Tagged: John Ostrander

Worldly Serious

  • News
  • October 28, 2007

Out in the land of baseball humidors, the Beantown Bombers seem poised to win it all.  But here at ComicMix we like to think our columnists hit home runs every day.  Or at least we’re somewhere in the ballpark.  Here’s what we’ve served up for you this past week:

I have to retire all my baseball puns until next spring now, don’t I?

Whose Story Is It, Anyway? by John Ostrander

  • News
  • October 25, 2007

In any given story, one of the primary questions that must be answered by the writer is – whose story is it? For example – in any Batman/Joker story, we assume that the story is going to be about Batman. He is the title character, after all. However, the story can be about the Joker – taken from his perspective, with the Joker as the protagonist and the Batman as his antagonist. A protagonist, after all, is not always a hero.

Sometimes, when I’m having problems with a story, I’ll go back to that simple, basic question – whose story is it? The answer sometimes surprises me. When I was writing my historical western for DC, The Kents, I assumed for a long time that the story was about Nate Kent, who was the direct ancestor of Pa Kent, Clark’s adoptive father. It was only when I was deep into the story that it occurred to me that the story was actually about Nate’s younger brother Jeb, who takes a wrong road, shoots his brother in the back at one point, becomes an outlaw, and eventually has to make things right.

The story may not always be about a person. When I wrote Gotham Nights, the focus of the story was the city itself, and the city was comprised not only of its buildings and roadways but, more importantly, the people who lived there, of whom I tried to give a cross-sampling. Batman was a part of all that because he is a part of Gotham City but the miniseries didn’t focus on him. It was Gotham City’s story. (more…)

Darn you, Westinghouse!

  • News
  • October 21, 2007

On this day in 1925, the first photoelectric cell was publicly demonstrated by the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg. Co. at the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York.  That palace no longer exists, having been replaced by an office tower, but it seems photoelectrics will always be with us in one way or another.  Heck, you’re probably soaking in them right now.  And with that cheery thought in mind, here’s your weekly one-stop ComicMix columnist shopping:

As you can see in our previous item, Ric is across the ocean from us, probably having the time of his life, and will return next week.  And now to return to my current masters, the television/DVD combo…

Writing Under the Influence, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • October 18, 2007

Nothing is created in a vacuum. Though the artist may like to think that the work springs forth Zeus-like full blown from their brow, the truth is any number of different other works influence your own. The works that move and affect us as artists also teach and guide us in our own expression. 

We prize originality but it is said there’s only x amount of plots when you boil them all down (the number has varied according to who is defining it, but it’s usually low) and they were all created by the Greeks. The greatest writer in the English language – William Shakespeare – rarely came up with original plots, most usually re-working older plays or tales from history. What is original often is how you combine the elements.

Imitation is the starting point for what you eventually become. In writing, you become influenced by certain writers because of the types of stories they tell, or their command of language, or the depth of their themes and thought or even just their success or all of it together. It is through imitation, I think, that we truly learn such things as structure. With writing, you can take all the classes and read all the books but, ultimately, you really only learn how to write by writing.  Hopefully, as you grow older and wiser – better – you discard the overt forms that you imitate to find your own voice, your own style. What starts out as something that you borrow has to become something that you own.

GrimJack began that way. As a writer, I very much fall into the camp of wanting to write because of the pleasure I’ve had in reading, especially certain writers. I’ve noted elsewhere that GrimJack was created as a cross between hard-boiled detectives and sword-and-sorcery heroes (making him what I sometimes laughingly refer to as a “hard-boiled barbarian”) but I haven’t talked about which sword-and-sorcery heroes went into the mix. Some might assume Robert E. Howard’s Conan but I’ve always been more drawn to Solomon Kane, Howard’s Puritan wanderer/adventurer. Conan as a character isn’t very reflective; Kane was, even though he was driven by a wanderlust that he couldn’t explain. (more…)

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John Ostrander: Obit the Living

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  • October 11, 2007

tp1902-5593800Obits – obituaries – are tough things to write. Their purpose is to commemorate the life of someone recently deceased, to list their accomplishments and achievements, to take note that someone has passed out of our lives. A last fanfare to the life of someone who is gone. Generally speaking, they are valedictory and complimentary.

Why do we wait until after a person has passed away to stand up and say these things? Okay, it might embarrass the person we’re talking about to hear the nice things we might say – and mean – about them but they’ll get over it. And they might like to hear them.

All of which is prelude to the fact that I am about to embarrass someone – a fellow member of ComicMix. Ladies and germs, let’s talk about Mr. Dennis O’Neil.

ComicMix readers tend to be a pretty knowledgeable lot, I’ve discovered. Unlike some comic book fans, they know their comic book history and know it extends prior to Marvel’s Civil War or DC’s Infinite Crisis. If you already know most of what I’m about to tell you, sorry – but I’m speaking for the record and for people who may not know Denny as well as they might or should.

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Phasing in with more to come

  • News
  • October 7, 2007

Wow, it’s been some week for ComicMix, and we appreciate all the kind words of support and terrific reviews we’ve seen so far!  Please let us know where you’ve seen our comics discussed, we don’t want to miss any feedback!  In the meantime, here’s your weekly wrapup of our regular columns:

As you can see, Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s Big ComicMix Broadcasts are now all accessible right from our front page, so no need to recap them here any more; just scroll down on the right sidebar and there they are!  In fact, it just so happens that all of the above columns can currently be accessed from our section entitled "More Comics News" at the bottom of our front page, mixed in with our news items.  Can a separate column archives be far behind?  Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

BIG BROADCAST: GrimJack Comes To ComicMix!

grimx-3877500The giant ticking clock on the wall here at ComicMix tells us that a mere 17 days remain until we launch Phase Two, but before then there are a lot of questions to be answered!  For example, how will co-creators Timothy Truman and John Ostrander bring their GrimJack series to a huge new audience as well as their scores of established fans? They tell The Big ComicMix Broadcast just how it will all work – and get us geared up for brand-new WEEKLY visits with the Man From Cynosure, FREE OF CHARGE!

Plus THE DARKNESS comes to your cel phone and Michael J goes back in time…..

PRESS THE BUTTON and get 10% off your tab at MUNDEN’S BAR!

JOHN OSTRANDER: Salt In the Wound

  • News
  • September 13, 2007

morton-girl4-copy-8739947It’s the odd little news story that tends to grab my eye and we got an interesting one this week. Not only the story itself, but how it is being told.

I found the story initially through the Associated Press version on msnbc.com. The story comes to us from Atlanta, Georgia, and tells how a police officer – one Wendell Adams – arrested a cook at McDonalds, one Kendra Bull, who sold him an overly salty hamburger. Bull admitted that she accidentally knocked the saltshaker onto the burgers she was making; on the advice of a co-worker and the manager, she tried “thumbing” the extra salt off but made the burgers anyway. Officer Fife – excuse me, Officer Adams – ate about half of it before it made him sick. Adams came back, took Bull outside and questioned her, and then arrested her. She was in jail overnight and released on a $1000.00 bond.

I’m going to use two quotes from the story itself because I cannot improve on them: 1) “Police sent samples of the burger to the state crime lab for tests” and 2) “City public information officer George Louth said Bull was charged because she served the burger ‘without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it.’”

She served a burger – a McDonalds’ burger – without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it. Ummmmm – isn’t that one of the things about fast food in general? That we all know it’s not really any good for us but that we eat it anyway? If that’s the standard, why would any fast food joint be open in Atlanta?

And they sent a sample of the burger to the state crime lab for tests? Oh, that’s the case I want to see on CSI!

I was wondering if this case might work as a “torn from the headlines” case for Law and Order but I’m beginning to think it’s better suited for the sense of absurd comedy you find on Boston Legal.

Digging further, I discovered that the hamburger in question was free. A perk for being a cop. Georgia’s not the only place that this happens. Free soda/coffee for cops on beat happens in a lot of places and I guess a Happy Meal comes under that heading.

I also discovered at Kevin Underhill’s Lowering the Bar site  – a fine and interesting place – that a healthy adult would need more than a bit of over-salting to cause the sort of vomiting that Officer Krumpke – excuse me, Officer Adams – says he endured. Which might explain sending the hamburger to the Crime Lab for further analysis.

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JOHN OSTRANDER: Bourne To Run

  • News
  • September 6, 2007

bourne-art-4988901Spoiler Alert: This week I’m discussing the three Jason Bourne movies and I may wind up revealing plot points, especially of the most recent film out, The Bourne Ultimatum. If you’re planning to see the movie, go see it first. More fun that way.

Just recently I got around to seeing The Bourne Ultimatum, the third in the Jason Bourne series of films starring Matt Damon. All are supposedly based on novels by the late Robert Ludlum – at least, to the degree that the James Bond films were based on the Ian Fleming novels, which meant they basically used the title and one or two elements, if that.

Which is one of its problems for the Ludlum fans. From what I understand, they also don’t like Matt Damon, saying that he’s too young or not right. While I haven’t read the Bourne novels, I have read one or two other Ludlum books and enjoyed them well enough. And I do have sympathy for their position. I complained about the SciFi Network’s version of The Dresden Files because they had so little to do with the actual series of books, which are wonderful. The TV series wasn’t. I sometimes wonder why H’weird buys up properties and then makes wholesale changes in them to the point that they have very little to do with the original concept. The current Flash Gordon series which both I and ComicMix EIC Mike Gold loathe (Mike, you lasted an episode more than I did) is a case in point.

All that said – I’m a big fan of the Bourne movies and more so after the third. I stumbled on the three by accident. (For the record, the three films are The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.) I happened to come across the Supremacy while I was channel surfing one evening, coming in after it started and found myself hooked. When the movie was on again, the lovely and talented Mary joined me and was also drawn in. We kept on missing the opening and it took about three viewings before we finally saw the film all the way through. We then got a hold of the first film and now have the first two on DVD. Supremacy, in particular, has become one of our favorite films.

A quick general summary is in order. Jason Bourne is an amnesiac Black Ops agent working for a super-secret program within the CIA called The Treadstone Project. He’s created to be a human weapon, a master assassin, with mad skills and an ability to improvise. When The Bourne Identity begins, the man known as Jason Bourne is hauled out of the sea by some Mediterranean fishermen. He’s been shot and he has amnesia. Numbers tattooed on his hip turn out to be a Swiss banking account. In a safety deposit box he finds passports and lots of money.

 

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JOHN OSTRANDER: Fighting Words

  • News
  • August 30, 2007

john-ostrander100-7183946Well, crap.

Just when I think there’s nothing more coming from the Mess in Iraq that can appall me, they find a new spoonful of shit to shove down my throat. Here. Go read this link from MSNBC.

Blood boiling yet? Quick summary for those of you who didn’t click the link: those people, the whistleblowers, who have spoken up about the corruption and the fraud, the outright diversion and theft of funds going into Iraq – our tax dollars! – are being vilified, harassed, fired, detained, tortured and, in general, getting their lives ruined. And our government – surprise! – is a big part of it.

There’s a purpose to all this: discourage anyone else who might think about speaking out. What makes the folks perpetrating this travesty think they can get away with it? The fact that they are getting away with it! Small companies to large and by large, I do mean Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR which got the lion’s share of money going to Iraq to “rebuild” it.

You remember Halliburton – the corporation Dick Cheney headed before going into public service as President – whoops, Vice-President. It’s no longer an American company; it’s now a United Arab Emirates company. I thought you weren’t supposed to be working for the government if you’re also going to be a company’s lobbyist but either I’m misinformed or Cheney is uninformed on this point. The amount of no competition contracts Halliburton or its KBR subsidiary received for the rebuilding on Iraq is staggering as was the price gouging and corruption. Here follows the testimony of one whistleblower:

“Julie McBride testified last year that as a ‘morale, welfare and recreation coordinator’ at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.

“She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.” — Iraq corruption whistleblowers face penalties,” Associated Press Aug 25, 2007

That last bit was just crooked, petty, and arrogant. Done because they could. Why could they? Because one political party controlled both the White House and both houses of Congress. I don’t care if it’s Republican or Democrat – to me, that’s just looking for trouble. And this Administration has worked hand in glove with certain Big Business to the point we’ve become a government Of the Corporation, By the Corporation, and For the Corporation.

What has happened to Ms. McBride? Let her tell it. “After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion,” she told the committee. “My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country [Iraq].” (more…)

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