We used to be the bastard child of our American culture.

We were embarrassed by our public image. As we aged, we demanded our pastime mature along with us. We started to infiltrate the means of production, bringing our all-important ideas and ideals along with us. After all, the comics field skipped a generation – few could enter a business that, in the 1950s, was rapidly shrinking. Besides, the Reader’s Digest and the Saturday Evening Post were painting comic book writers and artists as child pornographers. Better to write for the torrid magazines where buff, all-American manly men were saving all-American buxom brunettes from Uncle Joe Stalin and his legion of rodent-faced S & M fanatics, leaving the comics door open for those starry-eyed youngsters who knew no better.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and publishers facing diminished profits understood that our generation worked for a lot less money than the cranky old geezers who wanted to unionize. This same generation was also entering the rest of the public media. Together, we took pleasure in the modern media adaptations of our favorite characters because at least they took our childhoods seriously.

Then we got legitimate. It’s all Richard Donner’s fault. He made Superman – The Movie, the first massive attempt to portray the American comics medium as a serious, legitimate part of our cultural heritage. It was as successful as it was straight-forward, well-produced, well-acted, and well-written. Heroic fantasy took hold of a greater percentage our culture and hasn’t let go.

Comics were taken seriously. The stuff was taught in colleges and in art schools. A decade later Batman came out, upping the ante all the more. Then the Spider-Man movies, the X-Men, the Avengers Universe… Our pastime was generating more revenue in theaters and on television in two years than it had on the newsstands in the previous fifty combined.

And then the people who owned the movie studios that always offered style over substance – style über alles – began to understand there was money to be made in them thar hills. Talent was discounted as necessarily expensive bait. Warner Bros. realized they actually owned a major comic book company, a fact that was purposely kept mostly hidden from them for decades by that very comic book company. Disney understood that the House of Mouse lacked a relevance to the 21^st Century audience and their subsequent creations, as popular as they were, weren’t the cultural icons that were found at the House of Ideas. So the Mouse bought them.

And now, more than ever, its employees are being treated as cogs in these massive corporate machines. They need to be oiled and dusted and maintained for a while, but you can replace any or all of the cogs without damaging the icons, without diminishing the shine on the family jewels.

And so we grieve and we fret each time another massively talented creator gets replaced. But that’s how it works in the legit world.

Always did, always will.

The moral of the story: don’t quit your day job.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

Rose decides to do something very emotional and foolish. The results of her actions are dour indeed, and all because she chose to have a…

FATHER’S DAY
by Paul Cornell
Directed by Joe Ahearne

“An ordinary man – that’s the most important thing in Creation”

Seized by memories, Rose asks The Doctor to take her back before her father Pete died.  He died in a road accident when Rose was only a baby, and Jackie has gone to great lengths to tell her daughter what a fine man he was.  The Doctor agrees – they attend Pete and Jackie’s wedding, where he gets her name wrong in the vows.  Rose, thinking he’d be “taller”, is already starting to suspect his story may have grown in the telling.  Asking to visit the moment Pete died, twice, she makes a horrible choice – she saves her father from being hit by the car.

She’s overjoyed, but The Doctor is livid.  He tries desperately to get her to understand the enormity of what she’s done, and she refuses.  He storms off, but when he realizes what’s happening to the world, he races to find her.  She and Pete have headed to their friend’s wedding, and mysteriously, a number of guests are missing.  Time is starting to go wrong – songs are playing on the radio that haven’t been released yet, and Rose’s phone is picking up a call from Alexander Graham Bell.

Meeting up with Jackie (and a baby Rose) at the church, it’s more apparent that the tales she told her daughter were just that.  Pete’s big plans were just dreams, and he was much more Ralph Kramden than JR Ewing.  And all around them, mysterious creatures are snipping people out of time. This moment is a wound, and the Reapers are here to pick at the scab.  As things get more serious, Pete realizes that he is not meant to be here, and is forced to make a very serious decision to make it right.

Solid acting all around, in a very serious episode, even with the moments of levity.  Pete Tyler is a character who will return in the Tennant run of the series, as part of a long-form plotline that will tie into the season finale.  While he may not have planned it from square one (as moffat appears to do) but Davies was not a stranger to the long plot.

This is the first story of the new series where time travel itself is integral to the plot.  The average Doctor Who story takes place in a single location and time; time travel is little used in the story itself.  Here, we see a number of paradoxes, and how they all affect time itself.  Moffat will do that  great deal more when he takes over the show, and of course in the classic Blink.  Using time travel is very complicated, and requires a lot of explanation to make sure the audience can keep up. The challenge is keeping things entertaining, and Paul does it here expertly.

“I can do anything” – quite a different mindset for this Doctor than for Ten or Eleven.  Ten spent a lot of time talking about how he couldn’t do things, right up until Waters of Mars, when he came to the decision that, being the last Time Lord, he can do anything he damn well pleases, a decision that bites him BUT quick.  Even Eleven comes to his “Time can be re-written” realization, causing him to take massive risks, and only luck having them come out on his side.

One of the most shocking moments of the episode is one of simplest effects in the world, indeed there’s no effect at all.  The Doctor opens the TARDIS and it’s just an empty box.  Well…yeah.  But we’re so used to it NOT being just a box that it feels so wrong.  Wonderful moment.

The costume work in the 80s is positively unsettling. from Pete’s unconstructed jacket with the rolled up sleeves to the mad curly hairdo on Jackie, it’s hilarious.  It’s nice moment of fun against the dramatic story.  And anyone who thinks that Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All is the cutest baby to appear on Doctor Who has forgotten about this episode.  The expressions captured by the director are priceless, and how they’re edited into the proceedings are hilarious.

Rose accuses The Doctor of being jealous, that for once he’s not the most important person in her life.  It’s not the case, but at the end of the day, it’s Pete that saves the day, by doing something that the Doctor couldn’t.  And that only makes Rose love him more.  And that’s a feeling that will carry through that plot thread for some time to come.

Agent Pendergast, the creation of Authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child returns in a brand new novel, TWO GRAVES, arriving in bookstores today, December 11.

About Two Graves:
After his wife, Helen, is brazenly abducted before his eyes, Special Agent Pendergast furiously pursues the kidnappers, chasing them across the country and into Mexico. But then, things go terribly, tragically wrong; the kidnappers escape; and a shattered Pendergast retreats to his New York apartment and shuts out the world.

But when a string of bizarre murders erupts across several Manhattan hotels–perpetrated by a boy who seems to have an almost psychic ability to elude capture–NYPD Lieutenant D’Agosta asks his friend Pendergast for help. Reluctant at first, Pendergast soon discovers that the killings are a message from his wife’s kidnappers. But why a message? And what does it mean?

When the kidnappers strike again at those closest to Pendergast, the FBI agent, filled anew with vengeful fury, sets out to track down and destroy those responsible. His journey takes him deep into the trackless forests of South America, where he ultimately finds himself face to face with an old evil that-rather than having been eradicated-is stirring anew… and with potentially world-altering consequences.

Confucius once said: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves.”
Pendergast is about to learn the hard way just how true those words still ring..

Now available at Amazon and wherever your favorite books are sold.
Learn more about Two Graves here.

About the authors:
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are the coauthors of the famed Pendergast series, including the first two books in the Helen Trilogy, Fever Dream and Cold Vengeance. Preston and Child are also the authors of the Gideon Crew series. Preston and Child’s Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities were chosen by readers in a National Public Radio poll as being among the one hundred greatest thrillers ever written, and Relic was made into a number-one box office hit movie. Doug Preston’s acclaimed nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, is being made into a movie starring George Clooney. Lincoln Child is a former book editor who has published five novels of his own, including the huge bestsellers Deep Storm and The Third Gate. Readers can sign up for The Pendergast File, a monthly “strangely entertaining note” from the authors, at their website, www.PrestonChild.com. The authors also welcome visitors to their alarmingly active Facebook page, where they post regularly.

This weekend, Peter Jackson’s HOBBIT – AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY opens in theaters. We talk to cast members Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage and Elijah Wood on what is was like to return to the franchise after nearly a decade. Plus The FANTASTIC FOUR film moves forward, Gail Simone moves on and THE SAINT may be moving back to TV.

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