John Ostrander: WWGJD?
Warning: spoilers below.
“Look at the flowers.”
A seemingly innocuous line that should set shivers through regular fans of the TV series, The Walking Dead. (more…)
Category: Columns
Marc Alan Fishman: Turtles the Size of Buicks!
No doubt you’ve watched it. If you’re of my generation? You’ve likely re-watched it several times over. And after each subsequent viewing… you ask yourself: Is Michael Bay destroying my childhood one license at a time? In response, I think we’ve all come to relatively the same conclusion– maybe a little bit. But the <a href=”
target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>trailer in question reveals to us a Michael Bay at his Bay-ie-est.
Let’s start with the good. There’s plenty of hints that the film makers know the lore from which they are drawing. From April O’Boobs’ yellow jacket, the TCRI building, to the relatively recognizable Shredder armor… it’s clear that someone in the production watched a few cartoons in their pre-production meeting. (more…)
Martha Thomases: Frontieres Sans Comics
Please forgive me. I’m hideously jet-lagged.
Also, I haven’t read a comic book nor any of the news sites for more than ten days. Whatever the scandal du jour is, I don’t have an opinion.
Although I was in Israel for more than a week, I didn’t see a single comic book. I saw some newspaper cartoons at the Holocaust Museum, and the international edition of The New York Times in Jerusalem had strips, but that was it.
There were no comic book stores in any of the areas I walked through. I would think this might be some kind of kink in tourist destinations, but the Arab market in the Old City had three yarn shops. They were clearly designed for the local market (meaning they had no high-ticket tourist bait), so why were there no comics?
Certainly, the kids new about American superheroes. On Purim, not only did I see various Supergirls but Iron Men, Hulks, Spider-Men and more. It’s funny to see a kid with side-curls and a Thing t-shirt. I hope Jack Kirby would be pleased.
One of the most amazing people I met was in Akko, a city in the Western Gallilee. He had been in the Army, like many Israelis, but he and also been a junkie and had been in prison for a spell. He got himself together and was working with teens at risk. One of his projects was to organize a chess club. Chess is the hip thing to do in Akko. Arab kids play it. Jews play it. They play in tournaments together.
He told the story of a tourist couple, walking in the old section of town late at night, who saw a group of teen boys standing around a dark corner. The tourists were frightened, but had to walk that way. When they got close to the boys, they saw that two of them were playing chess, and the rest were watching.
It’s what the cool kids do.
It seems to me that a kid that can learn how to play chess can learn how to plot a story, or at least appreciate a story with a good plot. If there isn’t a comic book shop in Akko (and, like I said, I didn’t see one), maybe that’s a business opportunity.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to catch up on The Walking Dead.
Photo by Keshet: GLBT inclusion in the Jewish Community 
Mindy Newell: The Patient Nurse Conversation
I had a good conversation with Mr. Gold on the phone yesterday, as in Mike, editor and columnist here at ComicMix and a columnist over at Michael Davis World, as in Michael Davis who is also a columnist on this site. Did I ever mention that the comics industry can be a bit professionally incestuous?
Back to Mike, the gourmet of invisible doughnuts (here)—oh, and btw, although once in a while I’ve seen patients respond to anesthesia the way Mike did, I’ve never seen or heard of, and no one I spoke to at work has ever seen or heard of, anyone munching down on invisible donuts while in the ICU—I apologized for not warning him about just how miserable shoulder replacement surgery, and its immediate aftermath, can be. “I didn’t want to scare you,” I said. “Especially after seeing the X-ray you sent me. To be perfectly honest, Michael, my professional reaction was, “HOLY SHIT!” (In other words, guys, Mike had no shoulder left.)
Mike, surprisingly, at least to me, said, and with no malice at all, “Why not?” I guess better the devil you know, y’know?
Martha Thomases: Truth, Justice, and the Israeli Way
Purim in Israel is not like Purim in my life. Everyone is in costume. Sales clerks at the airport had on three-cornered Haman hats.
I love Purim. It is the story of a hero who saved the Jewish people. Kids dress up as characters in the story — Mordecau, Haman, King Ahasheares, and the hero, Queen Esther.
In Israel, it is more about costumes than specific characters, more like Halloween, a secular holiday.
I was in Caesarea, an ancient Roman city built by Herod. It’s a great place to take your family on a school holiday. There were kids dressed like knights and princesses and Voltron.
To me, the stars of the day were two gutsy girls, dressed like my favorite Kryptonian. It’s the right way to celebrate the story of a brave woman.
Marc Alan Fishman: How To Lose Your (Convention) Virginity
On a recent jaunt into the social media interwebs, an old foosball buddy of mine asked that I help him discover the creepy, crazy, wacky world of comic book conventions. By proxy, I assume he also means sci-fi cons, pop culture cons, and possibly the auto show. In any event? Todd Burrows, I got your wonderfully tattoo’ed back. Consider this your introduction and survival guide all rolled up into one easy to read article. Forgive me though, this ain’t Buzzfeed, so don’t expect 10 glorious animated gifs for scrolling.
Let us assume you’re not a comic guy, but this whole comic thing is mildly intriguing to you. Perhaps a person you used to know back in high school is now a small indie publisher, and you think it’d be neat to see him again. Perhaps that publisher from time to time uses his or her friends in model reference shots, and you think that maybe you’d like to see yourself as a superhero or nefarious villain. And maybe, just maybe, you think dipping your toe into the waters of these new-fangled cons would be a good way to know if all your intrigue is just a waste of your time. I know, that’s a lot of supposition. But I digress. The question is simple: Why Go To A Comic Con?
It’s inclusive.
Since the first time I’ve stepped onto a convention floor, I’ve never once felt on the ‘outside’ of the industry. Once your badge is flung around your neck – be you a complete noob or a working professional – you’ll find most every con filled with folks in the exact same situation. In the pair of decades I have considered myself a fan, I’ve not once found a fellow con-goer not willing to lend an opinion, give a bit of backstory, or make an education recommendation on a good read. It can be daunting, no doubt, to jump in head-first to a world you think you don’t know. But lucky for you? Comics have permeated TV, movies, and pop-culture now for so long, there’s little to no chance you haven’t been introduced already without even knowing it. (more…)
Dennis O’Neil: Veronica
Well, my friends, here we are, home after a weekend of adventure down south in horse country.
That’s a lie.
We intended to spend the weekend in Lexington, Kentucky, but we never got there. Friday/travel day, we got up at the crack of eight a.m., which for us is pretty early, and arrived at the Westchester airfield on time. The line in front of U.S. Air’s counter seemed unusually long and, after a fidgety while, we were facing an airline employee and learning the reason for the long wait: the flight had been cancelled and no other flights to our destination would be leaving that day. The best the very accommodating agent could do would require us to drive through New York traffic to another airport, change planes somewhere in the journey, and arrive in Lexington after the con had closed. We didn’t know about travel the following day, but assuming it was possible, we wouldn’t arrive until the con was, in all likelihood, mostly history. So I made one of those snap decisions we often regret and cancelled the whole trip. Then I spent much of the ensuing three days wishing I’d pushed harder, tried harder, mostly to assuage my conscience. I hate not doing what I’ve said I’ll do – would I have succeeded in politics? – and I felt I owed the Kentuckians something, which is a long story not to be told here.
So, instead of enjoying the bluegrass turf, we came home and eventually did a movies-on-demand viewing of Veronica Mars. I used to call Veronica’s television show a guilty pleasure. But why guilty? It was, in retrospect. a perfectly acceptable mass entertainment, maybe a cut or two above most of its kind. I didn’t miss the explosions or car chases – there were none – and the violence was well-choreographed, but fairly mild, and not overused. The plot was multi-layered and reasonably complex, but again, is this something we want to complain about? The ending left the sequel door wide open, but hey – this is the twenty first century media and am I not contemplating a sequel to my grocery list? (Bet there’ll be one, too.)
Which brings us to today. March 17. St. Patrick’s Day. Our annual bacchanalia. The first bacchanalia was begun in early history to honor the god bacchus. Our version is, as I type, being celebrated about 25 miles to the south, in Manhattan, among many other places, and presumably exists to honor a Christian saint named Patrick who allegedly evicted the snakes from Ireland, though a skeptic might say that the snakes symbolized the so-called pagans. That might include some of you, but not to worry: you almost certainly don’t live in fifth-century Ireland.
If you live in twenty first century Manhattan, well…maybe being a pagan is the least of your worries.
Box Office Democracy Review: “Veronica Mars”
In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I backed the Veronica Mars movie on Kickstarter. In addition to a myriad of cool perks this gave me, and thousands of other backers, access to regular updates on the process of making this movie, a level of access rather atypical today and totally unheard of a decade ago. I watched this movie grow from a cool pipe dream to an actual thing that is actually playing in theaters. This all adds up to a movie that I liked a great deal but am unable to assure myself that this affection is genuine, or is it more like the love a parent feels for their potentially mediocre child?
Mindy Newell: Yiddishkeit
I miss bookstores. Being able to walk up and down the aisles, pulling out a title that sounds intriguing, perusing the dust jacket flap, sometimes sitting down on the floor and reading the first couple of pages…just killing a couple of hours lost in a bibliophile’s heaven.
Okay, bookstores aren’t entirely gone, but they are, as everyone knows, on the endangered list. My own first hint of this came about 15 years ago when the Borders in the Short Hills Mall closed up. It was astonishing—this was a bookstore that was always mobbed, no matter the time of day. Many, many people objected to the closing, and many, many people let the mall’s management know it; the customer service desk clerk told me, as I filled out the complaint form, that there were over 3,000 signatures in the first week alone protesting the shutdown, and demanding, if not the return of Borders, the opening of another book proprietor. I thought, and I’m sure many others thought, that the store closed because the management had raised its rent beyond what Borders was willing to pay. But now I think that I witnessed the beginning of the end. I knew for sure that bookstores were about to go the way of the dodo bird when I drove over to Hoboken one Sunday morning a few years ago to spend a few hours in the Barnes & Noble there to find that it was gone; I remember being shocked (“Holy shit!” I said out loud) because not only is that particular store is in a city with a university (Stevens Institute of Technology), but it is also home to the sort of population that publishers love and book stores crave—well-educated and upscale and readers.
I bring this up because I recently bought a book on Amazon that whetted my appetite, especially because it is the last work of the late, great Harvey Pekar, who was one of its editors. That book is [[[Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land]]]. According to the blurb on Amazon, which is lifted from the front flap of the book’s dust jacket:
Yiddish is everywhere. We hear words like nosh, schlep, and schmutz all the time, but how did they come to pepper American English, and how do we intuitively know their meaning?
Martha Thomases: Comic books make me a better person
I love comic books. I have since I was five years old. I even love comic books I don’t like. I love the way the whole of words and pictures is bigger (and better) than the parts. I love the way that great storytellers can take a blank piece of paper (or computer screen) and <a href=”
target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>make anything happen.
Comic books make me a better person.
This point was brought home to me this weekend, when I read this amazing story. In case you don’t read it (and you should because, like I said, amazing), it’s about an autistic young man who found a way to articulate his feelings and communicate with other people through Walt Disney Studios animated films.
Now, I don’t know much about autism,and it is not my intention here to act like I’m any kind of expert. However, in reading the story, I was reminded how much I learned about people from popular culture. The kid in the story used Disney cartoons. I liked them, too.
But it was comics that really taught me empathy.
Any fiction (and quite a bit of non-fiction) can put the reader into the head of another character, will let you see the world through her eyes. Comics can do this, and also let you see exactly how difference another being’s experience can be.
For example, when I was a kid, I loved the Legion of Super-Heroes. I started pretty much when the team did, with three members, two boys and a girl, all white as the driven snow. I liked Saturn Girl, but she was not a lot like me. I had trouble imagining what it was like to be her. However, as I read more stories, the team got more members. Triplicate Girl had brown hair, just like me. Shrinking Violet was shy, just like me.
And there was Chameleon Boy, with his orange skin and his antenna. He was funny. and cracked jokes, just like me. Brainiac 5 had green skin, and he was so smart that sometimes he annoyed the other kids, just like I did. I learned that I could identify with someone who didn’t look like me, whose body didn’t work the same way mine did, who came from a place way way different from Youngstown, Ohio.
Superhero comics literally taught me how to see the world through the eyes of others. What I mean is, sometimes the artist would depict the scenes from a character’s point of view, not from the outside. Along with captions and thought balloons, it was like being in another person’s head.
Later, when I was in Sunday School and learned about Marrano Jews, I already had some understanding of what it meant to have a secret identity. I’d seen people who had them who were not Jewish (although most, I would later learn, had been created by Jews). It helped me to understand other kinds of people who might feel they had to hide their differences from the mainstream.
It’s a little bit roundabout that I made the leap to understanding other humans through Durlans, Coluans and Kryptonians. I felt what it was like to be alien from actual aliens, not from meeting people from other countries. I felt what it was like to be different inside from the Thing in The Fantastic Four, not from knowing someone of another race or gender identity.
Does that sound condescending? That’s not my intention. I’m trying to explain how a five-year old, or an eight year old — and sometimes a 60 year old — needs stories (graphic and otherwise) to see the humanity in other humans. That’s what artists do.
And I’m grateful.
