Tagged: comics

Mindy Newell: Nerds Unite!

“Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens. Couldn’t have passed for Normal if he’d wanted to.”

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

Sometimes the universe borrows from [[[Moonstruck]]], giving you just the slap you need so that you “Snap out of it!”

Case in point…

In last week’s column I talked about how crazy I get when I meet people who aren’t readers, or people who only like to read “happy stories; of how I feel out of step with the people I work with, and, while I didn’t come out and say it directly, how much better I am than them.

Yeah, that last sentence was in there. Read it again. It’s in there, all right, “underneath” the written words. After it was posted, I realized that I had been in a really bad mood when I wrote it; my old friend, Mr. Clinical Depression, had dropped in for a short (very short) visit. My co-workers are not ignoramuses and the surgeons aren’t incredibly narrow-minded and impatient—strike that. A lot of them are. But not all of them.

Last Thursday I was the scrub on an OMFS case. (OMFS stands for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. It’s serious stuff, heavy-duty reconstructive dental and facial work, mostly trauma, and we do a lot of it at my hospital, which is northern New Jersey’s #1 trauma medical center.) Anyway, I don’t remember how the conversation got around to comics—oh, wait, I do remember. One of the residents mentioned to the surgeon that I was from Bayonne.

“Why is that important?” I asked.

“That’s where George R.R. Martin* is from. You know who he is, right?”

I nodded.

The chief resident said, “Dr. C—- is big into Game Of Thrones.”

“Yeah, I’m addicted to it,” said Dr. C—-. “Do you watch it? Did you read the book?”

“No,” I said. “Neither.”

“You really should,” said the surgeon.

I felt dreadfully embarrassed and wanted the earth to swallow me immediately.

“Mindy wrote comics back in the day,” said the chief resident.

“How’d you know that?” I asked him.

“I read your stuff.”

God, I felt old.

Then Dr. C— talked about Captain America: The Winter Soldier and how much he had loved it. Everyone who had seen it agreed, and those who hadn’t all said they were looking forward to it. I said, “I love the way Marvel is creating a film universe, just like they have in the comics. Even on TV, the way Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. is tying into Winter Soldier.

“Yeah, said my friend the geek surgeon, “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“I love that show,” somebody said.

“I love Deathlok,” someone else said.

“Phil Coulson is so cool.”

“I love when Samuel Jackson shows up as Nick Fury,” said the medical student.

Then the third year resident said, “I love Deadpool.”

Dr. C—- said, “The X-Men rock! Did you know that they’re making Claremont and Byrne’s Days Of Future Past into a movie?”

The circulator said, “Hugh Jackman rocks!”

“They should make a movie about Gambit,” said the first year resident. “He’s always been my favorite.”

“And Rogue,” I said.

“I like Mystique,” said the rep from the company supplying the implants.

“Yeah,” said Dr. C—-. “Steve likes naked blue-skinned ladies.”

And for the next 90 minutes, as the case progressed, the surgical team talked about the X-Men and Iron Man and Thor and [[[Man Of Steel]]] and all things comics.

Yep, last Thursday the universe snapped me out of it…

And the surgery was successful, too.

  • For those of you who don’t, George R.R. Martin is the award-winning author of the series of books that started with Game Of Thrones.

Mindy Newell: How Unforgetable Sentences Can Help You Make Magic

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

The other day two grandmothers, Mindy and Lynette, were visiting their beloved grandchild Meyer Manual.  After playing and cooing and aahing and watching Alixandra attempt to feed him mashed bananas, 99% of which ended up on his bib and his chin and my elbow and just about everywhere but in his mouth, Lynette said she had to split.  As she was leaving, she said to me, “I love your columns.  You’re such a good writer.”  (Be that as it may.)  I said, “I don’t know where it comes from, I never had any formal training.”  Lynette laughed, and said, “Well, I had formal training, and I can’t write like that.”

Well, I don’t know how good a writer I am; I always think I could be a gazillion-million times better.  But that’s not the point of this column.  This is…

I left soon afterwards, and as I was driving home in my car, listening to All Things Considered on WNYC-FM (my local NPR station), coincidentally the segment was about writing.  Well, not writing exactly, but about great sentences.

The editors of the magazine American Scholar have compiled a list of their ten best sentences in fiction and non-fiction; as associate editor Margaret Foster explained, “It came about as a result of ‘water cooler’ talk around the office. We’re sometimes struck by a beautiful sentence or maybe a lousy sentence, and we’ll just say, ‘Hey, listen to this,’” Her choice, she went on to say, is the last line of Toni Morrison’s [[[Sula]]]:

It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

I haven’t read Sula, but even without knowing the context of the sentence, I agree that it is beautiful. It could be describing the wail of a mother who has lost her child, the ghostly unending cry of six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis in World War II, or the devastating misery of a population in a world gone to apocalyptic madness.  It captures an emotional resonance that echoes of unforgettable pain, unforgivable brutality, and undying loss.

It’s hard to say what makes an unforgettable sentence.  I agree with Ms. Foster, who said, “…in the end, very subjective,” she says. “I mean, who are we to say what the best sentence in The Great Gatsby is?”

By the way, Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, which many consider the Great American Novel, made the list with this sentence:

“Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

It’s not “See Spot run”, is it?

But even Fitzgerald started someplace.

I don’t know if diagramming a sentence is still taught in elementary school English classes anymore, but I remember it as a continuing homework assignment back when I was a student at P.S. 29 on Staten Island, New York.  It began with simple sentences and progressively became more difficult with our increasing comprehension of grammatical structure.  It looked like this, using the simple sentence from above:

Sentence Structure

Actually, that’s not such a simple sentence, “run” is a shortened present participle (don’t ask!), and the grammatically correct sentence should read, “Did you Spot running?”

So let’s pick another, simpler sentence.  How about…

I | love | comics

         …in which the diagram above indicates the “form” of a sentence.  The “I” is the object, “love” is the verb, and “comics” is the subject.

But how do you get from a simple, three-word sentence to something like Fitzgerald’s last sentence [[[The Great Gatsby]]], or to William Faulkner’s [[[Absalom! Absalom!]]] or James Joyce’s [[[Ulysses]]] without your editor throwing you out on your ass with a copy of E.B. White’s The Element of Style following your bruised butt?

It’s the same answer as that old joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice.”

Or is it?  Maybe it’s something else—a mastery of the language, or talent, or maybe it’s something intangible.

Call it a mystery, call it a gift from God or the Goddess or the Universe or even call it The Force…

Whatever it is that allows some to grace us with words that form sentences that speak truth to us and stay in our heads forever and ever—It’s magic.

Photo by gualtiero cc8-4389740

Martha Thomases: Frontieres Sans Comics

Please forgive me.  I’m hideously jet-lagged.

Also, I haven’t read a comic book nor any of the news sites for more than ten days.  Whatever the scandal du jour is, I don’t have an opinion.

Although I was in Israel for more than a week, I didn’t see a single comic book.  I saw some newspaper cartoons at the Holocaust Museum, and the international edition of The New York Times in Jerusalem had strips, but that was it.

There were no comic book stores in any of the areas I walked through.  I would think this might be some kind of kink in tourist destinations, but the Arab market in the Old City had three yarn shops.  They were clearly designed for the local market (meaning they had no high-ticket tourist bait), so why were there no comics?

bengrimm1211-7396496Certainly, the kids new about American superheroes.  On Purim, not only did I see various Supergirls but Iron Men, Hulks, Spider-Men and more.  It’s funny to see a kid with side-curls and a Thing t-shirt.  I hope Jack Kirby would be pleased.

One of the most amazing people I met was in Akko, a city in the Western Gallilee.  He had been in the Army, like many Israelis, but he and also been a junkie and had been in prison for a spell.  He got himself together and was working with teens at risk.  One of his projects was to organize a chess club.  Chess is the hip thing to do in Akko.  Arab kids play it.  Jews play it.  They play in tournaments together.

He told the story of a tourist couple, walking in the old section of town late at night, who saw a group of teen boys standing around a dark corner.  The tourists were frightened, but had to walk that way.  When they got close to the boys, they saw that two of them were playing chess, and the rest were watching.

It’s what the cool kids do.

It seems to me that a kid that can learn how to play chess can learn how to plot a story, or at least appreciate a story with a good plot.  If there isn’t a comic book shop in Akko (and, like I said, I didn’t see one), maybe that’s a business opportunity.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to catch up on The Walking Dead.

Photo by Keshet: GLBT inclusion in the Jewish Community cc6-5652740

Marc Alan Fishman: How To Lose Your (Convention) Virginity

On a recent jaunt into the social media interwebs, an old foosball buddy of mine asked that I help him discover the creepy, crazy, wacky world of comic book conventions. By proxy, I assume he also means sci-fi cons, pop culture cons, and possibly the auto show. In any event? Todd Burrows, I got your wonderfully tattoo’ed back. Consider this your introduction and survival guide all rolled up into one easy to read article. Forgive me though, this ain’t Buzzfeed, so don’t expect 10 glorious animated gifs for scrolling.

Let us assume you’re not a comic guy, but this whole comic thing is mildly intriguing to you. Perhaps a person you used to know back in high school is now a small indie publisher, and you think it’d be neat to see him again. Perhaps that publisher from time to time uses his or her friends in model reference shots, and you think that maybe you’d like to see yourself as a superhero or nefarious villain. And maybe, just maybe, you think dipping your toe into the waters of these new-fangled cons would be a good way to know if all your intrigue is just a waste of your time. I know, that’s a lot of supposition. But I digress. The question is simple: Why Go To A Comic Con?

It’s inclusive.

Since the first time I’ve stepped onto a convention floor, I’ve never once felt on the ‘outside’ of the industry. Once your badge is flung around your neck – be you a complete noob or a working professional – you’ll find most every con filled with folks in the exact same situation. In the pair of decades I have considered myself a fan, I’ve not once found a fellow con-goer not willing to lend an opinion, give a bit of backstory, or make an education recommendation on a good read. It can be daunting, no doubt, to jump in head-first to a world you think you don’t know. But lucky for you? Comics have permeated TV, movies, and pop-culture now for so long, there’s little to no chance you haven’t been introduced already without even knowing it. (more…)

Martha Thomases: Comic books make me a better person

capstone_contest-3297499I love comic books.  I have since I was five years old.  I even love comic books I don’t like. I love the way the whole of words and pictures is bigger (and better) than the parts.  I love the way that great storytellers can take a blank piece of paper (or  computer screen) and <a href=”

target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>make anything happen.

Comic books make me a better person.

This point was brought home to me this weekend, when I read this amazing story.  In case you don’t read it (and you should because, like I said, amazing), it’s about an autistic young man who found a way to articulate his feelings and communicate with other people through Walt Disney Studios animated films.

Now, I don’t know much about autism,and it is not my intention here to act like I’m any kind of expert.  However, in reading the story, I was reminded how much I learned about people from popular culture.  The kid in the story used Disney cartoons.  I liked them, too.

But it was comics that really taught me empathy.

Any fiction (and quite a bit of non-fiction) can put the reader into the head of another character, will let you see the world through her eyes.  Comics can do this, and also let you see exactly how difference another being’s experience can be.

For example, when I was a kid, I loved the Legion of Super-Heroes.  I started pretty much when the team did, with three members, two boys and a girl, all white as the driven snow.  I liked Saturn Girl, but she was not a lot like me.  I had trouble imagining what it was like to be her.  However, as I read more stories, the team got more members.  Triplicate Girl had brown hair, just like me.  Shrinking Violet was shy, just like me.

And there was Chameleon Boy, with his orange skin and his antenna.  He was funny. and cracked jokes, just like me.  Brainiac 5 had green skin, and he was so smart that sometimes he annoyed the other kids, just like I did.  I learned that I could identify with someone who didn’t look like me, whose body didn’t work the same way mine did, who came from a place way way different from Youngstown, Ohio.

Superhero comics literally taught me how to see the world through the eyes of others.  What I mean is, sometimes the artist would depict the scenes from a character’s point of view, not from the outside.  Along with captions and thought balloons, it was like being in another person’s head.

Later, when I was in Sunday School and learned about Marrano Jews, I already had some understanding of what it meant to have a secret identity.  I’d seen people who had them who were not Jewish (although most, I would later learn, had been created by Jews).  It helped me to understand other kinds of people who might feel they had to hide their differences from the mainstream.

It’s a little bit roundabout that I made the leap to understanding other humans through Durlans, Coluans and Kryptonians.  I felt what it was like to be alien from actual aliens, not from meeting people from other countries.  I felt what it was like to be different inside from the Thing in The Fantastic Four, not from knowing someone of another race or gender identity.

Does that sound condescending?  That’s not my intention.  I’m trying to explain how a five-year old, or an eight year old — and sometimes a 60 year old — needs stories (graphic and otherwise) to see the humanity in other humans.  That’s what artists do.

And I’m grateful.

Michael Davis: Who’s Sorry Now?

It’s been a while since I’ve taken someone to task with a good old fashion rant, so…

Last week I missed my ComicMix deadline.

Not that anyone noticed.

Usually when I missed a deadline it’s because of illness or stupidity.

Not that anyone cares.

I drive myself pretty hard and take on a lot of stuff and there are times when I drive myself too hard.  When those way to often moments happen I’m subject to the worst migraines and I’m unable to work.

How bad are these headaches? You know the expression; ‘I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy?’  Well I would, because I’m just that kind of bastard. If I miss a deadline because of illness a migraine is almost certain to be the reason.

I did not miss list week’s deadline because I was ill. So that leaves being stupid. (more…)

Nominate Your Faves In 2014 Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament Now!

  • News
  • March 6, 2014

comicmixmarchmadnessfeatured-550x98-8827471

Yes, it’s that time of year again, where we take the best webcomics and put them head to head to highlight the incredible diversity of work out in the comics world, to raise money for various comics charities, and to have fun while doing it– time for the Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament!

As usual, we always think we’ve gotten a good list together of webcomics– our directory lists well over three hundred webcomics  which are already going to the nominating round– but we always seem to miss a few newcomers, or strips that have just fallen under our radar for whatever reason. So we’re asking you: what strips have we missed? Just add them below with links to the site.

Our criteria for including them in the contest are pretty simple and broad:

  • They have to be currently in production, by which we mean “has come out with at least one new installment since the new year”. Surprisingly, this knocks out a lot of comics.
  • No paywalls. You gotta be able to read it to compare and contrast.
  • No adult webcomics. We do May Mayhem for the R and X rated comics, this is for family safe material.

Here’s how to do it:

First, take a look at our Directory page.

Then, if there are any webcomics you think we should know about and add into our Mix (so to speak) add them here. If you have email and Twitter contact info for the strips, so much the better.

Add a Webcomic!

Add a Webcomic!

  • Webcomic titleURLComic EmailComic Twitter 

Get your nominations in quick, we’re closing the window at midnight Pacific Time on Friday night and starting the seeding voting on Friday. And please, share this post far and wide so we don’t miss anyone!

John Ostrander: Writing Tids and Bits

Absent any overall topic occurring to me, maybe we’ll try the ol’ shotgun approach – a bunch of writing tips with the idea that, if there’s enough of them, some should work. (My friend William J. Norris used to describe my sense of humor that way – if I just kept talking, a certain percentage of it was bound to be funny.)

Da tips.

Cast your characters. This can be short-hand for a character and can help with dialogue. Who would play your character in TV or movies or who would provide their voice if the character was animated? It doesn’t have to be a living actor; heck, it doesn’t have to be an actor at all. It can be somebody you know or knew, friend or foe or relative (the last can be a combination of the first two). It can be a politician or your boss or a co-worker. Somebody you find distinctive and whose voice is inside your head.

Using a person as the template can help you with how the character acts, who they are, how they physically express themselves. Mannerisms, habits, nervous tics can all work into the character. The cadence of how the template speaks, verbal habits, and so on can help you as you write the dialogue. It’s sometimes easier to identify these traits in others than in yourself. That gives you perspective on them.

These traits are all shorthand – you still have to do all the basic hard work of who they are, their background, and what they want but this can help, especially if you get stuck.

You/Not You. All your characters are you; all your characters are not you. You have to find the point where you and your character intersect if you’re going to write the character honestly. Every character – the good, the bad, main characters, supporting character, one line wonders – lives inside you. However, you also have to detach from them a bit. You have to have some objectivity in portraying them. Give them their own life. It’s like parents with kids; at some point, the parent has to acknowledge their kid ain’t them. The dichotomy between you/not you can be tough to master.

Make Them Turn the Page. (more…)

Dennis O’Neil: The Evolution of Religion and Mythology

Gotta get this sucker written tonight because tomorrow or the next day I may have to resume watching the snow fall and fall and fall and fall…

So: what some benevolent publisher should do (and surely benevolent publishers do exist) is to put put a book that examines the way mythology/religion have evolved quite similarly.  Both began with stories that were. by our standards, crude, with little characterization and virtually all the meaning carried by the plot.  Then, very gradually, the storytelling forms began to vary, the story content change, the narrative structure mutate…But hey!  Enough.  I’m not going to write the frigging book, at least not here and now.

If such a book were to exist, though, it might include. perhaps as an appendix, a discussion of how a certain kind of movie is evolving much as its source material evolved a half century or so earlier.  I refer, as you astute hooligans have already guessed, to superheroes.

The first superhero stories tended to be short – there were several of them in your 10-cent comic book – and the heroes were…well, they were the good guys.  The ones that beat the bad guys. Characterization, insofar as it existed, tended toward the sketchy.  All the heroes were white and waspy, and the minorities were small in number and often the kind of stereotypes that might make those of us with delicate sensibilities cringe – not because the writers and artists were bigots, but because they didn’t know better.  You could tell which heroes were which mainly by their powers: the Flash could run fast, Green Lantern had a magic ring, Hawkman had wings that enabled him to fly, et cetera, et cetera…Most of them also had double identities, also white and waspy: rich guys with no jobs, or scientists,or journalists – nary a trash collector or milkman in the lot.
The form – comic books –  soldiered on through good times and bad, growing more sophisticated year by year, and gradually those complete-in-one-issue stories were supplanted by elaborate serializations.  Genuine characterization entered those colored pages, and “adult” themes, and one morning I woke up and my benighted profession was being covered by the New York Times and taught in major universities and – ye gods! – I was respectable.

That was comics.

And movies?  I did mention movies, didn’t I?  Somewhere back there?

Well, yes I did.  But that topic might be a bit ungainly to be contained in the small bundle of verbiage remaining in the 500 words (more or less) I promised to deliver each week to Mike Gold back when ComicMix was in its birth throes.  Let’s table movies  until next week.  For now, some of you better get to the ATM because you’ll probably need to buy salt or to pay hardy young men with shovels because the weather people are predicting more of the same.  Then you can lie back, cuddle up with a mug of hot chocolate, gaze through the window at all that glistening splendor, and hope there are no power failures.

Next week: the cinema.

shazamordwaycvr-e1393196245964-7607439

REVIEW: Shazam! The Complete Series

shazamordwaycvr-e1393196245964-7607439Growing up, Saturday morning television meant cartoons and nothing but cartoons. By the 1970s, though, live-action bits crept in, starting with Christopher Glenn’s In the News interstitials on CBS along with silly things like The Banana Splits and H.R. Puffenstuff. In 1974, though, Filmation cleverly blended the two as it took the Big Red Cheese from comics to television. Shazam! debuted in the fall of 1974 with Michael Gray as Billy Batson, charged by the animated gods with their powers to fight crime in the adult body of Captain Marvel.

Last year, Warner Archive released the complete series on DVD and it is as charming as ever in its simplicity. In a mere thirty minutes, Billy and Mentor (Les Tremayne) rode the highways of California in their RV and when danger struck, the magic lightning let Bill become the hero (Jackson Bostwick). The effects were little better than when George Reeves donned the red and blue costume as Superman twenty years earlier. Both fought evil with similar solemnity and everything was put back to order by the time the end credits rolled.

Throughout the 3-disc, 28-episode collection, nary another character from the comics are used, divorcing it from the source material, which is a shame since it could have used a Dr. Sivana or animated Mr. Talky-Tawny. Also, the wizard Shazam is absent and Billy gets advice directly from Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.

Bostwick was an earnest and likeable Captain Marvel and when he was replaced by John Davey, it’s fairly seamless. Gray’s Billy is easily five years too old to be a convincing youth but he’s very likeable while veteran character Tremayne does a fine job with little material.

Unfortunately the series aired from 1974-1976, a time when parent groups pressured the networks into cleaning up the level of violence the precious children were exposed to which undercut what could have been a fine kid’s action series. There’s fun stuff going on but a lot of missed opportunities as each case became a teachable moment instead of a thrilling thirty minutes of action. Still, the show was a cut above its competition which is why it is so well remembered. There’s a crossover with Isis (Joanna Cameron), who helmed a spinoff series of her own that was collected some time back and worth seeking out.

It would have been nice to have some extras but the Warner Archive program brings things to smaller audiences at the cost of no money invested in such bonuses,. We do, though, get a lovely cover from artist Jerry Ordway, who did a memorable run with the character in the 1990s.

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