The Tweeks love anything British, they love comics, and they love groups of kids solving mysteries so of course they were freaking out over John Allison’s Bad Machinery series where a group of 6 preteens in Tackleford, England not only solve cases, but spazz out over unicorns in video games.  Watch our review of Volumes 1 and 2 and see why this is kind of like  a younger Buffy without the vampires or British cartoon-y Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys only better.

…a man may smile, and smile, and be a villain

William Shakespeare

A lovely person with whom I once shared a wedge of life told me that the bad guys in my stories didn’t get really mean until I began having frequent encounters with a colleague who would never have gotten even close to my Christmas card list had I been the kind of guy who sends Christmas cards. And later I shifted part of the writer’s duty, the part that dealt with antagonists, to the editor while I pleasured myself with parts of the continuity that, at the time, I found more interesting.

Shame on me.

You may have heard it: the hero is only as good as the villain. Grant that there may be a taste of oversimplification in there somewhere, and then grant that the statement is true. Put Superman against a pickpocket? Batman against a jaywalker? Spider-Man against a graffiti artist? You’re not squirming in anticipation of those stories, are you? There’s not much conflict or drama – not much entertainment value – in a blatantly uneven contest. The powers and abilities of both halves of the story equation – good guy/bad guy – should be roughly equal and if you’re going to give an edge to one side, give it to the heavy; we do like to cheer for the underdog, don’t we?

Maybe my friend was right about the colleague. If so, I don’t know why. Maybe I needed some sort of emotional jolt, which the colleague generously supplied. Or maybe I was too involved with the plotting, as opposed to the charactering, of the stories. Maybe I wasn’t as involved in my craft as I should have been. Maybe my sun sign was not aligned with my moon sign and when that happens…run for the hills? Or maybe I was getting a preview of how I might feel in, oh, say – forty years later?: that is, now.

I’m not churning out as much fantasy-melodrama as I once did, but if I were, villains might be a problem. Time was that the baddies existed only to give he hero grief and if the baddie discharged that duty, enough said and well done! Some people are just nasty: case closed. But the best popular fiction now gives the evildoers just about the same degree of motivation and personality as is bestowed upon the good guys. And at a certain level, it’s becoming hard for me to really believe in villainy – that is actions that serve only to rain on someone’s parade. A really good writer – Shakespeare, say – can do a bad guy whose core seems to be sheer malevolence – and make the narrative work. But we aren’t all Shakespeare.

My problem is, I no longer believe in villainy. I believe in ignorance and, to borrow an idea from my days as a Catholic, some of it is invincible ignorance and the invincibly ignorant will hold onto their ignorance until ten seconds after they’re breathed their last. But they’re not infected with some spiritual toxin that makes men slimeys. They’re ignorant.

Thich Nhat Hanh, who is as close to a saint as anyone I know of, says that, given different circumstances he would have become a river pirate instead of a monk.

I look back on eight and a half decades and see myself doing plenty of ratty stuff. But I didn’t do it because I was a villain and, in the moment, I either rationalized my acts or simply didn’t deal with their moral implications. I guess what I did might fit some definitions of ignorance.

But “ignorance” doesn’t have the same dramatic heft as “evil,” does it?

Comics legend Al Feldstein died yesterday at his Montana home, at the age of 88.

Best known for his work as editor of Mad Magazine from 1956 to 1984, Al co-created, wrote and drew for most of the classic EC comics, including Tales From The Crypt, Weird Science, Panic and Shock SuspenStories. Prior to signing on with EC, Feldstein was a prolific comics artist with work appearing in comics published by Fiction House, Fox, and ACG, among many others.

Taking Mad over from co-creator Harvey Kurtzman, Al introduced many of the magazine’s most popular features, including Don Martin’s irrepressible pages, Antonio Prohias’ Spy Vs. Spy, Dave Berg’s Lighter Side, and Al Jaffee’s fold-ins. He also increased the visibility of company mascot Alfred E. Neuman.

A man of strong progressive political beliefs, he was the subject of an FBI investigation following his publication of satirical criticism of notorious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. According to USA Today, two FBI agents demanded an apology for “sullying” Hoover’s reputation by using his name in Mad. No such apology was issued by Feldstein.

Over the years, Feldstein’s work at EC Comics inspired quite a number of movies, television shows, cartoons and Broadway musicals. The level of outrageousness set by the editor and his staff inspired later satirists such as Mike Judge, Matt Groening, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Al devoted his retirement years to western painting, as well as the occasional “flashback” painting of the EC horror hosts, 1950s science-fiction themes and his late EC/Mad boss, Bill Gaines. He also appeared at numerous comics conventions where he  signed autographs and sold prints of his painted work.

Last August, IDW published Grant Geissman’s definitive autobiography of the cartoonist, Feldstein: The Mad Life and Fantastic Art of Al Feldstein! 

That final exclamation point in the title tells it all.

Last week, I attended two conventions in Chicago: the massive C2E2 multimedia clusterfuck-on-the-lake, and the more sublime Windy City Pulp and Paper show out in the western suburb of Lombard. Guess which one I enjoyed more?

To be fair, C2E2 is a lot of work for me, and my response to “work” is similar to that of Maynard G. Krebs (Google, chillun!). Lots of walking, lots of talking, some negotiating, some promoting, all the doo-dah day. As always, I enjoy seeing my friends – and that’s a big deal in Chicago. Dinner with the Unshavens on Friday at the wonderful Eleven City Diner (best deli in America), dinner with my ol’ pal and former (Real) First Comics partner Rick Obadiah at the wonderful Weber Grill on Saturday. The food was great at both venues, and the conversations were even better.

I went to the Windy City Pulp and Paper show on Sunday. Yes, “paper” includes comic books as well as old magazines and illustration art. There were tons and tons of self-published print-on-demand reprints of classic pulps, and even more original pulp fiction novels being hawked by their authors.

This latter phenomenon is extremely exciting. The authors are getting to do what they want and reach the audience they need, both through print-on-demand and electronic publishing. I wish I had the time (and money, and storage space) to read all the new pulp originals that caught my eye – but when it comes to this sort of thing I’m a stoner kid in a candy store. I will say this past year or two I’ve received more satisfaction from reading the new pulp originals than reading new comics.

Pulps are comic books without the pictures. And they’re usually self-contained. And they’re usually largely or totally insane in scope and story.

I haven’t been able to make it there ever since C2E2 moved their date to within a couple weeks of the Windy City Pulp and Paper show. This year I got lucky: they were held at the same time, albeit maybe two-dozen or so miles away. Again, lots of old friends, but no cosplay. Damn.

Lunch was in that neighborhood and was with two very old Chicago comics fan buddies, Jim Wisniewski and George Hagenauer, a frequent co-conspirator. The beauty of comics fandom is that it can be an extended family. I’ve got friends in this community that I can trace back 40 years or more.

That is the best thing about being a comics fan.

And the meals ain’t bad, neither.