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Mindy Newell: May The Force Be With Us

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Hans Solo: C’mon, baby, don’t let me down. • Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Five days and counting down.

Unless you live in France, where all new movies must open on Wednesdays. Or unless you live in the United Kingdom, where it premieres on Thursday, December 17. Or unless you live in Bayonne, NJ, where my local theater, Franks Cinema, is starting showings also on Thursday at 7 P.M. Which is weird because I haven’t seen anything, either on television or on the web, about the U.S. release date being moved up by one day.

Not that I’m complaining.

Of course I’m talking about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams’ newest baby, which he “adopted” from George Lucas when Disney bought Lucasfilm. To tell you the truth, I’m very nervous about the film, the saga having been tainted by the prequel trilogy – although Return of the Sith was somewhat saved by the final light saber duel between Obi-Wan and Annakin. Still, Lawrence Kasdan is part of the writing team, and he is responsible, along with the late Leigh Brackett, for what I consider the best of the Star Wars saga, The Empire Strikes Back.

Aside: Once upon a time I sent Marvel editor Louise Simonson a story treatment for What If? – it was an alternate version of Empire’s ending, in which the twist was that Darth Vader got to Luke, hanging on that weather vane or radar apparatus or whatever it was, before the Millennium Falcon. She called me and told me that she loved it, but since Marvel’s Star Wars was a licensed property, I couldn’t do anything that reworked the canon. That was my first experience dealing with licensed properties. And by the way, I think it is a major sin that ComicMix’s own John Ostrander and his work on Star Wars for Dark Horse, who inherited the license from Marvel, was cut out of the “new, official” history.

Anyway, like many of us I have been bemused by what it seems to me to be an overdosed marketing campaign launched by Disney, although in an online story dated December 8 by Robert Hackett for Fortune magazine, he quotes Disney CEO Bob Eiger calling the publicity machine “extremely deliberate” and “carefully constructed” and specifically saying “We are managing this with great care.” The article goes on to say that Disney has spent only $17 million on public relations, against the usual $50 million that movie studios typically spend on “blockbuster” movies.

Of course that $17 million doesn’t count the seven marketing partners that are flooding the airwaves, including Fiat Chrysler. To be honest, I do find some of these ads very clever and amusing. I just saw an ad for Dodge, which the company titled “The Force Gathers.” With “The Imperial March” ominously playing, a black Dodge Viper – a stand-in for Darth Vader – leads an army of white Dodge Chargers, Challengers, and Durangos, i.e., “Stormtroopers,” down a major metropolitan street, passing scared pedestrians and heading towards two very nervous parking valets standing in front of a theatre playing The Force Awakens. The fun twist is the homage to another major film that changed movies forever, as one valet paraphrases to the other, “We’re gonna need more valets.”

Still, part of me is sad and misses those halcyon days when a sci-fi fantasy space opera made on the cheap exploded onto the world through simple word-of-mouth. Those days, I think, are pretty much gone forever.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens carries a huge monkey on its back.

I really hope it doesn’t let us down.

Thanks and a tip of the Dark Helmut to Nerdist.com for the awesome hunk of art atop this column.

Ed Catto: Kim Draheim, Comic Shop Pioneer

Welcome to Auburn

My first regular comic shop, Kim’s Collectibles, was a cramped little store that shared a cramped little building with a barber. Old men would share war stories in the barber shop, while right next door kids would be flipping through the newest Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man. The small space got gleefully smaller with the long boxes of comics’ back-issues and bins of vintage vinyl records.

I stumbled across this treasure at the end of the story arc rainbow the day before they opened. And you can bet I made sure I returned the next day to make a purchase. But in 1975, especially in a little town like Auburn, nestled in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, we didn’t really know about comic shops. It would be a long time before being a Geek would be cool and “nerd shows” like the Big Bang Theory were waaaay in the future. But it was a glorious time to be a kid and fanboy.

I had the good fortune to catch up with Kim Draheim, the founder of Kim’s Collectibles (later called Kim’s Comics & Records) and he revealed some astounding things about those early days.

kim-draheim-illustration-7201887Kim explained that his path to opening a comic shop was not planned. He and his girlfriend were buying their weekly comics from a newsstand, but then decided to make a regular trek to a comic shop in Rochester. The so-called Flour City was way ahead of the curve, with two comic shops already located in that town. And he reminded me that back then, nearby cities like Syracuse had no comic shops. Queen City Bookstore in Buffalo had opened in 1969, but that was long drive from Auburn. New York had a couple of comic shops, but they had yet to catch hold in other major cities, like Boston.

So as Kim and his girlfriend made their weekly pilgrimages to Rochester’s The Fantasy Shop, there came a day when the owner suggested that Kim start his own comic shop. He had never considered it before. But in those early days, long before today’s monopolistic distribution model, The Fantasy Shop sold comics at a near wholesale price to Kim.

Kim knew that low rent would be important, and he found that little hole-in-the-wall in the Five Points section of Auburn, NY. The tiny brick building was owned by the barber, and he provided a separate storefront for Kim’s comic shop.

“Those little hole-in-the-wall comic shops are lost. Now they are they are all big and well lit … and that’s great. But there was a charm to those little comic shops,” Kim reminisced.

At that time, Kim reminded me, no one had ever heard of a comic shop. He had a hard time convincing his landlord that it would not be a porn shop. In fact, Kim had to give the barber all kind of guarantees that it wouldn’t be a porn shop.

The Community and the Comic Shop

Kim recalls how suspicious some parents were of the shop. Some thought he was dealing drugs. He was not. Other parents, and members of the small town, were supportive and would become friends.

One mother didn’t want her son to read comics. The boy was a voracious reader, however, and Kim would see time and time again that “readers read”. So many of his customers read not only comics, but also everything they could get their hands on.

There was an irony where one parent who was quite a drinker would give his son a $10 bill and say, “Go to that weirdo store”. The father would then spend an hour in the nearby bar. His comments probably reflected the mood of many folks in those days, i.e. reading “weirdo” comics was less healthy or productive than spending an afternoon in a bar.

“It’s funny, but I didn’t realize until later when my early customers grew up, how much it meant to them.” And local musicians, the other part of Kim’s Comics and Records, credit Kim for expanding their musical horizons. Several of them still have the first guitar that they purchased through the store.

The Early Days of Comics Distributors

I was curious how the distribution system worked in the early days. At first, Kim’s Collectibles would pick up comics from another store in Rochester. But quickly, he outgrew that system.

“We eventually worked with Capital then switched to Diamond Distributors. We were big enough so we were getting a 50% or 55% discount due to our big volume.” At least it was big volume for those days. “Today we wouldn’t get those discounts.”

In today’s world, where the vast majority of Geek retailing comes from one near-monopolistic distributor, it’s easy to come across complaints. “The one thing I do remember is customer service,” said Kim. When he would call his distributor “…everyone at Capital and Diamond knew comics” and was a fan or collector too.

What Made It Work … and What Didn’t Work

For a brief time, Kim left Auburn and sold the business to one of his best customers, Gary Amadon. Gary ran it for about three years, but the business went downhill without Kim’s passion as a fan of both comics and music. From the start, Kim had blended those two interests together for his retail store. “(Boston’s) Newbury Comics is an extreme example of a retailer who’s done this,” said Kim. To make it work in a small market, he realized he needed to use a blended model to ensure an income stream.

Kim also knew that as a retailer it was important that he didn’t let a fanboy’s collector mentality take over. He related a story about a time where Gary was astounded when a near-mint Amazing Spider-Man #2 was brought in for sale. And soon after, a second near-mint Amazing Spider-Man #2 was also brought in for sale. Gary, as a huge collector, bought both of those comics but couldn’t bear to sell either one. That was a lot of cash for a small store to tie up in non-saleable inventory.

A Return to the Business

Not long after, Kim returned to the Auburn area to start a family. They say you can’t go home again, but he decided to reboot the comic shop. He took it over from Gary.

And so it was time to re-negotiate with his landlord, the barber. Originally, Kim was paying $100 rent each month. That low overhead helped keep the business going. During renegotiations, Kim was concerned when the barber told him that he wouldn’t be able to give him the sweetheart deal any longer. “The price would have to be raised,” he told Kim in a serious manner.

“‘It will now be $110 a month’, the barber tells me,” said Kim with a laugh.

Upon his return to the store, Kim partnered with a super-fan named Thaddeus Foos. Thad had a great talent for grading comics, and together they took great pride that they never gouged collectors and always sold back issue comics at a fair price. They worked hard to ensure that nobody ever felt ripped off.

Thad, with a warm smile and infectious smile, helped make new customers feel welcome and continued the high standard of retailing authenticity for long-time fans.

His Greatest Regret

“I’ll tell you my greatest regret”, Kim confided. “It has to do with the astounding quality of superhero movies today. I feel bad that Gary Amadon died young. Gary loved superhero comics ten times as much as I did. He used to dream about quality superhero movies. He used to talk about it constantly.” With great sadness, Kim explained how much a super-fan like Gary Amadon would have enjoyed today’s big screen, and small screen, comic heroes.

It really has come full circle. Kim’s three-year-old granddaughter dons her red cape regularly to watch the new Supergirl show (over and over) with Grandpa.

Still Deep into Geek Culture

“Do you still read comics?” I asked.
“Absolutely!” he enthusiastically replied. Even after all this time, Kim’s still into Geek Culture.

Then Kim went on to explain that he drifted away from superhero titles, but his wife loves the superhero movies. Due to equal parts of nostalgia and habit, Kim still reads Conan comics, now published by Dark Horse. Conan was the title that pulled him back into comics, in eight grade, after he had “graduated from them” in fifth grade. He still likes several series such as Dynamite’s The Shadow, Drawn and Quarterly’s Berlin and Image Comics’ Stray Bullets. His favorite of recent years was Vertigo’s Scalped. “I kept waiting for it to jump the shark, but it never did.”
Kim still sells to a select group of fans. “To be honest – even now – when I get my new comics box I’m always excited. Even though I only purchase five to seven comics each month. And I’m always excited to look through Diamond Previews. It’s just a thrill.”

LEGO’s Justice League: Cosmic Clash Arrives March 1

 

1000576627BRDBEAUTY_ecbed26bBurbank, CA (DECEMBER 9, 2015) – It will take all the efforts of the Justice League – and a few of their super pals – to keep Brainiac from adding Earth to his miniaturized collection of planets in the all-new animated feature, LEGO® DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC Entertainment and the LEGO Group, the film will be distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on March 1, 2016 on Blu-rayTM Combo Pack, DVD and Digital HD. The Blu-rayTM and DVD releases will include an exclusive Cosmic Boy LEGO® figurine, while supplies last.

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash will be available on Blu-rayTM Combo Pack for $24.98 SRP and DVD for $19.98 SRP.  The Blu-rayTM Combo Pack includes a digital version of the movie on Digital HD with UltraViolet. Fans can also own LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash on Digital HD on February 9, via purchase from digital retailers.

The brilliant, hyper-obsessive-compulsive, super-computer Brainiac is combing the universe for new additions to his collection of worlds when he stumbles upon a ripe planet for his taking – Earth. But Brainiac quickly discovers Earth has a “firewall” – the Justice League.  When Brainiac cleverly displaces several members of the Justice League to other time periods in Earth’s history, Batman, Flash and Cyborg must build and use the Cosmic Treadmill to race across time to retrieve their comrades – while members of the Legion of Super Heroes attempt to hold off Brainiac’s assault. Only time will tell in this battle for the fate of the Earth and the Justice League!

The cast of LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash features some of the top voiceover artists in the industry voicing the core Justice League heroes: Troy Baker (Batman), Nolan North (Superman), Grey Griffin (Wonder Woman), Josh Keaton (Green Lantern), Khary Payton (Cyborg) and James Arnold Taylor (The Flash). Phil LaMarr (Futurama, Static Shock, Pulp Fiction) joins the LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes realm as the voice of Brainiac. The Legion of Super-Heroes also assists the Justice League efforts, spotlighting the voices of Jessica DiCicco (Supergirl), Kari Walhgren (Saturn Girl), Yuri Lowenthal (Cosmic Boy) and Andy Milder (Lightning Lad). Also along for the fun is Phil Morris, reprising his Justice League role as Vandal Savage, and Jason Spisak as Captain Fear.

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash is directed by Rick Morales from a script by Jim Krieg. Sam Register, Jill Wilfert and Jason Cosler are executive producers. Benjamin Melniker & Michael Uslan are co-executive producers, and Brandon Vietti is supervising producer.


“Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is excited to release LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash,” said Mary Ellen Thomas, WBHE Vice President, Family & Animation Marketing. “Fans of the LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes franchise can expect an action-packed and hilarious film as the Justice League battles to thwart Brainiac’s villainous plans”.

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash Special Features include:

  • Featurette – “The Justice League: Caught On Camera” – They may be the world’s greatest crime fighters, but Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Cyborg and Supergirl test Batman’s patience by flubbing their lines, missing their cues and basically stinking up the screen literally!

DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION ELEMENTS

LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash will be available for streaming and download to watch anywhere in high definition and standard definition on their favorite devices from select digital retailers including Amazon, CinemaNow, Flixster, iTunes, PlayStation, Vudu, Xbox and others. Starting February 9, LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash will also be available digitally on Video On Demand services from cable and satellite providers, and on select gaming consoles.

 

The Point Radio: CHILDHOOD’S END Comes To Life

The beloved science fiction classic CHILDHOOD’S END by Arthur C. Clarke is coming to SyFy this week in a special three night event – starting tomorrow night.  EP Matthew Grant and stars Mike Vogel and Yael Stone talk about their journey to bring this favorite to life. Plus there’s no doubt that Earth, Wind & Fire and Chicago are rock legends. The members share their favorite memories as well as talking about their continuing nationwide tour.

Follow us here on Instagram or on Twitter here.

John Ostrander: The Face We Show

Ostrander 2Every once in a while, I’ll come across a picture of me from back in my twenties and thirties or even earlier. I look at myself and what I was wearing and how I wore my hair (I had more hair back then to wear). I sometimes had a mustache, I sometimes had a beard, or even big sideburns and that was always a little bit odd. My beard especially came in sparse in some areas, tightly curled all over, and a touch red. Likewise, I sometimes let my hair grow long although it too was very curly so it never achieved any great length. It was longer on the sides than on the top of my head; I referred to as a bozfro.

I suspect a lot of people look at these older images of themselves and go, “What was I thinking?” And yet, it was a choice that I made. Part of it would have been influenced by the fads and fashions of the time but did I really think at the time that I was looking good?

Occasionally, the look was a little subversive. For two years in college I was both a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) and the Theater Department. This would have been in the late Sixties so the two were not especially compatible. Every Thursday we were supposed to wear our uniforms to school and to ROTC. This got me odd looks in the Theater Department; we were usually a rag-tag looking bunch of semi-hippies. However, I also told the ones in charge of ROTC that I was in a play and thus has to keep my beard and long hair. (Not true usually but they didn’t know that.) At least once a month our commanding officer would announce to the assembled ROTC that the following week would be an inspection and we all should “shine your buttons, spit shine your shoes, get a shave and a haircut.” His eyes would then rest in me, “unless you’re in a play,” he would mutter.

That was a choice I made back then. Whether we realize it or not, we make those kind of decisions all the time. Every character that we write or draw makes those choices. Even if someone says, “I just throw on any old thing”, that is still a choice. It says something. It may be saying, “I don’t care how I look; fashion is not important to me.” Or it might say, “This way I’ll be invisible; I won’t look any different than anyone else.” It does say something. We are making statements about ourselves whether we intend to do so or not.

As much as the costumes they wear, heroes and villains are defined by the everyday clothes that they put on, the look that they assume. It says something about them. When I taught at the Kubert School, one of my lecture/assignments was to have the students research the clothes that the characters wore when they were out of costume. Bruce Wayne will wear something different than Peter Parker. They will shop in different stores. I wanted the students to be aware and be able to draw different types of fabrics. This all conveys something to the reader.

What a person chooses to wear says something about them, about who they are, about who they see themselves to be. It’s how they present themselves. It’s the same for all of us. What image of ourselves are we presenting? How do we want the other person to see us?

Every line drawn in a comic is defining a person, a place, the action, and every other bit of information. The reader takes it all in. It creates not only a story but a reality into which the readers invests themselves. If the artist, if the writer doesn’t put the information in there, it doesn’t exist.

Certainly, an artist can over render. They can noodle a page to death. They can add extraneous information, as can the writer. The key is to know how much information must be given, what can be implied, and what can be omitted. We don’t want to confuse the reader because that pulls them out of the story, out of the reality we are creating with them.

People, all of us, are like diamonds and each facet reveals some different perspective or glimpse of who we are. The question becomes what are we choosing to reveal and to whom and why, and what are we revealing without realizing it. That changes from moment to moment and person to person. As with us, so it needs to be with our characters. We don’t want to shortchange them or the reader.

That’s the job.

Marc Alan Fishman: To Err Is Inhuman

Agents of Shield

TV has been so very good to us lately, has it not? Last week, I talked about Gotham. Making the rounds this week with the newly-coined label mid-season finale came both Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and DC’s The Flash. And boy howdy, could two shows be any more different.

The dichotomous execution of these shows has offered the comic book geek in me a chance to have my cake with a slice of pie on the side. The Flash is proving how DC can unravel the entirety of its wonderful bench of compulsory concepts and characters to build a universe that celebrates the source material; and now makes it flesh. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is happy to borrow only the table scraps of the 616 and spin a story that we couldn’t otherwise enjoy from Marvel Comics. Coulson and his cohorts are wholly a product of TV – built with respect to the medium in which they were born, but taking advantage of slow serialized arcs, and universe building by way of deep character work. In the macro, both shows are proving to the muggles that the best kept secret to first-class content has been comics all along.

Thus far this season The Flash has been an exercise in glorious gluttony. Where the House of Mouse is carefully crafting a cohesive communal cinematic universe, DC is running hard and fast in the other direction. In the front half of Flash’s second season we’ve seen a Man-Shark, a telepathic gorilla, the introduction of Earth-2, Jay Garrick, Zoom, Dr. Light, Vandal Savage, Hawkman and Hawkgirl – complete with comic-appropriate backstory, the introduction of Vibe, the return of the Weather Wizard (now with his magic wand!), the Trickster, a new Firestorm collaboration, and, of course, Wally West.

In the same amount of time, Agent Coulson got a black rubber hand and a D-Class Joe Maduereira Inhuman who doubles as Blair Underwood. I’m simplifying of course. And to be clear, I’m enjoying both shows, sometimes in spite of themselves. That being said, I have a few bones to pick with both programs.

Agents hasn’t fulfilled the destiny I’d hoped for it with the introduction of the Inhumans at the tail-end of last season. Where I was hoping to see an expansion to the use and usage of superpowers on an otherwise powerless show, we’re treated to only a few banal lightning bolts, melting metal, or CGI’d force waves. Oh, and the chairman from Iron Chef America can make guns float. At times, you can almost see the straining budget buckle – which is funny, given how profitable the entirety of the MCU has been for ABC, owned by Disney, who owns Marvel. But I digress. The Inhuman situation has been treated with kid gloves thus far in the second season. Whole swaths of them have been slaughtered off-screen to boot – which kills any chance for we the audience to feel anything about the quasi-genocide. And then there’s Hydra.

We all know the slogan – “Cut one head off, blah blah blah”. As we dove-tailed into this past week’s episode, all plots converged on a distant planet (see also: California dessert set #245 with a blue gel cap over the lens) where [SPOILER ALERT] an ancient Inhuman brain slug took over the newly deceased carcass of Ex-Agent Ward. We were supposed to feel things at that moment. Vindication for Phil Coulson who had lost so much. Regret over no longer having Ward to eat scenery up (and, according to my wife, be nice looking). And I guess fear over the Ward-zombie that will likely pick things up where we left off when we return from a 10 week jaunt with Agent Carter.

But, alas, I felt none of those things. Coulson’s budding romance with the head of the ATCU was far too short-lived to feel pangs when it ended. Andm come on, no one is really dead in comic book shows now, are they? I can already see Fitz and Simmons restoring an otherwise brainslug-less Ward back to semi-conscience by season’s end. Unless the slug is in fact Mr. Mind, and Marvel and DC are pulling a fast one over on us.

Over in Central City (or is it Keystone? Crap on a cracker I can’t recall), The Flash can’t stand still long enough to take a breath. As I’d detailed above, in half of a season it feels like 80% of the Flash portion of the DC Encyclopedia has been covered – but only in the faintest of ways. The biggest drawback with so many new concepts being tossed out is the inability to savor any of them longer than they appear on screen. And to be clear: They’ve all been on screen exactly long enough to say their names, show off their CGI, be defeated or recruited, and then walk off screen until they’re needed again.

Take the Hawkpeople. In the two episodes they appeared, they were introduced, given their lengthy back-story, and involved in a side-story revolving around Hawkgirl accepting her newfound disappearing wings and centuries-old memory lapse. The episode prior to wings, she was slinging coffee – for about twenty seconds. Suffice to s Say the leap we have to take from “Oh, she’s cute” to “Oh, she’s decided to throw whatever life she had away to now become a super hero with a man she’s ostensibly just met, but now will be in love with…” is short enough to make me scoff by the time she’s walking off the set of The Flash right onto Legends of Tomorrow. Put a pin in that one, kiddos.

At the end of the evening we’re still living in a golden age of comic book teevee. In between the angsty dialogue and drab sets of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lies a show that’s made names like Melinda May, Phil Coulson, and FitzSimmons worthy of the transition to pulp. And in spite of the breakneck pace of The Flash, we know the surface has only been scratched; the back half of the season can take a deep breath to start exploring the universe they broke the sound barrier to introduce in only nine episodes.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #375

BATMAN IS THE WORLD’S GREATEST DEFECTIVE

For a man billed as “the world’s greatest detective,” Batman really sucks at his job.

Understand, by detective I don’t mean the guy who sneaks through the bushes to snap photographs of the secret meetings of some modern day Tryst-an and Isolde. I mean a guy who investigates, seeks out clues, and uses deductive reasoning to arrest criminals. A police detective.

The New 52 Batman does precious little clue seeking and thinks deductions are best left to H & R Block. Mostly he beats information out of lowlifes or threatens to drop them off buildings unless they tell him what he wants to know. He’s not so much Dick Tracy as he is Dick Cheney.

In the pre-New 52 continuity Batman had two great mysteries, who killed his parents and Joker’s real name. However, in Batman: The Dark Knight v 2 #0, Bruce Wayne learned Joe Chill killed his parents before Bruce even became Batman. So the post-New 52, Batman only had one major mystery: what is Joker’s real name?

Batman now knows the answer to that question. But not from any detective work. See, in Justice League v2 #42, Batman took over the Mobius Chair, the technological marvel that allows the New God  Metron to travel through time and space and store all the knowledge accumulated in his travels. When Batman took possession of the chair, the first thing he did was to ask for the chair to tell him the Joker’s real name.

The world’s greatest detective should have learned the Joker’s real name by detecting. By investigating. Looking for clues. Ratiocination. Batman shouldn’t have solved his greatest mystery by asking an upholstered Magic 8 Ball.

But taking the easy way out was the least of Batman’s detective failings. In Justice League: Darkside War: Batman#1, we discovered what else Batman did with the Mobius Chair and that really proved Batman, like all poor detectives, didn’t have a clue.

Batman used the chair to sift through peoples’ thoughts. He could see what criminals were planning and arrested criminals before they committed their crime. Which gave the Gotham Prosecutors Office an even worse record than Hamilton Burger’s score against Perry Mason. The Prosecutor’s Office had to release most of the perps Batman brought in, because they couldn’t prosecute someone for something they hadn’t done yet.

Our criminal justice system is funny that way. Crimes require both a mens rea, or guilty mind, and an actus reus, or guilty act. Without both, no crime has been committed. Especially the actus reus. That’s really, really got to be there. If no criminal act has been committed, then no crime has been committed. Or, as Tony Baretta might put it, if you don’t do the crime, you don’t have to do the time.

A good detective, let alone, the world’s greatest would-be police detective, would have known this. Batman didn’t.

I’m not saying Batman should have let the crimes happen just so that the perps could be prosecuted. But when a good detective knows when and where a criminal is about to strike, the detective conducts a stake out. (Which shouldn’t be confused with letting one’s T-bone thaw.) The detective waits and watches until the perp takes some affirmative step in furtherance of committing that crime, then the detective arrests the perp. That way the perp can be prosecuted for attempted whatever crime it was that the perp was about to commit.

After Commissioner Gordon scolded Batman for bringing the GCPD perps they couldn’t prosecute, Batman changed his tactics. He confronted four people, all armed with unregistered automatic rifles, who had driven somewhere near the Club Alpha to rob it. They shot at him. Batman didn’t arrest them. Instead, he teleported them to McMurdo Bay in Antarctica, where a Navy icebreaker would be passing in a few hours, to give the criminals time to “contemplate their actions.”

Batman didn’t turn them over to the police, presumably because he didn’t think they could be prosecuted, as they hadn’t actually robbed the Club Alpha yet. But once again he showed a marked misunderstanding of the laws that every good police detective should know by heart.

The perps had automatic rifles. Unregistered automatic rifles. New Jersey NJ Rev Stat § 25:39-5 makes it unlawful to possess unregistered rifles. The same statute also makes it illegal to carry a machine gun, which New Jersey defines machine gun as a firearm that doesn’t require the trigger to be pressed for each shot and which has a means of storing and carrying ammunition which can be loaded into the firearm. A fully automatic rifle meets both these requirements. So the perps who were about to rob the Alpha Club had broken the law. A good detective would have known that he could turn these perps over to the law because they could be prosecuted.

In addition, the perps shot at Batman. He didn’t die because the Mobius Chair protected him. The perps didn’t know that the Mobius Chair would protect Batman, so when they shot at him they committed attempted murder. Again, a crime for which they could be prosecuted.

Finally, a good detective would also know that when four people plan to rob a club at gunpoint, secure the guns that they’re going to use to rob the club at gunpoint, then drive to the club; they have committed a crime. They have planned to commit a crime together then committed at least one overt act in furtherance of their agreement. Two actually, getting the guns and driving the car. That means the four perps were also guilty of conspiracy to rob. So, again, if Batman was a good detective – you know, the kind who knows the law he’s allegedly upholding– he would have turned these perps over to the police to be prosecuted for conspiracy.

Even if the prosecution couldn’t get the attempted murder or conspiracy charges to stick, because Batman was the only witness to them and Batman can’t testify in the New 52 continuity; the weapons charges, they would have stuck. Once the police found the men in possession of illegal weapons, it wouldn’t have mattered that Batman couldn’t testify. The cops could have testified.

After committing these felony faux pas, Batman visited Joe Chill in his prison cell. He asked Chill how many people Chill had killed. “And remember,” he told Chill, “you can’t be tried for hearsay.”

Finally Batman got something right. Chill couldn’t be tried for hearsay. Hearsay is a rule of evidence, not a crime. However, if Batman meant that nothing Chill told him would be admissible in a prosecution for murder, because it would be hearsay, then once again Batman was more wrong than Hello Kitty sex toys.

Chill told Batman he had killed forty people. If Chill were to be prosecuted for any of those forty murders, his statements would be admissible. In these prosecutions Chill’s admissions would be a statement made by a party-opponent in the case. Many jurisdictions, such as Ohio, say such statements are not hearsay, so would be admissible. The other jurisdictions, like New Jersey, consider such statements to be hearsay. But they’d still be admissible because their rules of evidence make statements of a party-opponent an exception to the hearsay rule.

Okay, the statements probably wouldn’t be admissible, because the only witness to them was be Batman and, as I said earlier, Batman can’t testify. So Batman was right for the wrong reason. Still, a good detective would know the right reason.

World’s greatest detective? Please. Detective? Batman’s not even fit to hold Inspector Clouseau’s magnifying glass.

Martha Thomases: Gender Bender

business_women1

The end of the year is often a time of renewal and reflection, an opportunity to look back at recent events and make plans for a better day ahead.

I’m happy to say that the entertainment industry is at least going through the motions, but in a way that makes me face-palm.

If you read the link above (please do), you’ll see that the major Hollywood studios (including folks who work for Warner Bros., owner of DC Entertainment, and Disney, owner of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios) recently had meetings to figure out how to hire more women.

Think about that. They had to bring in outside “experts” (that is, women already in the business) to find a way to commit to hiring a kind of person who represents more than half of the population. Everyone comes in contact with women every single day. Everyone has a mother. Many many people have sisters. Lots of people have wives.

Is it really so difficult to find employable women?

Apparently it is. Apparently, executives in the entertainment industry are so accustomed to thinking that writing, directing and producing films are jobs for men that they cannot imagine women doing them.

This makes me wonder about groups of people that are not necessarily part of white executives’ social circles. It is entirely possible for men of means to go through life without knowing any people of color, or out queer people. Gated communities (or gated estates with staff), exclusive country clubs, private jets and private schools for the kids don’t contribute to a diverse life experience. And the biases (conscious or not) that cause a person to seek such a lifestyle are the same biases that make them think that other white men are the only ones capable of getting the good jobs.

(Aside: Yes, there are some brilliant women and people of color making movies and television. I’m grateful they exist. However, they are the exceptions, not the rule. The rule continues to suck.)

Will the four-step plan put together by the committee make any difference? Or is it, instead, some puffery that allows the industry to act like they’re doing something while continuing business as usual? I can’t tell what kind of milestones are in the plan, if they have goals they mean to achieve by specific dates. They may exist. In the absence of such information, it’s up to us, the public, to demand results.

I would like to see something similar done for comics. Gender parity is an excellent goal, not because I want anyone (not even white men!) to lose their jobs, but because more trained talent means more good comics.

Tweeks Review Part-Time Princesses from Oni Press

When people (usually parents) find out we have this show on ComicMix, they will always ask us for recommendations for the kids in their lives. Sometimes it’s hard to think of things off the tops of our heads, so the smart thing to do is to just watch all our videos, but adults don’t have time for all that. But the fact is, we don’t have time to review everything we read and love (Maddy reads like a book a day…true fact.)
Case in point, Part-Time Princesses by Monica Gallagher came out in March & was one of our favorites from Comic Con this summer. If you are buying a holiday gift for a tween on up, this would be a winner. It’s real high school girls who get to be pretend princesses and kick a little butt. The four main characters, Courtney, Amber, Tiffany, and Michelle work at a lagging amusement park as princesses and need to take their jobs a little more seriously when their big life plans start to fizzle.  These are real girls who are awesome being who they are.
What’s really cool about Oni Press is that they have so many books exactly for kids like us. If your tween/teen (or even you) likes this then we also recommend the Bad Machinery books, Princess Ugg, the Courtney Cumrin series, & The Avalon Chronicles.

Dennis O’Neil: Wither Santa Claus?

Santa ClausLet us begin with a happy Christmas tale.

Once upon a time, Santa Claus came down the orphanage chimney with a sack full of comic books for all the boys and girls who had just murdered a meter reader. The children enjoyed the comics very much.

Part of the foregoing was a remedy for a mistake I made last week. What I didn’t do was mention comics, or anything closely related to comics or the vast domain of popular culture. And this is a website devoted to Things Comicish and so it seems only proper that comics/comicishness be at least mentioned … and, to fix firmly the relevance to the holidays, which seems to be the custom hereabouts, and avoid accusations of Scrogeiness, to end happily. All done now. Mea culpas finished. (This last is a shout out to the Catholics of my generation, who still remember the Latin Mass and has nothing to do with what comes next.)

While we’re in the neighborhood, let’s visit a house near the orphanage, the one at the end of the cul de sac. The Smith home.

First see the family baby, Janey, age six. She’s traumatized by something told to her by that snotty kid next door, Willie. He said that there was no Santa Claus. Janey thought he was fibbing until she caught Daddy unloading a Toys R Us bag from the station wagon. Daddy slipped on the icy driveway and dropped the bag and toys spilled out, all over the place and Daddy muttered something about visiting the North Pole on the way home from work and then Mommy, who had been standing on the front porch, said, “Oh for pete sake, how dumb do you think the kid is?”

“Plenty dumb” Daddy mutters, almost too quietly to hear.

It is as though there was an explosion in Janey’s head and suddenly she understood everything – daddy thinks I’m dumb! Santa isn’t real! – and before she opens the door to her room she is sobbing and has embarked on a lifetime of mistrust and disillusionment, Next Christmas, if she’s lucky, Santa will bring her an appointment with a therapist.

Meanwhile, Daddy has locked himself in his den and is at his desk, bent over stacks of papers and big, flat books, a pen in one hand, a calculator by the lamp. There is no way the figures offer redemption. When he factors in what he’s spent at the toy store, he cannot avoid bankruptcy. And foreclosure, probably.

At that moment, Mommy is behind the wheel of the station wagon, speeding toward the mall. If she can get there before the stores close, she will exchange the sweater she bought for her sister-in-law for something … different. Better. Classier and how the hell does she know what the old bitch will like, what kind of gift will forestall the snide remarks, the barbed whispers, the yearly humiliation?

Ten minutes ‘till mall closing. Does she have time for a quick stop at the liquor store?

Oh, before I go … Did something happen in San Bernardino last week?

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