We know, you’re all out buying Hawkeye #1, which we will also be picking up in a few hours. Clearly, it’s the season of the archer and for those following the Olympics, the archery competition has been fun. But now, we have a weird crossover.
The Hunger Games global phenomenon has inspired a surging popularity in the sport of archery demonstrated even further by the success of the United States Archery Team at the Olympics, as well as the highly anticipated Blu-ray and DVD release of the film on August 18 from Lionsgate. Team USA member Khatuna Lorig was there at the beginning to teach actress Jennifer Lawrence how to shoot a bow and arrow in preparation for her iconic starring role. In this image, Olympian Khatuna Lorig poses as “Katniss Everdeen” in a replica jacket from the film, with a symbolic mockingjay pin, in celebration of The Hunger Games’ huge and lasting impact on the sport.
As most recall, archery experts said Jennifer Lawrence’s skill with the bow was far superior to that of Jeremy Renner’s work with the same weapon in The Avengers. This sort of seals the deal on that topic.
You’d think with the Olympics going on and all that sloppy security Mitt Romney told us about, the authorities would have more important work to do than to count the number of penises (peni?) Howard Chaykin can squeeze into a single comic book. But – obviously, since I’m writing this – you’d be wrong.
I got an email from a British comics shop owning friend of mine, subsequently confirmed by our pal Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool, that Chaykin’s Black Kiss II #1 was the only title missing in his shipment from Image Comics. Knowing I have a long-standing friendship with the writer/artist (and, ahem, edited his American Flagg! and Blackhawk), he thought I’d be amused.
He’s right about that. Howard’s pushing 62 – not quite as hard as I am – and he’s still raising a ruckus. He’s more than my friend. He’s my hero of the week.
With the Olympics in town, perhaps the Brits are simply wallowing in testosterone and can’t handle Chaykin’s multitude of peni. Perhaps they can’t tell the difference between Black Kiss and Beano. Or maybe they’re simply very insecure.
Howard’s response to me was “And I can only hope Canada is next!”
Black Kiss II #1 goes on sale tomorrow at the more sophisticated comics shops across the nation.
I had one hell of a weekend, and I don’t mean that in the swinging wild party, gorgeous male strippers in thongs stuffed with dollar bills, wake up and don’t remember what the hell happened. I mean hell in all its Dante’s Inferno Nine-Circles-Of, sturm unddrang blitzkrieg, complete with crying jags and sheer, utterly emotional exhaustion.
We moved my parents to what is called in healthcare parlance a “continuous care retirement community.” They’re still living independently. It’s not quite assisted living. Yet.
Not that it’s a bad place. Actually, it’s quite lovely. Their new apartment is more spacious than the place they left; we didn’t have to get rid of any of their furniture, and by the time I left early yesterday afternoon, it looked like “home,” especially after brother Glenn, daughter Alix and her husband Jeff hung all the pictures and what-nots and set up the phone and the cable TV.
Actually, my brother was there with the cable guy when we arrived, so we didn’t miss any of the Olympics opening ceremony. Of course Queen Elizabeth II, with a little help from Daniel Craig, absolutely rocked the evening. Her outfit was stunning – luved the feathered “fascinator” she wore instead of one her standard hats, which I wouldn’t be surprised to find out her new granddaughter Kate picked out – and watching Her Majesty was lots better than watching Team USA wearing Ralph Lauren by way of a Chinese sweatshop.
Previously, my parents had Cablevision but now they have Comcast, so they’re having trouble figuring out how to use the remote, which is waaaaay more complicated and harder to read than the remote you get from Cablevision and Comcast’s channel guide is waaaay more “busy” (visually) than Cablevision’s, which really, really, sucks when you have macular degeneration like my dad does.
And the apartment overlooks a small lake with swans and a walking path and a gazebo. The staff is superb, caring and friendly, everything you could possibly want for your parents. And several of the residents were sort of a “welcome wagon” for Mr. and Mrs. Newell, accompanying them to their first meals in the main dining room.
But the first thing my mom said to me on Saturday morning, when she woke up in her new home was “I want to go home.”
I gave her a big hug, we talked, she went into the shower. I went outside and sat on one of the lovely rocking chairs on the lovely front porch and had three cigarettes in a row…between tears.
But I basically held it together – hung up their clothes in their new closets, folded the shirts and sweaters in the bedroom furniture, even did the laundry for them while they were went to dinner – until this morning, when I lost it completely. The above-mentioned sturm unddrang blitzkrieg, complete with crying jag.
Absolutely the wrong thing to do in front of my parents, who are stressed enough. Pissed off Glenn and Alix, disturbed Jeff.
So I went out for a ride. Went to the nearest WaWa, got a whole bunch of bagels – plain, garlic, onion, and pumpernickel. Checked out some nearby dry cleaners, which is the one service the retirement community doesn’t offer. Stopped at Rite-Aid and picked up some personal sundries for Mom.
And smoked some more cigarettes. (I admit it, I smoked a lot of cigarettes this weekend.)
And popped a Xanax.
So here I am, sitting at the computer, writing this column. Meant to write about moving, what it would be like to be Superman moving all that shit, Terran and intergalactic, to the Fortress of Solitude from his apartment in Metropolis. Wondering what was in Diana’s suitcases when she left Themiscrya. And how many times the moving vans have pulled into and out of the driveway of Avengers’ Mansion, with the constantly changing membership of that organization.
And where the parents of super-heroes – and super-villains, for that matter – go when they’re unable to live on their own.
But I’m just too exhausted and emotionally spent tonight to think about make-believe.
My last two columns generated a certain amount of off-topic political discussion, which is 1) exciting and 2) frightening. The fright stems from the fact that political discussions got us kicked off this site four years ago.
The excitement comes from proving something I have always believed. Feminists claim the personal is political. I think the arts are political, too. You may have a different opinion. It depends in your definition of art. I think art is something created by an artist that makes you see the world in a new way.
Forty years ago I had surgery, and was lying on my parents’ couch zonked on major pain killers. I was reading Dune, watching the Olympics and the political conventions. I couldn’t tell which was which. Maybe that’s because Dune is a mind-blowing book. The sequels never moved me as much. Perhaps it was the drugs, or maybe they need world-class diving in the background.
Different people with different perspectives can find enjoyment in the same entertainment. The Hunger Games, which seemed to me to be a reasonably populist and feminist fable, has made over $200 million as I write this, and I doubt all those ticket-buyers are part of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.
Comic books would seem to be an All-American form of entertainment. Especially superhero comics. Truth, justice and the American Way. Upholders of the law who best criminals and ne’er do wells. And yet, those of us who consider ourselves rebels and/or leftists have found plenty that resonates.
Superman is an undocumented alien. The X-Men are scorned because they are a minority, born different from the rest of us. The Legion of Super-Heroes imagines a future in which we not only survive, but learn to use science to live in peace. Mostly.
Often it is the sensibility of the writer that makes a story resonate politically. Twenty years ago, when Bill Clinton was running for his first term, Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove supported his candidacy. Dan Jurgens did not. If you were reading Superman comics then (when one storyline ran through four different titles, each published a different week of the month), you might have been able to pick out their different points of view.
There are people who share my political beliefs whose work I don’t like, and people with whom I disagrees whose work I read avidly. There are writers like Jamie Delano, who I mostly love but whose work I like less the more I agree with him.
We have an election ahead of us this year, and I hope that, as a nation, we can debate issues on their merits, and not descend into the kind of lies and distortions that frequently foul our discussions. And I hope comics do their part, presenting different issues and different perspectives through the prism of graphic fiction.
The Uchronic Press is proud to announce that “Uchronic Tales: The Horn,” our second release, is now available for Nook and Kindle. This thrilling 17,000 word novella by W. Peter Miller has a stunning cover by the talented Mike Fyles (Amazing Spider-Man and Iron Man Noir covers) and features the Ace Insurance investigator Clark Tyler, a man that trouble seems to find. Or perhaps he is just good at finding it. This story is available now at the special introductory price of 99 cents on Kindle and Nook with other formats to follow.
Uchronic Tales: The Horn follows Clark Tyler, an investigator for the Ace Insurance Company, as a simple job spirals toward an Earth-shattering conclusion all set against the backdrop of the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. What is the Horn and why do some distinctively nasty visitors want to get their hands on it? What would happen if someone decides to give it a blow? Clark is there to stop that from happening. Clark is joined in “The Horn“ by a daring aviatrix, a charming archaeologist, and a strange mercenary from Clark’s past.
Join us for the mysteries, the thrills, and the startling conclusion of…
The Horn.
The Uchronic Press is here to serve all readers that crave action, excitement, and a bit of an edge in their pulp adventure fiction. Our stories take place in an alternate past, a Uchronic world greatly like our own, but with a dash more mystery, danger, and the macabre. Here you will find heroic adventures, outlandish science, ferocious alchemy, mystic forces, and an alternate history just slightly larger than our own.
In the months ahead, danger will put Clark in middle of many Uchronic Tales. Look for stories featuring the classic days of Hollywood, earth-shattering danger, lost civilizations, and bizarre visitors from the unknown aether.
The special 99 cent introductory pricing on Uchronic Tales: The Zeppelin will be good until March 23, so get ’em while they’re hot!
Well, you know that I wasn’t going to allow Haywire to escape from my local monsterplex without giving it a look. A guy who’s written about Lady Shiva and Black Canary, not to mention a somewhat wimpified Wonder Woman who used martial arts in lieu of genuine superpowers – this guy was about to let pass a movie starring one Gina Carano who, in addition to being gorgeous, has real-life ass-kicker credentials, a film directed by one of the most interesting gents in movieland? No siree!
For reasons that I suspect are exempt from rationality, I have always responded to movie swashbucklers who can actually do the stuff they’re pretending to do – in the case of the excellent Jackie Chan, actually doing it for the camera. So, either in theaters or in my domicile, I’ve watched flicks starring Jackie, Bruce Lee, and, descending to the region of lesser lights, Cynthia Rockrock, Olivier Gruner, Jean Claude Van Damme, Don Wilson, Steven Seagal and maybe one or two I’ve forgotten.
Not everything featuring these performers was a cinematic masterpiece, but I watched and, dammit, I will continue to watch, at least as long as Blockbuster is willing to rent me discs.
The conflation of fiction and biography isn’t new – far from it. Davy Crockett and Wild Bill Hickok were featured in the pulpy dime novels of the 19th century in yarns that may have been…just a tad exaggerated, maybe. Hickok starred in a stage drama about a frontiersman who may have had more than a passing resemblance to Wild Bill himself before dying of a gunshot while playing poker, and Buffalo Bill Cody, animal hunter turned showman, had a vastly successful “wild west show” with cowboys and Indians and stage coaches and lots of horses. (Even a cow or two?)
Going way, way back – even Alexander the Great was pulpified in extravagant adventures written about someone with his name and general background who didn’t otherwise resemble the great conqueror. (My source doesn’t specify how these stories were disseminated: read aloud down at the agora while the hearties knocked back the fermented honey or whatever was in the barrel in far-past days of yore?)
So what’s the appeal of these mashups of fable and fact? I offer two possible reasons.
First reason: In the cases of Chan, Lee, et. al., it might be a twin to the pleasure we get from watching dance because dance is what a well-choreographed movie fight is. (And I do wish that Hollywood folk would become aware of this.) The human body doing the extraordinary – the reason we watch the Olympics and a lot of televised sports.
And the second reason: we need heroes and maybe knowing that there’s something authentic in screen portrayals helps, just a tiny bit, in our willing suspension of disbelief.
Haywire? Oh yeah, Haywire, with Gina Carano. Did I mention that it was directed by the protean Steven Soderbergh and that I thought it was pretty good?
It happens every few years, just like the Olympics or locusts: People lucky enough to live in democracies hold an election.
Sometimes they’re voting for a President or a Congressman, and sometimes they’re voting for a mayor or dogcatcher. People in comics vote, too, and their choices are often as stupid as ours.
That’s why, with primaries on the horizon and campaigns dominating the headlines, we’ve decided to take a look at some of the most notable attempts (successful or otherwise) at obtaining political office in the comics world… in typical ComicMix Six fashion.
*Sigh* If only it were that easy to ret-con a disappointing election in the real world…
6. Myra Fermin, Mayor of Hub City (DC): In the most corrupt city in the DC Universe, Myra ran on a platform promising to clean up the mess. And she won, because there had to be a reason she couldn’t sleep with the Question.
5. Gary "The Smiler" Callahan, President (Vertigo): This mayoral candidate gave Spider Jerusalem a lot to write about in Transmetropolitan. At first, Spider liked him more than his predecessor, "The Beast." And then, Spider learned the truth. Basically, The Smiler was sort of like Rudy Giuliani, but without the combover.
We know, you’re all out buying Hawkeye #1, which we will also be picking up in a few hours. Clearly, it’s the season of the archer and for those following the Olympics, the archery competition has been fun. But now, we have a weird crossover.
It happens every few years, just like the Olympics or locusts: People lucky enough to live in democracies hold an election.
