The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Dennis O’Neil: The Big Fall Flick

Somewhere in the curly-edged annals of ComicMix – surely such annals must exist! – there must exist a piece I wrote…well, ya know, I’m not really sure when, exactly, I wrote it. A while ago, okay? My subject, or what I’ll assume was a crisp fall day, was how Labor Day has, gradually, over time, assumed the weight and character of what I think of as a real holiday – one that exists because it fulfills a need.

Christmas is a good example: light and fire and feasting combine to celebrate the return of the light after winter’s long gloom. Similarly, Easter: the return of planting season. Thanksgiving and the various fall harvest festivals: cutting and storing enough foodstuff to see the community through the forthcoming cold. All of these occasions and more are tied to nature’s rhythms and marked by change.

So how does Labor Day fit into all this? Well. A U.S. President named Grover Cleveland decided that we as a nation ought to take notice of the contributions of the American working men the blue-collar Joes who created “the new world.” First Monday in September. From now on – Labor Day!” Thus declareth the Prez!

The Prez’s timing was good. Early September: the kids who worked on farms where pretty much done with the summer’s chores. Any family that could afford vacations had probably taken them by the time the leaves began to change. And there were the Big Holidays to brace for. (Where the hell did we store those tree lights?)

Those of us who got graduation documents – that’d be most of us – has busy Septembers. New classes and, ergo, new schoolmates, some of whom just might be cute. New teachers. New clothes. New sports. Streets spangled with decorations. Maybe some sliding and skating and all that other stuff.

And oh, let me not forget the television and the movies – the really honkin’ big films that seem to materialize in the hottest of summer and coldest of winter. Last year, the one we anticipated was Batman vs Superman and when I saw the name “Bill Finger” early in the credits, I thought this won’t be a complete waste of time. I’ll get some satisfaction from seeing Bill finally, after decades, get some of the credit due him. Then I watched the film.

This fall, I guess the Big Flick is Justice League. The story would seem to have some of the same narrative problems that beset Batman vs Superman. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, there’s some superhero stuff debuting/returning to the nation’s flat screened living room pals and that should suffice to keep us geeks from having withdrawal woes.

Emily S. Whitten: Krypton – Exploring the Unknown

I’ve been a fan of Superman since I was a wee lass – ever since watching that first Christopher Reeve Superman movie on TV. While the X-Men are relatable and Batman is cool and Deadpool is dark yet hilarious, Superman remains the ideal – the symbol of hope and the hero we should all strive to be.

I haven’t watched or read every shred of Superman that’s ever been produced, but I have consumed quite a lot of it; and even when I consider a particular portrayal to be an utter failure to embody Superman (hello, Man of Steel!!), I’m always willing to give the next iteration a chance. I mean, hey – how can you call yourself a Superman fan if you don’t have hope?

But with all the Superman that’s out there, there’s one part of the lore we hear about but still don’t generally see much of – a place that’s almost as much of a mystery to Clark Kent as it is to us. It’s the place of his birth – Krypton. Since a foundation point of the Superman mythos is that it was destroyed as he flew away from Krypton as the last survivor, it makes sense that we don’t often get to experience it in depth. Sure, we’ve seen flashbacks, and alternate universe versions, and the bottle city of Kandor; but we haven’t really lived and breathed Krypton.

The planet and culture have always fascinated me – when creators do approach or reference it, its laws and customs are often portrayed as stern and unyielding, despite its supposed advances in being civilized (and in the sciences particularly). As a lawyer and political theorist, I’m always interested in how societies are structured – and the success or failure of said structures. Not to mention it’s just plain cool to see a fully envisioned alien culture. I do sometimes feel that no one has quite done it justice yet; which isn’t surprising, since Clark Kent and Superman, not Krypton, are by default the focus of Superman stories.

For all the faults I found with Man of Steel (and I mean alllllll the faults. So many faults. Let me count the faults.) one thing I did like in that movie was the glimpse we got of that movie’s vision of Krypton. So I’m definitely interested in another modern take on the planet.

The upcoming Krypton show, which is coming to SyFy in 2018, aims to give us just that. It does have a serious challenge to overcome – giving us a version of Krypton and its inhabitants that both fits with why fans like Superman and also invests us in the fate of the pre-Superman alien culture and family. Given all the times Clark Kent’s human upbringing have been contrasted with the Kryptonian way of doing things, that may be a difficult bridge to cross – but I am more than willing to start that journey with the cast and crew and see where it goes.

Although SDCC saw the very first reveals about the show and thus there were some things we couldn’t yet discuss, I had a great chat with series star Cameron Cuffe (Seyg-El) and Executive Producers Damian Kindler and Cameron Welsh.

They shared what their vision for this (old) new world is like, what characters we’ll be seeing, and how they approach the House of El.

And happily, I can share that with you too.

Check out the interviews below for more Krypton details. And as always, until next time, Servo Lectio!

Interview with Executive Producer Damian Kindler

Interview with Executive Producer Cameron Welsh

Interview with Cameron Cuffe (Seyg-El)

 

Box Office Democracy: Blade Runner 2049

I often cite the original Blade Runner as my favorite movie.  I also think having one favorite anything is kind of silly so it’s always been less of a true answer as it’s been an indication of what I like.  I like cyberpunk, I like hard-boiled detective stories, I like being asked to think about things, and I like a movie that can spawn a conversation 30-some years after it came out.  I don’t know that Blade Runner 2049 has the legs for that last part but it hits all those other bits and so I have to say I liked watching it a great deal.  It’s a challenging movie and it makes some colossal missteps along the way— but it’s been fun to think about and talk about so far.

Denis Villeneuve is quickly becoming my favorite director.  I’ve spent a lot of time both here and in my personal life gushing about Arrival and this is such a big departure from this.  Arrival felt like a quiet movie and is practically art house next to the unending spectacle at play here.  This is a stunningly beautiful and well-composed movie.  You can see all the money they spent on this movie on the screen and you can see that someone with an actual eye for cinema was composing the shots.  The urban landscapes evoke the original film while borrowing from all the cyberpunk things that movie itself inspired in a ouroboros style self-inspiration.  The baseline test they subject Joe to are an incredibly harrowing cinematic experience and that’s incredible when you think that it’s really just a white room and a skewed perspective shot.  I could talk about different things I loved about the movie all day from the images of a blasted out Las Vegas to the flyover of a Los Angeles that is so overbuilt it almost looks like farmland but the thing that most consistently got me while watching it was the view from outside Joe’s apartment window.  It’s hard to explain but between the color and the proximity of his neighbors and the way it looks like my childhood window and also most definitely the far future proved this was good science fiction.

I don’t think it’s worth getting too far in to the plot because it’s a twisty winding kind of plot and it’s best experienced in person.  Also I feel like it would take forever to recap, and I would read it back and think I was a crazy person.  It feels overly complicated and subplots start and stop seemingly at random and some of the more interesting ones are just discarded never to come back.  There are countless screenwriting books that advocating putting your story beats on index cards to get a better map and it sort of feels like Blade Runner 2049 had seven cards they knew they wanted to hit and the rest of them didn’t matter and were just made as quickly as possible.  I want more from the plot, but a lot of the individual scenes work so well.

I don’t know what Ryan Gosling does differently than other actors when playing quiet roles but he’s on a whole other level.  He doesn’t have a ton of dialogue in this but he makes every word count and the work he does with expressions and movement is superb.  It’s like he took the quiet menace from Drive and turned it in to something that works all across the emotional spectrum.  Gosling is perfect for this role, for this movie.  I’m honestly not sure any other actor could have made this movie work but he does it.  He’s better than Harrison Ford in this.  He’s better than Ford was in the original.  It’s an amazing performance that will never get the attention of a movie like La La Land but shows so much more technique.

The gender politics in Blade Runner 2049 leave an awful lot to be desired.  Every woman in the movie seems to be trying to speak to some thesis about the commodification of women and their sexuality.  This is a fine point to make a movie about but it’s not what this movie is about, so it’s an observation with no critique which ends up looking an awful lot like just doing the thing you imagine they’re against.

I don’t know that Blade Runner needed a second chapter.  I don’t know that this movie needs to be so stuck in the past; it would probably be a better film if Deckard never showed up.  I wish so much that they had done more interesting things with basically every character.  This is a beautiful movie filled with missed opportunities, but for an almost three hour movie I was almost never bored.  There’s a lot to think about, there’s a lot to look at.  I appreciate that this is an attempt to make a deeper movie instead of a quick cash-in.  I look forward to watching this movie grow in time (and seeing the inevitable director’s cut) and seeing how I think about it in a few years.  If we had to revisit this world I’m glad we got as complex a take as this and one that pushes so many visual boundaries.

Mike Gold: Make Mine Marvel Maybe?

If a comics publisher falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound effect?

Marvel Comics has been facing growing dissatisfaction over their sundry practices (both alleged and real) regarding their minority characters, their massive event stunts, some questionable actions by sundry staffers and freelancers… even the less-than-beloved reception to their new Inhumans teevee series, which premiered last month. Long-time Marvel fans – and I’m one of them myself – have never seen Marvel receive the stinky end of the stick before; certainly, not like this.

If you were on Marvel’s staff in some marketing or promotion capacity, you might have looked at last weekend’s New York Comic Con as a great opportunity to shine a light on all the groovy new stuff the House of Idea has in its pipeline. Buff up the shine on the corporate engine, so to speak. After all, New York City is Marvel’s home turf and the Comic Con claims (perhaps correctly) that they attract more visitors than the annual San Diego cluster-kerfuffle. This magic opportunity couldn’t have come at a better time.

Ahhh. Sadly, that didn’t work out so well.

First – and through no fault of their own – Marvel had to cancel the NYCC promotion for their new Netflix Punisher series. They even had star Jon Bernthal ready to entertain what was very, very likely to be a standing-room-only crowd. Unfortunately, Stephen Paddock decided to murder some five-dozen people in Las Vegas with a number of his 47 reimagined semi-automatics, and Marvel, like others in the entertainment business in a similar position, canceled the panel. For those who are unaware, The Punisher has been one of the most violent heroic fantasy characters since The Spider, back in the 1930s. It’s completely proper for Marvel to show its respect in this manner.

Still, it was a blow to their promotion campaign.

Almost immediately after that, Marvel found itself getting an overwhelming amount of criticism from just about every conceivable corner of our own personal Bizarro World for climbing into bed with Northrop Grumman, one of the world’s largest defense contractors. This bothered a lot of people, even though the campaign supposedly focused on Northrop Grumman’s aerospace activities.

Lots of folks – fans, retailers, comics professionals – pointed out that Marvel has spent a lot of time and energy bragging about how war profiteer Tony Stark abandoned his munitions business for moral reasons in their comic books and, now, their movies. If you conflate Northrop Grumman with Stark Industries (in all its names), you’re left with the reality that, unlike Stark, Northrop Grumman is all too real. In other words, they really make a lot of stuff that kills people. Sort of like Stephen Paddock, but without the profit incentive.

So Marvel killed that campaign, removed all presence from its online activities, and cancelled that NYCC panel as well. I feel their pain; nobody enjoys watching Daffy Duck get cheered on by the crickets.

Typically, one would think the only way Marvel can work its way out of their deep promotional hole is to produce better comic books. But, really, comic book sales are so low that the bad press exceeds the positive impact of better stories – even if anybodymreally knew what the general public considers “better comic books.” Besides, it takes a long time to produce comics stories – particularly when one has to consider the four-dimensional domino effect that comes along with being faithful to current continuity.

One would think that, 20 years from now, Spider-Man and the X-Men and the Hulk will still be around and all this would be on the level of a fart in a blizzard. I certainly hope that’s true, but being a Geek Culture historian, I am reminded that damn near everybody in America used to be quite familiar with The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Saint and Nick Carter… characters that have been revived frequently (and, often, bizarrely) but achieved little or no traction. It can happen to every commercial product. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to buy Burma Shave.

I hope this does not happen. I’ve been a comics fan since Eisenhower was president; I wouldn’t know what to do with my time.

Besides, I miss The Fantastic Four.

 

Conan: Book of Thoth by Busiek, Wein & Jones

We really don’t need any more origin stories. OK, maybe if it’s integrated — a quick flashback during something else — it’s not so bad. But, please, not a whole story just to show us how the guy we already know got to the place we’ve seen him. Boooo-ring.

Writers Kurt Busiek and Len Wein (along with artist Kelley Jones) work hard to keep Conan: Book of Thoth out of the Boring Zone, but I’m afraid it’s a losing battle.

A) this is an origin story, and (even worse) one of a villain, so it’s all cackling laughter and evil triumphing.

Two) this is a Conan story in which Conan can’t appear at all, so we just get a couple hundred pages of neo-Howardian pre-historical squalor and woe.

Thoth-Amon is a major Conan villain — one of the few who doesn’t show up and get his head chopped off in the space of a short story, I mean, which is what “major Conan villain” means. And so, round about 2005, he got a comic-book series to explain Who He Is and How He Got That Way. And, well, it turns out he was a nasty street kid — battered by his father, to make it even more tedious and psychological — in some random Hyperborian Age city, who did various nasty things for four long issues to end up as High Priest of Set and secret ruler of an entire nation.

MUA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!

Book of Thoth is pretty much all one tone — slightly detached tsk-tsking at how horrible this guy named variously Thoth, Amon, and Thoth-Amon is, while still being excited at each new bit of nastiness. It’s really only for huge Conan fans, and I have no clear idea why it was on my shelf. (My best theory is that it came in one of the care packages of comics I got after my flood in 2011.) And it is one more signpost to show that we really don’t need more origin stories.

(By the way, I don’t know if Mssrs. Busiek, Wein and Jones knew this at the time, but if you google “Book of Thoth,” you get a whole lot of what are technically called “woo-woo” books about Atlanteans and energy beings and a tiny little bit of Egyptiana. Sometimes the obvious title makes your project hard to find.) 

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Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Mindy Newell: Single Jewish Woman?

“Mindy Newell (veteran of Wonder Woman, Daredevil, and just about everything else) noted that she originally thought ‘SJW’ stood for ‘Single Jewish Woman.’” • Comics for Causes: Planned Parenthood at the New York Comic Con • John Odum • Bleeding Cool, October 7, 2017

At my family’s celebration of Rosh Hashanah – Food! Lots and lots of food! And much imbibing of the alcohol of your choice! – shortly after 9/11, the conversation that we all had been avoiding finally arrived with the dessert and coffee. A lot of anger, a lot of sadness, a lot of fear, but no historical context until I opened my big mouth:

“This is what happens after nearly 100 years of the West treating the Middle East like pieces on a chessboard.”

Silence. My father is shaking his head.

“Hello,” I said. “The break-up of the Ottoman Empire? The Sykes-Picot agreement? Ignoring, discounting, millions of people with their own history, their own ethnic and religious and tribal identities?”

“You’re not excusing what they did, are you?” someone said in astonishment and horror.

“No fucking way! But, and I’m sorry, guys, we are not innocent in any of this, either.”

A fight was about to start, but someone, I think it was my cousin, quickly changed the subject.

Later on, driving home in the car, everybody else fast asleep in the back seat, my dad said, “When are you going to learn to keep your mouth shut?”

“You don’t think I’m right?”

“You were absolutely right.

“So?”

“Just don’t say it at work or anywhere else. People don’t want to hear it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

I’d like to say that I listened to my dad, who was a very smart man, but *sigh* I guess it’s still a work in progress. I have a very hard time “keeping my mouth shut,” even at work, especially when I get fired up.

And, oh, boy, was I fired up on Saturday at the NYCC, where I was part of the Comics for Causes: Planned Parenthood panel to inform and also celebrate the coming publication of the Mine!: A Celebration of Freedom and Liberty anthology put into production through fellow ComicMixers Joe Corallo and Molly Jackson to benefit the Planned Parenthood organization, which is now being attacked more brutally than I can ever remember, and is in very serious danger of being defunded by “you-know-who” and “you-know-who”’s administration and the Repugnanticans. (Just a week ago today, Tuesday, Oct 3, the Repugnantican-controlled Senate passed this, ignoring the law of the land that Roe vs. Wade has become.

Nobody counted, but my use of F-bombs might have set a record at this NYCC, and quite possibly every other comics convention on record. John Odum of Bleeding Cool even made note of it here. First time I’ve ever made it into Bleeding Cool… as far as I know.

I’m not apologizing. I meant every single one of those F-bombs. I meant every single thing I said.

My dad must be spinning in his grave. But I also know that he’s also proudly thinking:

“That’s my Mindela.”

Joe Corallo: Mine! Attack!

This past Saturday was our NYCC panel “Comics for Causes: Planned Parenthood and ComicMix.” On hand, in addition to myself (the center of the three-shot photo, surrounded by Molly and Mindy) were our editor-in-chief Mike Gold, my co-editor on Mine! Molly Jackson, Mindy Newell, Martha Thomases, and Glenn Hauman. The panel was made up of Mike, Molly, Mindy, Gabby Rivera, and myself. The panel was moderated by www.Geek.com managing editor Sheilah Villari; at the last minute Sean Von Gorman joined us as well.

We were humbled by over two hundred people that showed up for the panel, including at least half a dozen more Mine! contributors including Adam McGovern, Alice Meichi Li, Dave Kelly, Keith DeCandido and Tom Daly. Mindy spoke passionately about health care as both a comics writer and a nurse, Gabby addressed the importance of sex education and queer youth outreach, Sheilah talked about her and many other freelancers’ experiences having difficulty accessing affordable health care, Mike talked the current need for political activism, and Sean did an impression of me that was so spot on that someone assumed I had said something that he in fact said.

There was a question asked at the panel about discussing the different stories we’re contributing. I didn’t get a chance to answer that question at the time, so I’d like to use my column to talk about that now. Hey, it is my column after all.

 

One night some months ago a friend and I were talking over drinks. Mine! had come up in conversation, which lead to her sharing a story with me. Years ago she had been out at a club with a guy and that guy had given her something so strong the next thing she knew she was waking up in his bedroom. The next thing she did was go to a Planned Parenthood.

We talked about it further and decided that this was an important story to tell for the anthology. Unfortunately, it’s not important because it’s such a rare and unusual story, but rather that it is far too common. For many people in that situation, Planned Parenthood is their only option. I’m collaborating with artist Kristina Stipetic on this and made sure my friend approved the script before handing it off. I filled in some details and took some liberties, but the core of the story is all there. It was honestly one of the more emotionally draining things I’ve written. I can’t say that I hope you enjoy it exactly, but I hope all of you that pick up Mine! will come to this story and have a better understanding of how these situations often play out.

There are so many other great stories in Mine! too! Mindy is talking about a time before abortion was legal, Gabby about her Catholic upbringing, Mike about a couple that desperately needs health care but you don’t find out which one of them needs it until the end, and Keith came up from the audience to talk about how he and Tom Daly are doing a story about learning self-defense. Sean even made Keith show demonstrate a karate move!

You can preorder Mine! now on Backerkit, and you can preorder our t-shirts as well, if you so desire. Please go check it out if you haven’t reserved your copy yet, and spread the word!

 

REVIEW: iZombie the Complete Third Season

There has been a certain joyfulness to the CW’s iZombie which was missing in the original Vertigo series. Producer Rob Thomas has also been wise in making each season feel slightly different than the preceding one to keep things fresh. It certainly helps to have shorter seasons for a more potent viewing experience. Warner Home Entertainment has released iZombie the Complete Third Season on DVD while Warner Archive offers up a Blu-ray version.

Much of the credit beyond Thomas’ light touch goes to Rose McIver who plays Liv, the zombie who must consume a deceased’s brains once a month otherwise be turned into your stereotypical monster. Once she devours the brains, she briefly takes on the person’s aspect giving her a chance to go from vamp to klutz, a performance second only to Tatiana Maslany’s many-faceted clone over at Orphan Black.

She’s surrounded by a strong supporting cast led by Liv’s ex-fiancé Major (Robert Buckley), also a zombie. We open the third season to deal with ramifications of Chase Graves’ (Jason Dohring) company Filmore Graves having taken over energy drink producer Max Rager for reasons that get spelled out throughout the season. The idea of a home in Seattle for the growing population of zombies is an interesting one but things are never simple.

The inter-relationships have deepened this year as police detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin) learns the truth about Liv, making him more of an ally. Being a CW show, there are plenty of romantic complications, notably Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli) learning that Peyton (Aly Michalka) has slept with former zombie, once more human Blaine (David Anders).

Everything, gets shoved aside as D-Day approaches, with Carey Gold (Anjali Jay) releasing the Aleutian Fly as part of the master plan. When Aleutian Flu vaccines containing zombie virus are beginning to spread among the populace. The final episodes packs a little too much exposition into the beginning, which may show some earlier plotting missteps. To warn America about the plot, Liv agrees to let Johnny Frost (Daran Norris) broadcast that is not only warning about the tainted vaccine but that zombies already walk among them. This sets up an intriguing new status quo for the forthcoming season four.

The DVD set has fine transfers so audio and video are good for rewatching. There are a handful of deleted scenes throughout, including a thread about the Major seeking zombie turned called girl Natalie (Brooke Lyons). Beyond that we have the obligatory 2016 iZombie panel from San Diego Comic-Con.

John Ostrander: “A Legacy Of Spies”

A Legacy Of Spies by John LeCarréI’m a huge (or as our president would say, YUGE) fan of John le Carré, the English writer specializing in espionage stories. le Carre’ is the pen name for David John Moore Cornwell, who was a member of the Secret Intelligence System or MI6 so he brings a great deal of first hand knowledge to his work.

le Carré’s agents are far more realistically drawn than James Bond or Jason Bourne. Don’t get me wrong; I loves me some Bond and Bourne but, honestly, I’m far more drawn to the very morally murky world that le Carré depicts. You can see that influence in GrimJack but especially with the Suicide Squad. This is particularly true with the first multi issue Squad arc, “Mission to Moscow”. Bureaucratic screw-ups result in the mission’s failure with one dead and a member of the team captured while the rest barely escape. The feeling is meant to be realistic and the morality dubious. Very le Carré and that was by design.

le Carré’s most famous book, I think, has to be The Spy Who Came In From the Cold which was his third book, first published in 1963. Like much of le Carre’s work, it’s rather bleak but its success enabled le Carré to devote himself full time to writing.

le Carré’s latest book, A Legacy of Spies, revisits the events around of that earlier tome, giving us new background and insights to its characters and events. The legacy deals with the consequences of those acts as the offspring of two of the main characters, Alec Leamas and Liz Gold, bring a lawsuit against MI6 and some of the people involved, especially our narrator, Peter Guilliam, and George Smiley, Peter’s superior and le Carré’s spymaster and protagonist through a series of books.

As always, the book is suffused with feelings of regret and betrayal and not just in the matters of espionage. Smiley’s wayward wife, Ann, regularly betrayed him with affairs, one in particular having terrible consequences. Loyalty is important but more on an individual basis; the Service does not always share that loyalty to those who serve it, usually at such great cost. The story is set long after the events of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and there is serious doubt if the whole thing was worth it. The participants, and the reader, now see things in context. What was achieved, and at what cost, and was the cost worth it?

As I noted, Peter Guillam is the narrator of the story but it is also told through official reports and documents of that earlier era, like extended flashbacks. I’m not sure that always works; flashbacks can take the reader out of the “now” of the narrative. In this book, it can sometimes get a bit dry. However, it can be argued that it also serves the storyline and the themes.

le Carré is an old master and this is the work of an old master; assured, in full command of the material and his own gifts. Does the new reader need to have read The Spy Who Came In From the Cold or the other two le Carré’s novels – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Smiley’s People? Technically, no – all the information you need to understand A Legacy of Spies is in the book itself, which is as it should be.

However, it is filled with “spoilers”. The book reveals things that the reader perhaps really should experience first hand for themselves. If you haven’t read the other books, I recommend doing that first. They’re very worthwhile in their own right and, IMO, makes the full experience in A Legacy of Spies far richer. That said, the book is well worth reading on its own, the work of a master still showing his mastery.

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Catto: Returning to Riverdale

Riverdale returns to the CW Wednesday night. The second season promises more of the guilty pleasures served up in this surprisingly fun take of the Archie gang. It’s been wicked fun and I’m encouraged that it’s such a big hit.

Archie has had success in media beyond comics before Riverdale. There was an Archie radio show in the 40s and 50s. It’s a tough one to sit through, even for an old-time radio buff like me. Filmation Studios provided year after year of Archie cartoons for Saturday mornings, starting with The Archie Show and continuing with many spin-offs and sequels. And there have been several TV and movie fits and starts over the years, most notably the early 90s Return to Riverdale.

I graduated from UNC’s Business School about that time, and although I would embark on a traditional marketing career, even then I was looking for a way to blend my traditional marketing skills with Geek Culture. It wasn’t until years later, when I co-founded Captain Action Enterprises and the Bonfire Agency, that I would successfully do it. So while I was interviewing with Lever Bros., P&G and Kraft for traditional MBA marketing jobs, I also arranged an interview with the Chairman of Archie Comics.

I was invited to Archie’s Mamaroneck headquarters. In hindsight, I now know that my interview was about ten years too early. In those days, few could envision how important the business of Geek Culture would become. But one of the big topics we discussed was all about making the brand bigger with a made-for-TV-movie called Return to Riverdale. There were a lot of hopes and dreams dashed as a result of that tepidly received show.

So it’s all the better that the new CW Riverdale series show is such a hit. I’ve enjoyed watching it so far. I was very surprised, when sorting through my pal Freddie’s comic collection (more on that here) to come across one particular letter in a tattered copy of Archie Annual #15 from 1963.

As you can see, one of the cast members of an Archie pilot engaged in a little promotion, combined with pleading for swag from the Archie Comics powers-that-be. Wayne Adams, the actor who would play Reggie, is almost in character.

It’s a crazy look back at how things were done in the early days of what would get labeled transmedia. Today folks would try to accomplish the same thing with a well-orchestrated mix of social media and PR.

Which Witch is Which?

Beyond the clique of Riverdale High’s most popular students, it’s been reported that Sabrina may be joining the gang on the small screen. I think that’s great. I’ve been enjoying the very creepy Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comic series by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack, upon which the show is reportedly based.

I was introduced to this platinum beauty when she was cast as the “love interest” in what was essentially the Sugar, Sugar music video. We didn’t really call them music videos in those days but all the cool cartoons would feature chase scenes or spotlight songs within the framework of the larger cartoon. As I got older, it always seemed to me that all these quick-cut montages were an outgrowth of Richard Lester’s Hard Day’s Night.

Sabrina has had many incarnations over the years, but she debuted in Madhouse #22 along with her familiar Salem and her supporting cast. For years she was sort of a Bewitched type character with one foot in Archie’s neighborhood. She’d later leave the Archie style behind to become a stylized young girl and even an anime-esqe heroine. Sabrina was most widely seen in the long running ABC series starring Mellissa Joan Hart, of course.

But I’m really interested in Sabrina’s earlier walk on the wild side. In 1972, Archie Comics tepidly introduced the Red Circle line with a comic called Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina. Here Sabrina played the role of the spooky narrator. In comics, there is a rich and long tradition of horror hosts introducing macabre tales. During the first two issues, Sabrina would dutifully introduce watered down ghost stories. They were essentially EC comics by way of the Archie line’s house style.

By issue #3, it all changed. Each issue featured genuinely spooky stories, in the classic horror comics traditional, by top talents like Gray Morrow and Alex Toth. The Archie house style was thrown out the window, unfortunately along with Sabrina.

But the precedent was set. I’m leaving the lights on when CW does introduce this spooky Sabrina show.

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