Author: Mindy Newell

Mindy Newell: Up, Up And Away In My Beautiful Balloon

word-balloons-9480680I wanted to write about word balloons, which I’m pretty sure hasn’t been talked about here at ComicMix before, at least since I arrived here, is it coming on three years already? And now I’m incredibly frustrated and possibly going crazy.

I got the idea from seeing a piece in Entertainment Weekly featuring an interview with Scott McCloud in which he talked about the use of word balloons in comics. I thought I set the magazine aside to use as a reference – and I’ve been tearing about the house for over an hour looking for it. Can’t find it anywhere…and I even went through my recycle bin. And I went to EW’s website, but have you been there recently? It’s H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E! Supposedly it was “redesigned,” but it looks more like it was hacked into by The Onion’s staff, or maybe the same goons from North Korea who hacked into Sony. I mean, what kind of website doesn’t have a search engine icon?? Go ahead, go try searching the site for an old article… even a recap of Downton Abbey from two weeks ago. Unless I’m blind, it just ain’t there, folks – and if I am, please let me know how to search the EW website down below in the comments!

But back to word balloons.

If I could get a nickel for every time someone, upon learning that I’ve written comics, has said something like so you put the words in those little balloons, I’d be a rich lady. Maybe not part of the 1%, but at least a member of the 7%. Well, I do, actually. Put the words in the balloons, I mean. Only it all starts on the written page, whether it’s done as a full script or in what’s often called “Marvel style.”

I think I’ve said this before, but for me, when I’m really in the zone as I’m writing a story, it’s like watching a movie unfold in my head and all I’m doing is transcribing. As Scott pointed out in that article and in his brilliant Understanding Comics, the trick is, since it’s a visual medium, to convey the emotion behind the lettered words. And by using the art of the balloon, not only in its lettering, but in its presentation and placement within the panel. For example, if I were writing a key scene in a story between Clark Kent and Lois Lane in which Lois Lane has had enough of the bullshit, my script would look like this:

Lois: Well, you know what, Clark….

Lois: (big, bold letters in a big, bold balloon, because she’s done with the whole situation) GO FUCK YOURSELF AND THE ROCKET YOU FLEW IN ON!

Not that I could ever get away with that particular terminology in DC land. Well, I could if it was Vertigo.

If you’re lucky and you’ve got a great artist and a great letterer who really get it – and I have been – the final result will really hit the reader. If you’re not lucky, and you’ve got a hack artist and a hack letterer – and I’ve been there, too – the final result is just another panel among many, and that key moment will leave the reader skimming the page and feeling nothing.

Another trick I’ve used when writing scripts is what I call the “Howard Hawks” method. Film director Howard Hawks (The Thing from Another World, His Girl Friday) was known for his ability to have his actors talk the way real people talk, i.e., interrupting each other, overlapping, talking to themselves while the other person is continuing to talk, conversations going on in the background – he was so good at directing his actors in this that quite often you have to watch a scene at least twice to get everything. (Watch those two movies I reference above, and this time don’t pay attention to the main action– listen for what’s going on in the background. It’s quite a kick– for instance, did you know that the leading man and the leading lady in The Thing from Another World were sleeping together? I bet the censors didn’t catch that either, which is probably why it got through the finished cut. And of course Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell were superb at talking over one another in Friday.

The way you do this in comics is to have the balloons themselves overlapping and trying to crowd each other out. In that EW piece, a panel from one of Scott’s comics – I believe it is the upcoming The Sculptor, for which he is getting tremendous praise – has his character walking through Times Square, in his own world – but Scott gives you the sense of the thousands of people crowding and walking through the area with word balloons “floating” everywhere – bits of conversation that are going on around the main character which he doesn’t really hear except as the “buzz” of the city. Again, as a reader, because of the placement of the balloons, the number of balloon, the art of the balloon, you are with the character, not just a casual bystander.

Mindy: (faintly lined balloon with small letters, she’s whispering to herself) shit, it’s 6:27. mike is gonna kill me. better wrap this up.

Mindy: Let me know if any of you find that EW piece, okay, guys? See ya next week. And thanks.

 

Mindy Newell: Full Of Sound And Fury

First off, “I just think he’s hot.”

That’s a line from the end of Man Of Steel, which I watched again last night. And the captain who says it is right. Henry Cavill is – im-not-so-ho – hot. Extremely so. Perhaps more importantly, the man can act. Given a script that does not serve Mr. Cavill, in its, let’s say, frugality of characterization, exploration, and screen time of Kal-El alias Clark Kent actually being Kal-El alias Clark Kent, Mr. Cavill does a helluva job in conveying the confusion, loneliness, guilt, anger, and prickly emptiness inside this alien immigrant from Krypton.

The first time I saw it, I thought it sucked. This time, I thought, well, it doesn’t so much suck as it does come up empty, running on fumes instead of a full tank. And, no, it’s not because *gasp* Superman Kills Zod! *gasp* – which is what got so many bowels, including mine, in an uproar. Given the (truncated) emotional journey that Kal-El alias Clark Kent is on in the film, it’s – im-no-so-ho – the right action at the right time, for not only is Kal-El alias Clark Kent killing the warlord, he is also killing Kal-El the Kryptonian (and by inference, finally laying to rest the planet of Krypton) inside of him, killing the “otherness” that has haunted him all of his life. In that moment of final brutality, he transforms into Clark Kent alias Superman, born and raised in Kansas, U.S.A., and citizen of the planet Earth. As Clark Kent he will love Lois Lane; as Superman he will love Earth.

The problem with the film as I watched it the second time was that I had trouble staying awake to watch the very, very, very protracted battle scenes. Frankly, it got B-O-R-I-N-G. Director Zack Snyder, like George Lucas before him, is not interested in “what makes people tick.” He’s the toddler who knocks down his building blocks because it makes a big noise. He’s the kid with the Erector set building a giant John Deere crane that can knock down his Legos Empire State Building. He’s the adult ultimate SFX and CGI geek that is given a zillion dollars to play with.

And so in Man Of Steel we got an eternity of destruction played out before our eyes. We got IHOP and SEARS demolished real good. We got shockwaves of roiling dust clouds rolling across the Kansas plains. We got tidal waves sweeping across the Indian Ocean. We got F-16s and alien ships crashing to the ground. We got skyscrapers collapsing. We got pummeling and we got blood-and-guts – only there was very little blood and there was absolutely no guts. We got death without bodies.

It’s not really Zack Snyder’s fault. Nor is it the fault of so many young adults, mostly men, who have said to me, “Man Of Steel was so cool! The best part was the fight between Superman and Zod, and when Superman killed him, that was the best!” For they are all part of a generation that, as kids, saw the real towers fall down on television. Too young to really understand what was happening, too young to think about the political implications, too young to grasp the murky history of the Middle East and how it led to that moment, 9/11 and its aftermath, the televised “Shock and Awe,” was the ultimate video game, with explosions and lights, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing.

They did not know that it was a tale told by an idiot.

And now Superman has a new power. An incredibly destructive and unstable power, to quote writer Geoff Johns. Because heat vision and telescopic vision and super-duper strength and invulnerability and x-ray vision and the ability to fly at super-sonic speeds and across space and into suns and to cross the time barrier just isn’t enough anymore.

Because, you know, all that stuff can get so B-O-R-I-N-G.

 

Mindy Newell: Bits and Pieces

I’d like to welcome Molly Jackson to the cacophonous, crazy, crackling, close comradeship that is the corral of ComicMix columnists. Molly’s first piece is on Star Trek: Voyager. She, like, me is a devoted fan of Captain Katherine Janeway, Commander Chakotay, Lt. Commander Tuvok, Lieutenant Tom Parris, Lieutenant B’lanna Torres, the Doctor, Kes, Neelix, and Seven-of-Nine.

In fact, I think that every columnist here is a fan of Star Trek, in its various incarnations…or at least one particular series or movie. (Hmm…is it a prerequisite?) Anyway, as I responded to Molly in the comments section, it’s a weird bit of synchronicity that her first column is about Voyager. Last week I finished binging on the entire series courtesy of my DVD set. I was so into reliving it that I was actually pissed off as the final episode ended!

Molly, you’re so right – it was a great, great piece of ST mythos (im-not-so-ho)! Kate Mulgrew – I can’t even imagine Genevieve Bujold in the role – as Katherine Janeway put as strong an indelible mark on her character as Shatner, Picard, or Brooks. (Bakula, im-no-so-ho, got shafted by the network – he never really got a chance to “quantum leap” Archer out beyond the original series bible.)

My only complaint is that final scene in the final episode. I wanted more. We should have seen the crew actually set foot on Earth again after seven years. Do you think that the surviving Maquis members would be arrested and dragged off to the jail? Do you think that Janeway’s fiancée would be there – and would he leave his wife home? Do you think they’d start an affair? How would Seven of Nine integrate in society? At the very least, we should have seen the reunion between Admiral and Lt. Tom Paris…and the Admiral’s introduction to his new granddaughter.

I forgot to mention last week that the January 16 issue of Entertainment Weekly (the one with Paul Rudd as Ant-Man on the cover) had a very nice piece in the “News + Notes” section on Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Faction as “The First Couple of Comics.” The very complimentary – and deservedly so! – story had a sidebar listing other “power” couples (as EW termed them) in the four-color world – Terry and Rachel Dodson, Mike and Laura Allred, Stuart and Kathryn Immomen, Walter and Louise Simonson, and Amanda Connor and Jimmy Palmiotti.

When I read the piece, I said to myself, “Hey, what about John Ostrander and (the late) Kim Yale?” I meant to send off an e-mail to EW, but being a lazy, procrastinating shit, I never got to it.

However, someone else did.

This week’s “Oscar!” issue of EW, dated January 30, letter writer Beth Rimmels of Long Island, New York, said:

“Loved the piece on Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction, but when listing other power comics couples you omitted John Ostrander and the late Kim Yale. Their run on Suicide Squad put it on the map and influences the upcoming movie. Ostrander’s still turning out good writing, and Yale influenced many women who followed her.”

Amen, Beth. A-men!

Oh, and I think the casting of Paul Rudd as Ant-Man is brilliant.

There’s also a story in this week’s EW on Richard Selzer, a.k.a. Mr. Blackwell of the infamous “Hollywood’s Worst-Dressed List.” Alumni include Elizabeth Taylor Cher, Raquel Welch, Madonna, Dolly Parton, Whoopi Goldberg, and Lindsey Lohan. Got me to thinking of how the inheritors of critiquing celebrity fashion choices, like Joan and Melissa Rivers, who owned the red carpet for the E! network at events like the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and dissected star fashion on Fashion Police for the same network, would do at assessing the “costume” choices of the superhero population. Lots and lots of comments about wearing their “underoos” on the outside, I bet!

Sounds like an idea for next week’s column.

See you then.

Mindy Newell Is Trekkin’

Have you heard Star Trek Continues? I happened to discover it just today, as I was surfing the web this morning. It is an award-winning …well, let me quote from the site itself:

“Star Trek Continues is a critically-acclaimed, award-winning, fan-produced webseries… the brainchild of long-time Star Trek: The Original Series fan – and producer, director, actor, voice-actor, musician – Vic Mignogna.

“Star Trek Continues is proud to be part of Trek history, aimed at completing

the final two years of the original five-year mission. After mounting a successful Kickstarter campaign, the show is already making waves and attracting guest stars such as Michael Forest, Jamie Bamber, Lou Ferrigno, and Erin Gray – as well as cameos by Star Trek alums like Marina Sirtis and Michael Dorn.”

It really is absolutely captivating. Mr. Mignogna is perfect – and I mean perfect! – William Shatner as Captain James Tiberius Kirk, down to body movements and personal tics. And Chris Doohan is the living embodiment of Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer and Second Officer of the Enterprise. Then again, he should be. Mr. Doohan is the son of the late James Doohan, who, just in case you don’t know, played Scotty in the original series. (Fun fact I discovered on the website: Chris Doohan first boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC1701 in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and continues to do so, up to and including Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness, in which he appeared in a scene with Simon Pegg, a.k.a. the “new” Scotty.

Everyone is perfect in their roles, costuming, and make-up; except for, I have to say, Kim Stinger as Nichel Nichols as Lt. Nyota Uhura. Her 2014 hairdo and voice and physicality does absolutely nothing to remind me of Ms. Nichols or Lt. Uhura. She is the only one who takes me completely out of the spell, out of my “ suspension of disbelief.” She might as well be a new character.

Still, if you’re a Star Trek fan, you must check this website; all the music and sound effects of the original are incorporated into the series and even the special effects are so seamless and could easily “melt” into any of the episodes on your DVD set.

•     •     •     •     •

The reverberations of the attack on Charlie Hebdo continue to dominate the news cycle, even pushing the opening bell of the 2016 Presidential race here in the States to the second or third news story – yeah, here we go again – Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney (!!!) are all “exploring” the possibility of running – but as I read websites and newspapers and watch the news stations, I’m realizing that it’s about more than the right to free speech. It’s also about the rise of violence against Jews in France over the last decade, coinciding with the rise in the French Muslim population.

The history of French cooperation with the Nazis during World War II (aside from the Free French, who made valuable contributions) does not put that country of the list of “Righteous Gentiles“ at Yad Veshem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. Historically, France has been the center of European Jewish learning and assimilation into the greater society; after the French Revolution Jews were emancipated, and Napoleon deconstructed the ghettos.

Today the Jewish community in France numbers between 500.000 and 600,000. But over the last few years there has been a huge exodus as increasing anti-Semitism fostered by the French Muslim population has become a palpable threat, with almost 8,000 occurrences since 2000, including one very large and violent event last July in which 200 Jews were trapped inside a synagogue while the demonstrators outside shouted obscenities and threatened death.

This is why the French police and security offices have been protecting Jewish neighborhoods and sites in Paris and around the country since the assault at Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cache kosher deli, including schools and synagogues.

*sigh* And the story of Cain and Abel, and Isaac and Ishmael, just keeps on trekkin’.

 

Mindy Newell: Je Ne Suis Pa Charlie Hebdo

sobig-2004266Yesterday I had a thought – which I do have on occasion.

I have always considered myself a “socially conscious” comics writer. This means that, if you look over my body of work, you will notice that I have told stories that, in one way or another, reflect “real world” events and the consequences of those events on my characters. Notably, of course, in my 1986 Lois Lane mini-series about child abduction and abuse, “When It Rains, God is Crying” (coincidentally edited by ComicMix’s Robert Greenberger when we were both working for DC, he an editor and me a freelancer), but also as far back as “Moon River,” my first story in New Talent Showcase, an admittedly tyro effort to portray the outcome of a closed, dictatorial society on an individual. And of course there was “Chalk Drawings,” which I co-wrote with George Pérez for Wonder Woman, which was a story about suicide.

These efforts do not make me Edna Ferber (a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of renowned and influential New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits who gathered at the Algonquin Hotel every day for lunch from 1919 to 1929), whose “socially conscious” novels include, among others, So Big (1924), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, Show Boat (1926), which was adapted into a musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, and Giant (1952), which was made into a movie directed by George Stevens and starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean – his third and last role before his death by car accident – who did admirable jobs in a no-way-was it-as-good-as-the-novel script adaptation. So Big was about the war between art and finance, Show Boat was about the racism between black and white and its price, while Giant dealt with the racism between brown and white, the antipathy between cattle ranchers and oilmen, and, as well, the clash between liberalism and conservatism. All are issues we face today.

Nor am I Laura Z. Hobson, whose 1947 Gentlemen’s Agreement attacked post-World War II anti-Semitism in the United States. It was made into a film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who, according to Wikipedia, was approached by Samuel Goldwyn and other Jewish filmmakers. They asked him not to make the film because it could “stir up trouble,” and feared that Hays Code enforcer Joseph Brown would not allow the film to get by the censors because of his openly known anti-Semitism. But Zanuck essentially said, “Fuck him,” and the film went on to be nominated for eight Oscars and to win three – Best Picture, Best Director (Elia Kazan, no stranger to controversy), Best Actor (Gregory Peck), and Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm). Just a brief aside here: in my not-so-humble opinion, John Garfield should have won a Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dave Goldman, a Jewish WW II vet and best friend to Gregory Peck’s main character, journalist Phil Schulyer. Oh, and young Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap’s Admiral Al Calavicci and Battlestar Galactica’s Brother John Cavil) played Schulyer’s son.

But, getting back to my original sentence, in which I said I had a thought…

Am I still listed in the phone book?

Of course it sounds silly. I mean, who uses a phone book these days?

But the point is, how easy am I to find?

And the answer is: All too easy.

So what if I offended someone out there? Certainly in these past two and so years I have stated my opinions loudly and frequently. And I’ve done the same on my Facebook page.

Is it that inconceivable some one could decide to meet me in the parking lot at work, or in front of my apartment building, or even in my apartment? Some one with a pathological chip on his or her shoulder and a knife or a Luger or a Kalishnikov?

Or maybe while I’m shopping at the Jewish deli?

No, I’m not inflated with self-importance.

No, I am not Edna Ferber or Laura Z. Hobson. Neither am I Lawrence Wright or Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein. I’m not Maureen O’Dowd. I’m not Rachel Maddow. I’m not Chris Matthews or Ed Schultz. I’m not Megan Kelley or Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter. I’m not Jon Stewart. I’m not Steven Colbert. I’m not Louis Black or John Oliver or Bill Maher.

I’m not Thomas Nast. I’m not Art Spielgman and I’m not Jules Feiffer. I’m not Nigar Nazar of Pakistan.

I’m not Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman or G. Willow Wilson.

I’m not Mike Gold or Denny O’Neil or John Ostrander or Marc Fishman or Martha Thomases or Michael Davis or Emily Whitten or Bob Ingersoll.

I am Mindy Newell.

Je ne suis pa Charlie Hebdo.

But I could be.

We all could be.

And so could you.

 

Mindy Newell: To Resolve Not To Resolve

Today we are five days into the New Year, and I hope that for all of you 2015 has been rocking.

As Martha mentioned in her latest column, January is the traditional time for making resolutions. Well, I’m not much for making resolutions generally, and January is my least favorite month. It’s drab and dull and boring, a big letdown after the “holiday season,” with not much to look forward to other than lousy weather and 31 days to get through until February – not that I’m so nuts about February, except that it’s short and the days are just beginning to get noticeably longer. But, back to January.

There should be a national holiday in the middle of the month, “National Doldrums Day” to break up the monotony. All right, if your birthday or wedding anniversary or some other personal celebration is in January, I apologize, but there should be something for the rest of us, don’cha think?

Also, I’ve always thought that resolution is a funny word to use when referring to a new start or a new promise. As a writer, resolution means the end of the story’s conflict or problem, as in:

The Guardians of the Galaxy are no longer criminals, their crimes having been erased. Quill opens the last present he mother gave him, a cassette of her favorite songs, and also discovers that he isn’t fully human; his father came from an ancient, but unknown, species. They board the rebuilt Milano, carrying a sapling of Groot.

And as an operating room nurse, resolution refers to the clarity of an image from an MRI or X-ray, as in:

Surgeon: “The resolution sucks. I can’t see a fucking thing.”

X-ray Tech: “What the fuck you want from me? Goddamn C-arm is about 100 years old and the hospital is too cheap to buy a new one.”

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s a verbatim conversation or not.

It’s actually September that feels like the beginning of the year for me (and I would guess most of you) thanks to the indoctrination of the American school system… and perhaps just a bit due to the Jewish New Year occurring in the fall.

But of course resolution also means “to make a decision,” which accounts for how crowded my gym gets right after New Year’s every January – and also around April or May, as the summer nears – as people “resolve” to lose weight and/or get buff. Which is another reason why I hate January. The Body Pump class is so damn crowded and just try getting on the treadmill.

And the other thing about resolutions in January is that, let’s face, they’re so often the exact same ones a person made the year before.

“Okay, I mean it this time. I’m going to:

  1. Fill in here.
  2. Fill in here.
  3. Fill in here.
  4. Fill in here.
  5. Fill in here.

Hey, why should I embarrass myself by repeating the same old same-olds?

Check back here next year for my 2016 resolutions.

•     •     •     •     •

But there is one think I’m going to do this year; in fact I’m going to do it as soon as I’m done writing this and sending it off to Mike to edit.

I’m going to donate to the Norm Breyfogle Medical Stroke Fund. See that box over to the right?

Make a resolution to click on it as soon as you’re done reading this.

Make a resolution to donate as much as you can afford, even if it’s only $1.00

Make a resolution.

Just do it.

 

Mindy Newell’s Year-End Bests And Worsts

So here we are at the end of 2014, which is the time for media folk to opine about the best and the worst of the year in all the different areas of our overcrowded, put-upon lives. So though I rarely think of myself as part of the media folk crowd, I’ll include me in that description for this column, since all of you have so kindly considered my words, thoughts, judgments, attitudes, and so forth important enough to peruse over the last twelve months.

So here we go, in no particular order, and not divided into “best” and “worst”…

I applaud Marvel Comics’ writer G. Willow Wilson (great name, by the way, so alliterative!) and artist Adrian Alphona for introducing the comics world to Kamala Khan, an American Muslim teenager from Jersey City, New Jersey. Kamala’s parents and family are traditional, observant Muslims (for the most part), but Kamala just wants to be what every teenage girl wants to be – not different from her peers. But she is. Not just because she’s Muslim. It’s because she’s also Ms. Marvel.

In a time when bigotry is rampant in these United States – our President is a Muslim Kenyan socialist dictator terrorist determined to destroy America, and, oh, by the way, he’s *gasp* B-L-A-C-K – I just absolutely love that the House of Ideas has embraced the opposite of the disease named xenophobia. There is no better cure.

Just a few weeks ago at my daughter’s birthday dinner, we got into a discussion of the state of music these days. I said that I think there is nothing out there that can compare to the music produced during the ‘60s, certainly nothing like the great concept albums of the Beatles, the Stones, and so forth. Not for the mass public, anyway. It’s all manufactured pop crap. Certainly nothing that is going to hold up to the test of time. Said brother Glenn, “So where do you think great popular art is being produced?”

“Television,” I said instantly. “We in a new ‘Golden Age.”

“When she’s right, she’s right,” said Glenn.

There’s been a lot of really fantastic television these days. Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Downton Abbey, Transparent, Outlander, and certainly comics are rocking our personal screens with The Flash, Arrow, Gotham, and Marvel’s Agents of Shield. But my vote for the best TV show of 2014 – as if regular readers can’t guess before I type out the letters – is Homeland.

Homeland not only made everyone forget – well, sort of – Brody (for more see my earlier column on the series here), but it amped up the tension to equal the heyday of 24 – and beat Jack Bauer at his own game by never forgetting that it is also a study of the emotional, and psychological scars borne by those who serve their patriotism in the coldest of wars.

Best taking on of a role already inhabited by fan favorites: Peter Capaldi as the Time Lord in Doctor Who. David Tennant and Matt Smith made indelible marks on the saga of the Gallifreyan, between them raising the Doctor into the realms of a worldwide phenomenon shared by only two modern myths – Star Trek and Star Wars. I can well imagine the trepidation with which Mr. Capaldi must have felt when he was given the keys to the TARDIS, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t slept the night before the his debut premiered. But he made it his own; an original interpretation in which, im-not-so-ho, the Doctor had to figure out if, of if not, he’s a good man. “I don’t know,” said Clara. And I’m still not sure if the Doctor can accept that maybe he is, even if he did, at long last, salute Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.

Politics and World Affairs 101. (Hey, you know me – I wasn’t going to let this topic slip away.) This year was definitely one that went way beyond any introductory college course. The most “do-nothing” Congress in the history of this country, all based – again, im-not-so-ho, on the biases held against our President. (Reference first sentence in fourth paragraph of this column, please.) ISIS, jihadist Crusaders determined to raise the Ottoman Empire from the dust of history using beheadings with modern-day scimitars and social media propaganda, is the biggest threat to any type of peace in the Middle East – and the world – since Adolph Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party. And yes, that is really how I feel.

Meanwhile Vladimir Putin seems determined to lead a new Soviet Union – and for those who may point out that the Russian economy is in freefall…well, countries have gone to war because of failed domestic policies. And homosexuals in Russia are the new scapegoat, replacing Jews.

Best (and worst) on the domestic front this year. It seems to me that the American people have finally woken up and are marching in protest again against our own “black boots” (not to reference Nazis again, but…) who – shades of the pre-Civil Rights Act era – seem to feel they have a right to kill black men and anyone else who doesn’t “salute” them fast enough. I only hope the protests continue to the level of the social activism in which I grew up during the ‘60’s, and now dwindle away like the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Worst “Oh, God, I knew this was going to happen” moment: “The Mystery of Malaysian Flight 370” was televised on CNN. Just waiting for it to show up as an episode of “Ancient Aliens” sometime in 2015.

Dumbest comics controversy of 2014 (though I can understand the uproar) was that cover. Yeah, you know the one I mean. Jessica Jones as Spider-Woman with her ass up in the air.

The other dumb comics controversy – the stupidest, I mean – was DC’s decision not to allow Batwoman to marry her long-time love, civil rights lawyer Maggie Sawyer. Not only does it reek of bigotry and ignorance, not only does it go against the biggest non-issue in recent American history, i.e., gay marriage, but it’s based on an edict that “no DC superhero is allowed to be married” as “heroes shouldn’t have happy personal lives” because it would make for “less dramatic stories.” As if marriage is always a state of bliss. Um…no. And kudos to J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman for walking away from such ignoramity.

Most exposed comic character: Starfire. Once upon a time, back in the Wolfman-Pérez days of New Teen Titans, she was a nuanced character. Now she’s just…exposed.

Speaking of DC and stupidest. How about their contest concerning Harley Quinn? the company asked for tyro artists to draw a scene from Harley Quinn #0 which specifically asked for: “Harley sitting in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances, all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before her inevitable death. Her expression is one of, ‘Oh, well, I guess that’s it for me,’ and she has resigned herself to the moment is going to happen.”

Announced just before National Suicide Prevention Week.

Oh, wait, a lot of that happened in 2013.

Well, it’s still “worst of” bad news.

So what kind of stupidest stuff has DC done in 2014?

Turned Wonder Woman into a caricature of a feminist icon – whiney, spoiled, and bitchy.

Batgirl featured a literal “cartoon” of transgender characterization in the imposter Batgirl, who was actually a dangerous, deranged man. Um, btw, that’s not transgender. That’s cross-dressing. Either way, it was incredibly insulting to too many individuals. (The creative team of Brendan Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr apologized…and meant it.).

Merchandizing sexualized and insulting t-shirts with Superman “scoring” with Wonder Woman, and mottos like “Training To Be Batman’s Wife.”

Releasing a book for toddlers and early readers called “Superheroes Opposites” in which “Wonder Woman pushes a swing” with a little girl on it, while Superman, on the opposing page, “pulls the machine,” which looks like some combination of a Deere tractor and deep-sea oilrig. Anyway, it’s enormous and definitely very heavy. Yeah, I’ll be buying that book for my 15-month-old grandson soon.

DC sure isn’t Jenette Khan’s company anymore!

But DC didn’t just become the leading anti-feminist comics company in 2014. I found this at www.Whatculture.com:

“2014 also saw DC leaning on some wonderfully old-school gimmicks to try and boost sales, including falling back into the nineties speculator boom trope of providing shiny covers to try and entice people into buying flagging books. They planned to provide 3D variant covers for climactic final issues of their year-long crossover event Future’s End, a process which apparently requires certain special chemicals.

“One of which is called microcystin, and is highly toxic. Exactly the sort of thing you wouldn’t want to, say, get into a municipal water supply.” Woops, that’s exactly what happened though! Some sort of spill at the printing plant where the books were being published caused the deadly toxin to end up in Lake Eerie, which provides the water supply of eleven million coastal inhabitants in Northwestern Ohio.

Yes, DC poisoned the water supply of eleven million people. Lex Luthor would be proud.”

Okay, I’m sure DC comics weren’t the only books being published at the printing plant. But I just have three things to say:

How come stuff like this doesn’t happen at Marvel?

And, at least based on this list of “worsts,” I don’t think I’ll be working for DC anytime soon.

And, based on this list of “worsts,” I’m not sure I would want to.

 

Mindy Newell: Reflection In A Dark Pool

Through the mirror of my mind / Time after time, I see reflections of you and me / Reflections of the way life used to be / Reflections of the love you took from me • “Reflections,” by Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland, and Eddie Holland, recorded by Diana Ross and the Supremes, 1967, Motown Records

Like every other art form, comics – or more accurately, the creators of comics – reflect the times in which they live.

I started reading comics in the Silver Age, when superheroes were manufactured like products in factories, conveyed along conveyor belts of post-World War II American middle-class morality, which ensured that everything but the packaging was the same. Each hero kept their true nature hidden behind a pair of glasses, or a secretary’s typewriter, or a desk in a high school classroom. Each hero lived a lonely life, because to reveal their secret would only endanger their loved one. And each rose above their personal traumas and tragedies to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way.”

And we felt good about our heroes, and about ourselves.

Then, while Mississippi burned and Vietnam raged, “let it all hang out” and “tune in, turn on, drop out,” became the mantra of a generation. The real world intruded onto the four-color page as mutant X-Men fought societal preconceptions of race, religion, and gender roles, Speedy, Green Arrow’s sidekick, became a drug addict, and alcoholism consumed Tony Stark.

And even though our heroes suffered, they rose above their personal battles and we felt good about them, and about ourselves.

Then came the “Brit Invasion” of comics, and writers like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Grant Morrison, and Jamie Delano turned comics inside out and upside down. Our heroes became just like us, only more so; questions about identity and debates about right and wrong plagued them. Nothing was black-and-white in the four-color world, anymore; doubts and uncertainty ruled decisions, and outcomes were often ambiguous.

But we still we rooted for our heroes, because through their problems, we understood our problems, and so we felt good about our heroes, and about ourselves.

But now I wonder… yes, comics still reflect the real world, but now it too often feels like I’m leaning over the railing of a ship and spitting in the wind. The realism flies back in our face.

The world seems to me uglier today than it ever was. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda and ISIS have made the Crusades and the Inquisition footnotes in a text on religion as an excuse for totalitarianism and war. Cyber terrorism raises the specter of a war between creative freedom and potential lawsuits, and creative freedom loses. Racism is alive and well again as acts of violence and death are perpetuated by those who wear a uniform that is supposed to stand for protection against such acts. The so-called leaders of our country are unfunny clowns in a thunderdome of viciousness and ugliness, and a vice-president, the man-who-would-be-king, defends torture as the American way. And hardly anybody votes, because hardly anybody cares.

And we no longer root for our heroes, who are us, but only more so, because, you know, all art is a product of its society, and comics are an art form, and comics are created by artists who are can’t be blamed for reflecting the society in which they live.

 

Mindy Newell: Baby Mine

Baby mine, don’t you cry. / Baby mine, dry your eyes. / Rest your head close to my heart, never to part, / Baby of mine. • From Walt Disney’s “Dumbo”(1941), Words and Lyrics by Frank Churchill and Ned Washington

So Donna Troy is coming back.

Only this isn’t the vibrant, intelligent, powerful, and oh-so-very human – with all the foibles and strengths inherent in homo sapiens – young woman that I came to know and love back in the day when Marv Wolfman and George Pérez created and collaborated on The New Teen Titans.

This is a Donna created through the teamwork of Meredith and David Finch, who has been granted life through the dark arts, through black magic, and as she rises naked from the brewing miasma of a black cauldron, and so we react with fear and horror, our intrinsic fear of human sacrifice, blood ritual, and “unnatural” life causing us to recoil in horror and to whisper a psalm of David, to cross ourselves in supplication to God, to ward off this, this thing with shaking hands making patterns in the air, signs and symbols as ancient and as useless as our dead forefathers who huddled in fear on the plains of Africa as the light left the world and the darkness arose.

This thing is something forged in fire and brimstone. This thing is evil personified. This thing is wickedness beyond redemption.

This thing is sin come to life.

Yet once there was a woman, whose soul was dying from longing. Yet once there was a woman whose arms reached to hold nothing but empty air. Yet once there was a woman whose life was desolate with the silence of her home. And so this woman prayed to her gods for relief from this sorrowful existence, begged them to release her from her solitary misery.

She fasted in repentance; she washed only enough to ward off evil odor; and she put off wearing colors and smooth satins and silk, and dressed herself in haircloth and solemn hues. She ate sparingly, only enough to keep her alive, and took the bounties of her kitchen to the sick and needy among her sisters. And yet, for so long that Queen Hippolyta of Themiscrya lost track of the days, months, and years of her travail, the gods were silent.

And her Amazons whispered behind her back, and some thought that she must be overthrown, for she was mad, they said, and death will come to us all in following her, as surely as it did to the daughters of King Cecrops of Athens, who threw themselves from the Acropolis, or into the sea. But others calmed them, saying that the melancholia in their queen’s heart would find respite in their loyalty.

Then, one night the queen had a dream. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, came to her and whispered instructions into her ear. “Do not speak of this to anyone,” the winged herald said. “For if you do the gods will turn away from you and your life, such as it is, will continue in solitude as you watch your sisters and this paradise come to enmity and fall into entropy and chaos.

That morning the queen bathed once again in the milk of heifers, and had her attendants clothe her in the magnificence that was her due. She perfumed herself with the musk of roses and broke her fast with jellied eels and warm bread, and once again slaked her thirst with the waters of the Pool of Life. Her attendants asked her many questions, but, remembering the words of Hermes, she silenced them and sent them away.

Alone now, Hippolyta made her way to the shores of Paradise Island, where in a hidden cove she stripped herself of her finery. Naked, the queen made absolution to the gods, smearing her face with the mud of the ocean, and also over her womb and breasts. She knelt in the wet sand, and from that same mud formed the figure of a newborn babe.

And she prayed, repeating the words that Hermes had whispered in her dream.

The sky darkened and night fell upon Themiscrya, though it was noon. A cold wind blew and Hippolyta shivered as it battered her naked body. She looked up into the sky and saw that Selene, the goddess of the moon, had eclipsed Helios, the god of the sun, for this was the time of woman.

She looked back down upon the clay figure, and as she did so, she felt her breasts suddenly grow heavy and milk leaked from her nipples. A great pain spasmed through her loins and up into her uterus, and the queen lay down, crying out in a moment of fear as her legs drew up over her stomach and something moved within her body. For what seemed a lifetime Hippolyta lay there on the beach, wracked with pain, unable to stir afraid, sure that she was being punished for her arrogance in not accepting the fate woven for her by the Morai.

“Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, forgive me,” she groaned. “Forgive my presumption. Allow me to live to serve you and my Amazons.”

There was no answer.

And then there was a light, such a bright golden radiance, so that Hippolyta closed her eyes against it. And there were two voices.

“Do not be afraid, daughter,” said Leto, the goddess of motherhood.

“I am with you, as I am with all women at their time,” said Eileithya, the goddess of childhood.

Hippolyta opened her eyes. The goddesses, bathed in a glow that had no earthly source, stood before her.

“We have heard your prayers,” said Leto.

“And they are answered,” said Eilethya.

Suddenly the queen felt as if a great chariot lay at the doorway of her secret place, that place where no man had touched in so long. She felt, rather than saw, the two goddesses kneel on either side of her, then one was behind her and pushing her up into a sitting position, but taking the weight of Hippolyta upon herself. Opening her eyes, Hippolyta saw the other – was it Eilethya? – crouch before her, a blanket of silver cotton in her hands. “You must push now,” said the goddess. “Lean again Leto. She will be your rock.”

Hippolyta felt as though she was falling off a great cliff. From high above her, she heard the goddesses speak. Their brightness was as a pinprick in the darkness starting to envelop her.

“She will be the greatest of the Amazons, a gift not only to yourself, but to the world, for it is to the world she will belong.”

“A great warrior against the darkness, yet her soul and heart will be full of love,” said Eilethya. “All the glories and gifts of all the gods and goddesses of Olympus will be hers.”

“Her name will be Diana,” said Leto.

Warm salt water was in her nose and her mouth, and Hippolyta sat up with a start. The sun was warm on her hair and shoulders; it was noon, judging from the position of the sun; she was still in the cove, with only the sound of the surf and the cry of seagulls for company. Why had she come here? She had a memory of covering her face and parts of her body with mud, but reaching up to her cheek, there was nothing there except for a few wet grains of sand. She lifted her gown, which was soggy with ocean water. Her body was clean except for a few stray pieces of seaweed on her belly.

The queen shuddered. Had there truly been an eclipse? Had she dreamed it all? Or was she, as she knew many whispered, truly mad?

No.

That wasn’t the sound of seagulls.

A baby was crying somewhere.

But there had been no babies born in Themiscrya for millennia, not since the last children were born to those Amazons who had been raped by the men of Greece and Sparta in that terrible final war. A war which had led Queen Hippolyta – she herself raped by Hercules, though no child had resulted – to lead those surviving sisters who were willing to turn their back on what came to be known as “Man’s World” to Paradise. The immortal island.

The baby – if that was what it was–was still crying. Hippolyta followed the sound with her eyes.

There. Just where the surf met the sand. Something was lying there. Shakily, Hippolyta rose to her feet.

As she did so, she felt a warm gush of liquid spurt from her breasts, staining her gown. And a trickle of blood slid down her inner thigh. As if….

She stared down at the baby. It had black hair, black like the waters of the River Styx, and eyes were a strange green-blue, reflecting the color of the Aegean Sea where it met the Mesogeios.

The queen picked up the infant, who was wrapped in a blanket of very fine and very soft silver.

“Diana,” Hippolyta whispered.

The baby found the mother’s nipple, and nursed.

 

Mindy Newell: One So Right, One So Wrong

“You are a traitor and I am the fucking CIA.” – Carrie Mathison

Have you been watching Homeland this season?

Homeland suffered not a sophomore slump but a jumpy junior year, which im-not-so-ho, admirably redeemed itself with the emotionally tortured final story arc of CIA agent Carrie Mathison (the magnificent Claire Danes) and her lover, the “almost” terrorist Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody (the brilliant Damien Lewis), which left Carrie pregnant, Brody dead, and viewers wondering, “Where do they go from here?”

Well, where they went has been one brilliant roller-coaster ride.

The season four premiere was a two-hour feast of Carrie Mathison six months after the death of Brody, with the geography shifting from Kabul to Istanbul to Washington, D.C., as Carrie coped with a failed drone strike and the death of the CIA station chief in Istanbul at the hands of an angry mob.

Oh, and the reality of her (detached) motherhood, which included Carrie deciding to drown Brody’s child in the bathtub. But was that real? Or only the tortured dreamscape of a woman in torment over sending her lover on a mission that led to his death?

And that was only the beginning.

The show this season has been leaner, meaner and more complicated than ever. It revolves around the ramifications of that drone strike gone wrong in the first episode, by which, instead of killing a terrorist leader as it was meant to, the Americans rained death down upon a wedding celebration. There are no easy questions and there are no easy answers, as Carrie, Quinn (Rupert Friend), new CIA Director Andrew Lockhart (Tracy Letts) and Saul (the glorious Mandy Patankin – and if he doesn’t win an Emmy for his work this season I’m never watching the Emmys again) deal with the twisting truths, lies, and complicated relationships that define United States foreign policy in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East.

Homeland has reached season episode nine, titled “There’s Something Else Going On,” which aired two weeks ago and left viewers and critics alike with their jaws on the ground and in agony over the fortnight break. I have been avoiding spoilers – not my usual policy, as I am a spoiler whore – over what happened last night (in Mindy-time, tonight as I’m writing this) in episode 10, which is significant.

Reading what is to happen usually only whets my appetite to see the spoiler played out on screen with the nuances of the actors adding more depth to the written word – but this time I have luxuriated in the suspense and the “What the fuck!? What the fucking fuck!! – to quote Lockhart in episode 9 – aggravation of having to wait two weeks for answers. And I wasn’t alone. Yep, Homeland was the topic of conversation around the OR table for the last two weeks. Those who hadn’t seen it yet were all “Shut up! Shut the hell up!” and those of us caught up were all “Two weeks! How could they do that to us!”

I don’t want to give you any actual spoilers as to what created all this exasperation, but I will give you two hints. Think RPGs and Benghazi. Of course by the time you read this, episode 10 will have aired, releasing all the pent-up frustration, so it’s all rather a moot point. I’m only hoping that after the two-week bye (to borrow a sports term), the producers and their team don’t come on the field lazy and fat, but sleek and muscled and ready to win.

•    •    •    •    •

I have a place where dreams are born / And time is never planned. / It’s not on any chart, / You must find it with your heart, / Never-never land.” – Neverland, Mark Charlap, Julie Styne, Carolyn Leigh, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green

Of course, there was Peter Pan Live! to look forward to and to help bide me over.

I have loved the musical, based on J.M. Barrie’s classic tale, ever since I saw Mary Martin as the boy who refused to grow up back in the dark ages of television. And I also have had a special relationship to the show ever since I played Peter at Camp Monroe the summer I was eight years old. I remember as clearly as if it was yesterday all the words of every song and much of the dialogue; none of the joy has left, despite the 52 years laying between the then and the now. “Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning” will always be the direction of my life.

I so wanted it to be good.

Allison Williams was… fine. Yes, she can sing, but there was something wanting in her portrayal, some impish mischievousness missing, some boyish callousness and selfishness lacking.

Christopher Walken was an embarrassment. Was he actually reading his lines from cue cards? Sure seemed that way to me. With memories of Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook haunting me, I just could not believe what I was watching. Honestly, I was cringing for him.

And why were the Lost Boys so grown up? They seemed more like the Lost Gen-Xers. And what was with those German schoolboy costumes? Left over from last year’s “The Sound of Music Live?”

Ecch, there was so much wrong with it. Not even the clapping of every single child in the world could bring this “Tinker(ed with)” Peter Pan to life.

 

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