Next week is Banned Books Week! This means now is your chance to take everything you learned in our 8-Week #ChallengedChallenge and use that knowledge to fight the good fight. Let every one know about why banning and challenging books is bad. Maybe even go to your local library or book store and find a banned book to read. (We’ve created a great display at our local library for next week & we’re sure others will have them as well).
And if you are one of those people who don’t trust a couple of kids about such a serious subject, we’ve brought in the big guns. At San Diego Comic Con, we spoke with Editorial Director, Betsy Gomez from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund about why people try to ban books and had her show us some of their resources available to help those who find their reading rights are being taken away. Hey! And if you are a libraian or teacher this video is a great resource too, btw.
Time was when I was young and had not yet outgrown the need for hair that in the dead of winter, a lady friend and I rambled west and found ourselves in the San Francisco area. We crossed that big bridge and called on my Aunt Ethel, whom I had seen maybe once in my life when I was a little kid and who had no idea that we were coming. Knock knock, I’m your great nephew from Missouri you wouldn’t be able to pick from a lineup and this is my friend Anne and by the way, we have no place to stay and almost no money…
She was a nice lady, Ethel was, and she gave us room and board for a few days until we were ready to rehit the road. She was also a radical whose recently departed husband had been a pioneer union organizer in an era when, according to one story, union members went to meetings in groups armed with rifles. Anne and I were lefties in our early 20s and we were not big fans of unions. My father had gotten unwelcome attention from the Teamsters and in general we believed that unions were corrupt havens for the thug class.
Ethel, on the other hand, was one with Woody Guthrie and the other populists and believed the union movement to be a shining hope for the exploited and mistreated working man. So we disagreed, but we did it politely, and we were in a friendly mood when we left Ethel’s house in Corte Madera. I don’t know how or when Ethel died and I’m sorry about that. I should have stayed in touch.
Then I went to live in New York and pretty much forgot about organized labor until I became a member of the Academy of Comic Book Arts. ACBA’s mission was never very clear to me, but in broad, blurry strokes it was intended to be the voice of all us scruffy comics freelancers. What ACBA really did accomplish was to hold an annual awards banquet and hand out certificates (and later statuettes) to people who had done exemplary work before there were Eisners and/or Harveys. But there were no negotiations with management and when ACBA sort of faded away in 1977, the day to workaday situation of the comics creators hadn’t changed.
It’s gotten way better. We’re now guaranteed royalties, back end money, foreign use payments, various ancillary payments when other media get involved. We sign contracts and the bucks arrive and I’m okay with that. I hate bookkeeping – tax time is a trip to an unexplored corner of hell – and I’m willing to trust the folks out in Burbank.
But pensions? Medical benefits? Vacation pay? Maternity pay or its equivalent? Those are still not available to many of the gallant mavericks who slap ink onto paper and provide you with entertainment. Are we advocating unions? Shrug.
It may be that unions are remnants of a past century and there are other kinds of negotiating bodies possible to us now. Or it may be that the need for unionization is evolving into something else. But one service unions can still provide is fundraising. They can allow politicians unbeholden to billionaires to accumulate enough capital to mount a decent campaign. And at the moment, there are very few organizations able to do that.
And, you know, fossil that I am, I kind of like the two party system.
For the conclusion of Diamond Comic Distributors Retailer Summit and for the opening of Geppi’s Entertainment Museum’s new exhibit 75 Spirited Years: Will Eisner and The Spirit on Friday, September 25, 2015 – four top creators were asked to provide their interpretations of a concept sketch that had been created by Eisner but never before finished.
One of those creators was Mark Wheatley, the Inkpot, Mucker, Gem, Speakeasy, and Eisner award-winning writer-artist perhaps best known for his successful and often cutting-edge collaborations with fellow writer-artist Marc Hempel. Wheatley will see his piece based on Eisner’s sketch featured on the cover of a limited edition of Overstreet’s Comic Book Marketplace Yearbook 2015-2016. This version will be given to retailers who attend the closing party for the Retailer Summit, which is also the official kick-off of the Eisner exhibit.
“I’m thrilled to have been asked to posthumously collaborate with Will Eisner on this project. Will’s sketch left a lot open to interpretation, but really evoked the tone of The Spirit to me,” Wheatley said.
Wheatley will sign copies of the limited edition cover at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum on Friday, September 25, from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Retailers attending the opening will receive one copy each free of charge and will be able to purchase additional copies. The two standard versions of Overstreet’s Comic Book Marketplace Yearbook 2015-2016 are scheduled to go on sale at shops on October 7, 2015. The 192-page, full-color, trade paperback-size publication carries a $12.95 cover price.
Pitch Perfect snuck up on us as a charming, funny film that took the national interest in all things acapella and grafted it onto the teen Coming of Age story template from Bring it On. With a strong ensemble and winning soundtrack, it wowed at the box office, making a singing star of Anna Kendrick, and ensuring there’d be a sequel.
If the film had any fault it was that some elements were so outsized they seemed incongruous with the rest of the story, such as the force and volume of Anna Camp’s projectile vomiting or Renee Wilson’s super-sized characterization.
Unfortunately, the trend towards bigger and more preposterous elements plagues Pitch Perfect 2, out now on Blu-ray Combo Pack from Universal Home Entertainment. At a performance before President Obama, Fat Amy has a wardrobe malfunction that gets televised but the reaction is far more extreme than Janet Jackson’s real life exposure during the far better watched Super Bowl.
As a result, the Barden Bellas are now pariahs both on campus and in the acapella competition world. Of course, there’s a loophole which they exploit so the disgraced national champions prepare to compete in the International Competition against a German team that works with stereotypical efficiency. They are the goliaths to beat and we all know they will be taken down a notch with heart and soul.
The film barely pauses to introduce the full Bella squadron so few actually feel like characters as opposed to window dressing. Instead, we focus on Kendrick’s character, who has over the last three years become the leader. But, she wants more and secretly takes an internship at a recording company where she faces new challenges, shaking her from her mash-up comfort zone.
Impossibly, the Bellas are all seniors so graduation looms and until a freshman arrives to join the team, there is little thinking about continuing their legacy or domination. But legacy becomes an undercurrent as Emily (Hailee Steinfeld), daughter of a former Bella (Katy Segal) forces her way into the group. Being the younger outsider does for this film what Kendrick’s Beca did in the first and she is utterly charming in her innocence.
The broad humor does not work for me at all, as I prefer the subtler, funnier bits such as Kendrick’s fascination with her German rival Kommissar (Birgitte Hjort-Sørensen). Or the clearly ad-libbed and inappropriate comments from podcasters
The team’s antics reach a nadir with a senior home performance so they go to seek their mojo from Camp’s Aubrey, now a motivational guru. Cohesive once more, they work hard for worlds and win (not a spoiler) and their performance is all you want from this film.
A third installment is in the works and one hopes that the transition to a mostly-new Bellas will bring with it a downshift in tone so they avoid embarrassing themselves.
The digital transfer is just fine with an excellent 1080p transfer matched with the more important DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack that makes the songs pop.
The Combo pack comes with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD. The Special Features are plentiful but perfunctory. There’s a Bonus Song Performed by The Treblemakers (3:27): The song follows an introduction; Extended Musical Performances: Bellas (1:58), Das Sound Machine (1:23), and Bellas: Finale Clap-Along (0:44); Das Sound Machine Finale Breakdown (2:06) so you can hear each layer on its own; Deleted/Extended/Alternate Scenes: Jesse Drops Off Beca At Work — Extended (1:46), Treble Party — Alternate (1:00), Bumper Arrives at Treble Party (1:18), Treble Party — Extended (1:04), Car Show: “Farter” (0:56), Intro to Mansion — Extended (1:35), Beat Box — Extended (1:21), Setting Up Tents — Deleted (1:50), and Amy and Bumper Make-Up — Alternate (1:32); a fun Gag Reel (3:08); Line-Aca-Rama (3:36), alternate takes; Green Bay Rap (0:52), yes, those are the pro football players and film fans in their glory; Elizabeth Banks’ Directorial Debut (5:20), a celebration of the actress’ ascension to behind the camera; The Bellas Are Back (6:13); Aca-Camp (1080p, 5:04); The Making of the Riff-Off (6:02), a closer look at the underground sing off that seems out of place until they explain why it’s in the film; The World Championships of A Cappella (9:30), when Baton Rouge was used as Denmark; Snoop Is in the House (2:53), Snoop Dogg’s cameo is highlighted; Residual Heat Internship (2:26), as Beca works for the unnamed character played by Keegan-Michael Key; An Aca-Love Story: Bumper and Fat Amy (5:26), exploring the improbable Adam DeVine-Rebel Wilson romance; and finally, Legacy: Hailee Steinfeld (6:04).
There is additional Audio Commentary from Director/Producer Elizabeth Banks and Producers Paul Brooks and Max Handelman which actually tells you more about the film’s production than all of the above.
I’m guessing it was 60 years ago. I was a mere tyke; five years old. My sister was eleven. We lived in an apartment on Chicago’s mid-northwest side, and we had a television set. There were “only” five VHF stations and one of them was educational – a betrayal of my sensibilities. I hated school, even if it was merely kindergarten, and the idea that someone would waste one of those few precious teevee channels on school was simply beyond my ken.
At that time I was only interested in cartoons and in Jack Benny. Yeah, I’ve been a Jack Benny fan since the light from the cathode ray tube first shined in our living room. And I wanted to watch Bugs Bunny. Being six and one-half years older, my sister had more sophisticated taste. She wanted to watch Superman. And, being six and one-half years older, my sister usually got her way. So I watched Superman with her, as though I had a choice.
The show wormed its way into my heart, not so much because of Superman or Lois, although Perry White and Inspector Henderson were pretty cool. No, the character that appealed to me most was Jimmy Olsen, as portrayed by Jack Larson.
Jimmy was, indeed, Superman’s pal and who wouldn’t want to be that? He was a bit of a doofus, but in a very endearing way. He was one of those guys who could fail upwards and turn a crisis into a victory. He was swell enough to enjoy Superman’s confidence (but not his secret identity) and to help Clark and Lois in their work – and share their danger. Even though I didn’t want to be him as I knew Superman didn’t really exist, I sure as hell wanted to live next door to him.
Just like every other baby boomer. Jack Larson helped raise my generation.
I first met him in 1977, give or take a year, in Neal Adams’ studio. There were about a dozen of us, and Jack was polite, funny, informative and charming – even more so than his alter-ego. This was before he became convinced that George (Superman) Reeves committed suicide, and his analysis of the various conspiracy theories was fascinating.
I’d seen him at conventions and various DC functions since then and became aware of his career as a producer and a writer, often working with his life-partner James Bridges. But it was his previous lover, Montgomery Clift, who told him he was hopelessly typecast as Jimmy Olsen and he should move behind the camera, where he was quite successful.
Due to Jack Larson, Jimmy Olsen became even more successful. Roughly mid-way through the television run, DC came out with their first Superman spin-off book, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen. It ran for 163 issues, with subsequent revivals.
When DC was forced to abandon the Superman series due to the death of its star, they asked Jack if he would be interested in starring in his own Jimmy Olsen series. By then, John (Perry White) Hamilton had died, so they could take the show in just about any direction. Understandably, Jack declined.
Jack Larson had a major impact on an entire generation – and that was a damn large generation. He was the first television actor to make bow-ties cool.
We mourn for Jack, who died last Sunday at the age of 87. Thanks to him, Jimmy Olsen lives on.
Even Dr Evil might join in for a prize like this. THE BAZILLION DOLLAR CLUB is a new competition show from SyFy where tech gurus Dave McClure and Brady Forrest award big money to brilliant start up ideas, but how do they pick the right ones? The guys share their secrets here. Then meet actor John Lucas (A BRILLIANT MIND, AMERICAN PSYCHO) who previews his new comedy, THE MEND.
It’s really easy to dismiss a film by calling it nonsense, and this particular pitfall is one I feel I fall into too many times. I’ve cried nonsense on the plots of so many films over the course of my years reviewing films when I really meant muddled or confusing or pointless that now when I need it most I worry it won’t be taken seriously. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is nonsense in the purest form of the word; the movie has nothing resembling coherence or reason and it is a constant struggle just to understand what the hell is happening, let alone why it’s happening. I understand why these characters need to run away from bad things, but just about nothing else about the entire film. I derided the first Maze Runner film for being cliché and boring but it’s so much better to be boring than to be utterly incomprehensible.
You would think that by picking up directly where the last film left off The Scorch Trials could have some sense of narrative continuity, but you would be completely wrong. This film starts with the idea that everything we knew in the first movie was wrong but never bothers to explain what’s right. There’s some disease out there and for some reason it turns people in to zombies. The lab where they’re researching this disease has some weird shrimp monsters in glass tubes but no one acknowledges them in a serious way and they’re never spoken of or seen again. The outside world is one of sandstorms and powerful lightning storms but I can’t imagine that was caused by the zombie shrimp virus. The city they visit (or cities— it’s very hard to tell visually and the narrative gives no clues) is completely trashed with skyscrapers collapsing and fallen bridges, but none of that seems like zombies or sandstorms would cause it. The movie feels like the sets and locations were made with a paint-by-numbers set of post-apocalyptic clichés, and I could probably abide by it if they dedicated any time at all to justifying any of it. It wouldn’t even be that hard to slide this exposition when you consider all of the primary antagonists have amnesia, a disease practically invented to provide opportunities for simple things to be explained.
There’s also a stunning lack of consistency in the simple facts of the world. The kids travel by days on foot apparently risking dehydration and death by exposure to get from this ruined city to a secluded rebel outpost at the base of a far-off mountain. Then when things in the base go wrong two characters run around an underground tunnel for less than ten minutes before being deposited back out in to a giant city that we definitely couldn’t see in any of the establishing shots of that camp. When they leave this new city a few minutes later, they do it in a truck on a paved road. Civilization returned to this part of the world quickly in the maximum three days these events took place in. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt like my intelligence has been insulted so much by a movie, and I saw the Twilight film where the whole climax was a dream twice.
For two movies in all the characters are remarkably thin. I couldn’t come up with descriptions for any of them that last more than a sentence or contain more than two adjectives. I suppose Minho is the brave one and Thomas is the reckless hero. Newt has an English accent and Aris has a weird name. I think Frypan is supposed to be the strong one but I might be wrong. Teresa has almost nothing to do in this movie and barely speaks until it’s almost over but they still expect me to believe she and Thomas have some special connection, maybe by the time this is all over it will be somewhat believable. Patricia Clarkson is suitably menacing in her slightly expanded part as the series’ apparent big bad, but she’s starting to sort of fade in to the scenery as the famous older blond actress playing the big bad has become the new fad among the YA movie swarm. Giancarlo Esposito is a treasure and he gets the most real acting to do in this and while he crushes it I sincerely hope he gets better opportunities soon or that this paid enormously well. Alan Tudyk is featured in a very small role and while he’s utterly transfixing it seems as if the direction offered him was “take everything you’ve ever seen a junkie do on film and do all of it on every line” and it’s awfully strange to see.
While trying to figure out how much of what I didn’t get in this film came from some struggle to adapt the book into the film I read a summary of the book and discovered it basically has nothing to do with the movie they made. Some of the characters are the same and the second act seems to hit a few of the same beats but what are we even doing here at this point? Why make a film so unfaithful to the source material and also so staggeringly terrible? Who is being pleased by this film? Surely not the fans of the book and certainly not the poor audience members with no affinity for this franchise at all. The Scorch Trials is a failure as a film and a failure as an adaptation and it seems like somewhere, with enough effort, they could have gotten one of these things right.
Last week I went with my friend to a screening of Germany’s entry for the foreign-language film Oscar, Labyrinth of Lies, hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and featuring a Q & A with director and co-writer Giulio Ricciarelli. The film and Q & A were excellent.
The film focuses on the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, which took place in Germany almost twenty years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, from 1963-65. These trials followed the Nuremberg trials held by the Allied forces in Germany, and the resulting “first Auschwitz trial” in Poland. The first Auschwitz trial tried forty former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps who were witnesses in the Nuremberg trials. The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials charged over twenty defendants under German criminal law for their roles as mid- and low-level officials at the Auschwitz concentration camps.
Labyrinth of Lies examines Germany during the run-up to and beginning of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, as seen through the eyes of young public prosecutor Johann Radmann (Alexander Fehling), who strives to bring the truth of what happened at the camps into the light, and secure justice against the perpetrators via the court system. It tracks his attempts to obtain support for his crusade against the backdrop of strong political and social opposition in West Germany, and in the face of ridicule and hostility from his fellow prosecutors. The film does an excellent job of evoking the atmosphere and culture of a post-war Germany with a flourishing economy and no desire to look back at harsh and horrific truths.
Radmann’s world, from his struggle to get any of his superiors to support his legal quest and any of the Holocaust survivors to trust and speak with him, through to his difficulties in facing the brutality of the Holocaust, its effects on him and his relationships personally, and the disillusionment with humanity that he must work through as a result, is a well-told and emotionally gripping story. It is also one we are drawn into as we share in his amazement and outrage at watching a Germany that is seemingly wrapped in collective amnesia regarding what its citizens chose to do less than twenty years before, and at former SS members who have, with apparently no difficulty, slipped back into civilian life exactly as they left off. (As one associate explains, “The public sector is full of Nazis. And none of them has anything to worry about.”)
The story of Simon Kirsch, a survivor of Auschwitz who at first refuses to discuss his experience at all, is also riveting and powerfully portrayed. Kirsch’s tale and his revelation of it is a pivotal point in the movie; for after Radmann and journalist Thomas Gnielka find evidence in Kirsch’s apartment that they can use to build a case against the eventual defendants, they are able to convince Kirsch as well as many other Holocaust survivors to give testimony about their experiences. However, they have great difficulty in getting to that point, since Kirsch is gripped in a maelstrom of emotions in the aftermath of his time in the camps, including tremendous anger, sadness, and guilt at surviving so many who lost their lives. Forcing him to face the awful memories he lives with seems cruel, yet Radmann and Gnielka rightly observe that these secrets must be brought into the light before anyone can begin to heal. Opening the floodgates, however, also results in Radmann and others being forced to face horrors worse than any of them realized as the parade of survivors tell their wrenching tales of the camps.
Having read a fair amount about the Holocaust over the years, I was familiar with the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. However, what I was completely unfamiliar with, and what Ricciarelli, his co-writer Elisabeth Bartel, and the cast of Labyrinth of Lies portray so well was the culture of Germany in the late fifties and early sixties when the trials took place. While these days familiarity with at the very least the Nuremberg trials of 1945-46 leads one to think that after the war, everyone was made aware of the horrific crimes against humanity perpetrated against the Jews and others sent to the concentration camps, the film shows that in fact, at the time of the Frankfurt trials, older Germans refused to speak of the atrocities of the war, practicing silence to willful ignorance when the subject arose; and younger Germans, raised in this atmosphere of grim and institutionalized silence, were either ignorant or unsure of the full truth of what had occurred.
The film is a fascinating examination of the principle that what we choose to remember shapes the world, and highlights that the German culture of denial at that time was poisonous to attempts to move forward, and also allowed criminals such as Josef Mengele to cavalierly elude capture, sometimes for decades.
Labyrith of Lies is an exceedingly well-researched and intelligent film; and one that manages to weave the elements of a courtroom drama, fresh revelations about a much-studied period in history, the emotional and personal journey of an admirable protagonist, and the inherent complexities and contradictions of humanity that are so ruthlessly highlighted by the events of the Holocaust into a cohesive and arresting story. In showing Radmann’s struggle to confront the absolute incomprehensible atrocity of the Holocaust, and his determination that in the face of so much wrong the only remedy is to do what’s right, the film conveys a vital message, and manages to do so in a way that is fascinating and uncontrived.
Interestingly, the film also reminds me of the well-known graphic novel Maus (which ComicMixhas featured before), another well-executed true story of the Holocaust, written and drawn by Art Spiegelman. The film’s Radmann and Kirsch in many ways mirror Maus’s Art and Vladek Spiegelman, with the younger protagonists struggling to comprehend and live with the true stories they are encountering, of a humanity so contradictory and an atrocity so monumental as to be unfathomable.
The struggle Art Spiegelman goes through is particularly evident at the beginning of Maus II, as he tries to determine how to approach Auschwitz in graphic novel form, and belittles himself for thinking he could distill the impact of his father’s stories into something that would fit in a mere novel. This struggle with the enormity of such a task is echoed in Labyrinth of Lies, when Radmann moves from trying to locate just a few former Auschwitz staff members to ordering every phone book in Germany because he has realized that these criminals could literally be anywhere, and is shown almost comically in the delivery of an entire truck of the books, which evoke the literal feeling of being overwhelmed with information and not knowing where to start or how to approach the problem.
Another shared thread is the struggle of the survivors to face their experiences, as shown in Simon Kirsch’s possession of a suitcase full of papers he grabbed on the way out of Auschwitz, which he has never examined. Similarly, Vladek Spiegelman, although he does retain a box of photographs of family members, is shown to have destroyed all of his deceased wife’s journals recounting her Auschwitz experience, seemingly without having read them.
Both Labyrinth of Lies and Maus are amazingly well-executed and moving tales, in turns engaging and horrifying, of the Holocaust and those attempting to deal with its aftermath. I highly recommend Labyrinth of Lies, and, if you haven’t yet read Maus, it as well.
I love autobio graphic novels. I love them to the point that I hope to do one of my own. Fun Home, Blankets, Persepolis, Marbles, Epileptic, Clumsy, there are far too many excellent examples to name. Keeping all this in mind, ComicMix’s own Martha Thomases suggested I read Patrick Atangan’s Fires Above Hyperion to get my thoughts on it. I did in fact read it, and I did in fact have thoughts.
Prior to holding a copy of Fires Above Hyperion I was unfamiliar with Patrick Atangan. He’s an openly gay, multiracial author who has written and drawn many graphic novels before this, including Silk Tapestry and The Yellow Jar, and you can find out more about his work atwww.nbmpub.com. This particular story documents his often antagonist relationship with dating and gay culture spanning two decades.
The story is told chronologically, starting with his Junior Prom, and goes into about eight different anecdotes over the course of twenty years of men he’s been involved with. There was very little reference to what the actual years are that these stories take place, if at all. I’m not sure I realized how much of a pet peeve that is for me until I read this book. When dealing with actual events that happened in real life, I like to have an idea of when they occurred, as it is made clear that gaps do exist between stories. Though, since it is in chronological order, it does make it easy to follow, and this might just be me being nit picky.
Fires Above Hyperion comes in at ninety-six pages. With about eight anecdotes to cover, it gives very little time to delve into the one time encounters, flings, and deeper relationships that make up the story. This ends up getting frustrating for me as the reader, when one of the early anecdotes is about a six-year relationship and how that has as much precious story real estate as an anecdote about a guy Patrick goes on a date with once.
Ultimately, this makes me feel like too much of an outsider. What makes books like Blankets and Clumsy so powerful is that they shared all sorts of little details. It felt like you were going through all the emotions with the author. It’s not as personal and intimate an experience here, and not only does it take away from the story overall, it prevents the humor from landing just right. The dark humor is present, but because I feel detached from the story as I’m reading it, it doesn’t seem to work. Instead of feeling a situation is funny, I end up just feeling kind of bad for Patrick or the person he was with, depending on the particular anecdote.
There is something in this story that is important for the medium, and that’s Patrick’s perspective as a gay man that’s part Latino and part Asian. The vast majority of graphic memoirs dealing with an author who is part of the LGBT community tend to be from a white author. Although this does not take up a lot of Fires Above Hyperion, it is brought up closer to the end of the story, and for me was the most interesting part to read.
Patrick Atangan is certainly talented and was able to lay out this book in a way that was easy to read, and that’s tougher than it sounds. The art itself simple, and in this instance I would argue that it is a bit too simple. Being done digitally, I noticed throughout the book a lot of copying and pasting different illustrations into later panels, and some of the men from earlier in the books are palette swapped and reused later. That did cause confusion at a couple of points, where I was wondering why this character from earlier in the book was back, until I figured out that this was actually a new character. While I don’t think that art being done that way is inherently bad, at ninety-six pages and a price point of $14.99, I think it’s a bit much.
I can’t say I’d give this an overall recommendation. I think it’s a flawed piece that does genuinely try to hit the mark and falls short. However, if you love graphic memoirs, and in particular if you love graphic memoirs from LGBT creators, I encourage you to give Fires Above Hyperion a read. Patrick Atangan has a unique voice and perspective in this field, and this book’s success can help usher in more graphic memoirs by more people whose voices we so desperately need to hear.
As most of us Whovians and ComicMixers know, BBC America became the All Doctor Who All The Wibbly Wobbly Timey Winey Stuff network this past week in honor of the premiere of Season 9 – which, as I write this, airs tonight, Saturday, September 19. So I pretty much kept my TV tuned to channel 101 (the BBC America station on my cable system), except for some episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Hardball with Chris Matthews – oh, and the first half-hour of the Repugnantican debate on CNN, of which the less I have to say about that sorry affair the better, except that it disgusted me, and I returned to the All Doctor Who All The Wibbly Wobbly Timey Winey Stuff with relief.
So here’s a rundown of my opinions of random episodes in the lives of the Doctor.
Most Heartbreaking
There have been a number of emotion-walloping episodes since the reboot 10 years ago – see below – but TheEnd of Time “had me at hello.” Much of the credit goes to the absolutely smashing and brilliant Bernard Gribbins as Donna Noble’s grandfather, Wilfred Mott; there were so many moments, but two stand out for me: Wilfred’s tearful pleading and urging to the Doctor to kill the Master and save himself – “Now you take this, that’s an order, Doctor. You take the gun, you take the gun and save your life. And please don’t die, you’re the most wonderful man on earth! I don’t want you to die!” – and his final salute to the Gallifreyan at Donna’s wedding.
Don’t worry; of course I’m not ignoring David Tennant. His acting chops came to the fore here, from his rage and bitterness towards Wilfred, the man he had just told he “would be proud if he were my dad” for being the instrument of his end – “Cause you had to go in there, didn’t you? You had to go in there and get stuck, oh yes. ‘Cause that’s who you are, Wilfred. You were always this, waiting for me, all this time…But me…I could do so much more…So much more!…But this is what I get. My reward…But it’s not fair!” – to his last poignant visits, his last literally life-changing gifts to the people who had journeyed with him through this regeneration: Martha and Mickey, Sara Jane, Donna, Captain Jack, and, of course, the woman he loved, the woman he could never have, Rose Tyler. His last encounter with her, that last promise of “I bet you’re going to have a really great year” was both an acknowledgement that, because of WWTWS, for Rose it was just starting, but that for him, it was truly over. And yet… “I don’t want to go.”
Best Exit of a Companion
Or, in this case, companions. The Angels Take Manhattan rated a close second as “Most Heartbreaking,” as Amelia Pond, the “girl who waited,” became the “woman who refused to wait” – “It’ll be fine. I know it will. I’ll be with him like I should be. Me and Rory together.” – grabbed at the chance of a life in the past with the love of her life, her husband, Rory Williams (synchronally speaking, “the man who waited”). Yes, it broke Matt Smith’s Doctor’s hearts, but still she managed to let him know they were okay with no regrets, trying to offer him some comfort and reminding me that she and he were not over, because of all the WWTWS:
“Hello, old friend, and here we are. You and me, on the last page. By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone. So know that we lived well, and were very happy. And above all else, know that we will love you, always. Sometimes I do worry about you, though. I think once we’re gone, you won’t be coming back here for a while, and you might be alone, which you should never be. Don’t be alone, Doctor. And do one more thing for me. There’s a little girl waiting in a garden. She’s going to wait a long while, so she’s going to need a lot of hope. Go to her. Tell her a story. Tell her that if she’s patient, the days are coming that she’ll never forget. Tell her she’ll go to sea and fight pirates. She’ll fall in love with a man who’ll wait two thousand years to keep her safe. Tell her she’ll give hope to the greatest painter who ever lived and save a whale in outer space. Tell her this is the story of Amelia Pond. And this is how it ends.”
Hmm, here’s a WWTWS question: Did little Amelia Pond wait so long – 12 years! – because the Doctor was off having adventures with the grown-up Amy and Rory? Was everything that we saw actually a repeat of everything that had already happened?
Best Return of a Companion
Sarah Jane Smith in “School Reunion.” Elisabeth Sladen was my first companion (with Tom Baker), and for me she set the standard – and I believe for everyone who followed her. She broke the mold of what had come before. Rather than transcribe their meeting, here’s the link to the YouTube vid. And in honor of the late Ms. Sladen, <a href=”
a link to her.
As always, YMMV.
Best Introduction of a Companion
Jenna Coleman as Oswin Oswald in “Asylum of the Daleks” – or is that as Clara Oswin Oswald in “The Snowmen” – or is that as Clara Oswald in “The Bells of Saint John?” Yep, it’s “The Impossible Girl,” who has saved the Doctor in all his incarnations since the very beginning, when she guided him to the right TARDIS: “Sorry. But you were about to make a very big mistake. Don’t steal that one; steal this one. The navigation system’s knackered, but you’ll have much more fun.” Here I am proud to announce that I guessed the identity of the Doctor’s (upcoming) new companion in a phone call with Editor Mike, even though you tried to tell me I was wrong, Mr. Gold. Yes, you did. No matter how you try to deny it, it is a fact.
Best Confrontation between the Doctor and the Companion
I’m watching it rerun right now. Clara Oswald, in the penultimate Season 8 episode, “Dark Water,” demands that the Doctor prevent her boyfriend, Danny Pink, from being killed in a car accident, blackmailing him by throwing the keys of the TARDIS, one by one, into the lava pit of an active volcano…sorry, I have to stop writing for a second…
Okay, I’m back.
Best Recurring Character
Make that “Characters,” with an “s.” Im-not-so-ho, the Paternoster Gang: The Silurian lizard lady, Madam Vastra, (Neve McIntosh), her human wife (who masquerades as her maid), Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart), and the “Mr. Potato Head” Sontaran Strax (Dan Starkey), their butler. Hah! I bet you thought I was going to say River Song.
Runner-up to Best Recurring Character
Jemma Richardson as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, first seen as UNIT’s (UNified Intelligence Taskforce, nee United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) Head of Scientific Research, and later its Director. Hah! I bet you thought I was going to say River Song.
Bravest Loss of a Supporting Character
Danny Pink, the soldier, killed in a car accident, turned into a Cyberman by Missy, and yet rising above his programming to turn certain defeat into certain victory in “Death in Heaven.”
Saddest Loss of a Supporting Character Runner-Up
Kate Stewart’s assistant, the asthmatic Osgood (Ingrid Oliver), became an instant fan favorite when she was introduced in the 50th anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor,” sucking down on her inhaler and wearing the Fourth Doctor’s (Tom Baker) scarf, which she either knitted herself or “borrowed” from the archives hidden in UNIT’s Tower of London headquarters. We caught up with her in Season 8’s finale, “Death in Heaven,” in which she’s still sucking down on that inhaler, but now wears the Eleventh Doctor’s (Matt Smith) bow tie – again, she either went out and bought it or “borrowed” it from UNIT’s archives. But our reunion with her was brief, because The Mistress, a.k.a. Missy, The Master’s female incarnation, kills her.
But wait! It has been revealed that Osgood will be back in Season 9! How? Is she really the Zygon impersonator from “The Day of the Doctor,” or will be more WWTWS?
Best The Master
John Simm, especially in his last arc (“The End of Time.”) In his portrayal as the Doctor’s “Professor Moriarty” in “The End of Time,” Simm heartrendingly played to perfection the other side of the poor, wrecked mind of The Master; we got a glimpse of “what might have been.” Instead, it was revealed that The Master was a pawn of the Time Lord President Rassilon (Timothy Dalton) – who was responsible for the drumbeat in The Master’s head that drove him mad and onto the path of his many lives. Sorry, Missy fans, she’s okay, but I’m just not that into her.
Best Season Finale
“Death in Heaven.” Im-not-so-ho, this one had everything. Life and death, hope and resignation, love and hatred. There were final reunions and final sacrifices. And a season-long question was answered – “Am I a good man?” But the best part? Brigadier Sir Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart finally got that salute from the Doctor.
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