The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Our final word on Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch*

  • News
  • February 28, 2014

There has been a lot of hullabaloo over the casting of Michael B. Jordan (Chronicle, Fruitvale Station, The Wire, Parenthood) as Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in the Fantastic Four movie scheduled for release in 2015.

There are parts of the Internet that have predictably gone nuts.

While we believe that there could be some concerns as to revised character motivation based on changing the race of the character, our general attitude is: calm the %$#@! down.

We have survived this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVLqs9MrGbw

It cannot possibly be worse.

*Until we actually see, y’know, footage or something.

Martha Thomases: Female Pros and Cons, Part 3

Martha Thomases: Female Pros and Cons, Part 3

If you’ve been following my columns this month here and here, you know I’m on a tirade.  I don’t like it that women are still considered an afterthought in the comics industry, especially as our industry is represented at comics and pop culture conventions.

And so, I want to shine a spotlight on various shows, and discuss what they’re doing wrong, and what they’re doing right.

In my last column here, I wrote a lot about ReedPop, the folks who put on big shows in New York and Chicago, among other things.  They only had women creators as about ten percent of their featured comics guests.  Since then, several people have alerted me to the fact that C2E2 is highlighting their female guests in their advertising.  This is a great thing.  I commend them for it.

However ….

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The Tweeks Review the Pull of “Gravity”
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The Tweeks Review the Pull of “Gravity”

On the eve of the Academy Awards, the Tweeks look at multiple Oscar-nominated [[[Gravity]]], starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. (And some quick coverage of [[[Thor: The Dark World]]] DVD, because reasons.)

Dennis O’Neil: The Evolution of Religion and Mythology

Gotta get this sucker written tonight because tomorrow or the next day I may have to resume watching the snow fall and fall and fall and fall…

So: what some benevolent publisher should do (and surely benevolent publishers do exist) is to put put a book that examines the way mythology/religion have evolved quite similarly.  Both began with stories that were. by our standards, crude, with little characterization and virtually all the meaning carried by the plot.  Then, very gradually, the storytelling forms began to vary, the story content change, the narrative structure mutate…But hey!  Enough.  I’m not going to write the frigging book, at least not here and now.

If such a book were to exist, though, it might include. perhaps as an appendix, a discussion of how a certain kind of movie is evolving much as its source material evolved a half century or so earlier.  I refer, as you astute hooligans have already guessed, to superheroes.

The first superhero stories tended to be short – there were several of them in your 10-cent comic book – and the heroes were…well, they were the good guys.  The ones that beat the bad guys. Characterization, insofar as it existed, tended toward the sketchy.  All the heroes were white and waspy, and the minorities were small in number and often the kind of stereotypes that might make those of us with delicate sensibilities cringe – not because the writers and artists were bigots, but because they didn’t know better.  You could tell which heroes were which mainly by their powers: the Flash could run fast, Green Lantern had a magic ring, Hawkman had wings that enabled him to fly, et cetera, et cetera…Most of them also had double identities, also white and waspy: rich guys with no jobs, or scientists,or journalists – nary a trash collector or milkman in the lot.
The form – comic books –  soldiered on through good times and bad, growing more sophisticated year by year, and gradually those complete-in-one-issue stories were supplanted by elaborate serializations.  Genuine characterization entered those colored pages, and “adult” themes, and one morning I woke up and my benighted profession was being covered by the New York Times and taught in major universities and – ye gods! – I was respectable.

That was comics.

And movies?  I did mention movies, didn’t I?  Somewhere back there?

Well, yes I did.  But that topic might be a bit ungainly to be contained in the small bundle of verbiage remaining in the 500 words (more or less) I promised to deliver each week to Mike Gold back when ComicMix was in its birth throes.  Let’s table movies  until next week.  For now, some of you better get to the ATM because you’ll probably need to buy salt or to pay hardy young men with shovels because the weather people are predicting more of the same.  Then you can lie back, cuddle up with a mug of hot chocolate, gaze through the window at all that glistening splendor, and hope there are no power failures.

Next week: the cinema.

Review: “Adventure Time” Volume 4

Adventure Time has a history of uncommonly dark world building, and as anyone who’s seen the episode “I Remember You” will attest, it doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to gut-wrenching backstories. Fans expect the show to push boundaries. The comics are no exception: they seem sometimes to be a vehicle for character exploration too troubling for television.

Volume Four collects issues 15 through 19 of the celebrated tie-in series. Its primary storyline is an examination of the ambiguously sympathetic villain, the Ice King. Ice King’s magical abilities include ice spells (obviously) and being woefully pathetic, but in his deluded internal narrative he is a heroic figure. Adventurers Finn & Jake take pity on him and they team up for a quest through a dungeon that the Ice King no longer remembers creating, battling magical creatures that are representative of his numerous insecurities. Along the way, the reader gleans insight into Ice King’s tragic past, though Finn and Jake remain preoccupied with battling gibbering cartoon beasties.

As they progress through the dungeon and the reader is drawn inextricably into Ice King’s suffering and confusion, the adventurers grow sad without understanding why. The story plays into a conceit deployed in the show’s more dramatic episodes. Though the reader is presented with enough information to piece together the disturbing implications of the story, its two protagonists are action-focused and happily oblivious. The hints that the land of Ooo is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the Lovecraftian horror of the undead Lich and the Ice King’s fight to retain his humanity and remember those he once loved are plot elements that only impact the reader. Finn and Jake remain perpetually sunny and relatively innocent. They are caught up in events larger than they are comfortable with: Finn and Jake because they are action heroes, and Ice King because his memory is failing. It is no coincidence that a significant plot point is a quote from one of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s darkest poems, “Behold, we know not anything”.

If that sounds lofty and unsettling enough for you, Adventure Time Vol. Four is worth a look. There are also some pretty radical monsters to fight, and one particularly gruesome reveal that made me shudder. Writer Ryan North’s offbeat, on-point humor is never absent for long, and each page has a tiny line of commentary at the bottom for those of us who miss the alt-text experience when reading print media. (If his name sounds familiar, it’s because of Dinosaur Comics!) He tells an ambitious tale, sure to please avid Adventure Time viewers and those who just love a good story.

Here’s a preview:

Save the World by Buying Steampunk!

  • News
  • February 26, 2014

Steampunk Bundle 2

I don’t know if you already knew about this Steampunk charity bundle in support of Direct Relief, which has already made over 16 thousand dollars. Contributors get to save the world by buying steampunk.

The bundle includes thousands of pages of great reading, hours of gaming fun, and tons of fantastic music. You can get it all for just the donation of a dollar (though larger donations are encouraged and appreciated). The money raised by sales of the bundle helps fund to Direct Relief (directrelief.org) which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides medical assistance to people around the world who have been affected by poverty, natural disasters, and civil unrest. This bundle includes award-winning games such as Syberia, music from such artists as the acclaimed Sxip Shirey, and exclusive content such as the Cities of Ether anthology by G. D. Falksen. The great thing about this is that for as little as a dollar you get thousands of hours of entertainment and art, and you also help people all over the world by supporting Direct Relief. The more people know about the bundle, the more they chance they have to pick up some great Steampunk themed games, books, comics, and music, and the more funding the charity gets that can then go and help people all around the world. It’s a great win-win situation for everyone.

 

Glenn Hauman: Like “Sandman” Through An Hourglass

George Harrison once said to Eric Idle, “If we’d known we were going to be the Beatles, we’d have tried harder.”

That’s the phrase that comes to mind when I look back on that fall day when the pages first came into the darkroom at DC Comics. I’d been working there no more than a month or two.

Back in the day, pages of art that had bleeds were drawn on 12×18″ boards, which were too big to photocopy. To make copies for the colorist, every page had to be shot on a stat camera. Hundreds of pages a week. With photochemicals. It was a mind-numbing job, and I know one person who simply left one day for lunch and never came back.

And so one day, this book came in to be shot. Great, an oversized book, and it looked double-sized– 40 pages. There goes my break. I started to shoot the book.

Ooh, Sam Kieth art. I knew his pencilled stuff from an APA in the early 80’s, but I mainly knew him as the inker for Mage and later, penciller on Manhunter. Mike Dringenberg I knew from Adolescent Radioactive Black-Belt Hamsters (Don’t ask. Please.) And the writer– Neil Gaiman? That new guy, the one who wrote Black Orchid? Hmm…

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In Memoriam: Bill Hicks

[[[Bill Hicks]]] died twenty years ago today, February 26, 1994. Most comic book fans know him from his appearance in Preacher #31, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon:

Here’s the man at work, in a segment that David Letterman removed from his show:

This was his final statement:

February 7, 1994 –

     I was born William Melvin Hicks on December 16, 1961 in Valdosta, Georgia. Ugh. Melvin Hicks from Georgia. Yee Har! I already had gotten off to life on the wrong foot. I was always “awake,” I guess you’d say. Some part of me clamoring for new insights and new ways to make the world a better place.

     All of this came out years down the line, in my multitude of creative interests that are the tools I now bring to the Party. Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who’ve helped me. I’d read these words and off I went – dreaming my own imaginative dreams. Exercising them at will, eventually to form bands, comedy, more bands, movies, anything creative. This is the coin of the realm I use in my words – Vision.

     On June 16, 1993 I was diagnosed with having “liver cancer that had spread from the pancreas.” One of life’s weirdest and worst jokes imaginable. I’d been making such progress recently in my attitude, my career and realizing my dreams that it just stood me on my head for a while. “Why me!?” I would cry out, and “Why now!?”

     Well, I know now there may never be any answers to those particular questions, but maybe in telling a little about myself, we can find some other answers to other questions. That might help our way down our own particular paths, towards realizing my dream of New Hope and New Happiness.

Amen

     I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.

More power to you, buddy. Hope you enjoyed the ride.

REVIEW: Shazam! The Complete Series

shazamordwaycvrGrowing up, Saturday morning television meant cartoons and nothing but cartoons. By the 1970s, though, live-action bits crept in, starting with Christopher Glenn’s In the News interstitials on CBS along with silly things like The Banana Splits and H.R. Puffenstuff. In 1974, though, Filmation cleverly blended the two as it took the Big Red Cheese from comics to television. Shazam! debuted in the fall of 1974 with Michael Gray as Billy Batson, charged by the animated gods with their powers to fight crime in the adult body of Captain Marvel.

Last year, Warner Archive released the complete series on DVD and it is as charming as ever in its simplicity. In a mere thirty minutes, Billy and Mentor (Les Tremayne) rode the highways of California in their RV and when danger struck, the magic lightning let Bill become the hero (Jackson Bostwick). The effects were little better than when George Reeves donned the red and blue costume as Superman twenty years earlier. Both fought evil with similar solemnity and everything was put back to order by the time the end credits rolled.

Throughout the 3-disc, 28-episode collection, nary another character from the comics are used, divorcing it from the source material, which is a shame since it could have used a Dr. Sivana or animated Mr. Talky-Tawny. Also, the wizard Shazam is absent and Billy gets advice directly from Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.

Bostwick was an earnest and likeable Captain Marvel and when he was replaced by John Davey, it’s fairly seamless. Gray’s Billy is easily five years too old to be a convincing youth but he’s very likeable while veteran character Tremayne does a fine job with little material.

Unfortunately the series aired from 1974-1976, a time when parent groups pressured the networks into cleaning up the level of violence the precious children were exposed to which undercut what could have been a fine kid’s action series. There’s fun stuff going on but a lot of missed opportunities as each case became a teachable moment instead of a thrilling thirty minutes of action. Still, the show was a cut above its competition which is why it is so well remembered. There’s a crossover with Isis (Joanna Cameron), who helmed a spinoff series of her own that was collected some time back and worth seeking out.

It would have been nice to have some extras but the Warner Archive program brings things to smaller audiences at the cost of no money invested in such bonuses,. We do, though, get a lovely cover from artist Jerry Ordway, who did a memorable run with the character in the 1990s.

Michael Davis: A Burning Love Story

In the years I’ve been writing these rants I don’t think I’ve ever written about love.

I’ve written about sex many times but not love. I’ve always wanted to write about love but somehow never got around to it. Funny-perhaps I thought love and sex was the same thing.

Is that why I have not written about love? Have I, all these years simply assumed that love and sex were one?

Gethefuckoutofhere!

Anybody that assumes sex is love I’m willing to bet has an appointment every week that begins with being asked about their relationship with their mother or father and ends with being told their hour is up.

You may love sex but sex is not love. Trust me on this; I’m a doctor.

I’ve been in love. I suck at it. I’ve had sex. I’m pretty good at that.

How good? I’ve heard, ‘you’re my daddy’ so often someone reported me to social services who showed up at my door and asked where all my children were.

Pine Valley, in case anyone’s wondering.

I think my problem is I’m way too much of a realist. I can’t pretend something could be just because I want it to be. Then again maybe I’m too much of a romantic, I’ve often pretended something that isn’t could be.

Or maybe I’m just a motherfucking idiot clearly the above statement is a blatant contradiction and sadly its also true. I wish I would just pick a side.

Why don’t I have a weekly appointment that begins with being asked about my mother? Because someone talking about my mother is grounds for me putting my foot up that someone’s ass. Paying someone who’s going to end up with my foot in their ass seems mighty ‘crazy white people shit’ to me.

Translation: Black men don’t go to shrinks.

Damn I’m a mess.

But-if I know I’m a mess am I really a mess?  If you are aware you are crazy or you really? If I’m aware that I can’t love someone from a distance why do I think I can make a long distance relationship work? How can I be black and love the music of Florence Henderson.

Yeah.

I freely admit I love the music of Mrs. Brady and don’t give a shit who knows it.  The great thing about loving her music is I don’t have to think rather or not her music is going to fuck a bunch of guys and them blame me.

Yeah- that happened to me once, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It’s times like that when you turn to the things you love that cannot hurt you, things that cannot break your heart.

Like the music of Florence Henderson or comic books. Those things can never hurt you.

Right?

Wrong.

A funny thing happened to me the other day-my heart was broken. Broken by those I consider my extended family, fellow comic book fans.

The racism brandished on-line by some in comic fandom from the second a Black actor was cast, as Johnny Storm was agonizing for me.

It’s agonizing for all Black fandom and I dare say most comic fans of any color.

Yeah-I continue to be stupid and think people in comics, fan and professional are above this type of hatred.

I believe in my heart that the vast majority in our shared community is not what I’ve read on-line or saw in news reports.

I refuse to believe anything else.

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