The Mix : What are people talking about today?

John Ostrander: They Grow Up So Fast

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I’ve been watching DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow over on the CW. Among the characters that have been appearing on the show are Firestorm and Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Well, not so much Hawkman any more, maybe. I didn’t create those three characters but I certainly played with them a lot and, for a while, left my sticky fingerprints all over them. So it’s interesting watching manifestations of them in other media.

I’ll be experiencing that big time come August when the Suicide Squad movie hits the multiplexes. I created Amanda Waller and I defined characters like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang and it will be exciting to see how they translate for the screen. I hope.

None of the character portrayals will translate directly from the comics to movies or TV. I’m okay with that; none of them have so far. Different media have different needs. That’s why they’re called adaptations. The material is adapted from whatever the source was. My only question about any given adaptation is – how true is it to its roots? Did they get the essence of the character or the concept right? If you’re going to do Captain XYZ Man, there should be a resemblance to what makes up Captain XYZ Man. Right?

OTOH, I haven’t always done that and Suicide Squad itself is a good example. The comic was originally created for DC by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru; my version shared the title, a character or two, and some history with the original and not much else. Of course, as buddy Mike Gold pointed out in his excellent column this week, Kanigher may have gotten the title (and not much else) from a feature in a pulp magazine called Ace G-Man. What goes around comes around?

Amanda has appeared several times, including the TV show Arrow, lots of animated series, the Green Lantern movie, video games, the TV series Smallville, and probably more. I may need to double check my royalty statements. Any number of actresses have portrayed her and voiced her. She doesn’t always look the same. In Arrow and some of the comics, she’s built like a model. However, in all the variations I’ve seen there have been certain aspects that are kept – she’s female, black, and she’s ruthless as hell.

Even with other characters, I don’t always keep to how they were conceived. My version of Firestorm changed (evolved?) throughout my run. At one point when we decided he was a Fire Elemental (the Elemental idea was popular for a while starting with Alan Moore making Swamp Thing the Earth Elemental) and Ol’ Flamehead’s look was drastically altered, not always to universal approval.

Still, I think I kept to the essentials of the characters and, when I changed things, I kept within continuity as established although sometimes I picked and chose within the continuity.

All that said, I (mostly) enjoy seeing the variations and permutations of these characters. It’s like watching your kids grow up and moving away and seeing what they become. It’s not always what you expected but, hopefully, you can still see your DNA in them.

Joe Corallo: The Right Way

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This past weekend was Emerald City Comic Con. It’s one of the up-and-coming cons that seems to be getting exponentially bigger and more important to the industry every year. I have yet to have the pleasure and privilege to attend ECCC, but it’s on my bucket list.

ECCC has increased in importance to the point where some major announcements in the comic world are now made there. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, announcement made was from DC Comics. They announced a new DC imprint headed by Gerard Way titled Young Animal. The flagship title of this new imprint will be Doom Patrol; the first issue of which will be hitting the shelves in September of this year. I know he’ll be writing or otherwise involved in all the titles Young Animal is putting out including Shade, The Changing Girl, Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye, and Mother Panic, but today I’m focusing on Doom Patrol.

doom-patrol-1107b-2852493Gerard Way has stated the plans for Doom Patrol will be to pay homage to all the previous iterations while creating a unique story. In this interview, it’s discussed how Way has read every run of Doom Patrol and that there are great elements in all of them (that may be overly generous, but that’s not the point) which this run will make nods to.

In particular, it looks like this run will be heavily influenced by Grant Morrison’s run considering Flex Mentallo is one of the characters who appears to be in the preview art. And keeping in the tradition of the other runs, Robotman appears prominently as well. Gerard Way continued to reveal more on Twitter. Way tweeted that there are “special plans” for Dr. Caulder, which seems to reinforce the idea that Grant’s run having made Caulder a more complicated character will continue.

The most interesting thing about Doom Patrol that was revealed on Twitter (and I’m incredibly biased here) is how much Gerard Way loves Rachel Pollack’s run on the series. Way even specifically mentioned love for Coagula in an exchange. You can read that here. At least one other person I saw tweeted at him about Rachel’s run too which was nice to see. Though it’s not explicitly mentioned that Way would bring back Coagula, this is certainly the most positive statement in regards to the notion that’s been made since Rachel Pollack’s run came to an end.

I won’t delve too deeply into Coagula as that was what I dedicated my second column on here to. Please feel free to read it if you haven’t. In short, she’s DC’s first and only trans superhero. Not that they haven’t had trans characters in comics that aren’t superheroes, or that they haven’t printed other books with powerful trans characters, but they weren’t DC properties (Grant Morrison’s Invisibles is creator-owned for example).

Coagula, and Rachel Pollack herself, are important parts of history at DC Comics. I’m not going to say we need Coagula now more than ever. We’ve needed her ever since she came into existence. What I will say is that it’s not too late to make things right.

I understand how many people might not realize how big this is, but this is a big deal. In the decades since Rachel’s run, multiple failed attempts to revive the series have taken place. All of which got cancelled sooner than Rachel’s run and all of which have tried treating the Doom Patrol as a superhero team. That’s a mistake. They aren’t. Arnold Drake and Murray Boltinoff with Bruno Premiani created this team and set the groundwork for things to come. Grant Morrison with Richard Case understood that groundwork. Rachel Pollack with Linda Medley and Ted McKeever understood that too. No one else has understood that in the same way for decades until now.

I had the opportunity to talk to Rachel Pollack after my brief Twitter exchange with Gerard Way. “Wow! Times have changed.” she said. She went on to say that she’s a fan of Gerard Way’s Umbrella Academy. Who knew?

I’ll be honest, I was skeptical at first when I heard DC was bringing back Doom Patrol. Not because I doubted Gerard Way’s ability to write or craft a story, but was it going to be done right? Obviously right in this context is subjective. Like the feeling I get whenever I meet a Doctor Who fan and they tell me that their favorite Doctors aren’t either Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, or Peter Davison. Sure, they may like Doctor Who, they may have a great reason for liking the Doctor they like, but it’s not my Doctor Who.

When you’re a big fan of a work, your strong attachment to it tends to be linked to aspects of that work. For me with Doom Patrol, it’s the weirdness, it’s the absurdity, but it’s also the heart. It’s not just revealing a contradiction to defeat the Scissormen (thanks Glenn!), or stopping the men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. from exterminating eccentricity, but it’s Robotman risking life and mechanical limb to save Crazy Jane by going into her mind and riding with the Conductor to find her. It’s Robotman learning about Coagula and discovering more about himself through his initial bigotry to become a better man than he was before. It’s about heart, love, and acceptance. It’s about life and its power to take away from you and how sometimes it can feel like everything has been taken away, but sometimes you crawl from the wreckage, get back on your feet and slide in the wreckage and before you realize it you’re shining through the wreckage of your life.

Gerard Way gets Doom Patrol. It’s been decades since someone has gotten it quite like this. More than any other comic coming out this year from the big two, I am looking forward to this one the most. I’ll be buying multiple copies of issue #1, giving them to people who will take it, and spreading the good word. Doom Patrol means something to me. Maybe it’ll mean something to you too. And DC might have finally got it right again.

I’m looking forward to the ride. I’m thrilled that we’re being led by someone as talented as Gerard Way who understand this property so well and is a genuine fan of the series. And I’ll gladly follow Way’s run on Doom Patrol to the gates of hell, which in all likelihood is probably already on the team’s agenda. Maybe this will help finally get Rachel Pollack’s run reprinted too. Because honestly, who doesn’t love Coagula?

Mindy Newell: It’s Really Cool!

batman-beanie-8313350The other day at work I met a young man who is a surgical technician. Since I’m an operating room nurse, that’s an everyday occurrence. But what caught my eye was his scrub hat, which was a pattern of Batman’s insignia. So of course I immediately said, (duh) “So I’m guessing you’re into Batman.” And everything else was forgotten for a little while as he and I shared tales of our membership in Club Geek.

I bring this up because this Batman – that’s his actual nickname at work – absolutely loved Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. He has seen it three times, he told me, and wouldn’t mind going back for a fourth viewing. Being that this was the first time I was meeting him, I was polite and didn’t scoff or tell him that he’s an idiot. I did say that I hadn’t seen it yet, that I hate what Zack Snyder had done to the Man of Steel (pun intended) and that speaking I’m not a Snyder fan, that people I know with whom I work with and respect here at ComicMix have seen it pretty much hated it (see Mike Gold and Marc Alan Fishman’s columns, as well as Arthur Tebbel’s (review), and that I had decided to wait until the movie hits the streaming and cable markets.

“And I especially don’t like the idea of Batman using a gun. He’s not the Punisher,” I said. “The whole thing with Batman is that he operates, he lives, on that line between justice and vigilantism. It’s a tightrope between good and evil.”

Well, scrub tech Batman explained to me that Robin’s death (“by the Joker,” I interceded, to which he said, “Yeah, but the movie doesn’t show that,” to which I said, “Well, we know about it because of Dark Knight, but from what I understand his killing rampage comes out of nowhere, and don’t you think it should have at least mentioned the Joker for those not in the know?”) has driven Batman over the edge and that it makes perfect sense. “And it’s cool,” he said. “It’s really cool.”

Which got me to thinking later on – I didn’t ask scrub tech Batman how old he is, but he’s definitely a Millennial, and that’s the generation that’s come to adulthood in a world in which “death by bullet” is an everyday occurrence; in a world in which “guilt” and “innocence” doesn’t mean a thing; in a world in which fucked up wing-nuts use AK-47’s to settle arguments; in a world where police kill kids and beat up drivers for not signaling a lane switch; in a world where campaign rallies become Nazi Beer Hall Putsches; and in a world where Islamic fundamentalists fly passenger jets into buildings, kidnap and behead reporters, and burn enemies alive – all brought to them in living color courtesy of the news and the Internet.

So it’s not really all that surprising, if you think about it, that scrub tech Batman accepts the new paradigm of brutality, ugliness, rage, and “gangsta-ism” in their fictional heroes.

Anyway, it’s a theory.

 

Ed Catto: Valiant Efforts

wizard7-2989637The creative process has two cruel extremes. On the one hand, you might be involved with something big and exciting, like a Hollywood movie or a Broadway show, but everyone involved has to work closely with so many other people. Your creative vision, even for the director, may seem like an endless battle of compromises.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re creating something where there are no collaborators to work with, like a page of an artist’s sketchbook, you don’t have those concerns. You can do whatever you want. Of course, there won’t be any marketing budget or distribution plan in place. It’s likely that not as many people will be exposed to your work.

When I was in marketing for Oreo cookies, I thought I’d be more like the creative visionary moving the brand forward, but the job actually had much more in common with the Hollywood or Broadway creative process.

eternal-warrior39-coverAs a brand manager on Oreo cookies, the crown jewel of Nabisco, it seemed that everyone at all levels was very involved in every marketing effort. Advertising, promotions, line extensions – so many different layers of management were involved. Collaboration was the name of the game. A marketer with an entrepreneurial streak often had to subjugate those urges in lieu of corporate diplomacy for the greater good.

But a few times I got the opportunity to express my creative vision practically unencumbered.

There was a big Disneyland tie-in partnership I was leading. There were many parts to this program, including a grand prize of trip to Disneyland and a commercial with Keri Russell. In addition, Disney Adventures Magazine offered Oreo six ad pages. We didn’t have any current print ads then, and the ad agency wasn’t interested in creating new creative. But as Disney Adventures Magazine was very comics focused, you know I had an idea or two for these ads.

bs14I reached out to some of my new friends at that time – the then-fledging publisher Valiant Comics. They were the new kids on the block, and for early 90s fandom, they were white-hot for collectors (and speculators). I worked with Seymour Miles and Don Perlin to develop comic pages to promote Oreo. We featured a family called The Dunkin’s who would dunk their Oreos into milk. It was great fun and very well received.

For me, one fantastic side effect of this program was getting to know the entrepreneurial folks of Valiant Comics. It was a place of excitement and optimism, and as a lifelong comics fan, it was a treat to have a ringside seat during this publisher’s growth spurt.

There’s been a lot written about those early days, but for me it was all very positive. I got to know Jim Shooter, Jim Massarsky and Fred Pierce.

During that time, longtime comics artist Don Perlin was enjoying a wonderful second act. All of sudden, with comics like Bloodshot debuting, he was a sought-after artist at conventions and fans would wait in long lines for his autograph. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer fella.

armaleNow it’s years later, and Valiant has been reborn as a new Valiant. It’s run by people with a big vision and big hearts. And Fred Pierce is back again for his second tour of duty as Valiant’s publisher.

Valiant re-debuted almost five years ago, and soon their output will surpass the original. I thought it was time to sit down with them and find out just exactly what they’re trying to do, why they are working so hard, and what to expect in the future.

Next week, I’ll let you know what they said. And in the meantime, treat yourself to an Oreo or two.

REVIEW: Actionverse from Action Lab

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We get a hell of a lot of press releases over here at ComicMix. That’s understandable, even though we’re not really a news site – for those of you who watch Fox News, there’s a difference between “news” and “opinion.” We get ‘em from all sorts of people and places and most of the larger comics publishers, except DC Comics. Hmmm… I wonder why that is?

actionverse-molly-danger-297x450-9787457Perhaps the publisher who leads the pack in sending out press releases is Action Lab. I say this because in the time it took me to write these words we received another seven releases from Jamal Igle. Yes, the artist on Supergirl and Firestorm and New Warriors and Iron Fist / Wolverine and all sorts of other worthy stuff. His creation, Molly Danger (Hendrix much?), is over at Action Lab where Jamal also serves as Vice President of Marketing. Our very own Ed Catto made him the subject of a Supergirl-focused column about two months ago.

Not a problem. Some publishers seem to send out releases every time one of their staffers goes to the bathroom. Jamal’s are actually informative. The number one secret to getting outlets to read your press releases is to always have something interesting or newsworthy to say. If we didn’t already have a publicity/marketing human here at ComicMix who could eat Jamal’s lunch, I’d kidnap him.

actionverse-stray-7672553So after receiving notice of Action Lab’s upcoming superhero universe, I let out a long, slow sigh. Damn near every publisher that indulges in heroic fantasy tries this, and a lot of them were as good as they were unsuccessful in the long run. Malibu’s Ultraverse, Dark Horse’s Comics Greatest World, Dynamite’s line of pulp characters… everybody meets everybody, but the established (and incessantly reestablished) universes at DC and Marvel preempt too much of the readers’ time and dig too deep into the readers’ wallet to allow even really good projects such as the ones I just noted any chance at traction. Which, of course, is the point: DC and Marvel used tonnage to crowd competitors out of the newsstand, now they crowd ‘em out by draining time and money. This is the purpose of capitalism.

I picked up my keyboard and dropped Jamal a note saying “let’s see what you’ve got” and he rapidly replied with pdfs of the six-part Actionverse miniseries. I read the run during my just-concluded post-MoCCA recovery, which seemed appropriate as MoCCA focuses on smaller, independent publishers.

actionverse-6758259This universe consists of many Action Lab characters: The F1rst Hero, Fracture, Midnight Tiger, Stray, and Igle’s own Molly Danger. If you’re not familiar with any or all of them, Actionverse is a good place to check ‘em out.

By definition, putting the band together requires the creators to succumb to originitis, where by necessity the story revolves around establishing who’s who, what’s what, and where it’s all happening. Actionverse is no different, but at least each issue focuses on the introduction of one character joining the evolving storyline. Structurally, across the six issues we’ve got us a story that is structured in a fashion similar to the first issue of original, Tower Comics T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents by Wally Wood, Reed Crandall, Gil Kane, and Mike Sekowsky. This is the highest praise I can offer to the first issue of a new super-team.

We’ve got us a fun, unpretentious, straight-forward super-team here that is devoid of Greek choruses, one that I enjoyed reading and will indulge in further. If you enjoy superhero comics but have grown tired of the DC/Marvel’s rebooting/reimaging/rebirthing reflux, check out Actionverse. Six issues, six weeks, by (gasp) Anthony Ruttgaizer, Jamal Igle, Shawn Gabborin, Ray-Anthony Height, Sean Izaakse, Vito Delsante, Marco Renna, Chad Cicconi, Steve Walker, Mat Lopes, Ron Frenz and probably a few others.

Shipping against Civil War II and Rebirth, I’d hate to see Actionverse get lost in the shuffle. And, besides, you deserve something new and different.

Marc Alan Fishman: Dear DC Entertainment…

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Dear DC Entertainment,

I quit. I’m out. I’m done. This past week I’ve paid actual money I earned to view Batman v. Superman, as well as Justice League: War (on Netflix. And yes, I know that’s not new, but it’s still new enough to count). I freely admit my expectations were low. Lower than low in fact. I was hoping for some decent visual effects, maybe a few more jokes since the last time, and I prayed for some semblance of lessons learned from Marvel.

I got none of it.

Instead, you produced 2 ½ hours of angst, rain, punching, and death. And then you took your New52 Justice League comic series and ran it through the wringer in order to produce it as an animated adventure designed solely to appeal to 13-year old bitter tweens. You’ve sullied both mediums so egregiously that I’m honestly having trouble concocting any legitimate snark for these abortions given birth in motion. Alas, I honest-to-Rao can’t do it. My eyebrow is not cocked high. No smirk remains emerging from the corner of my mouth. I sit here in a bent-over stupor wondering who specifically allowed for either of these films clearance to see the light of day. Especially given that Marvel hasn’t made a single misstep in their recent releases… and Age of Ultron wasn’t even half the quality of its predecessor.

It’s not a shame. It’s not sad. It’s not depressing. It is soul-crushing.

You clearly couldn’t have missed the tidal wave of the zeitgeist in the aftermath of Man of Steel. Nary a stone was left unturned where the public did not denote in every feasible outlet in print and online that Snyder’s Big Blue Boy Scout was a banal shell of his former celluloid self. In the wake of every Marvel movie, it was clear what you needed to do, DC. A little humor and life-saving could go a long way. But you never wanted that for us, did you? You couldn’t deal with a little humility in the face of your financial defeat.

(And before the DC flamers decide to load their Trump cards of the current box office numbers of BvS, let’s just make this abundantly clear: Marvel’s movie profits since Iron Man utterly decimate DC’s by billions. With a ‘B’. If you need me to show you the math on it… e-mail me at info at box office mojo dot com.)

Offering us up a fight between your biggest two licenses sounds good on paper, until you forget within two and a half hours to develop any other plot or characterization to build a universe with. Instead of that, you chose to celebrate murder, nightmares, thievery, matricide, patricide, and wanton destruction. Spare the death from that aforementioned list and replace it with snarky one liners? You get Justice League: War. In both pieces action trumped all else. And because of it, we your once loyal fans leave exhausted but not sated.

In contrast, lesser sequels at Marvel – like Iron Man 3 or Thor 2 – upped their action ante but kept the bigger picture in mind. Tony Stark was a PTSD-suffering futurist thinking about macro-metahuman issues. Thor contends with having to grow up and be the demi-god he was meant to be… all while the cosmic conundrum (building toward Infinity War) leaves Earth in the center of the battlefield. While both films were shadows of their original counterparts, neither left me in a punch-drunk stupor; wondering how a 20-year veteran of crime fighting suddenly dropped his guard over the coincidental nature of matriarchal nomenclature. A bit too complex a thought, I know. I digress.

DC Entertainment… I am ashamed of you. You hold in your possession the world’s most recognizable licensed properties in super-hero-dom. With the financial backing by the same financiers of the multi-billion dollar Harry Potter franchise writing the checks. With all the potential you’d ever need to level the playing field by the competition now nearly a decade ahead of you in world building. You’re akin to Ohio’s Governor when it comes to wanting the throne with literally no path save for chaos in order to achieve it. Look upon the world left in ruin. The smoldering ashes of fan’s hope left glowing hot by hours of endless, needless violence. All you’ve left to show for it are a pile of Martha and Step Brothers memes. You can lie to yourself with your international box office ticket sales. But you can’t lie to your fans anymore.

Now lay in the coffin you put in the ground and pray your rewrites and reshoots for Suicide Squad right your ship. That being said… I’m not holding my breath for it.

 

The Point Radio: Rey Mysterio Still Flies High

Rey Mysterio has flown high above the squared circle for both WCW and WWE and now he is bringing his brand of wrestling to LUCIA UNDERGROUND on the El Rey Network. Rey talks about the superstars of the past who have influenced him, his worry about getting injured and his connection to comics. Then music star Ray J takes us for a ride to show off his new dating competition show, DRIVEN TO LOVE.

Follow us here on Instagram or on Twitter here.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #384

583334captainamerica6Sorry I’ve been absent the past couple of weeks. Blame it on the taxing business of prepping for the taxing business. Now I’m back. Not back with a vengeance – I’m not the Punisher – back with a comic book to write about: Captain America: Sam Wilson #6 .

I’ve been writing about the adventures of Samtain America, the portmanteau of Sam Wilson and Captain America I created, quite a bit. There’s a good reason for that, Serpent Solutions. As it’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote my last column, let me recap. (Oh, and DC take note. This is what a recap looks like.)

Serpent Solutions is a “legitimate” business made up of the villainous snake-motifed artists formerly known as the Serpent Society. It hired itself out to major corporations to do the dirty work said corporations couldn’t do. Although said operations were well within the corporations’ budgets, they were, well, outside the law. So the corporations hired Serpent Solutions. Serpent Solutions did the dirty work, then sold the results of their illegal operations back to the corporations which needed those illegal things to be done.

Serpent Solutions’ shareholder reports were a little vague on the services it provided for its clients. Fortunately, Captain America: Sam Wilson was more forthcoming. Serpent Solutions developed new patents for major pharmaceutical companies by kidnaping undocumented Mexican immigrants and having Dr. Karlin Malus use those kidnap victims in illegal genetic cross-breeding experiments. Dr. Malus developed new, hybrid species that Serpent Solutions patented those species and sold the patents to big pharma for obscene profits. Big pharma, in turn, planned to turn the new patents into obscener profits.

As sinister schemes go, this one was straight out of The Island of Doctor Moreau. Unfortunately, it was the Marlon Brando version, because this scheme, like that Brando movie, was monumentally stupid. Before I explain why, let me digress into some more of that endangered species, the recap.

One Dr. Malus’s subjects was Joaquin Torres. Dr. Malus cross-bred Torres with Samtain America’s pet falcon, Redwing turning Torres into a winged avenger. (“Eee-urp!”)  Torres escaped and scientists of the non-mad variety tried to undo the hybridizing. Unfortunately, back in All-New Captain America# 5, the Nazi vampire Baron Blood bit Redwing so Redwing had a vampiric healing factor, which got gene-spliced into Joaquin. Joaquin’s body healed all attempt to reverse the hybridizing, so his wings are permanent. (If it sounds like I’m making that up as I go along; I’m not. Cap’s writers are.)

The fact that Joaquin escaped and teamed up with Samtain America made Viper, head of Serpent Solutions, none too happy. It also made him quite loquacious. (Okay, the fact that Viper was a former Madison Avenue advertising agency executive turned super villain made him loquacious. Verbosity was in his both his job descriptions.)

In the big fight scene, Viper soliloquized more than if he’d been cross-bred with Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III. Viper monologued that Joaquin’s wings were Serpent Solutions’s property. The wings were the “result of [Serpent Solution’s] innovations and patents,” made for them under “a very strict work-for-hire” agreement. Which just proves super villains should be fight scened and not heard. Because nothing Viper said was even remotely correct.

See, kidnapping is illegal; even if the people being kidnapped are coming into the country illegally. Detaining them for the Border Patrol is fine. Kidnapping’s illegal.

Performing unauthorized gene splicing experiments on the people to turn them into people/animal hybrids is also illegal. As Dr. Malus’s medical manipulations happened in New York City, I’m going to go with NY Penal Law § 120.10, Assault in the First Degree. We have kidnapping and assault. There were probably more crimes, but these two are enough for our purposes. (Well, for my purposes, anyway, I’m too damned lazy to look up all the possible other crimes that may have been committed.)

Old court cases such as Riggs v. Palmer, have held that criminals can’t profit from their crimes. New cases do, too. For example, courts prevented convicted wife murderer Scott Peterson from receiving the proceeds of his wife’s life insurance policy. In addition, many states have some sort of Son of Sam law, which say that profits criminals earn from their criminal activities should be paid to the victims instead of the criminals. Under such laws, Joaquin, as the victim, could be entitled to the profits of Serpent Solutions’s crimes, his wings.

In addition, contract law says that a contract for an illegal purpose – such as kidnapping and criminal gene splicing – is not enforceable. So even if Dr. Malus was working under a strict work-for-hire contract, that contract wouldn’t be enforceable. Thus, the fruits of his experimentation would actually be his property, not Serpent Solutions’s. And as he conducted his experiments by way of kidnapping and assault, he wouldn’t be entitled to the profits of his experiments, either. (You were paying attention last paragraph, weren’t you?)

Ditto the big pharmas that hired Serpent Solutions. As aiders and abettors to the crimes, their claims to the patents are just as patently ridiculous, because their methods were patently illegal.

Any way you splice it, those wings belong to Joaquin. Which is a good thing because in Captain America: Sam Wilson #6, Joaquin became the New Falcon to Sam’s Cap. And a falcon without wings is just as bad as a criminal with profits.

Mindy Newell: DEATH OF A SUPERGIRL?

cbs-supergirl-death-of-superman-theory-729118I don’t know what the hell goes on in the minds of the CBS suits, or why the hell they are dragging their heels about Supergirl’s future.

But it doesn’t look good.

Monday night at 8:00 I turned the television on to CBS, only to see that Big Bang Theory was on for the entire hour.  This isn’t the first time the network has done this; so have other networks for other shows, and it’s almost always a sign that the show is struggling for life, that its ratings are not satisfactory enough for the suits to keep the show on the air. 

CBS is not a network noted for niche or cult programming, or a network geared towards the “coveted” 18-34 slice of the Nielsen ratings.  Their programming has been dominated by police procedurals (NCIS and its many spin-offs) and soapy dramas masquerading as law procedurals (The Good Wife, Madame Secretary), and reality shows (The Amazing Race, Survivor) with sitcoms eating up the rest of the airtime.  And the sitcoms are pretty standard fare; Big Bang is—im-not-so-ho—an outlier on their schedule.  I really don’t know how that series ended up on CBS, it’s so out of the box for them. 

Buffy, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Star Trek, The Walking Dead, The Sopranos were all the “little shows that could.”  All started out incredibly low in the ratings—Buffy lost out to Seventh Heaven initially, and only showed up as a truncated mid-season replacement its first year—but slowly became powerhouses through word-of-mouth.  But the networks to which they belonged all gave them a chance.  It may have been because there was nothing to replace them with; it may have been, like Star Trek, because of massive fan letter campaigns in that pre-internet dark age which in 2016 would equal or surpass the number of e-mails on Hillary’s private server.  Or, and I think this is the most important reason these shows stuck around to gain fan-atic followings, it may have been because there was at least one executive who championed it, who really believed in it.  I just haven’t read or seen that happening at CBS.  Rather, I think they simply wanted to jump on the bandwagon of the CW’s Arrow and Flash, and ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  There was no one who really loved Supergirl for herself and the show’s potential.

I admit, I was not all that happy with Supergirl when it first premiered.  (You can check out my initial complaints here.)  But followers of this column know that I have slowly been changing my mind, and I’m here to say—in-my-no-so-ho—that the second half of the series has really started to come into its own. 

For too long a time the supporting characters—Hank Henshaw/J’onn J’onzz, Alex Danvers, Cat Grant, even Max Lord, Winn Schott, Jimmy Olsen, and Lucy Lane—were developing and growing and becoming people we cared about.  Meanwhile Kara Zor-el/Kara Danvers/Supergirl was stuck in Barbie doll land—and then sometime around the

Episode 13, “For the Girl Who Has Everything,”—which I admit had some problems—the “doll” showed some cracks and wear and tear.  And with Episode 16, “Falling,” when her Freudian moral super-ego becoming subordinate to her darker and selfish id, Kara Zor-el was a Barbie no more; like Pinocchio, she was no longer moving to a puppet master’s strings, always dancing and singing and play-acting, but suddenly self-aware.  Was it ugly?  Sure, but it was human, and suddenly the audience could identify with her. 

As of April 4th, and with the success of the Supergirl/Flash crossover—which absolutely rocked!!!! (and which was a big flip of the bird to that other team-up currently gracing movie screens)—giving the show a much-needed ratings boost, the series is still in renewal limbo, although Les Moonves, CBS’s president, has said that “all freshman shows are likely to be renewed.”

Not much of an endorsement, is it?

Hey, Moonves, let the girl fly!

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