Tagged: Green Arrow

Pow! Zap! Dim! Thick! Asinine! by Michael Davis

  • News
  • February 8, 2008

hello-kitty-superman-9367110Have you noticed that whenever there is an article which feature comics, it almost always features a Pow, Zap, or some such idiotic way to describe comic books in the title? If not fight effects then it will begin with Holy, as in Holy Crack Whore! Comics find their way into Rehab!

As a comic book reader you no doubt want to scream your disapproval, but alas you cannot, as any action you take in defense of comic books would get you branded a geek at best or immature at worst. 
 
I am a grown man and love comic books and the industry that produces them, but I, like you am a wee bit…
 
PATRIOTS SUCK!
 
Sorry. Just had a subliminal moment and flashed back to the NY Giant’s impossible Super Bowl win. Forgive me, it won’t happen agai…
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR PERFECT SEASON, SUCKERS??
 
I am so sorry that keeps happening. However, in my defense I was so sick of hearing how my beloved Giants were just a gnat on the ass of the Patriots. I was also sick of hearing about the perfect season of the Patriots, so much so, I have developed subliminalitis. 
 
Sub*lim*in*al*itis: 
The abrupt screaming out of phrases such as The Patriots got their cocky asses kicked, during unrelated conversations or writings. See: Dynasty…not. 
 
To the fans in New England, hold your head up high! You won EVERY SINGLE GAME…almost!
 
You only lost one game.
 
Only one.
 
One loss.
 
The Super Bowl.
 
I’m sure that people will forget that you lost the Super Bowl but won 18 games.
 
Sure, they will!
 
Yep, So hold your head up high! 
 
That way you can see the sign that says LOSERS!! 
 
As I was saying, I am a grown man and love comic books and the industry that produces them, but I like you am a wee bit tired of the comic book industry being look at as “kid stuff.” Just the other day I was reading the February 4th issue of The National Law Journal…
 

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52 Weeks of Reading Recommendations by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • February 6, 2008

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When ComicMix launched a year ago, we were especially pleased to include the legendary Dennis O’Neil as one of our regular columnists.  Denny has written and/or edited every major character in comics, including Batman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Superman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Iron Man, the Question, Azrael, and Millie the Model.

Back in the day, when comics had letter columns, Denny would usually share his reading preferences with readers.  We’re delighted to have continued this tradition here on ComicMix in Denny’s weekly columns.

To celebrate the last 52 weeks of Denny’s contributions to ComicMix, here’s a list of what he’s recommended so far, in the order he recommended them and with his thoughts on the recommendations (when he provided them). You’ll notice that, sometimes, he suggests the same book more than once.  And sometimes, he suggests more than one book at a time.  That’s the kind of reader Denny is — he takes his time, and he’s eclectic.

Good reading!

2/13/07

Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud

This is the one essential book for anyone with a genuine interest in the subject.

2/20/97

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris

2/27/07

Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, by Thich Nhat Hanh

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William James and the Superbowl, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • February 5, 2008

Big game day. As I sit down to write this, the coin toss that will start this year’s Superbowl is about 90 minutes away. Let a hush fall over the universe. The Pats and the Giants are preparing to vie for godlike supremacy. Who’s your favorite QB – Eli or Tom? Me – I’m going for the Giants, not because I know anything about them, but rather because Marifran likes the Patriots and we have this annual bet. Winner gets to choose the next movie. Call us sports.

Wonder what William James would have thought of the Superbowl?

William James, brother of Henry, as the English majors and philosophy fans among you probably know, launched the concept of the “moral equivalent of war.” Although he was a self-proclaimed pacifist, he recognized that war has its uses – he even declared that history would be “insipid” without it. And it does. It hastens technological development, helps young men understand others who are not of their tribe, offers an opportunity for individuals to test themselves (and maybe learn what they really feel), provides an opportunity to develop managerial skills…You can probably add to the list.

War also kills and maims the innocent and destroys economies and nations and minds and brutalizes the survivors and gives money and power to those least deserving of them, such as men who have never fired a shot except, maybe, at forest animals and who knows? – even then the shooter might miss his target and hit a companion instead. Feel free to add to this list, too.

The trick, then, according to James and like minds, is to find a way to do the good things war does, and omit the bad. It’s a trick nobody has learned how to do. But we have some activities that approximate war that don’t do significant harm and may do some good, and sports is one of them. It allows young folk to obey their evolutionary imperative to engage in strenuous physicality with the goal of beating someone or something and maybe copping some glory and admiring glances and, please, let us not knock that imperative; it helped our distant, burrow-dwelling ancestors to claim a home on the Earth’s surface after a big chunk of rock did in the dinosaurs.

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The Worst TV Show Ever – Part 2, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • February 1, 2008

Last week I decided to write the worst TV show pitch in history since that is all that seems to get on the air these days. My show is called I’m An Asshole If I Watch This Show.

It’s Fantasy Island meets Bambi meets Lord Of The Rings meets Don’t Forget The Lyrics meets any reality show meets Leave It To Beaver meets Cheers!
 
Last week I introduced you to the regulars of a karaoke bar called Ass Funk. A young Asian lady named Denise Lee had come into the bar to drown her sorrows because her daddy had presented her with what he said was proof that the man Denise was going to marry was a Hobbit. Her fiancé Bilbo Baggins assured her he was not a Hobbit and that her father was just afraid of losing her.
 
When last we left Denise she had fallen off the Karaoke bar stage and been pimp slapped… 
 
Hey…wait a sec.
 
You see that link in my first paragraph? Well click on it and you’ll get last week’s column. Why the heck am I rewriting all this? On my horrible show there would be no damn recap. So here’s the rest of what a typical story line would be on my show…
 
Bilbo Baggins is staring at his ring while he tells Denise to go ahead and have him checked out. That way she will have an answer her father can never question. Denise resists this but Bilbo insists, saying “I have nothing to hide. I’m not a Hobbit. There are a lot of three feet tall people who don’t wear shoes and have the ring that rules all rings out there. Your father has raised the question, it must be answered beyond any doubt.” Denise sees the logic in this and decides to take the envelope her father gave her to the police department so she can get the proof she needs. Before she leaves she turns and asks Bilbo where he’s from. “I’m from the Shire.” He says without thinking. “Where’s that?” Denise asks. “It’s eh…in the hood near South Central.” He blurts out.
 

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Hate, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • January 29, 2008

Calling movie actors “stars” was appropriate when I was a midwestern lad, long ago, because they seemed as distant and unattainable as those celestial twinklers that speckled the summer sky. None of my friends or relatives were movie stars — they were butchers or clerks or drivers or printers — and what the stars did, acting, wasn’t a real job and so those who did it weren’t real people. They were…stars. But if you knew someone who knew, or at least had spoken to, one of these distant beings who lived in places you never expected to visit, the stars became somehow real — or maybe realer, anyway. They were, if not people, then some sort of demi-people.

Clark Gable was a star. But Rock Hudson was both more and less than a star because I knew a girl who had worked as an extra on one of his films. Julia Adams…heck, she was a person, because she did a personal appearance at the grocery co-op my father belonged to when she was co-starring with Tyrone Power in Mississippi Gambler and people I knew actually saw her in the flesh. And didn’t that make Power a demi-person, too, by association?

Which brings us to Heath Ledger. I was never in a room with him, never saw him on the street, spoke to him on the phone, none of that. But when a heard about his death a few days ago, I felt just a tiny bit worse than I usually feel when someone whose work I admire passes. Why? Mr. Ledger and I lived in two of the same neighborhoods, one in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan, though not at the same time, and my big 2007 project was writing a novel based on the script of a movie Mr. Ledger performs in. Somehow, all this makes me feel a dim and distant connection to him.

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Ballad of a Thin Man, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • January 26, 2008

 

Last weekend, we finally caught up with I’m Not There, the brilliant Todd Haynes movie about the myths of Bob Dylan. The director intertwines the lives of six men, each symbolizing a stage of Dylan’s artistic development and public persona. They include a wide range: a young black boy, played by Marcus Carl Franklin; the protest singer, played by Christian Bale; the walking, talking enigma played by Cate Blanchett; the egomaniacal prick, played by Heath Ledger; the romantic, Ben Winshaw; and the lonesome recluse, played by Richard Gere. I don’t know if you’d like it if you aren’t a Dylan fan, but, if you are, it’s an amazing narrative.
 
On Monday, Brian Williams reported on the NBC Nightly News that the Monday of the last full week of January is known as “Blue Monday,” because it’s the single day that the most people are depressed, and has the highest suicide rate. 
 
On Tuesday, Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment.
 
I don’t mean to imply that he committed suicide. His body was found by a masseuse, with whom he had an appointment, and people planning suicide don’t usually get a massage first. As I write this, there’s not a lot of information about what caused his death. The autopsy didn’t reveal anything, nor was there a suicide note. Police found prescription drugs in the apartment, but they’d find prescription drugs in my apartment, too. There was no evidence that these drugs had been taken in anything other than the prescribed dose. 
 
He was only 28 years old, and he had a daughter, Matilda, age two. And now he’s gone.
 
We know and grieve over Heath Ledger because he was famous. We knew his face. We sat in the dark of movie theaters, and projected our own emotions into his eyes. He was young and handsome and talented, and it’s a loss for all of us.
 
Those of us who love comics felt a special kinship, because he was playing The Joker in The Dark Knight. The trailers and the early teasers indicate that he gave a brilliant performance, one that understands the complicated character created by Jerry Robinson and further sculpted by dozens of writers and artists over the past 50 years.
 

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Cut Them Off At The Past, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • January 15, 2008

And the Screen Writers Guild lurches into a tenth week and if there’s any end in sight, I haven’t heard about it.

Last time, I mentioned the Academy of Comic Book Arts and its failure to do any significant negotiating on behalf of its members. ACBA wasn’t the first attempt, though, to organize those glorious mavericks, the comic book community. In the 60s…

Wait! Better issue a warning before I go further. Do not regard anything that follows as gospel. (In fact, you might consider not regarding the Gospel as gospel, but let us not digress.) I have no reason not to believe what I’m about to tell you except one: About a year before he died, Arnold Drake, who was a busy comic book writer at the time we’ll be discussing, told me that the story I had wasn’t the whole story, or even necessarily accurate. I don’t know why I didn’t press him for further information, but I didn’t.

Okay, the story:

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Cartoonists Of The World Unite, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • January 8, 2008
The television and movie Writers Guild strike lurches into its ninth week. If it goes on much longer, we may be doomed to even more staged “reality” and contest shows. Might be a good time to rekindle a book reading habit.
 
I’ve heard grumbling from folk who work that side of the street to the effect that the strike could have been better managed. Although I’m technically a member of the Guild, I don’t have an opinion – about the strike, that is. Two years ago, I was told that since I hadn’t done any United States television work for a decade, I was being put on retired status, which means, I think, that I can still benefit from the Guild’s services, but I don’t have to pay dues or have my mail box filled with notices of seminars and other industry events. 
 
All fine with me.
 
About the Guild, as separate from the strike, I do have an opinion. I think the Guild is a noble organization, one that does exactly what a union should do, and no more. It collectively bargains, it protects members’ rights; it offers education and retirement benefits. And membership costs are more than reasonable. The current disagreement is over whether/how much writers should benefit from ancillary use of their stuff, mostly new media and computer related. I can imagine no sane reason why writers should not get such benefits, but I admit to bias.
 

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I Like Sex, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • January 4, 2008

 

Happy New Year!!
 
Ah, an election year! It’s time we express our will as Americans! It’s time we hear about all the grand new ideas that our candidates have to offer!
 
It’s time after seven years of…eh…of…
 
I’m not sure what the last seven years was about, but it’s time to elect a new President! 
 
As long time readers of this column know, I am a Liberal Democrat. What you most likely don’t know is I should be a Conservative Republican. Yep! I’ll say it again: I should be a Conservative Republican! 
 
Why?
 
I hate big government.
I’m tough on crime.
I believe in a strong military.
I want America to the biggest and strongest MF on the planet. 
 
There are plenty of other reasons why I should be a conservative. The reasons I’m not are few and simple. 
 

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The Top 10 Reasons I’m Glad it’s 2008, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • December 28, 2007

 

Happy New Year!!
 
Soon it will be 2008! An entire new year! A fresh start! A new beginning! A new lease on life! I love it, love it LOVE IT!
 
Before my last rant of 07 begins, I should address some things. I’ve been asked repeatedly as to why my last two columns were a bit, shall we say… reflective?
 
Somebody even asked me why last week’s column were gloomy and downright depressing. Well, as I said in my very first column 46 weeks ago, I would always carry a real point of view in this space. 
 
My point of view.
 
I just can’t join the crowd and march to the same beat as everyone else does. As Sammy Davis Jr. said “ I got to be me.”  
 
Who is Sammy Davis Jr.? 
 

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