The new SyFy (and former Dark Horse) project, DARK MATTER premieres tonight on SyFy, and we begin our coverage with actor Roger Cross who tells us why this might be his biggest genre roll yet. DARK MATTER premiere tonight on SyFy, Then Dania Ramirez from HEROES and X-MEN LAST STAND takes us into the third season of Lifetime’s DEVIOUS MAIDS plus her new indy film project.
We’re back in a couple of days with more on DARK MATTER.
You are an actress. You’re an actor. You’re a singer, a dancer, model, novelist, journalist cartoonist, illustrator, photographer, or designer.
You are an artist.
You’re not just any run in the mill artist. You are a badass mofo, the absolute real deal. You’re a phenomenal talent and everyone knows it. Your family and friends, producers and editors, creative and stage directors, publishers and choreographers, marvel at your talent.
You know it’s going to be a hard climb. It’s hard to make it as an artist, any kind of artist. That’s not really a concern because you have the goods. Your Academy Award is assured. Amazon won’t be able to keep up with orders on your first novel. Your single will break iTunes.
Your peers are jealous. They talk about you, spread rumors, and take any opportunity to dismiss your genius. Some who’ve been in the game longer than you, offer council. Before you know it, your circle is full of like-minded people who have your best interest at heart.
It’s certainly hard to get your foot in the door, but you do it. Before you know it, you score an assignment from Marvel. It’s just a fill-in, but its real. It’s all down hill from there. The first day of shooting you have a little run in with the director. No biggie, he needed to understand your point of view and now he does.
It’s obvious the massive amount of notes given were guidelines, not direction. They sought you out for your voice and this is your novel after all.
What is the problem with your boyfriend? He knows the head of Sony. What’s the big deal? Why can’t he simply introduce you? You’re what they are so looking for. Is your girlfriend crazy? She thinks a mention and a plug of your latest article by a well-known editor is a good thing. You know that “mention” and “plug” is all bullshit an attempt to screw you over.
Man, are you tired of people not listening to you when it’s obvious you know what you are talking about. You didn’t need to meet any music producer the day you encountered a nice looking guy who brought you drinks and said he was a movie director.
Your boyfriend can hook that music producer meeting up any day.
So what if it’s the second time you’ve done that. He’ll get over it. You didn’t flake nor did you lie, you simply changed your mind.
Man, is that bitch crazy or what? You can certainly do a boys weekend in Vegas and meet your deadline Tuesday. It’s a 22-page story you have three, almost three pages done and all day and night Monday to do it.
She’s always bitching.
It doesn’t matter if your friend gets a movie; it has nothing to do with you.
Oh, yes it does. You’re much more talented than she is.
You don’t ask a powerful publicist to pitch you especially if she doesn’t represent you.
She reps your girlfriend and it will only take her two seconds. What’s the big deal?
Seeking funding for your production? There’s a procedure you have to follow.
Why? Why can’t they just give you the money?
Just because something’s done a certain way doesn’t mean it can’t be done another way. Don’t you dare listen to him when he say’s you’re not ready for primetime.
You have all the talent in the world, you really do. He’s an idiot when he said that talent, without professionalism, doesn’t mean shit in this business.
He’s full of himself, and his ‘everybody’ example was just ignorant.
Everybody was the best actor, writer, or singer back at Whatever Happened To High School. In entertainment, you need people around that will tell you the truth, not hangers-on who have not done a thing for your career but keep promising they will. “They won’t and you know why? They can’t. They can’t do a motherfucking thing; they have no connections, no power, and no scruples. Posers all.
Just because someone is super-successful and gets paid handsomely for advice they give you for free, does not mean you have to listen.
You keep doing things the way you do things. Don’t listen to anyone’s advice You know better. You are better.
You’re a star and one day all your years and years of shortcuts will pay off!
I’ll bet Matt Murdock wishes he hadn’t screwed up and gotten disbarred in New York. Because now’s when he could cash in.
It’s all because of what happened in Spider-Woman v5 #5, when Jessica Drew heard a woman screaming for help. She changed into her Spider-Woman costume and answered the call. She found a woman fleeing down an alley being chased by a huge, hulking costumed villain of some sort. Just as the bad guy was about to grab the woman, Spider-Woman leapt into action. Literally.
And, no, I didn’t say literally, when I meant figuratively. Spider-Woman leapt off a rooftop and dropped down between the attacker and the woman. She kicked the bad guy away from the woman and followed up by delivering one of her bio-electric venom blasts to his chest. After this, she flipped the attacker with a judo throw and threw him into a wall. Physical but efficient. After all, this wasn’t the story’s main obligatory fight scene, it was just the set-up.
When Jessica went to secure the baddie to a lamp post and call the police, she didn’t have to call the police. The assailant wasn’t a super villain. It was a police officer dressed up as a super villain. And the alley was already full of other police officers. Why even the damsel in distress was a police officer, pretending to be a scream queen. Who says there’s never a cop around when you need one?
Turns out Spider-Woman interrupted a how-to-fight-super-villains training exercise the NYPD was conducting. (And now we know why they say there’s never a cop around when you need one; they’re all in some rain-soaked alley somewhere taking down pretend super villains.)
Cut to the next day: Jessica Drew was in a holding cell in a NYPD precinct, where she’d been for twelve hours after being arrested for assaulting a police officer. She was playing Charades with the other women in her cell when Ben Urich, reporter for the Daily Bugle who learned of Jessica’s arrest on the Internet, got her released. Wasn’t too hard, Ben didn’t even have to post bail. Turns out NYPD didn’t even book Jessica.
Ben explained that the police “knew none of their charges would stick to Spider-Woman. They arrested her and kept her in general lockup all night so that they could post pictures of the super hero under arrest on the Internet and humiliate Jessica. “Sad fact of life: Cops don’t like super heroes as much as super heroes like to think.”
Here’s another sad fact of life: Stupidity like these cops engaged in is costly; to careers and to pocketbooks. As I said earlier, New York disbarred Matt Murdock, so he can’t handle the case. Too bad, too, as this case is a slam dunk. What case? Why Jessica’s lawsuit against New York City for wrongful arrest.
Wrongful arrest? How can it be wrongful arrest, Jessica kicked a police officer. Then she hit him with a venom blast and, finally, judo threw him into a wall. Any one of these would constitute assaulting a police officer by itself. All three of them is multiple counts of assault of a police officer; redundant and proof that super heroing, like comedy, subscribes to the rule of three.
Problem is, they don’t. Not one of the three acts of physical violence actually constituted assault of a police officer. Not kicking him. Not venom blasting him. Not judo throwing him.
There’s a New York statute which defines the crime of assault of a police officer. It’s New York Penal Law § 120.08. No, I didn’t know this off the top of my head. I can’t know all of the criminal statutes of the states, cities, and municipalities in this country. There’s a googolplex of them. So, I Googled it.
NY Penal L § 120.80 says someone commits the crime assault of a police officer when, “with intent to prevent a … police officer … from performing a lawful duty, he causes serious physical injury to such … police officer…”
Ordinarily, this might raise the question: Did Jessica cause serious physical injury to the police officer? In this case, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter how seriously the police officer was harmed; although it didn’t appear he was hurt too bad. The fact is, Jessica could have ripped off one of his legs and she still wouldn’t have committed assault on a police officer.
Look at the elements of the crime again. Study them. There’ll be a test later.
Okay, it’s later. (Hey, I never said how much later.) So, here’s the test.
“Jessica Drew didn’t commit assault on a police officer. Explain.”
Right. The statute requires that she must cause the injury “with intent to prevent a police officer from performing a lawful duty.” Jessica didn’t intend to prevent any police officer from doing anything. She honestly and reasonably believed a hulking somebody was attacking a woman in an alley. Her intent was to stop a crime, not to interfere with a police officer.
Remember, Ben Urich told Jessica – and, thus, told us – that the police knew the charges wouldn’t stick. How did they know? They knew because they knew Jessica reasonably believed she was preventing an attack, not interfering with a police officer.
However, that means that the police arrested Jessica knowing full well that she didn’t commit any crime so they didn’t have probable cause to arrest her. They arrested her for the express purpose of posting pictures of her arrest on the Internet and embarrassing her. That’s what’s sometimes called a bad faith arrest. Not to be confused with pinching Buffy’s slayer friend for theft. That’s a Faith’s bad arrest.
When the police made a bad faith arrest without probable cause just so they could embarrass Jessica, they broke the law themselves. It’s NY Penal L § 195, official misconduct. It happens when a public servant, such as a police officer, knowingly commits an unauthorized act relating to his office with the intent to deprive a person of a benefit. Falsely arresting a person so as to embarrass her, would deprive that person of the benefit of her right to liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment. And by these actions, the police committed a crime, they also opened the city of New York up to a false arrest lawsuit.
Earlier this year, a law student in Brooklyn was parked in a bus stop. Two police officers chased him out of the spot, not because he was parked illegally but because they wanted to park there themselves so that they could go to a nearby food truck. When the student confronted the cops about their abuse of power, they cited the student with two counts of disorderly conduct. The student sued New York City for false arrest and reached an out-of-court settlement that netted him some money. And netted his attorney even more money in legal fees.
If that law student could successfully sue the city because the police cited him to make him stop busting their chops about their parking in a bus stop, imagine what a bona fide super heroine and former member of the Avengers could do with the police illegally arresting her for the specific purpose of embarrassing her. Hell there’s probably even be a federal civil rights lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lurking around in there somewhere.
And if the law student’s lawyer got an even bigger award in legal fees than the student won, there’s money to be had for some lawyer. Matt Murdock can’t take the case. Maybe Jennifer Walters will take Jessica’s case. And if Jen’s too busy being She-Hulk, I might consider getting my law license reinstated – I let it it go inactive after I retired from the public defender office – so I could have a crack at it.
On second thought, no. Jessica is a fictional character and her case a fictional case. So any damage awards or attorney fees would also be fictional. While the joys of being retired from the practice of law are all too real.
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by Ian Edginton and Robert Deas. Self Made Hero, 144 pages. $19.95 retail hardcopy; also available in electronic editions.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that I’m a huge Jane Austen fangirl. I make no apologies. I made my husband take me to the Jane Austen museum in Bath for my 40th birthday. I own every version of every Jane Austen movie made – retellings too. As a matter of facet, I collect adaptations in every form from the sublime (The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Bridget Jones, Clueless) to the abusively bad (Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict is currently in my car’s CD player right now, but I’m powering through because I am not a quitter.) I’ve read Pride and Prejudice annually since I was 19 – and it’s not even my favorite Austen novel (that would be Persuasion, which I also read once a year as well as listen to the ITV Classics podcast version before bed more than that).
Yeah, I’m kind of obsessed with wit and social politics in my period-costumed love stories. Though for some reason, I never thought of reading a comic version of one of Austen’s books. I guess I never imagined a need for one.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if I think Regency-period chick lit is too good for the graphic novel form. I’m a fan of the No Fear Shakespeare series, and don’t tell any of my professors, but I much preferred Marvel’s The Iliad and The Odyssey to studying the actual Homer texts. But while Jane Austen obviously proves to be ripe for pop culture appropriation, I just never figured her characters transferring well into panels. But Self Made Hero made graphic novel version of Pride and Prejudice, so I had to try.
The graphic novel version certainly gets points for the plot, but, of course, that’s residual credit for Miss Austen’s storytelling ability. Break it down as sophisticated (the plight of privileged single women, the importance of good parenting, and romance triumphing in spite of polite society) or base (girl thinks rich dude’s a pompous jerk, until she sees his really big house and he saves her ungrateful slut sister) it’s a compelling story that you have to finish once you start. So, in reviewing this I needed to try to take the Austen out of it.
It does stands up panel to panel and writer Ian Edginton (Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Scarlet Traces: The Great Game) did a fair enough job of truncating the story, but it was choppy. It follows our heroine, Elizabeth, and somewhat tracks her sister Jane, but some important story beats are cut. It’s debatable whether the omissions would cause confusion to a first time reader, but what I do know is that it does strip the original story of its flow. I had to ask myself on every page if I was only enjoying it because of my familiarity of the characters and the story. Seriously, how do you review a property you know so intimately and still be fair?
But, the thing is, this cannot have been made for fans of Jane Austen. In what would have been a really cool Dramatis Personae page Mary Bennet was labeled as the fourth oldest sister, when of course it’s Kitty who holds that spot. Drab Mary is clearly the third oldest. Duh. This sin, so early in the game, left me skeptical and I just couldn’t get past it – and trust me, I know I’m not alone.
This is a version for those who just don’t want to read a whole novel, but would like to understand their girlfriend’s Darcy references, or cover their bases for pub quiz night. I bet with the help of Wikipedia and maybe Thug Notes you could totally pull off passing an AP Exam question about Pride and Prejudice from reading this graphic novel.
That being said – I’m totally passing my copy onto my husband because he’s yet to read the real novel and he might like this. So, yes, I totally believe it has an audience. But, as I said, it’s not for the typical JA fan. Because, let’s face it, we live in age with some really hot Darcys (Colin Firth, for example) and no girl is going to get that same weak in the knees feeling for this cartoon Mr. Darcy. He’s stone-faced without the benefit of good eye acting (looking toward Firth on this note as well).
But don’t assume I’m not a fan of Robert Dreas’ (Troy Trailblazer) art work. The characters all seem a little angry, but I like the style. He nails Mrs. Bennet. She was my favorite character to study, while I find I gloss over her in the novel (because she’s hella annoying). I also found the realistic nature scenes fun. Yes, fun. I don’t think they added anything, but then again I don’t turn to graphic novels to set a scene I already have firmly planted in my head. I know what Pemberly looks like because I’ve already imagined it 24 times before and it looks just like the movies.
With this realization, I figured out why I love graphic novels and love Pride and Prejudice, but couldn’t love this graphic novel version of Pride and Prejudice. I turn to comics and graphic novels to take me to a specific world found in the words and pictures. I rely on the art and the story to unfold together to show me the author and artist’s combined vision. I don’t have to do anything, but enjoy the story as it unfolds. Having already seen a better version of this story, I can’t really care about the vision unfolding. I’ve had better previous visions, thanks.
Plus, Kitty Bennet is the fourth oldest sister, dammit!
When circumstances prevented me from attending a comics convention in my hometown this past weekend, I felt a little guilty. These are my people. My clan. Don’t I have just as much of an obligation to attend these gatherings as I have to attend Thanksgiving dinner with my family?
(Side note: Just like when I miss a family dinner, I worry that everyone was talking about me.)
And then I found out about this happening the same weekend, a cat convention in Los Angeles. Not a convention attended by cats (which would be awesome, if only for the bar scene), but an assembly of cat lovers, cat fans and cat nerds.
That is amazing.
Because I wasn’t there, I don’t know how much CatCon was like the San Diego Comic Con. I mean, there were panels and people selling merchandise to fans, and even some celebrities. No one dressed up like their favorite cats – at least not according to the article – but lots of people wore t-shirts and socks and probably other items with pictures of cats on them.
Lots of people wore cat-ear headbands. So I guess it was a lot like the San Diego Comic Con ten years ago or so.
Naturally, I wondered if other geek communities had their own gatherings. Not conventions, really, because usually a convention is an industry event, not a recreational outing. Comic conventions have expanded to include other pop culture fandom, such as movies and television and animation and even radio, sometimes, so I’m not wondering about pop culture cons.
I know that we knitters and fiber nerds have places to go, and there are antique auto shows for people who like antique autos. There are garden shows for people with lawns, or at least decent window boxes.
There are certainly political conventions, but those are mostly for professionals, not fans. Some political activities (like LGBTQ Pride parades and NRA conventions) have street fairs or indoor marketplaces for fans. I’ve seen ads for festivals extolling environmental issues and vegan lifestyles, but I’ve never seen any news coverage of them.
What other kinds of conventions could we have? What subjects attract enough of an audience to profitably sell merchandise, to allow for fun assemblages and room for geeky outbursts?
I collect lenticular, and I sincerely doubt there are enough of us to support a marketplace, because otherwise lenticulars would cost too much and it wouldn’t be fun to collect them anymore. More people collect cookie jars and salt-and-pepper shakers, but I’ve never seen a show for them.
And what would the panels be like: What kind of cookies maintain the value of your collection? Pink Sea Salt: Design Choice or Sexual Preference?
I think we need more events like these. I think every sub-group should find a way to get together and celebrate their quirky affections. Here’s a smattering of some I might consider attending:
The more we celebrate our individual passions, the more people will share them. And the more people who share them, the more we’ll look for other things to enjoy together. It’s not impossible to think that we might achieve peace in our time over a mutual affection for the new Airboy.
Let’s do it, people!
Last summer at San Diego Comic Con, we got to sit on the bridge of the Enterprise and learn a little bit about the concept for the Hollywood Science Fiction Museum. Just in the beginning stages, it sounded pretty cool, but when we caught up with the Huston Huddleston the museum’s founder at WonderCon to talk about the progress we were blown away.
Set to open later this year at an existing Los Angeles museum, the Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum has plans to open its own location eventually. This location will feature a space ship restaurant, as well as a museum that will house a hall of cars, a hall of space ships, a hall of robots, and a ginormous store where you can buy everything from Harry Potter wands to Sonic Screwdrivers. It will also have sections for all the movies and shows in the genre. And there will also be an education component (you know, real space stuff & STEM) so it would totally be field trip worthy. Plus, being in L.A., you’d have to imagine all the studios would want to have exhibits for their movies coming out and that sort of thing. Are you sold? Are you planning your vacation already?
In this week’s episode, we feature conversations we had with Huston Huddleston, museum board member and sci-fi art designer Tim Earls (Babylon 5, Serenity, Star Trek), and Farscape actress and museum supporter Gigi Edgley. More information on the museum can be found at www.hollywoodscifi.org or if you are going to ComicCon in July, they will have booth full of cool exhibit photo ops & more info there as well.
You! Yeah, you over there… you as sick of seeing pictures of Caitlyn Jenner as I am? I mean, they’re all over the place and the media are riding the story – paltry little story – like a merry-go-round unicorn.
What? You’re not sick of Jenner pix? Well, go dump your bumple – while I try to elide the above into something at least remotely appropriate for this column, which is supposed to be about comic books or pop culture or something. Here we go. I’ll assume for an as-yet undetermined amount of bandwidth that you have for the past month been on your bi-annual Zen retreat up there in those mountains, far from screens and speakers and media in general (which might explain why you’re not sick of Jenneriana) and so you don’t know that one-time Olympic medal winner Bruce Jenner has become an almost-transexual, posed for a magazine looking hotter than any 65-year-old, of any gender, ought to look, and in the process did a name-change: Bruce, look in the mirror and meet Caitlyn. Caitlyn apparently hasn’t had surgery – hence my labeling her “almost” – but in all other ways the transformation is a fact.
I commend her. Hers could not have been an easy decision to make. Let’s believe what she says – I have no reason to doubt her sincerity – and assume that all these years, from her winning Olympic glory in 1976 through semi-stardom in the Kardashian reality TV ventures after Bruce married Kardashian matriarch Kris, right up to her present notoriety glut, Jenner was hiding her real identity behind an assumed identity. “Bruce” was a mask; Caitlyn was the real person.
Claiming one’s truth is a noble act. But I can’t help wondering why it was done so publicly. The Vanity Fair cover, the television interviews, all the spangly show-biz… it’s almost as though she’s plastering a new mask over the old Bruce one. (Norma Jeane Mortenson, meet Marilyn Monroe.) And basking in the fleeting warmth of the spotlight? Again?
Some of this may seem familiar to comics fans. Ever heard, or even participated in, a debate over which is the real person Bruce Wayne or Batman? Clark Kent or Superman? Part of the appeal of the double identity trope, which isn’t limited to superheroes, is that it acknowledges and delineates basic human reality: we all present different faces to the world depending on the occasion. The you who has pizza with pals is different from the you who has dinner with grannie – and many of us, I suspect, feel that the individual society sees is not the real us. (And it probably isn’t.)
Part of me chooses to believe that Caitlyn is moving toward something valid that’s not just her ego finding another way to demand attention. (Is Batman an exhibitionist, despite his penchant for shadows?)
Now, your turn. Go and get a mask and put it on. Then find somebody who might want to look at it.
Hello all; as of this week, my comics reviews are being crossposted to ComicMix, so I suppose I should tack a paragraph introducing myself onto the start. I’m Phil Sandifer, a blogger covering various forms of pop culture and media with my own idiosyncratic long-form analysis. I’m responsible for TARDIS Eruditorum
, my now-concluded history of Doctor Who, and the still-ongoing The Last War in Albion
, a sprawling history of the most important magical war of the last century, the rivalry between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.
This past weekend I took part in the Black Widow #WeWantWidow flash mob that swept through the world. If you happened to spend the past few days hiding under a really big rock from news sites and Facebook, here are the details about what happened.
This was cosplaying for a cause. Kristin Rielly, of RiellyGeek and formally Geek Girls Network, organized this event as a fun protest to the treatment of Marvel’s Black Widow, in terms of exposure in movies and merchandising. When I asked her the why of doing this event, she stated “After seeing Age of Ulton and Black Widow’s lack of character development (or her abrupt back story scene), and writing several posts for Fashionably Geek about the new Avengers line this and that – almost all missing Black Widow images, I just had enough. And then then to top it all off, Hasbro and Mattel both released action figures of Captain America and Iron Man on Black Widow’s motorcycle in her most badass AoU scene, instead of a Black Widow action figure.”
People from the US, Canada and Australia took part, dressing as Black Widow or in merchandise for the character. I was one of them, participating in the NYC demonstration outside of ReedPop’s Special Edition comicon. At least, that was the plan. The standard rule for most New Yorkers: if you are running late, the subway will make it worse. So I missed out on the big group photo shoot by a few minutes.
However, I lucked out that another late person and a few other Black Widows were out front when I arrived. So I still got my group shot! (I am weirdly proud of the belt buckle that I made. Never underestimate the power of twist ties!)
As I walked the floor of the comicon, some exhibitors remarked to me about the sheer number of Black Widows in attendance. I came to realize that this flash mob was sending a message to the people in the room that we want to see a change. I am so proud that I took part in it, even if I was late. I made a difference in that room.
The truth is that this really applies to all female and minority characters in comics. If DC had done the cinematic universe building first, we probably would have been tweeting We Want Wonder Woman instead. (That outfit would have been harder for me to make though.) I can hope that the industry heard us and saw the aftermath of supporting coverage.
In case you were wondering what to do now, I did ask Kristin how she thought we should continue. Rielly said “Let’s keep talking about it until we can make a difference. Keep sharing the hashtag, keep posting photos online of Black Widow images and cosplay. Maybe Marvel and Disney will see that they really do have a demographic ready for more female superheroines on screen and on the shelves.”
So, it is now in your hands. Go tweet #WeWantWidow. Go tell Marvel, Mattel, Hasbro and any other licenser that you want to see more Black Widow. Or go tell DC that you want to see more female coverage. Go use your voice to make sure that change happens.
Cleopatra in Space: The Thief and the Sword
By Mike Maihack
191 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $12.99
When Scholastic brought Mike Maihack’s webcomic Cleopatra in Space to print, it seemed like a perfect fit for their line. Unfortunately, the protagonist had as much to do with the real life Cleopatra as does the Queen of England. Target Practice was an Egyptian-flavored space opera with an overly familiar feel to it, much like the overhyped Amulet series from Graphix.
We now have the second volume and it does little fresh or different. In fact, it does less than volume one, slowing things down. Considering the annual release pattern, young readers deserve stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. Here, we start in the middle and reach page 191 without too much happening, leaving us with a cliffhanger that will frustrate the audience and make parents feel as if they wasted their money.
Maihack clearly studied comics when the decompressed storytelling of the late 1990s and 2000s were all the rage. At the time, graphic novel collections were increasingly valuable to the bottom line and six issue collections were the sweet spot. That meant pacing went way down and things dragged out. Here, Maihack spends lots of time watching people run, jump, fight, and so on without much of consequence happening. Similarly, he never deepens the characters so they remain flat, two-dimensional types rather than complex beings.
Maihack clearly knows how to tell a story and his character designs are good. His color palette is interesting and he brings some nice emotion to his story but that’s as far as it goes and for the price, more is expected. Heck, I’ll say, it’s demanded.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
Stephen Colbert, we have your writer for “The Chronicles of Amber”!
January 20, 2023
The Law Is A Ass #460: Those “For Life” Sentences Are Nonsense
February 24, 2022
