(Reuters) Marvel Comics has agreed to settle a lawsuit by a comic book writer who sued the publisher over the copyright to the flaming-skulled character Ghost Rider.
The agreement, disclosed in a letter filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, if finalized would resolve five-years of litigation brought by former Marvel freelancer Gary Friedrich, who claimed he created the motorcycle-riding vigilante.
The Reuters story quoted above is pretty sketchy, but maybe we should celebrate anyway. We don’t know the terms of the deal and we may never know them; the only instance I’m aware of where a comics creator didn’t get creamed when he tried to get paid for the success of a character happened years ago when the late Steve Gerber tried to get a piece of the Howard the Duck action. Steve got some kind of settlement, but the terms of it were never made public, possibly because non-disclosure was a condition of the agreement. Whatever Steve’s reward was, it didn’t make him rich.
I first heard of the Friedrich suit from Gary himself, when we were guests at a small Missouri convention. He couldn’t say much at the time, just that the litigation was happening. I had immediate doubts. As noted above, comics guys had a habit of losing in courthouses. And Gary did lose the first round; a judge smiled upon the corporation. That seemed to end the matter.
Next, Marvel countersued to regain the money Gary had gotten selling Ghost Rider souvenirs at cons. You could argue that Marvel’s legal cadre had to do what they did in order to protect the company’s copyright/trademark – that’s their job, after all, and this is not the place to debate the merits of their livelihood. But I couldn’t help feeling that Gary, a man who lives modestly, was being bullied by a New York behemoth. The money involved could be important to Gary, and wouldn’t make a blip on the corporate accounts.
Then, today, the good news. Gary won an appeal and, barring further legal shenanigans, his retirement became a bit easier.
Anyone familiar with the history of our peculiar medium knows that its dominant narrative is that business guys get fat from the efforts of creative guys, who don’t get fat. (This is pretty well documented: see Larry Tye’s recent history of Superman, Gerry Jones’s Men of Tomorrow, and a lot of journalism in Roy Thomas’s magazine, Alter Ego.) But their are indications of change – glacially slow change, to be sure, but change nonetheless. When I cashed my first comic book check, we pale scriveners got a flat, one-time-only payment, for which we relinquished all rights. No royalties, no foreign income, nothing for use in other media, on t shirts, lunchboxes, promotions…None of that’s true anymore. We still don’t own copyrights on work done for the big publishers, but we are guaranteed back-end money. Some might claim that we should get more, but we get something, and that counts as progress. .
Meanwhile, in legal land, Mr. Friedrich won his appeal and, as far as I know, the efforts of the estates of Superman’s creators are still in litigation, and maybe they’ll prevail. It’ll be much too late to do Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster any good, but it might benefit their descendants.
Having spent the past four days in Baltimore attending my favorite comics convention – the one that’s actually about comics – I had the opportunity to spend some serious conversation time with a lot of my friends. However, because the show is a four-hour-plus drive from La Casa Del Oro, the best conversation is with my daughter and ComicMix cohort Adriane Nash. Whereas much of her work is behind the scenes, Adriane is the one who kills here each year on April Fool’s Day and at least one of her hoaxes has graduated to the level of Urban Myth.
As her dad, this makes me very proud. But (sing along, folks), I digress.
After returning from Baltimore Monday night, while cuing TiVo for Ricky Gervais’ appearance on David Letterman, we had one of those “let’s tie-up everything we’ve been talking about” conversations. This one was about how, given time, them younger generations eventually discover the really great stuff that was done before they were born. Adriane started with Jack Kirby, which, of course, made me feel even older than my present dotage. Younger readers have to discover Kirby, the most influential creator in the history of American comics. And they do… with a little help from their friends.
There’s nothing wrong with that. When I was about half Adriane’s age, I interviewed disc jockey Bob Hale (WLS, NBC, and the guy who emceed the Iowa concert the day the music died). Bob said he didn’t despair for those kids who like crappy rock’n’roll because they eventually grow up and discover the Good Stuff. That was an important lesson (thanks, Bob!), one I’ve remembered for the past, ummm, well, 45 years. And so it is with comic books.
As it stands today, no less than three major comics publishers are reprinting various aspects of the canonical EC Comics. Will Eisner’s The Spirit stays out there on the racks, as well it should. Carl Barks – same thing. Because Jack Kirby’s output was so astonishingly massive, it seems there’s a new reprint of his stuff about every six weeks.
This is true with the classic newspaper strips (I define The Spirit as a comic book that was published in newspapers), these days largely through the efforts of the gifted and knowledgeable Dean Mullaney and our friends at IDW. Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, Chester Gould, Al Capp… you can bust your back dragging out all those massive hardcover tomes of Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and Li’l Abner, and that’s a small price to pay for the thrill of such discovery. And then you go over to Fantagraphics for Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Charles Shultz’s Peanuts and Elzie Segar’s Popeye.
So… as you age you’ve got a responsibility to pass along the good stuff, to educate the young’uns to the great stuff that provided not only the foundation for our great medium, but the first half-dozen floors as well. I guarantee you that just about every talented artist and writer impressing the hell out of you today has devoured these folks and many others possessing equal gift: Alex Toth, Joe Kubert, Mort Meskin… the Internet doesn’t have enough bandwidth for me to list them all.
It is our responsibility, our duty to pass along the good self.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of The Dresden Files, so it was awesome to get to sit down and chat with author Jim Butcher about the series while at Dragon Con last weekend!
The Dresden Files, as you may know, is a series about the wizard Harry Dresden, and follows his adventures and investigations into supernatural disturbances in modern-day Chicago, which he recounts through a first person narrative. It’s also, oh-by-the-way, a ton of fun, and weaves a lot of lore, myth, and legend from all cultures into modern adventure stories with a wizard who’s more gunfighter than Gandalf (even if he fights with a staff much of the time). As the series has progressed, it’s also gotten more complex and nuanced, with some great plot twists and character developments along the way. I definitely recommend it to anyone who hasn’t yet read it.
The series is pretty far along and we’re currently waiting on book fifteen, so if you have no idea what I’m talking about, I recommend you check out the series or at least the Wikipedia page before reading this interview; unless you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind possibly being confused or definitely encountering spoilers. Because, fair warning, there are spoilers ahead!
Have we all been sufficiently warned? Yes? Then onward to the interview!
I’m a big fan of The Dresden Files, and I’ve read all of the books, so let’s just begin by talking about the series. There are fourteen novels to date. Book fourteen is Cold Days, which sets up the upcoming book. In Cold Days, Harry is the Winter Knight, and Sarissa ends up as the new Summer Lady, and Molly, in an unexpected turn of events, is the new Winter Lady. And Harry’s lost all of his stuff – even his mini model of Chicago!
Yeah, it all burned up in his apartment.
So he’s got no place to go, he’s living on Demonreach, he’s upset about what’s happened with Molly, who he’s tried to protect; he and Murphy have this interesting dynamic changing from what they’ve had, and something deeper is going on…so that’s where we leave it. Tell me when we will be seeing book fifteen, and what we should expect from it?
Book fifteen is called Skin Game. It will be out either late this year or early next year, depending on how quickly the publisher wants to rush it through production. The basic premise of the book is that Harry Dresden is still stuck working for Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and there are people she owes debts to…
In Skin Game, Harry’s been out on Spooky Island, on Demonreach, and has been staying there for about a year, because he’s got this thing in his head that’s going tick-tick-tick, and it’s going to kill him eventually. And Demonreach is able to keep it from completely crippling him. So he’s been staying there, and he thinks that his friends have kind of abandoned him, and he finds out that Mab has been intercepting all his communications and making sure they think he’s fine and needs to be left alone.
And then Mab shows up and says, “Okay, well – here’s the thing, is, I’ve got this job for you to do. I’ve got a debt to pay off, and you’re going to have to go do it. And if you don’t do it, well, you know, I can’t make you do anything, because that was kind of part of the deal, that I can’t compel you to do this; but if you don’t, then the thing in your head is going to kill you in the next three days. So I’ll let you make up your own mind.”
Hah, wow! Faeries always do that, in The Dresden Files; they follow the rules but trick you anyway.
Exactly. She’s playing by the rules, technically, which is the only way to do it, if you’re a faerie. So she’s informed him, “Well, you can either do this or not.” And Harry’s like, “Fine, I’ll do the job, whatever it is.” And he finds out that the job is, Mab is going to loan him out to Nicodemus Archleone, the head of the Denarians.
Ahh, and he’s shown up several times, and he’s really awful, to make an understatement.
Yes, he has, and yes – he’s one of the worst villains in the series. And he’s off to pull a heist. And he’s putting a crew together to pull a heist with, and he needs Harry to be on the crew. So Harry basically gets signed up with the Evil League of Evil, with all these different villains from around the world, some of whom have appeared before. So now he’s off to rob the treasure vault of Hades, Lord of the Underworld. So that’s the plotline. Harry’s got to be working with these people…and he immediately arranges to bring somebody along to watch his back while he’s there, because he doesn’t really feel like turning on these guys, and so he rounds up Murphy to come cover his back for him.
Oh, so Murphy’s going even deeper into the supernatural, right from the start of this story.
Yeah – but Harry’s point is, “I need somebody who can see things. I don’t need somebody who can fight supernatural things; I can do that. I need somebody who can notice things.” And Murphy’s the sharp one; so he grabs her.
Yeah, Harry is a little bit dim sometimes.
He can be.
You’ve written him that way.
But he turns to Mab at one point and he says, “You’ve got to understand, Nicodemus is going to betray me. He is gonna stab me in the back and try and kill me; that’s who he is.” And Mab says, “Of course he is.” She says, “I expect superior and more creative treachery from you. Oh, and by the way, make sure you do what I said you would do. You have to fulfill that first. But as soon as that’s fulfilled, do whatever you want.” And Harry’s like, “I can’t believe you’re going to have me do this.” And Mab’s like, “I would have loved a game like this when I was your age, come on!”
And Harry’s like, “I just want to take a nap, and a hot shower.”
Yeah, exactly. Really, that’s kind of where he’s at, yeah.
Okay, so now where does Molly fit into this book? Are we going to see her? Molly’s a favorite of mine, and obviously what happened to her in the last book was a big detour from what we thought was going on, and has a lot of impact.
Right; well Harry gets to find out that Molly hasn’t told her parents anything. She’s just carried on, and kept showing up to Sunday dinner and so on. So her parents don’t know about the whole Winter Lady thing, and they’ve got no idea anything’s wrong. So that’s a lot of fun.
So we get to see more of Michael and all of the family?
Yeah, we’ll get the Carpenters in it for some stage time there. But yeah, she’s been off doing Winter Lady stuff, and catching up on about 150 years of Maeve’s backlog; because not only was Maeve crazy, but she wasn’t doing the job; and that was really the problem as far as Mab was concerned. Crazy, psychotic, murdering people? Okay, that’s fine – but is she getting the work done? So Molly’s been doing that; and Molly’s the only one who can take care of the thing in Harry’s head – Demonreach told him that Molly could help (in Cold Days). Which is why Mab has made sure that Harry couldn’t communicate with Molly. So she’ll have to show up to help him with that.
So that’s where we’re going in the next book – tell me, what’s the plan for the rest of the series?
We’re going to have twenty-ish of the books like we’ve had so far; these casebooks that happen as one-by-one stories; and then I’m going to cap the whole thing off with a big ol’ apocalyptic trilogy at the end.
So there’ll be a great trilogy at the end.
Well, big. I don’t know if it will be great!
Well, I think the books have kept getting better as you’ve gone along; and I always admire someone who can write a big series and keep it all straight.
I have help with that!
That’s to be expected! So we’ve got Harry and Murphy off on this adventure; Mab is kind of pulling some strings; Molly is dealing with her family, and possibly going to come in. What about the Outsiders, and the Nemesis and all that?
We’ll get back to them in the future. At the moment they’re not as huge an issue. Harry needs to survive the next three days, and then he can start dealing with some of the other things. At the moment he’s got enough on his plate with Nicodemus being in his face.
It’s kind of like on The X-Files, where we got some monster of the week episodes, and then some about the overarching conspiracy. It’s kind of nice to break it up like that.
Yeah, you can’t do huge-huge-huge all the time, because that’s no fun.
Okay, so let’s talk about Harry’s love life for a minute…
Oh, gosh. Yeah. Harry’s love life was something that I never really planned when I was writing out the whole series.
Well, going back to the very beginning; there was a whole lot of…almost uncomfortable…male gaze in the first few books. As a female reader, I love the books, I love the adventure, I would keep reading for the adventure; but the scenes where we stopped and spent five minutes talking in extreme detail about the women Harry meets, and learning that every one of them is model-beautiful… I was a little put off by that at first; and I think one of the reasons I wasn’t entirely put off is because when Murphy is introduced she’s treated differently, which was refreshing, and also made me think maybe she was going to stick around for awhile. You’ve gone away from that some…
Well, to a degree.
So has your perspective on that changed?
Well, I think the main thing is, I’m not a 25-year-old guy anymore. Which was how old I was when I wrote Storm Front. I don’t want to sound weird or anything, but you haven’t had the experience of being a guy in his twenties, where basically you don’t really know what’s going on, from the time you’re fourteen or fifteen until about the time you hit twenty-five, and then you sort of emerge from the testosterone haze, and it’s like, “Maybe there’s something in life other than boobs.” And that’s the – car insurance rates go down when you’re twenty-five for a reason. You know, I don’t think these two things are unrelated. But yeah, I mean it’s just one of those things that has been a change of perspective on my part. I just have to write the story that I write, and I don’t worry too much about basically anything except writing the story.
Well that’s fair. In the beginning, when you had Susan and some of the other female characters, and Murphy – did you realize that you were approaching Murphy differently, and introducing her without as much of the sexual component? Was that a purposeful thing?
Nope; I was just doing what I was doing.
Okay; so let’s jump over to the current relationships; now that we’ve talked about Susan and the other earlier women…
Yes, and poor Susan; she died horribly. Although there were so many people who were like, “Oh, I just can’t stand Susan.”
Well, maybe because of the way she was introduced – but several people have died horribly in your books!
True, and perfectly wonderful people have died horribly, too, so, you know, that…kind of happens.
True! So now…we’ve got Harry, and we’ve got Murphy, and we’ve got Molly…and we’ve got some relationship issues. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Right – Harry and Murphy have at least kind of admitted that there might be something there; which is way better than Harry would ever consider doing with Molly. Because he still remembers Molly when she was little, so, even though their age difference is not entirely huge, it’s huge enough that he’s weirded, anyway. She is no longer weirded by the concept at all, but he is. So Harry and Murphy have finally admitted there might be something there; but both of them are just very avoidant, and so they’ve had trouble actually expressing that, except in moments of adrenaline.
Yes. Now with Molly being the Winter Lady, and Harry being the Winter Knight – I root for Harry and Murphy because it just seems so right; you’ve written it in such a way that it makes sense – but I did wonder towards the end of the last book, now that they’re both in the Winter Court, and there’s this magical connection beyond the connections they already have; how is that going to play out?
Yeah, awkwardly. It will continue to be awkward; because it’s Harry Dresden, how could his life not be awkward?
True! Now, there’s a character that I absolutely adore, and I don’t know if we’re going to see again – Ivy. Will we be seeing her?
She won’t be in this book; she’s not gone from the series permanently, but not in this one.
Great; and anything else you want to share with the fans?
Well…here comes the next one! And I’ve still got plenty more after that. The stories are already planned out.
Well I look forward to reading them, and thank you so much.
• • • • •
Thank you, Jim, for your time and a delightful interview; and Dragon Con, for setting that up for us! Hope you all enjoyed it, ComicMixers!
The popular series, HAVEN, is back on SyFy blasting into a fourth season that picks up where they left off just a few months back. Actor Lucas Bryant talks about thew changes in his role and what we can expect for the series in this run. Plus SAGA wins big in Baltimore and is Katee being coy? Will she be Captain Marvel? Don’t forget – we are back with twice-a-week-updates – right here on ComicMix!
There was tremendous excitement over Lost’s Damon Lindelof making his Marvel debut with the Ultimate Wolverine vs. Ultimate Hulk miniseries. The writer, at the height of his popularity, was paired with Leinil Francis Yu so anticipation was running rampant. The first issue arrived and there, the behemoth literally tore the Canadian mutant in half – something we’d never seen before. The second issue ratcheted things up and then….nothing. At least not for threel years and by the time we got the final issues in 2009, few cared. The momentum and excitement was long gone and could not be recaptured.
Marvel Knights’ Motion Comics saw the potential here, and adapted the story into a multi-part serial totaling about 1:10 and for a change, did a good job casting well-matched vocal performers for the two lead roles.
The entire story is now collected on Shout! Factory’s release, Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, this Tuesday. Picking up on previous threads, Bruce Banner and alter-ego was hiding out in Tibet letting the world think him dead. Instead, uber-suspicious Nick Fury knows better and hires Wolverine to go finish him off.
They talk, they fight, they dream and we get various cameos from the rest of the Ultimates universe. Perhaps the most significant event to come out of this fairly thin story was the introduction of Jennifer Walters, a scientist work on the Super-Soldier research and becoming that world’s She-Hulk.
Yu’s artwork is never short of gorgeous and he fits in nicely with the more realistic-looking Ultimates world, coupled with Dave McCaig’s excellent color art. Unfortunately, the Motion Comics approach does their work a disservice. If anything, the movements are jerkier than previous productions and the actions are stiff or off-kilter. The concept does a good job with special effects and transitions but when you’re asking two-dimension artwork to try and gain motion, things are limited. The entire concept of Motion Comics appears to have come and gone, especially with digital productions, such as Madefire’s offerings, introducing a new generation of animated fare.
The sole bonus feature is a 7:26 look back from Supervising Producer Kalia Cheng and Yu, which is interesting but far from informative.
A few months before her birthday, Isabel asked me if I watched Doctor Who. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Do you?” She hadn’t, but all her friends were raving about Matt Smith. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll get you the DVD set of Doctor Who.”
But I made a mistake. I only got her the 11th Doctor’s series. I figured that if she liked Matt, I would backtrack and get her the Chris Eccleston and David Tennant series.
But my brother thought it would be best to start at the beginning – plus I think he was curious about the whole Whovian phenomenon – so, using Netflix, Isabel and he have been binging on the Time Lord, starting with the 9th Doctor.
They’re both hooked.
And Isabel had a dream.
This – to cop a phrase from Law & Order – is her story.
•••••
You think you have had the best dreams about the Doctor and his TARDIS? You might want to think twice.
It started like this. I got on a bus to Hogwarts. I knew something was wrong because you take the train to Hogwarts, not a bus. I had just put my luggage away when I looked out the window of the bus and saw the Doctor standing there watching me. Before I could do or say anything the bus took off and then just as suddenly stopped. I got off the bus.
We were at Hogwarts, and…
…it was in the middle of town.
Again I knew something was wrong. And no way was I going to go into Hogwarts if it was so public.
Then I saw the Doctor walking right towards me, but something was wrong again, because right in front of my eyes he suddenly split into the 9th, 10th, and 11th Doctors!
“This is crazy!” I thought to myself, and started running.
And ran smack into two metal things.
I fell down and looked up.
I was staring at a Cyberman and a Dalek.
“Exterminate!” said the Dalek.
“Delete!” said the Cyberman.
Suddenly I had a sword in my hand.
I swung, striking the Dalek in its eye. I swung again, and exposed the Cyberman’s emotion-blocking chip. I reached in and pulled it out. Both the Dalek and Cyberman exploded into tiny bits of metal that rained down upon me.
I stood up, searching for somewhere to hide.
The TARDIS!
I ran to it, but I couldn’t open the door.
I saw the three Doctors coming towards me. I knew that I had to get away from them. I knew they couldn’t all be together at one time. That they were not my friends.
I ran into a darkened theater. I looked back. The three Doctors were still on my tail.
I kept running until I couldn’t run anymore. I collapsed. The three Doctors were almost upon me. I had lost my sword.
Then all of a sudden the three Doctors merged into one, and it was the 10th Doctor. He picked me up, brought me into the TARDIS, laid me down on a bed, and gave me a kiss on the forehead.
And I knew that I was safe.
• • • • •
Isabel Sofia Newell is a vivacious 13 year-old who I have known since she was born. A young woman of many talents, she is an accomplished blue-ribbon equestrienne on the show circuit, a cellist with PhilOrchKids – the Philadelphia Orchestra’s young musician program – and the Symphony in C Orchestra intensive summer camp based at the Gordon Theater at the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts in Camden, New Jersey. She is also a gifted singer, who has wowed audiences with her performance as everybody’s red-haired orphan, ANNIE, in junior summer stock.
Isabel is also a voracious reader, a fan of, among other things, Bone by Jeff Smith, the Archie family of comics, Percy Jackson, and, of course, Harry Potter.
For years, I have railed against how often Paramount Pictures demonstrates their lack of understanding their Star Trek fans. One misguided decision after another dating back to the 1970s builds a fairly convincing case. The latest misfire is the release pattern to Star Trek Into Darkness, out on disc this week. In case you missed it, the combo pack includes the Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Copy we have all come to expect. You do get Bonus Materail on the Blu-ray disc, but it’s a mere 42 minutes of fairly perfunctory material, discussed a little later. On the other hand, there’s roughly another 60 minutes of features plus an audio commentary that exists but you have to be willing to buy retailer exclusive editions to get them or download the film from iTunes. Hopefully the outcry from consumers and failure to ignite massive sales to fans who must have everything will make this a one-time doomed experiment.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/gcSsn5f-w48[/youtube]
In a summer filled with disappointment, the release of the film is a reminder of what a squandered opportunity J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot had to sustain their reboot of the storied franchise. After making us wait four years, we get a fairly inept story with logic gaps the size of Qo’noS, raising themes but refusing to explore them in the Gene Roddenberry style, favoring action sequences that are prolonged and largely pointless. There are some very strong ideas presented here and given a surface presentation, not allowing the characters to chew over what it means to violate the laws and their oath or to interfere with a civilization’s destiny.
I09 has a brilliant deconstruction of the film’s major plot holes and I commend your attention over there.
Screenwriters Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof appear to have taken the most obvious traits the mass audience knows about James T. Kirk and ignored the rest. This means Chris Pine gets to play a hotheaded jerk who is all instinct and no intellect. Let’s compare: the TOS Kirk knew his ship inside and out, and kept current with the tech, otherwise he never would have known what to do to the deflector dish in Star Trek Generations. Pine’s Kirk kicked the hardware into place. Gary Mitchell chided Kirk for studying too hard, striving too hard to be perfect and still, Kirk had enough outside-the-box thinking to outthink the Kobyashi Maru test. Pine’s Kirk is smug and seems to skate through without effort. The television Kirk loved books and was pensive, quoting the Constitution of the United Sates and John Masefield. Pine’s Kirk gives us no clue he has such depth and dimension.
The biggest issue is how the Kirk approached the Prime Directive. On television, every time Kirk skirted or violated the law, it was for the good of the people (see Vaal, Landru) or to undo the contamination from other Starfleet personnel (see John Gill, Ron Tracy). In this film, the story starts with Kirk breaking the laws to save Spock’s life, a selfish, thoughtless act that led to his omitting vital information from Starfleet.
It’s as if the production crew at Bad Robot loved Star Trek without understanding it. The sloppiness in the plotting, what I termed a Swiss cheese script, is a deep shame given they took four years to write this disappointment and then tell us they waited for the right story to present itself.
By remaking Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, they demonstrated a complete misreading of why that film worked. We had invested sixteen years with these actors and characters so the themes of age and renewal, sacrifice and friendship worked. Here, we had to wait four years for a second installment and we’re still coming to terms with new actors in familiar roles so killing Kirk and making a big deal out of it fell flat.
I’m also really tried of military-minded rogue Starfleet officers, too easy a plot device. (I didn’t quite get how the detonation of Vulcan meant it was time to start a war with the Klingons.) Peter Weller is wasted as the bad guy and the movie’s closing scenes totally ignore the questions his crimes raised. Let’s see: how did the conspiracy work? Were there others involved and have they been arrested? Where’s the dreadnought’s construction crew? With Starfleet command compromised, who is vetting the new command structure? Are we that much closer to war with the Klingons after Weller’s unsanctioned visit to Qo’noS (the proper spelling damn it).
Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant and mesmerizing to watch. But his Khan is cold and apparently an enigma to the historians since no one troubled to look him up in the databanks. Instead, Spock-2 calls Spock-1 for the most pointless cameo yet. While the film is chockfull of winks and nods to the TV series it is distancing itself from, it doesn’t mention the Eugenics Wars or properly explain Khan’s amazing intellect and physique (he appears as invulnerable as Superman and has genesis blood so no one will ever die again).
After he craftily lures Starfleet’s brain trust into one room, he casually flies to HQ and opens fire. Here’s where I lost it. It’s a heightened security situation so they sit in a room full of windows and the airspace around Starfleet Command apparently isn’t patrolled. Similarly, two Federation ships cross the Klingon border and are undetected, then orbit the homeworld and remain undetected for a while. Really? The warrior race just lets anyone come visit?
The script had some terrific ideas buried under pacing that called for a loud, messy, lens-flare filled action sequence to interrupt every few minutes. It began to feel like a script written with an egg timer. The new characters are introduced and left to be underdeveloped so Admiral Marcus and his daughter, the curvaceous Carol, are pretty much cyphers while the supporting cast gets a few token moments of screen time. (Chekov being a transporter genius sort of makes sense since it’s an extension of navigation but being an engineering whiz stretches the point.)
Michael Giacchino’s wonderful score and Cumberbatch salvage the film from being a complete misfire. We should be thankful that director J.J. Abrams will be a galaxy far, far away when the third film is prepped for the series’ golden anniversary in 2016. Maybe they can actually hire a script editor to smooth over the rough spots.
That said, the film transfer is stunning in its beauty. The 1080p, 2.40:1-framed image is rich with color and detail. Similarly, the Dolby TrueHD 7.1 soundtrack means business is just about flawless.
As for the paltry features, they’re all short and focus on elements of the production with cast and crew discussing how things were created or determined. While interesting, it all leaves you wanting more detail and information, especially Abrams’ conclusion that Khan was the most compelling opponent from the original 79 epsidoes, echoing Harve Bennett’s conclusion thirty years ago. He never addresses why they didn’t just create someone new.
Anyway, you get: Creating the Red Planet (8:28), Attack on Starfleet (5:25); The Klingon Home World (7:30); The Enemy of My Enemy (7:03); Ship to Ship (6:03); Brawl by the Bay (5:44); Continuing the Mission (1:57): A look at Star Trek‘s work with returning veterans and public service projects; and, The Mission Continues (1:29).
My good friend Martha Thomases, as usual, wrote an interesting column this week on her way to the Baltimore Con. She wrote about choosing what to wear at the Con and that, in turn, set me to thinking and provided grist for my own essay mill. Some weeks I need a lot of grist.
Something that’s important in comics and too little discussed is the importance of clothes. The fashion choices made by a character says something about that character. What you wear makes a statement about who you are even if that statement is, “I don’t care.” As often as not, my criterion still is, “Is it clean? Is it clean-ish? Does it at least not smell? Does it not smell too badly?”
However, I can dress up. I clean up fairly well, to be honest. I’m not keen on wearing ties but I know how and when to do so. I like hats, especially fedoras, although the Irish cloth cap works well on me. One wonderful fan made me a beret like GrimJack wears and I like that a lot and can be seen at conventions with it.
Some people dress for success. Some people dress to be invisible. Choices are made even when it appears to be a non-choice. If you say, “I don’t care how I look; I don’t think it’s important,” that’s a choice. It says something and don’t bother maintaining that it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter. It does. We make up our minds about people right away depending on how they appear to us. They do the same with us. Assuming the phrase, “Dress for the job you want, not for the job you have.” Is true, why is it true? The answer is we want people to perceive us in a certain way even if our goal is not to be perceived, to blend in.
When I was working with student artists, I wanted them to look at different source materials for the way people dressed. Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne would be more likely to dress out of GQ whereas Peter Parker might dress from the Old Navy store. Here’s an extra-points question – how would Tony Stark dress differently from Bruce Wayne? Bruce’s suits are a costume for the playboy image he plays whereas Tony’s wardrobe is who he is (and, yes, I’m including the Iron Man costume).
Certain costumes can be a short-hand to who the character is – in Westerns, it used to be the good guys wore the white hats and the bad guys wore the black hats. Made things simple – an oversimplification, really. Clothing and costumes can describe a character but they can’t be substituted for characterization itself.
Clothing can reveal character: who the individual is, how they think of themselves, how they present an image of themselves. We do it (deny it if you want) and so characters do it as well. What’s true in life should be true on the page.
A very fun aspect of this in the past few years has been the rising importance of cosplay (costume playing for those of you who don’t know the term) as part of fandom. Fans become the characters they see in the comics or on the screen. The costumes can be elaborate or silly or elaborately silly or anywhere in that spectrum. They’ve become fixtures at most conventions these days and are often stunning. They’re a merger of the person who is wearing the costume and the character they represent.
Whether it’s in a drawing or in prose, clothes can make the character and if you want to work as an artist or a writer, you’d do well to remember that.
I know that amongst many writings for ComicMix, I am essentially still in diapers in their eyes (and I’m guessing, so too, perhaps is Emily). And as much as I don’t want to make that a jab at their graying hair, and preference for dinner around 4 PM, I can only assume that when they see the whipper-snapper trying to make a point about time and wisdom they might bruise a hip from chortling at the thought. But I welcome their guffaws… Because they know as well as I, that what I speak is the truth. It’s a simple truth, of course, but a necessary one to restate every now-and-again.
As folks my age rage against the MTVs and their kin, I choose to take a step back. Miley Cyrus gyrating on teddy-bears is exactly what a 20 year old with all the money and none of the responsibilities of life should be doing for attention. She’s an artist the same way any of us may have been at 20. She has the chops, but for now, none of the wisdom needed to produce something of value. John Mayer, now 35 is really coming into his own on his albums. No longer fluffy songs about “making love,” and growing up… now he turns inward, and deftly pushes outward his wry humor, and seamless guitar playing.
So too, do artists in our field of comics perform much the same. Mark Waid, as amazing as he’s been for years, seems to only gild his bibliographic lily with each passing issue of Daredevil. And where young buck artists for Marvel and DC are chugging away at their boards in an effort to ape the house-styles of the day, soon they will see that taking a risk on what they actually want to do will end up paying their rent just as well if not better. And screw you, I’m am optimist.
I dawned on this fact over this past weekend. Matt (my Unshaven Cohort) and I were invited to do a workshop on how to create comics for a batch of wonderful kids at a local art gallery. Their ages ranged from 6 to 14 (I believe), and we had a ball. One of the first things I did was ask each kid in the class to come up with an idea to draw out. Ideas ranged from showing Sonic the Hedgehog becoming “Dark Sonic” to a chicken facing an existential crisis. I was floored, if only because the young man who pitched it to me was so crystal clear on the concept. Why did the chicken cross the road? To die, of course. Later this spiraled out into the zombie chicken apocalypse, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The longer I thought about those kids, and their concepts, I was brought back to my own childhood. I can clearly recall in elementary school I created a trio of crime-fighting, mystery-solving kids (“The Cool Kids”), who I would draw over and over and over. I never actually got them into any unwieldy adventures, nor intricate mysteries. I’d spent all my time perfecting their look. Eventually (as in, a year later), I’d met Matt in class, and soon thereafter, moved into creating a complex continuity of comic characters. Matt and I bathed over entire teams of ‘original’ heroes. I’m nearly certain it took mere days for us to combine our cadres into a single cavalcade of crime-fighters. And amongst all of those long-lost creations, I can still pitch “The Human Blade” to you as the metal-made-man of true justice.
In my head (as I’m sure within those fine minds we melded with at the gallery), there were complex stories at the waiting. Emotional journeys, epic battles, and small character moments to be had. It is only now, with years of toiling at the art table (and blank script pages), do I finally feel like I have the tools to produce something of value. It’s not that I haven’t made product prior, mind you. But as with all artists, it’s time that has taught me that everything before right now is only as good as it could have been. In lesser heady terms… with age comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes a superior piece of art. Every comic Unshaven Comics has put out has clearly shown a progression of our styles, our scripting, and our abilities as story-tellers.
In more than one of the reviews we received back from fans of The Samurnauts: Curse of the Dreadnuts #2, we heard that there was “real progress” from issue 1. Not that they didn’t like issue 1 (and our sales to date are a testament to that…), but there was a clear and present evolution of our art within the 36 pages. I know for myself, I really pushed myself to get feedback throughout my creative process – something a younger me was too prideful to do. It was as if the passage of time (and the experience of doing it several times before) made me more able to produce something with nuance and an attention to craft. Preposterous, perhaps, but true none-the-less.
Rodney Dangerfield didn’t find his voice, truly, until he was well into his forties. Jack Kirby helped define an entire era of comics, at about the same time in his life. The older my personal heroes such as Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino get, I’ve found their works to mature with them. It’s a fact of life, perhaps, no? With age comes wisdom and foresight. And for we, the creatives, so too does our work evolve. Age is not just a number, kiddos, it’s a state of our well-being when we put our pens to the paper.
We begin our look at the new TV season with NBC’s BLACKLIST. Series star Megan Boone talk about how her role takes ongoing research, but on the plus side she gets to work with James Spader, while EP John Eisendrath promises the audience will get answers fast to the show’s mysteries. Plus Amanda Waller heads to ARROW and DC just ain’t too PC these days. Summer is past and now we are back with twice-a-week-updates – right here on ComicMix!
(Reuters) Marvel Comics has agreed to settle a lawsuit by a comic book writer who sued the publisher over the copyright to the flaming-skulled character Ghost Rider.
My good friend Martha Thomases, as usual, wrote 
