The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Joe Corallo: Greater Queerness

kevin-keller-it-gets-better2-300x425-8739460Over the last week or so, we’ve seen two positive affirmations of the greater queer community at two of the biggest comic franchises. Over at Archie Comics, Jughead is officially asexual. Down at Marvel, the pansexual Deadpool crushed box office records for an R rated movie at the box office. Will these queer portrayals in comic culture start a push for better and more complex looks into the sexualities of the characters we read and watch, or are we in for more of the same?

Let’s start with Archie. For years, Archie Comics has been slowly reinventing itself. With the help of creators like Dan Parent, the openly gay Kevin Keller has been a breakout student down in Riverdale. Following some years later, Chip Zdarsky has Jughead officially come out as asexual. I think it was an interesting choice having Kevin Keller be the one to use the word asexual in conversation with Jughead, rather than Jughead use the word himself, as a way of seeming to carry the tradition on from one character on the queer spectrum to another. And the way the conversation went did so without taking away from Jughead’s agency, unlike Marvel’s poor handling of Iceman being outed in All-New X-Men nearly a year ago.

I applaud Archie Comics and Chip Zdarksy for expanding its representation to this sexual orientation minority. Asexuality is something that both inside and outside the queer community has been argued over and is often misunderstood. Asexuality manifests in different ways for different people. For Jughead, he also identifies himself as aromantic, which is perfectly fine. Not all asexuals are aromantic. Asexuals don’t necessarily have an entirely non-existent sex drive. They may just have a low sex drive. They may end up in a monogamous relationship with an opposite sex or same sex partner where they may engage in sexual activity. That doesn’t mean they aren’t asexual. Just like when a bisexual person is in a monogamous relationship, that doesn’t suddenly mean they aren’t attracted to the opposite gender of their partner. And no, it is never, ever, ever your job to try to help them see that sex is great and they’re missing out. Ever. Never ever. Please always remember that.

kevin-keller-first-kissThis isn’t something I immediately knew and understood at a young age. It took time. I remember as a teenager on the internet in the late 90s to early 2000s checking out sites like the now defunct xy.com and chatting with a few men who identified as asexual. At the time, I thought if they weren’t sexually attracted to the same sex they wouldn’t be here, and that they were repressed and looking for someone to help them come to terms with their sexuality. That was wrong of me and I understand that now.

Some of the arguments and tension towards the asexual segment of the queer community comes not only from some of the misunderstandings, but it also comes from asexual treatment in our society and laws versus treatment of people in the LGBT community. The asexual community hasn’t necessarily in the minds of other people been affected the same way by our laws. That’s not entirely true in that an asexual who is not also aromantic could have potentially been denied the ability to marry who they wanted until recently, as well as being affected by other homophobic or transphobic laws on the books.

Asexuals also have to deal with societal pressures like most people in the queer community do. I certainly can relate to being in uncomfortable conversations with people that were aggressively heterosexual in nature when I was younger, either not out or not as confident at the time and not being sure how to handle the situation. Not to mention the conversations about how you need to have hetero sex before you can rule it out. Again, please don’t tell people they need to have sex to understand themselves and especially never imply to people that you are the one they should be having sex with in that scenario.

Moving on to Deadpool, I’ve mentioned in at least a few of my previous columns that although Deadpool is being billed as the first pansexual superhero in a major motion picture, that we have to wait and see how that ends up being handled. My fear was that most of Deadpool’s behavior that falls outside of the heteronormative would end up being joke fodder. I was at least partially right.

This isn’t really a spoiler for anything major in the movie, but if you’re avoiding anything regarding details in the Deadpool movie (or want to avoid the kind of vulgar subject matter that conspires in the movie) you may wanna skip the next paragraph.

Now that we got that out of the way, here’s the deal. We do see Deadpool engage in some behavior that’s considered outside the norm. He’s confident in himself, his sexuality, and it doesn’t make him any less of a powerful and threatening character. However, most of the instances when he’s doing something outside the heteronormative, it’s a joke. When he’s with his girlfriend they have a montage of different holidays they have sex on. For International Women’s Day, she ends up pegging him. It’s played for laughs. Other instances including kissing a pizza delivery boy on the cheek after threatening him, and complimenting his male taxi driver. This doesn’t necessarily help all that much in terms in pansexual representation.

If sexuality outside the norm is played purely for laughs, it’s just a joke and it’s not about being inclusive. That’s not also to say that we shouldn’t have any fun with sex and sexuality either. And I will give Deadpool credit in that it’s good to see more heroes who have less traditional sexualities and can help combat the dated and offensive notion that queer people are somehow weaker and can’t be taken seriously. More and more characters in nerd culture like Doctor Who’s Captain Jack Harkness have been coming out and combating this for years now, but stereotypes are damaging and linger.

Between Jughead and Deadpool in this last week, I feel that it was one of the best weeks for greater queer representation in comics and comic culture. Sexuality is not black and white, and I think these characters and the stories being told with them in comic culture are helping to show that sexuality is complicated, fluid, and can’t truly be encompassed by a single word.

Oh, and it can be profitable at the box office too.

REVIEW: Steve Jobs

Steve JobsWe think we know Steve Jobs, the maestro behind Apple but unless you read one of his biographies or watch Jobs or Steve Jobs, you only have impressions. General audiences will recognize the man in the black turtleneck and know he gave us the iPod, iPhone, Macintosh, etc. but most will mistakenly credit him for being the builder of these gadgets.

Read Walter Isaacson’s wonderful biography or study Jobs through the myriad video interviews or articles available online and you come to understand he was a visionary who pushed, prodded, cajoled, wheedled, and demanded his workers to meet his exacting standards.

Capturing that volatile and complex man on film would be a challenge for any production crew but director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin were the kind you wanted for something challenging. Sorkin took Isaacson’s bio as a starting point but then read and read more material. He spent time with Jobs’ first partner Steve Wozniak and knew he couldn’t write your standard bio pic for a most un-standard figure. The resulting Steve Jobs is out tomorrow from Universal Home Entertainment as a combo pack with the Blu-ray, DVD, and coupon for Digital HD.

steve_jobsInstead, he boiled the story down to three pivotal product introductions (the Macintosh, the Black Cube, the iMac) and stuffed all the drama into backstage antics in the countdown to taking the stage. Events and conversations are telescoped into these three vignettes with a sprinkling of flashbacks. Sorkin then led us through the fourteen years by focusing on the evolving nature of his relationships with several key people in his life: Woz (Seth Rogan), Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), his marketing chief, Joanna Hoffman, and finally, his daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine), who he at first refuses to acknowledge any blood relation and comes to cherish. The Sorkinisms are largely missing but his rapid-fire style remains visible.

That father/daughter relationship humanizes Jobs and provided Sorkin with the emotional spine to the film. Otherwise, we’d revile the volatile Jobs as he treats one person after another as a mere functionary in service to his grand vision.

Boyle is a visual stylist and gave each act a fresh look and feel, starting with shooting with three different film stocks (16mm, 35mm, digital) and staging each in a different way.

Steve Jobs 1What makes the film work, better than the box office and critical acclaim admitted this past fall, is Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet, the latter nearly unrecognizable in a tough part. Fassbender doesn’t look like Jobs but inhabits the persona and you believe him to be the mercurial genius who slowly mellows across the years.

The 123 minute film is worth a look if you haven’t read up on Jobs or if you want to see a lovely ensemble tackle a difficult topic and freshen the bio pic genre. The movie’s high definition transfer is superb and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is its match.

There’s a three-part feature on the making of the film which is quite compelling. Inside Jobs: The Making of Steve Jobs (44:11) explores everything from the story structure to recreating three specific time periods, and the extensive rehearsal process for each, which led to excellent performances all around.

The movie comes with two audio commentaries, one from Boyle and one from Sorkin and Editor Elliot Graham. Each are fascinating in their own way although there is some repetition from the special feature.

Mindy Newell, Jessica and Kara

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So it turns out that I maybe I do have a TARDIS, because I was able to finish watching Jessica Jones and to catch up on Supergirl.

You remember that basically crappy review of Supergirl I gave a couple of months ago? Well, the show is getting there, though, im-not-so-ho, they aren’t taking advantage of what could be some great story arcs. Except for Alex Danvers. And Cat Grant. And Hank Henshaw. But more on that in a bit.

I watched “Strange Visitor From Another Planet,” an hour that really could have called “Why Did You Abandon Me?” Hank Henshaw, a.k.a. J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter, struggled with the personification of survivor’s guilt and abandonment in the appearance of a “White Martian,” a member of the “other” Martian race responsible for the Martian holocaust – a literal “Strange Visitor.” And while the psychological voices from beyond the grave – including his wife and two daughters – chastised J’onn J’onzz for abandoning them by not joining them in death, Cat Grant dealt with her own, different kind of survivor’s guilt and abandonment issues when her “Strange Visitor” turned out to be the child she had chosen to abandon in her drive to become a professional success, now all grown up and wanting to know why she hadn’t loved him enough to stay. “Bizzaro,” a twist on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, borrowed – well, stole – the origin of the sad creature from DC’s New52 reboot, only instead of Lex Luthor creating the “monster” from splicing Superman’s DNA with human DNA and injecting it into a teenager, it was Maxwell Lord splicing Supergirl’s DNA with the human DNA of comatose young women who “resembled” Kara Zor-El. I thought the show sorta fell down on this one – it was essentially a “monster of the week” episode with Bizzaro Supergirl dying at the end and Maxwell Lord becoming “The Man in the Glass Booth,” kidnapped and imprisoned – for now – at DEO headquarters. Which is rather illegal, and I assume will lead to further ramifications down the line.

One immediate ramification of Max hanging around the DEO, though, is that he just happened to be handy when the alien chest-hugging flower called the “Black Mercy” dug its tentacles into Supergirl’s rib cage and inflicted her heart’s desires upon her in a hallucinatory mind-game. Many of you will recognize this as an adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1985 Superman Annual #11 story, For the Man Who Has Everything.

It’s not a bad adaptation, but if you remember FTMWHE, it’s not quite up to par in comparison, especially in the Krypton sequences. Granted, the show’s budget had to be a serious factor in producing this episode, but in Superman’s dream world, we really become invested in Kal-El’s life on Krypton and in Kryptonian society. Kara Zor-El, however, never leaves her home. She just sits in the “living room” talking with her parents and Aunt Astra, who was never banished to the Phantom Zone. Oh, yeah, and we also meet a prepubescent Kal-El, though there is neither mention of nor a visit from Jor-

El and Lara. And though there is mention of a serious boyfriend, we don’t meet him nor do we see anything else of what Kara’s dream life if Krypton had not exploded entails.

In Superman’s dream state he has no memory or sense of anything wrong – well, the dream does start becoming increasingly disturbing – but Kara’s immediate reaction when waking up in her bed on Krypton is one of confusion and a sense that something is definitely wrong. But as the Black Mercy continues its psychic invasion, Kara starts forgetting, and by the time “virtual reality” Alex shows up she has accepted her life for what it is and does not recognize her “Terran” sister.

It’s a good attempt, but not one for the ages. For one thing, for a story about Supergirl’s lost dreams, it’s a fantastic showcase for Alex, who totally steals the scene(s). Alex’s quest to save her sister, her devotion to her, is really what this episode is about – and I don’t know if that’s what the writers had in mind. In fact, lately it almost seems that the title should be Supergirl’s Sister, Alex Danvers. She has become the most well developed character on the show (with Cat Grant coming up behind and Hank Henshaw/J’onn J’onzz nipping at Cat’s heels). It’s too bad, because this could have been a real showcase for Supergirl/Kara Zor-El.

And, again, wasn’t it convenient that Max Lord was on DEO premises so he could help develop the “virtual reality” psychic connection thing-a-ma-jig that got Alex into Kara’s dreamland in the first place?

However, Melissa Benoist did a bang-up job in displaying Supergirl’s anger and rage and hurt and sorrow when she woke up. Echoing Moore’s words, she spits out “Do you know what you did to me?” and then “Burn” as she lashes out with her heat vision against Non, the evil – and oh so incredibly boring – Kryptonian who’s Aunt Astra’s husband, and who exposed her to the Black Mercy in the first place.

There’s a lot more plot about Non’s plan to destroy Earth (or something – I’m not quite sure exactly what he wants to do), but there’s a twist at the end that really disappointed me, which now means that it’s 

Astra is killed by Alex.

This is right up there with the whole “fooling Cat Grant and convincing her that Kara isn’t Supergirl” storyline. I mean, Boo! Hiss! Really, Bernanti, Adler, et.al., killing off what could have been a fascinating character and story arc? Again, Boo! Hiss!

And as for JJ – it left me shaken and stirred, with that uncomfortable feeling you get when you’ve had a horrific nightmare which stays with you all day, or after you’ve made the mistake of watching a double feature of Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb) on Turner Classic Movies.

SPOILERS HERE FOR ANYBODY WHO HAS ALSO BEEN LATE TO THE PARTY!

What really got me was the straightforward and uncomplicated denouement of David Tennant’s Killgrave – a simple twisting of his neck, a quick dislocating of his cervical vertebrae, a horrific rupturing of the right and left common carotid and vertebral arteries, and he’s as dead as the Tyrannosaurus Rex that King Kong killed using the same method – only with a lot less fight than in that epic battle. It was so straightforward, not what is usually expected when dealing with the gifted, as the show’s super-powered individuals and others called them; in comic-book land fights are usually a chance for the artist to strut his stuff, consisting of many panels and sometimes many pages of balletic and brutal brawling. What I thought, as Jessica approached Killgrave, was that she was going to rip his tongue out, which would certainly, I think, have been an apt Sisyphean punishment for him – King Sisyphus of Ephyra was punished by Zeus for his hubris, lying, greediness, and self-aggrandizing by being condemned to push a gigantic boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom before reaching the top, repeating this pattern forever and ever and ever.

Killgrave with his tongue is essentially powerless, and as I said, it would have been a fitting punishment; but Jessica said she was going to kill him and she did. But though it looked simple it wasn’t; Jessica Jones literally killed her demon. But the question is: Will it be enough? Stay streamed.

I am in no way dissing Krysten Ritter or anybody else in the cast of this superb show – Krysten Ritter was nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award, but I think it’s sin that no one else was nominated (Jessica Jones was ignored by the Golden), especially David Tennant.

I now have an even bigger crush on appreciation of David Tennant.

He’s getting handsomer and handsomer and handsomer.

His acting chops just keep getting better and better and better.

Ed Catto: Look! Up in the Sky! It’s Jamal Igle’s Supergirl!

jamal_igle-2624033Geek Culture in popular media has some dark and grisly stories to tell. I’m talking about shows like Gotham, The Walking Dead, Deadpool and the upcoming Suicide Squad movie. But it’s a big tent with lots of room.

CBS’s Supergirl show is on the other end of the spectrum. Supergirl is a positive, upbeat program that focuses on heroism without the grimness or grittiness that so many other comic shows embrace.

Over the years, however, Supergirl’s adventures have had many different styles. She’s run the gamut from being sweet and innocent to sultry and sexy (with goth-esque overtones). With a fresh and friendly point of view, Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle jumped onboard to the Supergirl comic in 2008. They never looked back. Today we see so much of what they brought to the party baked into television’s version of Supergirl.

I caught up with Jamal Igle, the brilliant artist of that Supergirl comic series, to see what he thinks about TV’s Supergirl and on his other projects.

Ed Catto: The CBS hit show Supergirl seems to embrace so much of the version of the character established by you and writer Sterling Gates. What’s your reaction?

Jamal Igle: I was over the moon, to be honest. It’s a little surreal to see the things you’ve drawn homaged on screen. There have been subtle changes in some cases like substituting Alex Danvers for Lana Lang, Hank Henshaw/ J’onn J’onzz sort of standing in for Inspector Henderson but the broad strokes were definitely maintained.

supergirl-sectret-identity-jamal-igle-5844205EC: Did you know about this approach before it debuted?

JI: I had heard some rumors before hand but I have some media connections who got to see the CBS upfront presentation and confirmed it for me.

EC: Do you watch the show, and what’s that like each week?

JI: I watch it with my daughter, we both enjoy it immensely. It’s definitely gotten stronger with each subsequent episode. I particularly like how they manage to balance the interpersonal relationships between the characters with the action. It’s fun for me to see Kara and Alex interact on one level as sisters and then as partners.

EC: Was your approach to Supergirl dictated by management or did you and Sterling develop that approach?

JI: No, in fact just the opposite. I think, at least for me we were going against the grain a bit. Keep in mind that when Sterling and I first came on the book, the series was a bit rocky in terms of characterization. It floundered after Jeph Loeb and Ian Churchill left and the sales had dipped a bit as they were trying to find an origin and a take that would work. Sterling came in with an honest to god love for the character that was infectious and made me love her as well. It seemed to work because we started to get some serious notice for what we were doing,

EC: How was your Supergirl received by management? How did the fans like it?

supergirl-dollmaker-jamal-igle-8542930JI: The majority of the fans loved it, and a lot of women came back to the book as well. There were some detractors of course. One example that always sticks out to me is a poster from the old DC Comics message boards who went by the name “Larry Gardner” who was incredibly upset by what we were doing. 

 “Those of us Supergirl fans who continue to be pissed off by the undershorts and Supergirl’s lack of hormones, spirit, and personality need to keep up our angered posts and let them know their gender double standards and anti-Supergirl witch hunt will never be tolerated.”

So incensed by our take, he started a “Disgruntled Supergirl fan” website.

There were some in the upper management that weren’t too keen on what we were doing either. They thought our approach was too prudish, that she was being written like an old woman. When the subject of the fore mentioned “Supershorts” became known after an interview I did on Comic Book Resources was picked up by NPR and a slew of feminist blogs, DC started turning down media requests from newspapers that wanted to cover the story. So the irony that the very same approach that some derided has been embraced by a large television audience hasn’t been lost on me all these years later. 



EC: How did Supergirl sell then?

JI: There was an uptick in sales for a good portion of our run, in fact we were at one point outselling Superman and Action Comics for about six months.

EC: Firestorm is an integral part of the CW show, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. What’s been your reaction to that?

jamal-igle-firestorm-9350846JI: I’m a fan, and again it’s awesome to see one of my designs translated into another medium that way. The first two episodes have been great.

EC: You’re now working on a comic called Molly Danger. Can you tell us about how that started and what it’s about?

JI: I originally created Molly back in 2003 as an animation pitch, but I ended up trying to make a comic series out of it. After many misfires, I put the series to the side until 2010 when I was approached by an editor at a publishing company looking for kids’ comics materials. So I revisited the concept and adapted it to its current form. When I finished my contract at DC, I was approached by another writer about trying to put together a Kickstarter and I decided to do Molly instead. After two successful Kickstarter’s, Molly is well on her way as an ongoing series. Molly Danger is looks and acts like a 10 year old girl, but she’s actually an immortal, invulnerable, super humanly strong 30 year old. She’s an incredibly famous hero with fans, merchandise deals but she’s also an incredibly lonely person. She’s trapped because on the one hand she’s probably one of the most famous people on the planet, but she isn’t allowed to have a private life. It tears at her and that’s where the story begins.

EC: How are Molly Danger and Supergirl alike?

JI: Beyond the similarity of their power sets, they’re both ‘good’ people, genuinely altruistic and loving. I think they share a love of humanity and a need to believe in the better nature of people.

molly_book_1_5-1228201EC: And what makes them different?

JI: Molly is much more world weary and cynical, even if she doesn’t like to admit it. The nature of Molly’s physical condition keeps her separate from the world and that creates a bit of pathos for her.

EC: Molly Danger is published by Action Lab Comics. What makes that publisher unique, and what are some of the other titles they publish?

JI: I think in terms of publishers, Action Lab has an incredibly diverse line-up of creator owned book as well as company created titles. Everyone involved on the business side of the company are people who self published or worked for large marquee publishers. So, while it’s a young company, the staff is comprised of established professionals who are incredibly serious about building the type of company we want to see flourish. The fact that as a smaller publisher, we have the luxury of developing new talents and giving them a platform is something many companies in our position can do. We’ve grown exponentially over the past few years and I feel that Action Lab will be the next marquee publisher in comics.

EC: Thanks so much, Jamal.

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John Ostrander’s Election Follies

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ComicMix comments upon pop culture and entertainment and, in this silly season of primaries, politics qualifies as entertainment. Sometimes perverse entertainment, I grant you. I’m from Chicago and I was raised during the reign of King Daley the First so I know from political entertainment. As Studs Terkel said many long years ago, “Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It’s the most theatrically corrupt.” So that’s my standard.

I was raised Republican but, on reaching voting age, I became a Democrat because that was the only way to vote in a mayoral election that counted in that city – the Democratic mayoral primary. The last Republican mayor of Chicago was “Big Bill’ Thompson was booted out of office in 1931. There is no Republican Party to speak of in Chicago.

So I know from political entertainment, although currently it’s hard to decide to laugh, cry, or go screaming into the night.

Let’s start with the Democrats, the apparent adults in the room. In the New Hampshire primary this last week, Bernie Sanders got 60% of the vote and fifteen delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Hilary Clinton’s share got her nine. However, as Larry Wilmore pointed out on The Nightly Show, the Democrats also have something called superdelegates and all six of those went to Hilary. So, despite Sanders clearly winning the popular votes, they both left New Hampshire with fifteen delegates each. Now there’s Common Core math for ya!

The real entertainment, though, was over with the Republicans where an actual reality show star topped the field in the GOP version of the New Hampshire primary. Donald Trump’s numbers, as he himself might say, were huuuuge. He got 35% of the votes and that was more than twice the numbers posted by his nearest competitor, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. (All together now – “Who?”) Even the GOP leaders don’t want Trump. His nearest competitor is Senator Ted Cruz and the GOP higher-ups don’t much care for him, either. I understand most of Cruz’s fellow senators are not fond of him.

In addition to Trump, there are two other Republican candidates seeking the Presidential nomination who have never served in public office – Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, although Fiorina dropped out of the race after New Hampshire. Their main appeal to the voters seems to be that they have never been politicians. The distaste for Washington seems so deep that some voters will take someone who has zero experience in politics and give them the most difficult, most challenging job in politics.

Before this whole brouhaha started, the presumed nominee was going to be Jeb! Bush, brother of former President George W. and son of former president George H. W. Bush. That flamed out pretty fast. He now has his mother stumping for him as well as his brother, not known in most circles as the best Prez of the U.S.A., will also be on the election trail. One of the saddest things I’ve seen was Bush pleading with a sluggish audience to applaud. And then there was the moment in the Republican debate when Bush interrupted Trump only to be shushed by the real estate tycoon.

You have to say that Trump is the real star of the show. He gets the attention, the audience, and the best (or worst) lines, He reminds me of Captain Boomerang when I wrote him in Suicide Squad. Every time you thought he had gone as low as he could, he’d find a new level to which to sink.

Here’s a sample of Trump:

“What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc”

“I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

“If Obama resigns from office now, thereby doing a great service to the country, I will give him free lifetime golf at any one of my courses!”

“All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.

On unemployment numbers: “5.3 percent unemployment – that is the biggest joke there is in this country… The unemployment rate is probably 20 percent, but I will tell you, you have some great economists that will tell you it’s a 30, 32. And the highest I’ve heard so far is 42 percent.” (Note: during the Great Depression, unemployment peaked at 25%.)

About his daughter, Ivanka: “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father…”

EEEUUUUHHH!

Trump has been generous in providing fodder for Noah Trevor, Larry Wilmore, Bill Mahar, John Oliver, and now Samantha Bee (whose new show is great) as well as all the late night broadcast folks and comedians and satirists across this great country of ours. That’s added to the entertainment value. Still…

Can you seriously see Trump with the nuclear codes? Can you see Trump at an international conference and talking to our allies who might not be our allies afterwards? Can you see Trump nominating a Supreme Court Justice and maybe more than one? Can you see Trump “negotiating” with Congress and maybe telling them all that they’re fired? Some people can and that cheers them. Me? I don’t know if it’s a comedy or a horror story.

Hmmm. Sounds to me like a Wasteland story.

Marc Alan Fishman: Yes. Yes. Yes!

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Forgive me, friends. I need to take a break from the comic bookery in order to indulge in my guiltiest of pleasures – pro wrestling. A big to do went down this week, and it behooves me to share my thoughts, feelings, and praise. In case you want to be technical about it: the WWE had some (terrible) comics out in the late 90s. This column doesn’t have anything to do with that, but maybe that will grant me the temporary pass for the week? Yeah… that’s the ticket.

On Monday evening, Brian Danielson – known to WWE fans as Daniel Bryan – retired from professional wrestling. He is 34 years old. As he would explain it to his hometown crowd in Seattle (Brian hails from Aberdeen, WA), he’s simply no longer fit for in-ring competition. “I started wrestling when I was 18”, he began, “… and within the first few years I’d gotten five or six concussions.” Brian explained that over the course of 16 years, he’d suffered from too many concussions, ten of which are documented. After being sidelined a little under a year ago with a final scan that showed swelling and lesion on his brain… it was time to take his bow.

Over the twenty-minute promo, Brian humbly thanked the crowd and the WWE Universe for getting behind him. He used the term “grateful” a lot. He held back tears. He thanked the special kids – like Conner Michalek – who showed him what real grit is. He thanked his family and his wife. He also mentioned that he’s totally down for making a Bella baby, and giggled with glee as 10,000+ fans shouted “That’s what she said!” He ended his speech with a nod to his father, who saw Brian be cheered at so loudly that it stopped the entire live segment shortly before his passing. Brian led the crowd in one last “Yes! Yes! Yes!” chant, and went to the locker room, no longer a professional wrestler.

I could regale you all with the tale of how Daniel Bryan restored my faith in the WWE product. I could wax poetic on how he proved that a solid work ethic paired with a fearless attitude helped elevate him from the undercard to main-eventing Wrestlemania in front of 70,000 fans. I could breakdown the entirety of his career for you, in an effort to show that he beat the odds in 16 years far better than the immortal (and racist) Hulk Hogan or Stone Cold Steve Austin. But others well versed in the Internet Wrestling Community have already done this. If you care, I implore you to seek it out. I, as always, am choosing to digress.

Brian Danielson’s retirement brought streams of tears to my face. Here is a man, only eight months my senior, being forced out of the thing that defined his life up until this point. And make no bones about it: he will never wrestle again. For better or worse, stopping now means he has the time to find new passions and new meanings. I’m sure becoming a father may be one of them. He’s also an eco-friendly Earth-hugger… which means he may be saving the planet instead of putting it into a LaBelle Lock or delivering a Shining Wizard to it. And maybe, if he’s willing, perhaps Brian would return to the WWE to train the next generations of superstars. But as the aforementioned Texas Rattlesnake would declare… it takes a long while to get professional wrestling out of one’s system.

More than anything else, Brian Danielson (and his alter ego) was able to make me remember why I loved professional wrestling in the first place. His passion leaked from every pore. When the crowd would shout his name in cheers so loud that he couldn’t finish a sentence… the creeping grin that couldn’t escape his face showed a performer who was clearly in the game to play it, not just to pay the bills. In the ring itself, Danielson could do it all. He put his body on the line in every match, knowing that being a head shorter and 30 pounds less than nearly any opponent left the burden on him to convince fans he was worthy of wins. He proved to me that anything is possible if you put enough effort into it. Call that cheesy if you must, because I agree with you. But it doesn’t take away the truth: Daniel Bryan made me a believer.

I’ve no snark, nor witty way to end this week. I only want to take my little corner of the internet to post loudly to Brian Danielson:

Thank you. Yes. Yes. YES!

Martha Thomases: Jughead’s Sex Life

Jughead Asexual 1This column is going to make me sound old.  Really really really old.

In the new issue of Jughead by Chip Zdarsky and Erica Henderson, Jughead comes out as asexual.  As I write this, it hasn’t yet appeared on the stands, but I’ve loved the series so far and I’m really looking forward to it.  Still, the news sent me on a tour of the Internet to exciting new avenues of political correctness.

(Note:  I want to be politically correct here.  I am trying to understand people who are new to me, and I want to be polite and respectful.)

The first thing I found out is that this isn’t even really news.  Comicbook.com had the story way back on September 25.  My first reaction was surprise that this didn’t show up on any of my feeds at that time.  My second reaction was admiration for Archie’s publicist for getting two hits with the story.

The next thing I learned is that I didn’t really understand what asexual meant.  I thought it just meant a person who wasn’t interested in sex.  I was wrong.  If you read the link (and it’s fascinating), you’ll see that identifying as asexual is much more complicated than my initial assumption.

As most things are.

Jughead Asexual 2Living life and meeting people is the easiest and most fun way to have one’s assumptions challenged. When I was a kid, society told me that homosexuality was a perversion indulged in by people who were too immature to form meaningful relationships.  I learned differently when I met actual gay and lesbian people.  Society told me that sex was only for reproduction, and that it was something only men liked, something that good girls only did so they could have babies.  I learned differently when my own hormones kicked in, and feminism became a thing.  Society told me that transgender people had extreme cases of body dysmorphia.  This is a case where society not only told me the wrong thing, but actual science has made it possible for there to be emotionally healthy alternatives to “just learning to live with it.”

And just in researching this column, I found out about skoliosexuals, about whom I was completely ignorant.  I look forward to maybe meeting some and having even more of my assumptions shattered.

At the same these changes in social attitudes happened, comic books grew up.  My childhood was filled with stories about Lois Lane wanting Superman to give her a “super-kiss.” Characters might wear revealing costumes, but they were all chaste.  It wasn’t until underground comix, and then the direct market, that a mass market saw comic book characters who had adult relationships with adults.

(Note:  Yes, it is my opinion that an awful lot of comic books are still smarmy and giggly about sex.  So are most humans.  Alas.)

This week, we’re seeing a comic book character who is shocking because of his lack of interest in sex.  He is being written (I think, based on the few pages I’ve seen) respectfully, as a character, not a caricature like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory.

(Is Sheldon supposed to be asexual?  Or is he supposed to just be really repressed?  Or don’t the writers even think about such things when all they want is a laugh?)

As an old person, I find myself looking at Jughead indulgently, thinking that as a teenager, his sexuality is probably at its most fluid, and that he might just be going through a stage.

And then I realize what I sound like, and try to shut up.

Dennis O’Neil: Absorbascon, Omcromicon, and Me

Absorbascon

Gentlefolk, the question I would put before the august company today is: If I had known about the Absorbascon would the Omcromicon have ever come to be and I would chose to elaborate on this inquiry by seeking your opinion as to whether the Omcromicon did, in fact, ever exist.

We may be tip-toeing into metaphyscs here, but I give you my word that we will not venture far.

Let’s begin my backing up a week. In our previous meeting I dissertated on a device used by Hawkman, a well-respected comic book character who also is currently appearing on television. I was not exactly heedless because I did preface my remarks by admitting that “I’m on shaky ground here because I’m not sure that I’m spelling “Omcromicon correctly” and that I knew of “…the Hawks’ favored weapons, antique harmbringers like maces and such,” but a hasty search of the web yielded no mention of this Omcromicon.

That’s because there was none. The Omcromicon was unintentionally created by me as I attended to writing last week’s column. Our esteemed friend Mr. Howard Margolin posts: “Denny, the device you’re referring to was called the Absorbascon.”

Much obliged, Howard.

Absorbascon/omcromicon…Absorbascon/omcromicon…The words aren’t exactly doppelgangers, are they? We’re not dealing with a misplaced letter or two. So out of what orifice did I pull “Omcromicon?”  I don’t know.

I am prepared to state the obvious: If I hadn’t been trying to write about the “Absorbascon,” I would not have coined “Omcromicon” So is one of these things real and the other unreal? Are both real? Neither?

Well, consider: neither is a tangible object that can be handled or dropped on the floor just after the warranty expires. But we’re giving them names and how can you name something that isn’t?

Perhaps we can solve this conundrum by borrowing a rhetorical tactic from St. Anselm. Let us refer the gadgets in question as The Most Perfect Omcromicon and The Most Perfect Absorbascon. So something that exists is more perfect than something that doesn’t and thus simple logic reveals that the most perfect iterations of both devices most exist or they wouldn’t be the most perfect. Of course, anything less than the most perfect has a problem, assuming that nonexistent things can have problems. (Could they have nonexistent problems and if so, how would we know about them? How would they know about them?)

I doubt that the writers who work on the television versions of Hawkman and Hawkwoman will incorporate any of this into their scripts. But that’s their problem.

 

Molly Jackson: Tangled in the Internet

Deadpool by the fire

The Super Bowl was this past weekend. I’m sure you know this, as it is a (unrecognized) national holiday. I enjoy watching football; it is a fun pastime to me. (The shock! The horror!) However, the game this year wasn’t all that great. There were too many fumbles and too many errors. Very disappointing indeed. But then again, the Super Bowl isn’t really about the game anymore. It is about the commercials.

This commercial revelation isn’t a new thing either. It has been at least a decade of excitement over the commercials. But even that is beginning to fade a bit as everything gets released online in advance. Now we get trailers for commercials! Or in our case, (bringing this back around) trailers for movie trailers.

As geekdom has become “normal” and accepted, comic book movies seem to have exploded in popularity. This past weekend saw at least five comic book movie trailers, plus commercials that featured comic book characters. However, you didn’t need to watch the game to see them. They were all released on the internet almost immediately after airing.

For those who skipped the game, the weekend also saw a minor feud start up (or possibly flare up) between creators Rob Liefield and Dan Slott about credits on the new Deadpool movie. Things were said, tempers rose, and we all got the ringside seat. In the past, this would have been an internal comic fight but the internet brought it straight to us.

Geeks connecting outside of their basements or comic shops is still a good thing. Now I know geeky people all over the world. Still, with great connection comes great responsibility. We all use the internet as a platform for expression, but it is always interesting to watch companies and celebrities use it to reach the masses.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that we are all connected. Now, creators get recognized for their own work globally. Before the Interwebs, we would have had no idea who Rob Liefield was, much less any quotes taken out of context. Bill Finger still would be an unknown and Superman creators Siegel and Shuster would have never gotten any credit in the history books. And without the interwebs, we wouldn’t get tangled up in creator fights or five trailers for the same film that provide no extra info.

So with that random thought in mind, surf safely.

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