The Mix : What are people talking about today?

INTERVIEW: Harlan Ellison, part 2

INTERVIEW: Harlan Ellison, part 2

In the first portion of our interview (click here), Harlan told Martha Thomases all about the nature of humanity and probably became the first person to use the names Klimt, Frank Buck, Eddie Condon, and Sanjaya Malakar in a single sentence. We pick up our story right after some stuff about Gary Groth…

Well, that’s that. Anyway. The Dream Corridor. After ten years, the book is out.

CoMx: It’s just gorgeous.

HE: Isn’t it? You know what’s interesting? It’s gotten great reviews in Publishers Weekly, in Newsweek. It’s gotten great reviews in the mainstream. And nowhere in the comic world are they reviewing it.

CoMx: What’s made it in bookstores is not what the comic press writes about.

HE: Yeah, it would seem you’re right, Martha; and it breaks my heart.  I love comics so, and want acknowledgement for them, beyond Crumb and Spiegelman and MIller.  But the comics press for the most part only plays the flak-agents for DC and Marvel.  They write about the superheroes. Here’s this book, this absolute gem, on which dozens and dozens of people broke their ass, Dream Corridor, and it contains the absolute last time that Curt Swan put a pencil to paper. We had the smarts to publish Colan as Colan, and then colored it, too. One would think: here is a book that really matters, what people say comics are supposed to be! And we can’t get a mention amidst all the talk about who’s going to be writing Birds of Prey.

CoMx: But you’re going to be reaching more people than Birds of Prey.

HE:  Yes, I suppose.The book is selling out, but it’s cold comfort, kiddo.

CoMx: I don’t know your numbers, but I know that Birds of Prey is selling less than, say, 300 is selling.

HE: Mmmm.  But is that really the point?  Whatever the distribution may be is sort of commercialspeak.  I guess I’m talking art for the people, not just feeding the adolescent fix.  Here are critics of the field looking at a genre, an art-form, and they have the choice of doing the current Spider-Man of the 500 Spider-Man books that are put out every month, or one issue of this magazine over here that is striving for something clearly different. And they choose to do the Spider-Man over and over again. When you call them on it, you get no response. It’s as if: why is this person talking to us about that which does not have a cape and a cowl?

CoMx: Because they are confusing the medium with the genre. They think “superheroes” is the same as comics. They think superheroes are the important stuff.

HE: You mean all the good, smart shit that Maggie Thompson or Peter David or Gary Groth has been nagging about all these years, none of it has stuck?

CoMx: Where it’s stuck, those people have not gone on to write for the comics press.

HE: That’s pretty depressing:  after all these years and all this serious discussion of what comics should be doing by all of the serious critics in the field … that nobody gets it. And they all still think that Superman is the beginning and the ending of this Great American Original Art-form?  Kill me now. There’s something awry in the world of graphics. It’s very distressing to me, especially because the new Dream Corridor is out, and it’s probably the last of that kind of thing I’ll ever do.

(more…)

Jamie Bishop killed at Virginia Tech

Jamie Bishop killed at Virginia Tech

It just came to our attention that science fiction author Michael Bishop (Count Geiger Blues) just lost his son, Jamie, in the recent massacre at Virginia Tech. Jamie was a German language teacher.

Our condolences go out to Michael, his wife Geri, and the rest of his family.

Short attention-span Heroes

Short attention-span Heroes

The Addiction:  Heroes, NBC Mondays

The Cure:  Monday, April 23

The Quick Fix:  The first 2 minutes of Monday’s episode available at fanpop.com/spots/heroes/videos/24692

The doctor (no no not that Doctor) has spoken!

Hello Heroes Fans, yes it’s true I checked myself … the first two minutes of next week’s highly anticipated return of Heroes is available online for your viewing pleasure.  In case you haven’t been watching the Peacock network’s other shows and have missed the commercial featuring the Cheerleader, Peter, Hiro and the next young person that is going to "Save the World"  – set your TiVo for NBC all day and all night until you find it. There is a 60 second promo with  all the Heroes gang and the featuring the newest hook,  Nickelbacks’ new release "If Everyone Cared."

Six days and counting!

Wizard of Id’s Parker Dies

Wizard of Id’s Parker Dies

The Wizard of Id co-creator Brant Parker died yesterday at the age of 86. Amazingly, eight days ago his partner Johnny Hart (also of BC fame) passed away. The feature, which has been around for more than four decades, will be continued by his son Jeff, who had been assisting his father for the past ten years.

Born on August 26, 1920, Parker won no less than seven awards by the National Cartoonist Society:  Humor Strip artist five times, the Reuben Award (named after classic cartoonist Rube Goldberg) in 1984 and the Elzie Segar Award (named after the creator of Popeye) in 1986.

Marvel draws a blank

Marvel draws a blank

In a gimmick reminiscent of Time Magazine naming the second person singular "You" as Person of the Year for 2006 using a reflective cover, thus skirting any responsibility for actually choosing a Person of the Year, Marvel has decided to give its usual cover artists a break by putting out a blank cover for its first edition of Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America.

They’re technically calling this a "sketch cover," suggesting that "fans will have the opportunity to get an original sketch on the cover, get it signed by top Marvel creators, or perhaps even draw their own alternate cover! How’s that for one of a kind?"

While the gimmick is sure to be a hit with that portion of readers which attends conventions and patiently waits in queues for sketches, as well as with some aspiring professionals, I’m not sure the artist who might have made a couple hundred bucks illustrating that cover is very appreciative of the lost income.

(Note: When DC Comics published a blank cover on Wasteland, the artist never received payment.)

What’s missing, Doc?

What’s missing, Doc?

Fresh from the rain drenched Northeast, ComicMix Podcast brings you a guy who isn’t Elvis, a guy who isn’t on Gary Groth’s Christmas List and a guy who didn’t have a good time in front of his TV last Friday night! Plus a full rundown of comics that are coming – as well as those that are missing! We’ve got the lowdown on the Marvel Civil War trade paperbacks, we’ve got DC’s World War III complete in about 100 pages, and we’ve got news, views, reviews… and a two-headed calf!

All you’ve got to do is (let’s say it all together, folks) Press The Button!

Robert Downey Speaks!

Robert Downey Speaks!

In a comprehensive article noting the planned Wolverine, Batman, Green Lantern and Justice League of America movies, the London Telegraph interviewed Robert Downey Jr. about his thoughts about his latest alter-ego, Iron Man:

"He’s a superhero who is just a man," says Downey. "Not that I wouldn’t play a guy who got bit by a spider or who has some freaky connection with bats, but I think this is a little more accessible.

"I guess that when Stan Lee created the character back in the mid-1960s,  to see if he could base a superhero on a hard-partying, womanizing billionaire who manufactures weapons, and still make him likeable enough to sell comic books. He clearly won his bet.

"Tony Stark is someone who has the ability to be right at the forefront of science and we are finding out more and more nowadays that science and mythology are becoming somewhat interchangeable. Some of the things that seemed really far-fetched aren’t any more."

Iron Man co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges andTerrence Howard and is set for release in spring, 2008.

Chick chaplain suspended

Chick chaplain suspended

Teresa Darden Clapp, an ordained Christian minister and a chaplain in Rockland County, New York (my ancestral spawning grounds and current home to ComicMix columnist Denny O’Neill), was suspended for distributing Jack Chick’s religious comic books to the prisoners under her care.

The tracts refer to Muslims as idol-and devil-worshippers and portray the prophet Muhammad as a criminal and a "religious dictator."

This is not the first time Chick Publications has run into accusations of religious bigotry, having previously attacked Catholics, Jews, atheists and others in similar fashion in their sundry comics.

Artwork copyright Chick Publications. All Rights Reserved.

The last internet argument

The last internet argument

One of my favorite web cartoonists, August Pollak, hits a home run with his Some Guy with a Website strip called "Internet Argument."  If you ever want to explain the world of blogs to anyone, you could do much worse than this strip.

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…?  Part 2

DENNIS O’NEIL: Who knows what evil lurks…? Part 2

Suddenly, the air was full of bats!

The “air” here is metaphorical and if you’d allow me to fully ripen the trope, possibly to the point where it emits a faint odor, it might read, The air of popular culture in the 30s and 40s was full of bats.

Let’s see.  There was a Mary Roberts Rheinhart novel and an early talkie adapted from it, both called The Bat, and there was a pulp hero also called The Bat and, a bit later, another pulp do-gooder who labeled himself The Black Bat.  Am I forgetting anyone…?  Oh yeah.  A comic book character that was introduced in Detective Comics #27, dated May 1939, as Batman.  Like an estimated eighty percent of your fellow earthlings, you may have heard of him.

And, again metaphorically, standing behind the Batman and maybe some of the others was one of the greatest pulp heroes, The Shadow.  The writer of the early Batman stories, Bill Finger, made no secret of his admiration for the Shadow novels.  He went so far as to admit that the Shadow’s influence on his batwork was extremely direct when he told historian (and author and artist and publisher) Jim Steranko, “I patterned my style of writing Batman after the Shadow.”  And: “My first script was a take-off on a Shadow story.”

Which brings us to Anthony Tollin.  Remember him?  I introduced the two of you a couple of weeks ago in this very feature. I told you that a company Anthony owns has been issuing reprints of the Shadow books. Recently, he sent me an early copy of one of those books, titled Partners of Peril, and suggested that I might want to compare it to the first Batman adventure, The Case of the Chemical Syndicate. 

Of course there are differences.  After all, the Shadow novel is probably around 50,000 words long and Batman’s debut is six comic book pages.  But there are also similarities.  I won’t even try to describe them all – see Robert Greenberger’s ComicMix article, or Anthony’s text piece in the book itself – but they are manifold.  In a phone conversation a few hours ago, Anthony mentioned the most obvious, among which are:

  • Both are about a – yes! – chemical syndicate.
  • The heroes of both get involved in the proceedings while visiting a law-enforcing friend.
  • Both feature virtually identical death traps, which each hero beats in the same way.
  • Both heroes offer the same whodunit-type explanation at the adventure’s end.
  • Both heroes spend a lot of time on a rooftop after a safe robbery.
  • The denouements of both stories are, again, virtually identical.

Et cetera.

As I wrote in the earlier column, anyone with even the dimmest interest in pop culture or comics history, or who just wants to sample the kind of entertainment that kept pops or granddad reading by flashlight under the covers, or who’s just in the mood for capital-M Melodrama combined with capital-H Heroics, might want to see if the Shadow has anything for them.

For me, the stuff has another aspect, one which is as modern as hip-hop. But that’s for next week.

RECOMMENDED READING: Awww…you know.

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.