Category: Columns

John Ostrander’s Summer Movie Wrap-Up

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Labor Day 2015 is upon us. Technically, the season’s change on September 23rd but for all intents and purposes, summer closes shop right after Labor Day. The summer movie season is over and the fall seasons are gearing up. Among things to look forward to is the new Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, coming out around Christmas. However, we’re going to look back at the offerings from last summer, specifically the ones I saw and most enjoyed.

I freely admit I haven’t seen all the cinematic offerings that were out. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation got missed, for example. I saw a fair amount, though, and I’m prepared to talk about those. You should be prepared for spoilers since I may reveal plot elements. That’s okay; you should have seen these films by now anyway.

There are six films on the list – Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Tomorrowland, Inside Out, Jurassic World, and Mad Max: Fury Road. All entertained me, some surprised me, and I’ll want all of them on disc for repeated home viewing, some more than others.

Remember: these are my opinions. Your mileage may vary.

Avengers; Age of Ultron moved the whole Marvel franchise forward and, together with Ant-Man, rounded out Phase 2 of the Marvel Conquers the Cineplex movement. The Avengers film had everybody and then some (played by their usual thespian counterparts), and included the Falcon in the mix and debuted Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and the Vision, always a personal favorite of mine. The Big Bad was the nasty computer program in the crisp robotic shell, Ultron, voiced by the always silkily threatening James Spader.

Did I like it? Yes. Did I like it as much as the first Avengers film? No. It seemed more disjointed to me. There were also odd additions – a possible budding romance between the Black Widow and Bruce (The Hulk) Banner (?). The suggestion that Black Widow had relationships with most of the other male members of the Avengers (because – why?). The fact that Hawkeye has a wife and kiddies out in the hinterlands. None of it seemed very central or even germane to the plot and seemed only to pad it out.

On the other hand, it also had the return of Nick Fury and, at a key moment, the original SHIELD Helicarrier, which I loved. The big fight at the end went on a bit long and didn’t always make a lot of sense. Nonetheless, I enjoyed all of it.

Ant-Man was the surprise to me. Like last year’s Guardian’s of the Galaxy, I would not have bet you money going into it that I would enjoy it so much. But I did. Paul Rudd was a hoot and I bought his heroic side when it surfaced. Michael Douglas took the Famous Older Actor In a Surprise Supporting Role that Robert Redford did in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Marvel/Disney really can afford just about anyone it wants to get.

Ant-Man may be better suited to the movies than the comics. The shrinking man and large objects around him works better on the screen than the page. I may be looking forward to this Blu-Ray even more than the Avengers one.

Tomorrowland is based, conceptually, on a portion of Disneyland but, like the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, is so much more entertaining than it needs to be. Part of that can be traced back to Brad Bird, who directed it and co-wrote the screenplay. You may know Bird better as the director on Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and others.

The film stars George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, and Britt Robertson as the spunky young gal who is the center of the story. The city of the title exists in a fold between time and space and it’s where the dreams of the future become real. It’s in danger of being corrupted and made prosaic by those who think they are saving it. What it needs is dreamers.

I love this film because, ultimately, it is so hopeful. It’s about the necessity of hope and that’s a message I think we need more of these days. It’s far from a perfect film but it’s message really appeals to me.

I’ve written before about Inside Out, the latest offering from Pixar. Quick summary: very inventive and imaginative, heartfelt, psychologically true (IMO) and wonderfully realized. I loved it.

Mad Max: Fury Road. Wow. Intense. As reboots go, stunningly successful. Tom Hardy makes a great successor to Mel Gibson and looks very much like him in the early Mad Max films. Charlize Theron kicks major league ass. George Miller is astounding. He’s seventy years old, it’s been thirty years since he last directed a Mad Max movie, and this film had so much raw energy, imaginative action sequences and filmmaking derring-do that you would have thought he was a much younger man taking over a sagging franchise. There’s lots of things that call back to the earlier Mad Max films while, at the same, time, laying claim to it all for a new generation of filmgoers.

Jurassic World. It’s been more than twenty years since the first Jurassic Park movie and about fourteen since Jurassic Park III (which, for the record, I preferred to Jurassic Park II although, from reports, Steven Spielberg did not.) This is essentially another reboot of a franchise although, strictly speaking, it does follow in continuity from the first one. It was a thundering successful relaunch; it made just buckets and buckets of money. It also marked Chris Pratt’s emergence as a bonafide and believable action film star. Oh, he was the star in Guardians of the Galaxy but his Peter Quill was a bit of a goofball as well; he had a strong streak of coyote in him. In Jurassic World, there is a young Harrison Ford feel to Pratt. Charismatic, strong, and a star.

One of the problems for Jurassic World is that, when we see the dinosaurs, there isn’t that same sense of wonder we had in the first Jurassic Park. The plot in Jurassic World mirrors that – the park itself is having problems because having dinosaurs is no longer “new” – not so much of an attraction — so the Powers-That-Be manufacture, by blending DNA strains, a whole new – and very deadly – form of beast. And, of course, it escapes. Jurassic World pleases us, it entertains us, but it doesn’t –- it can’t — give us that same sense of wonder, of discovery, that the first Jurassic Park did.

So – which of these was my own personal favorite? I enjoyed them all but there’s no question that Inside Out is my pick. It’s not a reboot, it’s not a sequel, it’s not another link in a cinematic chain; it’s fresh, it’s engaging, it’s funny, and it has its own truths to tell. Tomorrowland comes in second for the reasons I’ve already given. Like Inside Out, it is something new and fresh and that scores a lot of points with me.

So – how was your summer?

 

Marc Alan Fishman’s Been Kickstarted!

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I freely admit that I am 33 years of age and have never been drunk, high, or anything more than over-tired. But over the last 33 days I’ve experienced inebriation in all its stereotypical stages – if only by proxy – as I managed what I can now declare as a successful crowdfunding campaign.

No, I didn’t drink any alcohol, smoke, toke, or shoot any whim-wham-wozzle into my ding-a-ling. I merely held my breath for 33 days as I watched 155 people trickle in to support Unshaven Comics as we embarked on collecting together our first independently published graphic novel. I’m somewhere between hugging the toilet and declaring how I love you all.

Managing a Kickstarter is an absolute pain in the ass. In creating the campaign, it took the better part of every hour in my life not otherwise devoted to my full-time job, to being a husband and father, and to managing a freelance graphic design business. From sourcing the absolutely wonderful partners who filmed and edited our video, to lining up vendors for producing our would-be graphic novel, to locating all other extraneous artisans and stores who would supply the other pledge prizes, it was an undertaking that easily could have been a full time job unto itself. After our network of vendors was in place, it then took hours of meetings between we Unshaven lads to concoct our pledge goal and build the pledge packages to entice would-be backers. And then we had it all spot-checked by a network of successful campaign builders in an effort to ensure we weren’t doing it all wrong. And all of that was merely the work that needed to be done before we could launch. Did I mention this whole thing was a pain in the ass?

The next bit of fun, err, living torture, occurred over the course of the actual campaign. Somedays, backers came in droves. Other days I was essentially pan-handling on the side of Facebook, dancing for nickels. All because of the latent fear that without a steady rise in backing pledges, new traffic would surf in, do the mental math, and walk away – confident that we didn’t have the juice to meet our goals in time. These mounting daily fears compounded with the deluge of offers bandied at me from the ecosystem of businesses now built around crowdfunding campaign management. Each new business enticing me with their promises of success via public relations, targeted ad sales, or (I assume) the sacrificing of a virgin goat by vengeful locals in Papa New Guinea. How could it not work?

I’m happy to admit that I gave in to a pair of services. One worked immensely well. The other was absolute abject failure. While some I know here on ComicMix like to grind bad businesses into the dirt, I will take the high road. In other words, if you want me to sling mud or sing praises, find me man-to-man and I’ll spill my guts. To cut to the chase: PR doesn’t do diddley-squat for the indie comic creator. In contrast, a solid and honest e-mail campaign works wonders.

If I were to spin my experience out into a panel (and I’m fairly certain I could lead a riveting one on the con circuit now), I’d sum it up simply: Like anything else in the world today, the hope to become viral is a silly pipe dream you can’t count on. The Samurnauts has an immortal kung-fu monkey who pilots a giant robot and BuzzFeed didn’t come knocking at my door. Instead, like every book we move at comics conventions around the nation, it is down to real legwork. It’s the culmination of the pitch and the product. If you can’t convince someone that your project is cool in 30 seconds, you won’t do it over the course of a five-minute video. And if you’re lucky enough to sell your idea, you have to bring it home with a product (or series of products packaged into enticing rewards) at a price point that your target audience feels is a solid value for the money. It’s a balancing act that has as little to do with virality as Rob Liefield has to proper anatomy.

At the end of 33 days, I am utterly exhausted, punch-drunk from the emotional roller coaster ride that was our Kickstarter campaign. I’m left in awe of the real friends who pledged, shared, and truly supported us with their encouragement. I’m left bitter by the posers who talked the talk, but failed to walk the walk – false friends willing to eat the bread but weren’t around when I needed help sowing the seeds. I’m honored to work beside my brothers from other mothers… who checked in with my daily to ensure we were doing everything we could to succeed. I’m flabbergasted at the outpouring of love and support from our fanbase – who not only shared the campaign over 800 times over 33 days, but offered their own rewards to new backers. I’m weary at the long journey ahead, as Unshaven Comics will travel to Atlanta, Cincinnati, New York, and Kokomo all within eight weeks as we attempt to finish production on the actual book itself.

There’s nothing left to say, save perhaps for the battle cry that got us this far.

Samurnauts are go!

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #369

DAREDEVIL CAN TAKE THE STAND – FROM A LIBRARY

Because it had three stories in it, that’s why.

Yes, we’re playing Jeopardy. That’s the answer. And the correct question is, why did you write three columns about Daredevil v4 #15.1?

The third story in this extra-long volume with the screwy numbering – “Chasing the Devil” – featured a familiar scene. No, not the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet– please tell me that scene is familiar to you and I didn’t need to go with the food fight from Animal House. Rather this is the familiar scene that ends the standard super hero-super villain fight scene.

In this version of the scene, Daredevil was fighting Diablo, the centuries-old master of alchemy who first appeared in Fantastic Four #30 and who, despite the fact that he is centuries-old and a master of alchemy, is a surprisingly second-rate super villain. Let’s face it, he appeared in the third story in this particular comic, a story that was only eight pages long. Considering that some of the story was set-up and some of it denouement, the actual number of pages devoted to the fight was three and one-half. So, no, we’re not talking an A-lister here. B-lister, anyone? C-lister? Let’s just say, Diablo would be suffering delusions of grandeur if he auditioned for Dancing With the Stars.

So after their mercifully brief fight, Daredevil tied Diablo up and left him hanging for the cops to find and arrest. The cops did find Diablo, did arrest him and, I assume, Diablo was prosecuted for his misdeeds. I can only assume, because we didn’t see the aftermath. Apparently, the story didn’t want to spend any more time with the loser villain, either.

However, assuming Diablo was prosecuted for his crimes, the fact that he was prosecuted should be ringing more bells than Quasimodo in the Westminster Concert Bell Choir. Because we have talked about this before. Masked super heroes catching criminals, leaving them for the cops to find, then walking – or swinging – away before the police have a chance to question them or get their statements. I’ve noted that without that an actual conversation with the super hero involved, the police wouldn’t have enough probable cause to arrest the bad guy in question, because they didn’t see the baddie committing any crime and the person who did was nowhere to be found.

And even if the police did arrest the bad guy, taking him to trial would be trickier than a Penn & Teller special. Under the Sixth Amendment’s Right of Confrontation, the defendant has the right to cross-examine the state’s witnesses. But the defendant wouldn’t be able to cross-examine a masked witness, because the defendant wouldn’t know who that witness was, so wouldn’t be able to question the witness about possible biases.

Masked super heroes wouldn’t be allowed to testify in court without revealing their secret identities, which they wouldn’t want to do. (If they wanted to reveal their secret identities, they wouldn’t wear masks. I mean, what’s the mask for other than keeping a secret identity secret? A bad case of hat hair?) So if the masked heroes don’t reveal their secret identities and aren’t allowed to testify, there would be no evidence against the bad guy and said bad guy would be found not guilty.

That’s the way it would usually go, in one of the average super hero scenarios. That’s not, however, the way it would have gone in Daredevil v4 #15.1. Because this story was smarter than the average super hero scenario.

It didn’t have Daredevil chance upon the super villain doing his super villainy by happenstance. No, it had Daredevil overhear a police radio broadcast that “a major drug deal involving ‘Diablo’ and a number of known offenders is under way at the Syracuse Salt Mines.” (Hey, I know there are operating salt mines underneath Cleveland, Ohio. Are there actually salt mines under New York City, too? Not a big deal, I just wondered.)

The police already knew that Diablo was around and dealing drugs. The police didn’t need Daredevil for the information about Diablo’s diabolic doings, they already had it. The story didn’t say how the police knew. Could have been an eyewitness account from another witness. Could have been a undercover narcotics officer report. Could have been a tip from the Morton Salt Girl. How they got the information doesn’t matter. What’s important is, they had it.

And because the police had the information, that means someone other than Daredevil – the someone who told the police about the drug deal in the salt mines in the first place – could have testified at Diablo’s trial and supplied the jury with the information it needed to convict Diablo.

Of course, considering Esteban Corazón de Ablo goes by the nom de guerre of Diablo, maybe not even that information was necessary. Get people on the jury people who know that Diablo means devil and it might be a short trial.

(“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, the defendant in this case goes by the name Diablo.”

“Guilty!”)

But even if the jury was conscientious and required more information than the defendant’s chosen nickname, whoever supplied the information to the police should have been enough information for a conviction. The police wouldn’t need Daredevil on the witness stand.

Tony Isabella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Isabella once told me that whenever possible he’d have his super hero-super villain fights take place in highly public places before lots and lots of witnesses. That way there would be plenty of people around who could testify against the super villain, even if the super hero couldn’t. A wise practice. Prosecutors have enough trials and tribulations without extra trialing tribulations.

Martha Thomases: The Cool Kids

thomases-in-disneyland-2273253It would be my guess that, until recently, most people who loved comic books were not the sort who were popular in high school. We weren’t prom kings and queens. We weren’t elected to student council. Sometimes, we weren’t even the stoners.

To some extent, that’s changed now. Comics, or at least comic book properties are cool now. Celebrities compete to see who has the most geek cred.

Therefore, to people who are as socially insecure as I am, it’s possible to feel that comics is not the safe haven of fandom that it was in the old days. (To be fair, when I’m really feeling it, I’m too insecure to feel accepted anywhere, which is my problem, not yours.)

It was not always like that. And two books by my pal Jackie Estrada celebrate the days when comic book folks could create a place where we were the cool kids.

For those of you who don’t know, Jackie runs the Eisner Awards, and she is publisher of Exhibit A Press. Since the 1970s she’s taken zillions of photographs at various comic book events, especially the San Diego Comic-Con. She was influential in adding Artists’ Alley to conventions. I know her best through Friends of Lulu, since we were both on the first few Boards of Directors.

Jackie has put together two volumes of photographs from various comic-book events, Comic Book People: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s and Comic Book People: Photographs from the 1990s. They both feel, to me, very much like looking at old high school yearbooks.

Both books are organized in similar ways. The photographs are grouped in chapters, starting with the legends of the field — Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Siegel and Shuster, Stan Lee, and their ilk — then to writers, artists, inkers and colorists, editors, marketing people, retailers and others. A lot of the same people appear in each volume, usually with more hilarious hair in Volume 1.

Each photo has a caption explaining who the person or people are, their work at the time, and sometimes, why they are making such ridiculous faces. Jackie herself is in many of them, enjoying the company of her friends and “family.”

Because the comics industry was very much like a family. Especially in that first volume, we see a group of people who are being noticed for their achievements by their peers, often for the first time. In those long ago, pre-Internet days, there weren’t always credits in comics, so finding out who was responsible for your favorite stories could require some real sleuthing. Maybe I’m projecting, but I see surprise and pride in those faces, enjoying some well-deserved recognition and appreciation.

Instead of being ridiculed for liking and making comics, they are finally with a group of people who share that affection.

I didn’t go to many comics events until the 1990s. In the late 1970s and 1980s, I tended to just go to New York-based parties, usually with Denny O’Neil, because, as a freelance writer, I appreciated passed hors d’oeuvres and an open bar. I knew the folks at Upstarts (Walter Simonson, Howard Chaykin, Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz) and, later, when I worked at Marvel, I knew Archie Goodwin, Mary Wilshire, Trina Robbins and Louise Simonson. I met Howard Cruse at a Village Voice holiday party.

I recognize a few of the people in the first volume, but it’s the second one that sends me back to my high school neuroses. There are my colleagues at DC. There are people who make me squee and people who make me blush and people who I think are so cool that I can only stammer around them. There are people whose work I love but with whom I never connected personally, and people I adore whose work occasionally leaves me cold.

Jackie can’t be everywhere, and there are, inevitably, some people who I think should be represented and aren’t. Among these are Larry Hama, Mark Millar, Bob Rozakis, Lou Stathis, Gerry Jones, Keith Giffen and Shelly Bond. Maybe they loomed larger in my experience than they did in Jackie’s. That’s fair. Maybe they were just camera shy. That’s fair, too.

I want to be in the photographs with all of these folks, just like Jackie is, but I am not, and that makes me feel unpopular. As an adult woman of 62, these emotions are unbecoming.

You, Constant Reader, will probably not find yourself awash in insecurity when you look at these pages. Instead, you’ll see (especially if you get both books) how an entertainment industry grew up and grew close. You’ll see curly shag haircuts give way to well-trimmed styles (or baldness). You’ll see more women and people of color as the years go on. You’ll notice some of the legendary older folks passing on, but loads of talented new kids hoping for a place at the table.

Because our table is now the cool kids table. Everyone wants to be with us.

Tweeks: Interview Ashley Eckstein of Her Universe

If you have been following along with our show at all, then you know what devotees of Geek Chic we are. We are so lucky to be living at time where girls are being accepted (for the most part, there’s obvi still room for improvement) in geek culture and that we are able to have so many options to show off our fandoms while still being fashionable. We give a lot of credit for this to Ashley Eckstein, the founder of Her Universe. You have probably seen us wearing her designs in our videos because they are some of our favorite all time outfits. We cannot even count the times Maddy has been stopped while wearing her Star Wars sheets dress. Everyone wants to talk about at the cons, on the street, even in the middle of interviews. It’s like the clothes aren’t just cute, they build communities right there on the spot. Suddenly you can see what strangers are fellow fangirls. It’s like, “Hey! That girl in the TARDIS dress loves Doctor Who too! We have something in common.”

So, you can guess how excited we were to have the chance to chat with Ashley at at D23 Expo. We found out that she’s a musical theatre nerd like us and likes to shop on the con floor too. She also tells us what’s up at Her Universe and gives some really good advice for those who want careers in pop culture fashion. We absolutely loved spending time with Ashley and hope you enjoy watching our conversation.

Dennis O’Neil and the Double Meltdown

Ye Ed brays:

Our pal Denny O’Neil suffered a double tragedy. He had to go to the dentist. His computer stopped working.

I don’t know if the two are related. It seems unlikely, but I’m into string theory so anything is possible. Either way, that sounds like a real sucky day to me. 

Denny’s dental travails will be resolved. Denny’s computer will be fixed. And then we can all get back to the real issue…

Who’s stronger, The Thing or Donald Trump?

Molly Jackson: The Good, the Bad(?), and the Interesting

Ashley A. Woods

The past few days of comic news has been a wowza of roller coaster articles and announcements. I spent hours trying to decide what topic to tackle. Which sucked. A lot. It was way too difficult to settle for one tidbit to chat about. Then I realized, “My column, my format!” I also realized that I’m adult enough to have chocolate ice cream for dinner. So here’s my personal favorites of the week.

In my good slot, we have the exciting announcement of Ashley A. Woods joining Marvel as an artist. I’ll be honest, I had never heard of Woods. Once I checked out her work, I’m just so eager to see what she can do with the Marvel characters. Her upcoming book Niobe is abso-freaking-lutely gorgeous.

That isn’t the only reason that this is big news. It is exciting to see a woman joining the Marvel team and even more exciting that this is a woman of color. If the word on the web is correct, this is the first African-American woman to be a creator at Marvel. That’s pretty big @#^%!* news. And, I’m sure that Woods could teach the guys over there a few things about female proportions.

In my bad(?) slot, I’ve got DC rumors that the head honchos have told everyone to “stop batgirling” or being creative. The reason I went with the question mark on the end of that bad is because this could be a bad thing or an ok thing. It really depends on how they do it.

Truth is, if they don’t do a complete 180 on everything they have done creatively, it could just trickle through their other books rather than tidal wave. Large universes tend to get muddled and crazy pretty quickly. Perhaps this could be a way to keep this world easy for new readers to follow. I just hope they don’t destroy all the innovative progress they have made.

And for interesting, I recently read about the Middle East’s rising interest in comics. Comic cons have been popping up all over the place and new comic creators are developing new characters and stories. Some comics are used to as a veiled way to fight sexism or explore Muslim traditions.

Comics are a great way to embrace the best and worst parts of your world, in an engaging and descriptive way.  Since comics are such a mainstay in the US, we rarely talk about other countries comic industries. While it may have been an American influence at first, it sounds like other cultures in the Middle East are using it to do their own thing.

So those are the three things I couldn’t decide between. I’m betting that there is at least one thing you hadn’t heard about. One thing is sure though. Comics, they are a-changin’.

Box Office Democracy: American Ultra

American Ultra would have been the coolest movie in the world in 1996. It has the lovable loser slacker protagonist with a quirky hobby and a mundane job, it has plenty of sudden graphic violence, and it even has a plot that’s a metaphor for parental issues.

Unfortunately, the last 19 years haven’t been particularly kind to these tropes, and this movie that would have easily swept the Independent Spirit Awards two decades ago instead feels less special and more tired. It doesn’t sink the movie, it’s still frequently a blast and features one of the most best ensemble supporting cast I may have ever seen but this is a movie that in another era could have been a home run and it’s disappointing to see it just be a long double.

While not a fantastic reflection on the originality of the film, American Ultra lends itself very handily to mash-up comparisons. It’s Chasing Amy meets A History of Violence, it’s Slackers crossed with The Bourne Identity, it’s SubUrbia having a baby with The Transporter. Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is a stoner convenience store clerk who draws an ambitious if nonsensical comic book in his spare time. Unbeknownst to Mike he is an old CIA asset that due to a power struggle within the agency has been targeted for termination. When the CIA assassins come to kill him Mike discovers he’s an amazing killer. The ensuing chaotic escalation of this operation ends up bringing everyone in Mike’s life in to the orbit of this violent struggle especially his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) who is the cliché suspiciously-attractive girlfriend of a total loser. There are enough clever twists and fun tweaks to the formula here to make the film exciting but maybe they go a little too far as there are all these vestigial bits of plot hanging off the edges like threads that they forgot to weave in to the main fabric of the story.

While both Eisenberg and Stewart are quite good— in fact, both seem to be trying very hard to shake of the notion that they are budget-friendly versions of bigger stars— the real winning performances in American Ultra come from the supporting cast. Topher Grace chews scenery hard as the smarmy evil CIA supervisor and I’ve seen him do this douchebag performance so well so many times I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not like that in real life and that’s probably the mark of an exceptional performance (or an exceptional jerk in real life, but I hope not). Connie Britton usually acting across from Grace does a great job bringing a grounded energy to those scenes, but when she’s doing scenes with any other characters she switches gears and becomes the scene stealing performer we know she is. Walton Goggins is a terrifying presence as the CIA lunatic killer Laugher turning in a performance that is 100% chilling nightmare fodder. The cast is so embarrassingly deep that Tony Hale and John Leguizamo, both national treasures and utter delights in this film, feel criminally underused but there just isn’t room for more of them.

By the time I’m writing this it’s pretty apparent American Ultra didn’t find its audience. We’ve even gotten the 2015 signature move of the underperforming movie and someone involved in the production has taken to Twitter to complain about the results of their labors. It’s a shame, this movie deserves better and I hope that eventually people discover this movie on Netflix or wherever because it deserves to be seen and to be appreciated. Not because it’s screamingly original or clever but because it’s an example of exceptional execution and the good work a solid cast can do to carry a middling script. American Ultra is a film that deserves better than it got from America this weekend and better than it got from whoever came up with this terrible non-descriptive title.

Mike Gold: Who Needs Superhero Comics?

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Nope. This is not an old guy rant about how you-all young’uns are ignoring comic books because you’re too busy enjoying the movies and teevee shows being made out of those same comic books. I’m beginning to think that if you lust for heroic fantasy, maybe the plethora of such fare in our theaters and our sundry home electronics will serve your needs.

Back when I was doing public relations for DC Comics, which was so long ago it was well before my pal Martha Thomases was doing public relations for DC Comics, I was fond of telling the press that we had it all over movies because we weren’t restricted by reasonable special effects budgets. We only were restricted by the imaginations of our writers and artists, and that posed no problem at all. We had, and we continue to have, lots of people with wonderful ideas along with the ability to get those visions inside the reader’s brainpan. We could blow up a planet on page one, resurrect that planet on page two, populate it on page three and then blow up the new place on page four.

Today… well… we’ve got computers and brilliant people who never see the light of day to put all that in a movie at a reasonable price and at reasonable speed. And then a bunch of other moloids add music and sound effects and maybe some 3-D crap. Movies – and, now, television – can boldly go where comic books always have been… and get there first.

Better still, the consumer’s cost per minute is far lower in these new venues. Movies and cable bills are expensive, but two hours worth of comic books can run you maybe forty bucks.

This is not to suggest I no longer enjoy comics. To paraphrase a famous ape-fighting gun nut, they’ll have to rip that comic book out of my cold dead hands. And I hope it’s a goddamned expensive one. But this does offer me the opportunity for praise my fellow American publishers that are not owned by mammoth movie studios for moving well beyond traditional superhero fare. Today we can tell virtually any type of story, even true ones, and if that story is well-told and well-marketed we’ve got a pretty good shot at not losing the rent on it.

Maybe we haven’t quite reached the level of selling comics to, say, bored grandmothers who pine for their days of child-rearing. There are very specific comics in other countries, particularly Japan and Belgium, that cater to audiences we rarely think of in the American quadrasphere. But we’re almost there.

Today I am more interested in the new Marvel Netflix series than I am in the post-Battleworld Marvel comics. I am much more interested in the next season of Flash and Arrow than I am in DC’s next reboot – or their previous dozen reboots. That’s where the superhero mojo lives these days.

I see coming up with superhero comics that are more involving than other superhero media as a challenge to our comics creators. Having worked with at least four generations of such talent, I know this will be a wonderful thing to behold. However, right now I’m in the middle of producing at least a half-dozen original graphic novels (editors get to multitask, which is another word for “short attention span”). Some sort of fall into the category of heroic fantasy, maybe, but most do not.

As far as I’m concerned, happy days are here again.

Box Office Democracy: Straight Outta Compton

When I saw the first trailer for Straight Outta Compton I leaned over to my girlfriend and said, “Oh my God, are they making the story of N.W.A into a white savior movie?” and she looked back at me with fear in her eyes. It was a bad trailer, rather an unrepresentative one, which made it look like a movie about Jerry Heller trying to get the police and the music establishment to treat his clients with respect. That would have been a terrible movie, a tragic misrepresentation of the struggles that really took place. The movie we got is a powerful touchstone piece in documenting and dramatizing the rise of West Coast gangster rap.

I wish Straight Outta Compton felt as old as it is. That we could look at the events of this movie, now a quarter of a century gone, and think of them as the past when instead it feels like the present. The world they show us to contextualize the writing of “Fuck tha Police” feels very much like the world we see so very often on the news or in our own communities. The anger and the despair and the hopelessness of the situation feels so current and relevant and it only magnifies these feelings to know we’ve accomplished so little in the intervening years when it comes to policing minority populations. These are powerful scenes, the most affecting ones that I can remember seeing on the topic and if this movie does nothing but inspire this feeling of discontent in a few more people it will be a remarkable success.

Luckily, it does a few more things very well. The acting is generally superb; especially O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s work pretending to be his own father, a task that I have to imagine is one of the strangest tasks an actor would ever have to attempt. Corey Hawkins does a good job of playing Dr. Dre with the quiet rage I’ve always associated with him and showing it build, ebb, and flow in a natural manner. It’s an inexperienced cast and that inexperience sometimes shines through but they generally do great work. I was quite impressed with the scope of the picture, it starts as an N.W.A piece but then branches out through everyone’s respective solo careers and it helps to illustrate how influential these men were in launching other enterprises and helping along the careers of so many others. It stops short of getting into Ice Cube playing a police captain in the 21 Jump Street franchise and the irony therein but I suppose it was already a long film. Straight Outta Compton also does its part in establishing that Suge Knight is a real-life cartoon supervillain and I think that is an important detail to share with future generations that might watch this movie.

There’s a problem with the way Straight Outta Compton handles its female characters. Most of the women on screen in this film are some manner of groupie, party girl, or otherwise objectified woman with barely any lines. The exceptions are wives and mothers and while it’s nice to have that change of pace that isn’t really a less sexist depiction. Every woman is either a Madonna or a whore with nowhere in between. This is an accurate reflection of how bad the gangster rap movement was for the status of black women but one would hope that time and perspective might lend itself to a more nuanced look back. I don’t need the characters in the film to say or do things differently than they really happened but it would have been nice to get some indication that the filmmakers know this kind of conduct is wrong or damaging.

The music biopic is a genre that feels perpetually stale, and Straight Outta Compton is definitely not a stale film. It has all the little issues that biographical films will always have, character and event compression makes for some moments that feel as fantastical as people commanding ants through a metal helmet but there’s a passion and an energy I haven’t felt in one of these films in a long time, maybe ever. This is an important band who did important things at an important time and it’s important to remember their struggle and try to contextualize it for people who weren’t there or who couldn’t pay it the proper attention. If not for this movie there was a real danger that Ice Cube and Dr. Dre would be remembered by the next generation as an actor and a headphone mogul and if this movie keeps their other work in our collective consciousness it is doing our culture a great service.

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