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Mindy Newell: Collecting

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Yesterday was a tough one for the Newell family. Actually, the past few months haven’t been easy; my dad is – well, the best way to describe the situation is that my father is a soul trapped in the shell of what was once a healthy, vibrant human being. To be honest, I don’t know why he isn’t dead. And my mom had a stroke about a month ago – and although she’s up and walking around (with the aid of a walker), the energetic and vivacious woman with whom I laughed and fought and loved is gone, too, leaving behind an old lady who is dip-shit batty – though I must admit that some of what she says is pretty funny.

And at least they both are in the same nursing home.

We have spent the last few weeks cleaning out their apartment – especially my brother, who has the responsibility of doing most of the work and coordinating everything, since he lives only seven miles away from their adult community complex in a town on the Jersey side of Philadelphia. Alixandra, Jeff, and I have had at least the luxury of distance in dealing with all this as we all live in the metropolitan New York area; meaning that we are there on weekends, but Glenn is there every single fucking day. So here’s a shout-out to you, bro – you rock!

Anyway, I’m not about to tell you that while cleaning their place yesterday I found a mint copy of Superman’s first appearance (Action Comics #1, June 1938) buried beneath old photos and magazine in a beat-up old trunk. If only, right? ‘Cause the Los Angeles Times reported in August 2014 that a copy of that iconic comic went for a record-breaking $3.2 million. I’m not even sure if either of my parents ever read or were even aware of it; though come to think of it, now I do have a faint memory – or perhaps it’s just a wistful thought – of my father saying that he did, or maybe it was that one of his friends was reading it. I’m not sure.

Come to think of it, I do know that my mom said she never read comics, but neither of them objected to my reading them years later, especially after my uncle, a New York City Public School principal, said that it was wonderful that “she was reading, and understanding what she read, at such a young age.” Of course, reading a comic book was strictly taboo if I hadn’t done my homework or at the kitchen table during meals – which I never understood, because my father read the newspaper during breakfast, especially on Sunday mornings. The funny thing is, I don’t remember my brother reading comics. That doesn’t mean he didn’t – I just called him to check on that, and he said, “No.” I said, “Never?” He said “Aah, maybe once in a while, Richie Rich or something…”

Although there always were comics around the house, nobody ever saved them. They might lie around my room for a while, but eventually they made their way into the garbage. Which is why all the old comics are worth so much these days, because they are rare – it’s like real estate, y’know? When it comes to real estate, it’s location, location, location. When it comes to comic books, it’s rarity, rarity, rarity.

time-magazine-john-lennon-2654612But there were plenty of other printed words. In the form of books.

You remember books, right?

My parents were voracious readers, and they collected books. They were probably charter members of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and the New York Times Book Review was read as much as the Sports or Style sections. (I remember my parents tearing out reviews of certain books and taking them along to the bookstore. Remember bookstores? And in their bookshelves were everything from popular bestsellers to beautifully bound in leather and slip-cased classics.

Books like Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The Collected Works of Somerset Maugham. Salome by Oscar Wilde. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. All five novels of the Leatherstocking Tales by James Feinmore Cooper (and illustrated by Newell Wyeth, Andrew’s father). First editions of The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway), Giant (Edna Ferber), Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, and Winston Churchill’s five-volume history, The Second World War. And those titles are just off the top of my head. There are three huge boxes of books sitting in the hatchback of my Toyota Matrix right now, too heavy to struggle with in the cold, sleety rain last night to bring upstairs to my apartment.

I am planning on keeping almost all of them. But last week my brother and I were wondering if any of them might be worth on the market. So I did a little research on the web, ending up at the Antiques Roadshow site, and found out that, for instance, the Heritage Print, 1939 edition of Great Expectations is worth $450 – $500. The Collected Works of Somerset Maugham, Doubleday, 1953, is worth $250 – $300. And I don’t even like Maugham.

Wow.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that, if we decide to sell them, that’s what we’ll get. Vagaries of the market, and all that, and of course it depends on whether or not we sell them directly or to a dealer – the dealer automatically taking 20 or 30%.

And, of course, chances are that I’ll end up keeping them even though I don’t know where the hell I’m going to put them. *sigh* Alix claimed shotgun on my parents’ bookshelves. Time to go to Ikea.

But in all likelihood, there’s a few thousand dollars worth of books sitting in the back of my 1994 Matrix right now. Thank God the roof doesn’t leak.

Hmmm…

Wonder what that old Time Magazine, dated December 22, 1980, is worth? It’s the one with John Lennon on the cover.

 

Ed Catto: Elasticity of Geek Culture

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blaze-6019250Every college freshman learns about price elasticity in Economics 101. Price elasticity simply means that consumers will be more accepting of price changes for some products than for others. And as I’ve been watching the CW’s new Riverdale television series, I’m translating this economic concept to Geek Culture. Specifically, I’m mesmerized how some fans embrace changes to pop culture properties with a Geek Culture Elasticity and others just can’t embrace changes.

Long-time Archie fans – he is, after all, celebrating his 75th anniversary this year – are wrapping their heads around this latest television incarnation. The new Riverdale show is a steamy and creepy manifestation of beloved characters that ostensibly represent Americana. Unlike their traditional comic counterparts, these versions of the characters were driven by dark and base motivations that are a part of real people (albeit gorgeous and glamorous versions of real people).

I really liked the show. But then again – I like Gotham and that’s not really like the traditional Batman comic books, and I like the current Silver Surfer comics, and they aren’t like the traditional Silver Surfer comic books either.

criminal-tloti-00-5714536We should be used to twisted versions of the Archie gang by now. Long ago, the publisher realized the characters had great elasticity and created Lil’ Archie, miniature versions of the teenagers. More recently, the various Archie comics have been boldly publishing non-traditional versions of their characters in series like Afterlife With Archie (the zombie version), The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (creepy Gaimen-esque witch stories) and Life with Archie (The Archie gang grows up and becomes thirtysomething).

The entire line of Archie comics was recently refreshed with Mark Waid’s new Archie series. Jughead, Adam Hughes’ Betty and Veronica and the new Josie and Pussycats soon followed. Long-time Archie writer (for former Marvel editor-in-chief) Tom DeFalco just started up Reggie and Me in the same universe.

hawkeye-face-5360642There have always been twisted Archie versions percolating about. One of my favorite stories in recent years was Brubaker and Phillip’s The Last of the Innocent series from 2011. Doppelgangers of Archie and his gang were thrust into their very own crime noir story. It was deliciously wicked.

But taking a step back and looking at the entire Geek Culture landscape, it’s easy to see that while some fans welcome changes, others are furious.

Kelly Thompson is the writer of Marvel’s new Hawkeye series, and has some thoughts about fan outrage that illustrates some fans’ In-elasticity when it comes to beloved to icons. In the Marvel Comics mythology, the original Hawkeye, Clint Barton, has been very comfortable with sharing his heroic mantle with a young upstart, Kate Bishop. And this new series puts Kate center stage as Hawkeye.

Thompson recently told a story on Graphic Policy’s BlogTalkRadio about how one fan was outraged that “Hawkeye wasn’t a dude anymore.” And this fan claimed to be the greatest Hawkeye fan, which seems incongruous when you realize that Kate Bishop has been Hawkeye in the ongoing comics universe for over a decade.

It’s easy for some fans to shake their fists in rage when creators, or corporations, change or alter their characters. And it’s just as easy for other fans to embrace new takes on old characters, like a female Captain Marvel or a black Captain America.

It’s not just the lunkheads who have trouble with changes. That’s too simplistic an analysis.

The proof is in the sales numbers. Many retailers, as well as fans, feel that Marvel has pushed the pendulum of change too far, and these wide swings have resulted in softer sales. The Marvel heroes might not have the Geek Elasticity that senior management had planned on.

Longtime fans tend to take change in stride. They are confident that any character reboot will eventually bounce back. They don’t get upset when Captain America is revealed to be an evil double agent because they’d seen it before and they know that the status quo will eventually bounce back.

I am also impressed how Geek Culture can easily keep track of all the different versions of their favorite characters.

For example, Flash fans know the Flash’s pre-Crisis mythology, his post Crisis-mythology, his new 52 mythology, his television mythology and his Rebirth mythology. And if you don’t know what all those terms means – don’t worry. You may be better off.

A big character like Batman can support many versions.
Batman is dark and brooding and in the movies, while his television is young and growing while his comic book self, ostensibly his true self is… well, I guess that changes a lot too.

Pop Culture today gets more complicated than ever, some versions, like the video game mythologies offer another take on the characters. The popular Batman: Arkham video game series, by Rocksteady has created its own darker version of Batman and his villains. Developers Rock Steady and WB Games Montreal has cleverly invited longtime Batman contributors like Paul Dini and Kevin Conroy to lend their creative talents to these efforts, further blurring the lines.

You know, it’s always been this way. Back in the in the 30s and the 40s a big hero had two competing mythologies that were both tops in their respective media.

  • The Shadow of the pulp novels was a mysterious crime fighter, with dark mysterious history, many identities and an intricate organization full of nuanced operatives.
  • The radio adventures of the character featured a ubiquitous millionaire playboy, who was often quite bumbling and less-than-competent. And when he assumed the identity of the Shadow, he became invisible.
  • The Shadow Comics confused things even more. In those comics he looked like the pulp version of the Shadow, but became invisible like the radio version. And then the comics introduced new characters not in the pulps or the radio show. Most memorable was Valda Rune. She was an enthralling femme fatale. I hope either Dynamite Entertainment or pulpmaster Will Murray will revive her very soon!

But nobody seemed to have an issue with enjoying two, or three, versions of a top heroic character like the Shadow. Maybe fans were more comfortable with the Elasticity of Pop Culture Icons back then. Or maybe they were better at just keeping it all in perspective.

And when it comes to the Archie, Veronica and gang in Riverdale…hey, who really knows who they are in high school?

Emily S. Whitten: Fan2Sea, the Floating Comic-Con (Part II)

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In my last column I talked about my expectations for the Fan2Sea comic-con cruise, how it fulfilled them, and some of the things I generally loved about being at a con on a cruise ship and about the way in which Fan2Sea pulled off its maiden voyage (haha!).

Today, it’s all about the details. Want to know what your daily experience will be like if (when! I hope!) Fan2Sea happens again and you decide to go? Well, I can’t say, but I can tell you what mine was like! So here goes:

fan2sea-three-7783751Day 1

Day 1 was pleasantly low-key from the start. Because luggage was still being delivered to staterooms, I spent the first bit of ship time chilling in one of the main areas overlooking the bar, with my lovely roommate, ComicMix assistant editor Adriane Nash, and with PR guru (and former Comic Book Resources writer/editor) Steve Sunu. After some people-watching (and excited taking of first-day selfies), and a little bit of a ship tour, we wandered up to one of the main eating areas where we found plenty of food on hand; and in the midst of a mellow lunch out on deck in the warm weather, I also caught up with the ever-fun comics creator Reilly Brown (and lovely family). It was the beginning of several times when I got to actually just chill with friends I usually see in only rushed or crowded circumstances at cons, and that was super nice.

Once staterooms were accessible and we’d gotten settled in ours, I rustled up my Hot Topic Walking Dead-themed blood spatter sundress (although I do like to do full-on cosplay, I’d opted for more referential casual cosplay on this trip, given I was packing for ten days and also didn’t want to wear a lot of layers on a warm, sunny trip!). Then we headed to the pool deck, where the first two big panels, for The Walking Dead (with Michael Rooker, Lew Temple, Madison Lintz, and Seth Gilliam) and Guardians of the Galaxy (with Michael Rooker and Sean Gunn), were taking place in quick succession.

Although it was a bit windy and distracted out on the deck (which is why they moved later panels inside), it was also super cool to be reporting on a panel out in the beautiful sunny weather while literally standing in a pool. (Yes, that’s right – your intrepid reporter stood in a pool to bring you this con round-up and accompanying photographs!) And the actors fielded some great audience questions. I enjoyed the Walking Dead actors’ talking about the challenges and quirks of working on such a gruesome show; for instance, Michael Rooker shared that the bloody makeup didn’t really bother him – until he saw the zombies during lunch sitting around eating while wearing it! And one of my favorite questions to the Guardians panel elicited discussion from Sean Gunn about Gunn’s providing the rehearsal stand-in for the CGI Rocket Racoon, which the other Guardians actors would act against. Apparently at first Gunn was simply going to stand in and read Rocket’s lines, but he thought he could also provide the acting and eyelines for the others to reference, so he gave it a try – and lo-and-behold, he did such a good job of it that he ended up doing it throughout rehearsals.

After the panels we had a bit more time to explore, including checking in on the casino, which had an excellent and thorough Sin City theme, before it was time for the ship to pass under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which was pretty exciting considering our ship was so tall it barely cleared the bottom of it. (Also, the sunset was beautiful!) After that we headed to the formal dining room, where I confess that upon ending up at a table with some veteran cruisers, we were unable to resist the peer pressure of each ordering two appetizers and two desserts to accompany our entrees. And all were tasty! (P.S. Pro tip that I didn’t know beforehand, having not been on a cruise before – if you want to be seated with a group in the formal dining room, you have to show up with your group. But our small party also enjoyed talking with folks at the larger table, so if you don’t form your group beforehand, you might just end up making a new friend!)

The only thing that could properly finish off a dinner like that would be a great cocktail; so of course after dinner I headed up to the Walking Dead / Guardians of the Galaxy cocktail party and, on the recommendation of another attendee, tried a “twisted” peach and mixed berry daiquiri. It was a great accompaniment as I enjoyed chatting with folks at the rotating bar (which took us by surprise when it started moving!), including Lew Temple (who I was really sad to see die on The Walking Dead, and who was really friendly and laid back to talk with); and Sean Gunn (a favorite from both Guardians and, of course, Gilmore Girls, and with whom I had a really wide-ranging and interesting conversation).

The party was a ton of fun, and when it wound down, no one wanted the good times to be done – so first, a few of us had the idea of playing a round of mini golf – but the wind was so crazy up on that deck that we had to postpone that for another time. Luckily, on the Fan2Sea cruise there was always stuff going on (including, e.g., the movie theater, the in-room monster channel, and the game room); so instead we located the karaoke just in time to see Steve and Chris Sims singing Toxic by Britney Spears (yes, really – and trust me, it was an experience!). But even that kind of fun has to end sometime, so eventually, we made our way to sleep and…

fan2sea-guardians-3082728Day 2

Day 2 started with a relaxing room-service breakfast on our lovely private balcony, followed by a jaunt to Key West in the beautiful weather. I confess we had all kinds of complicated plans for what to see in Key West, including a butterfly garden and Ernest Hemingway’s house; but by the time we got off of the ship what we actually ended up having time for was a scenic trolley ride, a chill lunch with friends at Fogarty’s and the Flying Monkey Saloon, and a little stroll through the streets before it was time to get back to the ship.

Back on board, I attended one of the great Master Classes offered with the comics creator guests – this one with Reilly Brown. I always like watching Reilly’s approach to art, and this was no exception. He illustrated how to use dynamic action and expression to convey character in comics, and I especially enjoyed his example of how adding details to the same base character frame can result in two such disparate characters as Wolverine and Tony Stark. (And I totally claimed that sketch afterwards.) After the class, I hurried over to the live read of Charles Soule and Ryan Browne’s Curse Words #1. I love live reads, and this one featured some of the great guests on the ship – including writer Charles Soule, and actors Randy Havens, Catherine Dyer, and Sean Gunn. It was excellent fun and very well done, and I even managed to get a couple of clips on video.

The live read overlapped with the Batman pub quiz, which was also on my must-do list, in part because ComicsAlliance’s own “Batmanologist” Chris Sims was running it and had created the questions; so as soon as the live read had wrapped, I rushed over to the pub to join Adriane, who had been holding down the fort for two of the six quiz rounds all by herself. Steve joined our team there, and despite us all missing the first round entirely and only one team member being there for rounds 2 and 3, we still came in fourth! Go team! The quiz was great, and pretty darned challenging, too! (Kudos, Chris!)

Of course, all of that hard work made us hungry, but the cruise more than took care of that with another trip to the formal dining room, before we headed back to the pub for the After Hours War Stories with comics creators. This was a pretty unique program (with no recording allowed) in which creators shared the sort of personal industry and convention stories you wouldn’t usually get at a big convention panel. The stories shared definitely made this program a favorite of mine, and I was glad they enforced the No Recording rule so that everyone felt comfortable sharing.

By that point, we were well into the late night activity portion of the day. I stopped by the Nerdlesque (it’s not really my scene, but there were definitely some creative themed scenarios being played out onstage) and then was challenged to a game of air hockey (I totally lost) and issued my own challenge for a game of pool (Adriane and I totally won!). And then somehow, it was five a.m., and way past time for all sensible reporters to be in bed. Ah, convention life.

fan2sea-emily-s-whitten-6261613Day 3

Day 3 was the one day Adriane and I had decided to book a specific excursion through the cruise line, since we were going to Mexico and had a longer time in port. We booked a Mayan ruins tour that included lunch and a trip to the beach, and were delighted to find the lovely and talented Gail Simone and her husband Scott were part of our tour group. We had an adorably charming and funny tour guide named Luis to show us all around; I could actually feel the history of the Mayan ruins as it was described to us; the lunch was tasty; swimming at the beach was exciting (there were reasonably strong currents and also underwater rocks to avoid!); and we had a great time experiencing it all with Gail and Scott.

On returning to the ship, despite a pretty full day in Mexico, it was Stranger Things day and of course there were con things I wanted to do; so I first stopped for a brief glimpse of Goonies, which was being screened on the pool deck; and then changed into my Stranger Things party cosplay (yes, I was costuming The Wall, with a Hot Topic picture frame dress and blinking Christmas lights!), and went to the Stranger Things cocktail party, where I had an entertaining time talking with other fun cosplayers and fans, and meeting Shannon Purser, Catherine Dyer, Randy Havens, and David Harbour – all of whom were wonderfully nice and fun to talk to! (Caleb McLaughlin and Gaten Matarazzo were also circulating, but I did not get to chat with them due to the crowd – they looked like they were really enjoying themselves, though.)

After the party, I stopped by the pub to see how the Cards Against Humanity: Writers Edition program was going; and discovered that all of the comics guests were there chilling. So I sat down for a chat; and more friends came around; and then we wandered over to the casino; and next thing I knew, it was almost five a.m. again and we were ordering hamburgers from room service. Ah, cruise life!

Day 4

And then suddenly, it was Day 4! Our last full day on the ship, alas!! It was also the day of the Deadpool Panel, which I was moderating; so I donned my Hot Topic Deadpool dress (love that store for geek dresses!) and headed to the Pacifica Theater, which, incidentally, has some really interesting props backstage. This panel featured Gail Simone, Reilly Brown, Scott Koblish, and Chris Sims, and we had a riot of a time talking Deadpool on stage and taking questions from the audience – probably the most fun I’ve had on a panel to date! We talked about everything from how to get into the head of such a character to what it’s like to draw a story that’s told entirely on the covers of comic books to what the comics creators thought of the Deadpool movie adaptation – and happily, it seemed like the audience was having just as much fun as all of us on stage!

After the panel, the Deadpool folks headed up to their tables at Artist Alley, and after a brief rest (hey, even I get a little tired after such late nights) I did too. Even though this con was, for obvious reasons, organized differently than a traditional convention, it still had sections of time set aside for fans to meet comics creators in Artist Alley, and I was pleased to see a setup that made it easy for everyone to interact, and a good number of folks waiting to meet the talented guests. While there, I enjoyed watching Scott Koblish and Reilly Brown draw, chatting with Laura Martin, Scott Snyder, and Gail Simone, flipping through some of Creees Hyunsung Lee’s cool art, and picking up a copy of Curse Words #1 (hey, after that live read, I had to have it!) from Charles Soule.

By the time Artist Alley closed, it was just about time for the Wayne Foundation Black Tie Dinner (for which I had brought my fancy sequined Suicide Squad Harley Quinn dress, because what else do you wear to a Batman-themed fancy dinner?). By now I was a Super Pro at cruising (hah!), so I’d suggested we get together a big table of folks ahead of time, and we managed to make it happen. It was great to have our last big dinner be with a solid group of friends; and fun to get all dressed up for it! But it was also nice to relax for the last bit of the cruise, so after dinner Fancy Dress Harley turned into Casual Cruise Harley, and then, fittingly, ran into The Joker. Who managed to convince me, a solid non-gambler, to go gamble. (Look, when someone says they’ll bankroll you to go play a slot machine called the “Enchanted Unicorn,” there is really only one response, and that is: “Let’s go!”) And solid non-gambler me might have to revise that solid stance, because lo-and-behold on top of the money we put in we won a whole $54! At which point I decided it was probably best to end on a high note, and Adriane and I took our end-of-cruise sad feet back to the room for one last night of sleep in our cozy little stateroom.

And thus, the next morning we disembarked in Tampa and the adventure ended with a delicious breakfast of crepes, some fun vintage store shopping, and champagne sangria and lunch at the oldest restaurant in Tampa. And I would not be telling a lie if I said this was possibly the most fun I’ve had at a comic con, and that I most definitely want to go back. Tomorrow, if possible.

But since I can’t go back just yet, I’ll just have to console myself with looking at the full album of photos I took and crossing my fingers that soon, we’ll be hearing announcements of another Fan2Sea. When that happens, I assume you’ll all be signing up to go with me!

And until then, and until next column, Servo Lectio!

Marc Alan Fishman: Game On, Comics Off

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My good friend, comic retailer Shawn Hilton (of Comics Cubed in Kokomo, IN), posed an interesting conundrum: Why is it that a video game can be a multi-million dollar enterprise, yet yield nary a single issue sold when adapted (or continued…) to comic continuity?

A cursory look over some sales data would mostly back Shawn’s gripe up. This week, I’m not necessarily all that mindful of specific dollars and cents as much as the basic principle being questioned here:

injustice-1360693Is adaptation a worthy vehicle towards success, specifically in comic books?

At the most macro of levels, so much of our modern geek marketplace relies on adaptation. Outside the spinner rack a walk down the toy aisle in nearly any comic shop or big box store, will yield an unending regurgitation of the same figures — all adapted to a different specific milieu. Be it a Funko Pop, 6” Action Figure, Dorbz, MiniMate, or another half dozen iterations… a given character like Batman can be purchased in so many mediums, it boggles the mind.

Adapting video games beyond their pixelated purview has long been in practice. Be it the Super Mario Brothers TV show, Halo BoomCo dart blasters, or Injustice (I figure Shawn is in surplus of DC’s Injustice), there are plenty of video game bric-a-brac to go around. One would postulate if the products were truly unmarketable, they wouldn’t continue to develop and license their brands out, sure. But when I think specifically to comics? I’m drawing a considerable blank, in terms of out-and-out success stories.

Turning towards another friend in retail, Eric Garneau of Past Times (in Niles, IL, don’t-cha-know), my hypothesis seemed to carry weight.

“…yeah, mostly I don’t even touch them.” He mentioned to me. “Injustice has moved all right in TPB for me, at least the earlier volumes… [But] stuff like Assassin’s Creed, World of Warcraft, etc… no way.”

As I polled several other friends in the know, all basically came to the same conclusion: While video game comics themselves are OK to have a few of on the racks, they aren’t ever ordered or purchased with veracity. They are evergreen merchandise; easy to upsell someone on the outskirts of the fandom, doing more to make a shelf look filled out than rifled through.

If I were to hypothesize specifically to the correlation between a video game comic and the parent product, I’d guess the biggest difference (aside from controlling the content, as one does in the game) comes in the speed at which content can be consumed. In a video game — as with any motion-based medium — story can be delivered quickly, with little necessary comprehension.

A solid cutscene of Injustice lasts two or three minutes at best. In that time, character motivation, settings, history, et al can be gleaned with ease. In a comic book, time is almost as malleable, but the static imagery cements the reader in a single moment. Put simply, a comic will always read slower and accomplish less on a page than can be communicated on a screen. Is it better content? Rarely, in my opinion. But, again, the bane of adaptation carries the burden of the appeal inherent to the original medium of the property.

When a book becomes a movie, the movie must drop nuance and backstory for increases in action and visual exploration of settings. When a movie becomes a TV show, it drops the quality of the settings, and becomes stifled by commercial breaks interrupting story. When a TV show becomes a movie, it loses the ability to explore nuanced characterizations afforded to longer interactions across multiple episodes.

And in all cases, adapting to a comic book awards the property with a new visual communication tool but loses any number of other qualities the source material gained simply by virtue of the original medium. So too, do we lose subtle stylization and character depth when our beloved comics turn into movies. Even when done well, they’re still permutations and distillations of how we grew to love a character, setting, or story. So too, then, does it apply when pixels are plundered for the pen and paper.

All that… and comic books don’t reward you with thirty lives when you flip the pages up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, and then B, A, and start.

Martha Thomases: Lampooning The Lumpen

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Like many old farts, I think it’s been a long time since Saturday Night Live was reliably funny. A lot of this is nostalgia for my youth, when I was cool and cutting-edge. More, alas, is that I think Lorne Michaels tends to stick to what he thinks works and not to take chances and rock the boat. Too many sketches rely on catch-phrases or stock characters, or the surprise visit of a guest star.

For me, the last straw was letting Trump host the show when he was running for president. I thought it was antithetical to humor to suck up to power that way, and Trump’s racism, sexism, xenophobia and general lack of class are pretty much what good comedy is supposed to attack. It’s much funnier to point out that the Emperor has no clothes than to laugh at the naked peasants.

So you can imagine my surprise when I find myself, in general, liking at least the first half-hour or so of SNL lately. I mean, I’ve liked Alec Baldwin since at least Beetlejuice, and Kate McKinnon might be my spirit animal, so I liked a lot of the campaign. Since the election, the humor seems sharper, going after Trump’s ego and narcissism and ignorance rather than just his appearance, or the size of his hands.

And then, <a href=”

this.

Melissa McCarthy does angry better than anyone. My favorite parts of Spy are her manic rants against Rose Byrne. Even in a mediocre film like The Boss, her angry outbursts make me laugh. Therefore, I was going to laugh at her impression of Sean Spicer even if she didn’t actually copy his mannerisms.

In his response to the skit, Spicer showed that he has as little understanding of how comedy works as his boss. From the link, “Extra asked Spicer for his thoughts on the sketch, and his reaction was that McCarthy “could dial back” with her impression and she “needs to slow down on the gum chewing; way too many pieces in there.”

Because it’s only funny if it is factually accurate? I mean, I know this administration has trouble understanding the difference between fake news and satire, but this is something a kindergartner would get.

I confess I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that McCarthy is a woman and Spicer is a man. She nailed the confrontational tone of the administration’s attitudes towards the press because that is her jam, not her gender. However, SNL might have accomplished more than that, for a change. According to this, Spicer’s job might be threatened. To quote, “More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him.”

Politico was not the only media source suggesting that Spicer’s days might be numbered. CNN also had the story.

If all it takes is some cross-dressing on television to rein in Hell Presidente (thanks to Steve Grant for the nickname!), then I’m all in. Rosie O’Donnell has already agreed to play Steve Bannon, an easier way to get rid of him than calling all my elected representatives every week. Let’s use Trump’s misogyny to our advantage.

NBC has noticed that SNL is getting buzzier, and they’re looking for ways to monetize this trend. I get that. Given that SNL has such a spotty record, and that “Weekend Update” is among the spottiest, I’m not sure how this would work. Could a network show be as opinionated as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report?

I don’t know if they can pull it off, but I’d love to see them try.

Dennis O’Neil: Ha Ha Ha

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Here’s the plan. You’ll wait until the office is closed for the day and the lights are all out and then, possibly wearing a tool belt, you’ll sneak inside and remove the appliance from its place near the big chair and take it home and put it on the couch and sit next to it. Then you’ll tune in NBC’s new comedy, Powerless. (Did I mention that this will be on Thursday night?) You’ll turn on the laughing gas machine, the one that belongs to your dentist and place the mask over your nose and mouth. This is necessary, according to you, because you might not find the show funny and yet it’s supposed to make you laugh and if it doesn’t you’ll feel frustrated and to avoid this ugly feeling you can sniff the laughing gas and have yourself a good chuckle and maybe a gas-induced laugh is better than none at all.

Enough of that.

I know very little about Powerless, not much more than it’s about an insurance company that deals with the collateral damage that would inevitably accompany the damage superheroes cause while doing their superstuff. Not the worst premise I’ve ever encountered.

inferior-five-8236355This is not new, this conflation of humor with superheroics.

A few weeks back, I mentioned Herbie the Fat Fury, who appeared in the American Comics Group titles, and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, part of the Captain Marvel posse,  and The Inferior Five which, if memory serves, was about a quintet of costumed goofballs who did superheroish feats of the goofball variety. And on television there were Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific, whose live action adventures may have been inspired by Batman.

Ah, Batman. Saving the best for last, were we? Batman, of course, was a comic book crusader for years before he made his way to the tube. He had also appeared in two movie serials, in newspapers, and as an occasional guest star on the Superman radio series. So it was probably no great surprise that he’d pop into your living room sooner or later. But how he popped – that may have qualified as a surprise. This Batman was not merely a dark clad vigilante who prowled the city ever seeking to avenge his parents’ murder by assaulting crime wherever it was found – he was a dark-clad comedian who assaulted crime. Yep. Funny ha-ha kind of dude.

I won’t burden you with my opinions on how Batman’s comedy was achieved. Let’s just agree that is was achieved, for a while quite successfully. Then public taste moved on, leaving Batman to a protracted afterlife in rerun city. Quirky thing: Adults coming to the show for the first time tend to see it as what is was intended to be: funny. Kids, though, are more likely to enjoy it as action-adventure. I await explanations but not, I confess, on tenterhooks.

Meanwhile, we have a new show to sample.

Maybe we’re lucky.

Mike Gold: Alternative Facts


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A lot of people have been bitching and moaning about our latest president. Some think he’s an impulsive idiot. Others, a dangerous megalomaniacal narcissist with a remarkably selective and astonishingly petty memory. Still others find him a dangerous man who is likely to destroy the American Dream and, quite possibly, America.

1984-book-9839723Even though I believe all of that may be true, I have this to say about Donald J. Trump: he has gotten Americans to pick up and read a book or two. And that includes graphic novels.

It has been well-reported that, after he reamed out Congressman John Lewis by falsely accusing him of not helping “his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart, not to mention crime infested,” sales of Congressman Lewis’s autobiographical three-book graphic novel series March went through the roof. Amazon actually sold out, something I thought was nigh onto impossible.

A week later – and the man’s only been in office for 20 days, total – his anointed spokesliar Kellyanne Conway said, in response to Trump’s claim that three to five million people attended his inauguration, that media reports of at best one million were lies and they (Team Trump) had the “alternate facts.”

Alternative facts, you say?

Two things happened almost immediately. First, people learned they could be completely frightened yet laugh hysterically at the same time. Second, they ran out (to their computers, smartphones, and cars) and purchased copies of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984.

For those who have yet to indulge in this science fiction classic – and, really, you should – 1984 is the novel that gave us such phrases and philosophies as “war is peace,” “freedom is slavery,” “ignorance is strength,” “it’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” and “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

trumps-new-clothes-9434042That last one is my favorite.

According to Publishers’ Weekly, “Print sales of the Signet Classics edition of 1984 for the week ended January 29 were almost 26,000 copies at outlets that report to NPD BookScan, making it the biggest selling book in the week. Sales the previous week were about 4,500 copies. The book was also #1 on the iBooks bestseller list… ‘In one week, Signet Classics has reprinted 500,000 copies of 1984,’ Signet v-p and executive publicity director Craig Burke said. ‘That’s more than we sell in a typical year.’”

Previously, the number one best-seller was… wait for it… March.

To name but those two books, all this massive sales growth is due to the statements of Donald J. Trump and his sundry lackeys. Trump is motivating people to read.

That’s amazing, and that’s wonderful. Given the reported choice of material, this phenomenon is likely to bite Trump in his considerable ass, which, of course, is likely to give him quite a headache.

The phrase “may you live in interesting times,” falsely designated as an ancient Chinese curse, remains quite a threat nonetheless. And, clearly, we live in interesting times.

I have one question, though: what books should I read in response to Trump’s disenfranchising Mexico and Australia?

Box Office Democracy: Rings

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Most of the time when a studio looks to revive or remake an old property it’s a desperate grasp for more money, but I’m willing to give the people behind Rings a little more credit than that.  The Ring is about a shared video, and the ways in which we share and consume videos has changed so much in the 15 years since the original came out.  Rings exists to carry the franchise into the YouTube era, and it pays off on a lot of the promise offered by the new technology (although not actually YouTube which was strange).  Rings is a clever movie, but clever isn’t enough on its own— and unfortunately, clever is all Rings has.

I absolutely adored the use of new technology.  There’s a sequence where Samara emerges from a flat screen TV that has fallen face down on the floor that never would have happened 15 years ago and looks amazing.  I’m sure the actual technology to do that effect has been around for decades (at least since Thing in The Addams Family I reckon) but it looks like a million bucks and it feels new.  While not exactly showing off new technology, there’s a shot right before the credits where a character looks fearfully out a window while it’s raining, and when the lightning lights up the window it becomes the well shot from the cursed tape and that was my favorite shot of the whole film.  Again, there are good ideas here through the haze of mediocre filmmaking.

The story is convoluted, and while it contains interesting ideas it ends up right back where every other Ring movie has been.  We start out with this interesting idea about studying the tape as a scientific phenomenon with an infrastructure built in a college to keep passing the curse along so it can be studied.  This idea is tossed aside at the end of the first act and we get to more exploring the circumstances of Samara’s life in an attempt to break the curse just like we did in The Ring and The Ring Two.  There’s a mildly interesting twist, but it all ends up about where one would expect and that’s not even taking in to account that much of the end of the movie is contained in the trailer.

Through all this narrative malaise the entire enterprise is almost saved by two bigger name actors slumming it through Rings.  Johnny Galecki is playing a creepy version of his character from The Big Bang Theory and he simply outclasses the array of marginal TV actors and performers I’ve never seen before that he’s put with in this film.  It’s not a huge part but Galecki looks like a movie star, which might serve him well if he ever gets tired of sitting around on his giant pile of money after his TV show wraps up.  Vincent D’Onofrio is given the most leeway by the script and he turns in a powerful performance.  D’Onofrio is capable of switching from unassuming to terribly menacing in the blink of an eye.  It’s almost like he never stopped playing Wilson Fisk; he’s the best thing about the film even if his mere presence feels like a bit of a spoiler the first time you see him.

We have to be willing to accept that just about half of movies will be below average, and Rings is certainly in that half, but that that effort separates the mundane from the awful.  Rings isn’t a good movie, perhaps because the two lead actors are amazingly boring, but it’s trying.  It knows what it has to add to the mythos and it tries to weave those additions seamlessly in to the established formula.  The result is a bland retread, but one with moments and performances that will endure— hopefully as inspiration for a better movie down the road.

REVIEW: Justice League Dark

jldark-box-art-3d-e1479329949742-1499071The concept of the DC Comics’ mystical characters gathering to combat occult evil always sounds good but of course, execution is everything. When it was done sparingly, as in Swamp Thing #50, it was quite effective. As an ongoing series, it proved tough to manage since each player was plucked from a title that had a fairly unique look and feel.

That said, the newly released animated Justice League Dark film is incredibly entertaining and certainly a cut above the last half-dozen releases. From a story by JLD writer J.M. DeMatteis and Ernie Altbacker, Altbacker’s script shifts the super-heroic DC Universe to supernatural threats that Superman (Jerry O’Connell), Wonder Woman (Rosario Dawson), Green Lantern (Roger Cross) and the others are less equipped to handle. Altbacker is no stranger to heroes and magicians with credits including Spooksville and Green Lantern: The Animated Series and he does a fine job weaving the various threads.

A series of disconnected people around America and then the world think they are seeing demons and a puzzled JLA feels a bit out of their depths. Batman (Jason O’Mara), the logical character to bridge the worlds, is at first skeptical until Deadman (Nicholas Turturro) arrives to possess him and insist he seek out John Constantine (Matt Ryan). To find the Brit, he reconnects with his old friend Zatanna (Camilla Luddington) and from there, the path takes them to Constantine, living in the House of Mystery. Along the way, they collect Jason Blood (Ray Chase), which means we get plenty of doggerel from his counterpart Etrigan the Demon,

Thankfully, the story pauses now and then to give us brief origins which will certainly help introduce these lesser known players to a wider audience.

To locate the cause of the supernatural infestation, Constantine once again uses and abuses friends in trademark fashion. There’s a nice exchange when he must summon Swamp Thing (Roger Cross) for help.

The DC Animated Universe differs sharply from the DC Universe and Cinematic Universe not just in how characters look but also their back stories. The biggest change here is Black Orchid (Colleen Villard), now a spirit protecting the House of Mystery’s artifacts. There’s another substantive change at the end which I won’t mention.

Amped up beyond anything we’ve seen in the comics is Felix Faust (Enrico Colantoni), who seems super-charged as he magically duels the entire team. Later we get an almost unrecognizable Doctor Destiny, here a centuries-old being called only Destiny (Alfred Molina).

The movie moves along at a lovely clip and director Jay Oliva excels with the magic battles, refreshed after growing a tad tiresome of the superhero fights. He brings a nice moody look and feel to the entire production which is most welcome.

Vocally, the cast is strong, of course, and the banter between Luddington (Grey’s Anatomy) and Ryan (live-action’s Constantine) is a highlight.

The two-disc gift set comes with a Constantine figurine. Special features on the Blu-ray include an enticing look at this spring’s Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, also from Altbacker. There’s a very nice featurette on The Story of Swamp Thing, featuring cocreator Len Wein and artist Kelley Jones address the creature’s origins and the stunning art from cocreator Bernie Wrightson. There are a series of short, almost pointless, Did You Know?s including Constantine origin, Color of Magic, Black Orchid, and Deadman. A 2016 NY Comic Con Panel is included. Finally, From the DC Vault offers up Batman: The Brave and the Bold, “Dawn of the Dead Man!” and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, “Trials of the Demon!”

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