology caught up with films and, today, some might say the superhero film is more faithful to the feel and spirit of the lead character than the comics are.

I think that’s the key, especially when adapting novels into films. Novels are too long to be strictly adapted into movies; Game of Thrones works fairly well, as does The Walking Dead, because they are TV series. The episodic nature allows for the kind of development that mirrors the length and structure of the source material.

It comes down to what do you keep in, what do you cut; what do you omit and what do you add; what plot elements are the most important, what are less important; what’s necessary to tell the story? What choices do you make? These are basic questions for any story but are even more vital when you’re adapting another person’s creation. How true must you be to the source material – to the letter or to the spirit? Who is the primary storyteller?

When it was first announced that The Lord of the Rings was going to be made into movies, I was hesitant, dubious, and worried. I love LotR and I just didn’t see how it could be done. However, director Peter Jackson made a believer out of me. His adaptation is not perfect, no, but the fact that it exists is damn near a miracle.

When The Hobbit was announced, initially I was very psyched. Originally, Peter Jackson was only going to produce, not direct, but due to delays he eventually wound up taking over the director’s reins again. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit initially as a children’s book and, while in the same setting of Middle-Earth as LotR, Tolkien only later amended the book to tie into the later work. Some characters appear in both works.

The Hobbit is a shorter book than LotR so I was only mildly concerned when it was announced it would be made into two films. It’s when Jackson announced it would become three films that I started to become apprehensive once again. Still, Jackson had earned my trust with LotR. I adopted a wait and see attitude.

Well, I’ve seen the first two parts of Jackson’s The Hobbit and I am somewhat less than thrilled. They’re not bad films per se but it’s been made very much into a prequel for Jackson’s LotR and not to the source material’s benefit.

Warning: spoilers of both the movies and the books follow.

The basic story is the same: the titular Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, is dragooned into a motley crew of dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield, to reclaim their kingdom. Coming along is the wizard Gandalf the Gray. Woven into the story is how Bilbo won/stole the One Ring from Gollum. This, combined with an appendix Tolkien wrote, is the story of how the Great Enemy, Sauron, regrouped at Dol Guldur as the Necromancer until he was driven out by the White Council, including Gandalf (who disappears from The Hobbit’s storyline for a while to do this).

Adding this to the film makes sense and fleshing out that part of the story is fine. I also don’t have a problem with adding Legolas to the story or a new character, Tauriel, or even her possible romance with one of the dwarves. What bothers me is padding and bloating in the storyline. There’s a protracted running, jumping, yelling, fighting scene in the underground kingdom of the Goblins that could have been right out of the Mines of Moria sequence in LotR. It goes on way too long. Richard Armitage, as dwarf leader Thorin, is simply too good looking and something of a stand-in for Aragon in LotR. There’s a battle between the dwarves and the dragon, Smaug, within the mountain kingdom that simply never happened in the book and, again, goes on way too long.

For me, this is now less J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and more Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. It’s less about picking the elements to best tell the original story than what Jackson feels like doing. Some things he gets absolutely right, such as the aforementioned scene between Bilbo and Gollum. In that he keeps very close to the scene as written by Tolkien and it works wonderfully. A later scene, between Bilbo and Smaug, does not stick as closely to Tolkien and it suffers for it.

I will undoubtedly go to the third film when it comes out and I will have all three in DVD or Blu-Ray format as they become available, including the inevitable Director’s Cut versions which may be even more bloated. I understand this is Jackson’s vision of The Hobbit but it’s a lot darker than the book was. I’m very glad these films exist at all; I just would have liked it if they had been a little more Tolkien and a little less Jackson.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Jen Krueger: Cream Rising to the Top

krueger-art-140121-150x142-9457076I’ve been a fan of Top Chef for years, and this season has me particularly hooked. I like the New Orleans setting, the accompanying season of Last Chance Kitchen has been stellar, and I’ve found a few of the challenges to be some of the best the show has ever done, mostly because they manage to be surprising despite the show being in its eleventh season. But the biggest surprise to me about this season of Top Chef has nothing to do with the content of the show; it’s the sheer fact that I’m watching it.

Frustrations with my cable provider reached a breaking point last summer when I was overcharged by more than a hundred dollars in a single bill, and since most of the shows my roommate and I watch regularly are available through the combination of iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu Plus, we decided to call it quits with cable. Saving money was the obvious perk, but I was also more than happy to cut down on extraneous TV watching borne out of getting sucked into a show coming on after something I’d intended to watch, or worse yet, the time-wasting passive intake of crap I’m not even interested in but end up watching just because the TV is on.

On the other hand, while almost all of the scripted programming I enjoy is available through multiple outlets besides broadcast TV, most of the reality shows I liked seemed to be available only through iTunes, if anywhere at all. I’d always found the idea of buying episodes of reality shows silly since I don’t see any rewatch value in them, competition shows for the obvious reason that knowing the winner and loser of an episode takes away most of the point of watching it, and documentary-style shows because so many of the ones I watched tend to be of little to no substance. Even at just $1.99 a pop, I couldn’t imagine myself paying for them, so I figured they’d simply drop out of my viewing rotation altogether and was kind of bummed out at the thought.

Then I started tallying up the reality TV I’d been regularly watching. One iteration of Storage Wars, two shows about persnickety interior designer Jeff Lewis, three MTV shows about teenagers having kids, four sets of Real Housewives, and five food competition shows later, I wasn’t close to done but was sufficiently embarrassed at the volume of reality TV I’d been consuming. Ugh, I can totally live without this stuff, I thought. And I’ll save hours each week by not watching garbage!

But lumping together all reality TV as garbage isn’t really fair, is it? The first reality show I remember ever getting hooked on was Project Runway, which was innovative and entertaining while showcasing genuinely unique talents in an industry I knew little about (at least in the first few seasons of the show). Before morphing into a sensationalized and formulaic show on Fox, Kitchen Nightmares was Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on Channel 4 in the U.K. and documented sincere attempts on the host’s part to save restaurants in much more detail, meaning insight on everything from how to cook specific dishes to how to best run meal service to how to create a local customer base were all offered on camera by Gordon Ramsay. And though it was short-lived, Anthony Bourdain’s The Layover showed me more about the real local cultures of both cities I know well and cities I’ve never been to than I think I could’ve gleaned through hours of my own research and experiences.

I realized the black-and-white view I’d taken on reality shows in a cable-less household was entirely and arbitrarily self-imposed. I decided that by culling the quality reality wheat from the trashy reality chaff, I could still get my competition and documentary-style fixes without losing hours to the empty albeit entertaining morass that previously clogged my DVR. Last but not least in sealing the deal, I tallied the costs of an iTunes season pass for the few gems like Top Chef that I decided were worth keeping up with and found it comes to less than the cost of two months of cable. With a bargain like that, it suddenly seemed silly not to buy the handful of reality shows I like most. And after all, in any season of Top Chef, the Restaurant Wars episode alone is always good for at least $1.99 worth of entertainment.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold

 

Martha Thomases: Whatever It Is, She’s Against It

thomases-art-140117-150x116-9924058When Brooklyn Nine Nine won the Golden Globe for best television comedy on Sunday, my first thought was, “That’s the end of that.”

I mean, I love the show. I thought the episode that came after the Globes on Tuesday was really funny (although I don’t want to see any romances develop within the department. None. At All. Ever.).

But now I know that other people like it. It’s not cool anymore.

You may ask yourself, “Why does a woman who is 60 years old care about what is cool?” And you would be right. I have long held the belief that no one can be cool once he or she has children (exception that proves the rule: David Bowie). My colleague, Mike Gold, disagrees, telling me that his daughter’s friends think he is. I suspect they do think he’s cool – for a parent.

There is something ridiculously satisfying about being the one of the only people who likes something. It’s a secret that you share with only a favored few. I have felt the way about Peter Bagge, back when John Holmstrom first published him. Once he started working with Fantagraphics, I still liked his work, but felt let down that I had to share him.

Comics fans are especially bad about this, in my experience. I can remember several times when I would go to a comic book store, select my choices (mostly superhero comics) and go to the cashier, only to have him (always a him) tell me I had terrible taste and shouldn’t shop in that store. This never happened to me at any other place I shopped, not even at Pat Field which, before Sex and the City, was far too cool for me.

And so, I can only conclude that comic book fans are more rigid in their idea of exclusivity than even the fashion police. It’s almost enough for me to enjoy some schadenfreude about comics fans being squeezed out of the San Diego Comic-Con, except that I am one of them.

Speaking of which, if one wants to continue to enjoy one’s super-cool object of joy, one should hope it catches on enough to become uncool. Yeah, Firefly was awesome and I want to be a brown-coat until I die, but what I’d really like are more episodes which we would have had if the ratings were higher.

Which brings us to a useful definition, found in this article. Key quote: “The great video blogger Ze Frank once said, ‘Being cool is about not participating in traditionally enjoyable experiences and creating the illusion that happiness can be found in alternative, less enjoyable experiences. The degree to which other people around you try to emulate your alternative lifestyle and fail determines how cool you are. You’re only as cool as people wish they were.’

“‘Cool people starve themselves, get neck tattoos and listen to bands the rest of us have never heard of. These things are not fun, and they are not popular, and that is exactly the point.”

Coolness is not something one can achieve by trying for it. I was never cool, because I was always too enthusiastic about my pleasures. That’s okay, I’d rather have joy than admiration or envy.

Personally, I question how much longer tattoos can be cool. Eventually, people’s mothers will have them.

REVISED COLUMN SCHEDULE FOR THIS WEEK:

LATER TODAY: Michael Davis

SATURDAY: Back to our normal schedule with Marc Alan Fishman!

 

Dennis O’Neil: Disney, Woody and Me

Dennis O’Neil: Disney, Woody and Me

A week or two back, our own media goddess, Martha Thomases, observed that in real life Walt Disney was not the debonair and avuncular presence he wanted us to think he was. I’d heard rumblings over years, now and then, that Walt was guilty of anti-Semitism and racism and maybe sexism and that he was chummy with Nazis. I noted these rumors and then, no outrage, no anger – I pretty much forgot them.

But why didn’t I get upset? It might have been because I wasn’t a Disney fan. What he was selling was not high on my shopping list. In fact, I’m only a casual consumer of animation, which may seem odd, given how I’ve earned my living for the past half-century or so: all those comic books…

But at least the cartoons in comic books have the decency to stand still.

Understand, I don’t hate animation. I remember thinking highly of Mighty Mouse when I was in elementary school, and when Bugs Bunny appeared on my neighborhood movie screen, I enjoyed a few funny minutes. And today, I consider The Simpsons and Family Guy pop culture treasures, though I probably respond more to the writing and voice acting in those shows than to the (bouncing/hopping/jiggly) images. I could even enjoy Donald Duck and his pals. But if the Disney empire had never existed, my life would not be impoverished.

So Uncle Walt was a stinker? Well, that’s regrettable, but many things are, and I have no emotional investment in Mr. D.

That’s not true of every entertainer.

When the Woody Allen’s shenanigans with his step-daughter, Soon Yi Previn, became public knowledge, I had a twitch of distaste, because, no doubt about it, I liked Woody as a comedian, a writer, an actor, and most all, as a film maker. I’ve liked him ever since I first saw his young self do standup, probably on a black-and-white television screen, and I’ve liked and admired him ever since. The Soon Yi business? Yeah, that was regrettable. But since Woody and Soon Yi did not share DNA, no real, biological, incest was involved, and Woody did do the honorable thing and marry the lady. To quote my favorite line from Shakespeare: “Use every man after his desert and who shall ‘scape whipping?”

But now, on the occasion of Woody’s receiving a lifetime achievement award, his son, Ronin, and Ronin’s mother, Mia Farrow, claim that he once molested a seven-year-old. Sexual exploitation of children is hard to forgive, especially when it’s done by someone with whom you identify – one of your heroes. The Soon Yi affair was ugly; molesting children is monstrous.

I try not to judge anyone. But don’t expect to see me at the next Woody Allen movie.

REVISED COLUMN SCHEDULE FOR THIS WEEK:

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Martha Thomases

LATER FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

SATURDAY: Back to our normal schedule with Marc Alan Fishman

 

Mike Gold: Doctor Doom Is Obsolete

gold-art-140115-150x127-1516171A great many of our finer super-villains in the heroic fantasy world are bent on world conquest. Admittedly, a few simply want to destroy the planet, but at Lord Cumulous said to Prince Chaos in Warp, “Destroy the planet? Where are you going to live?”

For the life of me, I don’t understand why anybody would want to run a single nation, let alone the entire blue marble. Nonetheless, everybody from Doctor Doom to Ming the Merciless have tried time and time again. That’s how we know they’re insane: they keep on trying, and they never succeed.

These people spend a lot of money on their sophisticated Jack Kirbyesque machinery and even more money on henchmen. I’m sorry; henchpeople – just because you are evil, you don’t have to be sexist as well. And, by the way, are your henchpeople covered by minimum wage laws? How about health insurance? Obamacare? But I digress. Add the cost of your hidden lair, costume design and manufacture, those little flying television cameras that allow you to read the hero’s word balloons (today we call them “drones”), and you’ve spent the gross national product of Latveria and then some.

There is a better way to take over the planet. It’s probably less expensive and its got the benefit of being safer than, to site merely one example, the stunt the Masked Meanie pulled on Wonder Wart-Hog (Help Magazine #26) where he dug a hole several miles wide and as deep as the center of the Earth, filled it up with gunpowder, and lit the fuse.

If you’re a super-villain-in-training and you’re thinking about taking over the world, here’s what you do, in eight easy steps:

1) Start a Super-PAC http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/ie_only_letter.pdf.

2) Decide which of your henchpeople will follow your orders in the Senate and the House. You’ll need at least 60 Senate seats and 218 in the House. Make your henchpeople trade in their villain costumes for Brooks Brothers suits.

3) Use your Super-PAC funds to get your henchpeople elected.

4) Abduct and terminate the vice president.

5) Have your henchpeople vote you in as the replacement vice president.

6) Have your House henchpeople impeach the president and then have your Senate henchpeople vote to remove the president from office.

7) As president, go to the next U.N. opening and, during your welcoming speech, have your henchpeople slaughter all the representatives.

8) Declare yourself “King of the World!” Don’t worry; James Cameron won’t sue you. You’re king of the world! Tradition dictates you have a crown and you place that crown on your own head. It’s also a swell image on the teevee.

It’s just that simple. No muss, no fuss. And it has the benefit of not destroying the place where you live.

Any villain can do it.

REVISED COLUMN SCHEDULE FOR  THIS WEEK:

FRIDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Martha Thomases

LATER FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

 

The Tweeks Review 2013
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The Tweeks Review 2013

This week the Tweeks look back at the rest of 2013, giving us a twin tween take on what worked and what crashed and burned.

REVISED COLUMN SCHEDULE FOR  THIS WEEK:

THURSDAY 5:00 EST USA: Mike Gold

FRIDAY: Dennis O’Neil, Martha Thomases, Michael Davis

Mindy Newell: Good Night, Raggedy Man

newell-art-140113-150x137-9249487“We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”

The Doctor, Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 13

Perhaps I expected too much.

Yesterday my dear friend and fellow columnist John Ostrander did an excellent job in explaining “wibbly-wobbly storytelling” that marred “The Time Of The Doctor,” Matt Smith’s final bow as the Gallifreyian.

I feel the same way as John. Though I will try not to repeat what John wrote because I expect you to click here and read his thoughts, but I just want to add some of my own.

The whole episode, as John and others have said, did feel extremely rushed and cramped – it could have used at least an extra 15 minutes, though I would have preferred a two-hour special, which I believe Matt deserved as it was his Doctor, especially, that reignited the global Doctor Who frenzy.

I still feel cheated out of seeing more interaction between the Doctor and Clara’s family. So much of Clara’s story as “The Impossible Girl” has to do with her mom and dad, I was excited when I saw the rest of the family sitting around the set-for-Christmas dinner table. We had never heard mention of them before, but unfortunately, it just fell completely flat for me. In fact, I think I felt a bit of embarrassment here, just as Clara did – umm, naked? Really? Naked?? Yeah, I know that being clothed in nothing but your birthday suit is expected when attending the Church of the Papal Mainframe, and the Doctor was about to whisk Clara off to see the Wizard – sorry, I mean Mother Superior Tasha Lem, but again, it just felt rushed and uneven.

I mean, since the return of Doctor Who in 2005 the families of the companions have played important roles in the Whovian story, especially Jackie Tyler and Wilfred Mott. Wouldn’t the Doctor have been at least a little curious about Clara’s father, the man who was led by a falling leaf to meet Clara’s mother? Couldn’t we have seen at least five minutes more of interaction?

Having Clara hanging on to the outside of the TARDIS, creating a “drag” on the time machine as an explanation as to why 300 years passed before she was able to return to the Doctor was an awfully complicated twist to emphasize just how long the siege of Trenzalore was, and to allow the make-up masters behind the scenes to work their magic in aging Matt Smith – although they did do a masterful job in hinting at William Hartnell in Smith’s appearance.

Actually, about Clara – do you agree with me that, as a companion, she just sort of played more of a Watcher (to borrow a Marvel Comics character) when compared to Rose or Martha or Donna or Amy and Rory? I understand that, as the Impossible Girl, the role of Savior is her ultimate role in the Doctor’s saga, but in too many episodes she seemed to be sitting by and waiting, and although her impassioned plea to the Time Lords on the other side of the crack in the wall was beautifully written and beautifully acted by Jenna Coleman, I would have liked to have seen Clara engaging in more physical action, as she did in “Nightmare in Silver.”

And the bestowing of the “extra” regeneration energy by the Time Lords as a way to get around the 12th and final regeneration was the biggest cheat of all – though it was a clever way and use of “dues ex machina” around the myth, which of course was set up years ago because who in 1963 could imagine that 50 years later the show would itself have regenerated into a world-wide phenomenon?

But, oddly enough, of all these flaws, the one that really got to me, the one that made me feel most cheated, was the regeneration of Matt Smith into Peter Capaldi. It happened in a literal “blink of an eye.” I suppose we are to understand that we didn’t see the “burning time/regeneration energy” flowing out of Matt because he spent it destroying the Daleks, but there was no punch – when Christopher Eccleston regenerated into David Tennant, and David Tennant (admittedly the most heartbreaking of all the regenerations, with his Doctor’s poignant “I don’t want to go”) into Matt Smith, you felt it.

Yes, Matt’s removal of his bow tie, letting it just fall to the floor, was wonderfully moving.

Yes, Karen Pond’s return as Amy was tear-jerking (and bravo to the BBC and Moffat and all of the Doctor Who crew to keeping it secret!).

But I think the final gut-wrenching heartbreaker would have been Matt suddenly blazing into energy as Amy said…

“Good night, Raggedy Man.”

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold

 

Jen Krueger: Surviving the Fall

krueger-art-130107-138x225-2905200When we last saw the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes, he watched from afar as John Watson beseeched, “Don’t be dead,” to a headstone bearing Sherlock’s name. Watson does this at the end of “The Reichenbach Fall” after seeing Sherlock seemingly leap to his demise, and I thought it bold of series creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat to tackle this update of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” in their second series. A faked death on a show is as logistically tricky as a real one, and if there’s one thing that almost always creates a make or break moment for a TV show, it’s dealing with a major character’s death.

For a lot of shows, it’s a break moment. Perhaps some of the problem comes from the fact that a character’s death is often prompted by an actor’s exit from the show. When Dan Stevens decided to leave Downton Abbey at the end of his three year contract, his character Matthew Crawley was killed in a car crash that struck me as a spiteful way to explain his forthcoming absence in series four. Aside from the fact that the crash itself didn’t look severe enough to be fatal (I mean, how fast was he going, 30 m.p.h.?), it also felt like an afterthought to the 2012 Christmas special, as if the episode had been scripted to end in the preceding scene and the death was tacked on once it was official Stevens wouldn’t re-up. This was particularly disappointing from a show that had so recently served up an amazing character death by killing off Sybil Crawley mid-season. Even if I hadn’t hated her character (we get it, you like irking daddy by playing blue-collar), I would still have been pleased with her demise because of the way it affected the other characters on the show. Watching her parents, sisters, and husband deal with their grief was more interesting than Sybil herself had ever been, yet asking viewers to watch the family hit the reset button at the top of series four to mourn Matthew is grating.

But perhaps worse than the character deaths that are forced are the ones I don’t believe even within the world of the show. When Peter Bishop stepped into the doomsday device at the end of season three of Fringe, I didn’t for a second buy him exiting the show. His character was too important, and the circumstances of his disappearance too obviously pointed to a return for me to believe I’d never see Peter on the show again, which seemed to be what the writers hoped I would assume. Instead, watching became a waiting game centered on his return, and one that wasn’t concluded quickly or satisfactorily enough to justify his unbelievable disappearance in the first place.

That’s not to say shows can’t kill important characters successfully. When Boardwalk Empire concluded its second season by offing Jimmy Darmody, the character who’d served as the audience’s entrance into the (under)world of the show, it was wonderfully stunning. Even though the drama had blossomed into a sizeable ensemble by the time Jimmy was eliminated, he was still the most frequent point of view character, which meant his death irrevocably changed the show’s direction. But Boardwalk Empire had managed to build to Jimmy’s death in such a way that it seemed inevitable, and created plot momentum that carried forward into even the most recent season finale.

Of course, the holy grail of TV character death is the surprise demise. Four episodes into its third season, Southland unceremoniously killed detective Nate Moretta on the job. The disturbingly quick and brutal death was shocking in and of itself, but it also demonstrated no character on the show was safe regardless of their rank, skill, or narrative importance. From that moment on, I watched Southland with my stomach in knots every time a character I liked was in peril because I truly didn’t know if they’d emerge from it unscathed, or at all.

Though the titular character of Sherlock didn’t actually die in the series two finale, his faked death was just as striking to me as the most successful of these actual TV character deaths. The charade has the same effect on Watson as the real thing would have, meaning the audience still gets the emotional payoff of a pivotal character death, while how Sherlock managed to pull it off is a mystery fans are as eager to solve as they are any of the eponymous detective’s cases. Which, of course, is precisely the point. American audiences will get their answers in the series three premiere on January 19, but having already seen it myself, I can say “The Empty Hearse” sated my curiosity and I’m very glad that, as this prequel minisode promises, #SherlockLives.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

 

MINDY NEWELL: You Say You Want A Resolution…

Newell Art 140106Well, 2014 is six days old, and though I’m not too maudlin about it, I’m glad 2013 is over. It wasn’t my worst year ever – that was pretty much 2006, though 2009 does come close, for reasons that I’m not going into here because some things do have to stay off this page – but 2013 was the year I lost my father. No, he isn’t dead, but he is gone for good, and this is how I know.

We (Glenn, Alix, Jeff, and Meyer Manuel) were visiting my parents on New Year’s Day. I had brought my father up to an apartment from the nursing home division; my parents live in a continuous care adult community. We were having either a late lunch or an early dinner, and one thing about my dad, he hasn’t lost his appetite. He eats everything put in front of him, even eggs, which, in fact, he actively disliked. Anyway, my brother made a joke about how there’s nothing wrong with Daddy’s appetite and how, even when he was in a coma last year, somehow if we put food in his mouth he ate it. We all laughed (a sad, kinda bitter laugh, I think), and then all of a sudden my mom started coughing. She kept coughing. Hard. And all of a sudden I realized she wasn’t just coughing, she was choking.

I went to give her the Heimlich, but Glenn had realized what was going on the same time I did and got to her first. It took a couple of too many abdominal thrusts for comfort, but it worked, thank God. Mom sat down, cried just a little bit because she was really scared there for a moment (of course), drank some water… and I realized that my dad had just sat there during all this and continued to eat – no, wolf down – his french fries. He had been completely unaware of what was happening to his wife of nearly 66 years, of what had nearly happened. All he knew was his french fries. He was just staring at wherever it is that he stares at and eating his french fries. “That is not my father,” I thought. “My father is gone.”

So, so long, 2013. I hope the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

And hello, 2014.

What would I like to do this year?

Like Marc Alan Fishman, my fellow columnist here at ComixMix, I’d like to get back to the comics shop this year. Unlike Marc, I stopped going because of the financial blues I’ve been living with for the last couple of years, and I dream of the day I have real discretionary income in my checkbook register again. I’m making inroads, but sometimes the dream is overtaken by the nightmare, if you know what I mean.

I’d like to get off my procrastinating ass and talk to Editor Mike about a story idea that’s been floating in the back of my head for more than a couple of years. It could encompass all sorts of genres if I’m a good enough writer – a little bit of soap opera, a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of thriller, a little bit of romance, but not a little bit country or a little bit rock n’ roll. It can address a bunch of issues like racism and politics and evolution and love and hate and family and madness and sanity. That is, if I’m a good enough writer, which is the fear that keeps me procrastinating.

I’d like to stop thinking that my dreams are merely the flights of fancy of some crazy woman and act on them. Like, what the hell, why not work into a script the story of my father and his sharing a bottle of Scotch with Lord Mountbatten in Burma during World War II to Dreamworks and Steven Spielberg, whose father was a chief mechanic who was responsible for keeping those P-51 Mustangs flying the Hump in the C-B-I theatre during the war? The worse that could happen is that I hear nothing.

Or write it up as a short story and submit it to, oh, I don’t know, where do you submit a war story these days? The web is my best bet, but exactly what site? I’ll have to buy a current copy of Writer’s Digest.

Or maybe I can do in comic form after all, only then I have to find an artist. God, I wish I could draw and just do my own stuff; the toughest part of being a writer only (only a writer?) in a visual medium is seeing everything in your head so clearly but not being able to translate the whole picture onto the page.

Did I ever tell you that artists amaze me?

I’d like to go to San Diego this year. Yep, I’ve never been to the San Diego Comic-Con. I can hear all the groans now from those who have walked the floors of the convention center, hear all the complaints about how it’s not about comics anymore, that it’s now a marketing tool for Hollywood. But I don’t care. I’d like to experience it at least once. I’d like to go to some panels and I’d like to star gaze just a little bit (but not collect autographs because autographs have never interested me) and I’d like to see people I haven’t seen in too many years and I’d like to go to the beach and watch the sun set into the Pacific Ocean instead of rising up out of the Atlantic.

And I’d like to write Wonder Woman again, and do another Lois Lane book. I’d like to sit down over a cup of tea (I don’t drink coffee) or a glass of wine with Gail Simone and meet Kelley Sue DeConnick and hang out with Martha Thomases (I want to pick up knitting again, Martha!). I’d like to be on a panel about women in comics at a convention and talk about the harassment going on and challenge some of these jerks in person – you want me take me on, you’re welcome to try, assholes.

And I’d like to say thanks to everybody who read my column in 2013. Thanks to everybody who wrote in response here on ComicMix and on Facebook and the League of Women Bloggers. Thanks for all the different opinions and the discussions they engendered.

And thanks to Mike Gold and Glenn Hauman and Adriane Nash and everybody at ComicMix who continue to let me open my big mouth right here, every week, every Monday, for better or for worse.

Happy New Year!

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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