Our story thus far: Percy the comic book artist has gone to the South Street Seaport seeking influences. There he meets a mime and:

The mime stared directly at Percy and asked, “Looking for an influence, numb nuts?”

Gobsmacked! That’s what Percy was, absolutely gobsmacked! How could this white-faced bozo know what he, Percy, was after? It’s not like he was wearing a sign that said: Will work for influences.

“Pay attention,” the mime said and:

Was transformed into a little boy who is creeping down the stairs and sees a box and eagerly, eagerly unwraps it, flinging aside paper and ribbon and looks inside and is horribly disappointed and…

The mime transformed into himself again and, moving his face to within inches of Percy’s, growled. “You influenced?”

Percy stared at his shoes and mumbled, “You’re not even an artist. You’re just a guy who…I dunno what you do but how can you influence me…”

“Go to a museum,” the mime said and when Percy raised his eyes, the mime was gone.

A museum?

Well, Percy knew that there were a lot of them in Manhattan and he’d always kind of planned to visit one and he’d even got close to the big one on Fifth Avenue once when he was girl watching in Central Park…Okay, he’d go to a museum because, really, he had nothing better to do – in fact, he had nothing at all to do.

He found the right subway and got off at the right stop and went up wide, concrete steps past some columns and then he was inside a museum. Big. Crowded. Intimidating. He wandered into a gallery full of large paintings and scoped them out: saints – the people with halos – and characters from mythology –that’s what the little cards told him– and just people, all engaged in activities that were recognizable and interesting. Pretty cool, some of it, but…? “What does any of this have to do with comics” he said aloud, to no one.

“It’s about storytelling,” said a man standing nearby – a man who looked oddly like the mime if the mime had gotten rid of his whiteface, was sporting a huge, waxed moustache, and was wearing a tuxedo. “What these painter chaps do,” the man continued, “is imagine how their subjects would appear when their faces and bodies are at their most expressive and render that in the purest possible manner. Rather like what those buskers in the park…the silent ones who seem to be forever walking against the wind, poor devils.”

Gobsmacked – really, really, no kidding gobsmacked – Percy shuffled from the museum, took a bus downtown, entered his building, and slept a very deep sleep. The next morning, he skipped breakfast and went straight to his drawing board: the mime, the paintings, and what they did, how they communicated – his task was clear. Percy wasn’t satisfied with his first effort, or his five hundredth, but eventually, he got close to what he wanted. Then, he began winning prizes. But that is a story for another time.

Note: Thanks to Martha Thomases for “gobsmacked.”

FRIDAY: Martha “Gobsmacked” Thomases

JACK AVARICE IS THE COURIER #3 by Chris Madden will be in comic shops on Wednesday, November 16th. 

IDW Publishing is thrilled to introduce JACK AVARICE IS THE COURIER, an exciting, month-long, weekly comic series for the five-Wednesday month of November. Created, written, drawn, and lettered by rising star Chris Madden, the artist on the upcoming Danger Girl: Revolver series, this special five-part series is timed specifically to release one issue a week for each Wednesday of the month.
 
In issue #3, Newly minted Courier Jack Avarice and his partner Sam Kind are off in a race against time to find the deadly Eyes of Fate — but their mysterious enemy is hot on their heels! With their only lead dead and the fuse lit, they’ll lead a trail of destruction and burning tire tracks across India from Jaipur to the lost temple of Angkora — but will they find the answers they need in time? And who is behind their mysterious opposition, blocking them at every turn?
32 Pages.
$3.99.

Image Comics has announced a Feb. 15 launch for Peter Panzerfaust, by writer Kurtis Wiebe and artist Tyler Jenkins.
 
Peter Panzerfaust is set in the city of Calais, the first city in France to fall to the Germans in the spring of 1940. A mysterious American boy named Peter rallies a handful of plucky French orphans, and they must work together to survive Europe’s darkest hour!
 
“Peter Panzerfaust is a story Tyler and I have been wanting to tell for years,” Wiebe said. ” It’s an action series set during World War II that blends in a fresh take on the Peter Pan mythology. There’s a real rich setting we’ve developed in this series and I’m thrilled to share it with everyone.”

For more on Image Comics, visit them at http://www.inagecomics.com/.

Click on thumbnails for a larger view.

As is well-known, the Walt Disney Company purchased Marvel Comics a little over two years ago. Marvel joined the Muppets, Pixar, ABC and ESPN as tentacles of that great evil media empire that has done so much to homogenize the American culture. After all the jokes died down, some people wondered why the Mouse wanted the House that Jack Built in the first place.

Disney is a movie company, and Marvel’s shiniest family jewels – Spider-Man and The X-Men – were in the hands of competing studios (Columbia Pictures and 20^th Century Fox, respectively) and aren’t likely to revert any time soon. The sundry Avengers characters were in the hands of Paramount Pictures, although Disney was able to purchase a nice reversion deal here. But, still, the motion picture revenue picture was severely compromised by the Spidey and X deals, and made all the more expensive by the Paramount buy-back. So, the question “why” certainly is valid.

Nobody that big buys a publishing venture – certainly not a comic book publishing venture – for the profits it will generate on its own. The phrase “fart in a blizzard” comes to mind. Merchandising and licensing revenues can be fairly attractive and Disney/Marvel/Muppets are a good fit. But… still… why?

I think we’re beginning to see the real reason. Disney owns ABC, which includes ABC Family, the Disney Channel, Disney XD (which already carries many of the Marvel animated shows), Playhouse Disney, Disney Cinemagic, Hungama, Jetix, Radio Disney, SoapNet, WABC-TV New York, KABC-TV Los Angeles, WLS-TV Chicago, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, KGO-TV San Francisco, KTRK-TV Houston, WTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham, and KFSN-TV Fresno, and as the various ESPN channels – possibly excluding “El Ocho.” Plus all kinda stuff overseas.

One can argue that teevee in general doesn’t have much of a future, and I might agree. But teevee programming has one hell of a great future no matter what platform we’ll be enjoying in the future: cable, satellite, computers, tablets, integrated teevee/computer systems, visors, brain implants, whatever. And that’s where the Mighty Marvel Money Machine will become the Mouse’s cash cow, true believer.

Disney already has The Hulk, Cloak and Dagger and Alias in development. Of course “Alias” has to be renamed – it’s working under the title “a.k.a. Jessica Jones” right now, and the show includes both Luke Cage and Carol Danvers. Mockingbird is also in development as a Miley Cyrus style kids show, possibly as fodder for the ABC Family network.

Step back a pace and take a look at what’s going on here.

Most of these shows are built around female superheroes. As headliners, such characters are anathema to motion picture studios. But Disney is betting heavy, heavy bucks that the distaff side will draw a sufficient audience to warrant the investment.

That’s pretty cool – and very risky. Women heroes haven’t fared much better on the small screen: Nikita was renewed by the skin of her teeth, The Bionic Woman revival flamed out, as did Charlie’s Angels redux. David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman didn’t make it past the pilot stage. Yet Disney is developing no less than three Marvel shows built around women.

So no matter what I might feel about Disney’s predatory influence on our culture, they are showing a great deal of courage here – courage they developed by purchasing Marvel.

Interesting.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil