Monthly Archive: April 2016

X-Files -The Event and the Complete Series Blu-ray Coming June 14

x-files-the-event-e1460482949379-8368681 The X-Files – The Event Series
Almost 14 years after the original series run, the next mind-bending chapter of The X-Files™ is a thrilling, six-episode event series from creator/executive producer Chris Carter, with stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reinhabiting their roles as iconic FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Mitch Pileggi also returns as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, Mulder and Scully’s boss, who walks a fine line between loyalty to these investigators and accountability to his superiors. This marks the momentous return of the Emmy®- and Golden Globe® Award-winning pop culture phenomenon, which remains one of the longest-running sci-fi series in network television history.

The X-Files – The Complete Series Blu-ray Boxset
Now for the first time on Blu-ray™, The X-Files – The Event Series and the original nine seasons of this electrifying show can be yours to own!   Assigned the FBI’s most challenging cases, special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (Golden Globe® Winners David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) face terrifying danger and bizarre phenomena as they struggle to unravel deadly conspiracies and solve paranormal mysteries. While Mulder grapples to comprehend the paranormal in every case, Scully seeks to solve their mysteries through science alone. As the series progresses, secrets about a vast and horrifying conspiracy unfold, culminating in shocking revelations about aliens, the U.S. government, and humanity itself in the exhilarating The X-Files: The Event Series. Featuring over 25 hours of thrilling extras, including documentaries and commentary by creator Chris Carter and the production team — as well as special effects sequences, deleted scenes and an in-depth look behind the scenes of The Event Series — this collection is a must-have for any fan of the truth!

The X-Files – The Event Series Blu-ray & DVD Special Features

  • Deleted & Extended Scenes
  • Gag Reel
  • The Makings of a Struggle
  • Season X: An In-Depth Behind-the-Scenes Look at “The Event Series”
  • Monsters of the Week: A Recap from the Wildest and Scariest from the Original Series
  • “The X-Files” – Green Production PSA
  • Short Film – Grace by Karen Nielsen
  • Commentary on “Founder’s Mutation” with Chris Carter and James Wong
  • Commentary on “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Kumail Nanjiani and Darin Morgan
  • Commentary on “My Struggle II” with Chris Carter and Gabe Rotter

X-Files SetThe X-Files – The Event Series Blu-ray

Street Date: June 14, 2016
Prebook Date: May 11, 2016
Screen Format: 16:9 (1.78:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD-MA / Spanish 5.1 DD / French 5.1 DTS
Subtitles: English / French / Spanish
U.S. Rating: TV-14

The X-Files – The Event Series DVD

Street Date: June 14, 2016
Prebook Date: May 11, 2016
Screen Format: 16:9 (1.78:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DD / Spanish 5.1 DD / French 2.0 Surround DD
Subtitles: English / French / Spanish
U.S. Rating: TV-14

The X-Files – The Complete Series Blu-ray Boxset
Street Date: June 14, 2016
Prebook Date: May 11, 2016
Screen Format: 16:9 (1.78:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD-MA / Spanish 2.0 Surround DD / French 2.0 Surround DTS
Subtitles: English / French / Spanish
U.S. Rating: TV-14

Mike Gold: Do Comics Belong In Comics?

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I am not a sociologist, although I’ve known a few. But let’s assume the fact that “superheroes” (in the broadest sense) fill a need in our lives. They started out in folk lore, they appear in most if not all bibles, they were popularized in the “penny dreadfuls” which evolved into pulp magazines which evolved into comic books.

blackhawk-movie-8237355Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Zorro and others helped populate the movie theaters going back to its earliest days back to the silent era. When talkies came around, superheroes became the backbone of the short movie serials that were geared to bring patrons back week after week. Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman, Blackhawk, Captain America, Spy Smasher and others joined Zorro and Tarzan in this venue. When network radio came along, comics characters from older media (Superman, The Shadow) joined original creations (The Lone Ranger, Green Hornet) and flourished in the just-home-from-school time slots.

And television – well, television saved the superheroes’ collective ass. The Adventures of Superman, produced by what is now DC Comics, hit the boob tube before most families had teevee sets. At that very time, comic books were branded by the media as a source – perhaps the source – of juvenile delinquency. Comics outlets were disappearing, either from clerks no longer handling the product or from being squeezed out by chain stores and shopping strips and malls.

captain-marvel-movie-2594998But Superman was right there in our living rooms every week using his cape as a placeholder for 75 years of tradition. Over a decade later, as comic book sales were at a comparative low, the Batman teevee series kept the print medium alive. In 1978 Superman led the way into high-budget motion pictures, not only proving a man can fly, but an old man can extend his life by deploying whatever “new media” is burgeoning at the time. Radio, television, motion pictures – Supes was there first.

Today we have more superhero movies and television series than the average person can absorb. Even the average comics fan: most of us do triage. Their popularity is massive, perhaps 20 times bigger than the comic book audience. This has been going on for about a decade and there’s no sign of it slowing down. It will, of course, but history tells us the cinematic comics universes will never go away. Not completely.

(Probably. There haven’t been a lot of successful westerns in the past several decades.)

So I think it is reasonable for me to infer that for most people the superhero story fills a need, probably an emotional, cathartic need.

But there is no washback onto the mothership. Average comic book sales have never been lower, even with the supplemental release of trade paperbacks and hardcovers. The latter has helped, but, you know, Borders went blooie and it’s not as easy to find good general bookstores anymore. It’s even harder to find a well-stocked magazine rack. And harder still to find one that carries more than a handful of comics, if that many.

Back in the day, that day being an hour before the release of the first Star Wars movie, we in the comics business could produce stories where, for example, we can destroy an entire universe on one page, do the Greek chorus bit on the next page, run a full-page cosmic ex Machina on the third, and restore that destroyed universe on the fourth page. Movies simply could not do that.

Well, not only can they do so today, but computers and artistic technicians have brought their gifts to the television screen in a cost-effective manner. And to home computers.  And tablets. And smartphones.

So I humbly ask this question: has the comic book outlived its usefulness?

As you consider this, keep in mind that since the turn of the century Warner Bros. and Disney, two of the largest media empires, took control over DC Comics and Marvel Comics, respectively. They are best known for making movies and television shows. They are not known to have a major presence in the lumberjack game.

Will there always be a comic book publishing industry? Of course not. There won’t always be anything. But will comic books live another ten or twenty years?

Ask me after Warner Bros. and Marvel each release a couple of big-budget superhero bombs.

Box Office Democracy: Midnight Special

Midnight Special

At the theater I see most of my movies at, they sometimes run interviews with filmmakers after the credits. These are never particularly hard-hitting affairs, usually filled with variations on the question “just how is it you came to do such brilliant work on this movie” and so on. After Midnight Special, they ran an interview with writer/director Jeff Nichols where they asked him what it was like to be a writer who only wrote films he was going to direct and a director who only directed films he wrote. Putting aside that this isn’t nearly as uncommon as this interviewer seems to think, it kind of brought in to focus the nagging problem I had during the film; it’s a wonderfully directed movie and only an okay script. There are fantastic, compelling acting performances holding up a script that thinks it’s too clever for context, and a third act that feels utterly without consequence. A movie can go a long way on gritty atmosphere, tension, and a pervasive sense of intrigue, but it can’t quite get all the way to the finish line— and so Midnight Special is a frustrating good instead of a dizzying great.

Midnight Special is about a boy, Alton, with some kind of powers. They’re never made particularly clear, which becomes awfully convenient when they need him to do just about everything to make the story come together in the end. It’s also about his parents who love Alton so much that they’ll give up their lives and endanger innocent people to rescue him from a cult that might not have his interests at heart, but when it becomes clear they might not see their child again they never once tell him they love him or that they’ll miss him. It’s all tight-lipped stoicism and meaningful glances. It’s also about a manhunt to find him both by the government and by two agents of this cult, but the methods of the pursuers are vague and the cultists seem to give up very easily considering they think the boy will bring about biblical judgment. Midnight Special is a movie where nothing feels particularly weighty because nothing makes all that much sense.

There’s a pleasing depth to the world of Midnight Special, and while they drop us right in to the middle of the action it all feels lived in and real. The problem comes in because, while I don’t want more exposition per se, I can’t help but wonder if some of the stories we don’t see on screen aren’t more interesting than the one we’re seeing. The story of an established rural Texas cult refocusing itself around a precocious young boy and rewriting their scriptures, or the story of the NSA discovering that said precocious cult child is spilling national secrets, or even a 20-minute short about how the world would react to whatever the hell happened at the end of that movie. A movie should always try to leave the audience wanting more but Midnight Special left me wanting something completely different and something I’ll never be offered, and that’s slightly less pleasant.

Michael Shannon was seemingly created to be in movies like Midnight Special. He’s quiet, he’s intense, and he can convey an incredible amount of information with his expressions. He’s needed in this movie because while the information might seem thin or a little nonsensical, he can instantly ground it by wordlessly conveying to the audience what it means to his character and how we’re supposed to feel in the audience. He isn’t angry at Alton when the crashed satellite destroys the gas station, he’s afraid— stuff like that. Joel Edgerton and Kirsten Dunst are also very good and they’re acting against the type I have for them in my head, which is nice. They both feel like such substantial presences on the screen and while that might seem like damning with faint praise, it isn’t— their tiniest reaction or mannerism feels gigantic in this film.

I’m unhappy to admit that I was probably wrong about Adam Driver. I didn’t like him for a long time and it seems like he’s a real actor. I didn’t like him in Girls, I still don’t understand why people think he’s so incredibly good-looking, but he was good in The Force Awakens and he’s great here in Midnight Special. He’s firmly in my McConaughey Zone for actors that are going to take me a while to get past their so-so starts to appreciate their good work, but at least the newest inductee has a name I don’t have to look up every time I need to write it down.

It’s great for science fiction that Midnight Special exists. It’s a nice, slower, less special effects intensive kind of sci-fi that has a really good vibe (Alton reading 1980s Superman and Teen Titans comics in the back of the car was an especially nice touch). It’s an emotional film and its an effectively tense film but it never feels particularly clever; it’s a well-decorated house that’s collapsing into a sinkhole. It’s the kind of movie I would stick with if I ran across it on cable but would be not paying attention at all by the end.

Game of Thrones Seasons 3 & $ get the Steelcase Treatment in June

GoT 3-4 Collectors SetsNew York, N.Y., April 11, 2016 – Game of Thrones, the most-watched HBO® original series and best-selling TV on DVD title for the past five years, is now releasing in collectible Steelbook packaging. Following the release of Steelbook Seasons 1 and 2 this past fall, the collection continues, with seasons 3 and 4 releasing in a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray™ set with the revolutionary new audio technology Dolby Atmos.  Game of Thrones Steelbook Seasons 3 and 4 will be available on June 7, 2016 for the SRP of $79.98.

The Steelbook sets feature art designed by Elastic, the agency responsible for the series’ Emmy® Award-winning opening credits. Each Steelbook showcases a specific location that is significant to that season and includes usable magnets on packaging featuring Game of Thrones sigils and symbols. Season 1 packaging featured Winterfell and Season 2 the Lannisters in King’s Landing. Season 3 will feature the magnet sigil of House Frey and their ancestral seat of the Twins – the location of Season 3’s infamous Red Wedding. The icy landscape of Castle Black and the Wall–where the brothers of the Night’s Watch fend off an army of wildlings from the far north–will grace the packaging of season 4 including a crow and Jon Snow’s sword, Longclaw as the featured magnet.

In addition to all of the bonus content from the previous Blu-ray™ sets, the Game of Thrones Steelbook is the first TV on Blu-ray™ title to be released with the revolutionary new audio technology Dolby Atmos, which delivers sounds and music to specific areas in the room, including overhead, creating a captivating experience that puts the audience right in the middle of the action on screen. To experience Dolby Atmos at home, Dolby Atmos-enabled AV receivers and additional speakers are required; however, Dolby Atmos soundtracks are fully backward compatible with traditional audio configurations and legacy home entertainment equipment.

REVIEW: Justice League vs Teen Titans

jlvtt2Now that the DC Animated Universe has solidified its characters and reality, it makes sense to go exploring. After all, if there’s a Robin, surely there must be other teen heroes. We meet some of them in the newly released Justice League vs Teen Titans.

Robin (Stewart Allen) is the focal point as his go-it-alone and I-know-better-than-everyone-else attitude actually gets him into trouble on a case that foreshadows the arrival of the demon Trigon (Jon Bernthal). A frustrated Batman (Jason O’Mara) arranges for Damian to spend time with Starfire (Kari Wahlgren) and the Teen Titans. Interestingly, this interpretation of the Tamaranean princess positions her a caring, mentor figure as opposed to the current fish-out-of-water incarnation or the innocent warrior she was originally seen as. She is training the next generation composed of the Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle (Jake T. Austin), Beast Boy (Brandon Soo Hoo), and Raven (Taissa Farmiga).

As you would expect, Robin does not fit in and upsets the nascent team chemistry. Starfire eventually hits on the idea of a fun outing, a team bonding trip to the carnival where icy exteriors soften amid the friendly competition.

Meanwhile, Trigon’s forces have been seeping into the world and Superman (Jerry O’Connell) has been possessed and has fled, leaving a depleted League to figure out what’s happening. Why Shazam and Green Lantern are absent is never properly covered which is shame but Cyborg (Shemar Moore), Wonder Woman (Rosario Dawson), Flash (Christopher Gorham), and Batman get to work.

Once the connection between Trigon and Raven is established, the inevitable conflict between teams is brought forward and the battle is mercifully brief. While Sam Lu’s direction is solid, it’s a shame that, I gather, budget concerns limited the fight to showing any two opponents at one time as opposed to nearly multiple figures making for a richer battle. The only two rule grew annoying throughout the entire production.

JLvTitansThe DC Universe Animated Original Movie benefits from Bryan Q. Miller and Alan Burnett co-writing the screenplay since it treats all the characters with respect and allows time for characterization. There’s some nice byplay between Starfire and Nightwing (Sean Maher) and Superman and Wonder Woman that strengthens the overall production.

The generation gap between the teams is no longer as wide as it once seemed in the comics and the bickering between sides is kept to a minimum, in favor of the teen’s sticking up for one of their own. While this might be about the obvious Robin learns the obvious teamwork theme, it’s also about a young girl confronting her destiny and dealing with the world’s worst parent.

trigon_tt_jlDC clearly intends on doing more with the Titans in the animated world given the final scene just before the credits roll.

The 79-minute animated film comes in a Combo Pack with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD in addition to a collector’s edition complete with Robin figurine. It looks and sound just fine, as one would expect.

There are a smattering of extras including Growing Up Titan (23:46) wherein Marv Wolfman, Mike Carlin, co-publisher Dan DiDio, and producer James Tucker explore the nature of sidekicks and why the Teen Titans has remained one of DC’s most enduring titles for five decades. The same gang reunited for Heroes and Villains: Raven (6:05) and Heroes and Villains: Trigon (5:17) does much the same for this satanic arch-villain. Rounding out the collection is A Sneak Peek at DC Universe’s Next Movie: Batman: The Killing Joke (10:15) and Batman: The Brave and the Bold: “Sidekicks Assemble!” (22:52) and Teen Titans: “The Prophecy“(23:02).

John Ostrander: They Grow Up So Fast

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I’ve been watching DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow over on the CW. Among the characters that have been appearing on the show are Firestorm and Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Well, not so much Hawkman any more, maybe. I didn’t create those three characters but I certainly played with them a lot and, for a while, left my sticky fingerprints all over them. So it’s interesting watching manifestations of them in other media.

I’ll be experiencing that big time come August when the Suicide Squad movie hits the multiplexes. I created Amanda Waller and I defined characters like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang and it will be exciting to see how they translate for the screen. I hope.

None of the character portrayals will translate directly from the comics to movies or TV. I’m okay with that; none of them have so far. Different media have different needs. That’s why they’re called adaptations. The material is adapted from whatever the source was. My only question about any given adaptation is – how true is it to its roots? Did they get the essence of the character or the concept right? If you’re going to do Captain XYZ Man, there should be a resemblance to what makes up Captain XYZ Man. Right?

OTOH, I haven’t always done that and Suicide Squad itself is a good example. The comic was originally created for DC by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru; my version shared the title, a character or two, and some history with the original and not much else. Of course, as buddy Mike Gold pointed out in his excellent column this week, Kanigher may have gotten the title (and not much else) from a feature in a pulp magazine called Ace G-Man. What goes around comes around?

Amanda has appeared several times, including the TV show Arrow, lots of animated series, the Green Lantern movie, video games, the TV series Smallville, and probably more. I may need to double check my royalty statements. Any number of actresses have portrayed her and voiced her. She doesn’t always look the same. In Arrow and some of the comics, she’s built like a model. However, in all the variations I’ve seen there have been certain aspects that are kept – she’s female, black, and she’s ruthless as hell.

Even with other characters, I don’t always keep to how they were conceived. My version of Firestorm changed (evolved?) throughout my run. At one point when we decided he was a Fire Elemental (the Elemental idea was popular for a while starting with Alan Moore making Swamp Thing the Earth Elemental) and Ol’ Flamehead’s look was drastically altered, not always to universal approval.

Still, I think I kept to the essentials of the characters and, when I changed things, I kept within continuity as established although sometimes I picked and chose within the continuity.

All that said, I (mostly) enjoy seeing the variations and permutations of these characters. It’s like watching your kids grow up and moving away and seeing what they become. It’s not always what you expected but, hopefully, you can still see your DNA in them.

Joe Corallo: The Right Way

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This past weekend was Emerald City Comic Con. It’s one of the up-and-coming cons that seems to be getting exponentially bigger and more important to the industry every year. I have yet to have the pleasure and privilege to attend ECCC, but it’s on my bucket list.

ECCC has increased in importance to the point where some major announcements in the comic world are now made there. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, announcement made was from DC Comics. They announced a new DC imprint headed by Gerard Way titled Young Animal. The flagship title of this new imprint will be Doom Patrol; the first issue of which will be hitting the shelves in September of this year. I know he’ll be writing or otherwise involved in all the titles Young Animal is putting out including Shade, The Changing Girl, Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye, and Mother Panic, but today I’m focusing on Doom Patrol.

doom-patrol-1107b-2852493Gerard Way has stated the plans for Doom Patrol will be to pay homage to all the previous iterations while creating a unique story. In this interview, it’s discussed how Way has read every run of Doom Patrol and that there are great elements in all of them (that may be overly generous, but that’s not the point) which this run will make nods to.

In particular, it looks like this run will be heavily influenced by Grant Morrison’s run considering Flex Mentallo is one of the characters who appears to be in the preview art. And keeping in the tradition of the other runs, Robotman appears prominently as well. Gerard Way continued to reveal more on Twitter. Way tweeted that there are “special plans” for Dr. Caulder, which seems to reinforce the idea that Grant’s run having made Caulder a more complicated character will continue.

The most interesting thing about Doom Patrol that was revealed on Twitter (and I’m incredibly biased here) is how much Gerard Way loves Rachel Pollack’s run on the series. Way even specifically mentioned love for Coagula in an exchange. You can read that here. At least one other person I saw tweeted at him about Rachel’s run too which was nice to see. Though it’s not explicitly mentioned that Way would bring back Coagula, this is certainly the most positive statement in regards to the notion that’s been made since Rachel Pollack’s run came to an end.

I won’t delve too deeply into Coagula as that was what I dedicated my second column on here to. Please feel free to read it if you haven’t. In short, she’s DC’s first and only trans superhero. Not that they haven’t had trans characters in comics that aren’t superheroes, or that they haven’t printed other books with powerful trans characters, but they weren’t DC properties (Grant Morrison’s Invisibles is creator-owned for example).

Coagula, and Rachel Pollack herself, are important parts of history at DC Comics. I’m not going to say we need Coagula now more than ever. We’ve needed her ever since she came into existence. What I will say is that it’s not too late to make things right.

I understand how many people might not realize how big this is, but this is a big deal. In the decades since Rachel’s run, multiple failed attempts to revive the series have taken place. All of which got cancelled sooner than Rachel’s run and all of which have tried treating the Doom Patrol as a superhero team. That’s a mistake. They aren’t. Arnold Drake and Murray Boltinoff with Bruno Premiani created this team and set the groundwork for things to come. Grant Morrison with Richard Case understood that groundwork. Rachel Pollack with Linda Medley and Ted McKeever understood that too. No one else has understood that in the same way for decades until now.

I had the opportunity to talk to Rachel Pollack after my brief Twitter exchange with Gerard Way. “Wow! Times have changed.” she said. She went on to say that she’s a fan of Gerard Way’s Umbrella Academy. Who knew?

I’ll be honest, I was skeptical at first when I heard DC was bringing back Doom Patrol. Not because I doubted Gerard Way’s ability to write or craft a story, but was it going to be done right? Obviously right in this context is subjective. Like the feeling I get whenever I meet a Doctor Who fan and they tell me that their favorite Doctors aren’t either Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, or Peter Davison. Sure, they may like Doctor Who, they may have a great reason for liking the Doctor they like, but it’s not my Doctor Who.

When you’re a big fan of a work, your strong attachment to it tends to be linked to aspects of that work. For me with Doom Patrol, it’s the weirdness, it’s the absurdity, but it’s also the heart. It’s not just revealing a contradiction to defeat the Scissormen (thanks Glenn!), or stopping the men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. from exterminating eccentricity, but it’s Robotman risking life and mechanical limb to save Crazy Jane by going into her mind and riding with the Conductor to find her. It’s Robotman learning about Coagula and discovering more about himself through his initial bigotry to become a better man than he was before. It’s about heart, love, and acceptance. It’s about life and its power to take away from you and how sometimes it can feel like everything has been taken away, but sometimes you crawl from the wreckage, get back on your feet and slide in the wreckage and before you realize it you’re shining through the wreckage of your life.

Gerard Way gets Doom Patrol. It’s been decades since someone has gotten it quite like this. More than any other comic coming out this year from the big two, I am looking forward to this one the most. I’ll be buying multiple copies of issue #1, giving them to people who will take it, and spreading the good word. Doom Patrol means something to me. Maybe it’ll mean something to you too. And DC might have finally got it right again.

I’m looking forward to the ride. I’m thrilled that we’re being led by someone as talented as Gerard Way who understand this property so well and is a genuine fan of the series. And I’ll gladly follow Way’s run on Doom Patrol to the gates of hell, which in all likelihood is probably already on the team’s agenda. Maybe this will help finally get Rachel Pollack’s run reprinted too. Because honestly, who doesn’t love Coagula?

Mindy Newell: It’s Really Cool!

batman-beanie-8313350The other day at work I met a young man who is a surgical technician. Since I’m an operating room nurse, that’s an everyday occurrence. But what caught my eye was his scrub hat, which was a pattern of Batman’s insignia. So of course I immediately said, (duh) “So I’m guessing you’re into Batman.” And everything else was forgotten for a little while as he and I shared tales of our membership in Club Geek.

I bring this up because this Batman – that’s his actual nickname at work – absolutely loved Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. He has seen it three times, he told me, and wouldn’t mind going back for a fourth viewing. Being that this was the first time I was meeting him, I was polite and didn’t scoff or tell him that he’s an idiot. I did say that I hadn’t seen it yet, that I hate what Zack Snyder had done to the Man of Steel (pun intended) and that speaking I’m not a Snyder fan, that people I know with whom I work with and respect here at ComicMix have seen it pretty much hated it (see Mike Gold and Marc Alan Fishman’s columns, as well as Arthur Tebbel’s (review), and that I had decided to wait until the movie hits the streaming and cable markets.

“And I especially don’t like the idea of Batman using a gun. He’s not the Punisher,” I said. “The whole thing with Batman is that he operates, he lives, on that line between justice and vigilantism. It’s a tightrope between good and evil.”

Well, scrub tech Batman explained to me that Robin’s death (“by the Joker,” I interceded, to which he said, “Yeah, but the movie doesn’t show that,” to which I said, “Well, we know about it because of Dark Knight, but from what I understand his killing rampage comes out of nowhere, and don’t you think it should have at least mentioned the Joker for those not in the know?”) has driven Batman over the edge and that it makes perfect sense. “And it’s cool,” he said. “It’s really cool.”

Which got me to thinking later on – I didn’t ask scrub tech Batman how old he is, but he’s definitely a Millennial, and that’s the generation that’s come to adulthood in a world in which “death by bullet” is an everyday occurrence; in a world in which “guilt” and “innocence” doesn’t mean a thing; in a world in which fucked up wing-nuts use AK-47’s to settle arguments; in a world where police kill kids and beat up drivers for not signaling a lane switch; in a world where campaign rallies become Nazi Beer Hall Putsches; and in a world where Islamic fundamentalists fly passenger jets into buildings, kidnap and behead reporters, and burn enemies alive – all brought to them in living color courtesy of the news and the Internet.

So it’s not really all that surprising, if you think about it, that scrub tech Batman accepts the new paradigm of brutality, ugliness, rage, and “gangsta-ism” in their fictional heroes.

Anyway, it’s a theory.

 

Ed Catto: Valiant Efforts

wizard7-2989637The creative process has two cruel extremes. On the one hand, you might be involved with something big and exciting, like a Hollywood movie or a Broadway show, but everyone involved has to work closely with so many other people. Your creative vision, even for the director, may seem like an endless battle of compromises.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re creating something where there are no collaborators to work with, like a page of an artist’s sketchbook, you don’t have those concerns. You can do whatever you want. Of course, there won’t be any marketing budget or distribution plan in place. It’s likely that not as many people will be exposed to your work.

When I was in marketing for Oreo cookies, I thought I’d be more like the creative visionary moving the brand forward, but the job actually had much more in common with the Hollywood or Broadway creative process.

eternal-warrior39-coverAs a brand manager on Oreo cookies, the crown jewel of Nabisco, it seemed that everyone at all levels was very involved in every marketing effort. Advertising, promotions, line extensions – so many different layers of management were involved. Collaboration was the name of the game. A marketer with an entrepreneurial streak often had to subjugate those urges in lieu of corporate diplomacy for the greater good.

But a few times I got the opportunity to express my creative vision practically unencumbered.

There was a big Disneyland tie-in partnership I was leading. There were many parts to this program, including a grand prize of trip to Disneyland and a commercial with Keri Russell. In addition, Disney Adventures Magazine offered Oreo six ad pages. We didn’t have any current print ads then, and the ad agency wasn’t interested in creating new creative. But as Disney Adventures Magazine was very comics focused, you know I had an idea or two for these ads.

bs14I reached out to some of my new friends at that time – the then-fledging publisher Valiant Comics. They were the new kids on the block, and for early 90s fandom, they were white-hot for collectors (and speculators). I worked with Seymour Miles and Don Perlin to develop comic pages to promote Oreo. We featured a family called The Dunkin’s who would dunk their Oreos into milk. It was great fun and very well received.

For me, one fantastic side effect of this program was getting to know the entrepreneurial folks of Valiant Comics. It was a place of excitement and optimism, and as a lifelong comics fan, it was a treat to have a ringside seat during this publisher’s growth spurt.

There’s been a lot written about those early days, but for me it was all very positive. I got to know Jim Shooter, Jim Massarsky and Fred Pierce.

During that time, longtime comics artist Don Perlin was enjoying a wonderful second act. All of sudden, with comics like Bloodshot debuting, he was a sought-after artist at conventions and fans would wait in long lines for his autograph. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer fella.

armaleNow it’s years later, and Valiant has been reborn as a new Valiant. It’s run by people with a big vision and big hearts. And Fred Pierce is back again for his second tour of duty as Valiant’s publisher.

Valiant re-debuted almost five years ago, and soon their output will surpass the original. I thought it was time to sit down with them and find out just exactly what they’re trying to do, why they are working so hard, and what to expect in the future.

Next week, I’ll let you know what they said. And in the meantime, treat yourself to an Oreo or two.

New Suicide Squad Trailer Unveiled at MTV Movie Awards

We have a weakness at ComicMix for the baddies from Belle Reve, and this trailer shows you a little bit more of why:

Suicide Squad comes out August 5th. Hold on tight.

 

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