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The Law Is A Ass #421: Daredevil Ends The Art Show, Mural Less

The Law Is A Ass #421: Daredevil Ends The Art Show, Mural Less

Well, since they’re going to make it easy for me…

In Daredevil vol 5 # 11, there was a new villain in town, Muse, a deranged artist who painted a mural on a wall. Given that we’re talking about a comic book, I think you can Banksy on the fact that there’s more to this villain than meets the eye. Not just Daredevil’s eye, which is blind after all, but even more than meets the eye of an eagle with 20/10 vision. See, it’s not that Muse was using other people’s walls for his paintings; that would only make him guilty of vandalism. Muse was also using other people’s blood.

Yes, while some artists paint in oils and others in watercolors, Muse used the blood of his victims. I think for Muse, his medium is the message.

Muse painted a mural on the wall of a warehouse owned by one Freddy Durnin using the blood of over one hundred and twelve different missing persons. Freddy wanted to display the painting to the public for ten dollars a head. Did the public want to see this corpuscular – or should I say corpse-puscular – work of art? I think the idea grue on them, because there was already a line that went “around the block.”

Personally, I’m not too sanguinary about Freddy’s chances. DNA tests established that one of the victims whose blood was used in the painting was the niece of Andrea Pearson, Speaker of the New York City City Council. And Ms. Pearson did not want the painting displayed to the public.

Now, given that there was the blood of over one hundred victims in the painting, I’m not sure how any DNA sample wouldn’t have been so hopelessly contaminated that it would have been impossible to positively identify any one victim’s DNA. But I’ll give the story that one. After all, this is the Marvel Comics Universe. Reed Richards probably killed an hour one afternoon when the Internet was down by developing a highly efficient method of separating cross-contaminated DNA samples that’s used by whatever DNAgency operates in the MCU.

Anyway, back to Councilwoman Pearson. When Freddy rebuffed her, she went to the District Attorney’s office to get him to shut the display down. And DA Hochberg turned the matter over to assistant DA Matt Murdock. Hochberg was mad at Matt, who had been shirking his duties as an assistant DA. Seems Matt was out protecting the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil when he should have been attending to his ADA duties. So Hochberg dropped the case, and a sarcasm bomb in Matt’s lap, “You are supposed to be one of best attorneys of your generation, Matt. Please… do us both a favor. Prove it.”

Wow, some punishment. Hochberg punishes Matt by giving him a job that was so easy even a first year law student intern assigned to filing duties because the alphabet was at the upper end of his competence could accomplish in half an hour? Yes, punish the guy by giving him punishment that basically amounts to a paid afternoon off, that’ll show him.

Seriously, while I was writing these words, I came up with three arguments Matt could use to shut down Freddy’s nightmare. And I wasn’t even giving any thought to the problem.

  1. Have the police say they’ve only finished their initial investigation and that the warehouse is still an active crime scene that has to be kept free of outside contamination. So no visitors allowed.
  2. Have it declared a public nuisance. After all, that blood will attract flies and rats and other vermin to the area.
  3. And, hey, human blood is biological material. Some of that blood may have AIDS or hepatitis or some other infectious disease. That means the mural is a health hazard which is too dangerous to be open to the public. Even more so when you consider that this is blood from one hundred twelve people in the Marvel Universe. So one of them probably had radioactive spider venom or cosmic Gamma rays or Terragin mists or just plain, old New York City water coursing through their blood. That makes it even more of a biohazard.

Once Matt had a theory or five he would petition the court for either a preliminary injunction, an ex parte proceeding in which the person or persons who wanted to enjoin – or prevent – an action from happening appear before a judge without the other party to the case also appearing. To get a preliminary injunction, Matt would have to convince the court both that allowing the act he wanted to enjoin – here Freddy operating his art gallery – to occur would cause some sort of damage and that Matt’s argument would more than likely prevail when the case came to an actual trial. If the judge agreed, the judge would grant the preliminary injunction, temporarily blocking Freddy from running his gallery and setting the case for a immediate hearing in which both sides could argue their cases.

And seeing as how several pages after Hochberg palmed this problem off on Matt, the police presented Freddy with a preliminary injunction, that must have been exactly what Matt did. See, I told you they made it easy for me. Matt did everything right, so all I had to do was explain what he did and why it worked without the extra step I usually have to include of explaining what Matt should have done but didn’t do and why he should have done it.

Still all I said was that Matt made it easy for me, I didn’t say he made it painless. There was that extra scene when Matt complained to Foggy about his possible moral conflict. The DA’s office is supposed to promote justice, not shut down some guy’s business “because it gets on City Hall’s nerves.” Matt, baby, don’t invite problems. You weren’t shutting a business down because it got on Andrea’s nerves, you were shutting it down because it presented a legitimate health hazard. That’s a good thing and what you’re supposed to do as a DA. Don’t go worrying about problems that don’t exist yet.

If Hochberg tells you do to something at a later date which you think is wrong, then you can have your moral crisis. Don’t worry about it now, before he’s asked you to do that thing, whatever it is, worry about it later when he actually asks you to do it.

And considering how loose your legal ethics have been the past few years, I’m not so sure you’ll worry about it all that much later, either.

Martha Thomases: What’s In It For Me?

So, a lot of us here enjoy discussions of diversity in comics (and, no, I don’t mean this schmuck). It’s an interesting subject to consider in light of popular culture, contemporary politics, and the meaning of life.

It is also interesting in terms of marketing.

When we talk about comics marketing, especially in terms of diversity, I think we often miss the point. This may be because, in my experience, comics marketing tends to involve advertising in comic books and sending posters to comic book shops. These methods are terrific for attracting the attention of people who already read comics, but they are less effective for reaching people who don’t.

Sometimes, if a graphic novel is scheduled to be published, and is either written by a well-known writer or published by a mainstream book publisher or the source material for a critically acclaimed movie, you might see an ad in the book section of a newspaper or magazine. In general, however, it is too expensive to advertise individual monthly comic books on a national level.

But what if we could? To whom should we target the ads?

When I was in college, I did an internship with the research department of a major Chicago advertising agency. We analyzed data from thousands of questionnaires distributed at shopping malls all around the country (shopping malls were still a thing in 1976). New questionnaires were always coming in, because we wanted our analyses to be as up-to-date as possible. One of our clients was General Mills, so the questionnaires included a lot of questions about cake mix and instant mashed potatoes and the like. I learned from this experience that, if you want to reach a shopper who might buy cake mix occasionally, you emphasized the characteristics most appealing to people who baked more than four cakes a month.

(I will now pause and wonder what my life would have been like if I had been raised in a house that smelled like cake four times month).

By that logic, comics marketing is right on track. By promoting the characters, the colorful battle scenes, and sometimes the creative team, the ads appeal to those people who already are familiar with these elements of the story, and are familiar with those kinds of storytelling.

For better or worse, that’s not how marketing works anymore. My internship took place more than 40 years ago. The corporate pressures today are much different, and stockholders aren’t satisfied to simply reach the same customers they’ve always had. Instead, there needs to be more more more!

Toyota, with its Camry model, is a good example. Read the link, because it’s really interesting.

Now, I’m not an expert on Camrys, Toyotas, or automobiles in general. My regular car is the E train. I am not the audience for these ads. Therefore, I can look at the story with a certain level of detachment.

What I notice is that Toyota wants to reach not only the broadest audience (the white/multicultural pop music one) but also as many specific audiences as they can. As a result, they make a general commercial, but then also make commercials aimed at African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American markets. Each of those ads, for the same car, emphasizes traits that are determined to be most attractive to the targets.

(I am not in a position to comment on whether their assumptions about what is appealing are correct. I’m interested in the effort.)

Toyota doesn’t say to Hispanic car-buyers that the Camry is good because it has been selling for decades. Instead, they talk about why Hispanic car-buyers would like it.

Similarly, it isn’t enough for Marvel to say that Iron Man (as an arbitrary example, not to pick on it specifically) is a good comic for you because Marvel has been publishing it forever, or because Robert Downey, Jr. is really cute (although he is). Marvel needs to tell me what’s in it for me if I buy it. Is it a commentary on capitalism, or human nature, or the meaning of life? Is it funny, or scary, or emotionally moving in another way?

What’s in it for me?

And just as Toyota doesn’t only make Camrys, but has lots of different models for people with different driving needs and preferences, comics should (and does!) have lots of different kinds of books for people with different tastes in reading.

If you’re a straight cis white guy who loves comics, that’s great. Most of the titles in your local comic book shop are intended for you. You are still the largest demographic segment in this market. However, in order for the business to grow (and for profits to rise), publishers need to explore books that will appeal to new markets. Some of these experiments will fail because that’s what happens when humans try new things. But some of these experiments will succeed, and then there are more books for everybody.

We will not attract new readers to our books if we demand that they all fit in the same box.

Not even if that box is chocolate cake.

Mike Gold: Here Comes the Equestrian Statue

 

A short one this week, because I’m not here.

In fact, I’m in Pennsylvania having just completed my fourth convention in eight weeks. Yup: Chicago Wizard World, Baltimore Comic Con, New York Comic Con, and last – and best – the Kokomo (Indiana) Comic Con. That latter one came highly recommended by ComicMixers Denny O’Neil and Marc Alan Fishman… and they were absolutely right.

Whereas I am now completely exhausted, I had more fun than a monkey with whippits. I saw lots and lots of good friends and co-workers, made some new ones, and I seem to have managed to avoid pissing off the usual number of people. I guess I’m maturing a bit – as evidenced by my now being exhausted. Of course, because I avoid flying these days I had my car so I took a few side trips along the way, including a great lunch and great conversation with some great folks in Chicago – you might have seen the picture on FaceBook. And it’s always fun going back to the old homestead.

So, other than some sadly not-malicious gossip, I am woefully uninformed about what happened in the comics world this past week… if anything. Anything new, that is. So, no posturing and politicking from me this week.

The main reason I still go to comics conventions after – gasp – 49 years is to talk with the fans. Sure, I do some business when I have to and I sign a lot of comics, which is good for the ol’ self-esteem. But being able to get into one-on-one conversations with the folks who read the books, watch the movies and teevee shows, invest time in deploying our medium in educational and expansionist activities… you just can’t operate in the public media without having a clue what the “end-users” desire, and what they don’t care for.

As our audience has become more and more diverse, this quest for input becomes all the more important. Well, at least to me and those who are charged with putting up with me.

So, I thank everybody with whom I spoke these past eight weeks. You improve our work, and you feed my ego. Whereas the latter is virtually insatiable, it’s all good.

Thank you, comics fans, convention promotors, somewhat bewildered reporters and my companion denizens of the donut shop. I might be exhausted right now, but it’s a good type of exhaustion.

Joe Corallo: Indie Comics Showdown!

So my last couple of columns have been a bit on the heavy side. This week I’m going back to telling all of you how I feel about specific comics. This week is a Kickstarter project, The Showdown Volume 2, by creator, writer and letterer Russ Lippitt, illustrator Ezequiel Pineda, colorist Nate Esteban, and editor Jessica Kubinec. Before I get into that though, I’d like to chat a little bit about the indie comics scene.

Indie comics and creator-owned comics are terms that are used pretty interchangeably. While The Walking Dead is one of the highest selling comics every single month and have two different TV series out, it’s not unheard of to see it mentioned as an indie comic. Often folks talk about the big two (Marvel and DC) finding indie talent to bring on board. Indie talent tends to refer to any comics put out by publishers that aren’t Marvel or DC. Image, Dark Horse, and IDW would all be considered comics publishers with indie talent more or less. The tier below that would be BOOM!, Dynamite, and Oni. From there would be Lion Forge, AfterShock and Titan. Then we get into Black Mask Studios, Scout and so forth. You get the idea. It’s kind of indie, but also not quite. Now self publishing comics, that’s where we get the real indie stuff!

Okay, full disclosure, I have self published some comics before so maybe I’m a little biased. Going to Zine Fests, MoCCA Fest, SPX, that’s where you see the real raw indie talent doing what they really want to do. Some of these books you see at those kind of shows are quick little stories, art books, playing around with the format, and so forth. Other self publishing indie type comics look more like what you’d find in any given comic shop like Unmasked or The Showdown Volume 2. Both of those examples are actually a bit more like comics collectives rather than straight up self publishing as The Showdown is part of Broken Icon Comics, but you get what I mean.

Speaking of The Showdown, I should get to talking about it. This volume is 110 fully colored page about a car race in hell. It’s a bit of Wacky Races meets Zenescope’s Grimm Tales of Terror. Basically, lots of bad dead people in vehicular abominations are racing around all the different levels of hell. We jump around following more than a few different groups of racers as they encounter zombies, Nazis, dragons, fire and ice. Some of the racers we follow are more likeable than others, which is the point.

I don’t want to give too much away, but it is filled with references to bands and songs, some of the jokes are teenage boy type jokes which is not a knock it’s just that’s the target demographic for some of it. There are also plenty of visual nods to things like Ridley Scott’s Legend and characters like Harley Quinn.

Where The Showdown excels is pacing. The story just keeps moving which helps make this 110 page graphic novel a real page turner. The setting is a familiar enough mash up that you don’t need a lot of explanation to jump right in. I haven’t read Volume 1 and it didn’t stop me from understanding the basic elements of the plot. Where The Showdown falls down is in the stakes. The story bounces around between a lot of different characters so it’s hard to build up a strong attachment to any one in particular. Add the lack of feeling like there are any real stakes and consequences with what happens to the winners and losers and what the ramifications of that will be makes for a bit of an aimless read. (In fairness, part of that may be because I have not read the first volume.)

The other sticking point for me was the artwork. I feel a stronger horror artist might be able to help carry the story better. Some of the elements in the story could have been more terrifying or grotesque and it would have elevated the story. By that same token, if Ezequil would have went harder in the other direction and made it more cartoony that would have changed the feel of the story and possibly enhanced it as well.

If you have an interest in Wacky Racers with a horror twist then you should check out Russ Lippitt’s Kickstarter. One of the best things about it is that the comics is already done, so once it’s funded it will definitely be coming out! That’s usually not the case when it comes to comics on Kickstarter, so no worrying about a creative team switch up or a book being a year or so late. If you’ve been pledging to comics on Kickstarter for years and years like I have you know what I’m talking about.

Thanks for reading my column this week and do me a favor and go support some indie comics. The self publishing kind of indie.

Ed Catto: Comic Con or Entrepreneur Con?

Whew!  Another New York Comic Con is in the books. As usual, there was a lot of conversations about how these big conventions “aren’t about comics anymore” and instead focus on other fan-centric efforts. I’m maintain there’s still a lot of comics at big conventions. And I’d take it step further – one of the most interesting things at this year’s show was the plethora of creative entrepreneurs who use the show as platform to launch their comic focused efforts.

Here’s a few:

Mark Sparacio is a longtime comics artist with mainstream work on Sgt. Rock, Jonah Hex and Captain Action.  He’s become a staple of the convention circuit, including San Diego Comic-Con, selling his character illustrations.  I was surprised, but shouldn’t have been, to see his work on a lovely Wonder Woman program cover for the Rochester Comic Con last year. Mark and his wife Lisa were working it hard at their New York Comic Con booth and I was particularly intrigued by his new graphic novel, Chelsea Dagger. It looks like a mash-up of Marvel’s S.H.I.E.L.D. and a Tom Clancy novel. Sparacio talked about his research with members of the military, and how encouraged he was.  More info here: https://chelseadaggercomics.wordpress.com

It’s no relation to the Fratelli’s song of the same name, but I like that band and that song too.

Mark Vogur is a kid who loves monsters and 60s culture, and just happened to grow up to become an author. His latest, Groovy: When Flower Power Bloomed in Pop Culture, is published by TwoMorrows and even though it’s not officially on sale until Nov 15th, he had copies at New York Comic Con.  The book is packed with 60s ephemera and lovingly designed with mindful respect of the source material. More on this treasure in an upcoming column.

Has “world-building” replaced “transmedia” as the hot phrase among the entertainment  development community?  I hope so – I never liked “transmedia”, although I get it.  I ran across Liberty Endures in the small press section of NYCC, and they get both these concepts.  The team behind this concept has created a fascinating world, and tells the story in comics and serialized audio dramas.  Their booth was fun and their site, libertyendures.com , is too.

When it comes to comic art, I’m a bit of a traditionalist. I still love and have been recently enjoying giants from the past like  Alex Raymond, Frank Robbins or Stan Drake That’s why it’s all the more surprising that I’ve become such a big fan of Space Pirates, the new Image comic by . Alexis Ziritt.  This one is batshit crazy. It’s like drinking too much tequila in a biker bar that only uses black lights and everyone wears fluorescent colors. Ziritt grew up reading comics in Venezuela and just loves making them today.

Vincent Ferrante is a determined creator who’s become a regular on the NYCC exhibition floor. His company, Monarch Comics, started with Witchhunter and now has expanded to including several titles including  Horror Island and Evil Monkey Man. Ferrante is out there each and every year, banging the drum and introducing new fans to what is clearly a labor of love. I tried to catch up with him this year, but each time his booth was swamped!  Join the party at www.monarchcomics.com.

Tina Fine is a NYC author with a story to tell, and she’s chosen comics as her medium to tell it. Off Girl is a new comic about woman in New York City with a big problem.  Artist Mark Reihill brings Fine’s vision to life with a animation-isa style.  I admired Fine’s hard work selling at her booth, and even spotted her booth model, in full Off Girl regalia, on the show floor.   https://www.offgirl.com

I met the Lew and Jon, the entrepreneurs of FanSets last year in the Javits Center at Mission: New York, the Star Trek Convention. They create high quality enamel pins for hard-core collectors and casual fans.  This entrepreneurial enterprise has rapidly grown in a year to include several new licenses including Harry Potter, Firefly and DC comics.  In fact, an obscure DC character pin, the Grown-Up Robin of Earth Two, is what attracted my attention in the first place. One gets the sense that these two co-founders work hard at these conventions and have fun doing it.

Living the dream or fighting the good fight? These creative entrepreneurs straddle that middle ground between these two abstract start-up concepts. It’s never easy, but my hat is off to these strong willed creators who get it all together and enter the arena; armed with talent but also equal doses of bravery and determination.

 

 

 

 

 

National Graphic Novel Writing Month: Pick Your Shots!

 

Your graphic novel writing exercise for the day:

Take a tracking shot from a movie or TV show– one long, unbroken take that runs for a minute or more. If nothing immediately comes to mind, we’re going to take the opening from the last James Bond film, Spectre:

Your mission, 007: select the single shots from this sequence that tells the story.  All the important visual pieces that tell the story. You don’t have to draw them, you can just freeze frame from the clip. Keep the continuity from panel to panel, shot to shot. This clip is great because there’s a minimum of dialogue, so you can’t easily link panels by covering the action with words.

Beginner level: This shot’s a little over 4 minutes, so we’ll make it easy and give you five pages to do the sequence. Pick your shots. Then hand it to someone else and ask them if it makes sense.

Intermediate level: Describe the shots for your artist— what are the important things that are happening in each panel that the artist has to include, including continuity between panels? (Obviously, assume your artist has never seen this clip before.)

Advanced level: Cut two pages from your beginner level sequence.

Ready? Go.

Marc Alan Fishman: A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1

As you, my gentle readers, peruse this article, my Unshaven cohort Matt Wright and I will be on the road for the last time in 2017. We’ll be showcasing our wares at the annual Kokomo Comic Con in Kokomo, Indiana. We’re pleased as punch that this year we lured ComicMixers Mike Gold and John Ostrander down with us. Denny did it a few years ago, and it appears he didn’t have anything but nice things to say – hence Mike and John agreeing to make the trek out. I’ll cover how that show goes next week. For now, I want to jump into the way back machine to last week when my full Unshaven Comics crew and I descended once again on New York City for the ReedPop colossus known as New York Comic Con.

New York Comic Con is an undulating mass of humanity crammed into the Javits Center for four full days of geekery. This year, rumor has it over 200,000 attendees amassed amidst hundreds (if not an actual thousand as one fan postulated) of exhibitors and artists. Unlike previous years, the Artist Alley was nearly one third its original size – as the Javits renovates the pavilion wherein said Alley assembled in previous iterations of the con. Unshaven Comics specifically popped up our booth in the small press area on the main floor. We were luckyish to have landed in the same spot as 2016.

Let’s start with the cons so that we may build to up to the pros. This is especially easy as we had a very good show, mind you. But nits should always be picked, my friends.

The biggest concern for Unshaven Comics remains our classification with ReedPop. While yes, Unshaven Comics is a small independent publisher of original comic books, graphic novels, and art, we don’t necessarily consider ourselves to be Small Press. There is a stigma that the label of Small Press carries with it an odd “chip on the shoulder” mentality. To be Small Press, as some fans see it, is to be defiantly not-one-of-the-big-boys. Unshaven Comics certainly isn’t Marvel, DC, or anything even reasonably close to it. We are three best friends putting out a single series of comics. We are, in our own minds, merely an Artist Alley table that couldn’t fit down in the Alley. But I digress. This classification simply led to times throughout the convention when the waves of fans washed past our booth as they made way from one exhibition hall to the next. We were displaced barnacles willfully ignored by schools of fish traveling to deeper waters. Nothing hurts more than being ignored.

But our fans – and yes, this year proved to us that we did in fact have them – made way to find us. Over the course of 4 days, we bearded brothers-from-other-mothers pitched The Samurnauts to 699 people. 321 of them purchased 540 books. In addition, Matt and I both took several commissions, and Kyle was able to sell plenty of copies of his book Toolbox. In terms of the raw numbers? Unshaven Comics is plenty happy. With our friendly neighbors – Unstoppable Comics (look them up!) and Publisher’s Weekly – when fans took the chance to stop and hear us out? Well, it worked out just fine for the lot of us.

The biggest takeaway for me personally came in the projections for our Unshaven future. As we’ll collect The Samurnauts: Curse of the Dreadnuts into our first graphic novel here at the tail end of this year, our numbers tell me that next year’s New York Comic Con will potentially see us move 75-100 of said graphic novels. And knowing the difference in profit between floppy copies and a trade (an article to come, I assure you)? Well, that makes me smile from ear to ear.

Beyond raw sales though, what will leave a lasting impression on me this year will be the subtle shifting of my l’il studio in the indie space. This year saw Unshaven Comics rubbing elbows with ComicMixers Joe Corallo and Molly Jackson. Our wonderful host Glenn Hauman whispered a few cryptic thoughts in our ears of future projects to consider. We broke bread once again with Mike Gold, Martha Thomases, and several other friends of the ‘Mix.  More than any year prior, 2017’s New York Comic Con felt lived in for Unshaven Comics, in the best way possible. Gone were the nerves and that quivering question are we just faking it until we make it? Replaced; hardened by New Jersey Transit Tickets, Street Cart Chicken Kebobs, and Brooklyn Hipsters slapping our stickers to their poster tubes. All of it coalesced into a gestalt of limited-but-contented success.

While we didn’t beat any previous sales records (not being literally across from Marvel’s booth will do that to you…), we did prove that we’ve the mettle and drive to define our success in the comic industry. Tune in next week, when I contrast the sea-of-humanity to the most human show we table-up for. ‘Nuff said.

Martha Thomases: Super-Harassment?

Although I have worked at an event he attended, I’ve never been sexually harassed by Harvey Weinstein.

There are several possible reasons for this:

  • He was intimidated by my ferocious beauty and talent,
  • He knew he had no power over me since I didn’t work in the film business
  • He was too busy watching Nicole Kidman. because the event was for was her movie.
  • Or, most likely, I’m not his type and beneath his notice.

The Weinstein story has quickly morphed from the story of one man’s fall from power and into a more nuanced conversation about politics and the media. And by “nuanced,” I mean angry hurled accusations back and forth.

In a nutshell, the argument posits that Weinstein isn’t suffering as much for his crimes as Roger Ailes or Bill O’Reilly because he gave money to Hillary and Roger and Bill are conservatives.

Apparently, there was ample evidence to suggest that a lot of people knew about Weinstein’s disgusting behavior. The conspiracy theorists insist that word didn’t get out because his liberal friends were covering for him.

It’s not that simple. Really.

For one thing, there are a lot of assumptions in this perspective that don’t stand up to the light of day. One is that all of Hollywood (and journalism) are Democrats, and all Democrats are progressives. This is simply not true. There might be a lot of progressive actors, writers, and directors, but the money people — the ones who can get a movie or series produced and distributed — are like money people everywhere, and most likely to be at least fiscally conservative.

Another erroneous assumption is that to be a Democrat and/or a progressive, one toes the line on all progressive issues equally. Someone who supports environmental issues is also a feminist who wants to end economic inequality and have trans teachers in fully-funded public schools. Progressives, like conservatives, are more complicated than that.

A third erroneous assumption is that Weinstein got away with something for a long time. There were rumors, and there were reporters who investigated the rumors for years but couldn’t get anyone to speak on the record. Once they did (last Thursday), it took less than 100 hours for Harvey Weinstein to be fired from the company he co-founded, by a Board of Directors that included his own brother. That happened much more quickly than the dismissals of O’Reilly or Ailes.

Like almost every other business, Hollywood respects and honors success, not a virtue. And like any institution that involves humans, it is imperfect in its attempts to do the right thing.

So. What does this have to do with comics?

For one thing, we have similar stories about men in positions of power and the way they treat women who seek employment. In almost all cases, these rumors are just that — rumors. Our industry is small enough that it’s mathematically difficult to collect a large number of accusations against one person. And women are still new enough as freelancers that we don’t always talk to each other the way we should.

Speaking for myself, I’ve heard stories about men in comics who demand sexual favors for jobs, men who have physically abusive relationships with a partner, and men who are pedophiles. In all of these cases, my first reaction is shock and even disbelief. Understand that I don’t necessarily think the person stepping forward with such accusations is a liar, but the behavior is so far from my perception of the men in question. Sometimes I know that man’s children or other family members.

I’m only suffering cognitive dissonance. I don’t have to make a decision about hiring and firing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a solution? I don’t, at least not one that is a quick fix. As long as we live in a climate that assumes that men are naturally the people in power and that women in business must learn how to work with men (instead of men and women learning how to work with each other), women will be at a disadvantage. As long as women are seen as sexual objects or decorations first and foremost, and as valued workers second (if at all), we will have a problem with sexual harassment in the workplace.

We need to speak out and to present ourselves as whole people. Men need to complain about the bad behavior of other men, and women need to call out other women (which we do, constantly, but that’s another rant) when we allow it to continue. We need to be professionals and set a higher standard than Hollywood.

Tweeks: iZombie Cast Interview

As you know, iZombie was renewed for a 4th season, but as you also know it’s a midseason show, so we won’t get to enjoy it until early 2018. Boo!

But as Halloween approaches, if you are in the mood to find out what your favorite morgue-working zombie and her brain-eating squad will be up in New Seattle, Maddy had a little press room chat with show runner Diane Ruggiero-Wright and the cast including Malcom Goodwin, Rahul Kohli, Robert Buckley, Rose McIver and Aly Michalka.

Check it out.

Dennis O’Neil: The Big Fall Flick

Somewhere in the curly-edged annals of ComicMix – surely such annals must exist! – there must exist a piece I wrote…well, ya know, I’m not really sure when, exactly, I wrote it. A while ago, okay? My subject, or what I’ll assume was a crisp fall day, was how Labor Day has, gradually, over time, assumed the weight and character of what I think of as a real holiday – one that exists because it fulfills a need.

Christmas is a good example: light and fire and feasting combine to celebrate the return of the light after winter’s long gloom. Similarly, Easter: the return of planting season. Thanksgiving and the various fall harvest festivals: cutting and storing enough foodstuff to see the community through the forthcoming cold. All of these occasions and more are tied to nature’s rhythms and marked by change.

So how does Labor Day fit into all this? Well. A U.S. President named Grover Cleveland decided that we as a nation ought to take notice of the contributions of the American working men the blue-collar Joes who created “the new world.” First Monday in September. From now on – Labor Day!” Thus declareth the Prez!

The Prez’s timing was good. Early September: the kids who worked on farms where pretty much done with the summer’s chores. Any family that could afford vacations had probably taken them by the time the leaves began to change. And there were the Big Holidays to brace for. (Where the hell did we store those tree lights?)

Those of us who got graduation documents – that’d be most of us – has busy Septembers. New classes and, ergo, new schoolmates, some of whom just might be cute. New teachers. New clothes. New sports. Streets spangled with decorations. Maybe some sliding and skating and all that other stuff.

And oh, let me not forget the television and the movies – the really honkin’ big films that seem to materialize in the hottest of summer and coldest of winter. Last year, the one we anticipated was Batman vs Superman and when I saw the name “Bill Finger” early in the credits, I thought this won’t be a complete waste of time. I’ll get some satisfaction from seeing Bill finally, after decades, get some of the credit due him. Then I watched the film.

This fall, I guess the Big Flick is Justice League. The story would seem to have some of the same narrative problems that beset Batman vs Superman. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, there’s some superhero stuff debuting/returning to the nation’s flat screened living room pals and that should suffice to keep us geeks from having withdrawal woes.

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