Tagged: Green Arrow

Thank you. Thank you very much… by Michael Davis

  • News
  • November 23, 2007

Every Thanksgiving the media does reports on what makes people thankful. It’s always the same things. Husbands are thankful for their wives and kids. Wives are thankful for their husband and kids. Older people are thankful for good health. Kids are thankful for their Mom & Dad. Blah, blah, blah…

blahblahblahblahblahblah!

Give me a break. I mean come on; everybody loves his or her family. Well almost everybody. I forgot about the Menendez Brothers.

I love my family, as I’m sure you do but besides them, I wonder what people are really thankful for?

I think I may know…

Men are thankful for women and power tools. Women are thankful for shoes and power tools (…give it a moment). Skinny people are thankful for fat people. Fat people are thankful for meat. Black people are thankful for Lincoln and videotape, especially in Los Angeles. White people are thankful for golf and vacations. Super models are thankful for books on tape. Liberals are thankful for rent control and gun legislation. Conservatives are thankful for gated communities and guns. (more…)

Power!, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • November 13, 2007

So you wanna be a superhero. Okay, where are your powers going to come from?

For years – nay, hundreds of years; nay, thousands of years – the brief answer was: From out there. Somewhere. The first superbeings in popular culture (the only kind there was, back then) were either gods, or pals of gods, or imbued with magical abilities, the origins of which weren’t necessarily clear or important. What was important was…wow! – look at what he/she/it can do! And so much the better if it, whatever spectacular thing it is, is being done for reasons I approve of.

That’s still what’s important. But our minds seem to be wired to want reasons for what we see, which is certainly why there’s science and may be why there’s art and civilization. But, oddly, once a reason is supplied, many of seem to be satisfied and require nothing further. The great cosmic snortlefish created the oceans? Swell, now I know why there’s all that water and what’s for dinner?

By the time Jerry Siegel got around to thinking up Superman in the summer of 1934, magic wasn’t terribly fashionable and it had long since become divorced from religion. But science…ah, science was going to deliver us and besides, it was real. And Jerry was a reader of science fiction, which, in those happy days, at least claimed to be rooted in physics and chemistry and astronomy and stuff like that. So it was natural, maybe inevitable, that he would give his übermensch a science rationale. Guy comes from another planet, sure – that’d be why he could be so powerful. Makes sense. Made sense to Jerry in 1934, probably would have made sense to me when I was the age Jerry was when he created Superman, if I’d thought about it.

(more…)

With Great Power… by Michael Davis

  • News
  • November 9, 2007

It’s no secret that I think that people who worship celebrity are idiots. I mean, come on; do these people really think that Britney is thinking about them? Every night on a popular entertainment news program they have something called “Britney watch.” That is just nuts to me. This show follows Britney Spears everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE! If she goes to Starbucks there are camera crews watching her sip from a cup. I’m not kidding.

Most of the people we hold up as stars are also looked up to by many as heroes. Really? With that in mind I wondered what would happen if our super heroes acted like today’s stars.

My apologies in advance to DC, Marvel, Archie and everyone else. Hey guys, satire is good for the soul!

High above the skies of Metropolis an epic battle rages. For hours Superman and the evil super villain have traded blow after terrific blow. Neither asking for quarter neither granting any. Finally Superman looks into the face of the evil super villain and shouts, “You can’t win evil, super villain!” The evil super villain produces a green rock from behind his back. He thrusts it out at Superman who withdraws in terror! “ Kryptonite!” Superman says the word as if its very mention is painful to him. The evil super villain flies closer to Superman who is struggling to remain airborne. “Now you will die!!” The evil super villain declares as Superman plummets from the sky! (more…)

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • November 6, 2007

Before we get to this week’s official topic, a continuation of our discussion of how superheroes have been evolving, I’d like to remind you all that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. I’m sure all you fans of the late 19th century biologist Ernst Haeckel – and I know you’re legion – remember that this means that the development of an organism exactly mirrors the evolutionary development of the species.

Okay, now that that’s settled…consider any given story genre the organism and storytelling as a whole the species. The first stories, maybe told around campfires, were not long on characterization. According to some anthropologists, they were basically religious, an effort to give an identity to the forces that shaped people’s lives, the forces they were already acknowledging, maybe, with rituals. Not much characterization in these yarns. They were more about what happened – some deity decides to create the world – than the nuances of the protagonists’ personalities. As storytelling evolved, from an element of religion to entertainment, the characters began to have personalities, sort of, until by the time Homer smote ‘is bloomin’ lyre the good guys and bad guys were acting for reasons peculiar to who they were. And by the time of Greek drama, which, again, was part of religious festivals, they were pretty individualized.

Shoot forward about 2,500 years…Along came comic book superheroes (as opposed to all the other kinds of superdoers, who are a bit outside our boundaries, though I’m sure they’re very nice) and…well, they weren’t quite as uncharacterized as those campfire deities. But we do find ontogeny-recapitulating phylogeny, sort of. Clark Kent was, after all, “mild mannered” and Lois Lane was ambitious, but the stories were plot driven – the stuff was more about what the heroes did rather than why they did it. (Batman comes close to being an exception; a few issues into his initial run in Detective Comics, writer Bill Finger actually motivated him. But unless there are a lot of stories I haven’t read, the emphasis on what makes Bruce Wayne tick came later.)

(more…)

Dumb Ass, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • November 2, 2007

DNA pioneer James Watson says blacks are genetically less smart. He told a UK newspaper whites are more intelligent. Watson, the man who along with Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize for discovering the double-helix structure of DNA, is facing a HUGE backlash after claiming that black people are genetically less intelligent than whites.

 

I don’t know what the uproar is. He’s right. Well he’s right when it comes to me. I’m sure he’s smarter than I am.

Or is he?

I’m a pretty smart guy but I doubt if I’m smarter than a Nobel Prize winning scientist.

Or am I?

Mr. Watson tells the world that black people are dumber than white people and expected kudos from the world for his insight.

That’s like me saying Hitler was a hero and expecting a parade for my words of wisdom. Some small minded sick fools may believe that, but just how stupid would they be to say it? (more…)

Fear Factor, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • October 30, 2007

dennyoneil200_sepia-1714086Boo.

Did I scare you?

About that boo…Frankly, it’s a sleazy and probably ineffective way to get your attention. But it is sort of appropriate because it’s a word often encountered in late October and I’m perpetrating this opus a few nights before Halloween, which seems like an appropriate time to be both booing and writing about comics. Because, you know, comics and Halloween are kissing cousins.

Comics, like Halloween, often deal with unearthly phenomena and unlikely characters and, yes, costumes. Both comics and Halloween offer reassurance that after sojourn spent confronting ghouls, goblins, ghosts, vice-presidents and assorted other hellish manifestations of ghastliness, you can retire to someplace comfy and safe.

Fairy tales do that, too, and despite people, including me, frequently comparing comics to mythology, they’re at least as much fairy tale as myth. They don’t, after all, offer cosmic explanations of why we’re here and where we come from, as myths are wont to do, and they almost always end happily. According to a psychologist named Bruno Bettelheim, those happy endings are what make fairy tales useful to little kids. The message is, you can confront ghouls, goblins, ghosts and even vice presidents and you can prevail – you can go home again and maybe score some hot chocolate.

(more…)

Because I Said So, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • October 26, 2007

My mother is almost 60 years old. She has been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for almost 40 years. I don’t smoke. In fact I think it’s a stupid habit and I’m glad she told me not to do it.

She told me not to smoke. I listened. I’ll get back to that in a sec.

As I write this there is a raging debate over who can adopt and raise DOGS in this country. The talk show host Ellen DeGeneres gave a dog away she adopted. The agency said (and it was in the contract Ellen signed) you couldn’t give away an adopted dog so they went and took the dog away from the little girl Ellen had given the dog to. So Ellen goes on her talk show crying like a girl and tells the world of the injustice that has been done to this little girl. So what happened? Well the dog agency owners start to get death threats and Ellen’s legal team threatens “legal action” against the dog adoption agency.

What do I think? I could care less about Ellen, the dog agency, or the dog.

I am a wee bit concerned about this: why there is so much of an uproar about who raises a dog and virtually none about who raises kids? (more…)

Costumes Revealed, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • October 23, 2007

There may be some practical reasons why the grown-for-television superheroes dress in plain clothes rather than the colorful garb of their comic book and movie counterparts.

(For those of you who came in late: we’re continuing last week’s discussion of superhero costumes.)

I remember visiting the set of one of Joel Schumacher’s Batman flicks and watching costumers take a long, long time – 15 minutes? More? – just to fit Batman’s mask on a stunt man, a process that involved putting plastic wrap on the guy’s head and then trimming it after the mask was in place. And that was just the mask. Imagine what efforts went into getting tights, cape, boots and all to fit properly. Dash into a closet – a phone booth? – for a quick change? Maybe not.

Though I have no firsthand knowledge of this, I understand that there is actually a closetful of batsuits for the actor and his various doubles; which one gets worn in a particular scene depends on the scene’s content. Are we fighting? Running? Driving our spiffy car? Standing dramatically silhouetted against the skyline? We must wear the appropriate outfit!

Subtract all this time, effort and expense from the task of garbing your good guy and you have…what? Well, have a look at either of the Batman movie serials made in the 40s for your answer. The Superman and Captain Marvel suits from that era are better, but they don’t approach the panache of the average Curt Swan or Jack Kirby drawing.

(more…)

Mothership Connection, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • October 20, 2007

There’s been a lot of conversation lately in the girls’ section of the comics blogosphere about the way women’s lives are depicted in superhero comics. Even so-called strong, independent female characters are little more than an excuse to show tits’n’ass. Some site evidence that female characters are used as plot points, citing the “women in refrigerators” syndrome. More recently, discussions have centered on the premise that married characters are boring.

A lot of this is a reflection of the larger pop culture, which is at least as male-dominated as comics. The people who can greenlight movies, or put a television show on a network, are most likely Penile-Americans. Book publishing tends to be more diverse because there are more women in positions of authority, and (this is related) book publishing tends to pay less than other mass media.

Most of it, however, is lazy pandering to the perceived target audience. It’s assumed that boys find the single life more glamorous and more exciting than marriage. Up to a point, I agree. The thrill of the chase is, well, a thrill. That said, even the new gets old after a while. Dashiell Hammett used Nick and Nora Charles to show that marriage can be sexy and fun. Why can’t comics? (more…)

The Casting Couch, by Michael Davis

  • News
  • October 19, 2007

I have not gotten into trouble in a while so because I know I will be in Japan when this article runs, I can be safely away from the crap when it hits the fan.

I love the entertainment business for the most part. That’s for the most part. There are some areas of the business I don’t like and what I don’t like most of all are some in the acting profession.

I just don’t like certain actors. That’s certain actors. Most actors I’m cool with, this rant is not for them.

No, this rant is for the two types of actors I can’t stand. The first type is those who think what they do isn’t a profession, it’s a divine right. These “thespians” think they are involved with an art form of the highest ilk. Those conceited, self centered, cocky, arrogant, little brain, stuck-up creeps don’t take acting seriously and really piss me off. (more…)

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