Author: Mindy Newell

As I was saying…

One of the most imaginative uses of time travel as a story platform was Don Bellasario’s Quantum Leap, which starred Scott Bakula as quantum physicist (among other things) Dr. Sam Beckett and Dean Stockwell as Rear Admiral Al Calavicci:

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished…

“He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.”

Sam was changing history.

Or was he creating alternate histories?

Alternate histories that led to whole new universes.

Parallel universes.

Multiverses within the meta-universe.

The multiverse  (a term coined by American philosopher and psychologist William James in 1895—I wonder what he was smoking?) is a hypothesis that states that there are infinite numbers of universes existing parallel to our own, but at different “levels” within the meta-universe.  The meta-universe is the hypothetical set of infinite—or maybe finite—possible universes (including our own) that together comprises everything that exists, i.e., you, me, the iMac computer I’m typing this on, the New York City skyline outside my window, President Obama, Vladimir Putin, Syria, the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars, space, time, matter, and energy, and the physical laws and mathematical constants that define them.  (In other words, 1 + 1 = 2 no matter where you are in the meta-universe.)

Confused?  See if this helps.  Think of the meta-universe as a sort of giant department store.  The store is stocked with merchandise, but each floor is a separate department, and a little different; they are contained within the same number of square feet, but the first floor sells cosmetics and leather goods and men’s wear, the second is dedicated to children, the third to women, and so on.  But each floor, while having its own standards and imperatives, must obey the rules set by the larger store within which it exists.

So, if Sam Beckett was creating alternate histories as he “quantum leaped” through time, did he eradicate himself from any or all histories?  In the last episode, Sam rights what he believes is his greatest wrong—not telling Beth (Al’s first wife and true love, whom he met in a previous jump) that Al isn’t dead, that he is a POW in Vietnam:

Sam:  I’m going to tell you a story. A
 story with a happy ending, but
only if you believe me.

Beth:  And if I don’t?

Sam:  You will. I swear you will. Instead of ‘Once upon a time,’ let’s start with the happy ending.
 Al’s alive and coming home.

The screen goes black.  A caption tells us that Al and Beth will be celebrating their 49^th anniversary this year.

And another caption tells us, “Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.”

But what does that mean?

The Grandfather Paradox:  Some fans believe that by changing the course of Beth and Al’s life, Sam wiped himself out of existence because Al Calavicci and Sam never met, therefore Al never became a key element in the development of the Quantum Leap project and so it never got off the ground.  But if Sam never existed, then how could he leap to Beth and tell her to wait, for Al was coming home?

The Novikov Self-Consistency Principle:  Other fans say that, so what if Al is happily married to Beth?  Sam still developed his quantum leap theory, and Al still became his liaison with the government and Sam is still out there, fighting “to put right what once went wrong.”  History rights itself.  History is consistent.

The Multiverse Theory:  Quantum mechanics—Sam is a quantum physicist—describes existence as probabilities, not definite outcomes.  And the mathematics of quantum theory suggests that all the possible outcomes of a situation do actually occur.  Robert Frost described it this way in The Road Not Taken:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

By taking the “one less traveled by,” the narrator has led a life with a certain outcome.  However, in quantum mechanics, the narrator also took the other road, the one “more” traveled by, and so a “bubble” or “daughter” universe was created, one in which the events and outcome of the narrators life were just as true, but just as different.

American theoretical physicist and string theorist Brian Green, now a professor at Columbia University, put it this way in his 2011 book The Hidden Reality:  Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos.

“And in each universe, there’s a copy of you witnessing one or the other outcome, thinking — incorrectly — that your reality is the only reality.”

So in this universe I have a daughter named Alix who is married to Jeff and they’re about to have a baby any minute, and I work as a nurse in the operating room and write for ComicMix.

In another universe I stayed married to Alix’s father, only in that universe Alixandra is Alexander and I never became a comics writer so I’m not writing this column for ComixMix because I never met Mike Gold who talked me into this thing in the first place.

In another universe, everything happened just like it has happened, only I never got better from my clinical depression and when I’m not in the hospital I’m on Welfare and Medicaid and my daughter doesn’t talk to me.

And in another universe, my father doesn’t have Complex Partial Seizure syndrome and he is going strong at 90 and my mother doesn’t need a walker and doesn’t have emotional, crazy outbursts and she’s as healthy as a horse and my Aunt Augie never had cancer and died and she and my mother talk every day on the phone….

In another universe I don’t have black hair (yeah, I dye it) but let myself go gray and I never married at all but Alixandra is still my daughter and Jeff is still her husband and they live on the East Coast and I’m a film editor who lives in Laurel Canyon with a couple of Oscars and SAG Awards under my belt.

What dreams may be in the multiverse….

To be continued next week!

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• Mindy Newell: The Grandfather Paradox Gives Me A Headache (comicmix.com)

I had the weirdest dream last night. Like all – or most dreams – it was a jumbled mix. And some of the details are getting lost as the day goes on. But I do remember that I was in the midst of writing three books for DC, one of which was specifically for Karen Berger, although I couldn’t really classify the stories as strictly Vertigo. They were more along the lines of Elseworlds, or Marvel’s Ultimate titles.

All the books were graphic novels and very adult, but the only one I remember clearly now is the one about Supergirl, the original Supergirl, Kara Zor-El, and it was getting the full DC PR treatment – in fact, I think it was Martha Thomases, my friend and fellow columnist here at ComixMix, who was handling the publicity. Karen was very excited about it, and I knew I was writing at the tope of my game. Alex Ross was doing the art, painting it ala Marvels or Kingdom Come. Or if it wasn’t Alex, it was someone equally talented.

But my Kara wasn’t the sweet, prepubescent young lady who was Superman’s secret weapon. This Kara was one tough broad, and street-smart. In my dream she had escaped Krypton’s destruction by running away from home, hitching a ride on a space-trucker’s semi, who subsequently tried to rape her in his cab. This happened while the semi was passing by Earth’s solar system, so it turns out that, because of the influence of Earth’s yellow sun, Kara is the wrong babe for the space-trucker to mess with.

The (super) struggle causes the semi to crash on Earth. Kara is the “last man standing” after the crash, which is investigated, not by Superman, but by Wonder Woman and two other superwomen. (But even while I’m dreaming I’m feeling pissed off because I can’t identify the two other women clearly, though both could fly and were very powerful and I think one of them was a lot like Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Captain Marvel – or maybe it was Carol Danvers, I don’t remember.)

Anyway, Wonder Woman wants to take Kara to Themiscrya, but Kara refuses to go, telling Wonder Woman “I ain’t no dyke, and I ain’t going to an island full of dykes.” (Don’t ask me how she speaks English and knows nasty, sexist slang – dreams don’t work like that.) The “sorta” Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers pulls a full nelson on Kara, but Kara breaks her grip and the two fight. While they are fighting Wonder Woman uses her “lariat of truth” to rope Kara to try and calm her and make her tell the truth, i.e., who she is, how she got there, but Kara uses heat vision (inadvertently, the girl is still discovering her powers) and burns the rope, breaking free and flying off.

So this is the first chapter of the graphic novel, and like I said, Karen is very excited and happy with my work; me, too, plus I’m making so much money that I can quit nursing and become a full-time writer. Which is good because working full-time as a nurse would certainly interfere with my ability to make deadlines if I’m writing three graphic novels at the same time. And Joseph Campbell said to “follow your bliss” if you truly want to be happy, and nursing isn’t my bliss (though I’m good at it) and writing comics on a full-time basis is and I’m very happy, very satisfied, with my life.

But then I read in the New York Times and The Comic Buyer’s Guide that there has been a huge upheaval at DC, and it has been sold off to some conglomerate that is even bigger than Time-Warner – or maybe it’s that Time-Warner decides to dump DC because the company’s movies, even with Man Of Steel making gazillions, pretty much suck – or it had something to do with the CBS vs. Time-Warner Cable war…

I’m dreaming, remember?

So all my books are on hold, including the Supergirl graphic novel. It’s not going to see print.

I’m suddenly not enjoying this dream, and I want to wake up.

But I can’t.

Then I get a call from “somebody” that there is a big meeting regarding the reorganizing at DC after the sale and I’m invited. Only it’s the same day as a wedding I have to go to – or not. I remember that in the dream I dress up to go this meeting, waaaaay over-dress in an incredibly beautiful art deco-y type of gown – think Jean Harlow in Dinner At Eight – in a satiny deep, deep purple, and this stunning cloche with a peacock feather curling down and around my chin, and in the dream I guess I’m trying to justify why I’m dressed so formally because I’m thinking that I will catch a cab and get to the wedding/affair after the meeting.

But you know dreams. Even though I’m sleeping I know that something isn’t right.

So I get to the meeting and there are people there whom I know but can’t recognize. But everyone is very glad to see me. We are in this very corporate, and yet very classy, glass-enclosed boardroom. The ceiling lights are recessed and there are candles burning on glass coffee tables and we are lounging in big, slate-blue love seats. Everyone looks absolutely terrific, though I am the only one in a gown, everyone else is wearing very expensive, designer suits by the likes of Hugo Boss and Chanel and Stella McCartney and Dolce and Gabanna.

The new owners of DC (a few men and women) hand out prospectuses and folios that contain the new organization chart for the company. According to the chart I am going to be an executive editor. The “new Karen.”

But I don’t want to be the “new Karen.”

I want to be a writer.

I ask about my Supergirl graphic novel. I say that the first chapter is done and I’m working on the next. I want to know if I can finish it. I want to know if it’s going to be published.

Nobody hears me, or chooses not to answer.

Now the new owners pass out envelopes. We all open them. Inside are contracts, or “letters of agreement.” My letter tells me who will be in my “stable,” including editors, assistant editors, writers, and artists. I want to know if I have to use these people if I don’t want to; again, nobody hears me.

Boy, do I want to wake up now.

I turn to the woman sitting next to me. She kind of looks like Shelly Bond, but I’ve only met Shelly once or twice, so I can’t be sure, and, anyway, it’s not her.

She says, “Wow, Mindy, they’re paying you $70,000 a year. That’s great!”

“No, it’s not,” I say. “Not for the responsibilities they want me to have. And anyway, I make more than that as a nurse.”

“But that’s a lot of money.”

“No, it’s not. They just want you to think it’s a lot of money.”

Then I hear my name mentioned, and the new owners are telling me that they are pulling my Supergirl book. It’s dead in the water.

Everyone else is busy signing his or her contracts.

They are signing their lives away.

They’re all just happy to have jobs in the comics industry.

I get up and walk out.

I look spectacular

I am crying.

And then…

…even though it’s the worst way to end a story…

I woke up.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

History is important. Understanding the history of a subject leads to the understanding and interpretation of current events. Knowing where you were can help you in comprehending where you are now. For instance, want to understand the current Mideast conundrum? Learn about World War I and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire by the British Empire and its allies because that’s where our modern Middle East troubles really started.

“But history is so boring!” you say?

Then pick up a good book. I don’t mean a “bustier and boudoir” romance novel – I mean a novel that explores, through its characters and situations, the mores and creeds and ethos of its time. War And Peace, To Kill A Mockingbird, Marjorie Morningstar, Tales Of The South Pacific – well, okay, James Michener’s book is a collection of short stories – The Grapes Of Wrath; even Gone With The Wind will help you understand the South of today.

I bring this up because I’m currently reading Watergate: A Novel by Thomas Mallon, a noted historical novelist who is also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review.

Yes, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post wrote a wonderful non-fiction book about the botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex, and All The President’s Men was a brilliant movie starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein and Jason Robards as Washington Post Editor-in-Chief Ben Bradlee. I thought the book and the movie were the last words on the scandal, too.

But Mallon does a brilliant job in imagining the emotions, thoughts, and personal ambitions of those involved in what Vanity Fair called, in its review of the book, “the operatic drama of Watergate.”  The scandal was truly a Greek tragedy, a tale of moral bankruptcy and the corruption of leadership that still echoes in the hall of the United States government today, and not to the good.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, the Tea Party, the obstructionists, the corporatists, the Mitch McConnells, the Eric Kantors, the John Boehners, the Koch Brothers, the Dick Cheneys and their ilk took away from the Watergate scandal the wrong lessons.

As in: Be cleverer as you undermine the Constitution of the United States.

On July 21^st, John Boehner sat with Bob Schieffer of Face The Nation and actually said that Congress passes too many laws and that it “ought to be judged on how many laws it repeals.” And what laws would those be, Mr. Speaker of the House? You mean Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act?

As in: Lie until people believe it.

Iraq.

As in: Don’t fight the media. Use the media.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Fox News.

As in: The right to work without a union.

Yes. The right to work for less pay, worse benefits, more hours, and less environmental protection.

As in: Corporations are people.

Citizens United.

The Washington Post, home to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the paper that took down a President and his cabal of co-conspirators, was sold this past week to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. Bezos hasn’t said anything about his plans for the Graham-owned icon.

But we all know how great Amazon has been for Barnes and Noble and Borders and the great publishing houses like Random House and Penguin and Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Watergate.

That was a great story, wasn’t it?

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

So this is the story told in the Florida courtroom.

George Zimmerman looks out his window. He sees Treyvon Martin walking down the block. Zimmerman picks up his gun, goes outside, gets in his car, and hunts Martin down. Zimmerman finds Martin and confronts him. Martin is carrying a dangerous bag of Skittles. The two men get into an altercation. Zimmerman shoots Martin dead. Zimmerman tells the police that Treyvon Martin started the altercation and that he, Zimmerman, was “standing his ground.”

Can you pick out what is wrong in the story?*

•     •     •     •     •

As I was saying…

I started to regret ever taking on the whole assignment. I felt I was turning out crap. I was embarrassed. I was sad. I worried about my future as a comics writer. And finally…

I got fed up.

I will never forget the day it happened. I was arguing with Alan. And something in me simply exploded…

Mt. St. Mindy blew.

“Fuck you!!!! I don’t need this shit! I quit!!!!”

I slammed the door as I left. I walked out to the elevator. I pushed the button. I was fuming. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I was done. But Marv (Wolfman) had followed me out to the lobby and there he talked me down, convincing me to keep going, not to quit. He walked me back to the office, and I apologized to editor Alan Gold, and he apologized to me. (And by the way, Alan is a terrific guy, and he and I got along beautifully when we weren’t discussing Wonder Woman.)

So I finished the run. If you can’t remember that far back, the series was ending to prepare the way for George Pérez’s relaunch, and I was responsible for only the last three or four issues. But to be honest, I don’t think I would have stayed on with Alan as the editor, despite our personal friendship, even if the series had continued. I think I would have been fired. Lesson here, boys and girls: never curse out your editor in a loud voice that can be heard everywhere and starts the office talking. Or simply, never curse out your boss. These days I would still want to yell and curse and scream, but I’m a little bit wiser and a whole lot older (not just chronologically) – meaning more mature (?) – and I would try to find a solution that worked for both my editor and myself. Or, if that didn’t work, take myself off the book.

So I was done with Diana.

Until November 1989, and Wonder Woman volume 2, number 36.

Wonder Woman had been rebooted in 1987. Not many people remember that Greg Potter was the original writer/scripter, by the way, with George co-plotting and penciling. But Greg dropped out after the release of Wonder Woman #2, and George became the plotter, with Len Wein writing the scripts until issue #18, when George took over the whole shebang.

This post-Crisis reboot was the one that did it for me. As I’ve stated previously, I have always loved Greek mythology, and my favorite stories about Diana were those involving the Amazons and their gods. Apparently, George and Greg appreciated the rich background, too. The inclusion of the Hellenic mythos and theology of gods and goddesses with supernatural powers but all too human personalities and foibles finally imbued Diana with her own raison d’être that brimmed with a new truthfulness for the character.

Responding to the heartache and prayers of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, who had led her followers to an island shielded in the mists from the patriarchal and brutal world in which they lived, (as the Isle of Avalon is in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists Of Avalon), the goddesses instructed Hippolyta to shape a baby girl out of the earth, and breathed the “gift of life” into the clay. (Hmm…in Jewish lore this makes Diana a golem. A golem is a figure made of clay upon whose forehead the Hebrew letters aleph, mem, and tav are written out to spell emet, which means “truth,” and doesn’t Diana have a golden lariat that forces those bound by it to speak truth? Boy, could I run with that one!)

The child was given the gift of beauty and compassion by Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love; the gift of wisdom from Athena; the power and strength of the earth from Demeter; the creativity, passion, authority, and energy of fire from Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth; and from Artemis, the Huntress, respect for all life and a mastery of weapons. Only Hermes, of all the male gods, bestowed a gift upon Diana – that of speed and the power of flight.

This Diana, though once grown a great warrior and unafraid to use force when necessary, was also a “stranger in a strange land” – not only an innocent in the ways of the world, but unable even to speak English when she first arrived here as an ambassador (or emissary) from Themiscrya.

Even the supporting characters made sense. Steve Trevor was still in the Air Force, but he was older and involved with Etta Candy, who was also more mature and with a realistic physique for her age. And Diana’s mentor in Patriarch’s World, a.k.a. Man’s World, was one Julia Kapatelis, an archaeologist and scholar of the ancient Greek world, who recognized Diana’s speech as a variant of early Greek, and who had a daughter, Vanessa, just about to enter her crazy ‘teens.

Working on this Wonder Woman with George and Karen was absolutely sublime. He was doing the plots, but it was definitely a partnership; and all the characters were so real, so defined – they were easy to write because I knew just what each one would say in whatever situation they found themselves.

The highlight of our work together, im-no-so-ho, was Wonder Woman #46, “Chalk Drawings.” It was ostensibly about Lucy’s suicide, but George and I decided to not focus on Lucy herself; instead, it was about the aftermath of Lucy’s final action. No one knew why Lucy had killed herself; everyone searched for an answer; everyone blamed him or herself. Even Diana, who went home to seek solace from her mother, only to learn from Hippolyta that even an Amazon is capable of committing suicide; even an Amazon cannot always find the answer or the way to help. And with the beautiful artwork of Jill Thompson and Romeo Tanghal, I believe it deserves to be a classic.

On a personal level, having had to deal with clinical depression throughout almost my entire adult life – it wasn’t properly diagnosed until my mid-30’s, btw, and don’t ever try to tell me antidepressants, especially the SSRI class, is more dangerous than the disease, because I will bite your face off – that issue was very special to me, and really emphasized what Wonder Woman, the hero made of clay, the golem, stands for…

Emet.

Truth.

* The truth about George Zimmerman is that he deliberately went out and hunted down and provoked, Treyvon Martin. The truth about Treyvon Martin is that he was the one who “stood his ground.”

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis, if he’s recovered from SDCC

As I was saying …

And as for Diana …

I hated her.

Well, perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. I didn’t hate her, exactly. She made me, um, “uncomfortable.” Even as a kid reading her adventures. Not being old enough at the time to put it into words, to analyze my reaction, I figured it out as I got older.

I loved the stories that took place on Themiscrya, aka Paradise Island. It wasn’t just that I was a mythology geek – I read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales Of Gods And Heroes when I was eight years old – but that in these stories Diana was in her true element. Unapologetically independent, intelligent, strong, and self-assured, Diana was a hero who inspired. She lit up my imagination, and along with her fellow Amazons, became a role model, an icon for a little girl who thought she might become a veterinarian, a neurosurgeon, an astronaut when she grew up.

But when Diana was in “Man’s World,” she wasn’t such a, well, Wonder Woman. She had to hide her independence, her intelligence, her strength, and self-assurance in the guise of a meek Air Force secretary. She was the only powerful woman in the DC universe whose nom-de-guerre wasn’t borrowed from a male counterpart, and all she did was whine about Steve Trevor.

No, she was definitely not an icon for women in the later part of the 20th century.

An aside here, along with an apology to those regular readers of this column who already know this. When I was a prepubescent girl, it was Kara Zor-El, a.k.a. Supergirl, who really did it for me. Think about it. A twelve-year-old girl was Superman’s secret weapon? (How many times did she pull his Kryptonian ass of the glowing green fire?) Now she was a role model for a young girl growing up during the Silver Age.

Back to my writing gig as the first woman to be the ongoing writer of Wonder Woman:

I was unable to write Diana the way I really wanted to – as an interesting dichotomy. Here was a supremely intelligent, superbly physical young woman who didn’t know shit about life in the “real” world. A royal princess who was waited on hand-and-foot while growing up who now found herself in a nation that had rejected royalty at its birth. The only baby “born” in a civilization of women who had isolated themselves from the rest of humanity 2000 years ago, so of course she would be “pro-life” and “anti-abortion.”* How would she react to a world where women were just starting to break the glass ceiling, where they made 70 cents to every dollar a man earned? (Still do.) How would she understand a country that went nuts just because Hillary Clinton didn’t want to just stay home and bake cookies?

And as for men? How many men had she known? Besides Zeus and Ares and Apollo and Hermes, I mean. She had no experience with them. Had she ever actually seen a penis outside of an anatomy lesson?

And would she even be interested in men? Frankly, I thought (and think) her background would lead her to be a lesbian, if only because that was her template. And that could also bring up lots of different things: nature vs. nurture, genetic disposition vs. environment. (I hear that Grant Morrison’s Wonder Woman opus is going to explore this, which makes me Extremely Jealous And Pissed Off That I Never Got The Chance To Do This.)  And if she realized that she was heterosexual? Could make for some interesting situations as she started meeting more men of the mortal variety. As I said, until she came to New York, the only men she had ever had any kind of relationship with were her gods. (Okay, there was Steve – what a jewel.)

I started to regret ever taking on the whole assignment. I felt I was turning out crap. I was embarrassed. I was sad. I worried about my future as a comics writer. And finally…

I got fed up.

I will never forget the day it happened. I was arguing with editor Alan Gold. And something in me simply exploded…

Mt. St. Mindy blew.

“Fuck You!!!! I Don’t Need This Shit! I Quit!!!!”

I slammed the door as I left. I walked out to the elevator. I pushed the button. I was fuming. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I was done.**

And then Marv Wolfman came out to the elevator lobby and talked me down. (Should I bless him or curse him? sigh) He must have thought that I had talent and/or a future as a writer; he convinced me to keep going, not to quit, and he got me to go back into the office. He even got me to apologize to his friend, Alan. A miracle, I must say.

So I finished the run.

And my reputation as a “difficult bitch” began.

*This has nothing to do with my own feelings. For the record, I am firmly pro-choice.

**Little did I know that I was not done with Wonder Woman!

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

Over at www.geekmom.com, Corinna Lawson’s June 21^st Cliffs of Insanity column once again wondered why Wonder Woman doesn’t get any respect; this was instigated by the news that DC is producing a new comic, Superman’s Girlfriend Wonder Woman – the title is mine – which will “focus on the relationship between the characters.” (Apparently a DC editor considers Lois Lane nothing but a “trophy wife.”) This is occurring, as Corinna rightly points out, “in an environment where women are still fighting for some basic rights, even to the point of having to listen to politicians talk about ‘legitimate rape.’” And, may I add, in which Texas, North Carolina, and ten other states, along with the House of Representatives, have ignored Roe vs. Wade and declared abortion illegal past 20 weeks and making the procedure not only incredibly difficult to obtain, but incredibly denigrating to the individual woman who seeks it.

On June 28^th, Shoshana Kessock of www.Tor.com focused on “The Problem with Wonder Woman” in Hollywood, while noting that the Themiscrya Tigress “has recently been dubbed the 20^th greatest comic book character by Empire Magazine, and ranked fifth in IGN’s 2011 Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time…[standing] as one of the icons of the comic book world, and has been featured in dozens of comic titles since her debut in 1941. The character has also found success in other media, appearing in a popular live-action television series in the 70s, as well as several animated series (including Super Friends and Justice League).”

Why does Diana not getting her due bother me so much? I guess it’s because I have a personal history with her. Not only was Wonder Woman my first assignment as sole writer, but also I had no clue at the time that I was the first woman to be asked to write her – the only female cornerstone hero of the DC universe.

As I told Gail Simone when she interviewed me for her Five Questions webpage:

“I first worked on Wonder Woman in 1984 or thereabouts – back in the day, I was one of Karen Berger’s ‘fillies’ in her stable of writers in the New Talent Program. I honestly don’t know who suggested it – it sure wasn’t me. I think it was Karen, or perhaps it was Paul Levitz. Maybe it was Marv Wolfman or Len Wein. Anyway, it was about this time when plans were hatching for the [superb, imho] relaunch of Wonder Woman by the absolutely wonderful, nobody-can-touch-his-talent, charming and amazing George Pérez. So the then-current Wonder Woman series was running down – I think there were only about three or four issues le”ft – and I got a call from the editor, Alan Gold, asking me to come in and talk about finishing up the book.

Wonder Woman? Me? Frankly, I was amazed. Also very excited. And flattered.

I didn’t know it was going to turn into such a downer. You see, I didn’t really get a chance to write what I wanted to write. Alan told me – no, decided – what I was to write. He was big into Mayan civilization, theology and myths, and that’s the story he wanted to tell. I think he liked the idea of two great “pagan” civilizations clashing, as Wonder Woman represented the Hellenic Period. But I had no interest in Mayan culture at the time – or was it Aztec? (I still don’t have much of an interest in either of them, except that I know about the Mayan calendar, which ended in November 2012, so we’re all dead – or didn’t you know that?)

But this was my first chance at writing a regular series, plus I was a “nice Jewish girl” who hadn’t grown up yet, so I tried to go along with him – after all, he was the editor, right? But it was a disaster. I was trying, but my heart wasn’t in it, and when a writer’s heart isn’t in, then craft is supposed to take over. Only I was still learning my craft. And I couldn’t spell the goddamn name of the god who was the antagonist, and back then I wrote on a manual typewriter which meant a lot of erasing and White-Out and a lot of putting a fresh piece of paper into the typewriter when the original became too smudgy and too thick with the White-Out stuff.

It got to the point where I not only didn’t give a fuck about spelling the name of the god who was the antagonist of the story, but where I didn’t give a god damn about the whole story. I hated writing Steve Trevor because he lacked the right stuff: he was a nebbish, the perfect pisher, a humiliation in uniform, and a disgrace to the Air Force. I hated writing Etta Candy because she was a stupid fat girl who let men push her around and drowned her inner strength in chocolate.

And as for Diana…

I hated her.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

I didn’t know that writer blockitis was catching, but it must be, because just like my buddy and fellow columnist John Ostrander, I seem to be suffering from the same ailment today.

Signs and symptoms include sluggishness, an inability to form ideas, a lack of imagination, a desire to smash the computer, great interest in infomercials, and reading the Sunday New York Times.

Oh. Wait. Here’s something.

It’s an article by Brooke Barnes in the Arts & Leisure section, and it’s called “Save My Blockbuster!” Considering all the words and thoughts that have gone into discussing Man Of Steel by the columnists (including me) here at ComicMix since its opening on June 14, as well as the other comics, science fiction, and pop culture cinematic adventures that have already hit the screen (Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, World War Z) or are still to come (The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim, R.I.P.D., The Wolverine, Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters, Elysium, and The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones) this summer of 2013 – all involved studios praying that their production will be The Blockbuster of the season – Mr. (or is it Ms?) Barnes’s article is not only interesting, but also relevant.

But just when did the summer become the season of the adventure/science fiction/fantasy/comics/pop culture Blockbuster?

The summer of 1975. Jaws.

In 1973, Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown were producers at Universal. David Brown’s wife was Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan. He found a pre-publication copy Peter Benchley’s Jaws in the fiction department of the magazine. Cosmo’s book editor had written a detailed synopsis of the plot, which concluded with the comment “might make a good movie.” Zanuck and Brown both read the book overnight, decided that it was “the most exciting thing they had ever read,” and purchased the movie rights They hired the still chancy Steven Spielberg, although the 26 year-old director was starting to make a name for himself for directing Joan Crawford in the pilot of Night Gallery (“Eyes”), defining “road rage” in his adaptation of Richard Matheson’s Duel for an ABC Movie Of The Week – I clearly remember watching Duel perched on the arm of a sofa in my dorm’s packed-to-the-walls common room, every single one of us with eyes glued to the small 19” television set – and The Sugarland Express, his first theatrical film.

Jaws hit the movie screens of America in 1975. It became the archetype of the summer movie for Hollywood. It had a wide national release (“saturation booking”) and massive media buys, i.e., lots and lots and lots of television, radio, and magazine advertising. It made money, and now every studio wanted a Jaws. According to Lester D. Friedman’s book on Spielberg, Jaws “defined the Hollywood hit as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon.” Before Jaws, summer was the seasonal dumping ground for Hollywood studios, the home of films they were sorry they made. After Jaws, summer became “the prime season for the release of the…biggest box-office contenders, [studios’s] intended blockbusters.”

1975 was, let’s see, how many years ago?

38.

This summer Hollywood will have released, as the New York Times relates, “13 movies costing $100 million and up (sometimes way up), 44 percent more than in the same period last year. And because these pictures need to attract the global audience possible” to see any kind of profit, “they are increasingly manufactured by committees who tug this way and pull that way: marketing needs this, international distribution need that” and “the all-too-common result is a Frankenfilm” – I love that description! – “a lumbering behemoth composed of misfit parts.”

To test this assertion, Brooks Barnes conceived a movie titled “Red, White, & Blood” with the tagline “The only thing faster than her car was his heart.” The opening of the pitch reads “Think Fast & Furious meets Nicholas Sparks meets Die Hard.” He (she?) then presented it to a producer, a marketer, a studio executive, a researcher, a global marketer, and a writer.

This is what they said:

The Producer: “We need hotter weapons. Huge, big battle weapons – maybe an end-of-the-world device.

The Marketer: “There needs to be a wisecracking set of man candy here, and those actors are shirtless at least once in a TV campaign.”

The Studio Executive: “I’m a huge believer in a good tragic ending – it worked for Titanic.”

The Researcher: “If you try to appeal to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one.”

The Global Marketer: “Just be smarter then making a nationality or a culture the bad guys.”

The Writer: “Consider adding time-traveling aliens, or if that’s unrealistic, a regular alien and a time-traveling human.”

Jaws is a great movie. I have seen it at least a hundred times.

But it was a Trojan horse.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Partly Cloudy, with a Chance of Davis

In 1978, we were enticed to go see Superman this way:

• You will believe a man could fly.

In 2013, we have been enticed to go see Man Of Steel like this:

• He can walk through fire.
• He can melt glaciers with his eyes.
• He can rip through metal with his bare hands.
• So, how does the Man of Steel shave?
• Apparently with a Gillette razor.

Or…

• Fly in for Sears Memorial Day Mattress Spectacular and get up to 60% off plus an extra 10% off mattresses over $999.
• Plus special financing.
• Plus free delivery and haul-away.
• This is something super.
• This is Sears.

Does Superman prefer Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Stearns & Foster, Tempur-Pedic, or Sears’s own Sears-O-Pedic? And what size mattress – twin, full, queen, king, or California king?

According to a June 3^rd article in Advertising Age by Maureen Morrison, Man Of Steel had already made $160 million even before it even opened in cinemas around the world. The British newspaper The Independent upped that ante, reporting on June 10^th that Man Of Steel had snared $170 million in product placement and advertising before it opened on June 14^th.

Product placement isn’t new. In the “director’s cut” of Superman, there is a scene just before Martha Kent sees Clark out in the wheat field of the farm that didn’t make it into the theatrical version – and by the way, any theories on just how long it was between Jonathan’s death and Clark getting the call from the green crystal? At the funeral Martha’s hair is grey, but on the day Clark leaves for the “North,” her hair, as Clark later describes it to Lois, is “silver-white.” Anyway, in the aforementioned scene we watch as Martha does her morning routing, yelling at Clark to “get up, breakfast!” and placing a box of Cheerios on the kitchen table. And later in the film, Superman hurdles Zod into the Coca-Cola sign in Times Square – well, Metropolis’s version of Times Square – and while attempting to save the passengers on a bus thrown by the super-villains, Superman crushes a Marlboro delivery truck (Cigarette advertising? How retro!)

But these placements were subtle, and actually added to the reality – the first voice we hear in the 1978 Superman is Marlon Brando’s “This is no fantasy.” – of the film, aiding our suspension of disbelief.

But the amount of “product” associated with the newest film is really stunning. According to Morrison’s article, “there are more than 100 global promotional partners” attached to Man Of Steel. Some of them, in addition to the Sears Roebuck Company and Gillette, are:

• Warby-Parker Shades, where you can buy a pair of Clark Kent eyeglasses
• Hershey’s
• Chrysler, which is offering two different “Superman” S-class cars
• Kellogg’s
• Walmart
• Nokia
• Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr, where you can eat a “Super Bacon Cheeseburger”
• United States Army National Guard, which is using Man Of Steel as an enlistment tool
• Under Armor
• Mattel
• Budweiser
• Toshiba

To borrow from another DC iconic hero:

Holy marketing, Batman!!!!!

•     •     •     •     •

A confession. I did go to Gillette’s YouTube site to watch four videos entitled “How Does the Man of Steel Shave?” Bill Nye the Science Guy, Kevin Smith, Mayim Bialik – a PhD. in neuroscience? Really? – and Mythbusters’ Andy and Jamie offer their theories on how Kal-el goes from heavily bearded in the beginning of the film to smooth-shaven by the time he’s fighting Zod. And I must also confess that the vids are fun and entertaining. The four hypotheses are: (1) LHC Worm Hole Theory; (2) Materials Science Theory; (3) Follicle Denaturation Theory; and (4) Baby Rocket Theory.

I leave it to you to match up the theories with their progenitors.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis