Tagged: Wonder Woman

John Ostrander: When He’s Wrong…

I’m a dyed in the wool pinko commie leftie and these Trump days are not great for me. So I find watching the various commentators like Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah and especially Stephen Colbert to be therapeutic.

Into this mix, I can usually add Bill Maher on his weekly HBO show, Real Time. Maher is very attack orientated and each week he winds up his hour with a rant on a given topic., Usually, I find him really funny and incisive but Maher does have his blind spots. He is anti-religion – Islam in particular. He thinks the majority of American voters to be morons and says so, which I find to be a broad generalization, counter-productive and not true.

His past two shows featured rants that gored a pair of my oxen. One was on space exploration, such as terraforming and colonizing Mars, and the other was a screed against super-hero movies.

Maher argued (ranted) that we should not be exploring space or even think of colonizing Mars so long as we have so many problems here at home. Neal DeGrasse Tyson rebutted Bill the following week when he pointed out that any technology that could terraform Mars could also terraform the Earth and restore what has been ravaged. I would add that a lot of our technological advances are a result of space exploration. That computer you carry in your pocket? That’s a result of the need to reduce the size of computers while making them faster and stronger to be of use to astronauts in space. Sorry, Bill, you didn’t think this through.

Then on his most recent show, Maher was quite disdainful about superhero movies in general.

He said there were too many superhero shows on TV and too many superhero movies at the cineplex and blamed the genre for the rise of Donald Trump. He said they “promote the mindset that we are not masters of our own destiny and the best we can do is sit back and wait for Star-Lord and a f*cking raccoon to sweep in and save our sorry asses. Forget hard work, government institutions, diplomacy, investments – we just need a hero to rise, so we put out the Bat Signal for one man who can step in and solve all of our problems.”

Really? Super-hero movies and TV are directly responsible for the presidency of Donald Trump? Right – and they also promote juvenile delinquency, Batman and Robin are really gay (not that that’s a bad thing) and Wonder Woman is a lesbian (not that that’s a bad thing). Wait, no. That was Dr. Frederic Wertham in his book Seduction of the Innocent back in the 1950s. He was every bit as full of shit back then as you are today, Bill.

And, besides, everybody these days knows that Wonder Woman is bisexual.

I have no idea where Maher pulled this notion of superheroes and Trump from. Maybe his ass. I doubt that he’s seen many if any of the films or TV shows that he’s knocking. He’s taken an attitude and applied his standard disdain, snark, and superior attitude to it. Just not much thought.

Why does this bother me? It’s unlikely that Maher’s words will cause the opening weekend grosses for Wonder Woman to drop. However, this is a topic I know something about and if Maher can get that so wrong, can I trust him on topics that I don’t know much about?

Maybe I’ve outgrown him.

Think I’ll go watch a good superhero movie and let it rot my brain. It’s been a long day.

Mindy Newell: The Sound Of Breaking Glass?


                                                                                                                            

“Be careful of mankind, Diana.  They do not deserve you.” —Queen Hippolyta

 

Will the Amazonian be the woman who finally breaks the Hollywood glass ceiling?

Wonder Woman, starring Israeli actress Gal Gadot as Princess Diana of Themiscrya, premieres on June 2, just 12 days away, and the fate of all the superwomen and their eponymous movies who would follow her lies in the ability of her sword-wielding, shield-bearing, gold lassoing hands and her armor-plated breast to vanquish the biggest and baddest super-villain of them all: Box Office.

I’ve watched every trailer and clip that Warner Bros. has released, and though they were all great, the very best of all of them, im-not-so-ho, was Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.  Every time Ms. Gadot showed up, whether it was in her guise as Diana Prince or as Wonder Woman, the movie morphed from an overbearing, weighted down slog through mud into a wonderama gliding with the agility and talent of an Olympian figure skater.  Her Diana Prince was a woman of intriguing mystery and integrity, and her Amazon alter-ego was a wonder of heroic strength and bravery.  She is possessed with incredible beauty and stature, the natural grace of a gazelle, and quiet yet undeniable assurance.  The camera loved her; so did I, and I walked out of the theater knowing that Ms. Gadot is a worthy inheritor to the role that made Lynda Carter a star and icon for girls and young women coming of age during the 1970’s.

I know that I have previously said that I thought placing the movie during WW I might be a mistake.  But after watching (again) all the Wonder Woman clips and previews and that bit from BvS—in which Bruce Wayne discovers the picture of a “meta-human” captioned “Belgium, November, 1918” and starts putting “1 + 1”—I have what I think is a pretty good idea as to why the movie is set when it’s set.  (Of course, I will have to wait to see if I’m right…and I’ll let you know if I was, okay?)

Meantime, the Twitter universe has lit up with early reviews, released on Thursday, May 18; here are some examples:

Indiewire’s Kate Eerbland:

Courtney Howard @Lulamaybelle:

Mike Ryan, Senior Entertainment Writer at Uproxx:

Umberto Gonzalez@elmayimbe:

Every tweet I read reflected what I felt and saw on the screen in BvS.  Gal Gadot is to Wonder Woman what Christopher Reeve was to Superman.  And it may just be that the answer to the question posed up above will be a resounding yes.

Only the gods and goddesses know.


We all have mothers.  I had a mother of a cold last week, and since Sunday was Mom’s day, I thought I would take a moment to honor all those women who have taken on the absolutely hardest job in the multi-verse, even though it’s 24 hours late.

I think the best known mother in the four-color universe is the farmer’s wife from Smallville who, with her husband, found and raised the “strange visitor from another planet” who would grow up to become the one and only Superman.  Although I’ve always known that farmer’s wife as Martha Clark Kent, her name varied for quite a while; she was known as Mary Kent in Superman #1 (1939), but in George F. Lowther’s 1942 novel, The Adventures of Superman, and on the radio program for which Mr. Lowther was a writer, Mrs. Kent’s first name was Sarah, which also followed her to the George Reeves television series of the same name.  (The Adventures of Superman, Episode 1, “Superman on Earth,” written by Richard Fielding)   Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster finally settled on “Martha” sometime in the 1950’s, and since then, every variation of Superman’s mom on the page and on television and in the movies has been known by that name.

Several actresses have played Ma Kent on the big and small screens.  Virginia Carroll was the first to play her in the 1948 movie serial that starred Kirk Alyn as the Man of Steel, in which her name was Martha.  Francis Morris played Sarah Kent in the aforementioned The Adventures of Superman.  Phyllis Thaxter was the perfect Martha to Chris Reeve’s Superman in the one and only Richard Donner film—and if you haven’t seen Donner’s version of Superman II, get on it, guys!!!!!   The venerable actress Eva Marie Saint played her in Superman Returns, and Diane Lane is the most recent Martha, doing an admirable job in Man of Steel, Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and is about to return as Martha Kent in Justice League.

Television Marthas have been portrayed as younger and hipper.  K Callan’s version, in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures, was a sixties-something woman whom you could easily imagine having burned her bra and marched with Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and other women during the social upheaval of the ‘60’s.   And I have a special fondness for Annette O’Toole, who played Martha on Smallville for the show’s entire run.  (This was Ms. O’Toole’s second time around in the DC universe; she played Lana Lang in Superman III,)  I think her Martha was innately every bit a feminist as K Callan’s, but, im-not-so-ho, I don’t think she ever needed her consciousness “raised”—she just instinctively understood that she was as equal and capable as her husband and any other man, and her choice to be a “stay-at-home” mom was just that—her choice.  In later seasons, Senator Martha Kent went to Washington, representing the state of Kansas, although her political party was never stated; my own political leanings make her a Democrat, although in reality I think she would most likely be what in today’s political climate is called a RINO, which is pronounced like the animal and stands for Republican In Name Only—a pejorative for someone who is not considered conservative enough in their beliefs.

I also want to take some space here to give a shout-out to two very important moms in my life:  Loretta Yontef Newell, my mom, and her granddaughter (and my daughter), Alixandra.

I haven’t all that often talked about my mom here—I’m really not sure why.  She and my late dad were married for 69 years—they almost made it to 70 years, as their anniversary is coming up this June—and I know she was the linchpin for their relationship, for my dad adored her.  I remember when we celebrated their 60th year of marriage; I said, “y’know, I gotta tell ya, there were times I was sure you two were headed towards divorce.”  My father scoffed and said, “You’re nuts!,”; my mother wouldn’t even deign to answer.

She was a woman who was “feminist” in the same way that Annette O’Toole’s Martha was—raised to be able to stand on her own two feet in a time when most women were raised to become wives only, she first worked as a telephone operator before entering the U.S. Army Nurse Cadet Corps during WW II, and was stationed in Washington, D.C. as the war drew to a close.  After the war she worked as a Labor and Delivery nurse at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital—she commuted every day from Bayonne, taking bus, ferry, and subways!—where, she told me, she and her friends, after a long night delivering babies, went to the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn to see a certain young singer from Hoboken whose first name was Frank and whose last name was Sinatra.  (I could never get her to admit to being one of the “bobby-soxers” who screamed his name earlier in the decade.)  She was also a school nurse, a medical-surgical nurse, one of the very first nurses to work with dialysis patients back in the day when the dialysis machines looked like giant rotors with a netting strung across their innards, and worked for the U.S. Public Health Service at a hospital on Staten Island, where one of her jobs was to ride a jetty out to the ships moored in Lower New York Harbor and give physicals to the merchant marine crewmen, clearing them for entrance into the States.  She was a school nurse, a sleep-away camp nurse, and an ER nurse.  And she did all this while being an involved wife and mother.  My dad was always proud of his wife being a professional woman; and she was, for the longest time, the only one of their circle of friends who worked “outside the home.”

She made time for the kids (me and my brother), too.  She encouraged us to read—leading her own two plus their reprobate friends to the public library—and took us into New York City to Broadway shows and museums.  I think our elementary school teachers were afraid of her, because if she thought one of us had been treated unfairly, she didn’t sit on her hands.

When I was in second grade I went to my school’s library and wanted to take out “The Black Stallion,” by Walter Farley.  The librarian would not allow it, saying that it was a book for the older grades.  When my mother heard about this, she went up to the school and demanded that I be allowed to read whatever I wanted to read.  Of course, I wasn’t present for this showdown, but I can only imagine what my mom said, because from then on I never had a problem.

Another time, I think I was in third grade, the class was assigned to read a biography and then write a book report about the subject.  My mom took me to the public library, and I chose the story of Y.A. Tittle, the N.Y. Giants quarterback.  When I handed in my report, the teacher gave it back to me, saying, “Little girls do not read biographies about football players.”  Up went my mother, back to P.S. 29.  Again, I don’t know what she said to the teacher, but I got an A+ on that book report—I’ve always wondered whether it was because it was an early example of my writing ability or because, simply put, the teacher was scared shit of my mother.

My mother never told me what she said, and now it is too late—right before my dad died, maybe two weeks prior, my mom had a stroke, and though she is not physically disabled, her cognitive abilities are, to put it sadly and simply, pretty much shot to hell.  She now lives in the same nursing home, and on the same floor, where my father spent the last years of his life.  Sometimes she is more “cognitive” than at other times—sometimes when I speak to her on the phone, she is almost my mother; and other times, most times, she simply cries and says she wants to go “home.”

The other mom I want to talk about is my daughter, Alixandra.  She and her wonderful husband Jeffrey, my son-in-law the Doctor—he is a PhD. and a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey—have a son, named after both grandfathers:  Meyer Manuel.  He is loving and beautiful and the light of my life.  He is also autistic.

When Meyer was definitively diagnosed at 18 months—the earliest age at which autism can be, well, definitively diagnosed—Alix was working full-time and applying for a second Master’s program in Public Health and Policy at New York University.  She didn’t quit her job; she didn’t quit her educational plans, only delayed her entry into the program for a semester; she started researching autism and the education of autistic children, and found Meyer the best school in her area, Caldwell University, enrolling her son in the Applied Behavior Analysis program there.  It was incredibly expensive, and when the insurance company lagged in its responsibilities, she fought them.  She has never, ever ceased fighting for her child, has never ceased to put him first; they sold their beloved first home and moved to a town with better, and more progressive, educational policies towards special needs kids, choosing to rent and investing the monies from the sale of their home in Meyer’s future.  And meanwhile, she did go back to school for that second Masters and continues to work full-time, commuting to New York City and always bringing work home with her.

She is one hell of a mother.

In the abso-fucking-lutely very best way.

Mike Gold: Malled By Wonder Woman!

Last week, we had one of those delightful father/daughter days when Adriane and I went diving for Funko. According to our drivers’ licenses, we are “adults” but, according to our predilections, we are “fans.” Personally, I’m only an adult when I’m on the clock, and then only when I’m in court. Hey, it’s a living.

Whereas we, like most of you out there in comics ethersphere, saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 the week before, we weren’t really looking for GOTG stuff. Oh, sure, if they’ve got a Funko Pop with Baby Groot teething on Drax’s arm I’m buying it but, as you probably know better than me, the really good shit is grabbed well before the movie opens. Nope; we were spelunking for Wonder Woman chachkas, coming soon to a theater near you.

The trick is, there are certain Pops that are made exclusively for certain retailers. Target has theirs, Electronics Boutique and Game Stop have theirs, and so on down the drive past the malls and big box stores on the road formally known as “Main Street.” So doing the fanboy supermarket sweeps involves checking out a number of establishments.

Despite Adriane’s adulthood, she’s more familiar with the product than I am. It’s not like I don’t have a small shitload of Funko stuff, but Adriane’s collection could fill a warehouse. That’s fine by me, as long as I don’t have to schlep it the next time she moves. And Adriane doesn’t want to have to move my comic book collection. This is known as “21st-century quid pro quo.” So as we zot down the aisles, Adriane brings to my attention the more unusual stuff.

Which brought us to the Lego aisle. To be specific, it brings us to the Lego Lashina toy. Yes, your favorite Jack Kirby S&M character is now a Lego toy. This is pretty damn cool, unless the Department of Children and Family Services tends to frequent your home.

I realize Lashina is a card-carrying member of the DC Universe in all its forms. She’s been in the Suicide Squad. She’s been on Smallville. She’s been on sundry DC cartoons. And, honestly, I’m not opposed to S&M among consenting… um… Lego toys. Maybe she’ll get her own Lego movie.

But somebody’s gotta tell me what Krypto is doing there.

We didn’t get many Wonder Woman exclusives (remember when they were called “chase cards?”), but I did score a great Peter Capaldi as the guitar-playing Doctor; something to hold on to as they jerk us around with the “who is the new Doctor” bit… even though the BBC already filmed the regeneration scene.

I suspect Adriane will keep an eye on eBay, the best place on Earth to overpay for already overly expensive collectibles. The forthcoming Wonder Woman movie allows us to resurrect and adapt an old joke: Funko Pop! can market an invisible bi-plane in an empty box.

I wonder what that will go for on eBay.

Then Adriane showed me the Funko Pop! Vito Corleone.  Yep, The Godfather. Hey, they had to put something next to their Fredo vinyl. Why not a murdering drug dealer who refuses his Academy Award?

As weird as that seems to me, to be completely honest when (not if) Funko comes out with a line of Pops dedicated to Fritz Lang’s M… I am there!

Martha Thomases: Super-Hero Family Team-Up

Like much of the planet, I saw the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie this weekend. Like a smaller percentage of this group, I saw it with a friend who isn’t into super-heroes.

Let me be clear. She isn’t opposed to super-heroes. It’s just that they are not her genre.

Still, she had heard good things about it from people at her job, and she was visiting from out of town and wanted to be a good guest, and it was pouring rain and there weren’t a lot of other activities available to us, so we went.

She loved it. She was completely knocked out by it. The whole experience put her through an emotional wringer.

I don’t think she’s about to become a super-hero fan, but I think there are reasons that super-heroes reach us emotionally in ways that other genre fiction does not (and vice versa). In the process of explaining what I mean, there may be SPOILERS about this particular movie. I don’t think any will ruin your enjoyment, but I don’t know your tolerance. Be warned.

There have been a tremendous number of movies in the last few decades about fathers and sons. I blame Steven Spielberg, but I’m sure you can come up with a list of your own. And I get it. We imprint on our parents for every other relationship we have. With the increase in the divorce rate over the last several decades, as well as the stress on the family caused by income inequality (and loads of other reasons that we don’t have time for right now), lots of people feel estranged from their fathers.

Most movies that play with this issue, especially those by the aforementioned Mr. Spielberg, usually find a way to show that Daddy Really Loved You All The Time. And I hope that’s true, for Steven and for you.

But it isn’t for my friend. She had to leave home at 14, and over the next five decades her parents resisted every attempt she made at reconciliation. The only way they would accept her is if she gave up her own identity and lived the life they expected.

Like Ego, my friend’s father felt that she could do what he wanted or she could be dead.

At the same time, my friend was lucky enough to find a father figure. This man didn’t kidnap her from her home and use her to commit acts of piracy, but he found a place for her and made her feel worthwhile. She didn’t learn to command a spaceship, but she can play a wicked game of poker.

Because Guardians is a super-hero movie, there are epic space battles, exotic aliens, amazing special effects and fantastic scenery and costumes. I think these fantastic elements actually make it easier to find oneself in the story. Our inner infant feels parental abandonment and betrayal as world-destroying events. Watching worlds actually get destroyed is the ultimate catharsis.

After all the explosions, we are left with a new family. Unlike my friend’s birth family, these people choose to stay together, to love each other not despite their flaws but because of them. They take care of each other without even thinking about it, because that’s how real families work. Whether the threat is a blob monster, an unplanned pregnancy, divorce or unemployment, we find our real family through these crises. DNA doesn’t matter as much as commitment.

I don’t mean to suggest that Marvel Studios is a substitute for a good therapist, or that we can stop worrying about our kids as long as they can go to the movies. We still need to do the work. Still, I’ll take all the insight I can get, whatever the source.

I’m now waiting to see how well Wonder Woman deals with mothers and daughters. I doubt Hippolyta berates Diana about her weight as much as my mother did to me.

Mike Gold: The Guardian’s Daddy Issues

If you think working in the greater comic book conspiracy is all fun and games – well… there’s a lot of truth to that. For example, where else can you go to the movies, call it work and then take the ticket price off your taxes?

Last Thursday, I joined fellow ComicMixers Adriane Nash and Joe Corallo in the wildlands of Milford Connecticut (where the phrase “Milf” was coined) for the debut of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Two. We went for the full movie monty: IMAX 3-D at a ticket price that would cause Uncle Scrooge to quit working for Disney. When I plop my ass down in a movie theater seat, I am hoping I’m not wasting my time and all that energy I spent looking for a parking place. In the case of next month’s Wonder Woman, I will plop my ass down in a movie theater seat praying I’m not wasting my time… but I digress.

I had no such concerns for GOTG2. All the cast, crew and management had to do is jack up the action slightly and change the soundtrack and write some new gags. If Looney Tunes could do it for nearly four decades, James Gunn could do it twice. If, after seeing the movie, you find yourself debating whether it was as good as the first, not as good as the first, or better than the first – you’re thinking too hard. To paraphrase Joel Hodgson and Josh Weinstein, “It’s just a show, you should really just relax.” If you’re going to go to a movie like this with a stick up your ass, you’ll never get past the vicious furball who runs around carrying ordinance bigger than he is, let alone the pithy-yet-cute jumping twig that steals every scene he’s in.

In other words, we had a great time watching a very funny movie with an exceptionally high body count. If that sort of thing bothers you, don’t take your kids. Anyway, they’ll have more fun seeing it behind your back.

GOTG2 even made fun of the mighty Marvel movie method. There are five inter-credits scenes (they should start running the closing credits at the beginning of GOTG3) and more cameos than you can count. While it is impossible to translate a comic book property to the big screen without making some changes, GOTG2 came remarkably close to the source materials while maintaining the continuity from the first movie as well as the other Marvel Studios flicks. In fact, they even managed to do a quick tribute to Jack Kirby’s original depiction of Ego The Living Planet – they didn’t have to, but it was a nice touch for those of us who remember.

Remarkably, this movie fits squarely into the current Marvel Studios trans-flick story arc, and does a lot to set up next year’s Avengers: Infinity War. You are probably aware that the GOTG leads are all in that one, but then again, so is everybody else. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ben Afflick in there somewhere.

And speaking of Ben Afflick, if that nightmare of a movie Batman v Superman degenerated into a story about heroes with severe mommy issues, then Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Two is about a hero with severe daddy issues. But unlike the aforementioned DC movie, Guardians makes it work without insulting the audience. Kurt Russell turns in a wonderful performance as god.

The soundtrack, built around the theory that obnoxious tunes from the 1970s sound much better forty years later, is different from the first film, as one might expect. What I did not expect is for them to include a tune I play about once a year on Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind: Lake Shore Drive, by Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah. It’s really a beautiful song about the remarkably calming major highway that separates the City of Chicago from the parkland that hugs the coast of Lake Michigan. Quite frankly, I would think Rocket “Raccoon” would hate it.

We had a swell time. What more could you want for the money? If you were expecting Citizen Kane Volume Two, you need to change your meds.

 

Mindy Newell: Summertime Movietime — Already?

This week’s Entertainment Weekly (a “double issue” dated April 29/May 5, 2017) is its big “Summer Movie Preview” release, one that I usually really look forward to reading over my breakfast tea. But after doing that this very morning – which was yesterday by now – I realized that, in all honesty, there’s very little coming out on the big screen that warrants my plunking down my hard-earned dollars.

There’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, in theaters in just 12 days from now as I write this. (Btw, isn’t May 5th a little early to be calling it a “summer movie?”) Maybe I’m not taking much of a leap here when I say it will be the big blockbuster hit of the season. It’s classic “superhero space fantasy” and, of course, there’s Rocky. Not to mention Baby Groot. Then again, im-not-so-ho, there’s not much competition.

Though there is Wonder Woman, premiering June 2. This is the one I’m really rooting for, which should be understandable to anyone who knows my history with the character. Though… I’m baffled as to why the film is set during World War I; a strange choice. I’m a history buff, and I understand the significance of that war and how it birthed the geopolitical landscape in which we live today, but as a backdrop to the Amazonian’s first cinematic venture? I dunno. I just don’t know if it will sell. Though – and I admit this is incredibly sexist of me – Gal Gadot in an armored swimsuit will undoubtedly bring in lots of those coveted male teenage and young adult dollars. But, although Ms. Gadot has legs that don’t stop, will Wonder Woman have legs past the opening weekend? We’ll see.

Let’s see, what else? Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? It’s been 14 years since last we saw Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, so the hunger just might be there. It could give Guardians a run for its money. It could also tank, big time. Either way, I’ll pass. If I feel like a pirate movie, it’s Errol Flynn in Captain Blood.

Aliens: Covenant? Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Prometheus (which I never saw), takes place a decade after the later, and 20 years before Alien. To be fair, I will have to stream Prometheus before I decide on whether or not I want to go to the movie theater. But I have a feeling – unless word of mouth and critics lure me in – that this one is going to be either a cable watch or a streamer, too.

Baywatch? Never saw the television show, ain’t gonna watch this one. Not even on cable or streaming.

Then there’s Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 7). I really, really, really liked Tom Holland’s Peter Parker/Spidey in Captain America: Civil War – he almost makes me forget Tobey Maguire –and the trailer for Homecoming is incredibly fun and enticing. Plus, my not-so-secret crush, Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man.  But I still like Singer’s take on the webslinger’s ability to, uh, sling that web. Sure, it’s not canon, but it always made more sense to me that it was part and parcel of that radioactive spider’s bite’s effect on Peter.

And since I’m a sucker for World War II movies – which may be part of the antipathy I feel towards a Wonder Woman movie set in 1918 – I am looking forward to Dunkirk, out on July 21. The evacuation of the Allied forces – more than 300,000 soldiers – over eight days (May 26 to June 4) in 1940 from the beaches at Dunkirk, France is an event that could have had a very, very different outcome.

All in all, EW covers 110 movies that will premiere over the summer. Quite possibly at least one of them could turn out to be a sleeper hit. But right now the summer entertainment I’m most looking forward to is the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, starting April 26 on Hulu – okay, it’s not technically a movie – and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – okay it’s not technically a movie, either – on Starz as of April 30.

In other news, daughter Alixandra has started watching Doctor Who, beginning with Christopher Eccleston.

 

Dennis O’Neil: Invisible!

I was in what must have been a vast desert. I pivoted in the sand and looked in every direction. Nothing but sand – sand and overhead a brutal, merciless sun. Was I lost or stranded? And how did I get here?

“Hi, handsome,” a throaty female voice said from behind my left shoulder, I turned and stared and… sand. An endless vista of shimmering yellow sand.

“You gonna stand there and stare all day?” the voice said, and now I recognized it.

Aunt Scarlet?” I rasped.

“Bingo.”

“Granny told me that sometimes you turned invisible”

“Whenever I feel like it”

“You’ve come to rescue me?”

“Not really. But as long as I’m in the neighborhood… hop in.”

“Hop in what?”

 “I”ve borrowed Wonder Woman’s invisible plane, silly.”

And here we take our leave of the story above, which shouldn’t disappoint you too much, since it doesn’t have an ending anyway. “Silly” is probably its last word, one you’ll have to admit is appropriate, unless someone decides to continue it. Ask me if I care.

Now ask me why I’m expending bandwidth on a comic strip character who first appeared in the nation’s newspapers in 1940 and ended her run in 1956. Is a last name that’s identical to mine enough? That’s for you guys to argue. We’ll offer a kinda-sorta answer soon. Meanwhile, let’s take a brief look at…invisibility. (Yeah, I did that deliberately. Sue me.)

Invisibility has been a trope in both mythology and fiction for a long time – at least since the Greeks. You doubt? Then Google the Grecian helm (or cap) of invisibility and the brothers Grimm’s tale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” In the market for something a bit fresher? Well, there’s H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man and The Hollow Man, a movie starring Kevin Bacon. Then, in no particular order… a television series, comics’s Sue Storm, The Invisible Girl (later Woman) and… golly, what am I forgetting? Oh, sure. Harry Potter! You may recall that in one of the novels/movies, the boy wizard dons a cloak of invisibility and…I dunno – skulks?

There are more.

But for now, we come to the gent who is arguably the best known (and maybe just the best) invisibiler, The Shadow, of course. He began fighting crime on the radio in the mid-30’s and ended his broadcast career in 1954. While he was active he appeared in virtually every mass medium: radio, film, novels, newspaper strips. On the novels, films and comics, he wasn’t exactly invisible. He used a technique similar to that of Batman and your friendly neighborhood ninja, using dark clothing to blend into the – yes! – shadows.

In the early comic books and on the radio he was really, truly invisible.

He was an approximate contemporary of Scarlet O’Neil’s and if you’ve sampled any of the Shadow reprints, hey, maybe you’ d like to sample some of The Shadow’s comrade in invisibility.

So good news. Your comics retailer should be able to sell you a copy of Invisible Scarlet O’Neil: The Official History of America’s First Female Superheroine. And coming soon: Invisible Scarlet O’Neil Returns, an original graphic novel.

Okay?

Marc Alan Fishman: A Tale of Two Trailers

This week, the gods of the interwebs granted us a look at two dichotomous trailers for a pair of blockbuster comic book films soon to be hitting the mega-multi-plexes. Spider-Man: Homecoming and Justice League gave us somewhere around four-minutes total of titillating three-dimensional text, brief respites of prose, and the best action snippets CG could render. But beyond those stark generalities comes two massive worlds apart.

This should come as no surprise to any of us. Spider-Man is packed with wit, charm, and street-level action amidst the hints at bigger set pieces. Justice League is a dark and sordid affair – not without its own charm and wit, but punctuated with the Synder-trademarked sepia-hued gravitas and angst. At this point, would it be enough to say I was ear-to-ear smiles at one trailer… and terribly nervous about the other?

Two guesses which is which. Then again, if I give you two guesses you’d guess right no matter what.

Spider-Man presents a balanced picture that has me in giddy anticipation. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is presented as we saw him in Civil War. He is as close to the original source as we may ever get in an adapted character from comic to screen. He’s young, funny, nerdy, and oozes those immortal words of his late Uncle Ben between his not-quite-adult pores.

The story we’re presented seems rote. Following Civil War, Peter returns home to Queens to be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man as per the direction of his would-be father-figure, Tony Stark. But, in the 616 Cinematic Universe, we already know what evil lurks in the shadows. Enter Birdman. Err, Batman. Err, Michael Keaton. Before the trailer ends we’re given what appears to be the entire plot of the movie. Destruction, loss, redemption, snark. It’s almost too easy; I anticipate several key turns before we resolve to whatever happily-ever-sequel there is to come.

Meanwhile in the DCU, Justice League leaves us with a much murkier picture – not counting the actual cinematography. From what we’ve been given, we can safely assert that Batman is assembling a team (let’s go ahead and call them a league) of super-powered individuals to fight some unseen threat. Diana of Themyscira, Barry Allen, Vic Stone, and Arthur Curry appear to be on board to fight said threat. That aside, we really get nothing else specific. Of the snippets we are given though, a few streams of light pierce the typically dark DCU movieverse. From the sneer-grin of Aquaman as he rides on the exterior of the Batmobile, to Bruce Wayne revealing his super power (“I’m rich”), Justice League seems to at least made some minor commitment to be a slightly more mirthful affair than Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Sadness.

Unlike Spider-Man, Justice League’s trailer leaves me more guarded than enthusiastic. League’s teaser is simply too short to get a feeling if we’re taking a step forward or laterally. While BvS was quite profitable, the fan consensus was one of great disdain. What should have been billed as an Avengers level tour-de-force was more or less a maudlin, middling meh-fest. And far be it from me to throw a stone here, but Suicide Squad was a solid popcorn flick – but not one that moved the needle of fan-appreciation that DC desperately needs. Wonder Woman … you are our only hope.

So here we are. Four minutes of film, and we’re right back to where we started. While Marvel revels in whatever phase they’re in at present, DC seems to still be stuck at the starting block trying to impress everyone with how badass they are. And therein lies the truest sentiment of all.

While Marvel leaned into their inner nerd and gave us straight-faced superb tertiary titles like Ant-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy, DC can’t get out of its own shadow. Spider-Man already feels like a homerun two minutes and several posters in. Justice League is somewhere between an intentional walk… and a beaned batter.

Marc Alan Fishman: What DC Could Learn from Logan

Having finally caught and absorbed James Mangold’s Logan, the finale to the OG X-films, I find myself hoping that the execs behind the soon-to-be-released Wonder Woman and Justice League movies were taking notes. A caveat: I’m going to attempt to keep my lens wide this week. While I don’t believe I’ll be spoiling anything more than people on your Facebook feed have blathered about, be nonetheless forewarned.

Before I get into my listicle (they’re what make articles click-baity, don’t-cha-know), let me quickly pontificate. Logan was one of the most powerful superhero films I’ve ever seen. Perhaps second only to The Dark Knight. It was a straight-forward small-scale road picture that kept a handle on a single-thread story, presented as an homage to the westerns it evoked throughout the picture. In spite of a heavy-handed two-hour run-time, the film itself moves at a steady pace. The performances are top-notch, with Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman taking astounding leaps above their initial performances of Charles Xavier and Wolverine circa 2000. Sweet Rao I feel old just typing that. But I digress. On with the listercizing!

  1. Things get dark, but never for the sake of needless angst.

The first thing DC should take note on… and perhaps highlight, circle, underline and install neon lights around… is that it’s perfectly acceptable to be maudlin if it’s earned. X-Men, X2, and to a much-much-much-much lesser extent any of the other X-films did much to pile on the action and gravitas towards the mutant life en masse. But Logan abstains from needless retreading. Instead, it delivers us heroes who are hurt inside and out. It gives them needs, wants, and desires that don’t coincide with some greater plot or McGuffin. And when a McGuffin lands in their lap, they pleasantly drape it in subtext (Charles Xavier, through his delusional state, would seek to mentally communicate with any over living mutants, wouldn’t he?) that earns the gravitas the film requires. And when a character screams to the heavens in a shrill cry of anger and sadness, it comes by way of two-hours of earned malaise and not because it looks cool.

  1. Show. Don’t tell.

During a lull between brutal set pieces, Professor X waxes poetic about the final days of his former academy. He doesn’t speak in pure exposition. He drifts in and out, dancing around nuanced and painful memories, and ultimately evokes the feeling of tragedy and regret deeply rooted in his psyche. We never hear the full details of what occurs. We never see some spiffy CG recreation. And we never need to.

In addition to Charles’ admission of guilt and shame and the slow reveal of X-23’s backstory, Logan elicits the show-don’t-tell ethos that DC needs to heed. While yes, we get the obligatory backstory tacked to her early on, it’s delivered without hanging a lampshade on it time-and-again. Laura is feral and untrusting. She’s lethal and raw. While we see her drop her guard eventually, it comes over the course of many scenes and instances where Dafne Keen shows us how powerful a performer she is. Logan never once feels the need to montage our way toward understanding a new norm.

  1. Keep the violence real, believable, and still other-worldly.

The biggest issues I’ve had with Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad came solely in their fetish for destruction. Logan certainly was built for violence. But when it occurs, it’s not only earned by the stakes in the story, it comes layered with emotional and physical fallout. As Logan and others are forced to fight a youthful Wolverine clone (my one spoilery thing, I apologize…), suddenly fighting a savage killer with a healing factor feels like a true threat. It also stands to note that even in the climax of the film — with multiple combatants, gunfire, and viscera — there’s no death for the sake of spectacle. War is waged for hope, humanity, and vengeance. All that, and there’s nary a single beam-being-blasted-towards-the-sky. Natch.

  1. The story is fearless in the face of predictability

If nothing else could be counted on by DC after seeing Logan, it should be the safe admission that sometimes it’s OK to tee-up a predictable story. There’s nary a single twist to the picture if you pay clear attention. But, due to the patience of director Mangold, we get a film that never needed to rely on ham-fisted trickery to earn the 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The potency lies in the characterizations and believable escalation of antagonism. Villainy in Logan is no less super-villainous that Lex Luthor creating Doomsday, or Darkseid declaring war on Earth. But it’s the reactions of our heroes that carry us through to the end credits. Jokes occur naturally and not at the behest of breaking a tense and necessary silent moment for the sake of relieving the stress on the audience. Mangold lets the story unfold through deliberate character-driven motivations. We never see the puppet-strings of action-figure-merchandisers creating moments for future marketing. Honesty and artistry over bottom-dollar-profits. And because of it, the fans have carried a hard R-rated film to over 500 million dollars in ticket sales.

I know Justice League and Wonder Woman are being built to pitch out to a larger PG-13 audience. But the sincere hope remains that DC paid attention. Logan was amazing not because it used the word fuck a few hundred times, but because the story delivered earned every last fuck delivered.

 

Martha Thomases: Adventures On Other Words

When I saw Moonlight, the first thing I said as the lights came up was “school sucks.” And it does.

I think this will be spoiler-free, but if you haven’t seen this magnificent movie, I hope you go as soon as you can. Like the best art, it showed me a new way of seeing the world and made me feel emotions that bound me to the characters. Although this is in no way real, for the two hours of that film, I was a self-loathing gay black man, unable to express my personal truth.

My life is privileged, however, and part of that privilege is comics.

Chiron, the boy/teenager/man who is the main character in the film, is not very articulate. This isn’t an unusual trait in a child. We all struggle to learn how to use our words. Unfortunately for him, none of the other adults in his life know how to express themselves either. His mother is a drug addict. The adults at school are overwhelmed with responsibilities that don’t allow them to take the time to notice one kid’s problems. The only exception is Juan, the neighborhood drug dealer, who offers the closest thing to fathering that Chiron gets. Later, his girlfriend, Teresa, offers him a refuge.

I’ve written frequently about how fiction helps me get through tough times. Reading a story about someone else’s reality has been a comfort since I was younger than Chiron at the beginning of the film. My mother turned me on to her favorite children’s author, E. Nesbit, and I felt understood in a way that really makes no logical sense. A Jewish kid in Ohio has very little in common with a bunch of English kids with magical friends, created by a Fabian Socialist. Still, I related to their confusion, to their sense that adults didn’t get it.

In a slightly different way, I found similar comfort in Greek and Norse mythology. I wanted to be one of the magnificent and beautiful gods. I thought they might understand me when reality didn’t. I bet gods never fell down and scraped their knees.

From these tales, I discovered superhero comics. These had the advantage of being new every week, instead of being old stories completed thousands of years ago. I wanted to be all the characters. I wanted to be Robin and Supergirl, Plastic Man and Wonder Woman. Wanted to be a telepath and I wanted to be invisible. I wanted to be Betty and Veronica.

Through these stories, simple though many were, I learned that all humans have hopes and fears, insecurities and passions. And even now, decades (and decades) later, I continue to learn this over and over again. I need to, because it’s all too easy to see people as cardboard stereotypes. It’s even easy to see myself as a stereotype.

For example, if I were the blatant red-neck Trump victim, hating on Muslims and immigrants and elites (a person who probably doesn’t entirely exist, at least not as this stock figure), I might read Southern Bastards and feel like somebody finally got me. And maybe, as I read each issue, I’d see that even the characters that didn’t look like me and how it feels to be them in the same kind of small town in which I lived. And, even if I didn’t get that part, I might enjoy some of the recipes sent in to the letters page.

And if I had strange feelings in my body that I couldn’t quite describe, if I didn’t know what changes were going on or whom I should tell about them, I might feel better after reading The Old Guard. In this case, the odd changes have to do with immortality, not sexuality or gender identity, but I think the quivering uncertainty applies to all of us.

A book that continues to knock me out, perhaps because it touches on so many of my personal obsessions, is The Beauty, about a sexually transmitted disease that makes its victims beautiful before it kills them. Sometimes people try to get the disease so they can be good-looking. A recent storyline had a trans protagonist, and I was engaged trying to figure out how the virus chose which traits were pretty, and if these traits were different depending on one’s gender, and whether that gender was determined by the same criteria demanded of North Carolina restrooms. If you get the disease in a culture with different standards than ours, do you acquire different traits? How is it that the fashion/cosmetics industry hasn’t thrown all their resources into finding a cure, given that the illness makes their products irrelevant?

Is it a blind spot of my white privilege that I don’t see that the solace I get from books wouldn’t necessarily help Chiron? Maybe. Music and dance, poetry, theater and movies, all can provide the same balm to the soul. I’m in favor of all of those. Still, I think books are the easiest to put in one’s pocket.

There are no books in Chiron’s house. If there is a local library, it isn’t part of his world. We don’t even see him watching television. Instead, he is isolated.

In an ideal world, we would all have brilliant, loving parents and other adults in our lives. In their absence, we have books.