Captain America, Abbie Hoffman and the sexy statue in the women’s department? What the heck do they have in common?
Hey, everyone, it’s Memorial Day here in the beautiful lower Hudson Valley and if we venture out into the sunshiny pre-summer day, we’ll be seeing some flags. Flags flapping from flagstaffs, flags draped on the front of houses, flags on cars and maybe shop windows and if we drive west, toward New City, we’ll see flags – a lot of flags – displayed along the road that passes over the reservoir because somebody – I have no idea who – hangs them from roadside poles there.
Maybe I’ll even throw them a salute or two, those flags, for old times sake. (At one point, my life was full of salutes. Not so much anymore.)
The other day, en route to a department store escalator, I passed a curvy mannequin clad in a bikini that seemed to be fashioned from, yes, a flag. I didn’t salute – hell, I didn’t even leer – but it’s just possible that I thought of Abbie Hoffman and Captain America.
Abbie, most of you may not know (because his moment happened before most of you were born) led protests of the Viet Nam war. (He was smart, charismatic and energetic and articulate and, come to think of it, a friend of ComicMix’s own Mike Gold.) In 1968, in Washington, Abbie was arrested for wearing a shirt that looked like a flag. This is not as draconian as it might seem (though it’s still plenty draconian): in those days, most states had anti-flag desecration laws. So, technically, Abbie was breaking the law.
His conviction was appealed, and overturned. Sometimes the universe is just.
I wonder: would the law have pounced on, say, a lady wearing a stars-and-stripes bathing suit? The flag code, which is promoted by patriotic organizations, specifies “no part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.” Surely, a swimming suit, however minimal, qualifies as an “athletic uniform.”
And what if our swimmer lies down for a snooze on the beach? Again, the code: “The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.” Wouldn’t sand be as insulting as water? (And what kind of “merchandise” are we talking about, anyway?)
If our hypothetical bathing beauty is in trouble, Captain America had really better watch his p’s and q’s. Remember: “No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume…” And doesn’t Cap roll around in the dirt dodging bullets and the like?
I guess, at the end of the day, it all depends on who’s wearing the symbol, and why, and on who presumes to sit in judgment. That’s what the flag is, a symbol. Or a rectangle of colored cloth. But I won’t be entirely facetious if I salute it, later today, though what I’ll be saluting is probably different from what a tea partier salutes, or what is honored by the old men who send young men to war.
It’s beginning to appear as though we’re moving away from one of the pillars of superherodom, the secret identity. Even though this movement started back in the early 1960s with The Fantastic Four, it’s moved slowly up to the breakthrough moment in the first Iron Man movie.
Of course, that was telegraphed a few years before by my pal Mike Grell during his run on the comic book, but Marvel squeezed that back in the tubes where it sat until the movie people showed them Mike was right in the first place.
Such pettiness aside, I welcome the departure from tradition. The secret identity was almost always a stupid idea. Clark Kent became Superman to protect his friends and loved ones from harm? Okay, fine. I can appreciate that even the Man of Steel can not keep an eye on Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, Lex Luthor (well, they used to be friends…), Linda Lee, Lionel Luthor, and Leslie Luckabee simultaneously, 24/7. But let’s do a little reality testing here: all Toyman has to do is grab Agnes Applebee off of the streets and hold a gun to her head and Superman is in the exact same pickle.
There were worthy exceptions. I can see why Bruce Wayne covers up: he doesn’t want all those people inconvenienced by the Dark Knight’s activities to sue the poo outta him. Going back to the dawn of the pulp era, the incredibly wealthy nobleman Don Diego de la Vega was committing high treason every time he dressed up as Zorro: to the natives of California he was a hero, but to the Power he was a terrorist. Even then, Zorro revealed his identity at the end his first tale, The Curse of Capistrano, but author/creator Johnston McCulley overlooked this aberration in his five-dozen subsequent stories.
Arguably the first costumed hero (Spring-Heeled Jack was a villain, and was further disadvantaged by being ostensibly real) was the Scarlet Pimpernel, created 14 years before Zorro by Baroness Emmuska Orczy in 1905. He had the same excuse as Don Diego: he was committing treason, in this case against the French Revolution. He and his 19-member legion ran around rescuing their fellow aristocrats from the best of times, the worst of times. So, sure, he had a good reason for his secret identity.
But Superman? Not so much. Wonder Woman? Give me a break; army nurse turned Second Lieutenant Diana Prince was wasting her powers as anything other than Princess Diana. The X-Men? They had no lives; did they need masks because “Hey, Beast!” sounds better than “Hey, Hank!”? Doctor Strange didn’t have a secret identity; in real life, he was Doctor Strange. If the wrong people got the right idea, he’d mystically brainwash them. Spider-Man? C’mon, we’d be better off without Aunt May.
The man with one of the most famous secret identities of all time – or, perhaps, two – in fact didn’t have a secret identity at all. Were he to be unmasked, he would be nothing.
I’ll tell you about him next week.
THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil Talks About Mike Gold’s Old Boss
So in my first column discussing differences in the way guys and gals are treated by the comics industry, I’m totally going to start with a gender stereotype, ‘cause that’s just how I roll. Here it is:
Women love to shop.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read anything by me before that I will now say, “Okay, stereotypes are silly and that’s actually not true of all women. My sister, for instance, hates malls and isn’t a huge fan of shopping in general.” But it is true that I, a grown female comics fan with a desire to occasionally spend money on comic-y things, do love to shop; and since this is my column, we’re going to talk about me! (That’s also how I roll.) And about the fact that I am often disappointed, as both a shopper and a comics fan, by what’s offered to female fans in the way of comics merchandise, and generally by the way the industry seems to view the female demographic.
I do feel like there’s been some (read: glacial) improvement in this area in the past few years. But I don’t understand why it’s taking so long, or why there’s such difficulty in marketing to women (and in, simultaneously, notinsulting them in the process).
The way I see it, the goals of comics merchandisers are to take all my monieessssss and maybe have me advertising comics for them along the way, right? And to do that in such a way that I’m overjoyed to give them all my monieessssss and, say, wear the Bat-symbol across my chest? Okay, I don’t actually know what their goals are – although I do know that in 2009 Marvel’s president of consumer products seemed to think that in some way, marketing stuff to women might“alienate” their core of male consumers. Which is hilarious, since literally any geek guy I’ve ever talked to either wouldn’t even notice women’s products at all or thinks it’s cool to see women expressing their geek side.
But if I were a Comics Marketing Overlady, those would be my goals. Which could also be stated, in a slightly less evil way, as “Making successful products that promote the brand and appeal specifically to the target demographic.” Or even, “Making spectacular shit women would punch other people in the face to obtain.” You know, something like that. There could also be something in the mission statement about making people happy, I don’t know. Maybe the marketeers are also genuine geeks and they actually get super-hyped about their products and want us to be too. If so, that’s extra-awesome. That’s where the best products come from.
But if these are their goals, then why isn’t there more truly amazing comics merch out there for women? Don’t get me wrong – I love a good collectible figure just as much as the next geek (and I would, for instance, consider robbing a small child if it meant I could afford to buy this statue). But along with the stuff that anybody might like, there’s also a lot of stuff out there that’s pretty much designed for guys, with gals being a marketing afterthought if they’re thought of at all; and not only is that a saaaaad imbalance, but I also think marketers are missing out on some shockingly easy money-making opportunities.
Here are just a few examples of areas where the comics industry could really do better in marketing to women.
T-shirts: As stated, I’m a woman. Ergo, I ain’t built like a man, and any time I try to wear a shirt cut for a dude I look stupid. No matter how great the image, I never buy a tee unless it’s cut for women. Even if I get a man-cut shirt with a cool design for free the best it can hope for is to go in my “possibly pajamas someday” pile, because I refuse to leave the house looking like I’m wearing someone’s big brother’s clothes. Now, happily, this is an area where there seems to be more choice lately. In fact, I own that Batgirl shirt (photo above) and have worn it to at least two cons. I love it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t think of a bunch of times when I’ve seen a cool shirt design and it isn’t available for women. Despite there being more choice now, a majority of shirts still seem to be available only in guy-cut. And even when there are gal-cut shirts, sometimes the design that looks great on a guy shirt doesn’t work so well on a gal shirt, and I have to wonder if the designers are paying much attention to what women look like (hint: if you put a big rectangular design on the front of a woman’s shirt, it is going to be weirdly distorted and possibly some of it will disappear entirely). Maybe do some women’s shirts with smaller designs on the front, and the big panels on the back of the shirt? Just a thought, y’all.
Also, there have been some weird missteps when the companies do try to aim for that female demographic. Take the “Girls Rule!” shirt with full-grown lady superheroines on it that came out a couple of years ago. Maybe it’s just me, but I think calling women “girls” all the time trivializes them and yet is so culturally accepted that most of us do it without even thinking. But do think about it for a minute – would most grown men gravitate towards a shirt with grown male superheroes that proudly declared “Boys Rule!”
Haaaaaa, please.
And then there were those oh-so-charming “I heart men in uniform” and “I only date superheroes” shirts. I mean, okay, it’s cute I guess. Some women might buy that. But still – flip the demographic again and think about how many men would go for a “I only date superheroines” shirt over other designs? Although I think this particular issue goes to a much larger issue regarding women in comics, I really feel that we could get some better t-shirt designs for women if more people out there gave a toss about trying.
Beauty items: I love it when the comics industry tries to market beauty items (like make-up and such) to women, because almost always it fails spectacularly and I get to either laugh or rant about it. But, okay, I’d love it more if they actually started getting it right (I feel like the only time I’ve seen that so far was with the JADS International’s Black Widow perfume, and even there, they really should have done at least one more perfume, in a cool scent). Here’s a great example from 2009 of how the industry is kind of clueless about this stuff. The Lotta Luv Cosmetics partnership discussed there had me shaking my head and scoffing. Okay, yes, if they are only aiming at fairly young girls, the bubble-gum colors and flavors might appeal; but if they want to market to the people who are most likely to spend money on make-up (adult women) they should try another tack; and either way, what is with the ‘50s femme vibe they’ve got going on, which is far removed from anything I or most modern gals would identify with? Not what I want to see in my modern female comics products, something I also noted after the recent SpyGal Marvel/Benefit Cosmetics partnership announcement.
Also, I’m going to let Marvel (and everyone else) in on a little secret here: if female fans are going to spend money on comics make-up, it’s going to be because the make-up is good, or unique, or both. Sure, we’ll buy it over other stuff if everything else is equal, or if it’s a super-awesome product, but the product itself is key. Here’s an example: Last weekend I went to the Nebula Awards Weekend, which honors science fiction writers each year. And while a bunch of us ladies were geeking out over our friends’ geek accoutrements (like io9’s Annalee Newitz’s awesome iCufflinks) one showed me her nails – which were painted with tiny planets. Perfect for the Nebulas, and I was totally in awe and immediately jealous of her unique and geeky nails. I would have gone to a salon and plunked down money to get those, too! They were super-awesome, and you know what else would be? Superhero nail decals! Get on that, comics marketers. I’d wear ‘em.
Another example: I think Twilight is awful, at the very least because Stephanie Meyer slowly serial-kills the dignity and grace of the English language page by page, to say nothing of the bizarre lessons it seems to be teaching regarding relationships and self-worth. Nevertheless, when my friend told my there was a blood red Twilight lip plumper product on the market, I bought it. Even though I had never once considered trying a lip plumper before that. Why? Because I actually needed some red lipstick for a costume I was doing, and because I was fascinated and curious regarding the apparent effect of the gloss (my friend’s description was something like, “it stings a lot and then it makes your lips look bigger!”).
Hey, I’m a geek, which is usually accompanied by an appreciation for quirky things; so I had to try this stuff that apparently changed the very fabric (so to speak) of one’s lips. This is also why I bought magnetic nail polish. Because what geek can resist a product that gives your nails awesome designs through science? But I digress. My point here is: if you want to market beauty items to geek gals: 1) remember that we are gals who likely know a lot about make-up, and make sure the product is awesome or geeky, not just the packaging; and 2) make the packaging cooler. And no stuff from the ‘50s, please.
Quality accessories:I won’t go on too much about these, since there’s really not that much to criticize at this point… but that’s kind of the problem. Why aren’t there more, say, necklaces with a nice sterling silver (maybe with enamel for color?) comics symbol charm? I mean, I would wear the hell out of a Deadpool charm, especially if it was classy enough that I could wear it to work without anyone thinking it was out of place in a professional office (stealth geek attire!). Heck, I’ve actually worn my hand-made Deadpool earrings to work any number of times, and have gotten compliments on them from people who have no idea they’re from a comic. They just thought it was a cool design. Also, why aren’t there more cool comics-themed purses or whatnot? I’ve seen people making their own, so clearly there’s a desire for it. What’s stopping the actual companies from jumping on that? Oh, comics companies. I have so many accessory ideas. Why haven’t you had them already?
Costumes: …Okay, we’re going to save that one for another time. Because that’s a whole column in itself.
In summary – I love shopping. I love comics. I love shopping for stuff related to comics. But I’m a woman, which is apparently still the minority in the comics fandom, and there isn’t as much cool stuff out there for me to buy as there should be. Comics companies, it’s hard out there for a fangirl. Make it easier for me to geek out by making more cool stuff I’ll love. I promise I’ll buy it.
Do you agree with me, readers? Then tell me what products you’d like to see (or what marketing missteps you’ve noticed) in the comments. And until next Tuesday, everyone: Servo Lectio!
WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold Assaults The Secret Identity
I’ve encountered quite a few things in my Hollywood journey. Some great some not so great and some that really sucked.
Really sucked.
I once sold a show on a Monday morning and by Monday night the show was gone and so was my deal.
I once had a great idea for a reality show. I took the idea to a huge Hollywood player with the intention of making him the host of the show. He loved my idea. He loved my idea so much he tried to sue me and take the show. The show I created and asked him to be a part of.
One of the fun things about Hollywood is finding project financing. That’s always the highlight of any deal…not.
My partner in one particular deal was the fantastic writer, TV producer and now huge young adult novelist E. Van Lowe. E (yes, I call him E) and I spent a weekend in San Francisco securing funding for this great project.
We were a well-oiled money getting machine that weekend. We pitched the project like major league all stars and the money people were so impressed we had a yes before we left to go back to L.A. In fact, the meetings went so well that after we sold the idea and spent the rest of the weekend in the city by the bay just hanging out and celebrating our new fully financed deal!
Monday morning bright and early we boarded our flight secure in the knowledge that we were about to make television history!
When we touched down in LAX all was right in the world. E dropped me off at my house and before he left he took a phone call.
The deal was dead.
Dead like Lincoln. What happened? Or in hood speak, What had happened? Why hood speak? Because this is an article about blacks in the entertainment field and unless I throw in some hood speak many in Hollywood won’t take this seriously.
I know, I know. It’s pandering but you have to understand there are some in Hollywood that thinks my Ph.D. stands for pretty hard dick.
Well, continuing hood speak, what had happened was a third partner had decided she had not contributed enough to the closing of the deal so while E and I were happily flying to L.A. that bright Monday morning, she who must not be named was having a talk with the investors at breakfast.
Neither E nor I had any idea she was having this talk, and what a talk it was. She talked us right out of the deal.
Ah yes, there’s no business like show business!
I’ve got more horrible yet uplifting to my enemies stories but I’d best get to the point. In the blah blah years I’ve been doing the Hollywood thing I’ve had some great experiences and some (obviously) not so great experiences. Rather great or sucky I’ve never had a deal go south because I was black.
You would think that the way some in Hollywood react to black properties that would be the standard issue rejection.
Dear Michael Davis,
Thanks for coming in to pitch Negro Stories: Stories about black People.
Unfortunately, although we loved the concept, we could not help but notice there were many segments about black people in your pitch.
We completely understand the need for more diversity on TV but we are a business and everyone knows that black does not sell.
Sorry, homie.
Sincerely,
Ian White
Executive, Fox Studios
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard that black doesn’t sell or black is death and many more asinine statements regarding black properties in the entertainment business.
Think about this for a moment. There are people running studios, networks and comic book companies in 2012 that think that black doesn’t sell. These people think that America will not pay to watch black people entertain them.
That’s as stupid as thinking that just because I’m a black man I have a huge peni…nope, wrong example. That’s as stupid as thinking global warming is a myth. Global warming has been proven without a shadow of a doubt. Those people who refuse to believe in it despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary do so, in my opinion, because they simply don’t want to believe it.
Who denies facts? Well the GOP for one, and many in the entertainment business for sure.
Black doesn’t sell?
Really?
Here’s a news flash, Hollywood. Young people drive Hollywood revenue. Young people decide what’s hot and what’s not. Pop culture is a young person’s playground.
Here’s the kicker. Black culture is youth culture. Let me be clear, African American culture is youth culture all over the world.
It’s our swagger that drives pop culture. That’s our music your kids are listening too. That’s our style of dress you kids are wearing, that slang you don’t understand comes from us. That’s us who dominates sports, that’s our dance your daughter is trying to do…badly.
The film Heaven’s Gate was made for what was in 1980 an unheard of budget of 50 million dollars. That’s like 75 billion dollars in 2012 money. OK, maybe I’m a tad off but it’s not a stretch to think that in 2012 dollars that 50 million would be upwards of 300 million or more even.
Heaven’s Gate made three million dollars.
Damn! That, as they say in the hood, is ghetto!
Now that would be bad enough if the lost was just 47 million but the lost was much more. The budget was 50 million to make the movie. The adverting and marketing costs added millions more to that sum.
Result?
Heaven’s Gate just may be the worst box office disaster in the history of the world…that and The Spirit. Sorry, Frank.
Using the Hollywood formula applied to black movies that box office performance should have prevented another western from being made for years and years. When a black movie fails Hollywood loses its mind and then it’s years before another black movie is made because black means death and black doesn’t sell.
Here’s what I think, when any movie fails, black or white it’s because the movie could not find its audience for whatever reason… or perhaps it’s because the movie sucked.
George Lucas wrote a $58 million dollar check to produce Red Tails, an all black film about the Tuskegee Airmen. He said in an interview that Hollywood did not want to fund the movie because they did not know how to market it.
Translation: black equals death.
The movie did not do well. Here’s my guess why that was. It wasn’t a great movie.
Duh.
I wanted to like it but there were too many plot issues for me and the film seemed a bit contrived. The movie was the problem, not the racial element.
According to some in Hollywood, when a black movie fails its because it was a black movie – when any other movie fails it’s because of a zillion other reasons.
If that’s not the world is flat thinking then I really don’t know what is.
I’m amazed at the sheer idiotic thinking of some in Hollywood.
Black doesn’t sell?
Will Smith.
Black doesn’t sell?
Oprah Winfrey.
Black doesn’t sell?
Tyler Perry.
Black doesn’t sell?
Blade.
Black doesn’t sell?
Hancock.
Black doesn’t sell?
Jamie Foxx.
Black doesn’t sell?
Spawn.
Black doesn’t sell?
Denzel Washington
Black doesn’t sell? Bullshit, Mr. Hollywood, simply bullshit. The above list is a very short one to be sure but I think it makes the point rather well.
I think the problem is not that black doesn’t sell Mr. Hollywood but rather you don’t know how to sell black.
End, part 3.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Emily S. Whitten wants stuff!
WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold takes on Secret Identities!
I wasn’t sure what to write about this week. Then I read Martha’s column about Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and I watched the video. Then I read Denny’s column about what it takes to get hired. So I thought I might put my two cents in by telling you a bit about my experiences with success and failure.
When I graduated from high school back in the dark ages, I didn’t really have a clue what I wanted to do. No, that’s not it exactly. I knew I was going to college because… well, it was what was expected of nice Jewish girls of a certain economic class. I had some vague idea about going to medical school; mainly, I think now, because when I was young I would tell the adults who asked that I was going to be a neurosurgeon – they always laughed when I said that, that I distinctly remember – but don’t ask me why I picked that particular specialty. Maybe because of Ben Casey, or maybe because I just liked the sound of the word itself. Anyway, that autumn I would be off to Quinnipiac College – it wasn’t yet a university in 1971 – as a biology major, because that seemed a good idea for someone who wanted to be a doctor. Quinnipiac wasn’t even my first choice; that was Boston University and the College of Nursing.
My parents were proud of me.
My friends were impressed.
My boyfriend tried to warn me.
But me?
I was just along for the ride.
My first semester at Quinnipiac was a disaster. Besides the usual freshman blues, gaining 10+ pounds, and having a stick for a roommate, I hated my classes. It was all hard science and math, and my professors were incredibly boring. Except for English 101. My professor was a hippie and the textbook was the Playboy College Reader, and no, it did not contain the Playmates of the Months. It was chock full of the truly great and weird and fascinating articles, stories, and interviews found within Playboy – yes, they are really in there, folks. I read stories by Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov and Philip Roth. I read interviews with Alex Haley and Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. There were articles about the Vietnam War, Black Power, and Richard Nixon’s administration. My professor led us in fascinating discussions and I got to write some really cool papers on some really far out subjects.
Without telling my parents, I switched my major for the second semester to English with a minor in Women’s Studies. I took Introduction to Science Fiction and An American History of Women along with other rockin’ classes. I started to feel really good about myself – successful – and lost the 10+ pounds.
Then I came home for the summer and all hell broke loose.
“English?” my mother scoffed. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Women’s Studies?” my father yelled. “What, you need to go to school to learn how to be a woman?”
“You’re not going back,” they both said. “You’re going to go to work and learn the value of a dollar.”
To their eyes I was a failure.
And my mirror backed them up.
To be continued…
TUESDAY MORNING: Michael Davis’s Head Hurts
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Emily S. Whitten’s Fangirl Tribulations
Spoiler Warning: In reviewing the second series on the BBC series Sherlock, I may discuss some plot points. If you haven’t seen it – and you should – and you want to remain unspoiled on plot twists, best skip this.
By the time I was ten I had read all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I love the characters, I love the settings, and I’ve watched many of the movie and TV incarnations of the world’s most famous detective. Basil Rathbone was my initiation to the cinematic Holmes and, for a long time, he was indelible. My major gripe with the Rathbone Holmes movies was that, with only the exception of one or two, they were all set in the era in which they were made, the 30s and 40s, and had little to do with the actual stories. I wanted the gaslight and the London fog; I wanted the deerstalker cap and the horse drawn carriages and the steam locomotives. The era was as important to me as the characters.
So – as you might guess – when I heard that the BBC was doing a new Holmes series (simply called Sherlock) and setting it in contemporary times, I was not keen. I would have given it a miss except that I learned that one of the co-creators was Steven Moffat (along with Mark Gatiss). I’ve loved Moffat’s work on Doctor Who as both writer and show runner; bright, intelligent, witty writing with vivid characters and real heart. I couldn’t resist looking at the new show and I was so glad I did.
The first series was brilliant and it absolutely worked. The creators obviously know the source material and respect it. In the original Conan Doyle stories, Dr. Watson is a former Army doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan. In the update – Doctor Watson is a former Army doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan. (How times don’t change.) In the original, Watson wrote up his adventures with Holmes as stories published in magazines. In the update, he writes them up as part of his blog.
The series is aided immensely by the two leads – Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor Watson. In case you don’t know, Cumberbatch is slated to play (if rumors are correct) the villain in the next Star Trek movie and Freeman will be Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The chemistry between them as Holmes and Watson is terrific.
Each series has consisted of three ninety-minute episodes and the first series ended in a cliffhanger. Holmes had confronted his nemesis, James “Jimmy” Moriarty; Watson has a vest full of explosives strapped on to him and Holmes has three snipers homed in on him. A complete death trap! How will they escape?
The second series updates/adapts three of the better-known stories in the Holmes canon: A Scandal in Bohemia becomes A Scandal in Belgravia, The Hound of the Baskervilles becomes The Hounds of Baskerville, and The Final Problem becomes The Reichenbach Fall.
The first introduced Irene Adler, The Woman in the Holmes canon, an actress who went up against Holmes over some compromising letters involving the royal family and she proved to be a complete match for the sleuth. In the remake, she’s a dominatrix who has compromising photos of a (female) member of the Royal Family on her cell phone. When Holmes calls on Adler, she greets him in the nude which leaves the Great Detective somewhat flummoxed and he can’t deduce anything from her because she isn’t wearing any clothes.
Oh, and Holmes himself winds up in the Royal Palace wrapped only in a bedsheet. This is not your great-great -grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.
The Hounds of the Baskervilles deals with a possible spectral hound from hell threatening the life of Holmes’ client. The episode, The Hounds of Baskerville has that element but also brings in secret military testing and conspiracies. Changing “Hound” to “Hounds” is not just clever; it really ties to the secret at the heart of the mystery.
In the original “The Final Solution,” Doyle attempted to kill off Holmes by having him plummet down the Reichenbach Falls with his arch-enemy, Professor James Moriarty. In this new version, Moriarty is out to destroy his enemy and his enemy’s reputation. It also ends with what appears to be Holmes’ fall to his death although the very final shot of the episode reveals Holmes still alive. The question that needs to be answered is – how? Hopefully, that will be answered in the third season of Sherlock whenever they get around to making it.
Performances throughout are first rate, as are the production values. It doesn’t make the series perfect. They get out of the first season’s cliffhanger by having Moriarty getting a phone call and walking away. Not satisfying. I also found the conceptualization and performance of Moriarty (by Andrew Scott) too over the top. It was Moriarty as Heath Ledger’s Joker. I don’t mind a different interpretation that works, such as Lara Pulver’s Irene Adler, but Moriarty as giggling sociopath didn’t work for me.
And I have a concern. As I’ve said, the writing on this series is very clever and, for me, enjoyably so. There’s such a thing, however, as being too clever and that’s the trap into which Sherlock could easily fall – and that would be a more deadly trap than anything Moriarty could devise. The series so far has skirted the edge of it but it could easily step over and, sometimes, you don’t know how far is too far until you’ve gone too far.
All that said, I think this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes to be one of the best ever, constantly and consistently entertaining. It has intelligence and it has passion and it captures the essence of what made the Holmes stories work. The changes make us see the stories in a fresh way. I’m looking forward to the next season – which will be whenever our two main actors come back from Middle Earth, where no one has gone before.
This past weekend I decided to place my vote (that’s “Dollar Bills” to DC’s Bob Wayne) for The Avengers for a second time. I did it first and foremost to teach Liam Neeson a lesson: If you don’t know the movie adaptation of a board game is a bad idea, maybe you need a new agent. Second to that, I personally wanted to see the film again to revel in Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the Hulk. If there were to be a single break-out star (pun intended) of the film, Bruce Banner certainly was it. For many who saw The Avengers, this is a shared sentiment. So, this begs us to ask the dudes at the House of Mouse… What’s next for the spinach-hued smasher?
If we are to believe the internet (and when has that ever led us down the wrong path?), The Hulk will next appear on the small screen via ABC. The network is pursuing a reboot of the once powerful series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferigno. If this is to be true… I throw myself on the mercy of Mickey. Don’t do it.
Simply put? The Hulk begs for bigger and better treatment. The old series did last five seasons, and featured a few TV movies (co-starring Daredevil and Thor no less!), but this was long before the days of CGI. Long before the Hulk decimated Harlem. Or flew into the upper atmosphere on the nose of a fighter jet. Not that the recent movie Hulks have been perfect mind you, but they put poor old Lou out to pasture pretty quickly when it comes to conveying the size and power of the Incredible Hulk.
If Marvel/ABC ponies up enough dough to downsize the Hulk to the boob tube, it would certainly provide the interest of advertisers and the public at large to watch. But even with an HBO budget for a series, could today’s special effect houses handle the behemoth? In a word… no.
The fluidity of the Hulk within the Avengers was, as many fans agree, the first time the character didn’t feel entirely too fake to enjoy. Ang Lee’s monstrosity lumbered around the fabricated sets like a big baby throwing a tantrum. Louis Leterrier’s Hulk (who obviously did way more cardio than Ruffalo’s) fared better, but was more Max Headroom than Golum by comparison to the most recent iteration. While CGI and effect houses have certainly improved their efforts on TV, do yourself a favor: Watch the best episode of Heroes, Smallville, or Sharktopus Vs. Crocasaurus. Then go back and watch the Avengers. I’ll wait for you. Go on. Done? Now tell me that the scene-eating Hulk would be done any justice on a fraction of the budget that went into creating him on the big screen.
Don’t get me wrong, kiddos. For the chance to see Mark Ruffalo take the character on in a weekly serial, I’d be DVR’ing that series faster than Jeph Loeb could crap out a comic book. And while a TV show would obviously focus on Banner more than the titular titan, when it would come time to Hulk out, we’d get only a poor representation of what we know the character could be. And if they were to regress back to hiring a bodybuilder to smash cardboard walls? Well, who amongst us would not scoff as we wrote anonymous hatespew across the message boards?
If we can agree that Ruffalo’s Banner is following the Incredible Hulk movie of 2008, then we must know that there was an amazing set-up left for the sequel. Samuel Sterns was shown at the end of the film getting dosed by Banner’s blood/chemical sludge. His head began to throb and pulsate, and a creepy smile crawls across his face. Obviously meant as a wink and a nudge to the Leader, one of the Hulk’s better villains. With Ruffalo’s Banner perfectly balancing the line of intelligence and pent-up rage, only the movie screen can truly do the character justice in a battle with another gamma irradiated foe. Relegated to a lesser medium (in terms of only the effect work mind you), the Incredible Hulk might only come across the Credible Hulk.
I say make S.H.I.E.L.D. the TV show, and let Hulk continue to smash the box office.
If you haven’t already seen this video, rush right over here and listen to Neil Gaiman give a commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia last week. In his inimitably charming manner, Neil advises the new graduates on how to approach a life in the arts.
He is wise and he is insightful, and he inspires me to riff on a few of his tenets. And, because I’m me, I’m going to quibble with another.
The best thing he says is the scariest: Fail. You can’t be an artist if you don’t fail, frequently and spectacularly. You have to make mistakes, and you have to make them in public, or it least in front of an editor or a curator or a choreographer or a director who will be a witness. If you don’t make mistakes and fail, you don’t test your limits, you don’t discover who you are and what kind of art you are capable of creating.
It’s not enough to just make mistakes, or we would all be successful artists. You also have to learn from the mistakes you’ve made. Sometimes the lesson isn’t obvious – Neil describes how he misspelled the name “Caroline” as “Coraline” and thus was born a brilliant story – but if you don’t learn, you’ll keep making the same mistake, expecting it to suddenly produce success. And then you are an executive in the DC marketing department, not an artist.
He also talks about not taking jobs just to make money, which is a fearless thing for a young artist to attempt. Money is important, especially when you don’t have any. It pays for rent and food. It allows you to clothe yourself so you are presentable and can get other jobs. Sometimes the artist has children at home, and a hungry baby really doesn’t understand why artistic integrity is a thing. Like making mistakes, this is where the true nature of the artist is revealed. You can make the sacrifices for your art, and learn from them, as you learned from your failures. Maybe you’ll learn that the life of the artist isn’t for you.
That’s no disgrace. That’s real life.
And now, here’s my quibble. Neil tells the kids in the audience that, whatever happens to them, they should “make good art.” If the cat dies, “make good art.” If you lose a leg, “make good art.” If you can do it in the bad times, you can do it in the good times.
I’m in favor of good art. There should be more of it. However, one of my personal demons, when I sit down to write, is the fear that my work isn’t good enough. I’m much better off attempting to make art, without sweating whether or not it meets anyone’s standard of “good.” A writer writes because she has to write. An artist makes art because she has to make art.
“Good” comes with luck, practice, inspiration and skill.
The faithful among you may recall that last week we did a backflip through time to the sixties and beheld a young journalist taking a test and being offered a comic book job that changed virtually everything about his life forever. But this same journalist, now wizened and hard of hearing and just a bit crotchety around the edges, said that no comics aptitude test exists. Eh?
That was then and this is now. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only Marvel Comics employee, past or present, to take the test. I got to know both my predecessor and my successor in the job, and neither mentioned pre-employment testing.
But people do get hired by comics companies. So – how? Darned if I know. When I sat behind an editor’s desk, I did my share of job-giving, both to hopefuls applying for staff gigs and to freelancers, and usually my choices were pretty good-to-excellent. If I had a secret, I don’t know what it was. Something to do with hunches and intuition, maybe.
But there were things I liked to see in applicants. First: simple literacy. Does this person know that the big letter goes at the beginning of the sentence and the little dot goes at the end? (Don’t laugh. Instead, ask any middle school-and-up teacher you know if all his/her pupils have this competence.) Has s/he read a book or two? Did s/he enjoy reading the book or two? Second: interest in writing (and/or editing) per se? Not just writing comics – storytelling! Until I’m proven wrong, which could happen any second now, I’ll believe that most good comics writers are writers who have a liking or aptitude (or, ideally, both) for this particular medium and if comics didn’t exist, the person would be doing poems or plays or short fiction or novels or whatever.
We’ll take a paragraph break here, mostly because I feel like doing it, and move on to third: willingness to learn. Nobody knows it all, and that includes you and me, and nobody will ever know it all, but you can know more than you do now and if you want to get good at this job, or any job, you should. (Besides, its fun to know stuff. But don’t tell the no-child-left-behind crowd.)
And finally, fourth: Does the job applicant seem to be a reasonably adult human being? Willing and able to deliver on promises? Willing to accept compromise? Able to play well with others? Respecting but not worshipping the rules, whatever they may be? Having a closetful of Brooks Brothers suits and Hermes ties?
Just joshing about that last one.
I’m tempted to add a fifth: loyalty. But that’s something you learn about someone over time and so it’s hard to detect during a job interview and anyway, my veneration of it is probably rooted in my own insecurities.
Recommended reading:Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! by Wes Nisker
I am of the opinion that “bad taste” is a good thing. It’s the most ridiculously subjective concept imaginable: what offends me (admittedly, very little) might be absolutely awesome to you, and we each have a right to our opinions.
I was fortunate enough to be the editor and, along with ComicMix co-conspirator John Ostrander, co-conceiver of a DC Comics series called Wasteland. It was the black hole of humor, a monthly love-letter to bad taste. The stories usually had a point with enough wiggle-room in each concept to cause the reader night sweats. John wrote the series, often in tandem with improv legend Del Close, and we had a rotating gaggle of extraordinarily gifted artists as our visual collaborators. We’d have four going at any one time: three doing interior stories and one doing the cover. The one who did the cover in month one would do an interior job in month two, and so on. The artists usually came up with the cover concepts.
I only rejected one Wasteland cover. Drawn by Bill Wray, it happens to be my favorite. Those of you who are familiar with the Wasteland run might wonder just what it would take to cross my line. What it took was my concern for the continued existence of the comic book shop retailer: if not for the fact that we had to sell the thing, I would have published the cover about a hobo fishing off of a bridge into a sea of floating dead babies in a heartbeat.
(Just for shits and grins, I took it to editor-in-chief Dick Giordano anyway. He took one look at it, laughed, and said “You already rejected this!” I miss Giordano a lot.)
All of this is my way of reviewing a truly wonderful new book, [[[Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See]]] by Françoise Mouly, art editor of The New Yorker and publisher of TOON Books. Under her editorship, The New Yorker’s covers shifted rather rapidly from inoffensive fodder to litter doctors’ waiting rooms into a powerful agent provocateur lurking on the newsstands with the sole purpose of confronting our assumptions and values.
Well, not quite every week. Perhaps their most infamous of these covers rests atop this column; it is among the many that has acted as a pie tossed in the face of the pathetically uptight. Most of these covers are reprinted in Blown Covers…
… and so, as the title suggests, are many that didn’t make it. Most of those reprinted in this tome are certainly print-worthy, and to be fair, many didn’t make it because somebody else beat them to it, including Mad Magazine, which also employed the aforementioned Bill Wray. Some… simply… crossed the line. That inevitable, damned line.
Reading Blown Covers is great fun. Just looking at the pictures is great fun, but reading about the decision-making process should be de rigueur for anybody who thinks editing stuff might be a legitimate way to earn a living. Quotes from the artists abound.
My favorite of these rejects was one that wasn’t even offered for publication: it was done by Art Spiegelman, a frequent cover contributor and author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Maus, to his wife, the aforementioned Ms. Mouly. It was a drawing of a cattle car overstuffed with Jews on its way to a Nazi concentration camp. One guy was on his cell phone… and his über-cramped neighbors in the cattle car were annoyed and pissed.
What? Too soon?
Like I said, Blown Covers is great fun. Give it out as Christmas gifts to all your relatives.
I will.
Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See • Françoise Mouly • Abrams Books • $24.95 retail, also available in electronic editions.
THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil and the Secret To Getting Hired In Comics!
Captain America, Abbie Hoffman and the sexy statue in the women’s department? What the heck do they have in common?
