Tagged: Mike Gold

To Boldly Go Backward Again, by Mike Gold

To Boldly Go Backward Again, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • March 24, 2008

They say there’s nothing new under the sun. Well, now I’m saying that as well, but I’m saying it about science fiction.

S-F was supposed to look forward and, at its best, teach us something about today’s human condition. You can look forward by looking into the past, but you’re not looking forward by burying your nose in your belly button. Sadly, our popular fiction has been spending the past decade or so snorting lint.

After a lengthy rest, Star Wars returned to us with a three-part prequel renown for its tedium and lameness. Star Trek countered with Enterprise, which told us the secret origin of a starship. It was pretty good – after two exceptionally lame seasons. At least those who hung in there were slightly rewarded. Boosted by the enormous success of the show’s concept (it was the most short-lived of those that followed the original series), now Paramount is polishing up a “major” motion picture about Kirk, Spock, McCoy and friends at boarding school. I think Mickey Rooney and Liza Minelli are playing instructors.

Now we see that our friends at Battlestar Galactica are doing a pilot for a spin-off show. No, make that another spin-back series. Entitled Caprica, instead of capitalizing on all the careful and intricate concepts established in the original series (itself a remake of one of the worst S-F shows of all time), it’s set 50 years prior. The big deal: the Cylons are created. I’ll bet you didn’t know the Cylons were created. Certainly not, if you hadn’t watched either of the original shows.

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending March 23, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending March 23, 2008

  • News
  • March 23, 2008

I’m still recovering from my yearly giggle-fest as my husband and I spent last night MST-ing the Biblical epic The Ten Commandments, which for some reason was shown on Easter weekend rather than Passover weekend.  Always remember, Eliezar, he passed over your holiday!  So many great quotable lines in that film.  ComicMix columnists have been serving up their own quotables this week as well:

Here at ComicMix, love is not an art to us, it is life to us!

Michael George and the Pittsburgh Comicon

Michael George and the Pittsburgh Comicon

  • News
  • March 18, 2008

Well, this has been an interesting morning.

I awoke to a slew of e-mails from people either asking me about, or trying to get me to not go to, the Pittsburgh Comiccon. Not that I had decided one way or the other, although a lot of friends of ours (including ComicMix’s own Timothy Truman, Mike Grell and Robert Tinnell) will be there. It’s a good show.

This boycott is in response to yesterday’s conviction of Michael George, who, along with his wife Rene, is the promoter of the show. Michael was convicted in Michigan of murdering his first wife 18 years ago. The details of both the crime and the conviction are in the Macomb Daily.

I understand the sentiments of those who feel that they do not want to support a convention run by a convicted murderer. But I strongly believe such feelings are misguided.

First of all, the Pittsburgh Comicon is also a major charity event. Last year, for example, they raised nearly $30,000.00 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and some $5,000.00 for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Both are quite worthy causes.

But, more important, Michael George will not benefit from the profits of the show. Quite frankly, he’s set for life – if spending the rest of your life in a Michigan State penitentiary is your idea of “set for life.” It’s Rene who will lose out if this show winds up in the red.

After a long and horrific trial, Rene probably can use a few bucks. No doubt she’s looking at massive legal bills that were hardly of her making – despite her relationship with Michael, she didn’t kill anybody. She now has to create an entirely new life from the ground up; as such, she’s another victim of Michael’s efforts.

I don’t know if I’ll be at the show as I’ve got commitments to other shows and I can only spend so much time on the road, a lesson I learned the hard way last year. But I’m going to try. It’s a good show, Rene is a good person and the Pittsburgh Comicon no longer has anything to do with the sad horror that is Michael George.

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.

 

Being A Sport, by Mike Gold

Being A Sport, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • March 17, 2008

You might not have realized it, but this is the time of year when more Americans engage in more illegal activity than just about any other. Nope; it’s not drunk driving or tax cheating, it’s March Madness… and the crime is called gambling.

Studies suggest March Madness is the high school student’s portal to gambling. On-the-job productivity plummets. An estimated $2.4 billion dollars will be put on the line against the law, some of it with organized crime – which wouldn’t be the case if it were legal, unless you are like me and you consider bankers to be their own strain of organized crime.

I’ll admit, I don’t get it. I don’t have the gambling gene (or maybe I’m just too cheap), and I’m at best a second-tier sports fan. I follow hockey and I follow the Iditarod because being a hockey fan isn’t as weird as it used to be. I follow the Chicago Cubs because as a native northside Chicagoan I am compelled to do so. Much like Yankee fans, we believe that there’s some issue of “sports” involved with the team. And that’s pretty much it. My lifetime contribution to sports-related at-risk financial endeavors is zilch.

But I am a comics fan and a student of our culture. So I wonder, with all this interest in sports and all this money changing hands, why hasn’t there been a successful sports-themed comic book series?

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending March 16, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending March 16, 2008

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  • March 16, 2008

Can it be?  Is convention season well and truly underway?  No, I’m not ready yet!  Need job first!  Hello to everyone at WizWorld LA, LunaCon and everywhere else I can’t afford to be.  At least I and our other weekly ComicMix columnists can engage you from the comparative safety of our home keyboards:

Forecast for the last half of March: more pavement-pounding, but at least it won’t be in the snow any more!

Hope versus Fear, by Mike Gold

Hope versus Fear, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • March 10, 2008
 
You don’t have to have read superhero comics for any great length of time before you get the message: perseverance plus righteousness will defeat the enemy every time. Despite the “maturation” of commercial comic books, this essential message remains at the core of the superhero concept.
 
Turn on your television set and listen to our government’s message. If you disagree with their policies, you don’t understand the fact that there are monsters trying to get us. If we don’t torture anybody we like, we will have another 9-11. If we don’t wiretap anybody we like, we will have another 9-11. If we don’t give AT&T and Verizon a pass on their illegal activities, we will have another 9-11. If we speak out against the Iraq War, we don’t support our troops and therefore we will have another 9-11.
 
To justify this, they point to incidents that are massively exaggerated or outright lies. That gas attack on the New York subway system? It was bullshit. The attempt to blow up Fort Dix? That was, quite literally, a pissed off pizza delivery guy and a couple of his friends from the Mack Sennett lot. In Florida, the government busted seven childish wannabees for conspiring with “Al Qaeda” (actually, with undercover agents) in an attempt to blow up Sears Tower in Chicago – it seems that one of the seven was briefly employed there. Our evidence that they were master terrorists? They had been bopping around in public wearing homemade military uniforms and turbans, and they asked an undercover agent for boots (they supplied shoe sizes), machine guns and $50,000 in cash. Even idiots can pose a threat, but busting these clowns doesn’t justify waterboarding or preemptive military strikes.
 
Yes, we have real enemies out there and we need to deal with them in an effective manner. I’m not to trivializing it in the least by saying the threat requires police actions: detective work, and fairly routine detective work at that. The type the FBI has found fairly effective these past many decades. Abandoning everything that makes America America is not effective; it is surrender.
 

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending Mar. 9, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending Mar. 9, 2008

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  • March 9, 2008

Where does the time go?  Why does nobody complain about having an extra hour to sleep in the autumn?  And does anyone really feel the need to answer rhetorical questions?  Our weekly ComicMix columnists may not have the answers, but they still make for good reading on a truncated Sunday:

And don’t forget our special ComicMix TV broadcast covering the midnight release of the Dark Tower comic sequel!  Now can that wind stop howling please?  Some of us are trying to catch an afternoon kip.

Son Of Filling The Big Shoes, by Mike Gold

Son Of Filling The Big Shoes, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • March 3, 2008

Remember my column last week ? I’m sure you committed every hallowed word to memory. Well, this is a sequel. Fittingly, it’s about Hollywood.

I’m staring at this massive schedule of movies of interest to your average ComicMixer that are due to be released in the next 12 months or so: Iron Man 1, Indiana Jones 4, Incredible Hulk 2-but-1, Get Smart 1, Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight 6-but-2, X-Files 2, The Mummy 3, James Bond 22, Harry Potter 6, The Day The Earth Stood Still 1-but-2, Star Trek 74, Will Eisner’s The Spirit 1, and Green Hornet 1 (serials don’t count). I’m looking forward to about half of them, which is a pretty good average for me. But there’s one that I’m looking to with trepidation.

No, it’s not The Day The Earth Stood Still, the original of which is the Citizen Kane of science-fiction movies. Let them take a shot; I wish ‘em luck. Nor is it Star Trek 74: The Reboot-To-The-Rear. I’d scoff at this attempt but, frankly, after the majority of Trek movies what the hell, maybe it’ll work. It did for James Bond in Casino Royale 3. Nope, I’m trepidatious about Will Eisner’s The Spirit. Make that Frank Miller’s Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

There’s absolutely no slight here against Frank. Of all the folks in comics, he has been one of the most publicly and most aggressively pro-creator rights activists around. His passionate arguments about the Comics Code and about the way Marvel treated Jack Kirby still ring loudly in my inner-ear. In fact, I’m glad to see The Spirit in the hands of a person who knows how to make comics work yet also has a solid background in movies. 

No, I’m afraid of Hollywood.

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending Mar. 2, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending Mar. 2, 2008

  • News
  • March 2, 2008

I love March, particularly the way the winds blow in such promise for the year to come.  Spring training, buds on the trees, the hope that we can avoid any more snowstorms, it’s all fraught with positivity.  Even our weekly ComicMix columnists seem to be more enthusiastic than usual (particularly Michael Davis with his Obama-at-SDCC teaser):

Spring forward, fall back into bed now…

Filling The Big Shoes, by Mike Gold

Filling The Big Shoes, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • February 25, 2008

 

After much discussion with friends and the unwashed and bewildered, today I have decided to weigh in (again) on one of the many ongoing and irresolvable debates that have haunted the hallowed halls of comics academia since time immemorial. The question: when the instigator of a series retires from his or her creation, should the series be retired as well?
 
It seems a lot of creators and many fans think it should. To this, I say “ka-ka.”
 
I understand that a creator’s vision is important, and I strongly feel that creator should have the word on continuing the feature. For many creators, such choice was denied to them when they signed their publishing contracts. That was exploitative. Today, well, creators should know better. And many do: there are financial advantages to allowing a continuation of the feature, and there’s the idea that, to quote John Ostrander from the Stuart Gordon play Bloody Bess, “My words… my words shall live forever.” It should be the creator’s call, and there’s nothing wrong with deciding either way. Of course, after you drop dead your estate will likely overrule you, but that’s a matter between the dead you and your living family.
 
Aesthetically… well, that’s another matter. Bitch and moan all you want, but the replacements generally work out pretty well. 
 
If DC retired Batman when Bob Kane left the character 40 years ago, we never would have had the masterworks of Dennis O’Neil, Steve Englehart, Neal Adams, Marshall Rogers, Frank Miller and a legion of other superlative storytellers. Carl Burgos and Bill Everett were not involved in the Marvel Age resurrections of their Human Torch and Sub-Mariner (respectively), but all those Lee and Kirby stories sure were swell. Spider-Man didn’t truly take off until after Steve Ditko left; John Romita, Gil Kane and many others took Peter Parker to heights previously unimagined by the publisher.
 

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