The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Molly Jackson: NYCC is Bursting at the Seams

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Unless you are living completely off the geek grid (in which case, welcome back to civilization), you know that this past weekend was New York Comic Con. It was NYCC’s 10th year and over the past decade it has grown to one of the largest comic cons in the world.

I spent all four days at the convention, from open to close and occasionally even later. My one word summation is “OWWWWW.” Lots of walking and standing on concrete while carrying heavy books is equal to “OWWWWW” – and then some.

The biggest takeaway from NYCC for me is how big it has really become. It was wall to wall people. All ages, all groups just filling this too small venue for four days. In fact, it was the thing most people talked about. It replaced weather as the small talk of choice. Crowd management became a huge safety issue as the large mass of people made it almost impossible to move quickly.

With the growth comes a lot of perks though. More companies need to do something exciting to get your attention. DC Comics had Jim Lee signing three days in a row, Dark Horse had Frank Miller signing, and comiXology had paper copies of some digital only titles. Booths like DC and Image were telling people were to get their books signed by creators in Artist Alley. Some select panels were shown at the Hammerstein Ballroom a few blocks away. I predict as the area around the Javits convention center develops, we will see more and more convention events happens off-site.

Growth also meant most panels were packed. Some were insanely popular and some were just a good spot to sit down. (Chairs were at a premium all weekend.) I like to believe that this means a tired person got to test the waters on something new and maybe found a new book/tv show/website to try.

I remember when NYCC just used a portion of the Javits, and there might be a different show going on at the same time! Now the place is bursting at the seams with all the booths, creators, and cosplayers. Every year it morphs into something a little different but always bigger. Hopefully we can all keep up with the growth.

Dennis O’Neil: Keeping Up With The Avengers

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Saturday night and the old folks are not in Manhattan attending the convention. For many con goers, Saturday night is par-tay time, as it was for me in days of yore. But not now. If we were there we wouldn’t be partying and anyway, we weren’t there, so why the blather?

So: ordinary Saturday night. Does that mean it has to be boring? Wellll… Hey! I know, Let’s watch a movie on teevee – and don’t let me hear anyone say that senior citizens don’t know how to rip it loose! But which movie (and must life be one dilemma after another)? Hey, I know! Let’s pay homage to the fact that we’re not at the convention by watching… a superhero movie! Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

But – darn these dilemmas – which superhero movie? We missed a number of films we might have been expected to see – pretty arid summer, cinema-wise – and so, with a bit of channel scouring, we should be able to find a satisfactory non-convention-attending entertainment.

And lo and behold, there it is, available at the on-demand channel, for less than half the price of one theater ticket; a movie we actually wanted to see but for some reason didn’t – The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Life is good.

But the movie…?

Let’s put it this way:

BANG BANG BOOM talk talk BANG BANG BOOM talk BANGEDY BOOMBOOM

Open on a protracted and noisy fight and then more of the same. Structurally, the film reminded me of the old kiddie matinees shown at neighborhood theaters, in which one plot/story was stretched over months by dividing it into chapters, each ending on a suspense hook to pull you back for the next installment. Here’s how it parsed: Protagonist encounters adversary in battles that end indecisively until one doesn’t and the good guy wins. If he’s a cowboy, maybe he rides off into the sunset.

As noted, the opening scene in Ultron is loud and busy. In this it echoes one of the not-quite-rules that my merry men and I observed when we were Batman’s bosses: open on action. But a comic book is not a movie and anyhow, our debut action didn’t eat up much print space. Oh, and it was quiet. Little mousey quiet. Quiet as ink on a page.

One of my worries – okay, a small worry – is that film folk believe that audiences have come to expect – demand? – large portions of pyrotechnics and noise and in providing it they neglect others storytelling techniques. (Already, unless I’m missing something, they don’t seem much concerned with rising action.)

But maybe I shouldn’t expect expert storytelling. Maybe these entertainments are really about spectacle, closer to the offerings of P.T. Barnum than those of William Shakespeare. And in that case… next time you’re seeing a superhero flick, be sure to pop for a 3-D screening. When it comes to spectacle…hey, can it ever be too splashy?

Box Office Democracy: The Final Girls

The Final Girls is a movie that came to a crossroad about what kind of movie it wanted to be, and instead of making the choice stayed at that point reading the signs until it wasted away. There’s a good madcap comedy in there spoofing the Friday the 13th series and slasher movies in general, but it feels a little superficial when you consider that horror parody has been a persistent genre over the last two decades. Likewise, there’s a good metaphor in here about getting over grief and moving on after the death of a loved one, and at times it feels like the film wants to be very powerful on this topic, but it only feels like it exists in the scenes specifically designed to deal with it. Without walking down either path quite far enough, we’re left with a journey that never feels complete.

There’s not a lot of new space to make jokes about slasher movies. Scream gave everyone a full rundown of many of the clichés, but the genre has been firmly entrenched in self-parody almost from the very beginning. To point out that there are specific character archetypes or that certain behaviors will often lead to character death isn’t clever anymore and it’s only fleetingly funny. The bits that do work usually work because one of the better actors is delivering the material. Adam DeVine is a transfixing comedic presence that makes bad jokes seem good and good jokes seem amazing. Alia Shawkat is similarly magnetic in her screen time and it’s unfortunate that her character seems to fade further and further in to the background as the movie progresses and it becomes clear that her relationship with the main character is not the important one.

The main character, Max, is perhaps the biggest source of my frustration. I’m not entirely clear if the problem is the part is underwritten or if Taissa Farmiga is just in a bit over her head, and it’s probably a little bit of both. Max is supposed to be consumed by grief, and while that might explain her tendency to drift through the events of the film it doesn’t make her feel like a compelling character. At the end of the film the only things I felt like I knew for sure about Max is that she was sad a lot, she has a crush on a boy, and she was capable of remembering a pop song from the 80s. Farmiga also feels like a less compelling screen presence than her co-stars, particularly Malin Akerman, DeVine, and Shawkat. More than anything else, the poor casting underscores that this is an indie movie, and is stuck in my craw as a great “what might have been” for the film.

I am probably being too harsh with The Final Girls, or at the very least underrating how pleasantly surprised I was that this wasn’t another horror movie parody that’s really about sex politics. I don’t mean that there isn’t a place for those kind of critiques, but I feel like they’ve been done to death and I’m a little tired of them from a narrative sense. Instead, The Final Girls is about grief and the struggles to move on from an important loss, and the decisions made around this theme are so much more clever than the jokes they string up to hold the plot segments apart. The looping events and paradoxical geography of the camp are something I’ve never seen used before to talk about the feelings one can get stuck in after the loss of a close family member. It felt so much fresher than some of the other stuff, and I wish that whoever made the choice thought that stuff was more interesting that another round of jokes about how alcohol is always around cursed campgrounds.

Mike Gold: Friendship

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Yeah, yeah. Another major convention, a huge mother called the “New York Comic Con.” Emily wrote about some of it yesterday and Martha will be talking about it on Friday and maybe Marc will do the same on Saturday – yep, Marc actually went to New York City while the Chicago Cubs were working their way towards the pennant. He’s a southsider, so I’ll give him a pass. Not sure John Ostrander will.

Ergo, there is no need for me to write about the show. All those folks, as well as ComicMix Utility Infielder Glenn Hauman and columnists Ed Catto, Molly Jackson and Bob Ingersoll, were there and I think all or most were actually on the Javits Center floor more than I was. Besides, if you’ve read my deathless prose long enough you could probably write my review yourself. All I’ll say is, the major difference between the New York Comic Con and the Black Hole of Calcutta is that the latter has free parking.

So, instead, I want to talk about friendship.

Missing from the floor was my friend Jamie Graham. He’s the guy who lent his name to the Graham Crackers chain of comic book shops, which is one of the larger chains around. I’ve known the guy since, roughly, the Year Gimmel. In addition to comics and our common antiquity, Jamie and I have a lot in common – we’re both Chicagoans, we’re both hockey fans, and we’re both mindlessly acerbic.

You’re probably thinking by the end of this column, Jamie is going to wind up dead. This is not the case, and that is not a spoiler alert.

Last Thursday, my daughter and fellow ComicMix staffer Adriane Nash received a call from Jamie saying he had a personal emergency and he would not be accompanying his crew to the New York show. Well, that sucks but, honestly, I saw him two weeks before at the Baltimore Comic Con and about two weeks before that at Chicago Wizard World, so missing him in New York wasn’t a catastrophe. I haven’t had the chance to connect with him since the show ended – after each four-day convention comes about three solid weeks of catch-up. Four, if you count catching up on your sleep.

I mentioned Jamie and I are hockey fans, as is Adriane. This is true, but Jamie’s dedication to the sport exceeds mine, and perhaps exceeds reason as well. If his enthusiasm was akin to Stumbo the Giant, then I, as a hockey fan, am at best the mayor of Tinytown. As such, my friend had tickets to the New York Islanders/Chicago Blackhawks game held last Friday night. The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup last year, and the Islanders were having their home opener in their new home, Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. That means tickets were almost as hard to acquire as fresh air was at the New York Comic Con.

So I get a call from Adriane. She says Jamie has a present for us and he’s Fed-Exing it overnight for receipt Friday morning. OK, we both figured out what it probably was… as did you. While I was in Manhattan Friday hobnobbing with the elite, Adriane called to confirm our suspicions. She had the valued tickets in hand.

She was in Connecticut so she jumped into her car – named Brak, by the way – and I waddled out of my friend’s apartment in the city. Shortly thereafter, both of us were hit with a cloudburst of biblical proportions. We weren’t happy, but we would swim to the Barclays if we had to. For me, the arena was only a 25 minute subway ride away and, because subways run in a hole in the ground (as the song goes), the massive rain delayed me and about a billion other people waiting for the Lexington Avenue express. I got there, sweating profusely due to the heat of compressed humanity, an hour later. Hell, if I wanted to sweat I would have spent that time at NYCC.

The new arena is elegant with great sight lines but lousy bathroom placement (again; I could have stayed at NYCC for that). The game was great and the Islanders were sharp in their new home debut. I’m a Blackhawks fan, so you’ll forgive me if I point out that my team won – in overtime.

Jamie could have, please forgive the pun, hawked those tickets, probably for serious money. Nope. He sent them, at some expense, to Adriane and me. That, folks, is friendship.

I’ve said before that the best part of being in the comic book donut shop is that the folks in the adjoining seats are wonderful people. I have been blessed with a great, great many fine friendships, many quite enduring.

Like my friendship with Jamie Graham.

I love you, man. And I thank you.

NYCC 2015 Part I: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

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So if you haven’t noticed, the Thursday of New York Comic Con has kiiiiiind of turned into “Turtles Day” for me, in the sense that Nickelodeon does their press and events for the current animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show on that Thursday, and since I love Turtles and the current show, that’s where I’m at each year for whatever they offer.

This year, that means I had the pleasure of interviewing Ciro Nieli (Executive Producer/Director), Brandon Auman (Executive Producer/Head Writer), Hoon Lee (voice of Master Splinter), Rob Paulsen (voice of Donatello), and Greg Cipes (voice of Michelangelo) about the show. They dished about everything from the upcoming season to whether Raph and Mona Lisa are really going to maybe have babies in, like, Season 6 or something (heh). I also got to go to the rockin’ Turtles panel (in which cast and crew geeked out as much as we did when they realized their nameplates for the panel were made out of Megabloks and had TMNT character toys on them), and got to get a great Season 4 poster signed by the guys afterwards. And along with the aforementioned folks I interviewed, the panel also included Seth Green (Leonardo) and Eric Bauza (Tiger Claw), so we got to hear what they had to say as well, which was pretty cool! Not to mention there were lots of fun moments, such as <a href=”

Eric Bauza gave Rob Paulsen a “gift” onstage (heh), or when Greg Cipes got Sean Astin to say hi to all of us live on his phone (since Sean was running a marathon and couldn’t be in New York).

As you may know if you have been keeping up on the show, (Spoilers Ahead!), big changes have come to the Turtles world in the now-wrapped Season 3. Namely, Earth and everyone on it, except for the four Turtles, April, and Casey Jones, are gone. As Season 4 opens, the remaining adventurers are now zipping around space with an android named Fugitoid. (Who just happens to be voiced by David Tennant, who just happens to know a little bit about shows involving time travel, so, you know, maybe we’ll get the Earth baaaack? But in the meantime…)

I was a little skeptical about how Turtles in Space might go in the show going into Thursday; but after hearing what’s in store for the season during the interviews, and getting to see the Season 4 premiere episode, I’m totally on board. The first episode, in particular, was really fun: action-packed, with the excellent humor I’ve come to love, but also able to fit the setup for the season and the introduction of a vastly varied and fascinating new planet setting comfortably into one episode. Since the Turtles are apparently going to be bouncing around to all sorts of new planets during this season, that’s very promising.

The panel also revealed some new characters and voices that we’ll be seeing this season, including a race of “Salamandarians” which will include the character Sal Commander; Mona Lisa; the genie Wyrm; and a familiar 1987-style Krang (voiced by Pat Fraley). Other callbacks to the 1987 show include a “transdimentional” episode I’m totally psyched for, in which the 2012 show turtles encounter their 1987 counterparts in the 1987-style animated world, a CG world, and possibly a Mirage comic as well. We got to see a little clip of that work in progress, which was pretty rad; and learned that the original Turtles will be voiced by the original cast! I bet that was a trippy recording session for Rob Paulsen; but the bit we heard sounded great.

If you want to know more about what’s in store in Turtle-land, check out the interviews I did with <a href=”

Nieli and Rob Paulsen and with <a href=”

Cipes, Hoon Lee, and Brandon Auman. And if you want to see some great pics from the panel, check out my NYCC 2015 photo album.

Enjoy! And until next time: Turtle Power! Booyakabunga! And Servo Lectio!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REVIEW The Rocky Horror Picture Show 40th Anniversary Celebration

rocky-horror-picture-show-40th-anniversary-blu-ray-e1444584586423-5512274It goes without saying that the 1970s cannot be recounted without examining certain cultural phenomena. The Godfather and star Wars certainly helped redefine filmmaking and both had major impact on pop culture. But then there was the growth of cult cinema, which endures to this day, and was sparked by the arrival of a 20th Century Fox flop, a failed adaptation of a British stage play that gained some cred when it moved to Los Angeles. Little did anyone suspect that when New York’s Waverly theater began screening The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight, it would engage a generation.

I had heard of it soon after the screenings began but didn’t see it for the first time until my college roommate showed it in our dorm room so I could see and hear it for myself before it screened on campus with complete audience participation. I was taught which lines to repeat, when to throw toast, and the rest.

Thanks to home video, the film’s popularity has never waned as subsequent generations have discovered it and made it a part of their experience. So, here we are marking its anniversary with The Rocky Horror Picture Show 40-th Anniversary Celebration. 20th Century Home Entertainment has released it in a variety of formats but even its most basic single-disc Blu-ray edition is packed with wonderful stuff.

Richard O’Brien never expected his twisted homage to science fiction films would ever grow beyond the Royal Court Theater. Working with director Jim Sharman, they were clearly in sync and having fun. Anchored n stage by Tim Curry, the show gained a nice following, crossing the ocean to play at the Roxy Theater where core members of the film cast assembled, It was so enthusiastically received that a bidding war for film rights erupted.

The movie was shot cheaply and quickly, as befit its story, and opened in England on August 14, 1975 and at the UA Westwood in Los Angeles on September 26. Mainstream audiences and their critics didn’t get it. More, they didn’t like it and it was quickly yanked from its limited release. The Waverly began their screenings April 1, 1976 and finally, it found its intended audience.

In the current Entertainment Weekly, Curry (Dr. Frank N. Furter), Patricia Quinn (Magenta), Meat Loaf (Eddie), Barry Bostwick, and Susan Sarandon were reunited and in their reminiscences you got a sense of the organized chaos surrounding the production. It probably helped that Bostwick and Sarandon were new to the production, as were their characters Brad and Janet.

The story doesn’t always make sense but boy, does it look sharp and have a great soundtrack. The performances were spot on, with tongue just firmly enough in cheek so they got the joke and shared it with the audience. The combination of Sci-fi tropes, rock score, and amazing visuals helps keep it entertaining on repeat viewings. The high definition edition is crisp, matched with a strong audio track.

The single Blu-ray disc offers the film in in its USA and UK release versions along with Audio Commentary by O’Brien and Quinn. Most of the special features are repurposed from previous editions but is nice to have them here. Many of these can also be downloaded to your computer. These include:

  • Rocky-oke: Sing It!
  • Don’t Dream It, Be It: The Search for the 35th Anniversary Shadowcast, Part I
  • An-tic-i-pation: The Search for the 35th Anniversary Shadowcast, Part II
  • Mick Rock (A Photographer)
  • Mick Rock’s Picture Show (A Gallery)
  • A Few From The Vault
  • Outtakes
  • Alternate B&W Opening
  • Alternate Credit & Misprint Ending
  • “Rocky Horror Double Feature Video Show” (1995)
  • Beacon Theater, New York City (10th Anniversary)
  • Time Warp Music Video
  • The Midnight Experience
  • Pressbook & Poster Gallery

REVIEW: San Andreas

san-andreas-box-art-2d-e1444584443441-8866988We haven’t had a good old fashioned disaster movie in ages. The timing for San Andreas is interesting in that most Californians have stopped worrying about the big earthquake, focusing instead on the drought and/or the wildfires. But the seismologists have never stopped fretting that a quake, more devastating than the 1906 San Francisco event, is imminent. After several decades of “imminent” waiting, I can see how attention has wandered.

The Dwayne Johnson-led action film is a brutal reminder of just how much devastation is likely to result from such an earthquake. With CGI effects to enhance the imagery, this is a visual feast of destruction. And like every good epic in this genre, we follow the impossible efforts of one man not only to survive but to rescue his family despite the odds. As a result, the horrific reality is undercut by the muscular heroics. We know they’re going to nearly die but survive, the nuclear family intact, as San Francisco vanishes around them.

The movie, out now on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment, is exciting and entertaining despite stretching credulity, As with so many of this films, the scenes of death and destruction are sometimes hard to watch and always prolonged beyond necessity. Whereas you could get to know the cast aboard the vessel trying to land in Airport or survive The Towering Inferno, the editing is much faster so it changes the pacing and tempo and you can get lost in the debris.

The story begins with the scientists at Cal Tech, led by Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti). They believe they have perfected predicting quakes so of course, their equipment is immediately tested with the Bog One, which is bigger than most worst case scenarios imagine. We watch as Hoover Dam and Los Angeles get smashed as the wave heads north up the San Andreas Fault line.

Enter rescue helicopter pilot Ray Gaines (Johnson), abandoning his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario), to do his duty around Los Angeles. She accompanies her soon-to-be stepfather Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd) and her mother Emma (Carla Gugino) into and out of danger until dad has come to the rescue. They wind up being accompanied by Daniel’s sister Susan (Kylie Minogue) and things continue to move at a breathless clip.

You root for everyman Johnson to save the day time and again, because that’s all these movies want you to do. There’s no room for discussions over safety inadequacies or the general nature of human behavior. Instead, our core characters stand in for mankind and we munch our popcorn, hoping they survive without too much trouble.

Director Brad Peyton (Journey 2) keeps things moving along, sometimes too quickly, but rarely taking his eye off the family that gives the film a heart more recent efforts like 2112 skipped. We’re left reassured we will survive and rebuild.

The high definition transfer is excellent at 1080p, 2.40:1 so every bit of concrete and steel, every drop of water, and every fleck of blood is sharp. The Dolby TrueHD 7.1 lossless soundtrack is a peerless match the visuals making this one satisfying home viewing experience.

There are only a few special features included, which is surprising given the scope of the project. The Audio Commentary from Peyton offers up many a nugget of interesting information about the filmmaking process. Then there are some relatively short pieces starting with San Andreas: The Real Fault Line (6:23), as cast and crew recall shooting specific moments; Dwayne Johnson to the Rescue (9:24), as the star recounts making the film’s opening and closing sequences;  Scoring the Quake (6:13), with Composer Andrew Lockington; Deleted Scenes (4:40), a collection of eight scenes, with option commentary from Payton; a Gag Reel (1:22); and, a Stunt Reel (2:56).

Mindy Newell: A Psychic and a Bunch Of Spies

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Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette): It’s 9:00. How am I supposed to know you’re OK? How do I know you’re not lying dead somewhere? • Joe Dubois (Jake Weber): If something had happened, somebody would’ve called. If I were dead, who are we kidding, you’d be the first to know. • Medium, NBC and CBS, 2005 – 2011

She sees dead people.

From January 2005 until January 2011, Patricia Arquette played the role of Allison DuBois, wife, mother, would-be lawyer, and Medium to the Phoenix District Attorney Office. Brought to television life by Glenn Gordon Caron, who had also developed and produced Moonlighting, the show that kicked off Bruce Willis’ career – the show was based on the story and exploits of real-life psychic investigator Allison DuBois, a Phoenix native who worked as an intern for the city’s D.A. and who wrote a book called Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye.

I’m not here to argue the truth of (the real) Ms. DuBois’s ability – though I have a very, very dear friend whom I believe definitely has a “gift” – but just to tell you how much I loved the series when it first ran and which I recently discovered available on Amazon Prime.

Patricia Arquette, who won just about every award possible for her 2014 performance as the mother in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, is one of those actress whom I will watch in anything she does – from the first time I saw her in an episode of Thirtysomething to her turn as an aging prostitute in a 2012 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – because she is, im-not-so-ho, a natural actress, inhabiting her roles so thoroughly that I (and you) forget it’s a performance.

The charm of Medium, aside from the series’ science-fiction/fantasy genre elements, is that it also belonged to another popular television genus – the family drama. It wasn’t just about Allison DuBois’ crime-busting extrasensory abilities furrowing out the bad guy of the week, but also about her families, both personal and workplace, their traumas, their joys, and their lives; I think that Medium’s success was based on its “ensemble” approach to telling its stories, so that even those who avoided anything even hinting of “supernatural” or “magical” watched it. Like Buffy, it was a story about life

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” • Michael Corleone, 1990

Tonight, as I write this, is Sunday and so it is the second episode of the fifth season of Homeland. So I can’t talk about that because I haven’t seen it yet. But the premiere:

It’s two years (in Homeland time) since Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) made a mess of being station chief in Pakistan. She has left the CIA, and is working for a German millionaire philanthropist as his security consultant. Yes, we are in Berlin, everybody. On the surface everything seems fine for the bi-polar ex-spy: she is a happy working mom – Frannie, Brody’s daughter, is with her; she is in a stable relationship and living with her lover – uh, oh, first clue the past isn’t really in the past: the guy looks an awfully lot like Nicholas Brody, with reddish hair and a beard; and she’s even a frequent-flyer at church.

Uh-oh, second clue the past isn’t really in the past: Carrie’s boss wants to go to Lebanon to see what he can do to help all the refugees fleeing from Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq (just to mention a few fucked-up states in crisis mode). Like Lebanon is the most stable country.

And meantime, two “accidental” hackers into the CIA’s server have discovered that the “Company” has been illegally spying on German citizens for Germany, since that country’s strict constitutional privacy laws prevent that kind of “homeland” surveillance.

Uh-oh, third clue the past isn’t really in the past: A free-lance journalist tries to show Carrie these classified printouts, wanting to get her affirmation about them before the journalist publishes them–although Carrie refuses on the grounds that it would break her “exit-interview” agreement with the CIA to not get involved in any way with “Company” matters. (The journalist says she’s going to publish them whether or not Carrie can verify that they really do belong to the CIA.)

There are a lot more clues, the groundwork has been laid; Saul and Dar Adal are in Germany to address the hacking and Germany’s response, and so is Quinn, still doing what he does best – killing and blowing up things, which he’s been doing for the last two years all over the Middle East, with the sanction of the CIA.

But now he has been “officially” cut loose. And like Jim Phelps in Mission Impossible, if he is “killed or captured, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

But I think that Peter Quinn still wants out. And that Carrie wants back in.

I think it’s going to be like the old strip in Mad Magazine:

Spy vs. Spy

Ed Catto: The Golden Age Batman v. Superman – The Sinister Shadow

sinistershadow-cvr-full-1470322It’s still amazing to me that we live in a world where rumors about the trailers for the Batman v. Superman movie are reported in Forbes magazine. On the other hand, as Forbes signed on my pal Rob Salkowitz, an expert on comic-cons and pop culture, as a columnist, it’s apparent they understand the power of Geek Culture and I shouldn’t be so surprised.

Combining two franchises into a movie like Batman v. Superman isn’t a fresh idea, but it sure is a fun one. So as Hollywood and Warner Bros look to combine the quintessential dark hero with his counterpart, I thought it would be interesting to see how it was done with their prototypes.

worlds-finest-batman-v-superman-wf-21-5340637The Shadow and Doc Savage were created for the pulps and clearly inspired Batman and Superman. In fact, many argue that it’s less inspiring and more outright copycatting. For example, the very first Batman story was a rip-off of a Shadow adventure. Krypton’s favorite son borrowed many elements of the Doc Savage mythology, from his civilian name to his Fortress of Solitude.

“Let’s not bicker and argue…” is a Monty Python line that’s probably appropriate here. I enjoy them all and perhaps you do too. This summer I thoroughly enjoyed the new book, The Sinister Shadow by Will Murray, published by Altus Press. So I reached out to Will to learn more, and especially to compare and contrast his book to the upcoming Batman v. Superman movie.

willrr2-5795589Ed Catto: In your recent novel, The Sinister Shadow, you’ve created a Doc Savage vs. Shadow adventure. How did this all come about?

Will Murray: I’ve wanted to write a Doc Savage meets The Shadow novel since my Bantam Books days. The rights were never available. When Conde Nast okayed the project, I decided to pit The Shadow against Doc Savage in a way that acknowledged that while they both were dedicated toward the ends of justice, they also worked very different sides of the street. Like Superman and Batman, they are not natural allies, since their methods run counter to one another’s philosophies. But I felt they could become uneasy allies if joined in common cause.

tarzancscvr-3-6580985This is a crime-suspense story set in 1933, when both heroes are at the start of their careers. I’ve had this plot in mind for several years, but imagine my surprise and delight when looking through the manuscript for (Doc Savage creator/writer) Lester Dent’s only Shadow novel, The Golden Vulture, I discovered approximately 20 chapters of unused material. How wonderful it would be if I could make my first Shadow novel a collaboration with Lester! So I acquired those rights, and the rest is history. I’m really proud of this book, because between me and Lester Dent’s 1932 prose, we really evoke The Shadow of the early Depression, as well as Doc in his early career.

skull-island-5237908EC: You’re very respectful to the source material. In fact, this novel seems like a “masters class” for pulp readers. The reader really has to be on his or her toes.  Can you discuss your authentic and respectful approach to these characters? And how do you feel it’s received by fans?

WM: When I write Doc Savage, or for that matter The Shadow or Tarzan, any other such character, I try to write in the tone, style and mindset of the original author. That I often succeed is one of my gifts. The mind trick I use is not to write a story set in the past, to pen a contemporary pulp novel as if I were living in the timeframe in which the story is set. That way I don’t place too much emphasis on period details – just enough to evoke the era.

doc_savage_and_shadow_by-barreto-6197787Comments received so far on The Sinister Shadow say it is not only one of the best novels I’ve ever written, but it’s an uncannily authentic replication of those characters in their rightful time. Readers just love this book! And I loved writing it.

EC: While this is officially another entry in your Wild Adventures of Doc Savage series, isn’t this really a Shadow novel? Or is that my own bias?

WM: I have been fascinated by the reviews, some of which say this is a great Doc Savage novel guest-starring The Shadow, while others insist it’s really a Shadow novel in disguise. The truth is that The Sinister Shadow is a Doc Savage novel set in the gritty Great Depression world of The Shadow, with the characters adjusted accordingly. Late in the book, it shifts to being a full-blown Shadow novel, but that was driven by the Lester Dent material, not by my choice. I will say that the book nicely balances out, so that both heroes and their subordinate characters get their full measure of respect and participation in the action.

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Also, this is Lester Dent’s take on The Shadow. He’s mysteriously creepy and uses a lot of tools and gadgets (Shadow creator/writer) Walter Gibson never dreamed of.

EC: I was impressed by how you deal with some of the historical, yet cringe-worthy elements of each characters’ mythology. You certainly didn’t ignore or gloss over these dated ideas. I could almost feel both Doc and The Shadow squirming at different times during the story. Can you explain your thoughts on these elements? How do you think today’s audiences respond to them?

WM: I’m just as attracted to Doc Savage’s humane approach to fighting crime as I am The Shadow’s avenging angel punishment mindset. Both work for me. Of course, The Shadow was the forerunner of characters ranging from the Executioner to Dirty Harry. The formula is with us today. The enlightened Doc Savage approach is less common, hence its appeal as an alternative to the avenger-style hero.

Believe it or not, Doc Savage’s surgical approach to curing crime was considered very progressive for the 1930s. For me, the appeal of pitting these characters against one another was to explore their radically diverse crimefighting approaches. Therein lies the essential tension and drama of The Sinister Shadow. After one of Doc’s men and the real Lamont Cranston are kidnapped, that draws both heroes in. And when Doc unwittingly captures one of The Shadow’s agents and ships him off to his Crime College for corrective surgery, things really start to pop.

Having them team up comic-book style to fight a great menace wasn’t my approach because it isn’t the best way to introduce these characters to one another. I wanted the villain to be a catalyst, not the central antagonist. Having set up their difficult working relationship, I can now throw them against a super-villain down the road if future circumstances permit it.

EC: You’ve developed a great antagonist for this story. Without spoiling any surprises, can you explain your creation of the Funeral Director?

WM:  The Sinister Shadow is an extended chess game between Doc and The Shadow, who are after the same bad guy. I chose a villain who brought them into open conflict, without overshadowing the storyline.

The Funeral Director is a mysterious enemy who tangled with The Shadow before under another name. He’s been hiding from The Shadow’s vengeance ever since; hence he’s adopted an alias for one last big score.

I‘ve always wanted to tie up the unresolved loose threads of the early Walter Gibson Shadow novels, and in this story I tied up a ton of them. Shadow readers have been ecstatic.

EC: The cover art has become an integral part of any pulp adventure. Who’s your cover artist for this story and were you happy with the result?

WM: Joe DeVito is my cover artist, and has been since the days when I wrote Doc Savage for Bantam Books back in the 1990s. Thanks to the kindness of acclaimed artist James Bama, we’re working with original photos he took of model Steve Holland posing as Doc Savage back in the 1960s. We found a great one depicting Doc standing in a challenging position, looking like a literal Man of Bronze. This gave us a start. To this Joe added a nebulous looking Shadow opening fire on Doc. The scene is set in The Shadow’s secret sanctum. For the hardcover edition, we have a bonus back cover – a great graveyard scene of Doc and Monk wearing infrared goggles, while The Shadow crouches atop the Cranston family mausoleum. It’s hard to say which is the better image.

EC: What’s next for Doc Savage?

WM: Next, we jump ahead in time to the middle of World War II. Monk and Ham become embroiled in wartime intrigue that takes them to the Caribbean Sea, and a gang of pirates intent upon controlling The Secret of Satan’s Spine. That’s the title of the book. More than that I don’t want to give away. But expect some surprise cameos featuring characters who previously appeared in earlier Doc novels. Beyond that, I have ideas for an adventure set in Chicago at the height of the great gang wars, another that takes us to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, and then a return to the Valley of the Vanished where Doc Savage’s career began back in 1933.

EC: And I understand you’ll also be creating new adventures for The Shadow?

WM: While there has been some discussion about The Shadow, and I would love to take a swing at a new Shadow novel, I would prefer to do another Doc Savage-Shadow encounter next, preferably going after The Shadow’s great enemy, Shiwan Khan. Many readers had asked me to pit Doc against Fu Manchu, but I think the Street & Smith version would be more compelling.

EC: Are there other pulp team-ups and/or crossovers are you working on?

WM: I just released my first Tarzan novel, the well-received Return to Pal-ul-don. It’s a sequel to Tarzan the Terrible, and takes place when John Clayton is an RAF fighter pilot during WWII. I’m in discussions to write another Tarzan, but this one will be a crossover. I can’t yet say who the other character is, but I can hint at it. It’s a big hairy deal. This will be a major crossover that has been long dreamed of going back to 1935, but never executed due to rights issues. I’m also thinking of writing a Spider novel in which he teams up with Jimmy Christopher, the star of Operator #5 magazine, as well as G-8 of World War I fame.

I have mixed feelings about crossovers. We’re seeing a lot of them now, but for my money, they have to be extremely well realized to live up to reader expectations.

EC: What advice would you give to the folks making the Batman v. Superman movie?

WM: Far be it from me as a pulp novelist to give Hollywood filmmakers any advice, except the obvious: If you’re going to have two major properties meet, both must be equally respected and interact in ways that are true to their essential natures. A crossover for its own sake is a mere novelty. A crossover that explores both characters in new ways is an event. I think everybody’s more interested in big events than in entertaining novelties. Too many crossovers are just circulation stunts.

I do find it interesting that the core approach of Batman v. Superman – that is, antagonistic heroes who presumably work out their differences – is so similar to The Sinister Shadow, which I first plotted almost 10 years ago….

EC: Thanks for your time and insights, Will!

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John Ostrander: Damn you, Stephen Colbert!

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On The Late Show on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert celebrated the Cubs winning the wild card spot in the MLB playoffs (they beat Pittsburgh) by declaring that the Curse of the Goat was now broken and that the Cubs would go on to win the whole enchilada.

Mr. Colbert, how could you? You lived in Chicago for eleven years. I know that, at that time, you studied improv with Charna Halpern and my old writing partner, Del Close. You know the dashed hopes and numbing despair experienced by Cub fans. And just when the Cubbies had won their first playoff game in Twelve Years, you had to flout the Curse of the Goat and even eject from your show a goat that had been in the front row of the audience. The goat clearly did not want to go but you had to repeat the incident that first brought the Curse of the Goat down on the Cubs.

For those of you who don’t know, back in 1945, when the Cubs made one of their few appearances in a World Series, saloon keeper Bill Sianis (owner of The Billy Goat Tavern, a famed watering hole in the lower level of Michigan Avenue), was ejected from Wrigley Field along with his pet goat. Some say the Cubs owner, Phillip K. Wrigley, objected to the smell. Of the goat or of Sianis, I’m not sure. Sianis swore that the Cubs would never win a World Series again (accounts differ slightly but that’s the gist of it). And they haven’t. Of course, they hadn’t won a World Series in the 40 odd years leading up to that but perhaps the curse was retroactive. Who knows with curses?

Sianis himself tried to reverse the curse in later years; all sorts of rituals and exorcisms have been done to no effect.

I’m a life-long Cubs fan, Stephen. I had no choice in the matter. I was born on the Northside of Chicago; that locks me into the Cubs. The Southside is for the White Sox and the West Side – well, who knows or cares. They’re free agents; they may support St. Louis as far as I know.

The Cubs have not won a World Series in 107 years. My aunt, who lived to be 101, was alive the last time the Cubs did that. She was barely one-year old. That’s how long we’ve been suffering and waiting.

Every so often, it looks as if our luck is going to change, that the Curse will finally be broken. In 2008, they had the best record in baseball. There wasn’t anyone the Cubs couldn’t beat. In the first round, they were swept by the Dodgers. Didn’t win even one game. The Goat laughed. Baaaa-ha-ha!

In 2003, they were in the playoffs against the Florida Marlins. They were leading three games to two, they were at Wrigley Field, they were leading 3-0 in the 8th inning with two out, and a fan named Steve Bartman, sitting in the front row on the left field foul line, saw a ball headed his way. Trouble is, it was a playable ball and the outfielder, Moises Alou, had a chance to catch it. Bartman made a play for it, too, and tipped the ball. Alou didn’t catch it and a collective groan went up from the Cubs’ fans in the stadium and watching it on TV. We knew the Curse has struck again. The Cubs went on to lose the game and the series. Bartman had to be escorted out of Wrigley Field by security for his own protection.

And somewhere the Goat laughed. Baaaa-ha-ha!

And you, on your show, proclaimed that the Curse of the Goat was now broken and guaranteed, Guaranteed that the Cubs would win it all this year. You should know better. You should respect the Curse, respect the Goat, and don’t start celebrating before the season is over.

If/when the Cubs fail again, Cub fans are going to remember you taunting fate, Stephen Colbert. You are going to be the new Bartman. Your ratings will plummet in Chicago. You won’t be able to come back to the city to visit old friends, not that it will matter; they will shun you and your hubris.

Of course, there is the possibility that you’re right. That slim, ephemeral hope that comes back to life every time that the Cubs enter the play-offs, that glimmer of possible victory that enters every true Cubs fan’s heart, may finally be realized. And you will have called it. You will be able to lead the Victory Parade down LaSalle amidst the cheering throngs.  It will be a great moment of victory and you can claim it because you called it.

And then what will happen?

The team’s owners, emboldened, will move the Cubs out of the friendly confines of Wrigley Field to a new stadium, possibly in the suburbs, possibly in another city all together. They will maximize their financial potential.

And, shorn of their identity as baseball’s most lovable losers, the symbol of futility and the unending patience of the true fan, the Cubs will become just another baseball team.

Damn you, Stephen Colbert!

 

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