As a license, I have the utmost respect for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Since its comic debut in 1984, the property has been spun off into numerous animated incarnations, several movie franchises (both old and yet-to-come), and a bevy of merchandise unheard of unless you count Star Wars. And I have to give props where props are due: the IP as a whole has never been better. That being said? It could all go downhill very quickly. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
Let’s start at the top. Top of what I don’t know exactly. Let’s say comic books! IDW as of late has been deluging the market with TMNT titles. Ongoings, mini-series, epic crossovers, you name it. And while I’m sad to report that in my tenure as a fan I have yet to actually crack open a volume myself, it comes with great authority (a few of my good friends) that they are doing the characters justice. I will no doubt be jumping into the main book myself with issue #21. Per Comic Book Resources interview with Turtles’ Co-Creator Kevin Eastman, I was drawn into his description of bringing a level of reality (seriously) to the book with the titular teens having to learn new skills.
In so many words, Eastman was quick to note that the Turtles have generally been “ninja masters” and his intent is to remind us that the martial arts are an art form and artists never stop learning. It’s that kind of dedication in concept that sounds legitimately cool to me. Certainly cool enough to elicit a purchase once a month for the foreseeable future.
And what about the boob tube? Well, I’m happy to report that the current product being offered is now (thanks in large part to the CW canning Green Lantern TAS and Young Justice, grumble grumble), Nickelodeon’s relaunch of TMNT, is one of the best cartoons being offered today. won me over in less than a handful of episodes. The team behind it should be commended.
For many folks who don’t “get it,” the Turtles on the surface are merely a weapon and general personality trait. But the Bick show is smart to use those bullet points as inspirations. In the season that I’ve watched thus far, I’ve seen numerous attempts to flesh out each Turtle as an individual. Combine this with smart updates to many TMNT mainstays (Leatherhead, the Kraang, Shredder, etc.), and you get a cartoon that deftly plays to me as an adult while obviously targeting a whole new generation of kids. Compared to the hyper-Japanese-terribly-ported crap I’d seen trading spots with Spongebob? It’s a breath of fresh sewer air to me.
Now this of course brings us around the scary bend, that, of course, being the 600 pound explosive elephant in the room, Michael Bay. From the first utterances of news about his desire to create another abomination out of my childhood pleasures, so was I joined by other shellheads in our trepidation. Bay’s Transformers sits in my mind as one of the worst examples of modern merchandise-driven cinema. And let me be clear: I don’t mind for a second that some movies are built for action figures and bedsheets. But Bay’s adaptation was kinetic to the point of nausea, and riddled with near-racist portrayals of shallow predictable characters. And for whatever reason? It had pot-humor, John Tutoro in an increasingly baffling performance, and more military porn than my copy of Stars, Stripes, and Tits 2: Cannons Ho.
It’s these factors that weigh heavy on our minds. Especially given what little news seems to dribble out from the babbling brook of Bay. The Turtles will be from space? Megan Fox will be April O’Neil? And the title will just be Ninja Turtles? Suffice to say, with all that’s being done right with the brand, it might just take one explosion-riddled movie flop to ruin it all. Follow me on this:
The Green Lantern movie sucked and toy departments got stuck with tons of stuff that didn’t sell. Green Lantern The Animated Series was canned, due in large part to the lack of merchandise sales. Now, if Ninja Turtles tanks, it could take with it the whole property. Obviously the current Nickelodeon cartoon and comic are going to be well into their sophomore years when the Bay feature hits. But nothing like a bad day at the matinee to curb a kid’s appetite for their favorite amphibians. How do I know? Because I gave up on the cartoon when TMNT 3 hit the multiplex. And it took 10+ years for me to forgive them.
Until Bay blows up my childhood again, I’ll be happy to enjoy my new found love of Leonardo, my rapture for Raphael, my doe-eyes for Donatello, and my mania over Michaelangelo. With a potent toon on the tube, and a comic in my buy pile… it’s a good day to be a Turtle.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
– 1 Corinthians 13:11
Uh uh.
Leaving aside the gender issues that run rampant through our so-called holy books, I find myself about to enter my seventh decade with a computer full of rock’n’roll songs, shelves full of toys, and a plastic figure of Howdy Doody watching over my bed as I sleep. I revel in childish things.
So when I saw a story about Mattel’s latest attempt to revive the Max Steel line of action figures, I was curious. And then a little bit horrified. And then fascinated again.
When I was a kid, I loved team-up comics. The Legion, the Justice League, the Teen Titans – they were great because I could imagine myself as different characters depending on my mood. If I had friends who were also into comics, there were enough characters that we could each play our favorite. It was fun. We didn’t need any accouterments except maybe towels tied around our necks as capes.
In the 1980s, when my son was a boy, the ways corporations marketed to kids had changed a lot. My husband and I were real opinionated about it, and we had bunches of rules. We didn’t allow him to watch any cartoons that were created just to sell toys. No He-Man. No G.I. Joe. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were okay, because they were based on a comic book that was a satire of Frank Miller’s Ronin. The rules relaxed as he got older and better able to understand how marketing worked. Also, at four years old, he could tell the difference between a Tex Avery cartoon and a Chuck Jones cartoon.
Here’s what I noticed as a mom. Favorite characters came and went. Ghostbusters. Dick Tracy. Batman. Turtles. Whatever was in vogue, the kids would run around the playground, pretending to shoot (or send rays out of their hands, or wave swords). The names of the characters would change, but the game was always the same.
Back then, kids didn’t have computers. There was only television and, if the family budget allowed it, books and comics. Kids knew the story lines of their characters, but there was still a lot of room for running and fighting evil.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here. According to the article I cite, Mattel is creating a rather ornate web site with lots of information about the various characters and what they can do, even before the toys are available or the cartoon goes on television. “The intent of the wide distribution is to create viral marketing on social networks,” said Bob Higgins, the executive vice president for children’s and family programming at Fremantle. “Around the world, kids will start hearing about this,” he said. “Kids want to do what their friends do. If they are watching Max Steel, they want to be a part of that party.”
Before I buy my kid a toy, I want to know that he will actually play with it. Not hold onto it while he sits in front of the computer, but play. I want it to engage his imagination so he makes up his own stories, or thinks of ways the characters could participate in his own life.
Toys are media. They are how children learn about the world and how they fit into it. I don’t want my kids to learn that their place is in front of a screen, absorbing content.
I think tomorrow I’ll call up Merriam-Webster and suggest a new word for their dictionary. That word? Geeklitism. (Not to be confused with Geekleetist, which posts fun stuff).
It should be in the dictionary, because it certainly is a thing that exists. But how would I suggest they define it? Damned if I know, although I guess the short version could be: “claiming you’re a ‘real geek’ and other people aren’t; claiming you’re the superior geek.” But really, the various aspects of both this attitude and of being a “geek” generally are so broad that I’m not sure they can be encompassed in a dictionary definition.
The reason for this, and the funny thing about “being a geek,” is that it’s a different experience for everyone. For instance, I’ve been a geek probably all of my life; but I don’t know that I ever really knew it until adulthood, when, thanks to the increased ease of finding like-minded people via the internet, it suddenly turned out it wasn’t such a bad thing to be. As far as I recall, no one called me a geek growing up. I had no idea I was part of this mysterious group of people called “geeks.”
“What??” I can hear a geeklitist out there crying out in triumph. “No one called you a geek? That must mean that you didn’t get bullied by the “cool kids” in school! Haha! You can’t understand the suffering and hardships that I went through in my formative years because of my love of stories about hobbits! You are not a real geek like me!” (This is the kind of thing geeklitists say, don’t you know. Sometimes they also add, “And all the girls made fun of me!! I’ve never gotten over that! My life was so hard!”)
But that’s not really what I said, is it? Of course I got picked on. Most kids do. For instance, when I was in first grade and all the cool kids in my new school had moved on to jeans or whatever was in fashion, my mom, bless her, still dressed me in cutesy pastel sweatsuits with big decorative (but pointless) buttons and bows on them. It follows that one of my first memories of my new school is three girls in my class making fun of my clothes on the playground – at which point I probably said something mean.
I was a well-read little child, who could creatively insult other children with words that none of us really knew the meaning of; but they sounded like insults, so it all worked out. For example, at some point in my primary school years, one of the biggest insults I remember using was, “You’re corroded!” (Which makes no sense under the real definition but sounds like maybe you have a gross skin condition?) My favorite of the weird words I personally transmogrified into an insult when young was “You’re a transubstantiationalist!” No one else had any idea what it meant, but I managed to convince the kids I was using it on that it was a really horrible thing to be. Mwahaha. But I digress. Anyway, at that point, we all got in a fight. Like a physical fight, of the kicking and punching and hair and decorative bow-pulling variety. Yowch.
“Whatever!” the geeklitist is saying. “That’s not what I meant. That’s just fashion. You were only a geek if you were ostracized because of your offbeat hobbies and/or love of genre fiction as a child! That’s what makes you a real geek like me.” Well, yes. I was that, too. I used to sit by myself at lunch and read giant books that were too “old” for me, like Clan of the Cave Bear and The Mists of Avalon, propped up in front of me as I ate with painful slowness (something else for which I was occasionally teased, but which turns out to be the healthy way to eat. Take that!). I’d walk down the school halls reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet or maybe The Deed of Paksenarrion without looking up (during which I developed a great sixth sense for not running into people while looking down, which is very handy these days when texting while walking to work).
I was definitely called weird, and often, annoying (because I used big words and talked a lot) more times than I can count. I engaged in some geek activities that probably would have been thought cool by at least the little boys in my class, like watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men cartoons, but I never realized that, because at that point in my life, boys had cooties. (Of course.) I’m not saying I didn’t have friends; I did, and they were a lot of fun. But I also got made fun of; and as far as I knew, most of my friends were not actually interested in The Lord of the Rings or Batman: The Animated Series. I don’t even know that I ever thought to ask most of them.(Or if I did, and received blank stares, I probably never brought it up again. This is why I’d never make a good Whedonvangelist, another word I’ve decided should be in the dictionary.)
Those were the sorts of things I often enjoyed alone, and didn’t really talk about that much, and that was fine. I knew (from others telling me, repeatedly) that I was a weird child, and I guess I just kind of assumed that was how life was and would continue to be for me – having some interests that nobody around me shared. Of course, that feeling of being alone in one’s interests is often cited as part of the experience of geekdom; and of course, in truth, lots of other people also had those interests; I just hadn’t discovered them yet. But I guess that’s all part of being a geek.
“Ahaha!” an entirely different brand of geeklitist is chortling. “But none of that matters! That’s just kid stuff! You’re not a real geek like me unless you can list, right this minute, in reverse alphabetical order, every superhero who turned out to be a Skrull during Secret Invasion! And until you can name at least three obscure continuity errors in [my favorite comics character’s] ongoing storyline! And unless you can tell me your three favorite fighting tactics for the video game character whose costume you are now wearing!” But, second brand of geeklitist…the water is wide, and the world is large, and I might like a different character than you do, or I might focus on something for different reasons than you do. Are you saying your viewpoint and favorite genre things and factoids are inherently better and geekier than mine, and are the only things that can bestow upon all of us admission into the uber-exclusive society of geekdom, just because they are yours? …Well, yes, yes you are, and that’s pretty self-centered. We can all be geeks in our own ways, with our own specific areas of interest and knowledge. Right?
“No no,” chides another, lone geeklitist, standing apart with one brow raised and pointing a finger at each of us in turn. “You will never, ever be a real geek, because you didn’t watch Firefly until it came out on DVD! You only like the newest Doctor Who! You never participated in the drive to keep Chuck on the air via purchasing mounds of Subway sandwiches. You’ll never be a real geek, not any of you, because (cue dramatic music and Iwo Jima flag-raising reenactment) I was here first, and I claim this geekdom in the name of Geekmoria! It’s mine, all miiiiine!!!!!”
…What? No, really, what? That’s just asinine.
“…”
“…”
“Well…maybe,” says the lone geeklitist doubtfully. “But I was here first.”
How do you know, lone geeklitist? Did you turn on your TV to a new show before anyone else in the entire world? Acquire an ARC of the first book in a now-beloved series? Hold in your excited hands the very first copy of the very first appearance of a comic book character? And even if you did…why does that give you any more claim to an appreciation of it than anyone else? Why does timing somehow make you more passionate about your geekdom than all the other geeks?
“…?”
Exactly.
So, any other geeklitists out there want to make a stand about how they’re the real geeks? I just ask because I don’t like to exclude people, although I realize the irony of saying that to you, geeklitists.
…
…
I’m hearing a lot of silence out there. Guess I’ll just wrap this u–what? I’m sorry? What did you say?
A chorus of low, angry, guttural voices rises from the deep to repeat itself, as one last group of geeklitists has its say:
Last week, I wrote about the awesome folks of Warehouse 13, whom I was lucky enough to meet after attending their panel at Dragon*Con. But they weren’t the only fantastic people at the con, oh no. In fact, Dragon*Con is always so packed with amazing guests that I never get to see or meet all of them, and am left lamenting the fact that I missed Dean Cain’s panel or never got to say hi to Jewel Staite or Sean Maher in the Walk of Fame, despite running around from hotel to hotel like a hyperactive kid in a candy store. But I did get to see and meet a lot of cool folks, and that’s what I’m here to share, so here we go!
The first event I got to was a fantastic Lord of the Rings panel, featuring Billy Boyd (Pippin), Craig Parker (Haldir), and John Rhys-Davies (Gimli). It was a blast. The first thing I have to say about it is very shallow but true: these guys have the most delightful accents! I think I could listen to Scottish, Kiwi, and Welsh actors answer questions all day. And oh, yeah, the questions themselves were pretty good too. I think my favorite bit was when Craig invited a fairly young boy named Orion who was slightly hyperventilating up onto the stage to ask his question (it’s cute when a kid’s that nervous. Adults…well, not so much). I heard through the grapevine later that this happenstance made the kid a minor celebrity at other panels, where people started looking for Orion. To which I say – only at Dragon*Con. I love that about Dragon*Con. My second favorite bit was hearing about how Billy used to read books while working at a bookbinder’s – by tearing out the pages he was finished with and tossing them away. Being an extreme book lover, I’d call that sacrilege, but…well, it does sound kind of fun. And then of course, John predicted that The Hobbit will be a game-changer and that we’re all in for a treat, so: yay!
Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of asking Craig and John a couple of quick questions (missed Billy, sadly. Maybe next year?). Craig is delightfully easygoing, and John is effortlessly charming and has that amazing presence that I associate with really good stage actors. And even though he had a plane to catch, he still took the time to sit down for a few and give me his full attention, which speaks to the sort of person he is. Here’s what they had to say:
Craig Parker:
What would you like to say about current or future projects?
“Actually, I’m a total bum at the moment, because I’m in the process of moving to the States, so everything’s just… everywhere, and I’m not working on anything at the moment.” (Hopefully it won’t be that way for long. I’m sure we’d all love to see him in something again soon).
What’s your favorite part of Dragon*Con?
“I don’t know whether it’s the visuals…the overstimulation of seeing something incredible everywhere you look; or talking with all of the passionate people. It’s an incredibly engaging weekend.”
John Rhys-Davies:
What would you like to say about current or future projects?
“Projects are falling by the wayside all the time – you know, there were two pictures I really wanted to do recently, but they didn’t work out. But now I’m doing Golden Boots, which is a movie about a little boy who wants to play soccer, and that takes place in Detroit, Michigan. I’m also working on Behind the Mask, which takes place in the pre-continental U.S.; and I’ll be the villain. It has a bit of swash; a bit of buckle; a bit of murder…and unfortunately the bad guys don’t win. I’m going to be in the new Pinocchio, which is a mixture of animation and drama – and I’ll be playing the bad guy. And I’m hoping that Flying Tigers will be shot in China early next year.”
What’s your favorite part of Dragon*Con?
”Obviously the people – it’s the chance an actor gets to meet the people who’ve been keeping him employed for the past forty years. You get to talk to them, and know who they are. I cannot tell you how valuable that is. When you work in theater the audience is right there, telling you “You’re good; you’re bad; you stink.” In film, you can lose sight of your audience; and then you can lose sight of yourself and your own true proportion.”
Words of wisdom indeed. Next up we attended the Buffy & Angel Q&A, featuring J. August Richards (Gunn), Juliet Landau (Drusilla), and James Marsters (Spike). James Marsters challenged everyone to embarrass him (they tried but failed); J. August Richards shared his opinion of Gunn’s story arc from street-savvy vampire hunter to lawyer and back (he was happy with the lawyer arc, and with Gunn going back to his roots when the story needed it); and Juliet Landau spoke about her voice work as the Little Sisters in Bioshock (and how she landed the role thanks to her acting as Drusilla).
The panel was a ton of fun, and I got to check in with J. August Richards afterwards. When asked what he’d like to say about current or future projects, Jay told me that he has something he’s really excited about, but he can’t talk about it just yet. Therefore – check back here on ComicMix in a week or two, when I’ll be interviewing J. August Richards about his newest, as-yet-unannounced project! Yay!
When asked his favorite part of Dragon*Con, Jay replied:
“The people! What I love about Dragon*Con is that it’s one of the rare instances where you get to be around fifty thousand people who are completely non-judgmental.”
Word. At the Buffy panel, Juliet Landau mentioned a documentary she’d made that was airing Saturday, Take Flight: Gary Oldman Directs Chutzpah, and my friend and I love Gary Oldman, so we checked that out as well. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it turned out to be one of the surprise best parts of the weekend. The film is a behind-the-scenes documentary of Gary Oldman’s artistic process as he creates a music video for a Jewish rap group (yes, that really is a thing!), and it is fantastic. I was either smiling or laughing for pretty much the whole thing, because the rappers are funny, and Gary Oldman in creative mode is a thing of joy and awesomeness, and Juliet & co. did an amazing job showing all of that. Juliet also did an excellent job in selecting the classical music that accompanies some parts of the film and really highlights the beauty of the more peaceful scenes.
When asked about what she’d learned in making the film, she replied, “Every set you’re on, you learn. One of the things about Gary on set – and all the best directors I’ve worked with, like Tim Burton and Joss Whedon, are like this – is that he is very focused on the work, but also on having fun. Everybody’s focused, but there really is a joy to be making stuff – that’s really palpable with Gary.” And it really is.
I got to chat with the extremely nice Juliet after the film, and she shared that the documentary is available for purchase on her website. I definitely recommend it, but fair warning: the song being filmed is pretty catchy, so if you watch it, I guarantee you’ll be singing, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send your best guy right over,” for at least half a day afterwards! Juliet also mentioned that her upcoming projects include The Bronx Bull (Raging Bull II), and Where the Road Runs Out. And her favorite part of Dragon*Con? “Meeting all the people!”
Also included in our mad convention dash was the Big Damn Heroes panel, with Adam Baldwin (Jayne), Jewel Staite (Kaylee), and Sean Maher (Simon) of Firefly and Serenity. Those three are like a comedy show once they get going. Highlights of the panel included Nathan Fillion making cameos on all of their cell phones (taking over the panel even when he’s not on the panel, as Adam said!) to check in repeatedly on, basically, how pretty Jewel was looking that day (it really was a hilarious gag, and she really is very pretty); an audience member contributing Firefly bourbon for them to drink; and Adam Baldwin being temporarily embarrassed to share with the crowd (he got over it).
Speaking of Adam, I also went to a Chuck panel where he talked about his role as John Casey; and even when he’s the only one on stage, he’s a riot. Adam answered questions such as whether Casey was really in the Navy or the Marines, and then ribbed fans for being that into the details of the show, noting that “It’s not real!” However, he clearly appreciates the fans who care enough about his characters (notably Jayne) to dress the part, and was particularly kind to a thirteen-year-old fan who was a bit nervous in asking her question. As I said, I sadly missed chatting with Sean and Jewel, but I did get to talk with the quick-witted Adam after the panels.
Adam reports that his newest project is the opening episode of Law & Order: SVU. “I’m joining the cast as a ‘replacement’ for the captain, Cragen, who…got himself in a little bit of hot water last season. So that has kept me a little busy.” As for his favorite part of Dragon*Con? “The people – lovely people who are very kind, and good old Southern hospitality. And the food’s great…you know, wine, women, good food! And the panels …and the utilikilts (pointing). There’s one right behind you.”
And so there was.
Meeting Adam was a lovely experience; and another highlight of the weekend was Jane Espenson’s panel. Jane is like the writer equivalent of actor Mark Sheppard, in that she has written for basically every awesome genre show I’ve ever seen. She’s also delightful to listen to. Her panel focused in a large part on her newest project, Husbands, a web series which can be seen online at lovehusbands.com. We watched an episode, and it’s very funny; and certainly a spin on the newlywed premise that we haven’t quite seen before, being about two gay men who have gotten married in haste and are now dealing with the consequences. She also encouraged people to check out Once Upon A Time over on ABC if they haven’t yet, and answered questions about the writing process, mentioning that she’d like to turn her blog musings into a book someday (yes please, Jane!). Writing tips she shared included her own approach to beginning to write for an established character by asking “what one incident is going to most poke at the character’s emotional core? Getting inside that is one of the best ways to train yourself to be a good writer.” As for her favorite part of Dragon*Con: “Meeting beautiful amazing people in costumes!”
Speaking of people who’ve worked on everything cool ever, I also got to talk with Rob Paulsen, voice actor for a million billion zillion of the toon characters we all know and love, including Yakko Warner, Pinky, and more from Animaniacs. He couldn’t possibly have known that’s one of my favorite cartoon shows ever, but that didn’t stop him from saying, “Hellooooooo, nurses!” as I and my two gal pals walked up to say hi, and, “You all make me want to say, ‘Narf!’” which got the conversation off to a fun start. Rob shared that since he was Raphael on the original Teenage MutantNinja Turtles, he’s pretty excited to be Donatello now on the new one. “And Sean Astin is Raphael, Jason Biggs is Leonardo, and Greg Cipes is Michelangelo, so that’s great.” He also suggested we check out his podcast, Talking Toons, which can be found on iTunes or RobPaulsenLive.com; and now that I know about it, I certainly will! As for his favorite part of Dragon*Con:
Rob: “The pretty chicks!”
Me: “He says, looking at us…”Rob: “Absolutely! I’m not the blind Turtle!”
Bless.
Walking around the Walk of Fame, I got to chat with several other actors and actresses, including Lee Arenberg, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame (“’Ello, poppet!”) who was enjoying meeting all the fans, and can currently be seen as Grumpy in Once Upon a Time. He also mentioned that he’ll be in the new season of Californication. Last of all I sawMira Furlan, who told me that she’s going to be in a new film starring Penelope Cruz that’s called Twice Born. She then opined that DragonCon was “fantastic – mad and fantastic,” and I couldn’t agree more.
Well! That’s the news for this week, but there’s even more to come, as I also got to attend the Battlestar Galactica panel and chat with those actors while at Dragon*Con and have more to say about that; we’ve got an exclusive chat with J. August Richards in the offing; and I’ve just gotten back from the fantastic Baltimore Comic Con.
So check back for more excitement next week, and until then, Servo Lectio!
Tomorrow night (9pm ET) SyFy premieres SCHOOL SPIRITS, a new reality based series from the creators of CELEBRITY GHOST STORIES and Mark Burnett Productions. They go inside high schools and colleges where paranormal activities are noted – and we get to tag along. right here. Plus an apology to President Bush from “The King” and TMNT gets shelved.
You sure wouldn’t know that the world is in an economic crisis by looking at the prices that have been paid recently for original art. Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses, who’s recent auctions collectively tallied $266,591,000, established record sale prices for pieces of art including the most expensive work ever sold at auction, Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ which garnered a whopping $120 million!
Fans of comic art began to scream themselves when Roy Lichtenstein’s painting, ‘Sleeping Girl,’ sold for $45 million, a record price for any of his works. Lichtenstein is often criticized by comic art enthusiasts for not having credited the long list of comic artists whose work he used as subject matter for his paintings. Comparisons of ‘Sleeping Girl’ and the Tony Abruzzo panel which it is derived from, as well as dozens of other comparisons, can be seen here. David Barsalou deconstructs Lichtenstein with a vengeance and it is well worth following his crusade on the internet and in his facebook group.
The good news is that, though comic art has been generally viewed by the fine art community as “low brow” and is still not in a position to command the kind of money that Munch or Lichtenstein’s pieces do, original comic art is beginning to command some very respectable prices. It has long been known that there is value in collecting comic books. The highest price paid so far for Action Comics #1 being $2.16 million. The same comic book is estimated to be currently worth about $4.3 million.
Original comic art, on the other hand, is now gaining in value as well. The most expensive piece of comic art ever sold is reportedly a full page panel by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson from ‘The Dark Knight Returns.’ The piece sold to an anonymous collector for $448,125 as part of Heritage Auctions’ Vintage Comics and Comic Art Auction in 2011.
In the past week Heritage auctioned two more significant pieces that collected big bucks. Contradicting the earlier report Heritage claims that a Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott original from Fantastic Four #55 featuring a half page splash of the Silver Surfer and signed by scripter Stan Lee achieved the highest price paid for a page of panel art selling for $155,350, roughly one third the value of the Batman piece.
Another work of original comic art that proved its muster was the first ever drawing of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird that fetched $71,700.
Forbes recently ran an article on their site that lists good reasons for investing in comic art but neglects the obvious: Supply and Demand.
Though it may seem that there are tons of original comic art proliferating in the market, and there are, how many show significant images of major characters drawn by masters of the industry or are pages from historic works? Not as many as you might think and now that a lot of art is created digitally, the chances of hard copy future original art surfacing for sale are dwindling.
The idea that there are over seventy years worth of original art numbering in the millions of pages trafficking around the collectors market is false. Most comic art that was created prior to the mid sixties was simply destroyed by the publishers, considered by them as nothing more than waste once the printable films were made.
Flo Steinberg, secretary at Marvel during the early years of the ‘House of Ideas,’ was quoted in David Anthony Kraft’s COMICS INTERVIEW #17 saying, “We used to throw it out …when the pile got too full…it was like ‘old wood’ to us.” Likewise, there are stories of Neal Adams dashing across the office at DC to rescue original art that was about to be destroyed in a paper slicer! Any art that survived that slaughter was generally given away as gifts or just managed to filter its way out of the office as random souvenirs. The scary part is that most of the artists just accepted this practice as the norm!
By the late sixties when fandom started to prove that there was a secondary market for the art through the establishment of comic conventions and comic shops, artists began to demand that their art be returned. This was a tricky process since several people generally worked on any given issue. The art would be split up among the writer, penciler, inker, and even the letterer. Colorists usually would get back the color guides that they made for the color separator. Because of this practice entire issues are nearly impossible to acquire.
By the 1980′s the independent movement gave creators many more rights and more creators were responsible for their work in its entirety but still, usually, would sell off pages at conventions, one at a time, to support themselves economically.
Today more and more comics are being created digitally and hard copy originals don’t even exist. The work and creative talent that goes into creating a comics page is once again being trivialized as an unfortunate part of the process. Instead of ‘old wood’ it is now just a collection of magnetic data hogging up a hard drive, facing obsolescence with the next wave of new technology.
The printed version may remain as the only collectable hard copy of future comic works and even that is challenged by digital delivery of comics. The art of making comics is finally being recognized as something of value yet its new found respect is threatened with its own potentionally temporary creative process.
Criticize Lichtenstein as much as you’d like, but his copy of a single panel, swiped from a forgotten romance comic, will exist for a long, long time and will only become more valuable while the original line drawing it was lifted from has probably been trashed for fifty years. How can we come expect the art world, or anybody, to respect comics as more than source material for pop art parodies when we continue to allow the originals it to be disposable.
Is comic art trash or treasure? As comic artists, we need to decide for ourselves.
I love comics. I love reading them, thinking about them, discussing them, and even critiquing them. I also love writing them, something I’ve discovered in the last couple of years as I started writing a series of webcomics about characters in upcoming comic book-related movies, which were then published on movie news websites like MTV Splash Page and ReelzChannel. Since that time, I’ve realized that I’d really like to keep writing comics, including, hopefully someday soon, full issues for a major company, to be seen by all the worrrrrrld[insert maniacal laugh here].
That may seem like a big leap, but it could happen. After all, most of the people who are or have been involved in professional comics started out just as I did: as ridiculously huge fans of the medium and the characters and stories. I mean, sure, maybe a few here or there got pulled into a job and then discovered they liked it, but for the most part, the people making comics do it because they were fans who, basically, landed their dream jobs through expressing their love of or thoughts on comics.
There are some great public examples of this amongst the current Big Names in comics. They include Geoff Johns, who wrote in to DC Comics as a kid with suggestions for the Superboy storyline. There’s also Kevin Smith, whose lifelong comics fandom landed him a number of roles in comics-writing after he’d already made a name for himself with movies (and he also owns Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, the first comic book store I ever went to, being a Jersey gal). There’s also Gail Simone, who came to the attention of comics publishers through her website Women in Refrigerators, which critiqued the treatment of female characters in comics, and has since written a weekly column on Comic Book Resources and a lot of great comics about both male and female characters, including well-received stints on the all-female group comic Birds of Prey. (I mention this comic in particular because I think it’s great that after Simone expressed her opinion on a certain issue in comics, she had the opportunity to address that issue by writing a number of female characters.) And let’s not forget Mark Waid, whose studio tour on Comic Book Resources reveals just how much of a fan collector he is, as well as giving us this quote about a three-page sequence from Flash #0 that hangs on his wall: “[it’s] the scene where the adult Wally West meets his ten-year-old self and tells the boy that no matter how rotten his young life seems or how hard the days are to get through, when he grows up, every wish he’s ever wished for will come true. It’s hands-down my favorite sequence I have ever written because – and I say this in all sincerity – I often dream about being able to travel back in time and tell young Mark Waid that same thing.”
Aw.
Of course, compared to these greats and all of their former-fan-now-professional companions, including my esteemed fellow columnists at ComicMix, I wouldn’t say I’ve had too much of a “career in comics” to date. But like, I suspect, at least a few big names today, I have gone from being “just a fan” to being much closer to where I’d like to be in the industry, and have high hopes of continuing along that trajectory in the future. I know that a lot of other fans have similar hopes. So I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to look back at my own experience with comics so far and see how it’s progressed.
As a kid I hadn’t read many comics, and didn’t even know there were such things as “comic book stores” devoted to (gasp) just that medium. There were a few comics in the house that belonged to my oldest sister – the ones I remember being some old collections of Archie and some individual issues of Richie Rich – and I did read those few books countless times, and remember being enamored of both the funny and entertaining stories and the way the illustrations complimented and enhanced them. But I didn’t lack for reading materials, with an English teacher for a mom and two older sisters who loved books, so I never went looking for more comics.
Television, however, was a different matter. You didn’t have to go out and find television shows – they came to you! So I grew up on a healthy mix of cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ThunderCats, X-Men: The Animated Series (I still love the theme song!), DuckTales and Darkwing Duck, Batman: The Animated Series, and countless others, most of which either started as or ran concurrently with comic books (although I didn’t know it at the time). I also, thanks to my dad, got a healthy dose from an early age of adventure and comics-related shows and movies he loved, including Sky King, The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, and the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Fast forward a few years, and I was addicted to Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (and even later, I got hooked on Smallville. Apparently I can’t resist on-screen Clark Kent). So comics have always been a part of my life, and I’ve always been a fan, but I didn’t realize it.
In 2008, that all changed. Thanks to an ex who suggested we go to the local comic book store for Free Comic Book Day, I started getting interested in collecting paper comics. On that fateful day he recommended a character that “I think you’ll like,” i.e. Deadpool; and after flipping through a couple of issues, I was completely hooked. In the following month I acquired and read all the Deadpool books I could find (as well as a slew of other comics, both new and old), and, in a joking conversation with the ex in which I was pretending to answer questions as Deadpool, I think I said something like, “wouldn’t it be funny if Deadpool was online answering questions?” and he said, “You should totally do that,” and thus, the first entry of Ask Deadpool was born. I made up the first few questions myself; and by the next day, people were writing in. I’ve now been regularly answering questions online as Deadpool for four years.
I’ve never had much of an interest in writing fanfiction generally, but with comics, it feels a little different. In a strange way, the comics industry could be looked at as the ultimate repository for quality fanfic (except that as it’s published, it becomes canon). There are so many professionals that got their start playing in sandboxes that were built by previous professionals that writing a comic book character non-professionally feels less like fanfic and more like practicing to join the fun. Sure, my Ask Deadpool writing is still fanfic (until I take over Deadpool at Marvel and write it for the next 20 years, mwahahaaaaa), but it’s different than someone writing about a closed universe such as, say, the Harry Potter series. Not only is writing comics fanfic a great way to practice writing previously published characters’ voices, but there’s actually the chance that all that practice might someday be put to use, professionally.
And there’s also the chance that in writing about something you love, you will accidentally become known as a gigantic Deadpool fan to everyone you know and many people you don’t, which will result in a friend getting a cool Deadpool print signed to you by one of the best inkers in the business (hey-oh, Nathan Massengill!), and you will be so excited about it that you will get it framed, and send a thank you email and photo of the framed print to the inker, and subsequently become friends with the inker, who incidentally convinces you to go to a comic con and introduces you to a bunch of other cool people in comics, and soon other fans and all these people who actually work in comics will know you as the biggest Deadpool fan ever, and this turns out to be a pretty good thing.
Because then you will turn out to be “the most passionate Deadpool fan” that a movie news site has encountered, and will be asked to write a fan article about Deadpool for them, at the same time that you just so happened to have started writing comic strip scripts using Deadpool and other characters to commentate on current pop-culture news, and have found another fan who’s a great artist and has agreed to draw the comics, and it turns out that you’ve already written a script that exactly fits the topic of the article. And the news site likes it, and want to see more.
That’s how I ended up having webcomics published on popular movie news websites. (Although it’s also important to know your own value and not be afraid to pitch something. My Avengers three-part series ran on MTV Splash Page because I actually pitched it to the editor, rather than him finding me.) The same passion for comics and network of people and happenstances has also led to me meeting the folks here at ComicMix and being invited to write a weekly column; and to me meeting another writer who has already had several comic scripts published professionally, and with whom I am now plotting out the greatest comic series ever created (well we think so, anyway). And although I can’t predict the future, I have high hopes that for me, it will hold an abundance of work in comics.
The interesting thing here is, until recently I didn’t really sit down and think to myself, “hey, maybe I could actually write comics. Like, professionally.” Instead, I was just having fun with something I enjoy, and expressing a passion for characters and a medium I’ve come to love. As it turns out (I think, and evidence suggests), this is a pretty good way to get started in comics, and the more I think about what I’d like to write in comics, the more ideas I have. Along with thegreatest comic series ever created, I’d love to write Deadpool for Marvel someday (after much more practice, perhaps!) and I’ve got a Superman story in my head that I think would knock people’s socks off. And that’s just what’s percolating in my brain right now. But really, whatever happens in my future, I’m overjoyed that I am where I am today, writing about a medium I love and interacting with people who keep me inspired, and plan to continue to write columns, and webcomics, and anything else people will let me write professionally, for as long as I can. And maybe, if you’re a passionate fan like me, you can do that too! Servo Lectio!
So I finally joined the clamoring hordes who have gone to see The Avengers and, yes, I had a really good time. No spoilers but I can define my favorite scene in two words that won’t spoil the show: “Puny god.” ‘Nuff said. Those who have seen it know what I’m talking about. I also really enjoyed the little scene at the end of all the credits.
It’s made a billion dollars worldwide, and its already on its way towards making a bazillion, I’m sure. Marvel has played it very canny, building up to it by way of Iron Man (I and II), Thor and Captain America. You’d almost think that The Avengers success was inevitable and you’d be terribly, terribly wrong.
I got two words for you.
Joss Whedon.
Joss Whedon is the real star of the film, having both written and directed it (having worked up the story along with Zak Penn who, among other things, wrote a bunch of Marvel X-Men movies, created the TV show Alphas and directed and co-wrote – with Werner Herzog – the wonderfully strange and funny film Incident at Loch Ness and, yes, that’s a recommendation). It must be really nice to be Joss Whedon right now. The Avengers is making money hand over fist and breaking all sorts of records. That translates into power out in Hollyweird – the power to get the movies you want to do green-lighted.
Yet, I’m also sure there will be those (especially those on the studio end who will have to negotiate with Mr. Whedon’s agents on his next salary) who will claim that it was all set-up by the other films and that anybody could have directed The Avengers and it would have done just as well. That sort of mind just sees us puny artistic types as widgets – take one out, plug in another. Same result, right?
To minds that think like that, I have two more words for you (and not necessarily the ones you’re thinking):
Michael Bay.
Bay, in case you don’t remember, has directed all three Transformers movies, among other things. In many ways, I’m surprised they didn’t tap him – all three Transformers movies are big, spectacular, lots of special effects, playing with a franchise created elsewhere and made lots of money. In some ways, he’s the more logical choice – he has the experience with doing that kind of film.
Imagine what a Michael Bay version of The Avengers would have been like. This is also the guy who is producing the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, only now its just called Ninja Turtles and they’re not mutant turtles, they’re aliens from space. Go ahead; imagine what he would have done with The Avengers.
Okay, I’m obviously not a big Michael Bay fan. But plug in someone else as well (who I don’t like) such Roland Emmerich who also has experience with big special effects laden money making films like (gawd help me) Independence Day, 2012, The Patriot, Godzilla (the remake) and so much more. What would an Emmerich Avengers film have looked like?
If you subscribe to the artistic widget theory then these guys could have made The Avengers and it would have made money. Would it have made the kind of money, however, that Whedon’s version is making and, more to all of our fannish hearts, would it have been as good? Would it have been such a quintessential Marvel story? I don’t think so. I have relatives and friends who aren’t fan geeks like most of us and they’re going back to the film and seeing it more than once because they just plain enjoyed it so much.
Why? Because whether they know it or not, it’s a Joss Whedon film, a Joss Whedon story. We who know his work can see it all over the place. The respect and power of the female characters in the story. The traditional Marvel tropes (heroes meet heroes, don’t like each other, fight and bicker, and then come together) done RIGHT. The clever dialogue, insightful characterization, playing with theme that Whedon does over and over again. It’s Whedon who made The Avengers the film that we all, fan and novice alike, are really loving worldwide.
I’ll give the suits their due – they chose Whedon instead of the more logical and safer choices. Joss Whedon had never directed a film on this scale before (Serenity is great but it’s not on this scale). However, he brought a passion and respect for the source material that satisfied all of us fans and made it accessible to everyone else. There may have been some questions out in Hollyweird when Whedon was picked but there can’t be any now. He wasn’t the “artistic widget” choice; he was the right choice.
While fans continue to rally against explosion producer Michael Bay with his continual nerd-prodding over the recent announcement of the ‘Ninja Turtles’, it seems Bay can’t get enough of the hate. At a recent Transformers: Dark of the Moon Collectors Edition release and signing event at a soon-to-be closed Best Buy in San Paulo, California, Bay dropped a few more details on the upcoming Turtles release.
“We’re taking the best of the property, and trimming off all of the fat. The movie is really sharply written. I know the fans are clamoring against us, but they don’t know all the details. The flick will be equal parts Sin City and Avatar. We have a large part of it ready for pre-production. We’re bringing in [Robert] Rodriguez in to help run the set-shots for the black and white stuff. I’ll be assisting on the 3-D effects. Trust me, seriously, once you see Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo in their Shell Power Suits… you know it’ll be worth all this hype.”
Fans continued to press Bay with questions. One spectator, donning head to toe TMNT merchandise pushed to the front of the line to ask (quite angrily) “What about Donatello?!”
Bay, normally a very jovial celebrity turned cold at the question, and quickly snapped back “Like I said, we trimmed off all the fat,” and had his escort take him out of the back of the store.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman has moved his entire studio into Meltdown Comics… and he’s gonna auction the entire thing off in one giant lot to benefit the Hero Initiative.
The KEVIN EASTMAN ART STUDIO auction will run for 10 days beginning Dec. 25th, Christmas Day, at 9:00 PM (PST). It will wrap the evening of January 4th at 9:00 PM, which will be the final night of the 35 DAYS OF KEVIN EASTMAN event at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. Swing by for the huge blowout closing night party!
And before you do, check out this video in which Kevin walks you through the studio and some of the items.
As a license, I have the utmost respect for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Since its comic debut in 1984, the property has been spun off into numerous animated incarnations, several movie franchises (both old and yet-to-come), and a bevy of merchandise unheard of unless you count Star Wars. And I have to give props where props are due: the IP as a whole has never been better. That being said? It could all go downhill very quickly. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
Today more and more comics are being created digitally and hard copy originals don’t even exist. The work and creative talent that goes into creating a comics page is once again being trivialized as an unfortunate part of the process. Instead of ‘old wood’ it is now just a collection of magnetic data hogging up a hard drive, facing obsolescence with the next wave of new technology.
While fans continue to rally against explosion producer Michael Bay with his continual nerd-prodding over the recent announcement of the ‘Ninja Turtles’, it seems Bay can’t get enough of the hate. At a recent Transformers: Dark of the Moon Collectors Edition release and signing event at a soon-to-be closed Best Buy in San Paulo, California, Bay dropped a few more details on the upcoming Turtles release.
