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Michael Davis: Not The American Dream

When I was eight years old, I was racing my new Tonka toy truck up and down the concrete sidewalk on my block. I was doing so by bending over and pushing the truck as fast as I could with both hands.

The truck slipped out of my hand, and my momentum carried me quite a bit before I came to a stop.

I was fortunate my clothing protected most of me. Unfortunately, most of me did not include my face. My head skidded face down. As a result, the sidewalk tore much of the skin off my face.

My mother had just learned to drive and wasn’t very good at it.

I didn’t help I was screaming and crying as was my sister. She was screaming and crying not so much because my face looked like it had been through a meat grinder but because my mother was screaming and crying.

That was a first, and it freaked us both out.

Somehow, she got us to the ER left me with my sister in the car and ran to the nurse at the desk to plead for her child to be seen.

“How will you be paying?”

People think the discolorations and marks on my face are the remnants of severe teenage acne.

Nope.

My scars are my constant reminder of a Tonka truck a sidewalk and a horrible woman who for the better part of an hour let me sit while others with stomach aches or hangovers saw the doctor.

My mother took my stepfather’s car his pride and joy a spanking new 442 without his permission. That could have been a suicidal move— my stepfather was an alcoholic and had hit my mother before. Years later he would split her skull with another Tonka Truck leaving her for dead.

At the time, she was driving me to the emergency room she had been beaten enough times to know taking his car would certainly result in an ass whipping.

She didn’t care. We could have walked to the free clinic, my mother decided otherwise. I was made to wait because we went to the hospital in the nearest white neighborhood. I think that women at the desk would never have let me see a doctor, but one saw me. When he did, he came over stooped down and examined my face. “What happened? you get into a fight with a cheese shredder?”

I didn’t get it, but my mother laughed as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

No idea what drug he gave me or what he put on my face it smelled funky but reduced the pain a lot. He wrote a prescription handed it to my mother gave her a sample of the painkiller and sent us out to the monster to check out.

My mother placed the sample of the meds on the desk while she filled out ’promised to pay’ papers.  The front desk Nazi took them.

When my mom recounted this to me years later the look of absolute abhorrence on her face when she mentioned that woman was unblemished.

Jean (yes, I called my mother by her first name. It’s a Black thing) brought me a shit load of comic books to take my mind off the pain comics aspirin and the watchful eyes of my sister. Mother and grandmother were all I had.

When my face had healed somewhat, and the pain was mostly gone I was overjoyed to learn I could go to summer camp. Every morning my sister and I would board a bus and venture to some part of Long Island to attend a camp run by Catholic Charities.

CYO Camp provided low cost or free enrollment to many who could not afford to pay.  I had been looking forward to a fun experience since I heard the words ‘camp!’

It was terrifying.

This older kid, Steven Hillard (yeah you bastard I remember you) would tell me every day my face which looked like a jigsaw puzzle would never heal and I would be like that forever.

Each evening I fled by bus to the safety of my imagination in the pages of those comics. Each morning my dread would return the moment I stepped off the bus. Steven would make sure it stayed with me until I reach the safety of the bus then home to my comics.

Often, I still wake up with what doctors call a phantom pain. For what feels like an eternity but can’t be more than a nanosecond at most that phantom pain was the ghost who walked over my imagined still scraped face.

For that nanosecond that pain is real, I know it’s not, but it is.

What is, however, true is my trepidation and anxiety towards hospitals. Try as I might I could not bring myself to see Len Wein for two weeks. Len is recovering from spinal surgery and is like family to me. The best I could do while getting up my nerve over the last two weeks is call a big hospital bigwig I know who promised to cut through any red tape if any arose.

That’s a poor excuse for not sitting with a friend, but it’s all I got right now.

And after two weeks I finally manage to drive to see Len spurred on by his dear friend Bernie Wrightston’s death.

Len was gone. Moved to another hospital— don’t I feel like a goddamn fool. Now I’ve got to get up my fucking nerve again.

Len’s in a great hospital and in good hands.

I wish I could say the same for all Americans if ever in need of care.

24 million men women and children would have and may still lose their health insurance if the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare ever becomes law.

I love my country, but frankly, it is not that great to me, and I’m far from alone.

Trump says he wants to make America great again, but his vision of greatness is a selfish wet dream for those with wealth power and who selfishly want to keep it all.

His American dream is far from the American Dream this country is founded on, and I wonder does he even know what the actual American Dream is?

Well, here’s what it’s not.

It’s not Truth, Justice and the American Way.

No. That’s from a Superman TV show.

It’s not Baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet.

Nada. Chevy commercial.

It’s not a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.

Nope. Campaign Slogan.

It’s definitely not 40 Acres and a mule.

That was just another not so little white lie.

James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream in his 1931 book Epic of America this way:

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it.

It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Nowhere does it say screw the poor, elderly and non-white it means the opposite when it states “…regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Making the least fortunate among us suffer from savage cuts to programs such as meals on wheels for the elderly after school programs in the inner cities is not the American Dream. Raising insurance premiums creating severe financial hardship for seniors is completely contrary to the American Dream.

Since January, every step taken by our government has been contrary to that dream that should be America.

Mr. Adams says… “everyone with the opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

But…

That access to the American Dream is in a deck is stacked against Black people from birth. The Far Right controls the government, and to my knowledge, no one in a position of power has done much but refuse to acknowledge anything is wrong.

Yes, those in the inner city can work hard and hope to get an academic scholarship by being the best and the brightest from the ghetto. Yes, that does happen. But that deck keep getting stacked higher and higher, and it’s going on more and more.

The answer to many on the Far Right is refuse to acknowledge an obvious disadvantage then expect us to achieve the American Dream.

Those who repeatedly say we have the same opportunity as everyone else born in America is either an idiot, liar racist or all three.

Yeah, I count you as a fool if you’re an adult and refuse to learn about a thing before you damn it.

Saying we have the same opportunity as everyone else by birth is injudicious, to put it mildly. Given boxing gloves for your 18th birthday won’t give you the same opportunity to survive a severe beating if put in the ring with Mike Tyson.

Tyson could be 60 years old and still beat the living shit out of anyone 18 years old because he’s Mike Fucking Tyson.

If the system isn’t rigged why are Black men jailed three times longer for the same crime as white men?

How’s that for having the same opportunity?

I’ll give you a perfect example of how the deck is stacked against us on purpose.

Dismissing the following real fact will no doubt come from many. But to deny it proves my point even more.

Betsy DeVos is now Secretary of Education, and she has zero credentials for that position. Her views on education leave no doubt the inner city will suffer more under her.

Dr. Ben Carson is now Secretary of Housing and Urban Development with even fewer credentials than Betsy DeVos. The man who thinks slaves were immigrants runs ‘Urban Development.’

Give that a sec.

Say what you will about Carson, he’s a smart guy. That ‘immigrant’ statement was a blunder, but he’s no dummy. I’ve met him a couple of times— the truth is I like the guy.

Really.

Through a spokesman, he issued the following; “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency,” Carson’s close friend Armstrong Williams said. “The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”

I guess Trump convinced Carson that he wouldn’t cripple the presidency, leave that to Trump. Dr. Carson can just cripple Black people.

Omarosa Maniqault is White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. She is expected to continue the work she started as Director of African-American Outreach where she reached no African Americans.

But she is living the American Dream. She said so:

“Truly, I am living the American dream because of Donald Trump. Look at my career, the wealth, and exposure that I’ve had. It’s difficult to make the argument that Donald Trump doesn’t like Black people and Black women.”

No, it’s not. It’s easy even without a Google search.

The clear majority of African Americans think Trump’s Black Cabinet picks are working against their best interest. Let’s say they’re not (YEAH RIGHT) working against African Americans. Tell me what possible reason is there to put Black people neither respected or liked by the clear majority of other Black people in positions so important to our community?

D. L. Hughley said of Omarosa; “If you’re going to send a black person to talk to black people make sure it’s someone we don’t want to throw a rock at.”

His response to Ben Carson; “Comparing slaves to immigrants is like saying Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims were dinner guests.”

WHO does that? Who puts people in a position of authority over those who hate them?

Would you trust a Nazi to do community outreach to Jews?

What does this have to do with comics?

Everything.

Although I know I’m going to get my ass handed to me once again I make a plea for the comics community to join the rest of the world. It’s time to give a shit outside of the ‘special issue’ where the proceeds go to whatever tragedy is currently being ignored by FOX so they can push their far-Right Wing Agenda.

I say the following with dead seriousness; I can’t stand FOX, but I respect them.

They stay on message no matter what.

Comic book publishing isn’t unique enough so we can just rely on that ‘special issue’ as proof we are relevant. Although many swear, that is all we need. Denny O’Neil and Neal Adam’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow books in the 70’s is just as relevant today.

They shouldn’t be.

Yeah, I said it. Those books shouldn’t be as significant decades later as they are now. What Denny and Neal did in the late 60’s and early 70’s was groundbreaking.

What was even more amazing is they were published by DC Comics.

DC was taking a back seat to the reality Marvel was bringing to comics. Just look at the Fantastic Four. While Superman was trying to get some magical little bastard to say his name backward, Reed Richards was cock blocked by Namor. Ben Grimm was dating a blind girl. Sue Richards got knocked up (take that you fishy fuck), and Johnny Storm was hitting just about every piece of ass he could.

What Denny and Neal did in one bad ass move was put that Marvel reality to shame. They hooked a major character on heroin AND showed him shooting up.

Spider-Man did the same thing, but it lacked the gritty punch of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series.

That little piece of relevance soon disappeared from both Marvel and DC. From time to time something manages to capture that sense of genuineness but let’s face it, men in tights are still all the rage.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

But the times they are a’ changing.

Nope-the times have changed.  As good as those books from Denny and Neal were there are other battles that need fighting and our ‘go to’ books for purpose should not be almost 50 years old.

We are living in a time when people are stopped from entering our country because of the color of their skin and who they pray to. We don’t racially profile white men assuming they may be serial killers, do we? The clear majority of serial killers are white men, and they have killed far more people in this country than terrorism has. Most terrorist attacks in America are brought on by AMERICANS who were born here.

The President of the United States is a liar.  The President of the United States is against a free press. The President of the United States has promised to destroy any effort to combat climate change.

Hey, don’t take my word for any of this— that’s why there’s Google.

You may be OK with all this, and that’s your right. It’s the right of every American to agree or disagree with whatever they choose.

But give this a thought: how is any of what I listed above America?

The American Dream is the opposite of all this shit.

I just think the comics industry should do more.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the outstanding work done in the independent space. The real world is all there, but most are overshadowed by some super motherfucker flying by and blocking out the sun.

Yes, it’s business.

Marvel and DC are in the business of making money. Hell, so am I.

But this isn’t about business. This is about being responsible.

Both companies do on occasion light the world up with something significant enough to warrant discussion debate sometimes even a viable solution.

I love superheroes and would fight Tyson if that’s what it took to keep them flying. Fight? More like provide my face as a punching bag, but my point is I’d take a hit defending what I’ve loved from a child.

DC is still my favorite universe regardless of the friction that existed between us. I still think that Marvel’s Miles Morales is the single greatest character so far created in the 21st Century so this is not a hate on either company for what they do.

I just think they (you and me) should do more.

But I’m a realist, and they are the biggest and do some of the best work in comics.  In my opinion, Dark Horse, Image, and IDW are the best but that’s just my opinion.

Being the biggest they command a massive audience and that’s needed now more than ever.

How fantastic for the industry if Marvel and DC could create a place for those independent artists and writers to tell their stories within the Marvel and DC infrastructure but without the Marvel and DC restrictions.

Yo, House of Ideas here’s one; just print and distribute works you don’t own. Most major art institutions have programs to benefit artist and comics are a recognized art form.

As if.

I have no illusion that anybody with the juice to make this happen will take this suggestion or this article seriously. I expect it to be dismissed by most ridiculed by many and denounced by some.

So why write this at all?

I love comics, I love my country, and I couldn’t give a damn what people think.

I honestly believe American comic book creators there are the best storytellers in the world. There is no higher need than now to create narratives that prove what we are so fond of saying that we are the greatest country in the world.

The world thinks us fools because we elected one.

Maybe Trump will become the leader we can respect but if his actions are any indication we’ve got to change the perception that we all co-sign his shit.

We’ve got the power to do so and must because Trump is our responsibility.  You know what they say about power and responsibility don’t you?

The President would call that fake news. Until he acts differently he’s a fake president.

Until we act differently— are we just as fake?

Mike Gold: Truth, Justice, and Hysteria

I guess Marvel senior vice president David Gabriel has had a bad week.

In case you haven’t heard – perhaps you were in solitary confinement – at the Marvel Retailer Summit Gabriel said that some retailers have told him that they “did not want female superheroes out there.” I have no doubt this is true: every industry has its share of morons, and sometimes – the Trump election is a case in point – those morons can influence policy. Capitalism being what it is, if enough morons have their way something really good and necessary gets chopped. For example, our President’s recent budget eliminated the miniscule funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Social media is instant, uncensored, and vox populi on steroids, so Gabriel’s comment was the latest shot heard around the world and everybody jumped on the bandwagon, taking his comments out of context, twisting them around, and making him appear to be the Adolf Eichmann of comics diversity.

Are there retailers who refuse to order, or who under-order, comics that star black, LGBT, and/or female characters? Of course there are. To quote from Blazing Saddles, “You know… morons.” Gabriel did say that Marvel’s commitment to diversity remains unchanged. He wasn’t backed into a corner and babbling bullshit to save his ass – he was standing behind a commitment made by a Fortune 500 company. Fortune 53 company, to put a fine point on it. And a publicly-traded company at that.

Did Gabriel say it in the most productive way? Hell, I don’t know. I wasn’t there, and I haven’t heard or read the statement in its entire context. At worst, it was phrased in a manner that was not adequately defensive.

In these days of instant communication and instant reaction – and I’m not suggesting this is bad in and of itself – it is virtually impossible to make an important observation that won’t be shorthanded and tossed to the wolves. And I like wolves. I have been one; I will be again. Getting the full story in these days of shortened attention spans and heightened touchiness is a bitch. But it is what it is.

My own takeaway from this affair: First, David Gabriel reported that some retailers don’t like diversity in comics, and I have absolutely no doubt that is true. Second, David Gabriel stood behind Marvel Comics’ commitment to diversity and reaffirmed it.

Corporate America being what it is, that’s not a guarantee. But it is as good as one can expect given the circumstances. Don’t condemn the guy for reporting an observation made by some retailers, delivered at a conference of retailers.

There’s a broader issue, one that I think is at the heart of the criticism. Previously, Marvel announced that this fall their best-known characters such as Iron Man and Thor will revert to their original constructs. We all knew that was coming. I said so in this space before, and I didn’t hear a peep of criticism. But that doesn’t mean that characters such as Captain Marvel, The Wasp or Ms. Marvel necessarily will be altered, and that doesn’t mean that Lady Thor et al will no longer exist.

What we need, and this has pretty much been ComicMix’s point of view all along, is that we must continue to create original characters who are reflective of our entire society. Yes, that is not easy. Absolutely. It’s tough to sell a new character out there. But Marvel has the muscle of Disney behind it, just as DC has the muscle of Warner Bros. behind it. Archie has been doing this for a long time, and some of the “smaller” publishers such as IDW and Dark Horse have plenty of resources.

Diversity is not a fad. No matter how violently some people might react from behind the safety of their internet service providers, this change is here to stay if we remain vigilant and we protect our gains.

Box Office Democracy: Ghost in the Shell

Scarlett Johansson in Ghost In The Shell

I’m sort of curious why Dreamworks even wanted to pay for the rights to make a Ghost in the Shell movie if they weren’t particularly interested in doing anything with the property they acquired. They seemed interested in making a cyberpunk movie, a cyberpunk movie about a badass lady android with some identity issues. I’m pretty sure you could just make an original one of those, no one owns cyberpunk or androids.  If you’re going to pay for a beloved property you could try and tell a story they’ve already told, or at the very least not one that’s just like one they’ve told but much simpler and with a healthy dose of cliche.  I don’t understand why you would buy a Japanese franchise and decide that you only want the Japanese-ness to be set dressing.  If this was an original property it would be a dull movie with a draggy second act; as Ghost in the Shell it’s a colossal failure.

For the movie adaptation they decided to make Ghost in the Shell an awful lot like Blade II. The Major is the first of her kind and her special forces team needs to take out a mysterious terrorist who turns out to be a failed attempt to create the same thing that The Major is.  if you replace “terrorist” with “vampire” and “The Major” with “Blade” that is a perfectly apt description of Blade II.  I happen to believe that Blade II is a terribly under-appreciated movie; it isn’t because it has the world’s most compelling plot.  In things it does worse than Blade II the bad guy i always talking about having his own neural network and there’s a location with a bunch of what look like religious types plugged in to some machines but they never even attempt to define any of that stuff.  It appears to be an artifact from when the plot more closely resembled the animated movie from the 90s and they didn’t want to throw away any of the imagery.

There’s some fantastic visual design in this movie.  The city sequences look a little like Blade Runner turned way way up.  There are these recurring holographic fish through the advertising in the movie, and there’s a certain sense of high tech whimsy inherent in seeing insubstantial fish float all over the place.  There’s a sequence where the robot design becomes absolutely chilling as a robot clearly designed to appear normal and non-threatening becomes less and less tethered to human form as it experiences more and more distress, showing off the horror of inhumanity.  I also enjoyed the cloaking device effect when they let it shimmer and fade and much less when it felt like an excuse to not actually film some action sequence or another.  It’s also an exceptionally well scored movie if you’re as into this vaguely pulsating cyberpunk-style of music as I am.

None of this is super important though, because the biggest problem with Ghost in the Shell is that it’s profoundly racist.  The central plot is all about how to make the next step in human evolution the brains have to be taken out of Japanese people and put in to more perfect robotic bodies, robotic bodies that happen to be Caucasian.  Despite taking place in a clearly Asian city (filmed in Hong Kong but seemingly trying to invoke Tokyo) none of the starring roles are played by Asian people.  There are two Asians in Section Nine but neither has an incredible number of lines.  The evil corporation is seemingly exclusively staffed by white people.  It’s like Dreamworks wanted the Japaneseness of the story but didn’t want to use any Japanese people as anything but small parts and set dressing.  Asian writing can be in the background, Asian people can be the majority of the extras, but if anyone needs to do a bunch of talking this movie would just prefer if they were white.

Ghost in the Shell would be a bad movie even if it had perfect racial politics, but instead it gets dragged down in to being a dreadful slog of a movie.  It’s poorly paced, the action sequences run hot and cold, and there’s just too much unexplained nonsense to let the movie work even at all.  This is a movie that will look great on the resume of a visual effects artist and everyone else will spend the rest of their careers trying to gloss over it.  Ghost in the Shell is a lousy movie and a repugnant adaptation of a beloved property.

Joe Corallo: Diversity, Big and Small

Saying a lot happened in the world of comics this past week is a gross understatement. Between MoCCA Fest in the east, WonderCon in the west, the poor performance of the Ghost In The Shell live action remake, and the reports coming out of the Marvel Retailer Summit, I could have column fodder well into May. I’ll try to touch on a few of the points that are important to me.

For starters, I wasn’t at WonderCon, but you should read about it here.

Let’s start with MoCCA then. I wrote about MoCCA last year as well. For those not in the know, MoCCA stands for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. It’s a festival that’s been going on here for the past fifteen years, celebrating the indie side of comics as well as illustration, fine art, and creative innovation. This year featured big name guests including David Lloyd, Becky Cloonan, and Gene Luen Yang.

I joined ComicMix’s own Molly Jackson at the diversity panel MoCCA Fest put on titled Reading Without Walls: Diversity in Comics with panelists Gene Luen Yang, Damian Duffy, Hazel Newlevant, Whit Taylor, and moderated by Jonathan W. Gray. This panel is named after Gene Yang’s The Reading Without Walls Challenge he set as The Fifth National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature. The challenge, as detailed in the previous link, is to read a book about someone who doesn’t look like you or live like you, a book about a topic you don’t know much about, and/or a book in a format you don’t normally read for fun like a chapter book, graphic novel, and so forth. Diversity in format and topic is important too, and if you have a child this is a challenge you should consider giving them. Even if you don’t have a child, this is a challenge we should all give ourselves to make us more well-rounded people.

The panel was absolutely packed, with all the seats taken up and people standing all around the back and sides of the room. The discussion was engaging with all the panelists representing a different background and personal experiences informing their opinions on the importance of diversity. While not everyone saw exactly eye to eye on every aspect of the discussion, it was clear that everyone agreed that diversity is not only important in comics, but it’s crucial for future success of the medium. The room seemed to agree as well, with little challenge to the notion that diversity is important. And I’m not exaggerating when I tell you the amount of people, young and old, that looked on at Gene Yang completely awe struck.

This moment at MoCCA was a sharp contrast to the discussion going on at the Marvel Retailer Summit. Again, for those of you who don’t know, ICv2 was given access to cover the Marvel Retailer Summit. The coverage revealed that in many cases, according to what was discussed at the summit, retailers were not able to move books that would be described as diverse. In order to remedy that, Marvel Comics would try a more “meat and potatoes” approach that helped DC Comics find success with DC Rebirth.

Part of this discussion has to deal with legacy characters and who should identify as whom. This is nothing new as well. Yes, it’s new in that Marvel seemed to quickly be replacing top tier characters that have counterparts in multi-billion dollar movie franchises, but DC did this decades ago swapping out Hal Jordan with Kyle Rayner, Barry Allen with Wally West, all the different Robins, and so forth. Hell, Steve Rogers had replacements before Sam Wilson. All of these changes had some degree of success.

The real problem that I heard come up in all the many conversations I had on this topic were not that Thor was a woman or Captain America was black now, but that the changes wouldn’t last, which discourages people from diving into those books. I know that there are readers who are genuinely racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and Islamophobic, but it is more complicated than just that. It’s hard to throw yourself into a character and a story that you know isn’t going to end well.

I understand the frustration with Marvel over what has been reported from that Retailers Summit, but it really is more complicated than that. Many of the problems that have persisted in comics have been problems for decades, well before Axel Alonso and David Gabriel were in the positions they currently hold. The course corrections they’re talking about making aren’t radically different from anything that DC Comics has tried in recent history.

There is no easy solution to the problem of representation in comics because it involves multiple entities. How much of this is on Marvel to recruit diverse talent and invest in promoting diverse books? As part of Disney, the money should be there somewhere. What would it have to take and who would have to embrace that investment? How many characters could they invest in? In order to procure and retain talent that could create characters that could be diverse and a big hit, will Marvel have to change how they handle creators and the rights they hold on their creations so they don’t just take those amazing characters elsewhere? Is some or all of this a responsibility Disney and other corporations have and if so to what extent is all this their responsibility?

Retailers play a big role too. How much of a diverse comic’s success is on retailers promoting certain books more? And how much of this is on readers? If more readers tried taking Gene Luen Yang’s The Reading Without Walls Challenge would some of these books be selling better?

This can be a long discussion with a lot of nuance that I could keep going on about, but I know you have other things you’d like to read today so I’ll start wrapping this up. Before I go, I’d like to bring this back to MoCCA Fest. This year, like all the years I’ve gone, was filled with incredible talent that made me wish I could have dropped so much more money. Two graphic novels I did pick up are Everything Is Flammable from Uncivilized Books by Gabrielle Bell, a powerful graphic memoir, and Trish Trash: Rollergirl Of Mars Volume 1 by Jessica Abel, from Papercutz’s Super Genius imprint. It’s a gorgeous science fiction sports with a diverse cast of characters. If diverse comics and graphic novels are important to you, you should really check these books out too.

I already can’t wait for the next MoCCA Fest. Oh wait! I didn’t even get to Ghost In The Shell!  Real quick, I’m not surprised it didn’t do well at the box office, but they’ll probably blame Scarlett Johansson as a woman lead in an action movie and/or the source material they adapted instead of acknowledging the problems with white washing.

Mindy Newell: It Was Twenty Years Ago Today…

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the whole world, and an entire sprawling industry, that writing monsters and demons and end-of-the world is not hack-work, it can challenge the best. Joss Whedon raised the bar for every writer – not just genre/niche writers, but every single one of us.” – Russell T. Davies, producer, writer, showrunner, Doctor Who

…Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.

Oops. Sorry. Got carried away there for a moment and started grooving to one of the most groundbreaking albums ever – and anyway, that album came out way more than twenty years (and 23 days) ago today. But it was twenty years (and 23 days) ago today, on March 10, 1997, that another groundbreaking event in pop culture occurred: the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the fledgling WB network.

Although it wasn’t exactly a premiere. More like a reboot, as in Ronald D. Moore’s reboot of Battlestar Galactica from an incredibly corny “let’s cash in on the Star Wars phenomenon” series that deservedly failed into an incredibly intelligent series that deservedly succeeded. Then again, the televised BTVS wasn’t exactly a reboot, either. It was… more of a rebirth.

As most of you already know, Whedon’s original 1992 Buffy screenplay was hijacked by a dumb studio and a dumber director and totally bombed. And then something that only happens in storybooks and Disney movies happened. A fairy godmother by the name of Gail Berman, whose company, Sandollar Television, owned the rights to the movie, waved her magic wand, said bippidi-boppidi-boo, and granted the one thing that most of us wish for and never get – she gave Joss Whedon a “do-over,” a chance to start over with his original concept of “the ditzy blonde who walks into an alley and beats the crap out of the monster that attacks her” and do it right.

Did Joss do it right?

Did he ever!

Of course it wasn’t that easy. Life isn’t like that. It never is, or if sometimes it seems to be, there are always pitfalls and potholes to maneuver. But here’s the thing – all the crap that life throws at us was thrown at every single character who lived in the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sometimes it was metaphoric crap, as in monsters and demons and werewolves and vampires, and sometimes it was just truly plain crap, as in dead mothers.

Twenty years (and 23 days) later, BTVS is still watched, still talked about, still written about, still studied, still reviewed. YouTube features hundreds of channels dedicated to the Slayer; I am an aficionado of one channel in particular, Ian Martin’s Passion of the Nerd and his “Buffy Episode Guide.” Ian is a video producer for LinkedIn, and his very first video, “Why You Should Watch Buffy” kicked off his series.

Ian and I were both at Denver ComicCon last June, though we didn’t get a chance to meet – his panel and mine coincided, unfortunately. But here’s a bit of his presentation:

“Now Joss Whedon created in Buffy a densely, densely layered series that all filters down from the primary metaphor in the show, the Slayer role being the symbol of adulthood or becoming an adult.

“From there, each season has a unique overarching theme, informed by that primary metaphor. And each episode in the season was informed by that season’s theme.

“And the entire structure was built on this very robust existential philosophy.”

Here’s a quote from “Becoming,” the Season Two finale:

“Bottom line is, even if you see ’em coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.”

It still resonates, doesn’t it?

Even twenty years (and 23 days) later.

 

Ed Catto: It’s a Small World, After All

I like crowds. I like big noisy events. State fairs? Love ‘em. Black Friday shopping days? I’m there. Live music with tiny crowded dance floors? Sounds good to me. San Diego Comic Con? Yeah, baby. Ditto The New York Comic Con.

But on the other hand, when I’m thinking about Geek Culture and comic conventions, I find that I also enjoy small comic conventions. There’s a certain charm, an aura of creativity and a sense of community that embraces you in a unique way that you won’t find at NYC’s Javits Center.

I had to cancel out of this past weekend’s WonderCon in Anaheim, California. That was a drag as I was looking forward to being a panelist on Rik Offenberger’s Marketing/PR panel. But I haven’t been on a convention hiatus; lately, I have been busy finding and attending them. For consecutive weekends, I attended conventions in two Central New York – The Liverpool Comic Show and The Ithacon. Both were ‘small’ cons, but they both had a lot of charm.

Vanguard’s J. David Spurlock was in rare form at the Liverpool Comic Show, but isn’t he always? And after drooling over a couple of the books he publishes, The Frazetta Sketchbook and Wally Wood: Strange Worlds of Science Fiction, I broke down and snagged them both. He also shared a Wally Wood story with my wife Kathe and I. Who knew Wally Wood lived in the Syracuse area for part of his creative life?

In fact, Kathe was charmed by Jack Robinson, who was friends with Wood. Robinson was exhibiting right next to Vanguard. He’s a strong artist in his own right, and Kathe bought a couple of Bettie Page prints from him.

It was nice to see ComiXology’s Chip Mosher make an appearance at the local show. Catching up with him was filled with a lot of smiles and laughs, as always.

Ithacon hosted some impressive guests. But they always have. Over the years, fans have had the pleasure of meeting so many fantastic creators at this show: Walt Simonson, Murphy Anderson, Frank Miller, John Byrne, Al Milgrom, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman and so many more.

Tom Peyer’s always been a favorite creator and I was so glad he was at Ithacon this year. I appreciate the unique way he mashes up his strong devotion to Silver Age comics with his subversively hilarious wit. His current comic, Aftershock’s Captain Kid is a winner and if you’re not reading it, you’re missing out.

There was another amazing part of Ithacon. Jim Shooter and Roger Stern, longtime pros and longtime pals, hosted a unique panel, where they reminisced about the days when Shooter first came to Marvel, joining Stern who was already on staff. It was a wildly entertaining hour full of great stories and behind the scene insights, all wrapped up in good natured fun. Fans deep into Bronze Age history loved this, but, due to the charisma of these two gents, even casual fans enjoyed it. The room was SRO the whole time.

It’s always cool to see the local talent. Joe Orsak, who created the long-running Captain ‘Cuse, (a local Sunday newspaper superhero who fought villains each week, like his foe Lake Effect), was at the Powercon. The always enthusiastic Jim Brenneman, from nearby Marcellus, also displayed his upbeat and friendly artwork at Ithacon.

Pulp Nouveau Comix is a great comic shop in downtown Canandaigua, NY, and the owner, Mark, was at the Liverpool show. I love his store and it has that Joe Dirt/mullet strategy: “All Business Up Front, Party in the Back.” The back room of this “Curiosity Shoppe”-style store is filled with fantastic treasures.

And like all comic conventions, there were quite a few treasures to be found including:

  • Hulk vs. Superman by Roger Stern and Steve Rude. I have my copy of this prestige format comic/graphic novel ‘around here somewhere’ but I was so happy to find this at Ithacon. You see, my nephew Alexander recently asked, “Who’s stronger, Superman or the Hulk?” And when I send this to him, he’ll see!
  • Somerset Holmes: The Graphic Novel by Bruce Jones, April Campbell and Brent Anderson. What a wonderful adventure this one is. I enjoyed the comics long ago, and the story-behind-the-story is one of those cautionary Hollywood tales that has always stuck with me.
  • The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain. I discovered the 1946 New York City Board of Education version of this publication, where they used illustrations from students of NYC’s famous School of Industrial Arts. So this book has what I believe to be Alex Toth’s and Joe Orlando’s first professionally published illustrations!

Many of you know that I’m hard at work on this summer’s Syracuse Salt City Comic-Con. It’s a midsize show that will be punching above its weight class. We’re planning some very cool things and have an amazing guest roster. More on this in the months to come, but I think come June, I might have to walk back “It’s a Small World After All.” I might be saying “Bigger is Better.”

 

 

 

 

John Ostrander: Fool Me Once

Entertainment Weekly recently made its (multiple) cover story the return of the TV show Twin Peaks. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or even if I want to watch it. This is surprising to me since I was a big fan for most of the show’s run.

The show was set in the Pacific Northwest in a small town and was created by David Lynch (writer and director of the movie Blue Velvet) and Mark Frost (one of the main writers of the TV series Hill Street Blues). The show took place in the mythical small town of Twin Peaks, nestled in lumber country, and deals with the townsfolk, many of whom are, well, odd. The show starts with the discovery of high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer who has been murdered. Circumstances draw in the FBI in the person of Special Agent Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, a favorite actor of Lynch’s. Agent Cooper is, well, odd. He solves mysteries with the help of dreams and visions that he gets. He’s a very Special Agent and, I think, something of a shaman.

The show is a surreal mixture of crime drama, soap opera, and supernatural horror. The being ultimately responsible for Laura Palmer’s death is a serial killer named Killer Bob who is a demonic being who possesses humans – including folks living in Twin Peaks. And some characters have evil doppelgangers. Did I mention that the show is, well, odd?

It opened very well against stiff competition on April 8, 1990, but it lost a lot of its audience as it went on. It was cancelled half way through the second season but a big letter writing campaign had ABC run the last episodes. There was no third season but there was a movie in 1992 – Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It served as a prequel and sort of an afterword. It was not well received either critically or commercially and that was about it for over 25 years.

My late wife, Kim Yale, and I were big fans of the show at the start; what can I say – I like ‘em odd so long as they are also interesting. We even went to the movie and were badly disappointed. As the show went on, we became increasingly convinced that those running the show didn’t know where they were going. I’ve since read that both Lynch and Frost thought the murder of Laura Palmer was a MacGuffin and they originally hadn’t planned on ever resolving it.

(A MacGuffin is a plot device, some object or goal that the characters in the story care about but we, as readers or viewers, really don’t because we’re more interested in what happens to the characters. A classic MacGuffin is in Casablanca; lots of the characters are after “Letters of Transit” and getting them is life or death for them. However, the audience is more interested on who Ingrid Bergman is going to wind up with – Paul Henreid or Humphrey Bogart.)

The death of Laura Palmer doesn’t strike me as a MacGuffin. It’s too central to the overall plot of Twin Peaks. And, for me, if you’re going to show me a murder, you’d better damn well tell me whodunit.

They did but it was obviously not important to the creators and I’m not sure they knew whodunit when they started the show. Oddly enough, it’s very central to the movie.

Both Lynch and Frost wandered off to other projects after launching the TV series and it shows. Especially after the killer was revealed, it didn’t seem to know where it wanted to go.

Which is why I’m uncertain if I want to look into the revival. Do I want to invest the time? More important, do I want to invest the money? It’s going to be on Showtime and that’s a premium channel on cable and you pay to get it.

Furthermore, even in the article, everyone doing the new version are tight lipped. Lynch will reveal almost nothing about the new series except that it occurs 25 years after the last one ended. We see that a lot of the cast is back but just about nothing else. C’mon, man; sell it! Tell me why I want to sign on again… because I feel burned.

This is not to say that Lynch isn’t a great director. In addition to Blue Velvet, he did Wild At Heart and, a particular favorite of mine, The Straight Story. But he also did Dune as well as Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. He’s always interesting but I’m not sure if the new Twin Peaks will be worth investing my time and money.

One good thing – he and Frost wrote all the installments of the new series and Lynch has directed all of them. That’s hopeful. But I’m still leery.

Fool me once, fuck you.

Fool me twice, fuck me.

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.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #405

THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE THIS TOY BIZ MESS

In the immortal— no, the legen… wait for it… dary— words of Barney Stinson, “Challenge accepted!”

What challenge? Why this challenge.

In Mindy Newell’s column of March 20, 2017, my fellow ComicMix wrote about a court case involving import tariffs on action figures. She didn’t name the case, but she was writing about the 2003 decision in Toy Biz v. United States. It was a case that revolved around a strange quirk in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States.

What’s the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States? Pretty much what it sounds like, it’s a schedule that the US. Customs and Border Protection office uses. The schedule classifies imported goods into certain categories. Then the schedule says what the import tariff on the goods should be based on what classification the imports fell into.

In the 80s, at the behest of President Reagan, the United States rewrote its old Tariff Schedule so that it would correspond with the nomenclature and classifications used by the World Customs Organization in the International Harmonized Tariff System. And so was born the Harmonized Tari… Aw screw it; the H.T.S.

Cut to: the 90s, Toy Biz, a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, was in the biz of selling toys, including action figures based on Marvel characters. Toy Biz’s action figures were manufactured in foreign countries where labor costs were lower. Then Toy Biz imported the action figures into the United States for resale, which made those imports subject to the H.T.S. Here comes the weird quirk. The H.T.S. set the import duties on dolls at 12%, while the import duties on toys was only 6%. Mindy wrote this was because the H.T.S. considered dolls as “human,” and toys as, well as toys.

Why was there an import duty on humans in the first place? Didn’t the 14th Amendment outlaw that sort of thing?

Second, why did the H.T.S. classify dolls as human? Dolls are plastic, usually less than two feet tall, and have hands even smaller than certain presidents. No humans that I know match these criteria. Moreover, many dolls — particularly Barbie dolls — have proportions that no humans have. (Okay, some humans have the proportions, but those are plastic, too.) While other dolls, like Ken, have certain, shall we say, lack of proportions which aren’t human, either. So, given all that, how did dolls get classified as human?

Okay, the H.T.S. didn’t actually say dolls were human or that there was an import duty on humans; I pretended it did, because there were some jokes to be had. What the H.T.S. said was anything which represented a human was to be classified as a doll, not as a toy. This a-doll-is-not-a-toy classification carried over from the old unharmonized Tariff Schedules of the United States.

The strange dichotomy went on for a while, until Marvel Entertainment’s lawyers got a brilliant idea. They claimed that the action figures of mutants should be classified as toys not dolls. Mutants, after all, aren’t human, so action figures of mutants didn’t represent humans. It was an argument that put the lie to The X-Men’s entire raison d’être, but as it stood to save Marvel millions, Marvel told Professor X to suck it up.

I imagine part of the Toy Biz argument was based on language found in the United States Code, the codification of all the laws governing the United States that Congress wrote. 1 USC § 8 actually defines human as a “member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.” It also defined “born alive” as “the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member.” The definition of human being had to include the language “homo sapiens” language. After all, puppies, calves, and other mammals fit the definition of born alive. So if the definition of human being didn’t specify “homo sapiens,” some animals could also be considered human. And that could have given rise to definitions of animal husbandry that were never intended.

Armed with this definition of human, Toy Biz could have argued that under the USC, mutants weren’t homo sapiens but homo superiors, so mutants weren’t human. Therefore action figures of mutants didn’t represent humans. In the same way, Thor or Hercules weren’t homo sapiens but demi-gods, Galactus or the Silver Surfer weren’t homo sapiens but extra-terrestrials, and Fin Fang Foom was whatever the hell Fin Fang Foom is.

The case lasted for ten years in the United States Court of International Trade, before the court ruled. It based its ruling on the fact that when the former Tariff Schedules of the United States were re-written into the Harmonized Tariff Schedules of the United States, the wording in that doll clause was changed. Before the law governing doll tariffs said dolls were something “representing human beings and parts and accessories thereof.” After the schedule was rewritten, a doll was something, “representing only human beings and parts and accessories thereof.” The emphasis wasn’t in the original decision, I added it because it was the key word of the H.T.S. upon which the court based its decision.

The court found that the Toy Biz action figures did not represent only humans. Yes, there were some human action figures. But Toy Biz also had action figures of mutants, monsters, demons, and whatever the hell Fin Fang Foom is. As the Toy Biz action figures did not represent only humans, they did not meet the H.T.S. definition of dolls. Therefore, the Toy Biz action figures were not dolls. They were what any kid could have told the court they were; toys and subject to the lower toy tariff rate.

So the next time someone accuses you of playing with dolls, you can say they’re not dolls, they’re action figures. But now you’ll have a court case to back you up!

Mindy wondered — and threw her ball of wondering out of the US Court of International Trade and put it into my court — whether this ruling applied to all action figures from all companies or just Toy Biz action figures. And, because answering Mindy’s question means another week where I don’t have to think about Civil War II, I accepted the challenge.

The quick and easy answer is this: the ruling only applied to the company that had litigated the point, Toy Biz. However, all the other companies who produced and imported action figures could appeal their action figures’ classifications and use the Toy Biz ruling as precedent. One-by-one, as each company appealed its action figure classification status, the case would have applied to them, too.

And now they don’t even have to do that. Sometime after the Toy Biz decision, the H.T.S. was amended. Its wording was changed to reflect the obvious. The nonsensical distinction between dolls and toys was eliminated. Now, according to the H.T.S., dolls are toys

Which is as it should be. Dolls are toys. Innocent, harmless, fun toys. Unless, of course, they’re Talky Tina or Chucky. But that’s another story.

Martha Thomases: Save The Day!

Superman was not my first.

Yes, I know, I have been adamant in my assertions that I loved superhero comics from the time I was five years old. And that is true. But before I started to read Superman in the comics, before I even saw him on my black-and-white television set, I fell for another. Hard.

And now, Mighty Mouse is coming back to comics.

It is difficult to put into words how much Mighty Mouse meant to me. It didn’t matter that the character was male, and a rodent. I totally identified. Perhaps it helped that I was three years old, and I thought that jumping on my bed and singing the theme song was essentially the same as fighting the bad guys.

There have been Mighty Mouse revivals in the past, most notably by Ralph Bakshi in the Reagan years. It was fun at times, and my husband was a big fan of Bakshi. To me, including references to sex, drugs and rock’n’roll missed what I considered to be the point. Yes, Mighty Mouse was simple and two-dimensional and (you should pardon the expression) squeaky clean.

I thought that was a feature, not a bug.

There is a tendency among some modern creators to think that children’s entertainment must include winks to their parents, some references that will go over the kids’ heads to amuse the adults. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. The Muppets, especially, are terrific at it.

(Note: I am not including examples like the classic Warner Bros. and Disney cartoons because they were not created specifically for children, but rather to be part of a movie program. Le pedant, c’est moi.)

In my opinion, there are many more examples that are less successful. In general, I don’t find the Dreamworks animated features satisfying, because the scripts make me think the writers want me to know that they are absolutely not children but smart, hip adults. Smart and hip, maybe, but give me Pixar’s heart any day.

So I’m not sure how I feel about Mighty Mouse being retooled, even though it seems that I am one of the target geeks. I mean, I love Alex Ross, but his romantic realism seems contrary to the dynamic crudeness of the original Terrytoons aesthetic.

On the other hand, Solly Fisch wrote one of my favorite Superman stories during the New52, starring Krypto.

I’ll probably check it out. You should, too. Let’s hope that we lovingly pass it on to the toddlers in our lives, of all ages.

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