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Martha Thomases: Copycat Crimes

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Passionate and principled capitalists believe in the rights of workers, investors and creative people to reap the rewards of their efforts. If you start a business, invent a new product, or plant in your own field, you should get to keep the profits… after paying your workers fairly, of course. We’re talking about capitalists with principles.

In an ideal world, this can be a good system. I’m motivated to work hard because I get paid in a manner that is equal to my effort and my risk. Because I live in a world in which I, personally, cannot do everything myself, I rely on other people to work hard and get paid so that there are goods and services for me to purchase.

In an ideal world, everyone benefits.

We do not live in an ideal world.

In the entertainment industry, it is more than a little common for major entertainment conglomerates to own the work of the artists who create it. While I acknowledge that these studios and record labels are entitled to a return on their investment in distributing and marketing, I don’t think they are entitled to own the work outright.

They are not entitled to all the profits.

I bring this up because Harry Shearer has brought a lawsuit against Vivendi because of their accounting of the profits from the 1984 movie, This Is Spinal Tap.

You can read about the lawsuit here and hear Harry talk about it here. In a nutshell, the corporation claims that between 1989 and 2006 (more or less), the movie only made enough money to pay the creators a little under $200.

That’s right. The movie has been on television, on videotape, on LaserDisc, on DVD, on Blu-Ray, on cable, streaming and On-Demand for more than 20 years, and it’s only made enough money to let the talent buy themselves dinner at a mid-price restaurant in Los Angeles.

It’s clear that Vivendi didn’t come up with the idea of making a Spinal Tap movie, but sometimes issues of ownership are murkier. Comic book fans such as myself might be familiar with the issues surrounding the work of Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. In the 1960s Lichtenstein created a sensation with his paintings that reproduced small comic book panels on large canvas. To quote from the Wikipedia page:

“His most celebrated image is arguably Whaam! (1963, Tate Modern, London), one of the earliest known examples of pop art, adapted from a comic-book panel drawn by Irv Novick in a 1962 issue of DC Comics’ All-American Men of War. The painting depicts a fighter aircraft firing a rocket into an enemy plane, with a red-and-yellow explosion. The cartoon style is heightened by the use of the onomatopoeic lettering “Whaam!” and the boxed caption “I pressed the fire control… and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky… This diptych is large in scale, measuring 1.7 x 4.0 m (5 ft 7 in x 13 ft 4 in). Whaam follows the comic strip-based themes of some of his previous paintings and is part of a body of war-themed work created between 1962 and 1964. It is one of his two notable large war-themed paintings. It was purchased by the Tate Gallery in 1966, after being exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1963, and (now at the Tate Modern) has remained in their collection ever since.”

Lichtenstein did not pay Irv Novick when he used Novick’s work. Neither did he pay DC Comics, the corporation that owns the work. I’m pretty sure the painting sold for lots of money. Smarter people than I can debate whether or not Novick should have shared in the success of his image. There is also a school of thought that says Lichtenstein changed the image by putting it into a different medium and context, so that his painting was not a duplicate of the original but a comment on it and the society that produced it.

I’m going to leave those arguments to people who know more about copyright law and art criticism than me. I’m pleased to see that Irv Novick gets credit now, which is more than he got in the 1960s.

A lot of people who claim to believe in capitalism seem to lose their convictions when it comes to the work of creative people. There are publishers (digital and otherwise) who ask for free material, saying the artist will benefit from the “exposure” – but not the profits. There are clothing companies that use artwork without paying for it, figuring the artist won’t find out until it’s too late, the garment is on sale, and the artist doesn’t have enough money to sue.

In my opinion, the most heinous examples of the disrespect shown by capitalists to creative people might be legal. I’m referring to political candidates who use popular songs at their rallies without the permission of the musicians who wrote the music or recorded the hit version. This is not technically illegal if the venue has a general music license from ASCAP or BMI, and the artists might make a few cents in profit. But it is gross.

It implies an endorsement by the musician without actually asking for one. It implies an endorsement where there might not be one. It forces musicians to be in a financial arrangement with a candidate with who they might have profound disagreements. It can also confuse the public as to what the musician was trying to say. The earliest example I remember is the time Ronald Reagan used Bruce Springsteen’s “<a href=”

in the USA.” Clearly, no one in the Republican campaign listened to any part of the song beyond the title, because the lyrics are quite damning of the military/industrial mindset of the party at the time.

Today, we see many musicians objecting to the Trump campaign using their songs. Trump claims to have a licensing agreement that allows him to play whatever he wants at his events. Perhaps he does, but I don’t see why he keeps playing the music when the artists object. I’ve read so much about how Keith Richards hates him, how opposed to his candidacy Neil Young is, and many others. Real fans of the music will see the candidate denounced by artists they admire.

Why not stick to “<a href=”

God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood? It’s on message, it’s catchy (I find myself singing it all the time) and I’m willing to bet Greenwood is fine with it.

So what have we learned?

  • People who make things deserve to get paid by people who want those things.
  • People who take a risk and invest in people who make things deserve to get paid, too.
  • Artists are a category of people who make things.
  • Artists deserve to get paid when someone buys their work.
  • Artists deserve to get paid when someone uses their work to sell something else.
  • Martha Thomases is not an art critic.

Tweeks: Steven Universe Interviews

Steven Universe is one of our favorite cartoons ever and so we were really excited to get to interview them at Comic Con.

We talked to Zach Callison (who is not only the voice of Steven, but also of Prince James in Sofia the First), Ian Jones-Quartey (storyboarded/animator), Michaela Dietz (Amethyst), Deedee Magno Hall (Pearl….who Anya has been singing along to since she was 2 years old — no kidding, Deedee was Jasmine in the Aladdin Spectacular at Disney’s California Adventure), Estelle (Garnet), and Rebecca Sugar, the show’s composer & creator, who incidentally was shattering glass ceilings as the first woman to independently create a series for Cartoon Network! What’s really cool about Rebecca, as you’ll find out in our interview is that she’s a bit of a musical theatre geek like us. She not only got a song idea from Sweeney Todd, but she quotes Bob Fosse too.

It’s a long interview, but if you are a fan of Steven & the Crystal Gems, you need to watch this. The whole cast was so nice and fun. Plus they are very funny. And if like Maddy your life’s dream is to be a voice actor on a cartoon, you will love all the inside scoop on how that’s done.

Dennis O’Neil, Bob Dylan, and Temporary Disreputability

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I don’t know how or from whom I learned of Bob Dylan. My patches of memory reveal that I was living aboard an aircraft carrier. I must have gone into a city (Boston?) and bought a copy of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, then taken it to a tiny office below the flight deck, put it on a kiddie-sized turntable somebody had brought aboard, and listened and liked.

Another memory patch: a shipmate, a kid I barely know, typed the lyrics to Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice” and put them on my desk, where I found them later. I have no idea why he did this – he owed me nothing – and I wish I’d been more grateful at the time.

Then some years when the misfits and rebels were constructing a counter cultural matrix from activism, folk music, rock and – yes – comic books. Not a lot of it was openly seditious (except for some of the politics) but virtually all of it was anti-establishment. The nonconformists were not looking for a corporate ladder to climb, nor a cozy nest in suburbia, nor a wife who would supply an acceptable number of scrubby offspring. Whatever that was, we didn’t want it, though I’m not sure why. There were probably a lot of different reasons; everyone carries their own burden. But sometimes the burdens can be shared.

Always, there was Dylan, sometimes figure, sometimes ground, but always, one way or another, present. He acted in a western and was the subject of a documentary film, he performed on Saturday Night Live, he published a memoir, and he wrote songs and made records and toured. He refused to be labeled the voice of his generation, but, I’m sorry, that’s what he was to me and myriads of others.

Now, we rebels are aged, not as spry as we once were, maybe not as attuned to whatever’s revolutionary these days..

I was a comic book writer and editor, content enough to be a bit disreputable in a somewhat disreputable business. But disreputability is temporary and ours faded over the decades, and eventually, without my much noticing it, comics had parity with other narrative forms. And Dylan’s combination of music – some folk, in there, some country, some rock – and his inimitable lyrics, found a home in the tonier venues. Comic books and Bobby D, occupying separate spheres, but related by time and circumstance.

Last week, Dylan was awarded the ultimate establishment accolade, the Nobel Prize. Does this mean that, at long last, we rebels have succumbed to respectability? Maybe. Probably. I guess that the answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Michael Davis: The Dream Killer 3 – Know The Game!

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Please read the first two installments in the series if you have not done so.

From Dream Killer 2:

Full discloser: For two decades I was not welcome at DC.

“What did you do?” I’ve gotten that question countless times. “What did they do?” Not as many have asked, but more than a few. What’s the difference between those who ask the first question as opposed to the second?

And why and how despite being blackballed by one of the big two was I able to not only survive in the industry but thrive?

What did I do? I refused to accept unjust treatment and called attention to it often. That was my right.

What did they do? They got fed up with dealing with me. That was their right.

I haven’t any idea rather or not I’m welcome at DC Comics these days. The perception is there is a feud between Milestone and me. DC is in a deal with Milestone, so that may mean I’m not a desirable. There isn’t a feud; there is an incident.

Milestone made what no one is disputing a real dick move. Not telling me they were moving ahead with plans without me was as fucked up as can be. Now add they were supposed to be “friends.”

That is as horrible a thing. An absolutely disgusting thing.

Well, to me it is.

Except for a few brave souls, there has been not a peep of anyone giving a fuck.

That’s OK. Pity isn’t my thing. My thing is to do what’s right. I’m doing that by not creating a front page Black vs. Black lawsuit and not detailing events that go back 20 years.

Milestone is the single most important event in the history of black comics. For over two decades I’ve led a campaign to keep Milestone relevant and make sure the phenomenal history of Milestone is correct and accurate. More people are aware Milestone is not owned by DC Comics and was Denys Cowan’s idea because of me.

I’ve devoted more to that effort than the three partners combined. My struggles to create opportunities for people of color in comics also dwarfs their collective work in that area. The talent program they now tout as their own was created by me, as was the universe for their most successful character Static Shock.

All of the above is easy to verify.

All that said, Milestone, the idea is more important to African Americans kids at large than anything I’ve done. A chance for black kids to see themselves represented fairly in the media is much more significant than Michael Davis.

Character counts in this world. Some think my character is lacking because I use words like fuck, shit and nigger in my written narrative. Many believe that somehow dilutes my good character. I think those individuals should get a clue.

Here’s a hard truth about this industry. People talk the talk, but few walk the walk. When it’s time for my annual San Diego Comic-Con party, everybody’s my buddy. When there was a rumor that Milestone stole its business plan a great many of my buddies were quick to co-sign that bullshit.

When my heart lay in a broken heap two years ago over the Milestone slight, there were those who said it was my behavior that caused Milestone to do me like they did.

Really? That’s the same behavior every single partner at Milestone as well as countless others benefitted from over many years.

I write and say what I think. When I think I’ve been used like someone’s bitch, I say so. I also say something when others are prescribed the same medicine.

Milestone’s treatment of me is relevant to the black comic book industry. How we treat each other is essential to future generations When black people are good to each other which is the vast majority of the time rarely does it make the news when those uncustomary moments are demonstrated black kids see integrity and leadership when bad it’s the lead story on Fox News.

Why use my account of the Milestone story when it’s so negative?

A few reasons. As said earlier it is only negative to me but used as the example why relationships are important it’s a grand one, and in the big picture, it’s positive.

I still support those books and the company. Regardless of what they did, I’m going to do the right thing.

That brings me back to DC Comics.

Dwayne McDuffie died in 2011. I was invited to I write a piece for the Static Shock tribute issue. My last published work in a DC comic was over twenty years ago. My exile ended officially two years before in 2009 when Diane Nelson took over as president. I’d met Diane ten years before that at Warner Bros and liked her immediately and vice versa. She assured me I was welcome back at DC and I have had a meeting there since.

That’s all cool on the surface but so is thin ice. Once you fall through, it’s colder than most can stand.

Let’s recap. I have an excellent relationship with the most influential person at DC Comics. Still, I don’t know my status. That’s because of Milestone. Why? DC has a relationship with Milestone in the bullshit world of Hollywood once you reach the boss and recount your tale of wrongful woe all is right in the world.

Why don’t I just call Diane and use her to pave the way for any project I may want to do at DC?

Respect.

  1. Respect for Dan Didio and Jim Lee, comics are their lane and going to Diane is as disrespectful as I could be.
  2. Respect for Diane Nelson. Sidestepping Dan and Jim is calling them incompetent which they are far from being. Also doing so calls into question her judgment which I’d never do.
  3. Respect for myself. I couldn’t sit in a room with Jim and Dan without addressing the Milestone elephant. Why resign them or me to that drama? If I weren’t already suffering from depression, that would do the trick.

That, boys and girl, is called knowing the game. Those who don’t shouldn’t play. So despite being blackballed by one of the big two how was I able to thrive?

Alternative means of finding distribution, budget and happiness.

The vast majority of top tier creators in the industry use one option.

There are numerous more, and I’ll touch on those next time. As well I will break down what option was preferred and why for the project I’m using for this series.

I’ve been in the game for a long time. What I use as examples are not intended as a ‘how to’ to get into the comics biz. If so the series would be named ‘how to ruin your career.’

The underlying point is to look at the big picture when entering this field. I believe with every fiber of my being one should always look to do the right thing. Comics are a very very small industry and to have a real shot, it’s counterproductive working on how well you write or draw without working on your relationships skills.

Put another way, when people tell who they are and what they are about, trust but verify.

Mike Gold: The Mighty Marvel Monster Society

strange-tales-annual-1-4311901Remember back in the good old days when comic books were fun to read? Before the never-ending cascade of deaths that are meaningless and temporary, multiple characters with the same name and pretty much the same abilities, and incessant earthshattering mega-events that bring together entire universes of superheroes just so we can see how much they hate each other?

For several years before the debut of the contemporary Marvel Universe, the House of Ideas published a lot of westerns, romance comics, teen humor, war titles – and some major tonnage of monster comics. I was probably in their prime target audience at the time, having just turned 11 when Fantastic Four #1 came out. That’s the first Fantastic Four #1. But for me, there was only one problem.

I never bought those monster titles. They just didn’t appeal to me. They looked kinda dumb.

monsterbus-9702235Then Fantastic Four #1 came out, followed by Fantastic Four #2 and then the creation of the Marvel Universe as we know it today… more-or-less. And then Marvel decided to jump on the oversized annuals bandwagon, a cart already crowded by DC, Archie, Harvey and Dennis The Menace. They released their first two in the summer of 1962 – Millie The Model and Strange Tales. I was so surprised I immediately bought the latter and actually considered buying the former.

I bought it at Chicago’s Washington Avenue subway kiosk as I was about to climb down the stairs to go home. Yes, my mother let me go downtown alone: it was 1962 and we were a lot less paranoid back then. Anyway, I started with page one and got through all 76 pages before I hit Albany Park. And I had a blast.

krogarr-3064728Since then, Marvel has incorporated some of these monsters into their continuity, most famously Fin Fang Foom (my favorite, whether he’s wearing pants or not) and Groot. Editor/head writer Stan Lee later recycled some of the names for use as heroes and villains: The Hulk, Thorr, Magneto, Elektro, The Thing, Cyclops. Perhaps the spelling of the monster Thorr explains why the superhero Thor’s name was misspelled on the last panel of his debut story.

The Creature from Krogarr (the orange guy on the left) was recycled in a brief monster team-up in The Incredible Hulk. I guess he might have received greater exposure, had his name not been almost exactly the same as the mammoth supermarket chain.

So Marvel is doing a big ol’ event in January called Monsters Unleashed, recycling another Marvel name. As Captain Renault said with great insincerity, “I’m shocked.” But leading their effort is an oversized omnibus called “Monsters Vol. 1: The Marvel Monsterbus by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby.” It reprints Groot, Fin Fang Foom, Thorr the Unbelievable, the alien Hulk, the eight-foot-tall Magneto, and others. 872 pages in total. I don’t think I could carry that on the “L”, let alone finish it. The Marvel Monsterbus retails for a hundred bucks, or roughly the cost of a variant cover.

But I do not believe Krogarr is in the Monsterbus. At least, not volume one.

And I’ll bet volume two has a whole lotta Steve Ditko.

Box Office Democracy: The Accountant

Movies like The Accountant used to be a dime a dozen, or at least they felt like that, a simple action movie with a low-A-list or high-B-list actor just filling time in the schedule. Now it feels like all of these movies have become franchise entries instead, a safer attempt at the same money as star power has become less important and licenses have become king. The Accountant is a by-the-books action movie with a gimmick, the main character is supposed to have Asperger syndrome, and it relies on that gimmick and the charm of the cast. It’s an exceptionally charming cast, and it’s capable of pushing a rather cliché movie through all of the rougher parts. I like The Accountant despite the things it does badly and, maybe a little bit, because of them.

I’ve seen some variation of The Accountant’s story a million times. A criminal with a heart of gold (Ben Affleck) gets in over his head with what is supposed to be a simple job. An innocent girl (Anna Kendrick) gets wrapped up in a world she has no place in and must be saved by said criminal. The twists and turns are supposed to keep you guessing as to whom the real bad guy is but it ends up being the person with the highest billing that isn’t the protagonist or the love interest (I don’t want to give it away but you can read a movie poster). A young cop (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) tries to bring the criminal to justice but struggles with the shades of grey around who the real bad guy is. I’m not mad, I like this story, but maybe this one wraps up a little too neatly as everyone in every flashback wraps around to be an important part of the present day. There’s also a kind of inexplicable moment where the back-story, previously told through flashbacks gradually handed out throughout the movie, is dumped out in a giant bit of narrated exposition at the end of the second act as if they realized they had run out of time for their previous framing devices.

It’s a little strange that the gimmick of this movie is that Ben Affleck is playing a neuroatypical character. I don’t know if this is an accurate depiction of Asperger’s or an offensive one. I am reasonably sure that most people with any form of autism are not master assassins, so it’s all kind of abstract at that point. It feels like grabbing a tiger by the tail to suggest that the way to make your special needs child function in a normal society is through an intensely abusive upbringing that turns them in to an assassin, but maybe it’s enough that all of the autistic people in the film are depicted as functioning reasonably self-sufficient adults. The Accountant might be ahead of its time now, but it feels like it’s in dire danger of seeming very regressive a decade down the line.

Then again, maybe The Accountant isn’t meant to stand up to the judgment of the ages. This is The Transporter or Kiss of the Dragon more than it’s a Die Hard; a movie to bridge the gap between bigger releases and to take advantage of the lead actor bulking up to play Batman. I had a great time watching The Accountant— the action was fun and as original as you’re going to get for a movie made at this level of effort. The plot wasn’t any great puzzle or anything, but I had a good time pulling at the threads and unraveling it in my brain. I would watch eagerly watch a sequel and sigh and roll my eyes if they stretched it in to a trilogy. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane and not every action movie can be Crank 2: High Voltage but the world needs new movies all the time, and The Accountant adds up to a solid film.

Win a Free Digital HD Code for Bad Moms

  • News
  • October 18, 2016

badmomscoverOver the summer, the hot button topic of “having it all” and being the “perfect mom” was explored in the well-received satire, Bad Moms. The film, starring Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, and Kathryn Hahn was an over-the-top story of rebellion and re-examination, sparking countless discussions. With the film coming to Digital HD today (and on disc November 1), you can join in on the renewed conversation by entering our contest to win one of two digital codes, coutesy of our friends at Universal Home Entertainment.

All you need to do is tell us by 11:59 p.m., Friday, October 21, what you consider to be the most extreme example of someone being a “Bad Mom”, someone you have personally experienced. The decision of ComicMix‘s judges will be final.

Bad Moms, the year’s biggest R-rated comedy – a runaway hit with audiences and critics alike – is coming to Digital HD on October 18, 2016 and Blu-ray™, DVD and On Demand on November 1, 2016, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.  The raunchy film described as “incredibly funny!” by Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly, is the first R-rated comedy since The Hangover to earn an “A” grade from audiences nationwide.  Hailed by critics from The New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times and Washington Post, Bad Moms is one comedy not to be missed.  The Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital HD come with nearly an hour of exclusive bonus content including hilarious deleted scenes, gag reels and exclusive interviews with the cast and their moms that will have everyone laughing again and again!

Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Hangover, Four Christmases) and produced by Suzanne Todd, (Alice Through The Looking Glass) and Bill Block (Dirty Grandpa), the comedy also features Jada Pinkett Smith (The Women), Christina Applegate (Anchorman 1 &2), Annie Mumolo (The Boss) and Jay Hernandez (Suicide Squad).  It’s time to party like a mother with this hysterical and relatable film.

In this hilarious and heartfelt comedy from the writing duo behind The Hangover, Amy (Mila Kunis) has a seemingly perfect life – a great marriage, over-achieving kids, beautiful home and a career. However, she’s over-worked, over-committed and exhausted to the point that she’s about to snap.  Fed up, she joins forces with two other over-stressed moms (Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn) on a quest to liberate themselves from conventional responsibilities – going on a wild, un-mom-like binge of long overdue freedom, fun and self-indulgence – putting them on a collision course with PTA Queen Bee Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) and her clique of devoted perfect moms (Jada Pinkett Smith and Annie Mumolo).  See the movie that critics are cheering as “…a funny, giddy, sentimental laugh-in…” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times.

Tweeks: We Bare Bears Interviews

One of the absolute cutest shows on TV is We Bare Bears. It started out as a web comic by Daniel Chong and now it’s on its second season on Cartoon Network.

We sat down with Daniel Chong and the voices of the stackable San Francisco bears Grizzly (Eric Edelstein), Panda (Bobby Moynihan) & Ice Bear (Demetri Martin) & let them just be hilarious.

 

Editor’s note: Don’t forget to catch the Tweeks in their regular time slot Thursdays at 1PM Eastern!

Joe Corallo, Year One

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younganimal1-5838389I started writing a weekly column here at ComicMix a year ago today. The past year I’ve given my thoughts on a number of issues focusing in particular on diversity in comics. Those issues have often involved LGBTQ representation. I’m going use this column to highlight some of the topics I’ve covered, see if anything has changed or if any predictions I had made turned out to be true and maybe add in an anecdote or two.

The second column I wrote for ComicMix was about Coagula, DC Comics first and only trans superhero. A lot has happened this past year as far as Coagula is concerned. She went from being an obscure character created by Rachel Pollack from a still uncollected run of Doom Patrol, a long cancelled series with seemingly little hope of being brought back as a monthly comic to being the flagship title for Gerard Way’s Young Animal imprint. Additionally, Gerard Way has stated he wants to bring Coagula back in his run. I can’t stress to all of you enough how great it’s been see this series of events unfold.

Another early column was regarding Alysia Yeoh, Barbara Gordon’s trans friend, getting married. Though there was a lot of press around that and Alysia Yeoh seemed to be gaining some interest from fans the character, one of the incredibly few trans characters that DC Comics has, faded into obscurity.

I spent no less than two columns discussing my displeasure with Iceman being outed. It’s been a long time since I discussed it so I thought I’d follow up on that. It took until All-New X-Men #13 for Iceman to pursue men and not just talk about coming out to someone. He embarrasses himself in a gay bar, runs out and runs into a guy named Romeo (I’m not kidding) who happens to be an Inhuman. I guess they wanted to make sure that character was named Romeo to make sure you’d get that Marvel is borrowing from Shakespeare here. The poor handling of Iceman being gay would almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad. It’s somehow managed to be worse than I even thought it was going to be, and I came in with low expectations.

beaton-david-bowie-7289240Bi-erasure came up a few times discussing characters like Constantine who was being portrayed as straight in the now-cancelled NBC series and Marvel’s Hercules being portrayed as straight despite the character’s history of bisexuality. Bi-erasure came up again as Harley Quinn was portrayed as straight in the Suicide Squad movie and most recently with Gal Gadot confirming that Wonder Woman would be portrayed as straight for the 2017 film. If you want a bisexual Wonder Woman, stick with Greg Rucka for now.

I still don’t think Poe and Finn from Star Wars: The Force Awakens are in love with each other.

When David Bowie passed away early in the morning of January 11th, I had tossed out my previously planned column (with editor Mike Gold’s permission) and wrote about how much David Bowie had meant to me over the years. One story I had forgotten to include was the one and only time I was in the same room as David Bowie. I was seeing a Nine Inch Nails at Hammerstein Ballroom here in New York with my friend Jake back in 2005 with the Dresden Dolls opening. After they opened up in VIP balcony seating above us came out Chris Rock, Marilyn Manson, and David Bowie. The standing room crowd started chanting just being in Bowie’s presence. It got so loud and disruptive that he opted to get up and leave until the house lights went off so as not to draw attention away from Nine Inch Nails. Real classy guy. If you’re unfamiliar, give his album Station to Station a try.

Sam Wilson became Captain America in Steve Rogers absence, but now Steve Rogers is back and Sam Wilson has been relegated to being the second class Captain America.

If you haven’t seen that Netflix Pee-Wee Herman movie, it’s good, but it’s no Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

Eddie Berganza is still group editor of the Superman family titles at DC Comics which has continued to maintain exclusively male employment in the editorial department.

alters-1-4623751I’ve highlighted many different creators in the past year including Patrick Atangan, Steve Orlando, Rachel Pollack, Fyodor Pavlov, Howard Cruse, and Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Back in June, AfterShock Comics announced a new series, Alters, written by Paul Jenkins with art by Leila Leiz. The principle character, Chalice, is a trans woman and the hook for the series is “She can only be herself when she’s not herself.” I wrote about my reservations and the red flags I saw from reading the write ups. Paul Jenkins reached out to me and we conducted an interview for the following week. I want to stress that Paul was very polite and agreed to all the questions asked without any hesitation. Now that issue #1 is out we’ve seen the comic be met with mixed reviews, many of which unfortunately reaffirm my reservations based on the initial announcements. Paul Jenkins has done some incredible work including his Marvel Knights run on Inhumans which I can’t recommend highly enough, but the missteps in Alters would be hard to make a course correction on at this point, at least as far as I can tell.

Oh, and I took issue with Simon Pegg making Sulu gay in Star Trek Beyond against George Takei’s wishes even after asking George Takei first. It sounded like a cheap publicity stunt for some free marketing that backfired. Now that the movie is out, it happens that Sulu didn’t even get to kiss his husband in this movie who’s already barely in the film so it turns out I was right to be cynical about it. That column led to the liveliest discussion I’ve had on Facebook about anything I’ve written for ComicMix. Even more than that time I said we don’t need Iron Fist.

That about sums up my summing up of my first year as a columnist here at ComicMix. I’d like to thank Martha Thomases for suggesting me as columnist in the first place, Mike Gold for going with that suggestion, having faith in me to deliver on a weekly basis and for acting as a sounding board and mentor over the past year, and everyone else at ComicMix for being welcoming and supportive over the past year. Most of all, I’d like to thank everyone who’s been reading this column over the past year for your time and support.

I hope you’re as excited for what the next year will bring as I am.

 

Glenn Hauman: Rejected!

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One of the most frustrating things to learn when you’re trying to break into the comics business is that you can be doing everything right – you can be skilled in your craft, pro-level, ready to go, with genuine audience pleasing work – and you still don’t get the job.

Even more, you can go back, show the same work again, get an even better response to it – and you still don’t get the job.

Let me offer myself as an example.

1989. Summer. Batman had been in theaters for six weeks and I was at the San Diego Comic-Con. My first, their 20th. I was 20, so it seemed fair. The show was still in what they now call the San Diego Concourse, with the Masquerade in the Civic Theatre, and it was the biggest convention I’d ever seen, bigger than all the New York shows I’d been to – why, there were eleven thousand people there!

(We pause for a moment of laughter – nowadays, that’s the line for Hall H. Onward.)

And there was a panel there called (more or less) “The Mighty Marvel Pitch Session.” You would get up on stage and pitch your plot to Executive Editor Mark Gruenwald and Historian / Archivist Peter Sanderson, who would listen and critique you to the audience, and give you a thumbs up or thumbs down. I went. And I had nothing, really, except for a She-Hulk story that I’d written up and mailed to editor Bobbie Chase in the wake of John Byrne’s leaving the book, who rejected it.

Heck, I didn’t even have a copy of the plot, just the memory of it. But it was what I had. And so I went up, to face the judgment of the duo doing Siskel & Ebert.

I don’t have the space here to recap the plot, but trust me: I killed.

The audience was laughing hysterically at all the right places, and Mark and Peter were right along with them. By the time I got to the point where She-Hulk was arguing with the new voice in the narration box, wanting to talk to Byrne, and the narrator explaining Byrne wasn’t there because he wanted to have She-Hulk shave her legs with her heat vision –

“ – I don’t have heat vision!”

“Yeah, we know. Messy, ain’t it?”

Mark turned into the gale force of crowd laughter, exclaiming, “Does everyone know this story???”

I finished the story to rapturous applause, and got the only double thumbs up of the panel.

Afterwards, Mark came up to me. “That was a great story! Why don’t you submit it?”

“I did. It was rejected.”

“Really? Who did you send it to?”

“Bobbie Chase.”

“Hmm. That’s weird. Why don’t you send it to me, and I’ll bring it over to Bobbie and see what’s going on with it?”

An invite to submit a story to Marvel? To the Executive Editor who already likes your story? “Yes, sir, I’ll send you a copy as soon as I get back to New York!”

And so I sent it off, and waited.

I waited through August, and just as I was packing up to head back to my Junior year of college, I got a reply – which I just found this weekend in my files and reproduce for you here.

marvel-mark-gruenwald-rejection-letter-6584204

Good story, amusing story – just not usable anymore.

Argh.

By that time, school had started up again, and I got busy and didn’t end up pitching again – you know, just got caught up, had to finish school, had to pay the bills, had to move, yadda yadda yadda. My next time writing Marvel characters would be almost seven years later in a prose anthology, The Ultimate X-Men.

So, is there a moral here?

Yes, and it’s this: Don’t give up.

Seriously.

Every writing manual tells you not to get discouraged, just keep at it, and eventually it’ll break for you.

And it will, but it does take effort. It takes time to find a voice, a groove, a point of view. The only thing that moves that process along is output.

And even when you’re ready – the shot may not be there. Even crazier: the shot you take may miss.

And that’s okay.

Don’t take it personally.

There will be other chances, other places, other things that inspire you to create.

But also, this: Talent and skill does not necessarily correlate to career opportunity.

That’s a tougher one to handle; realizing that no matter how good or bad you are, your career will hinge to a completely unknowable level on blind luck and happenstance.

But that’s okay too.

Because then when you realize it, all you have to do is put yourself out there, and all you have to be… is ready.

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