Tagged: Dennis O’Neil

Mike Gold: The Superhero Ideal

gold-art-130327-3288409Why doesn’t Batman use a gun?

Because his parents were shot down? Really? I mean… really?

That’s weak. Even for an obsessive-compulsive who’s borderline psychotic, that’s just silly. He’s got a belt full of lethal weapons, he’s got more in his car, and even more in his cave. And, speaking of OCD, they all have the same first name.

So, why doesn’t Batman use a gun?

Because it’s boring. It’s visually boring, and comics is a visual storytelling medium.

If the Joker comes running at him, he can whip out his Batgun and splatter the walls with green hair. Or he can start off a nifty three-page fight sequence.

Well, he can also whip out his Batarang and separate the crown from the clown, but that’s just one long panel. It might be entertaining if we were in one of those once-every-generation 3-D fads, but those fads never last long.

Let’s try it again.

The Red Skull is out after Captain America. Cap whips around and:

A)  Shoots him, obviously in self-defense and likely saving the lives of dozens if not hundreds of innocents to come, or

B)   Frisbees his mighty shield across the page and leaps upon the evil bastard and pummels the poo out of the guy, who even in defeat, manages to escape.

Yeah. What would Jack Kirby do?

Superheroes are not anti-gun because they are possessed by the liberal media. Superheroes don’t use guns because it’s unexciting storytelling. Gunplay in superhero comics is visually boring.

Police use guns because they are not paid by the panel and they have some concern over what their spouses are making for dinner. Taking the longer view, our military uses guns for much the same reason. In their world, visual excitement will likely get them killed.

You know who else uses guns?

Gun nuts. But that’s only in the real world.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Michael Davis: Brokeback Bastard

Davis Art 130219DC Comics is hiring a very anti-gay writer named Orson Scott Card to write for them.  That’s bad enough in my opinion, but they are giving him Superman to write.

Damn DC.

Giving a guy who wishes gay people were wiped off the face of earth is one thing, but giving him Superman is just ballsy as shit.

The outcry in the industry is loud and clear. There’s a movement to have DC just fire the guy outright.

Not gonna happen.

Let me be clear, I don’t think DC will fire the guy unless videotapes are found of him doing unnatural things with a German Sheppard… a girl German Sheppard, of course. I don’t want to offend him in case he’s reading this.

This is a win – win for DC. They get a pretty good writer and massive publicity so why fire the guy? When the book comes out they will get another round of colossal exposure so like I said, why fire the guy? For DC this is not personal, it’s business.

I say, let the guy write the book. Really.

If you want to take a stance against him and his views as I do, trying to get him fired is the wrong way to go about it at least I think so. Nothing short of a massive boycott will make a dent in stopping this guy from doing the Superman story.

But there is another way…

Take the writer to task at every turn. Make him own his views. Challenge him all the places where DC will send him to promote the book. Like comic book conventions, or any online forums, or any book signings anywhere he will show his bigoted face. Then the story is about his hated, his views and his failings as a human being. No company wants that shit following them around, over and over and over.

Trust me on this; I know first hand just how hard that sort of bad press hits corporate America. The way they are perceived by the public is easy to weather unless it keeps happening.

Now is if they also just happen to be a publicly traded company…

Yippee Ki Yay Mother Fucker.

I like what DC is doing with its line these days. I don’t like to think that one of my favorite comic book characters is going to be written by a guy who would deny others their right to exist.

I don’t blame DC for hiring the guy, I don’t blame them for standing behind him (although it better not be a guy standing behind him) because like I said for them it’s not personal it’s business.

For me and I’m guessing many of you making his comic book journey miserable is not business, it’s personal.

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Marc Alan Fishman: The Superior Spider-Ploy

fishman-art-121222-1272828SPOILER ALERT: To be fair… if you’ve not read Amazing Spider-Man #700, and care about the ending, and haven’t scoured the interwebs for spoilers previously? Please don’t read this week. Go read Dennis O’Neil’s article instead. It’s better than mine anyway.

Awhile back Michael Davis and I got into a heated argument over balls. Not kickballs. Not softballs. Not soccer balls. Balls. Juevos. Or Huevos, depending on how you look at it. We bickered a bit on whether DC’s New52 was a move made with testicular fortitude. Well, I’d like to think ultimately I won. I said they didn’t use enough man-juice. They got the bump in sales they wanted, but I don’t believe for a second they “changed the industry,” “changed the game,” or did anything more than what they did after the first Crisis on Infinite Earths – but in a significantly more watered down way. But I digress. This week, I’m not here to chastise DC. This week. I’m here to celebrate a bold and ballsy move by none other than Dan Slott. His Superior Spider-Man is a gutsy concept that deserves recognition.

Slott started in on his run on Amazing Spider-Man way back at issue #546. One-two-skip-a-few-ninety-nine-six-hundred. At issue #600 Dan started what would lead to a hundred issue long game wherein he would eventually do the (mostly) unthinkable: he would kill Peter Parker, and in true comic fashion mind-swap Otto Octavious into the titular hero’s body. And he’d keep it that way. Thus, when Marvel launches Superior Spider-Man with Doc Ock as Peter Parker… we have a new(ish) Spider-Man in the 616. Balls, kiddos.

The ideology here is simple. Thwarted time and again, Octavious decided to play one of the longest cons in comic history. In bits and pieces and dribs and drabs, Doc Ock found ways into Peter Parker’s head. And after his nefarious plan succeeds, in very a Ozymandias’ way, we are left with Spider-Ock. But instead of proclaiming potential world domination, instead Slott aims Octavious towards a goal that makes him more a shade of gray than previously thought. To paraphrase: all Otto’s ever wanted (aside from a dead nemesis for years and years, and maybe a better haircut) was to improve the world. Now, with this newfound great power will come great solutions. He has proclaimed that he will be the superior Spider-Man. Natch.

Now, the whole body swap thing has been done before. As has the “replace the title character with character X.” Bucky-Cap. Dick Grayson-Bats. Frog-Thor. And yes, we know that Spidey-Classic will no doubt be back in his own body safe and sound. And let’s even be so bold as to suggest somehow Otto will get himself a new body too. Younger. Stronger. Designed with 100% more lines and angst. It’s just the nature of this business. Don’t believe me? Go look at Frank Castle. Bloodstone my Jewish ass. But that’s a whole ‘nother show, as Alton Brown might say. The key here, and the reason I’m so excited about this, is because of the sheer novelty.

It’s widely known my favorite book of 2011 was Scott Snyder’s Detective Comics, starring Dick Grayson under the cape and cowl. I had not purchased a Batman book for eight years prior. Thank you, Hush. Why did I return? Especially when I didn’t know Scott from a hole in the wall? Because of the opportunity to give me something new. And whereas seemingly all other Marvel titles being brought into the “NOW,” here Slott decided to end his pre-now run with a big bang. Everyone else put the toys neatly back on the shelf. Balls. Of course, it may be a bit unfair to say that. Slott leaves Amazing Spider-Man to go to… Superior Spider-Man. So, perhaps he’s only semi-ballsy? Nay. To start a new number one with such a concept – for however long it goes on for – is a calculated risk.

Most of us in comic land know that a shiny new #1 on the shelf is an invitation to hop on board the bandwagon before it’s too late. I missed the boat (er… wagon) already on Daredevil, Hawkeye, and a few others outside the big two. To start a book by throwing out the previously known characteristics of your lead hero is something even more refreshing that Bucky-Cap and the like. Octo-Spidey has a cold and calculating mind behind the bright spandex. He has knowledge of the underworld other heroes would not be privy to. And he has all of Peter’s knowledge on top of his own. That’s two super-scientists for the price of one, for those counting. All of these things contribute to an amazing (superior? Nah, too easy) amount of potential energy. So long as Slott can convert that to kinetic energy he has an opportunity to redefine a hero with decades of backstory (and a ton of it truly despised). Goodbye clone saga. Goodbye “One More Day.” Hello new stories. For however long they last.

Speaking of that length, I cite Señor Miguel Oro. “…It’s not merely a matter of execution: eventually, the readers’ patience will wear out. The trick it to make the arc so compelling you don’t want it to revert. That’s some trick. But even then, you’re racing against the reader’s expectations.”

And therein lies the ultimate question. How long can Dan Slott keep the ball in the air. The longer he does it, the more attention will gather around the book. I mean, with a major motion picture looming not too far off in the distance, can Slott successfully maintain a Spider-Man that isn’t? Only one way to tell. And while I only read “Ends of the Earth” on his Amazing Spider-Man run before being lured elsewhere… I for one will jump on board as long as he delivers.

Dan Slott, the balls are in your court. Now (heh), use them.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Mike Gold: Joe Kubert, Personally

gold-art-120815-8105636One of the hardest questions for me to answer begins with the phrase “What is your favorite…?”

My Top 10 movie list has over 100 movies on it. My Top 10 television shows list must first be categorized: is it fair to compare Rocky and Bullwinkle to The Prisoner? Well, maybe that’s a bad example, but I think you get my point. If you were to ask me to name my favorite musician, I’d go into a fugue state and you’d get scared and leave.

There is one exception. If you were to ask me who my favorite comics creator is – and you were to ask me this question at any time in the past half-century – I would immediately and firmly respond “Joe Kubert.”

As we reported, Joe died Sunday evening. It was one of those moments when time… simply… stopped. For the past decade I’ve been in amazement that Joe was still giving us a graphic novel and a mini-series or special or something every year. Jeez, if I make it to 85 (and I’m nowhere in as good a shape as Joe was) I’m planning on lying there bitching until somebody changes my Depends. Joe was still at it, producing great stuff.

I was fortunate to know both Joe and his wife Muriel (predeceased by four years); Muriel knew the depths of my affection for her husband’s work, Joe knew it as well and was quite gracious but, as to be expected from an artist of his caliber, I could tell he wasn’t connecting with my praise for something he had finished months ago. He already was on to the next thing. Or maybe the one after that.

When I first started working at DC Comics back in 1976, my office was two doors down from Julius Schwartz. Denny O’Neil had the office next to me. Joe Orlando – Joe Orlando! – was a few doors down from that. And, three days a week, there was Joe Kubert. The best of the best.

I was a 26 year-old fanboy and if I wasn’t breathing I would have thought I had gone to heaven.

Kubert had been my favorite comics creator since the day my mother bought me Brave and the Bold #34, cover-dated February-March 1961. It featured the debut of the silver age Hawkman. We were getting on Chicago’s L, headed towards the Loop for my first visit to the eye doctor. I was anxious to read the comic; it looked really cool. Exciting. Different. And new superheroes were few and far between in those days of buggy whips and gas lamps.

Of course, my eye doctor did what eye doctors do: she put those serious drops in my eyes and everything got all blurry and then she exiled me to the outer office while my pupils dilated to the size of manhole covers. I was told to sit there quietly for an hour. I was ten years old; the concept of “sitting quietly” was well beyond my understanding. Certainly, not with that awesome-looking comic book on my lap.

I tried to read it. My mother started to scream about how I’d permanently ruin my eyes. She was supportive of my reading comics, she just had odd theories about how I’d go blind. Being me, I continued to try to read the Hawkman debut but now more defiantly, with purpose and determination – despite the fact that each panel was more blurry than the previous. I went through that book several times, trying my damnedest to understand it. To see it.

The book was astonishingly great – a tribute to writer Gardner Fox and editor Julie Schwartz as well as to Joe. After I finally read the comic in focus, it was clear to me that it was worth all the effort. That’s probably what made me a Joe Kubert fan.

By 1976 I had learned first-hand that a lot of the public figures I admired weren’t really worthy of such tribute on a personal level; if you were going to meet a lot of celebrities, you had to learn how to divorce yourself from the person and remain married to that person’s work. This is a lot less the case in the comics field, I’m happy to report.

And it most certainly was not the case with Joe Kubert. We could be diametrically opposed on certain political and social issues, and we were, but it didn’t matter one bit. Part of that came from Joe’s upbringing in the Talmudic arts where discussion and debate is encouraged and honored. But most of that came from Joe’s simply being a great, great guy.

That’s what I have to say about Joe Kubert. He was a great, great guy.

Here’s what I have to say to Joe Kubert.

Thank you.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

PULP OBSCURA DEBUTS NEW ADVENTURES OF ARMLESS O’NEIL!

  • News
  • June 17, 2012

A stranger with a glittering hook for a left hand. He came to the untamed wilderness of Africa to escape from a dark, troubled past to make his fortune. Yet his new life comes at an unexpected price. Wherever he goes adventure, danger, and death seems to follow… From Pulp Obscura comes five brand new adventures of one of the most unique heroes of Classic Pulp!

Armless O’Neil, explorer, adventurer, and soldier of fortune with his own unique view on life and a thirst for action like no other lives once more in the pages of Pulp Obscura, an imprint from Pro Se Productions in conjunction with Altus Press!

In the Heart of the Dark Continent, the Man Known as Armless O’Neil Hunts for Legendary Treasures, but Discovers a World of Shadowy Secrets, Wild Danger, and Sensational Adventure! Thrill to Five Fantastic Stories of Savage Mystery, Amazing Action, and Incredible Excitement from Sean Taylor, Nick Ahlhelm, R. P. Steeves, I. A. Watson, and Chuck Miller! Follow Armless O’Neil as he makes his way in bold new stories from the finest in New Pulp today! Featuring a stunning cover by Mike Fyles and wonderful cover design by Sean Ali as well as excellent interior design by Matt Moring (Print) and Russ Anderson(Ebook), Pulp Obscura Proudly Presents Blood-Price of the Missionary’s Gold: The New Adventures of Armless O’Neil! From Pro Se Productions in conjunction with Altus Press! Pro Se Productions- Puttin’ The Monthly Back into Pulp!

Get BLOOD-THE PRICE OF THE MISSIONARY’S GOLD: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ARMLESS O’NEIL in print today for $12.00 from Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/7yfpt8p as well as www.prosepulp.com and www.pulpobscura.net!  

Also available in Ebook format for the Kindle at http://tinyurl.com/c6up47q and in multiple formats at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/172960 for only $2.99!

For the classic adventures of Armless O’Neil, check out Altus Press’ latest release – SWAMP FETISH: THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF ARMLESS O’NEIL VOLUME 2 by Dan Cushman featuring an all new introduction by James Reasoner!  Get yours today at Amazon or at http://tinyurl.com/cx2bms3 !

DENNIS O’NEIL: The Weight of Fall

It’s the time of year when the world holds its breath. Back from vacation and if you’re old enough and lucky enough to be employed, fill the tank, Monday morning will be here before you know it, and if you’re going to school, either to sit in rows among the other students or to stand and teach… well, there are supplies to get – how late is Staples open? – and maybe some last minute reading and – one, two, three, all of us cop to it now – the anticipation: will the subjects be interesting, will the room’s other occupants be pleasant and/or pretty or trolls, will something that spins existence on its axis occur and change life forever and if you’re a lady who’s just retired after schoolmarming in four states for fifty years will you feel a tad blue – not that I know anyone like that – and, finally, will the English teacher get really frosted at having to read sentences that go on and on and on and on…?

No gold star for me? I’ll live with it.

If you’re a comics geek – and yes, we do know who we are – you may be feeling a bit disoriented. Not long ago, the days that cluster around the September holiday marked the end of major fan activity. The big conventions were history, the summer annuals lie all snug in their Mylar nests, the big publishers seemed to take a breather between those annuals and the big Christmas push to fill stockings with graphic novels, preferably in hardcover. Oh sure, all the regular titles appeared, but they were just … you know… stories. Nothing special. This year, though, there are several conventions yet to come, including the monster-doozie that occurs at the Javits Center in Manhattan, Marvel and DC are going digital, which will almost certainly change the biz, maybe a lot, and – what am I forgetting…?

Oh yeah. DC Comics is relaunching its whole line. Relaunching its superhero pantheon when print publishing is struggling to survive and reinvent itself in what may be the most turbulent climate since Gutenberg set his first stick of type: an important bookstore chain that according to one estimate accounts for maybe fifteen percent of retail sales is closing its many doors and an online retailer is altering the way business is done and nobody seems to know what the hell the e-book revolution will spawn.

All that is figure resting on the ground of a legislative system that seems hopelessly broken and huge environmental uncertainties that might affect publishing and everything else.

Plus…is the Mayans who say the world will end next year? Or am I thinking of that television preacher?

Yessir, Mr. D, the times they are a’changin’.

Ask me if I care. In about six weeks, the Rockland County foliage will begin its yearly display and, for a while, the daily trip to the mailbox will be reason for rejoicing. That will be enough now, and maybe forever.

Recommended Reading: The Will Eisner Companion, by N.C. Christopher Couch and Stephen Weiner. Disclosure: I contributed an essay to this book, but I’m not in the way of any royalties. If you know Eisner’s work, you’ll want to read it, and if you don’t…hey, it’s about time.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

 

MIKE GOLD: Hey, Here’s A Surprise!

mike-gold-column-photo-8889817Well, I’m having fun.

Back when we started out, ComicMix used to run all these fabulous columns written by all these swell writers and, well, by me too. Those columns disappeared after about a year and a half and a lot of people told us they wanted ‘em back. Among those people were most of the columnists themselves. And me. Man, I bitched up a storm. And nobody can bitch up a storm like me.

So we re-geared out operations (that term creates the ambiance that we actually have a clue as to what we’re doing), and, effective right now, we’re reinstating our daily columns. Joining returning writers Dennis O’Neil, John Ostrander, Martha Thomases, Michael Davis and myself are two newcomers: Marc Alan Fishman and Mindy Newell.

You know Marc from his frequent contributions to ComicMix. He’s just a kid, which is weird because his wife is pregnant with a smaller, younger kid. A life-long comics fan who knows his barbecue, Marc is part of the mighty Unshaven Comics crew. That’s at www.unshavencomicsonline.com, where he’s joined by his buddies and my pals Matt Wright and Kyle Gnepper. Together, they publish indy comics that are truly worth reading; that’s how we found Marc in the first place. Check ‘em out at their website.

Chances are pretty damn good you’ve also heard of Mindy. She’s making her return to comics here at ComicMix; she spent about five years editing at Marvel Comics and ten years writing such features as Wonder Woman, Catwoman, the Legion of Super-Heroes, American Flagg!, Daredevil, Black Widow, The Next Wave… you get the idea. She’s also an operating room nurse, which I think might come in handy around here. Somebody told me – I think it was Mindy – that I cannot live on barbecue alone. I try.

We’ll be focusing more solidly on comics than we did last time around. Not to say we’ve abandoned the heavy political/social stuff: Martha, Michael and I have been writing those type of columns every week for www.michaeldavisworld.com for a couple years now and we’ll be continuing to do so until we get arrested for sedition.

But here at ComicMix we’ll be mostly talking about comics and directly related media and phenomena. We’ll probably be talking about the comics related movies and teevee shows and, if we can find somebody wealthy enough to buy tickets, even to comics related Broadway plays. Perhaps I’ll even do an expose about just how many Wonder Woman statues a 35-year-old woman can squeeze into her basement apartment.

Most important, we invite you to join in on the fun. We’re in for some hectic times in the greater comics world. DC is recreating itself again, and Marvel going nuts with special events. Everybody’s got something new, and new publishers continue to pop up like rabid Whac-a-Moles. Please feel free to comment until your fingers fall off. It’s probable that the relevant columnist will play in and we can get a nice little dialog going. Think of ComicMix as sort of like Twitter with an attention span.

And bring along your sense of humor.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil!

Superheroes Come Home, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • October 14, 2008

I guess we’ll have to get our superhero fixes from comic books for a while, though I’m not complaining, because isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? My glances through the various newspapers and magazines that come to this house tell me that there are no superhero movies coming to a theater near me, and the closest thing to a new superhero on television is those can-do wheels on Knight Rider, whose ancestor is the Batman utility belt of the middle-period comics and the early Green Arrow quiver; whatever the situation calls for…well, here it is – just the thing. Some of last season’s superdoers are back, and some of them will be on our living room screen, though the plot(s) of one seem to be unfocused and the future of another, The Sarah Conner Chronicles, seems to be iffy, which saddens me because one of the stars makes my dirty old man merit badge pulsate.

Superheroes and summertime seem to be yoked. As usual, commerce rather than aesthetics seem to be the reason. Until recently, and maybe even now, publishers felt that their comic book audience – kids – had more disposable income and more leisure during the hot months and so they saved their annuals and double-sized issues and important stories – Reed and Sue get married! – for the time when the young’uns lucky or unlucky enough not to have jobs didn’t recite the pledge of allegiance every morning.

(Ah, I can remember – or almost remember – the feel of the cool concrete of a front porch under my prone body as I looked at the funny book and wondered why his shirt was red if his name was Green Lantern and couldn’t his cape at least be green? Was there an editor in the making here?)

(more…)

Smoke Gets In Your Brain, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

 

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette / Puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death. / Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate / That you hate to make him wait, / but you just gotta have another cigarette. – Merle Travis 

I was getting ready to leave the office and walk over to NBC, where I planned to tape a reply to someone who had accused Batman of being in league with the Big Tobacco. It seems that in one panel Batman is standing on a roof, and in the background, on another roof, there was a billboard with a fragment of what might have been a cigarette ad visible. Our accuser said that putting Batman proximate to a cigarette image amounted to Batman – and his creators – endorsing tobacco products and advocating their use to children.

Well, no. Had I kept my rendezvous with the microphones and cameras, I would have probably observed that we agreed that smoking was bad and none of our characters ever actually smoked – Bruce Wayne abandoned his pipe early in his career – and, in fact, we had just done a pro bono anti-smoking ad for the American Heart Association. I might have taken my screed just a bit further and argued that we had always presented Batman’s turf as a realistic American city and – sorry! – urban areas are full of cigarette ads.

I didn’t have to do any of that. At the last moment, cooler heads prevailed and said that if I went on the air, our accuser would answer my answer and prolong the story’s life, whereas if we simply ignored it, the story would not survive into the next news cycle, which is exactly what happened.

One might ask why I allowed the billboard to appear in the first place. For the sake of realism? Or did I just miss it when I edited the artwork? Or did I see it and decide it wasn’t worth the hassle of a change? Humbling answer to all of the above: I don’t remember.

But this pretty inconsequential incident does raise another question: Where do the obligations of good citizenship and moral behavior end and the obligations to storytelling begin? Some kinds of people smoke and drink and take drugs and they’re not all hideous monsters, and some kids are influenced by what they experience through the media. I’ve heard recovering alcoholics say that the movie images of glamorous, witty sophisticates swilling booze prompted them to emulate the swillers and led, eventually, to badly damaged lives. But people do drink, and in a fictional world that mirrors the real one, shouldn’t drinkers – and smokers and druggies – be presented? Or does the potential harm of these behaviors outweigh aesthetic and narrative considerations?

I don’t know.

Sometimes, the coexistence of storytelling and responsible citizenship is painfully troubled, and sometimes I’m glad I no longer sit in an editor’s chair.

RECOMMENDED READING: The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World, By Matthew Stewart. 

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and The Shadow– among others – as well as many novels, stories and articles. The Question: Epitaph For A Hero, reprinting the third six issues of his classic series with artists Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar, will be on sale any minute now, and his novelization of the movie The Dark Knight is on sale right now. He’ll be taking another shot at the ol’ Bat in an upcoming story-arc, too.  

Artwork by Kim Roberson, from Underworld. 

Batman’s Comedy of Eros, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • September 16, 2008

Way back in the late 80s, or maybe early 90s, an inker working on one of DC’s superhero comics rendered a female form rather more like the Lord made female forms than the mores of the time allowed. The editor dealt with the problem by putting a color hold – a purple one, I think – over what some would have deemed offensive nudity.  Sex always wins. The lady’s charms shone clearly though the purple haze and a fuss ensued.

I remembered this anecdote when I saw, in the New York Times, an item about a Batman comic describing “a two page action sequence that is filled with foul language…uttered by (a) heroine…

“A black bar covered the blue words, but it was too transparent and allowed the text to be read.” Sex always wins and maybe “foul language” at least doesn’t fight fair.

According to the Times, the print run was destroyed. Having made more than my share of blunders when I sat in an editor’s chair, I know how easily goofs like this can occur and I hope the ensuing fuss doesn’t devolve on the editor, whoever he or she may be. As a certain Secretary of Defense said, stuff happens.

But I’m curious.  Did the creative folk always intend the offensive language to be covered? Surely not. Why go to the bother and expense of lettering copy that no one will read? Easier, one imagines, to simply do the black bars in the first place, though as a storytelling strategy, that would be questionable; why pull the reader out of the story while they puzzle over the meaning of the black bars?

Okay, the copy was meant to be seen? Didn’t somebody wonder if such language could cause trouble and…I dunno – ask around?

Maybe someone saw it as a free speech issue. If so, I’d demur.

I think the First Amendment is the crown jewel of the Constitution, and, personally, I can be a potty mouth. Much of my choirboy vocabulary was left on an aircraft carrier and much of whatever was left in the gutters of the East Village, pre-gentrification. But I think the way things are marketed creates expectations, and it’s not playing fair with the customers to thwart those expectations. Anything – and I do mean anything – should be allowed in the public arena, but if one buys a book bylined Henry James, one should not be subjected to a story by Mickey Spillane.

Comics have come a considerable distance in the few years since I left editing. Hell and damn, once verboten seem okay both in comics and on TV, and a few gamier locutions are beginning to pop up. But I don’t believe the medium – comics – has evolved to the point where authentic street lingo is expected.

A final consideration: The question in matters like this is always a simple one. Does it help the narrative? Is the vocabulary the writer is using his way of showing off, or does it serve a larger purpose? Any vocabulary that tells the story is almost certainly the right vocabulary, though I’d expect to get argument on this. In the case of the Batman comic we’ve been discussing, I don’t know, and probably never will.

RECOMMENDED READING: Redemolished, by Alfred Bester

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and The Shadow– among others – as well as many novels, stories and articles. The Question: Epitaph For A Hero, reprinting the third six issues of his classic series with artists Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar, will be on sale in September, and his novelization of the movie The Dark Knight is on sale right now. He’ll be taking another shot at the ol’ Bat in an upcoming story-arc, too. 

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