It’s interesting to watch different interpretations on a given character. Later this summer we’ll see Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/The Amazing Spider-Man and can compare/contrast it with Tobey Maguire’s version in the previous three Spider-Man movies.

For me, it’s even more interesting when you compare two different versions in two different media. You can do that with Spider-Man or any of a number of different superheroes recently. The upcoming Avengers movie will offer that in spades.

The one I’m focusing on here, however, is the character of U.S. Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens, created by Elmore Leonard in a number of short stories and books, the most recent being Raylan. He’s also the central character on FX’s Justified, which just wound up its third season recently.

For many, Elmore Leonard is the best crime novelist writing today and one of America’s best novelists – period. Lots of his stuff has been adapted to movies, including 3:10 to Yuma, twice, and Get Shorty, which resuscitated John Travolta’s career) He’s not always expressed pleasure with adaptations of his work but he’s pleased with Justified which is as should be seeing that he’s listed among the writers for the series and is among the executive producers.

The character of Raylan Givens is a throwback, a frontier type lawman in the modern world.  He’s not above prompting the bad guy to draw on him, dispensing his own kind of justice in a way that works as justifiable homicide. Hence the title. He cuts it a little too close in Miami and gets sent back to Kentucky from whence he came and to which he’s not real keen to return.

The cowboy imagery is re-enforced by the cowboy hat that Raylan habitually wears. In the books and short story, he wears an open road Stetson hat, flat brimmed, similar (according to Leonard) to the hats worn by the Dallas Police at the time of the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. In the TV series, it’s a hand-modified Stetson 4x beaver with a basket weave embossed leather hatband, with a three piece buckle set. Does it make a difference? It does to Elmore Leonard who does not care for the TV version. I’ve seen both hats and, well, Elmore Leonard is wrong. There, I said it. And it underscores what has to happen in adapting what works on the page to what works on the screen, big or little. The hat on Justified is a better visual.

Raylan Givens is laconic, iconic, and charismatic, especially as embodied by Timothy Olyphant for the TV series. Elmore Leonard has a great way with dialogue and the TV series stays true to that. It also keeps true to Leonard’s worldview and sense of character. I read somewhere that the producers of the TV series approach the writing by asking, “What Would Elmore Do?”

In watching the series and reading the prose, it’s interesting to see how plot elements in Raylan were taken and adapted to the series, some more successfully than others. There’s a plot involving illegal harvesting of human kidneys that plays better in the novel than in the series, mainly because on TV it gets squeezed in as a subplot and done in essentially one episode.

On the other hand, the TV series has made changes that were brilliant. Boyd Crowder, played by Walton Goggins, dies at the end of the story Fire In the Hole. The TV series wisely let him survive and change and grow into a truly compelling character. Mags Bennett, played by Margo Martindale who won an Emmy for her portrayal, is new to the series, to the best of my knowledge, although her sons are in Raylan along with their father.

There’s a plot involving a coal company and the woman representing it to the community that it has poisoned and that’s about the same in both the book and the series. Elmore Leonard has used elements and characters that have appeared in the series just as the series has used characters and elements that have appeared in the stories.

It’s apples and oranges, I know, but if I had to pick, which would I prefer – the series or the novel? To be honest, I prefer the TV series. The novel, Raylan, is more like a series of linked short stories; each one has its own climax and then it’s on to the next one but there’s no overall climax. Each season of Justified has worked as an entity of its own and reaches a single climax to end a given season.

Both are worth the investment of your time and together they form a sort of alternate universe take on the main character, Raylan Givens. Same guy but slightly different incarnations. It’s a concept familiar to comic book readers or viewers of Fringe. Ah, Fringe. That’s another column at some point in the future.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

Seriously, it happened so slowly, I never saw it coming. It’s long been a fact: Marc Alan Fishman is a card carrying member of the DC Nation. But then, something changed. Flashpoint was one epic-crossover-super-event-that-changed-everything too many. With the New 52, I’d made a steadfast rule: In order to conserve money and my sanity, any book that delivered two issues in a row that left me bored or was just terrible I would remove from my pull list.

Like every red-blooded nerd worth his salt, when a book is dropped from my box, I can’t help but seek to replace it with something new. And now that I look across the board, Marvel is now on equal footing, book-for-book with my pull list for DC.

More important, every Marvel book on that list is one that when I see it on the shelf, I get truly excited. Truth be told, I get Blue Beetle, Batgirl, Justice League Dark, Green Lantern Corps, and Resurrection Man – and they are good comics, but none of them excite me anymore. I’m slowly coming to terms with it; New 52 be damned… Make Mine Marvel.

Simply put, right now Marvel is putting out better books than DC. I welcome the flame war and argument from the interwebs. Based solely on the Marvel books I’ve read in the last three-four months, DC pales in comparison in story depth, quality, scope, and clarity. A few examples, you ask?

Take the Fantastic Four. Jonathan Hickman’s run on the title has been compared to Kirby and Lee’s initial run; and said with sincerity. His “War of the Four Cities” multi-year arc was as epic as any DC “Crisis” without the multitude of mini-series. While it did spawn a second book, FF, the grandeur has been well contained. Even better, FF brings the ideology of the family and creates an excuse to explore more of the Baxter Building collective without over-saturation. It’s a riff, not a rip-off. Compare this to the four Green Lantern titles being pumped out at DC and you can see how a little consolidation can really tighten up a title’s overall quality.

How about the newly relaunched Defenders? Matt Fraction’s “vacation” title is a glorious send up to an old and mostly forgotten secondary team… dusted off, polished up, and presented wonderfully in the modern age. While only five issues in, I’ve been nothing but impressed up until now. In fact, Defenders #4 easily tops my list of best comics I’ve read for the year. The year is early, yes, but amongst dozens and dozens of issues, I’ve little doubt it won’t falter from my top ten by years end. It’s a comic not afraid to be written with a smirk… that knows when to be deadly serious, or just go for the nut shot. Something Justice League International tried to do, and fell on its face for attempting.

For those following my reviews on Michael Davis World, you’ll no doubt also note my recent jaunt into Spider-Land with the Amazing Spider-Man title. With the promise of the “Ends of the Earth” storyline being a good jumping on point for new readers, I dove into a title and character I’ve always wanted to read, but never did because of the bad mojo that came with the book. Ask anyone about Spider-Man’s most recent bullet points and I doubt you’ll see a face light up when discussing One More Day, the Other, or even Spider-Island. That being said, the series thus far has been a joyous romp. A Saturday morning cartoon concept with a hidden maturity, that has a perfect balance of comic-book-quirk with well thought out plot development.

And over in Invincible Iron Man? Well, Matt Fraction is proving what a truly potent writer he is by shaking off the grime of the horrendous Fear Itself crossover crud and taking his baby book back to form. His long-winding plot of Mandarin’s careful and calculated destruction of Tony Stark has been a slow burn that’s been a long time coming. And when everything recently came to a head, we got a moment in comics I’ve dreamed of reading since I finished The Watchmen – an arc where the hero loses because he’s been out-matched. It was bold, ballsy, and has me chomping at the bit for more.

All this, and I’ve not even mentioned Daredevil or Ultimate Spider-Man. I’d love to, but well… I’ve not read them yet. But they are high on the list for me to catch up on, the second the next DC book takes a dive in my box. Resurrection Man? I’m looking at you.

Now, of course, Marvel isn’t perfect. Just a few weeks back on my podcast, a lifelong X-Men fan told me he’d literally given on comics all together because of the terrible decline of his favorite mutants. And let’s give credit where credit is due: Fraction and Hickman’s bold pacing is very much in-step with Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison’s work on Green Lantern and Batman over the last 60 or so issues. Anyone who read “Batman R.I.P.” can see what “The War of the Four Cities” or most of the run on Invincible Iron Man is being inspired by (not directly mind you… but certainly in conceptual scope). And DC is not without its own amazing titles. Action Comics, Batman, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, and Green Lantern always float to the top of my reading pile when I pick them up.

This of course leads me to ask the bigger questions. Was the New 52 not powerful enough overall to keep me from being lured away? Is Marvel just in a great rhythm right now? Will X-Men vs. Avengers cause some major crisis to interrupt all the goodness coming out in their top titles? Or with the second wave of new books (Dial H and JSA are both looking mighty fine to me…) hitting shelves soon, will DC reclaim me?

Don’t worry, I’ll let you know.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander Feeds The Chickens

I’m not as good-looking as Tony Stark – not even close. And I’m not a billionaire – not even closer. And as for technology…well, let’s just say that I’m not exactly an early adopter – more like an after-the-sun-cools adopter.

About two feet from where I sit, there languishes an iPod Touch that Mari got at no cost when we bought this computer because she’s a teacher. I don’t know how to make it work. Neither does she.

Her Kindle sat on a table for a month before the lovely and accommodating Perri Pivovar did some wizardry and now Mari’s reading the second volume of the Hunger Games trilogy off the Kindle screen (and enjoying it, you very much.) But without Perri’s kindness? Maybe Mari could have used the Kindle as a bookmark.

I’m reluctant to buy electronica because I fear the frustration I feel when the things don’t perform.

So when the editorial fates landed me the job of writing the monthly Iron Man comics a couple-three decades ago, I wondered what there was in the Tony Stark/Iron Man character for me to identify with. The first Iron Man I ever did was a single issue fill-in and I had Tony able to solve a problem only by shedding the armor that enabled him to claim superhero status (and feel free to read into that anything you like.) But when I agreed to do 12 Iron Mans a year, I knew that Tony’s metallic striptease was a one-time-only trope, best not repeated anytime soon, if ever.

So I had a hero whose very existence was based on gadgetry and I was cursed by Crankus, the evil god of technology, and how was I to bridge the gap between high tech fiction and the Luddite real life me?

Ah. A realization. I drive cars, don’t I? And Tony “drives” his armor and maybe therein lies the commonality between Mr. Stark and me that would save me whatever woe might come from doing stories about a guy I neither knew nor liked. Anyway, good enough. I embarked on what was, for me, a very satisfactory three-years as Iron Man’s chronicler-in-chief.

But I still had trouble with technology, even after I dropped dead in a café and was revived by John Ingallinera, Lizzie Fagan, Michael O’Shea and Bryan Holihan, who knew where a defibrillator was and how to use it. The gadget literally brought me back to life.

Maybe Crankus was easing up?

So a month ago, I decided that I’d had enough of not being able to understand song lyrics, conversations at parties and my wife’s comments on television shows we were watching, among other irritants. I had hearing loss. And a technological remedy existed. And that being the case, it was foolish vanity to go through life saying, “Huh?”

We went to the hearing aid place in a nearby town. I got tested and yep! – loss of hearing in both ears. Conversation was held, a down payment proffered and off we went, to return a few weeks later. I now owned two nearly invisible hearing aids. A new dawning? Should I have another shot at the iPod? Maybe get my own Kindle? A tablet with a Skype attachment? How about those video games the youngsters like?

I put ‘em on, went home and…

Discovered that the one for the right ear didn’t work.

Maybe Crankus has downgraded me to half-cursed.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

All of a sudden I find myself in the midst of a half-dozen publishing projects. All are comics, and all but one are comics stories.

Here’s the rub: I’m dying to tell you about them. Really. I’d kill to tell you about them. But I can’t. I’m not the publisher, I’m not the artist, I’m not the writer of most of them, and I’m not the publicist. So it’s not my place to blab. I’m the editor, the dealmaker, and in at least one case the conceptualizer. So you’d think my ego, which even I call The Hulk, could handle a bit of a wait.

Well, no. That’s why I call my ego The Hulk. That’s why, when Jack Kirby came up with an entire living planet named Ego (Thor #132, cover-dated September 1966), I identified like crazy.

There’s another reason. These deals haven’t been papered yet. “Papered” is high-falutin’ dealmaker speak for “signed contract” or “signed letter of agreement,” which are the same thing. Anyway, any or all of them can still collapse. That happens all the time.

So my ego is so big I’m telling you these deals are happening even though they haven’t been papered yet. Of course, having a signed deal is no guarantee that a project will ever start, let alone be released. If you took all the development proposals, all the unreleased master tapes both audio and video, all the edited film footage and laid ‘em all end to end, it would stretch from the San Diego convention center all the way to Ego The Living Planet.

So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit excited. I’ll be working with friends old and new, including at least seven folks who are currently involved with ComicMix. There is no greater pleasure (with my clothes on) than doing creative work with good friends. People whose talent I can count on and the readers enjoy. People whose work habits are compatible with mine and vice versa. People I can call at 2 AM if they’re late on a deadline.

True story. Back when I was working at DC Comics in New York, I made an emergency trip to Chicago to be there for my father during his surgery. Of course there was nothing I could do during the surgery itself, but I was a ten-minute drive away from a freelancer who was almost a month late on a deadline. I borrowed my father’s car – hell, he wasn’t using it – and drove to said freelancer’s apartment. He wasn’t home, so I bribed the building superintendent into letting me in. I took a sheet of art board and scrawled in red marker “HEY! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU! YOU’RE LATE! I BETTER HAVE THE PAGES ON MY DESK BY MONDAY! Love, Mike Gold.” I taped it to his drawing table and then I returned to the hospital, stopping only for an Italian beef sandwich. Yes, I had those pages on my desk by Monday.

So pay attention and you’ll hear about all this stuff. I hope. Actually, we teased a couple of them at the C2E2 convention last week, so if you were there you can easily connect some of the dots. And I should be in San Diego annoying the masses with all this as well.

Huckstering is an intrinsic part of our popular culture. But I pride myself in my inherently total lack of common sense to promote nothing by name… and to do so months in advance.

Yeah, that’s how excited I am.

THURSDAY: Is Dennis O’Neil Really Tony Stark?