It’s not quite the way Stan would write it. Super Villain vs Super Hero and the result – somebody gets pregnant. Meet Jourdan Gibson (aka “DarkStar”) star of SUPER KNOCKED-UP, a red hot web series already in its second season. Plus more with Brian Fuller on bringing HANNIBAL to network TV, and Robyn Schneider returns to start Talking Dr Who again.

Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Mad Men starts its sixth season this weekend. I won’t be able to see it because I’m out of the country, but my cat sitter has strict instructions to set the DVR, so I expect to be up to speed anon.

I am psyched.

The last season ended in 1967. I’m not sure whether this new season will pick up immediately after the last one left off, or if it will jump forward a year or two. In any case, the late 1960s were a time when any average Tuesday had more drama and conflict and human interest than all of the 1980s combined.

The advertising for this new season, at least as seen in the posters in the subway, hint at some of the challenges we can expect to see. Buttoned-up Don Draper versus a chaotic world.

To me, it looks like a Vertigo cover, circa 1998.

Which brings me around to comics, and the points I want to make this week. For as long as I can remember (which doesn’t include the late 1960s, by the way, because that’s what the late 1960s were like for me), comics fans have bemoaned the fact that comics don’t advertise. If only comics reached out to people the way books/movies/television do, we’d have a mainstream medium.

I don’t think it would make any difference. Comic companies don’t know how to advertise.

Let’s look at an ad for an upcoming series I anticipate eagerly, the new Constantine, written by Jeff Lemire, with art by Ray Fawkes and Renato Cuedes. John Constantine is one of my favorite characters.

The ad shows Constantine sitting in a graveyard, slouched against a tombstone with his name on it, smoking a cigarette. There is a vase of red roses at his feet. Zombie hands are reaching for him, and there is a drooling zombie behind him. A skull rises from a grave to his left. There is a logo above his head, and above that is the line, “Playing with magic always comes with a price…”

It’s a terrible ad.

If you didn’t know anything about the character, or the creative team, what would this tell you? It seems to depict a guy who is so lackadaisical about the undead that he can relax with a smoke. Where is the tension? Where is the drama?

What’s in it for me?

The best advertising suggests a benefit for the consumer. It elicits an emotional response (and if you don’t believe me, watch any episode of Mad Men in which Don Draper explains things to the client). Perhaps my dishes will be cleaner, my vacation more glamorous, my beer-drinking nights more fun. Successful advertising for entertainment promises me emotional highs and lows, laughter and/or tears. It promises me that I will experience something I’ve never had before.

Perhaps DC assumes that, since the ad is running in their books, the reader knows who the character is, and what the creative team can do. Perhaps they think this information is enough to motivate someone already familiar with the work.

After all, the Mad Men poster I praised earlier is just a picture of Jon Hamm walking down a city street. In this case, however, the average media consumer knows about the show, and even if that person doesn’t watch it, Jon Hamm is regularly in movies and other television shows, reaching an audience outside the show’s usual demographics. By using a master of advertising illustration from the same era as the show, the ad evokes the time period. The composition implies a tension that is at odds with the soft colors of the background.

My curiosity is piqued. I can’t wait. Anticipation achieved.

The DC ad does none of this. And until our industry learns how advertising works (and, no, this doesn’t count), we don’t deserve nice things.

Saturday: Marc Alan Fishman

Sunday: John Ostrander

Carmine Infantino, the legendary artist, editor, and co-creator of the Black Canary, the Barry Allen Flash, Elongated Man, Deadman, Human Target, and Batgirl, and onetime publisher of DC Comics has passed away at the age of 87.

Carmine was born in his family’s apartment in Brooklyn, NY, on May 24, 1925. He started working for comics packager Harry A. Chesler during his freshman year of high school at the School of Industrial Art. His early career included stints on Airboy, The Heap, Johnny Thunder, the Golden-Age Green Lantern and Flash, and the Justice Society of America.

In 1956, Julius Schwartz teamed Carmine with Robert Kanigher to attempt to revive superheroes by creating a new version of the Flash in Showcase #4, an event which marked a beginning of the Silver Age of Comics. Carmine designed the streamlined look of the series, down to the familiar red and yellow costume. He also had famous runs on Adam Strange and Batman, ushering in the “New Look” in Detective Comics #327, complete with yellow oval around the Bat-symbol on his chest.

In late 1966/early 1967, Carmine was tasked by Irwin Donenfeld with designing covers for the entire DC line. Stan Lee learned of this and approached Carmine with a $22,000 offer to move to Marvel. DC Publisher Jack Liebowitz confirmed that DC could not match the offer, but instead promoted Carmine to the position of art director. When DC was sold to Kinney National Company in 1967, Infantino was promoted to editorial director, where he made artists Joe Orlando, Joe Kubert and Mike Sekowsky editors. New talents such as artist Neal Adams and writer Dennis O’Neil were brought into the company, and in 1970, Carmine signed on Marvel Comics’ star artist and storytelling collaborator, Jack Kirby, to a DC Comics contract.

Carmine was made DC’s publisher in early 1971, during a time of declining circulation for the company’s comics, and he attempted a number of changes. In an effort to raise revenue, he raised the cover price of DC’s comics from 15 to 25 cents, simultaneously raising the page-count by adding reprints and new backup features.In January 1976, Warner Communications replaced Carmine with magazine publisher Jenette Kahn, and he returned to freelance work, doing Spider-Woman, Star Wars, and Nova for Marvel and numerous stories for the Warren family of comics magazines. He returned to DC in 1981 on the Flash, Supergirl, Red Tornado, Dial “H” For Hero, and the Batman syndicated newspaper strip.

In 2004, he sued DC for rights to characters he alleged to have created while he was a freelancer for the company, including Kid Flash, Iris West, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, Gorilla Grodd, the Elongated Man, and Batgirl. He wrote and contributed to two books about his life and career: The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino and Carmine Infantino: Penciler, Publisher, Provocateur. He appeared at conventions promoting these books up to the end of 2012.

Carmine was often quoted as saying his favorite character was Detective Chimp.

He won numerous awards over the years, including the National Cartoonists Society Award in 1958 for Best Comic Book and eleven Alley Awards, plus a special Alley Award in 1969 for being the person “who exemplifies the spirit of innovation and inventiveness in the field of comic art”.

The multitude of Roger Ebert obituaries were wrong. I knew a different guy.

The Roger Ebert I knew was this kid fresh out of college who, after about a year at the Chicago Sun-Times, was pressed into service helping high school newspaper editors improve their craft. I was sports editor at the Niles High West Word, and the guy painstakingly yet affably showed me a slew of techniques that immediately improved my work, stuff that I use to this day, stuff that, as an editor, I share with others.

Just a few years later, the Roger Ebert I knew befriended the “underground” newspaper that employed me, the Chicago Seed (our circulation topped out near 50,000 copies so I always put quotes around “underground”). I was up at the Sun-Times one day in the early 1970s when Roger came into the city room and was mobbed by his fellow staffers, all congratulating him for his just-published piece in Esquire Magazine. He laughed and handed out copies of a different magazine that also carried his by-line, saying he was much more proud of that sale. The magazine was a science fiction digest, Fantastic, edited by the brilliant Ted White. Some people thought Ebert was kidding. Those people were wrong.

Like every other Chicago institution and individual, The Seed had its favorite pizza joint: Pat’s Pizza, on Sheffield about a half-mile north of our office. We shared this passion with Roger, and I would often – surprisingly often – run into him there. The guy knew his pizza joints.

Like his competitor and broadcast partner Gene Siskel, Ebert had strong passions towards the comics medium. When, in 1976, I was among the handful of people who organized the first Chicago Comicon, Roger called to ask if I could line up an interview with Harvey Kurtzman, one of our guests-of-honor. Even though I was familiar with his interest, I was taken aback. In 1976, if the press covered comics at all the headline always contained the words “pow,” “zap,” and/or “crash,” and focused on the imbeciles who would pay $35.00 for a 20-year old piece of crap. Ebert saw comics as an important storytelling medium and Kurtzman as one of its most important auteurs, a view with which I strongly agree. He was one of the first reporters to take us seriously. He was most certainly the first Pulitzer Prize winning reporter to bestow the light of credibility upon our medium.

I more-or-less lost touch with Ebert when I moved out to New York and he became tied up with his television show and his movie festival and such. But I never forgot that important push he gave me back when he was only in his early 20s. And I am forever grateful.

Roger Ebert died Thursday of complications from cancer, after a half-century of a career that can best, and most succently, be described as “two thumbs up.”

Thanks, Roger.

…if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things

The quote above is from Raymond Chandler’s superb essay, The Simple Art of Murder. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a huge favor and do so, right now. Google the title and read Chandler’s prose and then come back to me. I’ll wait.

Hi. You’ve finished reading Chandler and here you are, and yes, you owe me one.

But now I want to bollix the discourse by disagreeing with Chandler. I agree with almost everything Chandler writes in the essay – almost, but not all. “...if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things”? Um, no. But it’s a qualified no. If we’re discussing a fictional man, then okay, let Chandler’s claim stand. I think most writers and critics and teachers would agree that consistent behavior is a constant – in fiction. But does it apply to real life? Maybe not. The engines that run we noble humans are deep and complicated, and the rules they follow, if any, aren’t easily visible. Ol’ Charlie there, he can be a Fearless Fosdick in one situation and a whimpering poltroon in another and does even Charlie know why?

The event in which I participated last week might prompt these musings. It was held in SoHo, my old stomping grounds, and it ostensibly celebrated…well, maybe “celebrated” isn’t the right word: Let’s say that the event recognized the 148th birthday of Dr. Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent and big kahuna among the witch hunters of the early 1950s. His book, and the congressional hearings of Senator Estes Kefauver, with the approval of a sub-posse of clergy and editorialists, decimated the comic book business, put hundreds of decent citizens out of work and, arguably, lamed an art form.

Boo and hiss, Dr. W., you stinky old psychiatrist.

We comic book guys have tended to demonize Wertham for sixty-plus years. But last week’s give-and-take yielded information about Wertham that may have been new to many in the room. He fought for public school integration. He provided psychiatric care for residents of Harlem for a quarter a session, or a dime. He seemed to be a decent and useful professional. Until he wandered into comic book land.

Carol Tilley, a librarian at the University of Illinois, was one of my co-panelists in SoHo. Ms Tilley performed the useful, and much overdue, task of actually digging into Wertham’s papers. She discovered that Wertham faked much of the “research” he used to bolster his accusations. So…this successful and respected and charitable man of science cooked the books. A couple of columns ago, I speculated on his possible motives and reached no conclusion, and although the SoHo event was interesting and informative, no conclusion was reached there, either.

We can call Dr. Fredric Wertham a man of honor. He just wasn’t a consistent one. Maybe he should have been fictional.

Friday: Martha Thomases

Saturday: Marc Alan Fishman

The end is near! Part 8 of Lance Star and The Crown of Genghis Kai, a 10-part webstrip by Bobby Nash and James Burns is live at www.lance-star.com. New strips every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Written by Bobby Nash
Art/Colors/Letters by James Burns
Lance Star: Sky Ranger © Bobby Nash
Click on image for a larger view.

Well, this is fun.

As I type these words – 20 hours prior to posting – ComicMix is in the following situation. Glenn Hauman is about to board a plane taking him from WonderCon to San Francisco to Newark, New Jersey. We should see him sometime late next year. Martha Thomases and Arthur Tebbel are wandering around Japan hoping the whole North Korea is-gonna-nuke-us thing is a joke. Bob Greenberger is somewhere vaguely north of the White House staring at boxes and wondering how he got so old so fast. Adriane Nash is floating around North Haven Connecticut holding a candle. Vinnie Bartilucci is in Who Heaven studying the 50^th anniversary show read-through photos pixel by pixel. Marc Alan Fishman is trying to come up with a way to spend more time with his son Bennett without having to go to Japan. Some of the above are planning on this weekend’s MoCCA Arts Fest.

That leaves me here at ComicMix Central. Always a dangerous thing.

And then my iMac started acting up.

Oy.

I’ve had more than 29 years of experience with all things Macintosh, so I should be able to fix things while Wizardboy Hauman is on the Left Coast. And, while I’m at it, I should be able to shoot down flying monkeys with my psionic death rays.

Turns out that psionic death rays thing might have been easier to pull off. I’ve spent 24 hour doing PRAM zaps and SMC resets, swapping cables, connecting and disconnecting USB cables (2.0 and 3.0), connecting and disconnecting USB devices, fussing with Bluetooth and WiFi, blowing off sundry start-up apps and rebooting like a cobbler on meth. And I still get five copies of the “You’ve got a USB device that’s draining too much power, asshole” error messages cascading across my screen on the average of every 20 seconds.

OK. Every once in a while computers, cars, and human beings break down and I’m way, way past my due. When Adriane isn’t wandering around New Haven county, we’ve got a zillion machines here including iPads and iBooks and iBalls. Unfortunately, Adriane is wandering around New Haven county with some of the above equipment, so I can’t boot my machine as a target disk.

Which means, in English, that I can’t do squat until I’ve fixed it. I’ve got to post Michael Davis’s Tuesday afternoon column (this wouldn’t have been a problem if I got the column on time, as opposed to just past midnight Monday morning; Michael’s got an excuse and it’ll probably be next week’s column) and I’ve got to write and post my column and do all kinds of other important stuff. I can do a lot of this on my iPad and I have, but in order to edit art and post properly, I need that iMac.

And then, literally 55 minutes before Michael’s column is to go up, I find it. Well, maybe not “it” but something that, if disabled, seems to cure about 90% of the problem. That’ll do… and maybe that other 10% will disappear when I reboot.

Or maybe the iMac will go Nagasaki on me: that’s how computers, cars and human beings tell us they want to be replaced.

But at least I’ve got a column out of it.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

The much anticipated HANNIBAL has finally made it to NBC, but fans are wondering how this version differs from the books and movies that we all know. Executive Producer Brian Filler and actor Hugh Dancy (“Will”) tackle that topic and more. Plus The Rocketeer meets The Spirit, cable ratings have a great weekend and we finally get to see the original STAR WARS.

Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

BBC Books will be releasing Amelia Williams’ children’s classic Summer Falls in e-book form, tying in with its appearance in the Doctor Who episode The Bells of Saint John.

Amelia Williams, née Pond, and her husband Rory, The Doctor’s previous companions, were transported back to 1930s New York at the end of The Angels Take Manhattan. Based on the evidence, she became part of the publishing industry, writing this book and publishing the Melody Malone adventure The Angel’s Kiss.

This is the third tie-in book produced for the series, the first two being the aforementioned Melody Malone adventure and The Devil in the Smoke, an adventure featuring Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax the PotatoSontaran.

Summer Falls will be released on April 4th, and is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com.