Tagged: Mike Gold

Filling The Big Shoes, by Mike Gold

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  • February 25, 2008

 

After much discussion with friends and the unwashed and bewildered, today I have decided to weigh in (again) on one of the many ongoing and irresolvable debates that have haunted the hallowed halls of comics academia since time immemorial. The question: when the instigator of a series retires from his or her creation, should the series be retired as well?
 
It seems a lot of creators and many fans think it should. To this, I say “ka-ka.”
 
I understand that a creator’s vision is important, and I strongly feel that creator should have the word on continuing the feature. For many creators, such choice was denied to them when they signed their publishing contracts. That was exploitative. Today, well, creators should know better. And many do: there are financial advantages to allowing a continuation of the feature, and there’s the idea that, to quote John Ostrander from the Stuart Gordon play Bloody Bess, “My words… my words shall live forever.” It should be the creator’s call, and there’s nothing wrong with deciding either way. Of course, after you drop dead your estate will likely overrule you, but that’s a matter between the dead you and your living family.
 
Aesthetically… well, that’s another matter. Bitch and moan all you want, but the replacements generally work out pretty well. 
 
If DC retired Batman when Bob Kane left the character 40 years ago, we never would have had the masterworks of Dennis O’Neil, Steve Englehart, Neal Adams, Marshall Rogers, Frank Miller and a legion of other superlative storytellers. Carl Burgos and Bill Everett were not involved in the Marvel Age resurrections of their Human Torch and Sub-Mariner (respectively), but all those Lee and Kirby stories sure were swell. Spider-Man didn’t truly take off until after Steve Ditko left; John Romita, Gil Kane and many others took Peter Parker to heights previously unimagined by the publisher.
 

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending Feb. 24, 2008

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  • February 24, 2008

Ah, it’s Oscar time again!  I know I’ll be glued to my seat, whilst falling asleep in it at the same time!  Look for all the geeky movies to win the usual geeky (technical) awards, most of which won’t be given out on the air.  Better to get your geek on reading our ComicMix columns for this past week:

I know Ratatouille will probably win for Best Animated Feature, but I’m still rooting for Persepolis, so there.

Rock and Roll and Comic Books and Our Future, by Mike Gold

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  • February 18, 2008

 

There’s a website called Electronista that blames the precipitous drop in music sales on iTunes and the iPod, quoting NBC News’ Peter Alexander as saying “with 120 million iPods sold since 2001, digital downloads of individual songs are through the roof, soaring 500% in the last three years. In that same period, CD’s sales of declined dramatically, as listeners prefer hits over to entire albums.”
 
This type of sloppy reporting would have gotten me thrown out of Journalism school. I’m sure his numbers are right, but mp3s and mp3 players existed well before the iPod, and iTunes is not a bootlegging service: you pay for your music. Presumably, if the record companies aren’t ripping off the artists (which, ahem, has been known to happen), the artists are getting their fair share of the pie.
 
I know I’m going to get a ton of e-mails from Suits trying to redefine the argument in terms of bootlegging and that’s what is bringing music to its doom. To which I quote Sherman Potter: Horse hockey.
 
People always bootlegged music, ever since the inexpensive cassette recorder debuted in the late 1960s. You’d buy a record, you’d knock off a copy for your friends. People shared more in those days. This practice is so prevalent that some countries charge a bootlegging tax on blank media, the revenue from which going to a common fund for creators. It was no big deal then, and it’s no big deal today.

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ComicMix Columns For the Week Ending Feb. 17, 2008

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  • February 17, 2008

The WGA writers are back at work, thank goodness, so there’s finally some good stuff to watch this President’s Day weekend (how can one have a "day weekend" anyway?).  Meanwhile, our ComicMix columnists have been typing away as usual; here’s what we’ve done for you this past week:

Just as a reminder, Denny O’Neill’s column was a bit waylaid this week so we didn’t get to enjoy it until Friday, but he’s still listed in his usual date order above…

Today, We Are One, by Mike Gold

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  • February 11, 2008

 

Well, it says here that this is Whizzy’s Wazoo #53. That means today ComicMix starts our second year.

Wow. 

This is a good time to look back at what we’ve done, what we’re trying to do, and how we’ve made the world a better place. Whereas that last point is undoubtedly true, I’d rather look forward. Not a whole year forward; that seems like bad luck. Just the next few months.

ComicMix is going to increase our number of pages by tens of thousands. No kidding. We’re almost ready to do that; our tech team has been working furiously to do the tech voodoo that they do so swell. We’ve already got enough broadband to bury Atlantis. You’ll be seeing a lot more of… well, everything, including some of the greatest names old and new in comics and related media.

And speaking of comics… (more…)

ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb. 10, 2008

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  • February 10, 2008

There’s a new Marshall in town, and he’s laid down the law against punny headers.  So let’s just get down to business and rustle up this past week’s worth of ComicMix columns:

So if ComicMix newbee Rick is the Marshall, does that make me the schoolmarm with the heart of go — nah, I’m more like the extra mumbling "rhubarb" in the background…

“… this is Captain America calling…” by Mike Gold

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  • February 4, 2008
There’s been a lot of controversy about killing and resurrecting superheroes. I know that, because we’ve done a lot of that here on ComicMix. It’s fun. Be that as it may, Steve Rogers is dead, deal with it; Bucky Barnes is alive, so we (meaning me) should deal with that, too.
 
Quite frankly, I would have been burning effigies of Joey Quesada for allowing  ol’ Bucky to rise from the grave – if not for the simple fact that Ed Brubaker’s run in Captain America is so damn great. Any lesser achievement would have inflamed my wrath and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
 
Well, maybe you would, but only from afar.
 
Wandering back towards the point, it’s perfectly fair for someone to inherit the mantle of a “dead” superhero. I did this when I was editing The Flash; management wanted a new person inside the suit, and I felt strongly that Wally West earned his stab at adulthood. If Bucky Barnes (now referred to as “James”) is alive and well, he deserves the shield and cowl. So it’s only appropriate that I comment on Bucky’s transcendence.
 
There’s an odd timeliness to the story, as it opens with the doubling of the price of gas and thousands of homes being foreclosed. That puts a sharp contemporary edge on a story about a guy who should be 80 years old and keeps on linking his feelings to those he experienced in The War. But the economic apocalypse is a story-point that establishes the role Captain America will play in this continuing story.
 

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ComicMix Columns For The Week Ending Feb 3, 2008

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  • February 3, 2008

Snackies at hand?  Ready to cheer on the best ads in between the quarters?  Me, I’m psyched to see me some Tom Petty at halftime.  Before they take the field for Superbowl XLIIayeaye!!one!, why not warm up with this past week’s ComicMix columns?:

I love how the titles of those first three columns kind of go together… sex, hate, death (warmed over)… Anyway, Giants in, erm, four, just to be weird…

Sex, by Mike Gold

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  • January 28, 2008

I’ve been gallivanting across this fine country again like the high society bon vivant that I am, so I was a little late in scoring my family’s big box o’ comics. It was even heavier than usual, despite the fact that my wife and daughter are both big-time comics fans. I figure it was about four and one-half pounds heavier. That’s because Playboy Cover to Cover – The 50s, finally arrived. It was released as a Christmas item last November, no doubt under the belief that it would make for an excellent stocking stuffer should King Kong become a cross-dresser.

If you ask founder / publisher / editor Hugh Hefner, he’ll give you the impression he single-handedly invented the sexual revolution back in 1954. That’s okay; he’ll also give you the impression he has foursomes with The Girls Next Door. Whereas I think the creation of the birth control pill and the resultant sexual empowerment of women had a lot more to do with it than Hugh, he did take a lot of risk and paid some heavy dues. Remember, until 1965 laws prohibiting the distribution of information about contraception, and in some cases even the possession of contraception, were still on the books – and not just in the bible belt states. Connecticut was the last to fall. People still went to jail for publishing, owning or mailing stuff about sex.

From a sexual perspective, all Playboy’s success did was put some of the under-the-counter content out on the newsstand racks. By the time Penthouse and, later, Hustler came out Playboy was irrelevant from a pictorial point of view. Of course, later the Internets completely rendered Playboy magazine sexually impotent, as they supplied men the one thing any magazine could not: freedom from your own fist. No, sex is not the reason Playboy was hip. (more…)

Good For What Ails You

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  • January 27, 2008

There’s something in the air, and unfortunately your author has caught it.  But it’s well worth rising from one’s sickbed to bring you the weekly roundup of ComicMix columnists!  Isn’t it?:

Apologies for not adding in Andrew Wheeler’s "Manga Friday" columns before now, but he’s only started numbering them himself.  And by the way, the best thing about being sick?  Erm, well, nothing, actually…

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