The Mix : What are people talking about today?

The Legendary Mindy Newell?

One of the joys of having returned to the comics convention scene this fall was seeing old friends and industry comrades again after too many goddamn years – Walter and Louise Simonson, Marv Wolfman, Fabian Nicieza, Timothy Truman, Jim Salicrup, Dave Gibbons, Cat Staggs, and Jill Thompson, to name just a few – and to have a chance, at last, to meet, face-to-face for the very first time, a woman whom I’ve wanted to meet for a very long time, a woman of immense talent and of immense class…

The first time Gail and I communicated it was through Facebook, by which she reached out to me to apologize for all the press she was getting about her assignment to write Wonder Woman, i.e., “Wonder Woman Gets First Female Writer” and so forth, and that she wanted me to know that she kept trying to correct the press.

I said something like this: “But, Gail, if they print that, if they call you the second ongoing Wonder Woman writer, there’s no story.”

Of course, Gail went on to write one of the best ever run of the Amazon’s adventures.

Anyway, that led to Gail asking me to participate in her “Five Questions with…” site. Check it out. I just reread it – it’s one hell of an interview!

Gail and I continued to communicate via social media, but we still remained only “Facebook friends” until…

At this year’s NYCC, knowing Gail was there, I walked up and down the aisles until I finally found her booth. She was off at a panel, but I was determined to make time to at last meet one-on-one. So at timely intervals I kept walking over to her table – it was about the fourth time that I knew that she was back because the crowd and line around it snaked up and down the aisle. I stood off a little bit watching her talk to fans and sign her work until there was a (very) momentary break – I slid in, with apologies to the fans at the front of the line (“Just want to say hello for a quick second”) – and felt like a complete idiot. I finally had a chance to meet Gail, and I was tongue-tied.

It felt like an eternity; but it was probably a maximum of three seconds, until I said, “Hi, Gail, it’s Mindy Newell.” (Like I was on the phone or something.) I think I stuck out my hand for a shake and said, “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

She just stared at me. I thought I had done something wrong, so I think I said, “Well, I don’t want to hold anybody up,” and left.

Then, yesterday, I found this on my Facebook page:


Gail Simone

21 hrs ·

https://www.facebook.com/mindy.newell.35

It was lovely to meet the legendary Mindy Newell briefly at my table at NYCC.

She’s the REAL first acknowledged writer of the Wonder Woman ongoing title

(something I get routinely, but incorrectly, credited as being).

She’s a huge inspiration and a lovely person, and when she came to meet me at my table I was too overwhelmed to do much more than just gasp out a hello.

But she’s a legend and I adore her!

Honestly, guys, the last thing I think of myself as is “legendary.” Legends in the comic books industry, to me, are people like Stan Lee, or Jack Kirby, or Steve Ditko. Or Neil Gaiman, or Marv Wolfman. Or George Pérez, or Alan Moore, or Karen Berger. (And yes, you, too, Mike Gold, as I kiss up to my editor here at ComicMix *smile*.) To me, it is absolutely incredible that I even know these people. Or worked with some of them. Or can call so many of them, and others, friends. Or that I knew and worked with Julie Schwartz, whom my daughter still remembers giving her pink sucking candies from the jar on his file cabinet in his office. Or Len Wein, who actually invited me to a poker game where sat around the table people who had only been names on a splash page before. Or Mark Gruenwald, who always made me laugh and actually hired me to work at Marvel.

Legendary?

I’ll tell you a secret.

Sometimes I feel like a fake. A fool. An illusionist.

Someone who didn’t try hard enough. Someone who gave up too easily.

Yeah, it’s easy to say, “I suffered, and still do, from chronic depression syndrome.” It’s easy to say, “I had a daughter to raise.” It’s easy to say, “I needed a job with benefits and a regular paycheck.” It’s easy to say, “I didn’t have any support.”

That’s not what legends say.

That’s what cowards say.

Legendary?

That would be Gail Simone.

Ed Catto and The Charlton Comics Documentary!

I’ve been writing about several of the impressive Geek Culture entrepreneurs I met at this year’s New York Comic-Con, but the real-life Gotham City certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on these passionate creators who are making it happen.

The Buffalo Comic-Con is run by Emil Novak and his team. They’re also the folks behind Buffalo’s long-lived comic shop, Queen City Bookstore. It’s a great shop full of treasures, staffed by people who love both comics and customer service.

I was invited to be a panelist at their convention a few weeks back. As we were wrapping up our panel, the next folks were setting up and I realized that was the panel I wanted to see. Keith Larsen and Jackie Zbuska are creative entrepreneurs and they are passionate about their Charlton Comics documentary.

Ed Catto:  This project seems like a lot of fun! How’d it all start?

Keith Larsen & Jackie Zbuska: So what’s our origin story? It’s not spectacular, or even exciting. Tired feet and washing dishes. We were at the 2014 ComiCONN in Bridgeport, CT. It was an awesome venue with lots to do, but after a few hours, we really needed a break off. Keith noticed a ticker ribbon message advertising a panel featuring Denny O’Neil, Bob Layton, and Paul Kupperberg. Perfect! Comic book legends and our excuse to sit!

We snuck into the panel room as Paul took the stage and announced the panel topic: Charlton Comics! Huh…what? Charlton? Didn’t they go away like, 30 years ago? “And, what the heck is a Charlton? One of those candies you put in the freezer…?”

What about Batman, Denny? What about Iron Man, Bob? Why did you kill Archie, Paul? Charlton?!?!? But, what the heck, we’re nerds who like comics, and the room is pretty packed, so let’s give it 10 minutes and then get back to walking the floor. The whole panel included Paul Kupperberg, Bob Layton, Denny O’Neil, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Frank McLaughlin. After maybe two minutes, we moved from the back of the room to the second row. By the end of the hour, we were hooked. These guys had some hilarious stories!

Cut to the next morning: Keith is doing dishes thinking about the Charlton panel… wait a minute!!!! Why not do a documentary about Charlton! Keith called Jackie with the idea. To get things going, Keith would call Mitch Hallock, who produces TerrifiCon. Mitch knew some of the guys from Charlton, so maybe he could help us track them down! Jackie’s response: “Nope, I’ll be there in 20 minutes. We’re driving back down to the con and cold pitching these guys.” The guys obviously said ‘Yes’ to the pitched idea. Since then, we’ve expanded the team, done more interviews, and have been hitting the books to crack the whole saga wide open.

EC:  Now, can you remind me how Charlton as a company started?

KL & JZ: The Comics division began only out of the necessity to save money. The Charlton factory was an all-in-one publishing establishment that made their money off Music magazines – like Hit Parader – and crossword puzzle books. They found that it was more cost effective to run the printing presses overnight – and thus Charlton Comics was born!

Oh yeah, and apparently, the idea of Charlton proper was hatched from two guys who met in jail. Weird, right?!?

EC:  Did you have a love of Charlton before undertaking this project?

KL & JZ: HAHA. NoooooNoNoNo. As we mentioned above Jackie had never heard of it and Keith has a slight recognition once he saw the bullseye logo, but that’s about as familiar as we got. We take our fair share of social media trolling for it, but as far as we are concerned we see it as a good thing. Approaching the project as filmmakers first and comic book fans second, gives us a fresh and unique perspective on the story. Had we been big Charlton fans, we may have told the tale with a bias or fan perspective. Not knowing anything about it lets us take a clean and honest approach to making the movie.

EC:  I’m excited to hear about some of the fans you’ve met along the way. What is the typical Charlton fan like? What are the atypical Charlton fans like?

KL & JZ: Funny enough, the die-hards we encounter are punk rockers from the hey-days of CBGBs. Our one atypical fan is truly unique. He’s a Generation Z 16-year old who’s got a substantial Charlton collection. He’s also a student of the silver age of comics in general. We’d say that his knowledge of the genre rivals that of any adult comic book historian we’ve spoken to. We interviewed him for the movie and we talk to him regularly as he finds Charlton gems at flea markets, tag sales and conventions all over the Northeast.

EC:  It seems like you have been making the rounds on the comic-con circuit. What’s that been like?

KL & JZ: We’re always surprised to meet new Charlton fans at every one of the stops we make. It’s a unique community of people and happy that our project is exciting to them. It charges us up to know that people are finding out about this movie and supporting us. It’s very flattering that true Charlton fans are trusting us to handle telling this story about something that they cherish so much.

EC:  Several Professionals have a spot in their hearts for Charlton. Who carries the torch for Charlton these days?

KL & JZ: Well, a super-fan named Fester Faceplant started a Facebook fan page and set up an online Charlton reading library of digitized Charlton books for fans to read. From there, it ballooned into a full-blown revival in the form of Charlton Neo Media spearheaded by Paul Kupperberg, Mort Todd, Roger McKenzie, Joe Staton and Nick Cuti amongst others. They’re first retail issue of “Charlton Arrow Vol 2” hit stands in October 4th of this year!

EC:   I’m sure you’ve learned some surprises in your research. What can you share with us now?

KL & JZ: Hmmm, if we tell you, then we’d have to kill you! Hahahaha.

What we can share is that most of the lore of Charlton that exists online is far from the truth. It really lends an extra cutting edge to what our movie will show – the real story behind Charlton Comics – and trust us, life is stranger than fiction.

EC:   After all this – What was your favorite Charlton Comic originally and what’s your favorite one now?

Keith Larsen: My first taste of some “real” Charlton was from a coveted gift I received from our new pal Joe Staton the day we interviewed him for the movie. He gave me a collected edition of E-Man published by First Comics. That was my favorite until I was able to read every Question back-up story in Blue Beetle comics from a digital collection we purchased on eBay. But Joe’s book is still awesome!

Jackie Zbuska: I instantly gravitated toward their expansive collection of horror titles, which despite the Comics Code, are subversively graphic. I have a soft spot for Gorgo stories, but my true favorite is John Byrne’s Rog-2000. He was in backup stories in some of the E-Man comics.

EC:  What’s the timing of the project and how can fans help?

KL & JZ: Honestly, we were hoping for the project to be finished by the end of 2017, but funding dictates how fast we can work. We had financial help via crowd funding, but the money has run out. Unfortunately, with something as unheard of as Charlton Comics with as niche a fan base as it has, it hasn’t allowed us the ability to break into the sphere of pop culture awareness. So, in the case of crowd-funding, our reach has been limited to the marketplace of serious comic book fans or collectors. We’re hoping that our future efforts for raising funds will make strides into appealing to that larger audience potential. Any ideas are welcomed!

You can contribute via our website, www.CharltonMovie.com

EC: Which Charlton comic series is cooler, Judo Master or Gorgo?

Keith Larsen: Judo Master!
Jackie Zbuska: Keith’s wrong, it’s totally Gorgo!

For more information, check out their site at : http://www.charltonmovie.com/ or their panel at the Rhode Island Comic-Con on Friday, November 10, 2017.

John Ostrander: From This Nose… A Hero?

I’m pretty excited!

Recent doctor visits revealed that three spots on my otherwise remarkable countenance were basal cell carcinoma, a.k.a. skin cancer. Okay, that’s not exciting. It’s really a bit of a downer, although if you’re going to have cancer, this kind of skin cancer may be the one to have since it is (by all reports) the most curable.

The treatment strategy has been decided: high level bursts of radiation. Okay, that’s not exciting either. Also a bit of a bummer as the possible side effects include vomiting which is also a bit of a bummer.

However, it is a well-known fact of comic book physics (especially MU physics) that radiation in some form may be the greatest single cause of mutations that result in super-powers! Pretty spiffy, eh?

So I’m wondering what sort of super-powers I might get. I know that I speculated like this once before but that was just an injection for a heart catheterization or something. I don’t remember and I can’t be bothered to look it up. Besides, it was something small like a particle for tracking purposes.

Obviously, since I never got any superpowers it wasn’t enough to trigger a transformation… and boy-howdy I still feel gypped! But this time it’s going high level burst of radiation! High level bursts, ladies and gentlemen! (I think that’s what they said.) As Nietche once said, what radiation bursts that don’t kill me makes me super-powered. You can look it up!

I have long posited that the powers a character receives are based on aspects of his personality or character and if that isn’t true, it should be.

So, working from this principle, I’ve been trying to guess what might my powers be.

I’m a writer so the ability to become invisible and observe people might be really useful. I’d would say it would allow me to sneak into a women’s locker room unobserved but this is the era of Harvey Weinstein and that’s not funny.

Maybe my power would be to step into other people’s lives such as Deadman or Dr. Sam Beckett (and while we’re on the topic of Quantum Leap, why – in the era of reboots and relaunches – haven’t they brought that show back?). As a writer, I invent other people’s lives; this power could be pretty useful, no? At my age, I could become OldMan with the power to get those kids off my lawn!

However, none of these powers would get me into either The Avengers or the Justice League, let alone my own solo movie. That and action figures are where the real money is. Not that I’m in this for money but, you know, what could it hurt, hmm?

Which makes me think I shouldn’t just limit myself to super-heroes. If I’m going to be in it for the money, I should consider super-villains. I’m good at writing them; they’re usually a lot more fun and they get all the best lines. Yeah, they get put in prison a lot but they never seem to stay there.

I have a fraternal twin brother so maybe I could be my own evil twin (not that my brother Joe is my evil twin; it’s more like I’m his goofy twin). I could be a super-hero by day and a super-villain by night; I could be my own arch-enemy! And neither personality is aware that they share a body with their foe. That might be fun.

Of course, fate could be cruel and instead of giving me super-powers, the radiation makes my nose fall off. Still, even then, I could be Lee Marvin as Tim Strawn in the movie Cat Ballou and wear a silver nose tied to my face. Or Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera. Maybe my nose will become bright red and I’ll become JohnO the Red Nosed Writer.

Naw. Fate won’t be that cruel. We already have Donald Trump.

 

Marc Alan Fishman: Shabbat Shalom, Mother Trumper!

In 2003, the baddest Heeb this side of Tel Aviv took on Christmas. The Hebrew Hammer, a send-up of Shaft by way of Manischewitz, hit Comedy Central. It was, as it still is, a hilarious holiday romp that made star Adam Goldberg pull off cool, even while in complete Jewish regalia.

As someone who stayed Jewish mostly for the jokes myself, I was drawn to the flick at the mere mention of it at the first teaser, most likely saddled between an episode of The Daily Show and a rerun of Strangers With Candy. But as with many a holiday special, The Hebrew Hammer made its way to the DVD rack (purchased by yours truly essentially the day it hit said rack), and for many a gentile… faded from memory. Now that I’ve successfully spared you looking it up on Wikipedia, we soldier on.

The Hebrew Hammer is set to return, just in the nick of these tumultuous times. For anyone not paying attention to the current meteoric rise of Tiki Torch sales, the time is nigh for a plucky Hassid to don his wool hat and Blue Blockers to do what needs to be done here in Trump’s Amerikkka. What’s that? Oh, you know. Go back in time and kill Hitler. Suck on those kosher nuts, Tarantino.

Launching a campaign via MicroVentures, Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler is crowdfunding its way to punching the anti-Semites right where it hurts. I had the privilege of speaking to Adam Goldberg (the He-Man Hebrew himself) and Jonathan Kesselman (the nebbishy Jew behind the camera) to learn more.

Before we start, should we… you know… show people the actual video for the campaign?

Adam Goldberg: I think… maybe… well—

Jonathan Kesselman: Yes. Do that.

Adam Goldberg: (some barely audible kvetching about being interrupted) You should go here and watch the thing.

OK, simple enough. Now, what do people need to know about Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler that isn’t in the video?

Adam Goldberg: I don’t know… Well, over the years, after the first film, people had been asking me about doing another Hammer and I was always one foot in, one foot out, you know? And it was also couched in those feelings you can get of being too-overly-identified by a single character. But then, of course, maybe a year or so ago, with the ascent of Trump, my Twitter mentions begin to include calls for the resurrection of the Hammer – when it didn’t include grotesque anti-Semitic propaganda from these pussies hiding behind cartoon frog avatars. So Jon and I began talking about recontextualizing the sequel script we had worked on years ago—not changing it dramatically, just giving it a little symbolic contemporary context. We had come up with some serialized shorts to sort of bridge the gap between the two movies that we thought we might put online, but in the end we decided to focus our efforts on getting the sequel made. We sort of bastardized the “pilot” of the series to use as our campaign video.

And from there… how did you decide on this campaign specifically?

Adam Goldberg: Indiegogo had been courting us for a while. They had recently teamed up with Microventures to form a new entity which finances projects using equity crowdsourcing. Jon and I felt the cultish nature of the film always lent itself to a crowdsourcing campaign but we dug the idea that you weren’t merely donating, or just getting a mug or a hat or whatever, but that you were actually investing in the film— and invested in the financial success of the film.

I would dare say… how Jewish of your guys!

Adam Goldberg: (laughs) Uh, yeah. I mean, it depends. The Nazis would say it would be more Jewish of us to just take the money. In this case, we’re investing it. It’s more accounting-based… but I feel like maybe we’re going down the wrong road here, Marc. (laughs)

But, you know. Look, I have no problem with straight-up crowdsourcing.  I’ve lent support to many campaigns – completely not movie related at all.  And I’m even considering doing it for an album I’d release next (as in music, as Adam has three albums out already). But the campaigns I like the best are the ones where in essence you’re pre-ordering the product. And in this case you get to watch the film and maybe you see a financial benefit. It just feels like a more collaborative effort.

And we can’t ignore that Hitler has been offed semi-recently in film. Can you promise us Hammer kills Hitler better than Inglorious Basterds?

Adam Goldberg: I have no idea! Never seen it, if for no other reason to never be accused of borrowing from it. But we wrote Hammer vs. Hitler in 2005. So…

•     •     •     •     •

So, what are you waiting for, bubbala? I hope you had a chance to watch the video and see their campaign. Suffice it to say, I was moved by it enough to back it. Then again, I am Jewish and as such felt the pangs of guilt to help my fellow tribe-members out. And who am I to say no? I mean, sure, I’m a father of two growing boys, and I have my own ventures I sink my money into, but how could I let these fine young men stay poor and broke out in the street?

And to my goyem friends, how could you pass up this deal? I mean South Park already let loose the secret of our Jew Gold. And now you have this rare chance to become an investor in a big Jewish Hollywood film? I mean, what kind of madness is this? It’d be like Adam Sandler letting you invest in his next 19 crappy Netflix shows… except this will actually be funny, won’t be phoned in, and has 1000% more killing of Hitler.

REVIEW: Batman vs. Two-Face

REVIEW: Batman vs. Two-Face

You can’t help but watch the just-released Batman vs. Two-Face with a tear in your eye and weight in your heart. Adam West’s final performance was thankfully completed well before his untimely death in June. He goes out with some fine tributes but it’s a shame the concluding chapter of his Batman career is such a mess of a story.

For whatever reason, ABC and 20th Century-Fox chose not to use Two-Face, perhaps fearing he was too gruesome for 7:30 p.m. viewing. That’s a shame since the Harlan Ellison treatment for a two-parter, had some promise. The tortured psyche of District Attorney Harvey Dent makes for a wonderful examination of mankind’s duality and the obsession with the number two fits in with the rest of the rogues’ gallery. For whatever reason, the screenwriters eschewed the comic origins in favor of something hewing closer to Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde (appropriately name-checked here).

There are storytelling lapses in logic that one could argue is in keeping with the rushed pace of producing the original story but for a sustained, feature-length story, you need a far stronger premise. We have Prof. Hugo Strange (Jim Ward) making his debut, demonstrating he has figured out how to extract “evil” from Batman’s foes. To test it, some genius has allowed him to experiment on five of the most dangerous foes rather than one, so yes it works, but so much evil has been extracted that the machine predictably explodes. And so Two-Face is born.

The rest of the story presents an opportunity to showcase large numbers of familiar felons in a wrong-headed bit of fan service (we got them last time so this feels repetitive) while creating an oddly dissatisfying subplot of Dick Grayson (Burt Ward) actually feeling jealous of Bruce Wayne (West) having an adult male friendship with Dent (William Shatner); something to feed the homosexual theories that have existed between the duo since Fredric Wertham first raised the issue in the 1950s. Thankfully, we have the welcome dalliance between Batman and Catwoman (Julie Newmar) early in the story to cement the notion that Bruce is straight. His opening scene of reciting poetry to her from outside her prison cell is one of the most romantic elements in the series.

Given the pedigree shared by writers James Tucker and Michael Jelenic, I expected a tighter story. There’s a lot of fighting, wheel-spinning, and effort to wink at the fans to prolong the story of Two-Face’s efforts to rule Gotham, especially after he unmasks Batman, and Dent’s struggle to retain his humanity. We get a nice focus on King Tut (Wally Wingert) and his own duality issues while little used villain Bookworm (Jeff Bergman) makes for a nice red herring. There is also the introduction of Dr. Quinzel (Sirena Irwin) which is tonally wrong and out of place.

Director Rick Morales does a serviceable job but may have allowed too many inside jokes, marring the actual pathos of the story. That said, of the various puns and jokes, the best may be that Dent is treated after the initial explosion at the Sisters of Perpetual Irony Hospital.

While West, Ward, and Newmar are welcome familiar voices, Shatner surprises with a nuanced performance as Dent/Two-Face. What could have been over-the-top, even for this series, actually helps ground the character’s torment. They are all well-supported by an able vocal cast.

Visually, the designs for Batman/Wayne and Robin/Grayson are less effective than the previous feature. In some angles, Robin actually looks aged and too often, neither look like their live-action counterparts. Thankfully, the animators literally copied Filmation’s Captain Kirk poses so Shatner is recognizable as his 1966 self and his Two-Face is appropriately creepy.

The Blu-ray combo pack comes with the Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD code. The Special Features open with “The Wonderful World of Burt Ward” (14:30), a look at the actor’s career and half-century relationship with West. The actor is remember during the Adam West Tribute Panel from Comic-Con International 2017 (39:30), where radio personality Ralph Garman, director Kevin Smith, producer James Tucker, actress Lee Meriwether, and moderator Gary Miereanu talk about the man’s influence over generations; “Burt Ward on Being Starstruck” (2:00); “Burt Ward on Ambition” (1:00); and “Julie Newmar on Inspiration” (2:00). Look for a 30-second Easter Egg which is fun, but obvious.: bAT

Martha Thomases and the Multi-Dimensional Geeks

This past weekend I had a truly multi-dimensional geek experience.

I went to the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, which is the San Diego Comic-Con of fiber nerds. I went with two women I’ve known since we were in boarding school together. One is now a judge in appellate court, and the other works for a local historical society. I would like to say that we had a highfalutin’ philosophical discourse as we drove to the Dutchess County New York Fairgrounds and carefully walked among the sheep, but mostly we talked about yarn and comics. One of my friends had read a piece in her local newspaper about the traditional book publishers who exhibited at New York Comic-Con (alas, I cannot find a link). I tried to explain that this was nothing new, but I’m not sure I succeeded.

I wish she had been able to come with me on Sunday, when another friend was kind enough to take me to the American Museum of Natural History for a panel about “Ethno-Graphics” about anthropology and graphic story-telling.

I was unfamiliar with two of the panelists, Lucio Zago, the writer and artist for Williamsburg Shorts and Sherine Hamdy, one of the writers of Lissa, and only a little bit aware of the third, Edgard Miranda-Rodriguez, creator of La Borinquena.

The moderator, Catrin Einhorn, is an editor at The New York Times. She seemed quite knowledgeable about anthropology, and perhaps a bit less informed about graphic story-telling. It’s also possible that she spoke less about that aspect so that the panelists could speak more.

Lucio Zago’s book about Williamsburg and the gentrification it has experienced since the early 1990s when he first moved there, sounds sweet and graceful. Alas, according to this, it is out of print. I don’t know if it was ever available beyond the Kickstarter through which he raised funds to publish, and a few copies for local bookshops. In any case, he seemed to be a bit of an outlier at this particular occasion.

Sherine Hamdy’s book, Lissa, is published by an academic publisher, the University of Toronto Press, and is the first book in what is planned to be an entire line of graphic novels. Although a fictional story about two young women and their families, Lissa is a thoroughly researched examination of religion, culture, medicine and class in the United States and Egypt. The back matter runs over a hundred pages, including original research and interpretations of other studies. I’m very curious about this new publishing venture, and whether these graphic novels, like other publications from academic presses, are used as textbooks as well as entertainment.

Edgard Miranda-Rodriguez was a bit familiar to me from this write-up, but I had no idea what a firebrand he was. He created a Puerto Rican super-heroine because that is exactly the comic book he most wanted to read when he was a kid, and it’s the comic he most wants his kids to read now. He was careful and deliberate to credit other Puerto Ricans working in the medium today (especially ), and more than anything I wanted to ask him if he knew Ivan Velez.

I wanted to ask all three panelists such questions, what one friend of mine calls “Jewish Geography,” although it doesn’t have to be just about Jewish people. It’s what happens when you meet a person for the first time, and try to establish some common ground by asking a few questions (“Where are you from?”) and seeing if you know any of the same people. The panel wasn’t about who these folks knew, however, but rather the anthropological elements of their work, so I restrained myself. Instead, I satisfied my need to feel important by recommending the Eisner-winning Sonny Liew book, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye to the helpless woman sitting next to me, unable to escape my attention.

My high-school friend might enjoy it, too. It’s published by Pantheon, a real book publisher.

Tweeks: Halloween Costume Help

Are you still looking for Halloween Costume? Yeah, we get it. Trying to coordinate with your friends is hard and sometimes even with all the planning ahead you try to do, you end up scrambling at the last minute to pull together the right costume.

Well, we’re here to help. We talk about some of our best group costume ideas and enlist guidance from Howie from Rubie’s Costume to help you figure it all out.

Box Office Democracy: The Snowman

There’s a degree to which I have to respect any film that can take a thoroughly innocuous thing and make it terrifying.  Movies like Child’s Play or Nightmare on Elm Street have done this and become iconic classics partially on that basis.  If you can make something spooky that people didn’t find spooky before like a kid’s toy or going to sleep you are going to get substantial mindshare out of it.  The Snowman gets to that place with snowmen.  I walked in to the theater convinced it would be a silly device but by the end of the movie I got a bit of a charge seeing them get that little bugger in to new places.  It doesn’t save the movie— it’s unfortunately a terrible bore— but it gives it a bit of a lasting legacy as opposed to just being completely forgettable.

I don’t like when I feel I’ve been lied to by the marketing materials for a movie.  The first poster I saw for The Snowman (and most of the marketing material overall) was focused on this letter that read “Mister Police You Could Have Saved Her I Gave You All The Clues” and that’s a galling claim for a movie that has basically no clues in it.  The investigation follows one thread for the whole time for basically no reason than one person has a hunch/grudge and the suspects are creepy.  Then when this part of the investigation dead ends (because it was nothing to begin with) the movie is basically out of time and has to just tell you who did it so they have time for any kind of climax.  There’s no mystery presented to the audience at all.  To be fair the letter on the poster is not in the film at all but it still feels like I was sold a mystery and then delivered a more straightforward thriller.

It’s such a bummer that The Snowman is as bland as it is.  There’s a decent cast in here but they have nothing to work with and there’s no spark coming from behind the camera.  Michael Fassbender is an actor that I like but there’s nothing compelling about being a drunk detective that doesn’t have his life together.  That isn’t an interesting character because it’s been done hundreds and hundreds of times before.  He floats through the movie seeming barely interested (it leads to an amazingly unintentionally funny sex scene but that probably wasn’t the point) and that’s not acceptable in a movie about people being killed.  People have to care about that.  The whole movie is full of people who don’t care enough that a serial killer is plaguing their lives or that their son keeps running away, or that a dead person is suddenly in front of them.  Val Kilmer apparently was battling cancer during filming of The Snowman and they had to have someone else come in and rerecord all of his dialogue and it’s jarring and the sync is not as good as it could be.  I don’t know why you would cast someone who couldn’t deliver their lines.  I love Val Kilmer but he’s not such a transcendent physical actor that he’s good enough when his ever scene is a spaghetti western.

It would be hard for a transcendent movie full of spectacular performances and excellent directing to overcome the dreadful story work in The Snowman and with lifeless entries in all other categories this movie sinks into the frozen lake the provides so much of the plot development.  This is a movie with two compelling scenes in the first third of the film and then just a slog of bland nothing for an hour as the gloomy array of characters struggle to make me believe they care.  There are reports out that they didn’t get to shoot 10-15% of the script due to timing and budget issues.  Maybe somewhere in those gunshot pages there are magic scenes that turn this in to the compelling mystery thriller the marketing promised.  It’s just as likely there’s nothing that was going to save this film, that the adaptation was doomed from the start and it was a studio deciding not to send good money after bad.  We’ll never know and I don’t intend to lose any sleep over it.

Dennis O’Neil: Invisible Comic Books!

So look: we’re all part of the same whole, right? I mean, we can all trace our origins to the same big bang, between 13,000,000 and 14,000,000 million years ago, give or take a few calendar pages, so I shouldn’t have to perform mental/verbal gymnastics to convince you that radio drama has a relationship with comic book scripting, beyond the obvious, that both are what Stephen King calls story delivery systems.

But there may be a few gnarlys lurking in the crannies of bandwidth who present themselves as doubters. We shall let them continue gnawing on fish bones when I sweep you back some 68 (again giving or taking some of those pesky calendar pages — but much smaller calendar pages this time).

It’s me, there in the kitchen, standing on a chair so I can reach Mom’s white plastic radio which lived atop the refrigerator, also white and sometimes called the “icebox.” I was listening to – I was heeding – my programs. Superman. (Of course, Superman!) Captain Midnight. Buck Rogers. Tom Mix. (He was a cowboy, and of course we made room for cowboys.) These, and others I may be forgetting were after school shows, broadcast on weekdays between four and six.

I heeded them. Oh, yeah.

The radio stuff wasn’t all that was in my post-toddler portfolio. There were also the comic books and some weeks I got only one, largesse from Dad who picked it up along with milk for the family after Sunday Mass. Some weeks, though, I had a lot more than a single paltry comic to read. Every once in a while, often on a sunny afternoon, I collected my used comics, put them in a wagon and visited the homes of the other kid-comics readers in the neighborhood and, sitting on somebody’s porch, we’d trade: their used and maybe slightly torn comics for mine. Our books were never doomed to Mylar bags, to be hoarded like the contents of Uncle Scrooge’s vault. Our comics were only getting started! They were destined to extend their gifts of enchantment and delight into the future, to porches we had never seen and maybe even city blocks that would be new to us.

So, yes, I was a comics nerd before there were such things. But… except for the days when I went a’trading, I had only one new comic in a week. Pretty sparse diet of high adventure. But radio – Monday through Friday, exciting stories – and a bunch of them. Sure, they were continued but I didn’t mind that, and I didn’t know what the characters looked like (unless they also appeared in comics) but that was okay, too.

Better than okay. Not seeing the humans who belonged to the voices, I visualized them – you know, made them up in my head – and while I was at it, I imagined cars and planes and buildings and lots more. I imagined a world.

Pretty good training for a kid who would grow up to be a comic book writer.

Sweatshop by Peter Bagge and others

This is not a limited series. I know: I was surprised, too. But Peter Bagge’s afterword, which explains the history of Sweatshop , makes it clear that it was intended to be ongoing, and that he would have been happy to keep it running for a much longer time.

That didn’t happen: Sweatshop got a six-issue run from DC in 2003, when that company was in one its periodic throes of trying to broaden its range, which was followed by the inevitable and equally periodic pullback to its core competency of grimacing people in spandex punching each other repeatedly.

Sweatshop is not about spandex, or punching. It does have its share of grimacing, and other extreme facial expressions, because we are talking about Peter Bagge here. But, otherwise, it doesn’t look much like a good fit for DC. Our central character is Mel Bowling, a comics creator on the far side of middle age. He’s the credited creator of the syndicated strip Freddy Ferret — though it’s really put together by his oddball crew of young, underpaid assistants — and a lazy, narcissistic golf-playing blowhard.

(The set-up is not unlike some manga about manga-making — Bagge doesn’t mention any inspirations, or Japanese comics at all, in his afterword, but it’s at the very least a striking case of parallel development.)

Reading the first issue, I thought it would feature Bagge’s art on stories about the whole team and his fellow artists (Stephen Destefano, Bill Wray, Stephanie Gladden, Jim Blanchard, and Johnny Ryan also contribute art to these stories) each picking up from the POV of one of the assistants. That would have been neat, and more formally interesting, but it’s not the way the series ended up going: the feint in that direction was apparently a scene-setting one-off for that first issue. Instead, there’s mostly a lead story for each issue drawn by Bagge, and then additional stories drawn by one or more of the others, in the style of old humor comics.

The stories are all about that crew in Bowling’s studio — worrying about the “Hammie” awards, planning and going to the big Comic-Con, dealing with a new writer joining the team, and various career and personal issues for all of them. It’s not quite as zany and slapstick as Bagge got in the ’80s and ’90s, but these are broad characters who do crazy things: it’s a lot like a sitcom on the page.

Sweatshop is funny, and probably even funnier the more you know about strip comics: I suspect Bagge buried jokes and references I didn’t get among the ones I did see and laugh at. Some readers may find the changing art styles distracting, though they all are in the same tradition — Bagge’s rubber-hose arms and googly eyes are probably the most extreme, cartoony style here, with the others giving a (sometimes only very slightly) more restrained version of the same look. What can I say? It’s a funny collection of stories about comics and comics people, and a decade has only dated it slightly. (A contemporary version would definitely have at least one issue full of webcomic jokes.)

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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