Author: Dennis O'Neil

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Dennis O’Neil: Modern Times

oneil-art-120816-4855880Don’t believe the trash talk. I am really a religious guy. Let me elucidate.

It began with long phone conversations. Very, very long. Several of them. How many technical support people did I talk to over the last three days? Five? Six? I lost track. And then there were the trips to the computer store in the mall. Two of those. The first had us at the “genius bar” for two hours-plus. The second – today’s – went much quicker. Home again, home again, lickety split.

The weekend shot. Maybe I’ll get this column to Mike Gold reasonably promptly (and maybe not) but the book proposal I’d hoped to finish? Forget about it.

What was wrong? Good question nobody seems able to answer. A virus? Could be. Something else? Wouldn’t rule it out. Anything I can do to prevent recurrences? Well, if I don’t know exactly what the problem was…

I wish there was such a thing as an anxiety-o-meter and I wish I could buy one. At the mall, maybe. (Doesn’t the mall have everything?) Because I’m curious; I’d like to calibrate the amount of angst dealing with this, ahem, labor saving technological miracle has produced since Friday the way the MD calibrates my blood pressure. (And while we’re at it, can we have measurements for frustration, anger, and feelings of helpless inadequacy, too?) Bet the reading would be off the chart – depending, f course, on the chart

I used to write my comic book scripts on portable typewriters and once in a while, one of them would break down. Plenty annoying, let me tell you. But I don’t recall these mishaps causing much anxiety, maybe because I could understand them. I could wrap my primitive brain around the problem. I could see it. The little thingy that attached to the other thingy’s come loose. Or: my gosh, the letters on the page are blurred because the keys are so dirty… The dirty keys I could, me, myself, fix, with a toothpick. The other stuff would probably require a trip to the typewriter shop. But I knew what the problem was and I knew there was an algorithm that would right the wrong. (Step 1: Take the machine to the repairman. Step 2: Come back in a day or two and give the nice man some money. Et cetera.)

I spent much of the past weekend doing…I don’t know what. Phone pressed to (slightly defective) ear, or looking at a pleasant young man across a counter, I obeyed instructions. I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing, or what it was, or what to expect from it, or if it would solve anything. Finally, the pleasant young man did a cyberversion of Sherman’s march to the sea: offloaded, uploaded, reinstalled and home again, home again…

And back, when I couldn’t download the app the pleasant young man suggested I use. Stand. Wait. Another pleasant young man who seemed eager to help, and did. And now, having just watched a brilliant episode of Newsroom on HBO, I’m at the keyboard trying to honor a commitment.

Am I angry/bitter/frustrated? Do I feel I didn’t deserve this grief and that maybe, just maybe, we were all better off back in the day when electronic brains were the stuff of pulp sci-fi?

Or how about going back further, to when hunters and gatherers offered sacrifices to the beings – call them gods – that they knew must be out there because their lives were constantly disrupted by things they couldn’t understand, much less control and somebody had to be responsible. So they gave the gods livestock or grains or maybe cousin Matilda, the one who smelled bad. The calamities didn’t stop happening, but at least the sacrifices gave the tribesman a feeling of doing something.

Okay. So what I’ve been up to, recently, is offering sacrifices. There’s not a lot of livestock or plant food lying around the house, and heaven only knows where Matilda has got to, so I’ve sacrificed commodities I do have: patience and time.

Told you I’m religious.

(Editor’s Note: As usual, Mr. O’Neil delivered this column right on time, despite the technological distractions.)

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases Talks Dirty

 

Dennis O’Neil: Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?

We’ve been pretty grim, these last couple of weeks, so I thought maybe I should lighten up. What I thought I’d do, last night, was take my place at the computer and spin some wordfluffle suitable for submission to ComixMix and then…what? Continue existing? But before I could get to it, I saw the news window on the screen and learned that some lone gunman – anything familiar in those words? – had killed six Sikhs in a Wisconsin temple before being himself gunned down by police. We don’t yet know why. We probably won’t be too surprised when we do.

The politicians – no surprise here – beat me to the fluffle. The same dreary litanies we hear so often: hearts and prayers going out to and deep sadness and troubled days ahead… Democrat, Republican, independent all saying the same thing and in so doing actually saying nothing.

Look: I get ritual. I don’t much like it and I’m no good at it, but I think I understand it. Somebody dies or gets married or gives birth and you recite some variation of a limited set of sentiments and it’s not the words that have meaning, it’s the act of saying them. We use these formulae to console and rejoice and lament because, really, language isn’t up to these primal needs and so we let the clichés act as signifiers to express what resists expression. And that’s all good.

But when ambitious strangers say the words? When they claim that a tragedy that happened to strangers makes their hearts heavy? Allow us, please, to doubt. Allow us to at least suppose that the ambitious ones are using tragic occasions, at the very least, only because the recitation of the words is expected of them or, even less admirably, to further their own agendas. The word for this is hypocrite.

Let’s agree that hypocrisy stands pretty far down in the catalogue of major transgressions, and I’d have no serious quarrel with it if it were followed by action of some kind. Any kind. We’re not advocating anything draconian here. We’re not even advocating a program of legislation and, to be honest, I doubt that any single law or even set of laws will solve the problems that lay deep in the senseless acts of violence that are happening again and again and again.

But shouldn’t we start? Somewhere? As Jon Stewart pleaded, let’s agree to discuss everything, openly and honestly, with nothing withheld from consideration. Then maybe the hollow words will begin to have meaning.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases and the Fanboy Politicians

 

Dennis O’Neil: The News Re-Cycle

oneil-120802-art-3173971There was something I wanted to discuss…what the devil was it? Something about a theater in Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming – one of those cowboy states. But have you heard about that movie star from the vampire flicks and how she admitted to cheating on her boyfriend? Boy! Wasn’t that something? Wonder if they’ll get back together. I kind of hope so because it’s always sad when young love goes blooey, though that seems to be mostly what young love does. These days, anyhow. Now when we were young… Oh wait. I did get dumped at tender age 21, didn’t I? Well, good luck to the youngsters, anyway.

Back to that cowboy state – was it a movie theater or some other kind of theater? A music hall, maybe?

And speaking of music… Elton John’s kid is just turning one year old. Bet Elton throws him a heck of a party.

And while we’re on the subject of music…Did you hear that JLo is quitting American Idol? You’ve got to wonder what that’s really about. She says she wants to devote herself to performing, but Idol’s ratings are sinking and has it been the same since Simon Cowell split? Some might say yes, some might say no. Me – I’m just asking.

Seen any of the Olympics? Monday Michael Phelps got his Speedo kicked. Came in fourth in a swim race. Fourth! Michael Phelps! Last Olympics, he medaled eight times and now…a fourth. You know, he was caught in a photo smoking weed, or at least holding the kind of pipe used to smoke weed – I forget the details – and you gotta wonder… I mean, they say that weed doesn’t hurt athletics – “they” being weed smokers – but still…

Did that business in the cowboy state –was it Texas? – have anything to do with smoking in a theater? Or maybe smoking out on the prairie, where the deer and the antelope play? Maybe smoking is allowed in theaters west of, say, Kansas. I can’t remember when I was in a western theater, but I’m sure I must have been in one some time – probably during one of my visits to California. Don’t recall what the smoking situation was.

One more item before we abandon the Olympics… did you see that some of the athletes got in trouble for pictures they posted online, or Tweeted, or something like that? One of those cyber things that seem to consume people my children’s age, or maybe younger. Yes, let’s say younger! I don’t know what the pictures showed, but how bad could they be? A shot of somebody smoking weed? Would that be considered bad? I mean, didn’t the president admit to trying the stuff at a party?

Wait! The president and his chief opponent and that western state… Something about what those guys are saying? Or not saying?

Well, end of the day, who cares? I mean, whatever happened happened last week – ancient history, no? And there are so many other things to think about.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases and her Green Lantern Problem

 

Dennis O’Neil: Batman’s Lethal Force

  • News
  • July 26, 2012

It is one of the universe’s pointless ironies that the horror in Colorado happened at the showing of a Batman movie. Despite the grimness in the Batman mythos, the character has neither been an advocate of violence, nor an apologist for it.

Not that I think it’s necessary, but let’s put out a few reminders anyway:

The only time Batman used a gun was in a very early story when the character was still in the process of forming.

Similarly: the mature Batman has eschewed lethal force of any kind.

A couple of decades ago, John Reisenbach, the son of a colleague, was shot to death on Jane Street in Greenwich Village – one of those senseless urban crimes that will probably never be solved. At the urging of Jenette Kahn, and under my editorship, John Ostrander wrote a fine Batman story about city streets and guns in reaction to our coworker’s tragedy. The story, titled “Seduction of the Gun,” was later credited with helping to pass anti-gun legislation in Virginia.

A final example: In the movie that was showing in Colorado, Batman has a line forbidding another character to use firearms.

So it wasn’t our fault, and, happily, the only press I’ve seen tying the massacre to comics was in New York’s Daily News, which cited a Frank Miller story in which similar gun violence was committed.  But even that piece quoted Brad Meltzer’s observation that Batman has been vocally anti-gun for these many years.

So it wasn’t our fault and it wasn’t the fault of anything the gunman read or saw or played. All extant evidence indicates that normal, psychologically healthy individuals and not prompted to atrocity by anything in the media. And the unhealthy? That’s scary and I’ve experienced occasional momentary uneasiness when I’ve had a hero in something I’m writing use lots of physical force to solve some problem. Was I setting a bad example? I don’t think so. Like it or not, we humans have aggression in our nature – that ol’ devil Evolution again – and if that weren’t true, we probably wouldn’t be entertained by depictions of warriors doing their thing. The earliest stories we have – and a good bit of what’s known as Scripture – are full of bloodletting.

Maybe the tactic for us modern storytellers is not to glorify the violence. Sometimes it’s necessary to use force in defense of self or other, sometimes the skills of the warrior are valuable. And, arguably, warriors are legitimate heroes. But, in our stories, let’s not glory in our characters’ infliction of pain and death. That glorification might be the line between heroism and sadism.

None of this is of any use to the people in Colorado and I’m too cynical to say that some good will come of it all. I don’t believe that much good came from the Columbine massacre or the Gabrielle Giffords shooting or the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan or the murder of John F. Kennedy or the million gun death that have happened in our nation since the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

Maybe the best we can hope for is that we will stop blaming movies and television for these indescribably sad events and have the courage to begin investigating the real causes. It is a forlorn hope, but it may be the best we have.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: Superman, Spider-Man, and the God Particle

oneil-column-art-120719-1801460First, the good news. Scientists are prepared to say that, definitely, god exists.

Now the bad. (He) (she) (it)…oh dang, there are really no appropriate pronouns for a concept that transcends the very idea of gender. Let’s settle for “they” and start again: They – the god thingies – are called “Higgs bosuns,” nicknamed “god particles,” and they permeate the universe. And without them, nothing could exist, could ever have existed. (Unless, that is, there’s a kind of reality we can’t comprehend, and we’re not exactly willing to rule that out, but we’ll never know and anyhow, who cares?) Although physicists have been seeking the Higgs for a half-century because the accepted model of the universe indicated that the things had to be there, it wasn’t until July 4 that they were prepared to say, yep found it. I understand that there was some celebrating in the Land of Labs.

Me, I got my science fix when I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man at the local monsterplex and, later, caught a few minutes of Superman on the tube: the first big-budget Superman, released in 1978 and hyped with the line, “You’ll believe a man can fly.” (For the record, I didn’t.) That flick has flaws, but it’s pretty good, especially for something made when Hollywood was just beginning to learn how to make these kinds of entertainments. The only part I really dislike is the ending: the graphics, though they tell the story, are pretty crude compared to what’s preceded them. And the science…oh woe – the science. (If you want to consider this a spoiler alert, suit yourself.) Lois Lane dies in an earthquake and Superman flies counterclockwise around the Earth and thus – ready for this? – reverses time and goes back to before Lois died and happy endings all around.

Reverses time, does he? By flying counterclockwise. Uh huh.

Nothing in the Spidey flick is quite so nettlesome, but in this reinvention, the film folk chose to explain Spidey’s ability to shoot webs huge distances and make them, apparently, as strong as the occasion warrants the same way Stan Lee and Steve Ditko explained it in the first Spider-Man comic book story, way back in 1962: A teenage Spidey, who gets really good grades in science class, having acquiring amazing powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider, goes home and, you know, tinkers around and comes up with a gadget that a) does the web shooting stuff and b) is compact enough to be worn like an oversize wrist watch.

So: if he commanded such technology, why didn’t he use it for much greater good than he could achieve as a costumed vigilante and, incidentally, plunk his saintly Aunt May down in some swell digs?

For the same reason that Superman didn’t use his godlike time reversal stunt to undo every single bad thing on the whole planet? (I mean saving Lois was nice and all, but…war! Famine! Disease!)

Of course, this kind of story is basically fantasy and, I guess, we all have a private setting for our willing suspension of disbelief. I complain about plot devices that violate the story’s own “reality” and haul us out of the fiction while we try figure out how we’re supposed to accept what we’ve just seen.

Since, in superhero writing, there is a long tradition of writers using whatever’s in the zeitgeist at the moment, I expect we’ll be seeing some costumed dogooder involved with Higgs bosuns pretty soon. I hope I don’t have to mangle my willing suspension of disbelief to enjoy the story, god particle or no god particle.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Dennis O’Neil: Maybe…

  • Uncategorized
  • July 12, 2012

oneil-column-art-120712-8981869Maybe you’re not reading this. Maybe you’re one of the thousands of computer users who lost Internet access on the interface between Sunday and Monday – that’d be midnight – because some really evil cyberstinkers infected your machine with the “Doomsday” virus and in the process made themselves rich. They were caught – sometimes the Feds get it right – but apparently nothing could be done about their mischief they caused and so, barring the unforeseen, at midnight on the ninth, some 69,000 U.S. computers until things get sorted out. I hope that yours isn’t one of them.

Maybe I should switch tenses and say that, again, maybe – is there no end to the maybes? – you won’t be reading this due to malfunctioning machinery. (I’m typing it at a little after five on Sunday. You think I know what will happen in seven hours? You think I know what will happen in two minutes? Please!)

So if you won’t be reading my blather, what will you be doing? Heading toward the annual mind-croggling San Diego Comic Con? If so, well… brace yourself. It’s an intense experience, that con, and I guess it can be an expensive one. Hotel rooms on beachfront San Diego don’t come cheap. Food costs aren’t too bad, but it is a tourist area. And inside the convention itself are hundreds of merchants who, in my experience, are nice people, but they do want to sell you something. And isn’t one of the reasons for con-going to buy stuff you can’t get on your home turf?

But – here it is again – maybe you’ve been bitten by the economy and a trip to southern California is not a current possibility for you. Always next year, but meanwhile… Can you afford a movie ticket? It’s a bit early to see the new Batman flick, which doesn’t open until the twentieth in most places. But the new Spider-Man is all over the place and – here it comes again – maybe you live near a multiplex that reduces admission costs during drive time and, being as financially strapped as you are, you aren’t doing anything else late afternoons, are you? If you have to pay the full freight, skip lunch. And dinner. And don’t even think about popcorn.

Although I haven’t seen the movie myself yet – ahem, maybe Tuesday? – I believe I can calm those who are wondering, What the heck? It’s only been five years since the last Spidey, and only a decade since the first big-screen Spidey and that one did include an origin story, thank you, and now they’re reinventing the whole mythos, including another origin? I mean, what the heck!

Okay, take comfort in remembering that the history of the filmed entertainment’s first cousin, comic books, demonstrates that a little reinvention, from time to time, is not necessarily undesirable. On the contrary. As for the small number of years between origin and origin revisited… There were two filmed adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s classic crime novel The Maltese Falcon in the ten years before John Huston gave us his version and the existence of the first two did nothing to harm the excellence of Huston’s work.

That’s a factoid you might miss if your computer’s on the fritz and you’re not reading this. Or – wait for it…maybe not.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases Writes From Las Vegas?

 

Dennis O’Neil: The Brightest Day In Miami

  • Uncategorized
  • July 5, 2012

oneil-column-art-1207051-4061400The other writer on the platform was Tony Bedard and he was getting most of the questions. We were at the Supercon in Miami and our topic was the Green Lantern.

What was Tony doing there? That’s easy. He was answering questions about the current status of GL and well suited to do it, was he, being the writer of The Green Lantern Corps, one of the GL spinoffs and a part of what has become, I guess, a franchise. Tony’s in the know.

Me? Well, let’s see…I wrote the character about 40 years ago, briefly, and I can retail a factoid or two regarding his early years, in the 1940s, and I saw the movie. But the recent stuff? Nah.

And that’s what our Miami audience was interested in, the current continuity, not the senescent blathering of a fossil about what was, to them, ancient history.

Be blessed, superconners. You were right.

The study of comics’ history is a legitimate discipline, and becoming more legitimate every day – as legitimate as the study of any, ahem, art form. But it has little to do with your enjoyment of the story that you’re looking at. And as Samuel R. Delany once suggested, neither does the discovery of “respectable” historic antecedents lend any valid respectability to the story you just bought. There’s a connection between comics and the German genius Goethe? (There is, isn’t there?) Well, okay. The expressionist painter Lyonel Feininger once did comic strips? Uh huh. Patricia Highsmith and Dashiell Hammet and Stanley Kauffman once did comics? Uh huh and uh huh and uh huh. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and modern Chinese and Japanese writing bear resemblances to comics? Okay, noted.

But what about the thing in front of you?

There are a couple of ways creative types might use the past: as examples of what not to do and as a source of ideas. They might also use it as examples of what to do, but that’s creeping toward dangerous territory. We don’t want to rehash what we loved when we were fans/readers, regardless of how many hours it brightened. Rather, we want to give our audiences the same kind of pleasure we got from our predecessors.

Let us nod in agreement with the great haiku writer Basho: Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the masters. Rather, seek what they sought.

So our friends in Florida were behaving properly when they focused on Tony Bedard and kind of ignored me and, you know, it was pretty darn hot outside that hotel – just how mythic is that global warming? – and it was not excellent weather for crying, but, heck, we take our tears where we find them…

RECOMMENDED READING: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson.

Friday: Martha Thomases and Cuddly Li’l Ted

 

Dennis O’Neil: Of Trilogies and Kindles

  • Uncategorized
  • June 28, 2012

oneil-column-art-120628-8840474Based on…oh, I don’t know – some observation? A hunch? An angel whispering in my ear? Anyway, based on some darn thing, I hereby guess that some comics writers aren’t as aware of story structure as they might be – not as much as, say, their artistic first cousins, screen writers who, I’m told, are generally very aware of it, particularly if they’ve studied the craft in some college-level course, or read a few of the many books on the subject.

Well, although I do address the structure stuff in the courses I teach, I won’t burden you with it here and now. Not the time, not the place. However, maybe just a teensy bit of structure blather might not be amiss.

But first:

Have you noticed that trilogies seem to be the publishing rage? (Okay, not rage. Whimper?) There was the Girl in the Dragon Tattoo, which was twice a trilogy, as novels and as movies, and may be moving into a third trilogyhood because there’s been an English language film adaptation of the first novel – the other movies were in (I think) Swedish and were directed by (I’m sure) a Dane. (A great dane? Time will tell.)

Did I write “a third trilogyhood?” Yes I did. Wanna make something of it, buddy?

The other trilogy which is crowning the New York Times bestseller lists is Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels. I haven’t read more than a handful of the books’ words, but, ahem, somebody in this house has it on her Kindle and we have it on good authority that these novels are smut! (What’s on my Kindle is Walter Issacson’s bio of Steve Jobs, which is not in any way smutty, at least so far. Probably just as well.) I ask you: does such a thing belong on the Kindle of someone who attended Catholic schools, clear through to a university degree?

And while we’re on the subject of Kindles: the ninja fairies who work for Amazon snuck into my Kindle the other day and left a message informing me that the voodoo-hoodoo that runs the cyberworld has been upgraded, or at least fiddled with, and pretty soon I’ll be able to read comic books on the gadget. In two formats, if my understanding is good. Am I rejoicing? Moaning with happiness? Doing a celebratory dance? Nope. Still don’t trust technology, despite the fact that I’m really digging the Steve Jobs book. But I’ll probably give Kindlecomix a try when the ninja fairies make the machine hospitable to them, if only to demonstrate that, while you may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, some old dogs are at least willing to try jumping through the friggin’ hoop.

But weren’t we discussing story structure? Well, consider yourself taught by bad example because this column is ill-structured, at least for story purposes – indeed, it’s structured only by association of topics. Not the best approach to dramatic storytelling. But maybe one of you can make it work.

RECOMMENDED READING: Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder. If you want to learn something about story structure, give this a try.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Mike Baron Tells Us A Story

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases Gets Worldly

 

Dennis O’Neil’s Pissed Off!

  • Uncategorized
  • June 21, 2012

oneil-column-art-1206211-1789784I’m tired of being an outsider! No more rebel for me! From now on, I run with the pack.

But where to begin? Why, by emulating our leaders, those wonderful ladies and gents who prowl the halls of power in our nation’s capitol. Yessir, I’m talking about Washington D.C. and I’m talking about our own Congress and we’re not playing favorites, the House or the Senate, either one will do. So, to imitate our solons…I guess I should get pissed off about something. I guess I have to! Isn’t that what the current crop of lawmakers do?

But what? The economy? Nah – everybody’s riding that hobby horse.  The wars? Old news, and besides, everyone seems to be taking them for granted. Wait…I’ve got it.

The Journal News. My local newspaper.

A little context. I’m just back from the St. Louis area where I spent some coin on a couple of editions of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, which Joseph Pulitzer owned before he went to east and, at the New York World, commissioned the first color comics. Now, I never worked for the PD – I reported for a much smaller sheet upstate – but it was an early part of my daily life from toddlerhood on. I guess my parents must have been subscribers.

Almost certainly, it was in the PD’s “funny pages” that I got my first exposure to panel art. Not only were there comics in the PD, at a certain time in, I guess, the 40s, those comics were in color. Not just Sundays – heck, every paper’s Sunday comics were in color – but every blessed day. I think I was on the floor of my grandmother’s living room when I opened the paper and…wow! Color comics! On a weekday! Some occasions, a kid doesn’t forget. And somewhere, Joseph Pulitzer was exalting.

So, flash forward: Last Monday, I picked up the PD, turned to the funny pages looking for my favorites and, yes, there it was, the strip that I think is tied with Doonesbury for being the best and wisest feature in all of syndication: Non Sequitur, by Wiley Post. But it was a strip! And in the Journal News, it’s a box! The editor in me wanted to know if the feature was sent in two formats or certain papers reformatted it themselves, and what effect that might have on Wiley Post’s working habits and if he has to reformat himself, why that doesn’t drive him crazy.

But, while all that gives one pause, it’s not bad. What is bad is what I saw the day before, in the PD’s Sunday funny pages: Non Sequitur. In color. On Sunday! On Sunday, dammit. Because the Journal News, though it has a Sunday comics section, which I read every week, doesn’t carry the Sunday Non Sequitur. I didn’t even know that there was a Sunday Non Sequitur before this week

Well, Journal News? I’ve been a loyal reader for 14 years and I live in Upper Nyack and I can’t help wondering what you have against doing us the service of publishing Non Sequitur seven days a week. Not six – seven. Do I hear an excuse?

I’m waiting, Journal News. And I am pissed!

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases and Big Hair

 

Dennis O’Neil: Meet Me In St. Louie?

  • Uncategorized
  • June 14, 2012

oneil-column-art-120614-9017579Holy cryin’ commie vomit! The old chrome dome is writing another column? Didn’t he just send one off yesterday?

Matter of fact he…that is, I did. But I’ll be out of town for a while and I’d better get this in before I subject myself to the activity that I’ve done most often of all the activities I truly dislike, which is to get in an airplane and go someplace. (The going someplace is fine. It’s the getting there that’s a bowel-froster.) I’ll be going west and by the time you read, I’ll have already gone to St. Louis and returned therefrom. Not to visit friends and family, though some of that may happen, but to attend a convention.

Last time we were in that area, a hurricane passed within about a half-mile of our hotel, damaging the airport and going on to devastate the suburb Marifran grew up in. We can hope for a more sedate visit this week. (Though I have to admit, the possibility of being blown to Oz is an attention-getter.)

Mari and I are St. Louis natives, of course, but returning to the city hasn’t been exactly going home for a while now. I look at street signs and think, I should recognize this neighborhood. But I don’t. Because I lived in Missouri for maybe 22 years, and I’ve lived in New York for something like 47 years. And St. Louis – can you believe this – has changed! And Tom Wolfe was right: You can’t go home again. Because home isn’t there anymore.

Anyway, I prepared for the trip by reading Comics’ Second City by Missourian Mike Phoenix. Mike makes a good case for his title: St. Louis does have a strong claim to being we funnybookers’ second city and I suppose, using Mike’s book as a guide, you could organize a tour to look at the significant sites, where the destinies of comics and the city intersected. I won’t be doing that, though in a funny way I’m glad they’re there. (Or were there. Damn burg’s changed, remember?)

Much of the book’s latter half is devoted to the St. Louis fan scene over the years. I suppose I shouldn’t be too fascinated by this material, never having been a fan. But I found it to be a snapshot of a time and place and set of activities that I did find interesting,, as any glimpse into other lives can be interesting. And just recently – as I was writing last week’s column, if you must know – I’ve come to realize that without fandom, we might not be here. Would Phil Seuling have thought of the direct sales market if he hadn’t met fans at conventions, some of which he organized? Would he have been confident that he could bypass the distributors and sell comics directly to fans if the fan base didn’t already exist? And I think we can agree that comics as a populist medium might not have survived the wholesale extinction of newsstand product without the direct market?

Meanwhile, I’ll meet you in St. Louie, Louie…Well, I’ll meet somebody in St. Louie.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

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