Category: Columns

John Ostrander: Pop Food

When I was back in college, a girl I was dating teasingly insisted that if I had to choose between her and a double chocolate cake I would have to think hard. “Nonsense, my dear,“ I told her, “You exaggerate. I would always choose you.” After a beat, I added, “With infinite regret for having lost that double chocolate cake.”

The relationship with that young lady did not last but my relationship with chocolate and, indeed, food in general certainly has. I’ve become a pretty good home cook over the past few years and I credit television for a lot of that.

I was not into cooking all that much for most of my life. Oh. I could feed myself and even – on occasion – make a really good meal. Then one day I was reading in the newspaper an article about a new show coming onto the Food Channel (which at that point I not only didn’t watch but disdained). It was Iron Chef (the original Japanese version) that was described as a cross between a cooking show and a sports event. Well, that intrigued me enough to sample it and, in short order, I was hooked. It was complete with play-by-play announcer, a field reporter, an analyst, and guest commentators who also were part of the judging committee.

The Chairman who presided over it all was also over the top – heck, the whole thing was over the top – with florid weekly attire. Weekly challengers would come in to challenge the three (later four) Iron Chefs and, while the whole thing may have been rigged, it was played straight.

It led me into sampling more of the Food Channel which in those days included Sarah Moulton, Mario Batali, as well as Rachel Ray and Bobby Flay until the Food Channel became one of the most frequent stops for me on the dial. I also started checking out some of the food shows on other channels such as PBS where I discovered America’s Test Kitchen and its sister show, Cook’s Country, which are my two favorites. Sarah Moulton eventually migrated over to PBS as well and there’s the indomitable Lidia Bastianich, the Italian cooking grandma who scares the bejabbers out of me. I would never cross Lidia. However, she’s a great cook, good teacher, and excellent communicator.

I’ve learned things from them over the years, especially America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Country, and Sarah Moulton. Tips around the kitchen, recipes, ways to prepare food and even how I think about food. I subscribe to some of the magazines and bought some of the cook books and, in general, have become a much better cook as a result.

Things have changed along the way, some not for the better, IMO. The Japanese producer took Iron Chef off the air. An American version followed, with William Shatner as The Chairman but it was (thankfully) aborted after only a few episodes. It was terrible. Food Network launched its own Iron Chef America and it’s been pretty good. A bit tamer than the Japanese version but very watchable.

The problem is that it also ushered in a generation of cooking competitions that now dominate the network. There are battles over cupcakes, you can get Chopped, there are even competitions to decide who will be the next Iron Chef (whose roster has grown from three to a bloated six or seven). To get a cooking show on Food Network you now have to survive a competition called Food Network Star. Only one winner – Guy Fieri – can honestly be said to have gone on to become a real Food Network Star. The others get a show that seems to last a season or two and they’re gone.

The competition shows so dominate Food Network that the parent corporation had to create a new channel, the Cooking Channel, to house the shows that actually are about cooking. Some of the best cooks who were teachers – Mario Batali and Sarah Moulton – left (or perhaps were forced out). I’m watching less of it.

I know on the regular networks they’re even doing a talk/food show called The Chew. It sometimes has Mario Batali or Iron Chef Michael Symon on it, both of whom I enjoy, and I’ve tried watching it sometimes during my daily lunch break but, in general, I find it unwatchable. I know Rachel Ray has also gotten a syndicated talk show on which she also does some cooking but she’s not a great interviewer. If I want that kind of show (and I don’t often) I’ll watch Ellen.

I’ve watched a fair amount of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. It’s formula – Ramsey is asked to come in and help a struggling restaurant, he finds food, décor, and/or sanitary conditions deplorable, hollers and berates everyone in sight, makes things better, and leaves somewhat akin to a surly Scottish Lone Ranger. I mostly enjoy it even though I learn nothing and it’s successful enough to have spawned a rip-off imitation on Food Network and about a bajillion other Ramsey starring shows. You cannot watch all the shows Gordon Ramsey does and have any sort of real life. It would just take up too much of the day. He’ll probably have his own cooking channel shortly – all Gordon Ramsey, all the time. I suspect his ego would like that.

For me, it’s about the food, and can a show make me learn something new or does it make me want to run out and cook. My Mary and I saw one of Julia Child’s later cooking shows when she was in a kitchen with her friend, Jaques Pepin, and they were making hamburgers. They concocted what they considered to be the quintessential hamburger. It got us drooling so much that we ran out to find a place that served good hamburgers. What we got wasn’t on the scale of Julia and Jaques’ but we had to have a burger – any burger. That’s how well Julia communicated and why she was the Master Chef of television. Gawd, just remembering it is making me drool some more.

Excuse me, I’ve gotta go find something to eat.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

Marc Alan Fishman: In Defense of Modern Comics, Part 2

Welcome back to the ranting and raving, kiddos. Be forewarned, some time has passed since my last article – one week to be exact – but I’m still angry as all get-out. For those just joining us: Tim Marchman’s review of “Leaping Tall Buildings” in the Wall Street Journal was an incendiary piece of trash. The review meant to blame the lack of universal love (and sales) of comic books due (in part) to the “clumsily drawn” and “poorly written” books themselves. Last week, I argued on the side of the artists. This week, I mean to tackle this asshat’s jab at the scribes of our pulpy tomes.

To say that, on the whole, modern comics are “poorly written” is just about the silliest opinion I’ve heard since my buddy told me “Ranch dressing tastes bad on chicken.” First off, ranch is delicious on chicken. More to the point, modern comics are writing rings around previous generations. We’re in a renaissance of story structure, characterization, and depth. Writing, much like art, is largely subjective when it comes to collective opinion. That being said, certainly anyone with minimal brain power might be able to tell good writing from bad. Easy enough for us all to agree that the Avengers was better written than the Twilight movies. OK, maybe that’s a bit unfair. Axe Cop is better written than Twilight… and it’s penned by a six year old. Either way, I’d like to think we the people (of Comic Landia) might defend the quality of today’s comics as being leaps and bounds better than books of yesteryear.

I know this might be daring (and insane) of me to say… but for those old farts and fogies that proclaim comics “aren’t what they used ta’ be!” – and imply the scripts are worse now than they were in the 60s or 70s – should go back to the nursing home, and yell at the TV until dinner. Call it a sweeping declaration. Call it mean-spirited. But I call it as I see it: Modern books are simply written better. Today’s comics – when they are good – embrace pacing, motif, and intelligent payoffs by and large far more than ever previously. I assume Marchman, while researching for his article, was only reading Jeph Loeb books. And if that’s the case? He’s probably right. But I digress.

Open a book today. You’ll see things that previous generations simply failed to execute properly. A modern comic is unafraid to let the art speak for itself. Not every panel needs an explanatory caption box anymore. Gone are lengthy thought balloons that explain away every ounce of subtlety. Writers allow their characters time to emotionally deal with their actions, and end books on a down note when needed. And as much as terrible crime against nature it is, modern writers are even willing to ret-con, reboot, or reexamine the past of a character to better flesh out their drive or motive. It’s been done before, I know, but never as good as it’s being done now.

Comic writers today (again, “by and large”) embrace risk like no other generation before them. Guys like Kurt Busiek and Robert Kirkman channel their love and admiration of tropes and stereotypes, and drill down to new and unique concepts that spin old ideas into fresh ones. Dudes like Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman layer super-psuedo science and lofty concepts within their stories to transform the truly implausible to the sublimely believable… a metamorphosis of story that a Stan Lee would not have ever delivered to the true believers. And what of our own ComicMix brethren, whose bibliographies aren’t complete… Would John Ostrander or Dennis O’Neil say that the scripts they write today aren’t leaps and bounds better than their earlier work? As artists (be it with brush or word), we always strive to evolve. That equates to the present always being better than the past.

Simply put, Marchman’s postulation that the scripting of current comics is to blame for the lack of sales in comparison to alternative media (like movies or TV) is hilariously wrong. While he’s quick to back his point with the cop-out “continuity” argument, he lacks the niche-knowledge necessary to know how idiotic he sounds. With the advent of Wikipedia, friendly comic ship owners, digital publication of archive materials, as well as countless other online resources… the barrier to entry for someone truly interested in buying a comic is the commitment to seek out the backstory. To blame the lack of sales on an arbitrary assessment of the quality of the stories, was made without considering the avalanche of amazing material being published today.

If I can use a trope from the bag of Seth MacFarlane, I’d like to end on hyperbole. You see, Mr. Marchman, if you want me to believe that comics today are poorly written? I’d like you to read current issues of Action Comics, Batman, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Invincible Iron Man, Fantastic Four, The Boys, Dial H, Saga, Irredeemable, Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, Justice League, Green Lantern, Powers, Monocyte, The New Deadwardians, Batman Incorporated, Courtney Crumrin, Saucer County, Fatale, and Batwoman. Then get back to me. Until that time? Suck-a-duck.

SUNDAY: The Aforementioned Geriatric John Ostrander

Martha Thomases: Prometheus and the Comic Bookworm

In a seasonal confluence, the movie Prometheus opens today, just as Book Expo America (BEA) ends. In 1979, I saw the first Alien at a screening in Los Angeles at the American Booksellers Association convention, the precursor to BEA.

ABA (as it was known) is the professional convention for the publishing industry. Publishers have booths with which to show their upcoming titles, and booksellers from all over the country come to see what will fill their shelves. It’s a grand event where books are glamorous, authors are rock stars, and librarians are courted. It’s changed over the years – they are even experimenting with letting consumers in this year – but it remains a celebration of ideas and literacy.

It was my first time at ABA, but the man who would be my husband was an old hand. He’d been going since 1963, when he was 12 years old. His father had taken a job with a small bookstore in Minneapolis, which had ambitions to grow and become a national chain. That bookstore was B. Dalton. As a result, my husband was used to attending, and accustomed to being fussed over by publishing houses that wanted to make a good impression on his dad.

By 1979, his dad had long since left B. Dalton, Minneapolis, the United States and the Northern Hemisphere, but John still knew his way around the convention floor. He showed me how to get free books, catalogs, and all sorts of other cool stuff.

One of the cool things we got was a pair of tickets to a movie screening. Alien. The same booth had a graphic novel adaptation by our pals Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson (which seems to be on the fall list this year as well). I had never been to a movie screening before. I was really excited.

That night, I read the book. It scared me so much that I was unable to sleep. We were staying with my cousin in a tiny little cottage in Laurel Canyon, and every noise from outside sounded like a landing spaceship to me, not a coyote.

We left the convention with plenty of time to get to the theater for the movie. I had very particular ideas about the best place to sit (near the front, in the center of the row). I had to get there early enough so that I would have my choice of seats. I’m still like that. If you’re going to go to the movies with me, you had better be prepared to be at the theater half an hour before showtime.

Once the movie started, for the first 45 minutes or so, I was in heaven. I loved the way the future looked in the film. It was the first time I’d seen a spaceship that looked like people lived in it. There was dirt and grime. People put up New Yorker cartoons. The cast was great, and I especially loved John Hurt, whom I had only previously seen as Caligula in I, Claudius.

Boy, was I upset when his character was killed off.

You have to understand. I had read the book the night before. I knew what was going to happen. I knew the good guys were going to win at the end. And yet, I was still terrified. I was sitting in my seat, peaking through my fingers, knowing that I had about an hour left to sit in the theater and wait for the monster to jump out of dark places. Finally, I decided to go. I stepped over the many people sitting in my row (since I had to sit in the middle).

My husband had too much self-respect to leave. He later told me he did his best to hide under his seat.

And now, Prometheus is supposed to explain the story of what happened before Alien. It’s directed by Ridley Scott, whose eye for detail makes his films always worth watching. It was the film my husband was most looking forward to seeing this summer.

The trailers scare me.

I like to think of myself as a good feminist. I don’t need a man to give my life meaning, to pay my rent or open my pickle jars. And I don’t expect a man to protect me from movie monsters.

But I’m afraid to go to this movie by myself. Either I’ll find the courage, or take the cat.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman defends the modern comic book some more.

Dennis O’Neil: Are Comic Books… Invulnerable?

Call comics “the little issues that could?” Or maybe the “phoenix of mediatown?”

At least twice in my long – ye gods! – long association with the form, I thought they were going down. Not all the way down: I thought, sure, comics will survive, the way poetry and harpsichord music has survived, as entertainment for aficionados, the loyal few who are willing to make a sacrifice or two to keep something they love alive. But as something vaguely resembling a mass medium? Huh uh.

Comics’ first decline began in the late40s-early 50s, after a lot of self-righteous souls and maybe a few who were just plain ambitious condemned the funnybooks as either amusement for the mentally challenged or the devil’s pulp, luring the nation’s youth into wicked thoughts and, Lordy, Lordy, who knew what kind of naughty behavior? Dozens of publishers bit the big one and those that survived barely survived.

Then… something happened. I’m not sure exactly what. Part of it was that the country became aware and accepting of popular culture and, in the Kennedy era, maybe a little less anal, and part of it was that our two giants, Julius Schwartz and Stan Lee, reinvented superheroes and those characters were pretty much identified with the medium that begot them.

In the mid-seventies, when general interest magazines were virtually extinct – wha’d I do with my latest issue of Collier’s, anyway? – and it was becoming harder and harder for a kid to get his monthly Batman (Spider-Man, Herbie the Fat Fury, et. al.) because the small stores and newsstands where a kid could find his favorites were also becoming extinct, that crazy New Jerseyite Phil Seuling and a few like-minded visionaries created the direct market and suddenly comics had what Colliers and the other slicks and the pulp fiction magazines didn’t have: a place to sell the stuff. The direct market was a direct descendant of fan activities – the clubs, the conventions – and so, takes a bow, fans. You did your bit.

About a decade later, comics’ suffered an artificial boom when innocents with disposable income were led to believe that comics were investment: buy a hundred copies of Spawn #1 and put yourself through college! Well, no. It took the world about four years to realize that while Action Comics #1 could fetch over a hundred K at auction, it was mostly because there weren’t many copies left on the planet. It wasn’t hard to find a copy or two of the first Spawn. The boom was bust and some publishers vanished and the survivors suffered, having swollen to a size that accommodated the boom’s demand and was too big and too costly for the bust.

When I walked out of an editor’s office for the last time, a dozen years ago, I wondered if I wasn’t feeling the deck list beneath my feet. But, no. The news is that comics are again on an upswing, moving into the digital age, learning from past mistakes, benefitting from enormously popular film adaptations.

Okay, sooner or later comics publishing will end. But so will you and so will I.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases, Bookie

 

Mike Gold: Truth, Justice, and Spinelessness

Just as life is drifting into a lull, I can always count on Fox News to provide entertainment by going disproportionately apeshit. Case in point:

DC Comics made a big whoopdeedoo about one of their top characters coming out of the closet. Immediately, our friends at Fox said “It’s the end of the world! Superman is gay! Superman is gay!”

They were subsequently told Superman is not gay. Don’t tell Rick Santorum, but that caped dude Lois Lane’s been sleeping with is actually a strange visitor from another planet.

So Fox thought about it for a nanosecond and started braying “It’s the end of the world! Batman is gay! Batman is gay!”

They were subsequently told Batman is not gay. Perhaps they were also informed that psychiatrist Fredric Wertham beat them to that bullshit story over 60 years ago.

DC finally came clean and, as you undoubtedly know – particularly those of you who have been to your friendly neighborhood comic shop today – it’s Green Lantern who is gay. No, not the guy from last year’s unwatchable movie or the guy from this year’s better-than-expected CGI teevee series, not the black guy who was in the Justice League teevee show and has his own comic book and has been around for several decades, and not the guy with the Moe Howard reject haircut who was in the Brave and the Bold teevee show and also has his own comic book. Nor is it one of the hundred thousand or so space alien Greens Lantern. Nope. None of them.

It’s Alan Scott. The original Green Lantern. So original he predated the Green Lantern Corps by almost 20 years. The old dude who was ret-conned out of existence last year. Now he’s been reintroduced as a gay man.

The story received some press, much of it just shy of ridicule. Each piece I read was careful to point out that Alan Scott was not the guy in the comic books or in the movie. Each piece I read tried to justify its newsworthiness but came short. For good reason.

Showing the fourth-string (at best) Green Lantern to be gay is less than no big deal. Hal Jordan, yes. That would be a big deal. Barry (Flash) Allen, certainly. Wonder Woman, absolutely. Any one of what Warner Bros. refers to as the “family jewels” would have been newsworthy.

Gay characters in comics are no big deal. We introduced an ongoing, major gay character in Jon Sable Freelance in the early 1980s; having super-macho Sable deal with the revelation was unique for its time. A few years later, Marvel’s Northstar came out. Not a household name (nor was Alpha Flight – but the X-Men were), but a big deal for the time. Last week, Northstar got engaged, which was pretty cool. Over at Archie Comics, they introduced a gay character that Veronica Lodge fell for. That was an amazing story, a very courageous move for Archie because it is almost totally dependent upon newsstand sales and therefore was taking a risk of tainting its brand. Quite the opposite happened: Kevin Keller graduated from supporting character to mini-series star to his own title, all within a year.

In the face of growing acceptance of same-sex relationships, DC revealed its spinelessness by outing a character few people have heard of (you’d have to have been collecting social security for years for you to have been a reader of All-American Comics) and even fewer people care about. There was no risk of an Alan Scott movie or television series, no action figures at Toys R Us or Wal-Mart, no ancillary revenues put in jeopardy.

This is not a knock on the creative talent involved: James Robinson has been one of the best writers practicing the craft today and he’s held that status in my fanboy brainpan for quite a while. I don’t know if Alan Scott’s still got those kids; there’s no reason why he shouldn’t but that would show more guts than DC has offered thus far.

It is not DC Comics’ job to bring truth and justice to the American way. But making such a big deal over such a small event is just pandering.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil talks comics’ survival

 

Emily S. Whitten: Comics – We’re In This Together!

I’ve been writing for much of my life, whether for school and my career, for my blog and online columns, or creatively. In the creative vein, I’ve written short stories, and poetry, and silly humorous things, and am currently working on-and-off on two novels. But in none of those endeavors did, or do, I have a collaborator – a.k.a. a partner in crime! Writing is generally a lonely business. It can be a joyous experience; but even if you have an idea you know you want to express, it can also be a struggle to formulate it, get it down on paper or in a Word document, edit it, and then show it to another human being. That last bit can be especially hard. Even if you’ve been encouraged in your writing, it can be damned difficult to open yourself up for criticism about something so personal – a thing that’s come out of your head and your (mental) sweat and tears, and that you think you might just love, but fear others may scoff at.

For example: back in high school, I was a winner in a fairly competitive poetry contest for which the prize was $100 (yay!), a book of poetry, an invitation to read your poems at a local event for the judges, some poets, the other winners and their parents, and then an opportunity to read on stage at the Dodge Poetry Festival. I didn’t make the Dodge Poetry Festival, seeing as how I had to be in another state starting college the week before it occurred, but I did go to the local reading. I’m not generally a nervous public speaker when it comes to presentations or debates but on that day I was thoroughly dreading getting up and reading my own creations in front of everyone – and particularly the professional poets and other winners.

What made it worse, of course, was that with my “W” last name, I was one of the last to read. I sat there and listened as winner after winner read these deep, sorrowful poems about dying and winter and illness and frozen birds (really) and all of this very, very angsty stuff, and I started wondering if perhaps the judges had added my name to the winners’ list by accident. You see, the poem I’d chosen to read was sort of a happy thing, about nature and peace and contentment and family; and as I listened to all of this raw, dark emotion pouring out I thought, “You know, I don’t actually think I’m supposed to be here. Can I just go home now, please?” Even after being chosen as a winner, I was still afraid I didn’t really fit in there, and nobody who listened would think my little poem was any good, and I’d be left standing at the podium in embarrassed silence while everyone just sort of stared at me or, worse, golf-clapped.

Fortunately, it all went fine, and one of the poet-judges came up and shook my hand and said he’d really enjoyed my poems. I’d like to say that I’m completely over that sort of negative thinking now – but I’m not. Although I am better at sharing my work these days, I still sometimes feel as if whatever I’ve just written is awful (this column! It stinks! Get the Febreze!); and I’d hazard a guess that many successful writers still deal with that fear as well. However, I’ve found one method of writing that doesn’t come with the side effect of staring dully at your computer at 2 a.m. while moaning, “This is just terrible.” And it is: collaboration!

One of the best things I’ve discovered about writing comics in particular is how much fun it can be to collaborate, with either an artist or another writer; and how, if you’re lucky, you can find someone who not only complements your own ideas but adds to them to make the whole shebang that much better. Comics is an art form that naturally lends itself to collaboration and often actually requires it, and I’ve learned that I love that.

One great thing about having a collaborator is that you’re both in the creative process together, with the goal of producing a good end product; and so you have someone who cares as much as you do to tell you if they think something’s funny or if it works, or to bounce ideas off of, or to brainstorm with. Because you know they care, you can trust that they’ll be honest in their opinions or suggestions on how to improve the work. Having that other person adds a new dimension of fun to the process, gives you ongoing external feedback that you can trust, and, for me at least, strips away a lot of that internal worry about whether one single other person out there will like my work – because I already know that there’s at least one other person out there who likes it enough to work on it with me!

I first learned the fun of collaborating while working with Marc Vuletich, who’s the artist for all of the webcomics I’ve written to date. I “met” Marc (in the internet sense) two years ago after seeing his work on DeviantArt, and particularly this comic (so wrong but so funny). I’d commented on a few of the webcomics he’d done with Liam Bradley, and then later on I got a Deadpool script idea (which turned into this strip). But, alas, I cannot draw (well not very well, anyway). So I contacted Marc and asked him if he was game to draw it for me. Happily, he was, and it turned out he’d actually read Ask Deadpool before, and liked it, which was a pretty good sign for us working together.

Thus begun our collaboration. I could tell from the first comic that he was going to be fun to work with, because not only did he enjoy my scripts, but he made me laugh at my own comic, adding things I hadn’t mentioned but that fit right in with the spirit of the script, or doing such a good job on a character’s expression that it was just like what I’d pictured, only somehow better. Marc’s work improved on my vision, and strange as it may sound, that made me enjoy my own writing more. It also helped me to see where I could improve my writing, as, for instance, when I would get too wordy and then realize there was no way Marc could fit all of that text into one frame. Okay, so I’m still too wordy sometimes (sorry, Marc!) – but at least now I know it!

Writing for an artist also helps a writer better visualize and develop the balance of text versus action that makes a scene work. Seeing the results of your imagination as visualized by someone else provides new ideas for future ways to frame things or order your storyline. And, of course, working with someone else forces better discipline when it comes to responsibly meeting deadlines, as you need to finish writing in time for your artist to draw the comic and send it back for editing and finalization.

One of the great things about collaboration can be when you find someone you work well with, and work with them long enough to establish a good sense of teamwork and synchronicity. I asked Marc to weigh in on what working together is like, to see if his perspective matched mine, and here’s what he said:

“Emily is really great to work with. First, we both share the same passion for the character Deadpool, and second, her writing style totally complements his comedic personality which makes drawing her comics so enjoyable. The scripts are always very descriptive, which gives me a clear picture of what she’s looking for, while at the same time I still have the artistic freedom to add my own little touches to the comic. The only trouble I used to run in to was finding a way to balance the amount of dialogue in each panel with the action happening around it, but now that we’ve been working together for a while I think we’ve reached this cool little groove where we know exactly what each other wants and we make this awesome team because of it.”

Yep, I think we’ve got some synchronicity going.

Along with my collaborations with Marc (and he’s working on a new script right now that may appear here soon), as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I’ve recently started working with another writer to develop a new comic series that will be epic in scope. I don’t know if it was luck or fate, but it just so happens that we started talking at just the right time and under just the right circumstances to come up with this fantastically fun idea and discover that we are the perfect foils for each other’s zany brainstorming. I’ll suggest a scenario, and he’ll add something that’s like the missing puzzle piece as to why that scene would be awesome. Or he’ll say something that I’d never have thought of but that fits perfectly into another idea I haven’t even mentioned to him yet. And the best part of all is that he loves my ideas just as much as I do, and vice-versa. There’s no sitting around worrying about whether anyone but me thinks this would be any good – instead, there’s enthusiasm on both sides and a new horizon of infinite possibilities stemming from our creative partnership.

I can tell you right now that this is probably the most creative fun I’ve had in my whole life. And it’s a writing experience I might never have if it weren’t for the collaborative nature of comics. So hooray for comics, and collaboration, and the way this process helps us overcome our writing inhibitions and become better creators.

And remember, we’re in this together! So until next time, Servo Lectio!

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold Outs Much Ado About Nothing

 

Mindy Newell: Success And Failure, Part 2

We pick up the story a few months after my parents pulled me out of Quinnipiac and sent me off to work to “learn the value of a dollar.”

I joined the drones commuting to lackluster jobs on Wall Street. Got a job as a receptionist. Had my first experience with sexual harassment from the big boss, though it wasn’t called that back then and zero-tolerance policies were still twenty years in the future. Didn’t crumble. Called the guy an asshole and quit. A good feeling. Went home. Worried about what the parents would say. Told them I got laid off. Said I would start looking for a new job “tomorrow.” Picked up my battered copy of Exodus (by Leon Uris) and started reading. Started crying instead. (Failure). Coincidentally the movie version of Exodus was on television that night. I watched it. Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan. Oscar-winning score.

Went to sleep. With the soundtrack of Exodus and Paul Newman’ blue eyes – hell, just everything Paul Newman – keeping me company in my dreams.

The next day I told my parents I needed a little time, I’d start looking for a new job on Monday. Went to the laundromat, and while my clothes were spinning in the washer I finished Exodus. Also decided that I was going to go to Israel. Live on a kibbutz. Meet my own version of Ari Ben Canaan and marry him. Raise a bunch of sabras. (Look it up.)

I was still just along for the ride.

Now my family was never especially “Zionist.” Supportive of Israel? Of course. But I once asked my grandmother – whom family legend says walked from Poland to Germany with two little kids in tow (my Aunt Ida and Uncle Philly) and hiring herself out as a laundress, cook, whatever, to make money for the journey to Hamburg, where they took passage to America – why she didn’t go to Palestine instead. “Why would I go from a country where the Poles shot at Jews to a country where the Arabs shot at Jews just to live in tents and dirt?” she scoffed. “Here you can live like a mensch.” And when my dad, who was a fighter pilot in WWII – flew Mustangs in the CBI for you WWII history buffs out there – was approached by the fledgling – well, basically non-existent back then – Israeli Air Force to train pilots, he and my mother were not willing to give up their American citizenship, which was a real possibility at the time.

So when I announced that I was going to go to Israel for six months, live on a kibbutz, study Hebrew – no one in the family was exactly jumping for joy. Especially Grandma. But they knew I was unhappy – hell, they knew I was “lost” before I did – and were questioning their decision to pull me out of school, so, well, being good and loving parents, they said okay.

I hated Israel.

Yes, I must be the only Jew in America that hated her visit to the land of her forefathers.

Well, let me rephrase that a little. I didn’t hate Israel itself. I couldn’t stand the Israelis I met. The kibbutz I landed on was Shefayim, one of the original kibbutzim (which was cool), founded by Russian Jews imbued with Theodore Herzl’s dream, sitting on the Mediterranean coast. It was beautiful, but the kibbutzniks were another matter. I found them incredibly arrogant and judgmental towards America and the Americans. They were always saying really nasty things about the United States to me and the other Americans in my group of starry-eyed wanderers. And at the same time, they were trying to recruit us to move permanently to Israel. All they ever said to us Americans was that we were Jews who happened to be American and we belonged in Israel. All I ever said back to them was “No, I’m an American who happens to be a Jew, thank you very much.” Okay, so that didn’t exactly endear me to them, but c’mon. I wasn’t going around telling them that I thought the way they treated the Palestinians was shitty. I just wanted to learn some Hebrew, pick oranges in the orchards and milk the cows in the barn, and take side trips to Jerusalem and Haifa and Tel Aviv and the Sea of Galilee, explore the country of my ancestors.

I wanted to belong somewhere. I hadn’t belonged at Quinnipiac. I sure as hell didn’t belong at that job on Wall Street. I had wanted to belong in Israel.

But I didn’t.

After two months I called my parents and told them I was coming home. My father said, “Don’t come home. Fly to Paris or Rome or London or Madrid, instead. Call me when you land, I’ll send you money through American Express. Take advantage of being there. See Europe.”

An incredibly generous – and loving – offer.

But what I heard was “Don’t come home.”

Feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere.

Feeling like an utter failure.

To be continued…

TUESDAY MORNING: Michael Davis, black in back

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Emily S. Whitten discusses creativity and togetherness

 

John Ostrander: Great Horny Toads!

Censorship can, sometimes, be a spur to the creative mind. It’s more often a pain in the ass but there are times when a creative mind finds ingenious ways of getting around the bans, whatever they may be.

For example, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, them crazy guys who created South Park (and, even more oddly, the Tony Award winning musical The Book of Mormon) originally wanted to call the South Park movie South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose. That got rejected by the MPAA for having the word “Hell” in the title. Parker and Stone re-named the film “Bigger, Longer, Uncut,” which is more salacious. Evidently, the MPAA were the only ones who didn’t get the penis reference. Creativity trumps censorship.

George Carlin in 1972 famously listed seven words you could never say on television. Not only can I say them here, but I think editor Mike Gold would insist. They are: “shit,” “piss,” “fuck,” “cunt,” “cocksucker,” “motherfucker,” and “tits.’’ These days I think you can get away with “shit,” “piss,” and “tits” on television sometimes) but the other ones are still right out. You definitely can’t say any of them in mainstream comics.

For example, Marvel’s Luke Cage is a streetwise badass motherfucker who swears like your granny. “Sweet Christmas!” is his most common swear word. When I wrote him in Heroes For Hire, I had a villain taunt him about it. Cage, as he beat the shit/poo (take your pick) out of the guy explained it was because his grandma didn’t approve of swearing and “she was tougher than you.”

On Battlestar Galactica, instead of saying “fuck,” the characters said “frak” but we all knew what they meant. The word has gone on to enter the vocabulary of the fans and some other sci/fi works. One of the things I enjoy about it is that the process of raping the earth and poisoning it to get at natural gas is called “frakking.’’ For me, it means they’re fucking us all to get at the natural gas and its profits.

George Carlin also famously noted that when we say “Fuck you” we’re actually wishing something nice on a person. Working from that, in some sci-fi stuff I tried replacing “fuck” with “nuke,” as in “Nuke you and the nuking horse you came in on.” Or calling someone a “mothernuker.’’ “Nuke” has the harsh “uk” sound as “fuck” and hoping that someone gets nuked is not wishing them a good time. However, the substitution seemed a little forced and drew too much attention to itself. It read like the author was trying to be clever, which I guess he was, so I dropped it. Sometimes you just can’t beat the fucking classics.

Worse than that is anything sexual. You can rip a guy’s arm off and beat another guy to death with it, all the while spurting gouts of blood but you show too much skin or a couple getting it on or (Christian Right Forbid!) any sort of same sex naughtiness going on and there will be a hue and cry far greater than any uproar over profanity. See the current Right Wing brouhaha over Alan Scott’s Green Lantern being gay or Northstar over at Marvel marrying his boyfriend.

For a long time, if a movie had a couple in bed together, at least one of them had to have one foot on the floor. On TV, I remember that on The Dick Van Dyke Show, whenever they went to the bedroom of Rob and Laura Petrie, they had separate beds. Who were they fooling? I was young at that time and even I, sheltered Roman Catholic boyo that I was, knew my folks slept in the same bed. I didn’t want to think whatever else they might be doing in that bed (still don’t – shudder!) but I knew sure as hell they didn’t have separate beds.

Still, there is a certain sexuality, a certain sensuality in suggestion rather than in statement. I remember when First Comics was doing Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! everyone talked about the sex and the nudity and all except … there wasn’t. It was implied. Sexy, yes – and sensual. It was a great, classic series whose rep is dirtier than the book ever was.

Over at DC, on Wasteland, we did all sorts of crap. We tossed a baby out of a window in a story called R.Ab (which stood for retroactive abortion) and we managed to honk off both pro-lifers and pro-choicers (and, if memory serves, our publisher) at the same time. We eviscerated a biology teacher for laughs and tried to get the reader into the mind of a serial killer among other things. Without bad language and without sex. We got accused of bad taste, which we reveled in, but rarely bad language or blatant sex.

I’m not saying that the envelope shouldn’t be pushed or that censorship is a good thing. However, if you try to establish boundaries and tell creative folks not to go there, odds are the creative folks figure out a way around it, if they can. That’s why they’re called creative. They’re never more creative when trying to do something naughty. Or juvenile. Or naughty juvenile.

Whoaaaa! Sounds dirty, that! Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

Marc Alan Fishman: In Defense of the Modern Comic, Part 1

Once again, my Facebook friend Jim Engel tipped me off to another jumping-on point for a rant. I think I owe him a Coke. Seems someone at the Wall Street Journal perked up at the news that the Avengers crossed the bajillion bucks meter, and it stemmed a very obvious question: If the movie is that popular, shouldn’t there be some kind of carry-over to the parent media? And the simple answer is one we comic fans hate to admit: Ain’t no carry-over cash coming through the doors of the local comic shop over this (or any other) movie. So the WSJ writer, one Tim Marchman, decided to take his book review of “Leaping Tall Buildings” and turn it into a tirade on the industry  I want so badly to call home. Now don’t get me wrong, Marchman makes a few solid points. OK, he makes a lot of them. But I know you guys like me when I’m pissy… And one point in particular boils my blood faster than Wally West got eliminated from the New 52:

“If no cultural barrier prevents a public that clearly loves its superheroes from picking up a new Avengers comic, why don’t more people do so? The main reasons are obvious: It is for sale not in a real bookstore but in a specialty shop, and it is clumsily drawn, poorly written and incomprehensible to anyone not steeped in years of arcane mythology.”

First off? On behalf of the industry as a whole? Fuck you. And normally I refrain from the potty mouth, but here is one occasion I feel damned correct in using it. Second, let me clarify where my anger lies. I agree with him about location. The local comic shop is indeed a specialty store. One that carries a stigma of exclusivity that can’t be broken, except on very rare occasion. Most comic shops try hard to throw open their doors to the general public in hopes of enticing them in with their fictiony wares, but the general public doesn’t look to consume their books off the shelf anymore. Ask Borders. But I digress.

I won’t even argue his point about continuity. I could easily argue that, mind you, and if people respond violently enough to this article I may talk about it in a few weeks. Suffice to say, yes, it’s a big barrier to entry. Anyone walking in, fresh out of the theater, would be hard pressed to know where exactly to start reading an Avengers comic. The movie-roster tie-in isn’t well-liked by any reviewer, and the modern Bendis epic-arcs (Disassembled, Civil War, Dark Reign, etc.) are amazingly dense with history. Enough at least to perhaps scare off someone from really taking a leap of literary faith. Again, I digress.

The jab Marchman takes specifically toward the “Clumsily Drawn” aspect of modern comics. Frankly, I don’t get where he’s coming from.

Let’s talk about those clumsy drawings he’s obviously so urped by. Take a look across the racks of your local comic store. Do you see what I see? I see a breadth of styles more diverse than any other period of comic book publishing. Do you think, even for a nano-second, that years ago you’d see Travel Foreman’s sketchy macabre style sharing shelf space with Mobius-inspired types like Frank Quitely and Chris Burnham? Or the crisp and clean lines of the Dodsons bunked-up nice and cosy next to the loose and energetic John Romita, Jr.? No. You’d get 17 Rob Liefeld clones boasting whips, chains, impossible guns, and thigh pouches. Go back to the 80’s? You’d get a sea of house-styled Neal Adams / Dave Gibbons / George Pérez wanna-bees and an occasional Bill Sienkiewicz or Frank Miller thrown in.

I truly believe we are in an amazing time for comic book art. Artists and editors are finding a real balance between new styles, and composition to tell a story. Not every book is perfect mind you (and yes, there is still a house style to both Marvel and DC… but assuredly not as rigid as it once was). On the whole, a comic off the rack today has more chance of being an original artistic statement than a commanded tracing of “something that sells.” While comic sales have plummeted from the false peaks of the 90’s… I truly doubt it is the fault of the art on hand. Well, except for Scott McDaniels’ stuff. Yeesh.

Now, I know that there’s some debate amongst my ComicMix brethren about this point-in-question. I openly beg for some of that debate to happen in the comments below. I’m hard-pressed to believe that on an industry level that the artwork is to blame for comics’ dwindling sales. As I look across the smattering of books I’ve been reading these days – Daredevil, Invincible Iron Man, Batman, The Boys, The Manhattan Projects… and flip through the pages of artists truly giving their all to every panel – I get a little verklempt. I want all of you to go on with out me. I think about this Marchman, and all I can think is “Ver es kon kain pulver nit shmeken, der zol in der malchumeh nit gaien!”

Now go on… discuss!

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Martha Thomases on Neil Gaiman and Alison Bechdel

As if to offer a bookend to last week’s column about Neil Gaiman and creativity, Amazon delivered Alison Bechdel’s new book, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama. A companion to her harrowing and brilliant previous book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which was about her father’s life in the closet and eventual suicide, Are You My Mother is about her relationship with her mother, and the life of an artist.

I’ve been a huge fan of Bechdel’s work since I first saw her strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. The sense of humor on display here, making fun of the challenges facing those who aspire to change the world with their passion, fervor, and political correctness, mirrors my own. (If you, too, like Bechdel’s series, I can’t recommend The Complete Wendel enough because Howard Cruse is incredibly funny.) I know the people in the strip. I identified with these characters so closely that I would sometimes question my sexual orientation.

Are You My Mother isn’t funny. I mean, there are some laughs, but the story is about the struggle the artist faces when she tries to make art that is honest and meaningful and, with luck, lucrative enough to make a living. The struggle involves the women she loves, including her mother and her therapists. I’ve read some criticism of this book that centers on the sections about psychiatry, saying they are too literal, too heavy-handed. I didn’t find that to be true. I thought they reflected the artist’s zeal to find answers, to find ways to heal her pain.

Gaiman discussed the nuts-and-bolts of an artist’s life. He talked about what to do, what kind of jobs to take, how to deal with discouragement, and how to carry on. Bechdel describes the work, the really hard parts, where you have to dig and be honest, no matter what the consequences.

I don’t think these two perspectives are in conflict, nor do I think one is superior to the other. I think, in fact, both are saying the same thing: that to be an artist, one has to find one’s unique gift, and then one has to present it to the world. No one else has the same gift, so no one else can do your work for you.

For example, this week, I’ve been mesmerized by a begonia I planted on my terrace. It is red, with an orange undertone and a blush of rose. There is a gray spot on it, one that is probably the first bit of mortality. I cannot stop staring at it. Even when the sky is overcast, the petals seem to glow. I can’t tell you why this moves me so much. Perhaps, in a previous life, I was a queen in India, and my king presented me a jewel with the same tones. Perhaps I lost a beloved baby blanket with that color. It looks a bit like blood, thinned with lemon juice. I know that every writer I enjoy would find a different story to explain it.

As should I.

Gaiman and Bechdel are describing the same thing, but inside out from each other. Either way, it still fits.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

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