Ever since we resumed our sundry weekly columns I’ve asked our writers to keep their focus on our popular culture in general and, as often as possible, on comics in specific. I have no problem linking the events of the day to our culture; indeed, that usually brings a nice contemporary perspective to our cheap thrills. At worse, it makes for a fun rant.
I commend our ComicMix columnists for their faithful cooperation and effort. And so, now, I’m going to violate my own edict. I’ve done this little rant ever since those hallowed days of the real First Comics three decades ago. Somehow, I even managed to get away with it at DC Comics. So, true to my Ashkenazi roots, I am going to maintain this tradition.
Next Tuesday is election day. In telling you this, I’m assuming your teevee set is broken. We get to pick us all of our Congresspeople, a third of our senators, a petulance of governors, a shitload of local officials, and, oh yes, a President of the United States. All are important in that each winner will have his or her foot on our necks and his or her hands in our pockets. We are given the holy right to choose our oppressors.
“But Mike,” you might say (if you’re being polite), “if they’re just going to oppress us, why should we bother?”
Because somebody is going to win. Good, bad, and otherwise – and it will be good, bad, and otherwise – as of this writing either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is going to win. You might think they are both jerks. Maybe so, but one of those jerks will be sworn in as President this coming January 20th. That’s an absolute fact.
And odds are overwhelming that the winner will be choosing the next member of the Supreme Court. Maybe the next two.
You know the Supreme Court. The folks who are the last word on all of our laws and who, for years now, have decided a great many things by a one-vote margin? Yeah, those folks. They even decide elections. Whoever wins the election next week is likely to bring about a fundamental change in our nation’s laws and procedures, one that will have an effect for decades and decades to come.
Are you opposed to abortion? How about our medical care laws? Corporations-as-people? Super-PACs? Incarceration of marijuana users? Next Tuesday is your big chance to put your left foot in, your left foot out, your right foot in, and shake the nation all about.
I do not care whom you vote for. Well, that’s a total lie; of course I do. But that’s not the point here. No matter whether you’re smart enough to agree with my politics or you’re some kind of stalking Neanderthal, this Tuesday get off your ass and vote!
If you decide not to do so, you lose your moral right to bitch. And that, dear friends, is among the greatest of all pleasures.
Next week, back to life’s more important matters.
Mike Gold is ComicMix’s editor-in-chief, and this was a bone fide editorial.
While we’re almost halfway through the current football season, hard to believe, fans who cannot get enough of the sport should know that season three of The League is now out on home video.
We have two Blu-ray copies to give away courtesy of 20th Century Home Entertainment. The semi-improvised hit comedy is about a fantasy football league, its members, and their everyday lives.
To be a fan of The League, you don’t need to know much about fantasy football, or sports at all. You just need to have friends that you hate. The ensemble comedy follows a group of old friends in a fantasy football league who care deeply about one another – so deeply that they use every opportunity to make each other’s lives miserable.
Taco lost the Shiva Bowl in season three so what advice would you give him for the current season? The two best answers received by 11:59 p.m., Sunday, October 21 will be winners. The judgment of ComicMix will be final and the contest is open to readers only in the United States and Canada.
The box set includes the following Special Features:
Once again, Mr. Davis is not with us due to his hilarious misadventures in France. It is our understanding that he was involved in a long discussion regarding the effectiveness of the “no-fly” list under the belief that it restricts Jeff Goldblum’s employment opportunities.
We have it on good authority that Mr. Davis is now back in the United States, evidently returning bags of dog shit. This, of course, would be another story. We are simply grateful that the Wi-Fi connection at Gitmo remains as strong as Mr. Davis’s sense of indignation.
The hysterical It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia just saw its seventh season released on Blu-ray/DVD.
In season 7 we saw the Gang prepare for the apocalypse, hit the beach at the Jersey Shore, produce a child beauty pageant, and take a walk down memory lane at their high school reunion. As they say, some things never change. So if you haven’t seen these episodes yet, be prepared for more depraved schemes, half-baked arguments and absurdly underhanded plots to subvert one another.
We have two copies to give away to readers, limited to those in the United States and Canda. Tell us who is your favorite character and why before 11:59 p.m. , Saturday, October 20. The judgment of ComicMix will be final.
Here are more details on the home video release.
Special Features:
● Commentary on “THE GANG GOES TO THE JERSEY SHORE” featuring Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney
● Blooper Reel
● Artemis Tours Philadelphia
● Commentary on ‘The Anti-Social Network’ featuring Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney
● Commentary on ‘The Gang Gets Trapped’ featuring Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney
● Commentary on ‘The High School Reunion Part 2’ featuring Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney
Women had made their mark as pilots well before World War II. Amelia Earhart, Jacqueline Cochran, Nancy Harkness Love, Bessie Coleman, and Harriet Quimby were some of the women holding records in aviation.
When war broke out in Europe, Cochran, Harkness and other women went to England to volunteer to fly in the Air Transport Auxiliary, which had been using female pilots as ferriers since 1940. These women were the first American women to fly military aircraft – Spitfires, Typhoons, Hudsons, Mitchells, Bienhams, Oxfords, Walruses, and Sea Otters under combat conditions.
In 1942, now in the war, the United States was in desperate straits for combat pilots. After much political maneuvering and bickering, it was decided to train women as ferry pilots, with Jackie Cochran enlisted to direct the program. 25,000 women applied; only 1,830 were accepted; of these, 1,074 passed the training and became Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPS. The WASPS flew over 60 million miles, piloting everything from trainers to fighters like the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-51 Mustangs and the heavy bombers: B-17s, B-26s, and B-29s. They ferried new planes long distances from factories to military bases and departure points across the country. They tested newly overhauled planes. And they towed targets to give ground and air gunners training shooting – with live ammunition.
In 1959, an independent researcher named William Randolph Lovelace, who was part of the team developing the tests for NASA’s first male astronauts (who became known as the Mercury 7 – see or read The Right Stuff) became interested in finding how women would stand up to the same conditions; in 1960, he invited accomplished pilot Geraldlyn “Jerrie” Cobb to submit herself to this challenge.
The tests ranged from general physicals and X-rays to weird things like swallowing a rubber tube to test stomach acids, undergoing electrical shocks to test the ulnar nerve (found in the forearm), having ice water shot into their ears to test vertigo and reaction time, and dozens of other weird oddities. (See or read The Right Stuff to get an idea of the regimen.)
She became the first American woman to undergo and pass all three phases of the testing.
19 more women were invited into Lovelace’s program, which was funded by WASP director Jacqueline Cochran.
13 passed.
They became known as the Mercury 13.
I bring this up because writer Kelly Sue DeConnick is doing something remarkable in the new Captain Marvel series. Without publicity or blowing of trumpets, DeConnick is rewriting the possibilities – no, the actualities – of “women in comics.” Using the proud history of women in aviation, including the WASPs and the Mercury 13, DeConnick and her team, which includes artist Dexter Soy and editor Stephen Wacker, are presenting women who are just as smart, just as stupid, just as capable, just as frightened, just as full of bravado, just as confused, just as sure-minded, and just as fucked-up as any of their male counterparts.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
High Flight
John Gillepsie Magee, Jr.
By the way, Captain Marvel rocks!
Fly, girl, fly!!
TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten, Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon
Family Guy’s tenth season saw the family travel through time and space, from revisiting the very first episode to crossing the Atlantic Ocean. They met famous folk like Ryan Reynolds and Robin Williams and had the usual assortment of antics.
Family Guy Season 10, containing all 14 episodes, is coming out on DVD and thanks to our friends at 20th Century Home Entertainment, we have three copies to give away.
You must live in the United States or Canada to be eligible to participate. To enter to win, tell us which era or location the family should visit this coming season – no repeats. We want your best ideas no later than 11:59 p.m., Monday, September 24. Prize winners will be selected on the 25th and prizes will be shipped directly from 20th Century Home Entertainment. The decision of ComicMix’s judges will be final.
Two hundred and twenty five years ago today, the final draft of the Constitution of the United States was adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The First Amendment of the Constitution states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We mention this because earlier today, comic book artist Molly Crabapple (that’s her artwork above, previously published in The Nation) peaceably assembled on the streets of New York City for the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Apparently, the NYPD insisted everyone get on the pavement, and once they were on the pavement they were arrested.
Molly live-tweeted her arrest on her Twitter account. Warren Ellis started the hashtag #FreeMollyCrabapple, which rapidly became a trending topic on Twitter, and was covered by numerous news outlets. And this evening, Ms. Crabapple was released.
We’re sure she’ll have much more to say later. For now, we’re just happy she’s out.
My Twitter feed informed me today that my current obsession, the music video to “Gangnam Style” by Korean pop singer Psy, has passed 100 million hits on YouTube. The cool kids love it. The masses love it.
So I was taken aback when a friend of mine went on a Facebook rant complaining about it. He’s Korean-American, and he not only hated the video, but everyone who liked it. If I’m understanding him correctly, he thought it was over-produced, hook-heavy, and reflected badly on the Korean music scene.
I felt as if I was being inadvertently racist. The things he slammed were the things I loved. Too many cuts? Impossible. Ridiculous imagery? That’s my favorite part. I have no idea what they’re saying, but I love the way they’re saying it.
Also, I love the guy in the yellow suit.
Is my affection for this video a sign of racism? In my experience, the easiest way to spot a racist is to listen for the phrase “I am not a racist.” I’m not going to fall into that trap. And I’ve had an interest in Asian culture at least since college, when a class in Chinese Literature in translation introduced me to a new way of thinking and a new way to see the world.
I’ve loved Japanese comics since before they were cool (or at least, the beginning of when they were cool). They displayed a depth and breadth of subject matter and passion that was missing from American comics at the time, whether focusing on politics, adventure or cats.
Still, I’m not very knowledgeable about Korea. And it’s certainly racist to lump together all Asian societies as if they are the same.
I’ve struggled with this conundrum before. In the 1990s, the film Bamboozled made me question whether my love of tap dancing was racist. I remember talking to Dwayne McDuffie about it, and he said, “I think Spike Lee likes tap dancing, too.”
Does that let me off the hook?
If you think I’m being too politically correct, consider how it must feel to be on the receiving end. I had that experience when I saw the fantastic French animated film, The Triplets of Belleville. There is a part of the film when the main characters get to the United States, and everyone here is incredibly obese. I wanted to raise my hand and say “We’re not all like that.”
I imagine that my friend feels the same way when he watches Psy. I wouldn’t enjoy it if all of American pop music was judged by Taylor Swift. And I don’t even hate Taylor Swift.
It would help if there was, generally, more diversity in our popular culture. If straight white male was not the default assumption, the exceptions to straight white male wouldn’t be startling. And the people who make these assumptions know they have a problem.
Those of us in comics are among the worst offenders. It’s still front-page news when a flagship character is African-American.
Let’s work together to fix this. But first, I have to work on my pony moves.
Back in 1986, I was selling DC Comics on the idea of the Suicide Squad. At the time I proposed it, the Squad would be a relatively subversive idea: the U.S. government would use supervillains on covert ops that were deemed in the national interest. Unofficial, unseen by the public, doing dirty work.
Between the time I sold DC on the idea and when the first issue debuted (May 1987), the Iran-Contra Affair, also known as Irangate, broke out. In it, the Executive Branch of Ronald Reagan’s White House were illegally selling guns to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras that had been banned by Congress via the Boland Amendment. So the U.S. government was engaged in illegal covert action already. Once again, reality made me look like a piker.
Reality has a way of doing that. There are things that happen in so-called “real life” that I would find it hard to sell to an editor.
Let’s take Rep. Todd Akin (Republican, Missouri), who is running for the Senate seat in that state. He famously said last week that, in the cases of “forcible rape” that pregnancy isn’t likely because “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” (The New York Times covered the whole incident pretty well here. This is not some backwater goofball; he’s a six term congressman and is, or was, a member of the House Science Committee.
I don’t think I could sell an editor a character who believed something that fundamentally flawed. It is too much of a caricature. And yet it’s real.
Let’s take another case. Back in January, Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield, a Republican, claimed that it was virtually impossible for heterosexuals to get AIDS. I guess he never heard (or cared) about how AIDS has ravaged Africa – or, for that matter, America. Okay, this one I might get past an editor but again I’d be close to caricature and parody.
And down in Texas, Judge Tom Head said if President Obama is elected to a second term, it could cause a civil war. “He’s going to try to hand over sovereignty of the United States to the U.N. We’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.” He added: “Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ’em in Lubbock County. OK. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say, ‘You’re not coming in here.'”
The judge says he was quoted out of context but you can see a video of it here. He was quoted exactly. And he wasn’t foaming at the mouth or kidding; he’s was very matter of fact about it. And the interviewer is just sitting and nodding and going “Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.”
Again, I don’t know if I can sell him as a character to an editor of fiction. I’m not sure I could sell his scenario to an editor. There are too many logic flaws in it. A fantasy should have a least some element of reality in it and this is just paranoia.
What links them all? They’re all right wing Republican conservatives with strong Tea Party connections. Individually, they are incidents. Link them together and they’re a narrative.
Although closeted in the interim report of the 1954 comic book hearings, race was not an issue that America really wanted to deal with and perhaps that above all is why race had been given little more than a nod in the hearing.
Race was however one of the major reasons that 2.5 million black Americans registered for the draft between 1941-45. Hoping that by helping their country win the war the United States would at last make the “Four Freedoms” a real part of their lives and not something they had to aspire too. Freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and fear were offered to every American by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in one of the greatest speeches in the history of the United States of America.
Black people were well aware that those freedoms were not being offered to us, not without some serious mind changing by many in the country. Enlisting and fighting in World War II was going to change those minds that at least what a great many black people believed or wanted to believe. During WW II Japanese propaganda ridiculed America’s so called great society by pointing out the hypocrisy that existed therein. They pointed to the exclusion of black players from baseball, the national past time, as proof of that hypocrisy.
And they were right.
The great society that was America where “all man are created equal” and where “land of the free, home of the brave” originated was anything but to black people in the United States. Other American ideals such as opportunity, rights, liberty, democracy and equality were a rallying cry from America to the world. Baseball has been the national pastime almost since the first ball was thrown out at the first game. Nothing says America like Baseball.
Japan’s propaganda aside, WW II saw the best of America. The war produced many heroes and many more books and films based on those heroes which trilled the American public.
During World War II there were plenty of black heroes, but even today those heroes are slow to be recognized. As late as 1993 there were no black Medal of Honor recipients. That was rectified in 1997 when Bill Clinton awarded the medal to seven African American World War II veterans. This only after an Army commissioned study that showed clear racial discrimination in the awarding of medals.
Perhaps with an acknowledged black hero from the war the civil rights struggle would have been given the push that could have garnered patriotic pride in the county. That push may have given way to needed awareness that blacks were just as American as the next guy. Unfortunately, the war was not to be the event that would level the playing field for black people.
Perhaps the playing field needed to be an actual field.
Baseball had that black hero that would be recognized. Hell, he had no choice but to be recognized. He was the only black man playing in the major leagues.
That hero would be Jackie Robinson and 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of Jackie’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Jackie Robinson was the first black player to play professional baseball.
Wrong. If you believed Jackie Robinson was the first black player to play professional baseball, and after Robinson it was easy for blacks in the majors, then you are in for a bit of a surprise.
In 1867, just two years after the end of the Civil War, organized baseball made its first attempt to ban blacks. The National Association of Baseball Players refused to allow an all black team from Philadelphia to join the league.
In what was the brave new world of Post Civil War America it’s puzzling (at least it is in retrospect) that the great state of Pennsylvania where the railroad system, iron and steel industry, and its vast agricultural wealth contributed greatly in the North’s victory did not protest this snub.
Maybe, now that I think of it, it’s not so puzzling after all since there are currently some funny voter restrictions going on in the once great state of Pennsylvania. But (Peter, I love you dude) I digress…
Bud Flower is the first known professional black baseball player. He played on an integrated team in 1878. During the next twenty-five years, more than 50 blacks managed to play on white teams and John ‘Bud’ Fowler was the first when he joined a white professional team in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1878.
Being able to “play” was clearly a double edge sword.
Making a living as a black man playing a game must have surly been a dream come true in an era when having a career and not just a job was a dream realized by very few in the days following the Civil War. To many, having any income and not just trying to live off the land was a godsend.
However, post Civil War America after blacks were freed was anything but the Promised Land that blacks thought it would be.
In the south, lynching black people was not only a possibility but in some areas it was an assurance. Blacks had little to protect themselves with while playing a game that was ripe with racism and danger for most if not all of them. Some players made it a habit to carry a bible as a way to comfort them. It’s not known if Bud carried a bible, however, what is known is Bud is credited with inventing the first shin guards. White players were spiking him so often that he began to tape pieces of wood to his legs to protect himself.
Religion to many African American slaves was sometimes the only saving grace that could be embraced with little fear of outrage from their masters, when freed, African Americans continued to embrace their faith for the strength they would need facing Jim Crow America.
Upon his entrance to the game many blacks considered Jackie Robinson a savior of sorts. Jackie’s arrival on the world stage, lifting them out of the bondage of separate but clearly unequal treatment at least in baseball.
Jackie Robinson was the first black player in the modern age. The end of the golden age of radio and the advent of the age of television helped usher in this ebony knight in shining armor. Much like the early days of baseball, an African American making a living in the beginning of the comic book or related industries would have been a dream come true.
What, pry tell does this have to do with comics?
This…
Baseball, with its barriers to entries, talent, skill and perseverance to name but a few mirrored the comic book business regarding race. Baseball has moved on and so has comics but there still exists a great many who think those obstacles are still in full effect for blacks in comics.
America during the 50s and Jackie Robinson’s story is a perfect parallel for African Americans in the comic book industry even today.
Too many fans of the great American pastime there was nothing more offensive than a Negro ball player. When Jackie broke the color barrier in 1947 there were organized revolts around the country as well as within baseball. By 1954 Jackie had pretty much won over baseball fans and a great many Americans. In spite of the fact that victory was being waged and won on the baseball field, African Americans were still fighting on many other fronts.
Some of those battles were public, a great many more private and some in utter secretly.
Like Jackie Robinson and his journey but deep in the background so far off the radar of anyone black or white was the battle over blacks in comic books. Utter secretly may even be an understatement. It’s safe to say that in 1954 people concerned about civil rights be they black or white were not giving any thought to comic books as a tool for social change.
Except there were a few people in comics who were fighting the very fight that Branch Rickey had fought for Jackie Robinson. At the forefront of that battle in 1956 was the two-year old Comics Code Authority on one side and EC Comics on the other.
The Code tried its best to stop EC from publishing a particularly offensive (to them) comic book. The book they were trying to stop was an issue of Incredible Science Fiction the story was called “Judgment Day.”
What was objected to was not a gory scene of a space monster under orders from a criminal ripping to pieces an earth girl who, clad in scant bra and panties was an obvious sexual tease for young 50s era boys.
What was objected to was the main character, an astronaut, was revealed on the last page in the last panel to be a black man.
Ever since we resumed our sundry weekly columns I’ve asked our writers to keep their focus on our popular culture in general and, as often as possible, on comics in specific. I have no problem linking the events of the day to our culture; indeed, that usually brings a nice contemporary perspective to our cheap thrills. At worse, it makes for a fun rant.
