Mild-Mannered Reporter

RIP "Mr. Wizard"

2007-06-13T05:27:00.001-07:00

An icon of my youth has passed on. Don Herbert, star of "Watch Mr. Wizard" in the 1950s and '60s died June 12 from bone cancer. He was 89.

I can't say that watching Mr. Wizard perform science experiments in his kitchen-like set, always with a young assistant, inspired me to become a scientist. But it did help give me a respect for the scientific method, for the idea that we can learn about how our world works. His enthusiasm, his interest in showing us that science is not just a guy in a lab but an understanding of how everyday things operate, helped make me into an inquiring, thinking person.

Clearly, his show struck a nerve with many of my generation. It even became a running gag on the Jim Henson series Dinosaurs: "We're gonna need a new Timmy!"

In our current era, when science is under attack even within our own government, we could use a Mr. Wizard again.

It Was 30 Years Ago,Today, Luke and Leia Taught the Band to Play

2007-05-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

I didn't see Star Wars on its opening day. I forget why, but something else was on my schedule. I saw it the next day and stood in line for something like two hours in Times Square for the privilege.

Star Wars opened in New York City at the Astor Plaza theater, on 44th Street, just off Broadway. It was part of a then fairly new entertainment complex. The entrance was at ground level...and on the second floor there was a huge Broadway theater, the Uris (now renamed the George Gershwin--I saw Annie there some years later). The Astor Plaza was in the basement...and it was huge. At the time, it was still a one-screen theater, so you can imagine what it felt like to see that opening scene of the ships coming in over your heads on such a viewing surface.

In those days, theaters still had "continuous showings," admitting audience members throughout the screening, so it was possible to sit through two screenings for one ticket (which I did). Star Wars ran at the Astor Plaza for more than a year, not finally closing there until July of 1978. In that time, I probably saw the film another seven or eight times. That makes me a piker--I know people who saw it at least twice a week in the first summer.

Using Tragedy for Political Purposes

2007-04-18T06:01:00.000-07:00

I knew it was going to happen, I just hoped it would take more than 24 hours. I was wrong.

The Internet and the world's newspapers are already swamped with garbage like this posting on "California Conservative", arguing that the killings at Virginia Tech could have been prevented (or at least mitigated) if the students there were permitted to carry firearms to class. Money quote:

Today, a lone gunman killed more than 30 young men and women. The wrath of millions of Americans should be directed upon the political party, legislature, and university administrators that made it possible. Hundreds more will die tomorrow at the hands of armed gunmen who prey on disarmed Americans.

And then there's this, in the same vein, from today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

The killings on the Virginia Tech campus, the worst such rampage in our history, might have been mitigated if just one member of the faculty or a student had the means to return fire.

I have owned guns for decades. On rare occasions, I have had to "show" one of my guns to people with bad intentions. Not surprisingly, they changed their plans to take my money and do me harm. The Virginia Tech killings confirm the value of empowering ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons.

So, in the opinion of these writers, and others espousing the same nonsense, the situation would have been so much better if, instead of one young man with a loaded gun there had been 20 or more of them, all pulling their weapons. Want to bet what would have happened?

Sure--one of the students might have killed Cho Seung-Hui; but I'd wager that one or more of them would have also killed or wounded several other students or instructors in the ensuing melee...particularly if the initial shot didn't take Cho out immediately.

Not to mention the capacity for even more tragedies before and after. If every time an individual has a beef with somebody else, he has deadly force ready and available at a moment's notice, how often will that deadly force be called upon? Imagine two student bodies, both armed to the teeth, confronting each other at a hotly contested basketball game, for instance, between long-time rivals. I've seen fist-fights break out at such events over a stare, a bumping, an overheard comment. What would it be like if one or more of the offended parties could regularly brandish a handgun instead of his knuckles?

And this doesn't even begin to deal with the increased likelihood of suicide: Students despondent over bad grades, ruined romances, and even more trivial matters have been known to turn to overdoses, hangings, and other methods when all looks black. How much easier it would be to simply pull out the gun in the nightstand in the dorm room.

The rest of the world is appalled by the US insistence on a "gun in every home" culture. In Philadelphia, there have already been more than 100 homicides with guns in 2007; in Blacksburg, VA, 33 people are dead from shootings in one day. In all of Great Britain, there were fewer than 50 deaths (both deliberate and accidental) from firearms in all of 2006. Yet the anti-gun-control forces in this country will insist that stringent measures like those in the United Kingdom don't work (handguns are completely banned from private ownership there).

Tell that to the 26,000 students of Virginia Tech today. Go ahead; I dare you.

The Prestige: Compare and Contrast

2007-03-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Intrigued by the trailers for the movie version, I picked up Christopher Priest's The Prestige last fall. (In part, that was because I was fairly certain I wouldn't get to see the film in theaters, given my busy schedule at the time.) The book lived up to all my expectations--it was mysterious, moody, adventurous, and (at least to my layman's eyes), historically accurate...save, of course, for the science-fictional aspects involving Nikola Tesla's work.

The rivalry between these two 19th-Century stage illusionists and its effects not only on them but on their modern-day descendants is presented in a pair of diaries, offering the viewpoint of each of them and jumping in time not only in their stories but into the lives of the descendants as well.

The movie (which I saw on DVD this past weekend) jettisons the modern-day portions of the story and alters certain aspects of the 19th-Century events. There's a certain loss in removing the modern "wraparound"...especially as it eliminates the sense that this great feud has continued for another 100 years, long after its originators have passed on. But I can see the reasons for that choice by screenwriters Jonathan and Christopher Nolan (the latter also directed)--as a film, the story is far more compact without the modern extension.

The film keeps both its big "secrets"--as to the manner in which each magician performs his master illusion--until the very end, while the novel reveals them about two-thirds of the way through. That's because, again, there's a deeper mystery in the modern part of the story, that ties the feud up very neatly.

At first, I thought I'd need a spoiler warning in order to discuss some important differences between the two versions of the story, but I've decided that's unnecessary. Suffice to say that the novel's version of Robert Angier's (Hugh Jackman) illusion is "spookier" (especially as it relates to how things go wrong when Borden (Christopher Bale) interferes), but the film's version is decidedly more horrifying.

Priest, I think, manages to avoid having his reader choose one or the other of his protagonists as "the hero". Both men do things that are, at times, despicable, understandable, and admirable. But the film seems to make Borden the more heroic, in the end, although it teases us by showing more of Angier's struggles than of Borden's.

I recommend both the book and the movie to anyone with an interest in stage illusion and historical fiction.

52 #42

2007-02-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

This post can be viewed as a follow-up to the previous one. In reviewing the two Shazam series currently running, I mentioned how the sense of whimsy and light-hearted adventure was missing from one and seemed submerged in the other.

The most recent issue of DC's 52 makes it clear, at least to me, that there is no longer any room for light-hearted adventure anywhere in the DC Universe as currently configured. What other reason can there be for killing off Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man? (If killing off his wife, Sue, in Identity Crisis weren't enough of a downer.)

Ralph was the superhero who could look at a simple jewel heist as a big deal, to whom solving a mystery was a kick, not a mission. He was the last vestige of the Silver Age sensibility in the DCU. And now he's gone. In an era when even a wacko idea like Detective Chimp is being used for dark and conspiratorial plots, DC has truly lost something irreplaceable.

Up 'til now, I've generally enjoyed 52--but this has put a damper on my enthusiasm. I was really hoping the Dibny storyline was intended to reinvigorate the character and make him see that life--a fun, involved life--could continue even without his beloved wife. If the "Lost in Space" storyline concludes similarly to this one, I'll know the DCU I grew up with has died.

Shazam! Shazam! Shazam....

2007-02-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

...with apologies to Gomer Pyle.

Two very different takes on the classic Captain Marvel are currently being published by DC Comics. The first, currently up to the fifth issue of a 12-issue run, is The Trials of Shazam!, in which Freddy Freeman--now apparently of college age--must undergo a series of tests to be re-gifted with the powers of the gods and heroes and take his place as the new Captain Marvel...who, apparently will just be called Shazam, now.

I presume that last bit is to allow DC to actually have a character who uses the name by which they have marketed the Marvel Family for the past 40 years or so.

If this series, by Judd Winick and Howard Porter, were about any other character, I'd call it a terrific idea, as Freddy meets the current human incarnations of the various "Shazam" donees. (So far, he's met Solomon as a female tattoo artist and Achilles as a never-dying soldier.) But the whole thing is just too dark and too angsty for the Marvel Family, who have always had a touch of whimsy in even their biggest battles.

And the art--ignoring the bad drawing in so many places, why is this done in this semi-painted style anyway? It's, again, inappropriate for the nature of these characters (at least as they've been portrayed in the past) and wildly inconsistent besides.

It appears DC has decided, yet again, that the way to make Captain Marvel (excuse me, Shazam) work in the modern era is turn him into every other dark and conflicted hero. To quote the great Rocket J. Squirrel, "but that trick never works!"

The second series, which has just begun its four-issue run, is Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil! This one is written and drawn by Jeff Smith, of Bone fame...and I had high hopes for it. Certainly, we have here, at least, an art style appropriate to the character. And Smith is good at injecting whimsical moments into the story, as evidenced by the scene with Cap and the hot-dog man.

But I question the need to re-tell, one more time, Cap's origin, complete with making Billy Batson's life even more miserable than at any time in the past. And I don't think the idea of Cap having a "past life" that he doesn't completely recall works either. Neither does the insertion of metaphysical concepts like magic working differently at the Rock of Eternity, or the (spoiler warning) literal "footprints" Billy accidentally leaves on the world, setting up the crisis for the rest of the story.

I'll continue to follow both of these tales--the first because, as I said, if it were any other character, it would be a great idea; the second, because I think Smith can still pull this off, if he doesn't let the need for modern complexity overcome the character's natural simplicity.

Exterminate--You Silly English Kuhniggit!

2007-02-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

I must thank Andrew Sullivan, of all people, for bringing this to my attention:

Spirited Attempt

2007-01-31T05:46:00.000-08:00

The first issue of DC's Will Eisner's The Spirit is a good comic book story, but it doesn't really capture the spirit (sorry about that) of Eisner's work.

For one thing, the story's too long. At 22 pages (OK--two of them are a useless double-page spread for the splash page), it's almost four times as long as one of Eisner's eight-page classics. And, yes, Eisner would have managed to get in the same plot in just those eight pages. This would have worked much better with two eight-to-ten page stories (make them related, if you must) with the kind of tight plotting Eisner excelled in.

While the art, overall, captures the sense of Eisner's work without slavishly aping his style, the coloring is horrendous. What Eisner would have accomplished in his line work--blending black and white to create a noir-ish look to the page--artists Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone have left to colorist Dave Stewart to achieve. The result is just muddy, not shadowy. If the dialog didn't, at one point, tell us that the Spirit is dressed all in blue, we'd never know it. Except for the cover shot, his outfit looks grey throughout.

And that's another thing--the exchange between the Spirit and newscaster Ginger Coffee about his outfit is just too fanboy-oriented. It sounds like the kind of discussion two guys in a comics shop would have about why the suit, mask and hat work as a disguise. Eisner never explained why nobody recognized the Spirit as the "late" Denny Colt--they just didn't. It was a given, part of the willing suspension of disbelief needed to make the stories operate.

Oh--and the villain seems far more Chester Gould/Dick Tracy than Eisner/Spirit in tone.

On the other hand, there are a number of nice touches in the story--the opening sequence, showing the cable news coverage, is very good, right down to the throw-away partial stories we see in the "crawl" at the bottom of the screen. ("...wo headed puppy killer captures jurors' hearts..." "...ited Nations officials finally admit they're 'basically useles...") Ginger Coffee's narration of her own rescue--which the Spirit originally thinks is just an annoying habit--is brilliantly funny.

This wasn't a total disappointment...just not a complete success. I look forward to what this team does in future issues.

Home-Schooled Speller to be Included

2007-01-30T19:05:00.000-08:00

In what I consider to be a really bad decision, the Avon Grove school district has decided to let Meghan Reynolds participate in the middle school spelling bee. See the full story here.

What the story doesn't adequately explain (to me, anyway) is how Meghan is going to qualify for the school-wide bee. All the other participants qualify by winning the preliminary round in their respective classrooms. The only student in Meghan's "classroom" (her home) is Meghan--she is, perforce, the winner. She will be the only competitor at the school-wide level who has not had to prove herself in an earlier round. This is fair? She's essentially getting what would be considered a "bye" in the first round in an athletic tournament...but, of course, teams that get "byes" in athletic tournaments earn them by their standings.

To reiterate my earlier stance--parents who choose to home-school their kids have made a choice. I think they should have to live with all the consequences of that choice--including the fact that their child will not (or should not) be able to participate in extra-curricular activities in the public schools (and certainly not in semi-academic ones like a spelling bee). I just don't get the idea that these parents think the schools aren't a good place to educate their kids but a fine place for them to play.

A Plea for Inclusion--Except Where It Counts

2007-01-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

The following is based on a letter sent to the Philadelphia Inquirer, in response to this article.

"She just wants to be included," says Kim Reynolds of her home-schooled daughter and the fight for her to take part in Fred S. Engle Middle School's spelling bee. Yes, she wants to be included, except where it really counts--in the classroom.

The winner of the school's spelling bee, who will go on to the county-wide level, should represent the students of the school. Meghan Reynolds represents no one except herself and her family. She is not a member of the student body of Engle Middle School.

As a life-long proponent of public education, I am opposed to Pennsylvania's Act 67 and its requirement that home-schooled students be permitted to participate in extra-curricular activities at public schools in their districts. Why? If such activities are so important to them, why is not the rest of the public school experience--classes and lunch with their peers, the camaraderie in hallways--not equally as important? If the argument is that their parents are paying taxes to support these activities, the same can be said of parochial school students; yet no one argues for those students to be part of the extra-curricular activities at public schools.

In many districts, there are curricular components to these activities. In my own district, band and chorus are classes, for which students receive a grade. That seems to be the case for Engle's spelling bee, as well. Further, in many districts, there are academic requirements that must be met before one can participate, especially in athletics. Who assures that the home-schooled students are meeting the same requirements? Their parents?

No--a well-rounded education consists of many things...and class participation should not be separated from extra-curricular participation. If you choose not to be part of the first, you should not demand to be part of the second.

Aren't "Surges" Something to Avoid?

2007-01-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

There's a reason we use "surge protectors" in electronics. Surges are dangerous--they are unpredictable with usually disastrous results.

Odd that President Bush can't see that.

A few days ago, just after Dubya's speech about the "surge", my wife--well aware of my politics--asked me who would be in a lower circle of Hell, Nixon or Bush II? I had to think about it for a while, and I think I've come to a reluctant conclusion--the Shrub is definitely destined to a lower level, IMO.

Why? Well, for all his faults, I never doubted that Nixon--even in the depths of Watergate--thought he was acting in the best interests of the nation. He was wrong--tragically so--but his intentions were never entirely selfish. And he certainly never had the hubris to suggest that he and his actions were, in some way, ordained by the Almighty.

Not so with Bush. I am quite convinced now that the only thing GWB is concerned with is his own image and legacy--nothing is more important to him than to not have a "failure" of the magnitude of Iraq occur on his watch. And so his tactic is "delay, delay, delay"...find any way to prop up his program for another two years, so that when the US withdrawal eventually comes, he can say, "That wasn't me, that was the next guy."

That overwhelming concern with self, combined with his belief--both stated and tacit--that his electoral victories (such as they were) were signs that he was divinely chosen to lead America at this time, and combined with his utter disregard for the clear meaning of the Constitution's words regarding the powers of the executive and legislative branches (never mind the Bill of Rights), make him a far more dangerous, and--yes--villainous individual than Nixon ever was.

In Shakespearean terms, Nixon was our MacBeth--a man who could have been a great leader destroyed by personal demons. George W. Bush, on the other hand, is our Richard III--a conniving schemer who thinks the success of his schemes is the hand of God at work...and their lack of success merely the work of those who will not recognize his divine inspiration.

Look What I Found!

2007-01-17T06:43:00.000-08:00

I was going through my files, in anticipation of some more posting here, and discovered I still had something I thought was long gone--the original art that Phil Foglio did to go with the Challengers of the Unknown submission I discussed here. At left is Phil's version of the Challs--Rocky, Ace, Red (wearing the cold-weather version of the uniform), and Prof.

And here are the villians I was planning to use in that initial story--Multi-Man, D-Man, Roc, the Gargoyle, and Mistress Wycker--all established foes of the team. The plot, as I recall, revolved around a threat to the Challs' loved ones, especially Ace and June's daughter, Maggie.

"Entitled to Your Educated Opinion...."

2007-01-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

I believe it was Harlan Ellison--and someone is sure to correct me if I'm wrong--who said, "Everyone is not entitled to his opinion; rather , everyone is entitled to his educated opinion." (It might be "informed" rather than "educated", but the point's the same.

An interesting discussion on this point is currently going on on comicon.com in a thread entitled, "OK for pros to bash fans on Comicon?".

The gist is summed up in these postings:

matchesmalone

Now that we've exhausted the wit of Bernard "You Work at McDonald's" Chang, here's the wisdom (from one of his replies to me):

"if you have to ask a question like: '...how does one both pencil and ink in the digital environment?' - should you really be commenting about art in general?

So how about it fans and pros alike, do you have a right to an opinion about "art in general" if you don't know how to both pencil and ink in the digital environment? Should only professional comics artists be entitled to have opinions about the work of professional comics artists? Should only friends of Tommy Lee Edwards be able to make (supportive) comments about Tommy Lee Edwards?

X-Treme12345

Originally posted by matchesmalone:
So how about it fans and pros alike, do you have a right to an opinion about "art in general" if you don't know how to both pencil and ink in the digital environment?

I thought this was pretty interesting, but it got lost in the middle of Matches' pledge for Internet Martyrdom™ He may have had a history of obnoxiousness in this case to warrant a reply like that, but I have seen quite a few pros replying to fan's criticisms basically with "shut up, you are not a writer/artist and don't know how to write/draw."

BATFAN

Originally posted by matchesmalone:
So how about it fans and pros alike, do you have a right to an opinion about "art in general" if you don't know how to both pencil and ink in the digital environment?

One does not need to know about the ins and outs of comic book art or writing to talk about it, but if you want to have an educated discussion about the subject then it's best if you know about the subject so that you wont look like a jackass in the end.

David Porta

You don't have to know anything about entertainment to know what you like and dislike and why.

In general, I agree that intimate knowledge of a medium is not required for stating an opinion as to whether you liked it...but if you're going to go into depth about why, I think it's best if you can speak with some knowledge, if not authority, about how these kinds of works are created, the challenges faced and met, the standards a professional is expected to meet, etc.

I'd never, for example, speak about musical composition beyond the typical American Bandstand "It's got a good beat, you can dance to it, I give it an 85," because I simply don't know enough about music--other than occasionally performing on an amateur level--to speak knowledgeably about it. But I think I've been around comics long enough--30 years or so, including some time attempting to submit proposals--to opine with some expertise.

Your thoughts?

TV--Improving or Not?

2007-01-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

'Way back in April, I posted a comment that network television was in "a rut". I figure it's time for another look at what I'm watching, what I'm not, and where I figure TV is and where it's going.

I still can't honestly say I have any "appointment" viewing this season. The closest thing to that is Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip--I try not to miss it, but if something gets in the way, I feel no compulsion to tape it. Actually, I've gotten even more interested in the series since I found out that certain characters and elements mirror Aaron Sorkin's life. Sure, we could all figure out that Danny (Bradley Whitfield) has a lot of Sorkin in him...but it took a profile of Kristin Chenoweth in The New York Times Magazine to make me realize that Harriet (Sarah Paulson) is based on that Broadway star and former regular on The West Wing...right down to certain incidents in their respective lives. I now suspect the recently introduced film producer who admits to wanting to date Harriet (again) is another avatar of Sorkin.

I like Numbers (or as they insist, NUMB3RS), but I think it's going to lose something without Peter McNicol, who is moving on to a regular role on this season's run of 24. It always hurts when a show starts paring down the supporting cast.

The only Fox show I make any effort to see is House, though the constant repeats in its schedule have made it difficult for me to maintain interest. There's nothing on the CW I routinely watch, though if Smallville follows through with some of the hints in the recent episodes I've seen (and previews), it may bear closer watching in the future. Likewise, there's nothing on ABC that makes me sit up and take notice.

I was watching Justice on Fox, until they cancelled it. It was a lawyer show with a nice twist--in the final minutes, they would show how the crime actually took place...often indicating that the defense attorney's version was dead wrong...and sometimes that both sides had it wrong! It was the most unusual legal show I'd seen in ages...and that includes Shark, though I like James Woods and Jeri Ryan, and the relationship between Woods' character and his teenage daughter.

On the other hand, I did watch the second season of the new version of Doctor Who on SciFi, and I'm looking forward to the next one as well.

I'd be very interested in my readers' thoughts on this TV season.

Challenge?

2007-01-02T05:43:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite series from the Silver Age was Challengers of the Unknown...and, unlike many, I actually preferred the Bob Brown-drawn version to the original Jack Kirby/Wally Wood issues. For one thing, once Kirby left, the Challs began to exhibit individual personalities in speech and habits, which made for a more interesting group.

But by the end of the '60s, no one seemed to know how to make a group of non-super adventurers work. There were several attempts to rework the concept, but none of them really jelled. Later attempts to revive the series...including a "Vertigo-ized" version of the originals...never caught the spirit of the characters or the idea behind them, either.

About 20 years ago, through my buddy Bob Greenberger, I submitted my attempt at reviving the Challengers. As I expected, it never saw the light of day. I no longer have the original proposal, but here are some of the highlights, as I recall them:

"Ace" Morgan--Like all the Challs, Ace never had a real first name in the '60s. I decided "Ace" was more than just a description of his flying prowess but an acronym for "Arthur Charles Edward". In 1990, I made him a former 'Nam pilot...today, I'd probably make him a former shuttle pilot. I also had married him off to part-time Challenger June Robbins, and given them a 10-year-old daughter, Maggie.

"Rocky" (Robert) Davis--With pro wrestling a joke, I turned Rocky into a former gold-medal Olympic weight-lifter, and a college grad with a degree in physical therapy.

"Prof" (Philip) Haley--Not just a diver, but a polymath scientist--sort of Jean Cousteau combined with Carl Sagan. His special interest is in ancient civilizations.

"Red" (Aloysius) Ryan--No wonder he prefers "Red"! Red is the youngest Challenger, a former gold-medal Olympic gymnast. He's the one--other than her parents--who is closest to Maggie Morgan, her beloved "Unca Red."

I gave them utilitarian uniforms, in purple and gold--recalling both the Kirby-era jumpsuits and the Bob Brown-era yellow-and-red outfits. The uniforms were layered...tight-fitting t-shirt under a jacket, with baseball-style caps. I suggested there might even be a cold-weather version as well.

My art is crude--I'm out of practice--but here's a look at what I had in mind.

Starting Over

2006-12-30T08:11:00.000-08:00

I've been terribly remiss in keeping this blog going, for a variety of reasons--among them, lack of time, lack of stuff to talk about, a general malaise if you will.

I want to change that in the New Year. I hope, beginning with January 2 (too much happening over the weekend to start right on New Year's Day), to post at least once a week and hopefully every other day!

In the meantime, perhaps to get things going, here's a rework of a letter I sent to my local paper recently. It's a response to their support of certain portions of the report that came out of the Gates Foundation about the future of education:

You cite the Gates commission report, I assume approvingly: "Public schools should be run by private contractors...."
On a practical level, I would have thought our nation's experience with the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel in Iraq had taught us a valuable lesson about outsourcing government operations (still paid with taxpayer funds). I would have thought such experience made it clear that the private sector is neither more efficient nor less corrupt than the public sector. Apparently, I was wrong, if a respected newspaper can still suggest that privatizing K-12 education makes sense.

On a philosophical, ethical level, I am equally troubled by the notion of turning education into a profit-making business. Are our students, our children, nothing more than widgets to be turned out at the lowest cost, with the highest return on investment? If so, what happens to those children who it will never be profitable to educate? What happens to the children whose needs are so great, so costly to meet, that they can never "turn a profit" for the private concerns chosen to run our school systems? Do we go back to the institutionalization of such children? Do we return to 18th- and 19th-Century models for dealing with the disabled, the handicapped, either mentally or physically?

I hope not. But we have seen how private business deals with the unprofitable--it abandons it, as it abandoned, for example, the unprofitable transport of passengers by rail, eventually turning over to government the service it had failed to maintain because there was no "profit" in it.

Can we afford to have the education of our children, 25 or 50 years from now, turned back over to government, after private enterprise has let it fall further and further into disrepair, because maintaining it at a high level was simply "unprofitable"?

Comments are, as always, welcome.

Indy Comics: Boring?

2006-06-07T18:23:00.000-07:00

In last fall's issue of Mome — a still-young quarterly showcase of new comics artists from the publishing house Fantagraphics — the cartoonist Gabrielle Bell made a somewhat startling confession. "I've often been really impatient with most comics," she told Gary Groth in an interview. "The stories, in most cases, even if they're good, they're still not as good as most books, most novels are."

Now, I trust Gary Groth won't take it as an insult to say that, in the whole let's-take-comics-seriously movement of the past two decades, he is among the most-serious-taking. As the bold and sometimes cantankerously opinionated editor of Fantagraphics, Groth has published and championed many of the finest cartoonists working today (including as it happens, many of those discussed here), and he has long battled on behalf of what we now call "the graphic novel" over what he considers mass market junk (though he uses a somewhat more biting epithet), which is to say: superhero comics. But Bell, bless her, seems completely unaware of her little blasphemy as she refuses to dis Catwoman, and maintains that first and foremost, comics are supposed to tell stories. Comics Chronicle, New York Times Sunday Book Review

Boy, I'm glad somebody finally said that. John Hodgman goes on to call to task the many "slice-of-life" cartoonists so loved by the Journalistas--precisely because their lives simply aren't worth being sliced and served up as reading material:

For all the admirable effort to allow comics to tell different types of stories, there is also a creeping sameness to many of these comics: black-and-white, semi- or wholly autobiographical sketches of drifting daily life and its quiet epiphanies.

This is the part of comics (or any form of entertainment) that Groth and company simply don't get--it's supposed to be entertaining! This is not to say that the "quiet story" cannot entertain; of course, it can. The Glass Menagerie is just as good a play as, say, MacBeth--even it doesn't have bombast, and blood, and murders, and ghosts, and witches. But 20 or 30-some pages in words and pictures of the angst-filled life of the "starving artist" simply isn't compelling enough for the average person. Too often, I feel as if the average "indy" cartoonist is writing only for all those who share his condition, as opposed to trying to same something to those who don't.

In the process of trying to be different, too many of these cartoonists wind up being all the same.

Review: "Out of the Night...."

2006-05-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

Isabel Allende is generally considered a "literary" author, so the fact that she has had a major hit with a "pop-culture" title like Zorro is something of a surprise. I'd never read anything by Allende before and I was warned that she might not be my cup of tea.

Allende looks at the masked hero's beginnings and gives them a somewhat more mystical, more spiritual bent, with a half-Indian mother and a grandmother who is, essentially, the tribe's medicine woman. Diego Vega's mute assistant, Bernardo, becomes his "milk brother," the son of his Indian wet nurse. She eventually manages to tie Zorro's development to the Napoleonic Wars, the War of 1812 and Jean LaFitte, and even the restoration of the Spanish crown.

Still, once she gets Diego back to California after his Spanish education, many of the events of her story parallel those of Johnston McCulley's original novel, The Curse of Capistrano, although details of names and specific actions may differ. And, despite her "literary" background, she is not above a sly pop-culture reference:

To thrill the children, he whistled, and his mount whirled and reared; then he pulled out his sword and flashed it, making it glint in the lantern light, and sang a verse that he himself had composed during the idle months in New Orleans; something about a valiant horseman who rides out on moonlit nights to defend justice, punish evildoers, and slash a Z with his sword.

Isabel Allende's Zorro, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden, is now available in paperback.

What a Rut!

2006-04-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

I've come to the conclusion that network television is in a rut.

On one network, NBC, it seems that there's only one successful formula--cops and lawyers. Four different variations on Law and Order, not only running on their regular nights but apparently used to fill space with reruns whenever some other show winds up in the rating cellar.

On another network, CBS, it's cops and science. Three versions of CSI, one variant that puts it in a military setting (NCIS), one that makes it psychology (Criminal Minds), and one that makes it mathematics (Numbers). Again, the CSI shows appear to be used as space-fillers in an emergency.

ABC, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have a successful "franchise" of any kind. Desperate Housewives is its big hit...but if there's a way to spin that off into other shows, they apparently haven't found it yet.

On Fox, the "franchise" is "reality"...largely based around American Idol. But I don't see the appeal to this show at all--quite frankly, there are better performers among my high-school senior's drama club...most of whom have no intention of going professional. Fox's one other notable show, House, seems to be taking a cue from CBS--forensic medicine, for lack of a better term.

WB? It's all teen angst, all the time. UPN? Other than shows aimed at the black, urban market, I can't see a strategy. No wonder these two are merging next year.

Situation comedy seems to have fallen into one of its periodic declines. (When Two and a Half Men is touted as TV's biggest comedy hit, you know you're in a decline.) And I don't think there's a Norman Lear or a Bill Cosby waiting in the wings these days to resuscitate it.

Seven years ago, I had high hopes that Aaron Sorkin and The West Wing would introduce new subjects and venues for TV drama. But it took that whole seven years for ABC to come up with Commander-in-Chief, a washed-out variation on its prececessor. And I wasn't really thinking then of a whole string of political dramas...I was hoping that the range of topics on Sorkin's show would lead some producer, somewhere, to find material in some other business or profession or concept.

Is the journalist so reviled in this day and age that there's no interest in a series about a reporter? (Make him a blogger if you want to make it "relevant" and "hip".) I thought NBC might be going somewhere with The Book of Daniel--surely there's room for an examination (serious, comedic, serio-comic) of the life of a member of the clergy beyond the platitudes of Seventh Heaven? Have Enron and Tyco and their ilk so turned us off that a series set in a major corporation has no chance?

For the record, I like the original CSI, the original L&O (and spin-off SVU), Criminal Minds, Numbers, and--to a lesser extent--Commander-in-Chief. But, at least recently, none of them has become for me what The West Wing once was, an "appointment"--a time when I would make a point of being in front of my set for the latest episode, when I was annoyed when it was pre-empted for a "special", or when I was disappointed when a real-life event conflicted with it.

I wish I had more "appointments" with my TV these days.

Why I'm Not Reading Marvel Right Now

2006-04-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years, I've found myself only reading the comics that truly intrigue me.

The intrigue can be caused by characters I care about, interesting plot devices, or creative teams I trust to do competent, craftsmanlike work. That said, flipping through Marvel's titles in the store, reading the comments on message boards, I find that there's nothing intriguing in Marvel's current output.

Characters I once cared about--the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four--have been so altered by creative teams and editorial decisions that I don't know who they are anymore. The X-Men of the movies--different as they are from the characters I grew up--are still closer to the people I cared about than the ones I see in today's comics. As for the Avengers, the editors seem to have lost all focus of what that team is supposed to be about; as a group with an ever-changing roster, having a solid idea of why the team exists at all is paramount to making it consistent and consistently interesting. Every time I open and skim an issue of this New Avengers, I find myself asking, "Why are these people hanging together and why are they called Avengers?" Characterwise, the FF are closer to my image of the team than any other set of characters at Marvel....but they seem to be retreading the kinds of stories they were involved in 20, 30, 40 years ago. The characters are right, but there's nothing interesting in the plots. I've read this stuff before.

When I first read about the upcoming Civil War, I had high hopes for a concept that I could get interested in. But the pre-release publicity makes me think this is just another excuse for big fights between people who have no reason to fight otherwise, and for another trip down Marvel's recent well-worn road of making everything look and seem like X-Men circa 1990 or so. The heroes are under suspicion, they don't trust anybody, nobody trusts them, it's them against the world. Ho hum.

Marvel, we already live in a dark world, filled with people we can't trust. (In government and out, unfortunately.) Any chance we could have a fictional world where that isn't the case?

I'm baaack!

2006-04-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know, it's been eight months since I posted anything here. Yeah, I know, that's no way to run a blog.

Forgive me. Sometimes there's just nothing to write about. Sometimes it's easy to lose interest in posting regularly if you feel there's nobody responding (or maybe even reading).

But I decided to give it another shot and to start with something a little controversial (see below), something I know there are strong feelings about on many sides.

Let me know what you think.

Whither Superboy?

2006-04-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

By now, most of you have seen this or know the gist of it:

U.S. District Court Judge Ronald S.W. Lew ruled last month that [Jerry] Siegel's widow, Joanne Siegel, and daughter, Laura Siegel Larson, recaptured the Superboy character's copyright in November 2004.

Much has been made of what the Siegel family wants and what they will do with the ownership of the character; indeed, much has been made of what they can do with the character, especially since DC Comics claims trademarks on such things as the "S" shield.

Here's my take on it all, from someone who--though not a lawyer--has looked at copyright and trademark issues for a number of years.

1. I sincerely doubt the Siegels want to actually produce their own Superboy stories. None of them are in the writing, drawing or publishing business and it's unlikely they want to go through the hassles of finding someone to do it for them, not when they have DC Comics sitting right there with 75 years of experience at doing it and making pretty good money from it.

2. I sincerely doubt the Siegels want any kind of creative control over Superboy in comics or any other medium. Again, they haven't the expertise to do it.

3. This next is purely guess work, based on what I know of the principal people involved. If DC president and publisher Paul Levitz had the power to make a substantial financial agreement with the Siegel family right now, he would. He doesn't have that power; this is now being handled at a level way over his head.

4. The most likely outcome? I suspect the Siegels will wind up with an agreement not very different from the one the Marston family has regarding Wonder Woman. They will get a substantial yearly payment (perhaps based on where and how Superboy is used, perhaps just an agreed-upon sum, indexed to inflation) with additional money coming from percentages of out-of-comics licensing of the character. How long will it take for this to happen? Depends on how stubborn Time-Warner's lawyers are and how much they want to protect the Smallville property from being part of this settlement.

5. Is Smallville about Superboy? Good question. To me, Superboy is a kid who wears the "S". Since the Clark character in the show has yet to do that, maybe there is no connection to Superboy. But if the courts define "Superboy" as any depiction of the youth of the man who will become Superman, then Smallville is just a non-costumed version thereof.

Final prediction: This won't be finally resolved until Smallville is out of production, once and for all....because then, T-W's lawyers will have a better handle on the real worth of that property and be able to put real numbers on what they're willing to accept.

A Recommendation

2005-09-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Whenever the conversation among comics fans turns (as it invariably does) to the question of how to make comics a mass entertainment medium again, I am asked to point out a currently published title that I think could have the same appeal to the general public as popular films such as the Indiana Jones series, Ocean's Eleven, and the like.

My choice is also invariable: Rob Hanes Adventures by Randy Reynaldo, published by Reynaldo's WCG Comics.

The eponymous character is a globe-trotting agent for Justice International, a security-cum-detective agency headquartered in New York City. He is frequently partnered by an older agent named Abner McKenna...and most adventures involve a beautiful girl or two. Like Indiana Jones, Rob is human, a little headstrong, fallible, but ultimately on the side of the angels...even when it seems he may be bucking his own employers and/or the US government.

Recent stories have revealed the secret of Rob's father's past ("The Glowworm Identity," Rob Hanes Adventures #5), a search for a missing scientist ("The Hunt for Octavius Jebru," RHA #6), and an encounter with an antiquities collector in Africa ("The Last Explorer," RHA #8). That last brought back into the series two of Reynaldo's most interesting characters--the woman who might be Rob's "one true love," Caroline Cromwell, and her unredeemable husband, Anthony.

Reynaldo is an unabashed fan of the adventure comic strips of the 1930s and '40s, most especially Roy Crane's Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer and Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates. It shows in the style of story he tells and in the crisp black-and-white art he uses to illustrate them. There are still times when Reynaldo bites off more than he can chew artistically and something doesn't quite work, but he's growing constantly as both a writer and an artist.

I'm also a big fan of those strips and I'm pleased to see someone in modern comics successfully emulating them. These are the kinds of stories that non-comics fans enjoy in other media and there's no reason the comics form of them shouldn't be equally as popular. They just have to be pointed out to them.

For more info on Randy Reynaldo and Rob Hanes, go to WCG Comics.

Why Manga Isn't Comics

2005-09-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you find a small part of a blog post or essay will take over the whole discussion. That seems to have happened to my comments on Dirk Deppey's essay. I never intended my "manga isn't comics" comment to hijack the whole discussion, but it seems to have. So I guess I have to explain myself more fully.

First of all, the comment is not intended as either an elevation or a put-down of manga. It is not lesser nor greater than Euro-American comics--it is simply equal but different. This is, as I've said elsewhere, an argument about taxonomy, about where in the wider set called "graphic storytelling" the subset called manga belongs. Most I've talked with want to lump it in with "comics". I disagree--here's why:

I think kinds of storytelling are defined by their conventions...in terms of graphic storytelling, that includes "visual vocabulary," if you will. The visual vocabularies of Euro-American (henceforth "EA") comics and manga are different, in part because they are built from different artistic traditions.

Deppey even points to one of manga's most prevalent "vocabulary" idioms (one it does not share with EA comics) in his essay:

The tendency to drop into "superdeformed mode," where characters suddenly transform into ultra-cartoony versions of themselves when broad comedy is demanded, is a classic but by no means unique example.

While there is certainly a range of styles within EA comics--from the broad cartoony stuff of Asterix through the gentler humor styles of Archie to the straight-forward illustrative tradition of Alex Raymond, it is rare (I'd say "it never happens" but then somebody would be sure to hand me a dozen representative samples) for an artist to jump from one to the other in the midst of a story, other than for very specific effect...and certainly not as a recognized idiomatic form throughout the medium.

Other visual elements unique to manga include a use of backgrounds to convey emotional content. EA comics tend to have two background modes--either an attempt to convey a specific setting or no backgrounds at all (the latter usually after a scene-setting "master shot"). While color might be used as an emotional signifier in EA comics, the actual drawing of the background is not.

But in manga, the background of a panel is often replaced by an explosion of lines (what many western readers might misread as "speed lines") to indicate extreme emotion on the part of the primary character.

A third element of this visual vocabulary is a greater reliance on "silence". Yes, there have been totally "silent" EA comics--The Little King is a prime example--but, for the most part, the EA comics tradition is that even panels of pure scenery have some verbal content. It's a minor point, perhaps, but it changes the entire pacing of a story, such that manga has a different sense of time from EA comics.

Other critics have commented on this:

Indeed, the amount of wordless passages in any volume of manga may be striking to the Western eye. To 'read' manga is to read images - the rhythm is determined by the sequence of images. Of course, western comics also have a genre known as 'sourds' - wordless comics. As opposed to Japanese perception, such works are regarded in the West as 'experimental', 'avant-garde' - in other words exotic, or as a new (peripheral) phenomenon. However, even in the 'sourds', the sequence of images is not so much based on analytical montage in comparison to manga production.

...
As opposed to Euro-American comics, you will rarely find descriptive captions in manga. The use of these is kept to a strict minimum, which cannot be said of the prototypical European/American comic.

--Aarnoud Rommens manga story-telling/showing

My thanks to Noiseman433 at comicon.com for pointing me to that discussion.

I think those differences in "vocabulary" (and there are probably others, I'm trying to keep this from turning into a book) are enough to classify manga as different from "comics" as traditionally defined.

Moving on to one other point in Deppey's essay that I didn't get into last time--

Deppey seems to make a lot of the manga publishers' "courage" in pursuing what he sees as a wider market in bookstores and by providing such a diverse range of material. (That all of it is aimed at a single demographic of "tweens and teens" seems to elude him; there is a wide range of adult-targeted manga in Japan, but damned little of it--if any--reaches American bookstores in translated form.) Among his comments:

What makes all of this so wickedly funny is that companies like Tokyopop and Viz are practically rubbing Marvel and DC's noses in the practices that have allowed manga publishers to succeed at levels previously thought impossible... and yet Marvel and DC still clearly can't figure it out.

Of course, the part Deppey conveniently ignores is the economics. Tokyopop and Viz are reprint houses--all the creative and production costs of what they provide to the US market have already been paid. They're just paying for US reprint and distribution rights, some translation costs, and some minor production costs in having the English replace the Japanese...and in these days of digital imaging, that's pretty damned easy.

In other words, the manga importers can afford to experiment (although, as noted, the experiment hasn't gone very far afield from the Sailor Moon and Voltron audiences they started with).

I'll continue this discussion in comments here and at comicon.com...but this is my last blog post on the subject. I'd like to move on to other things.

I'm Baaack!

2005-08-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long disappearance again.

I hope to be back on a more regular basis now--once a week, at least. Meantime, I've found something from one of my favorite betes noir to rant about below.

Manga--NOT Comics Salvation

2005-08-30T18:04:00.000-07:00

A friend who knows my somewhat iconoclastic opinions about manga and its relationship to American comics directed me to this essay by The Comics Journal's Dirk Deppey. (Admittedly, the friend also knows my antipathy for nearly all things related to The Comics Journal, so the direction may have been made simply for the fun of watching me go ballistic reading Deppey's complete and utter misunderstandings of the relationship between the two forms of graphic storytelling.)

Let me make something in that last parenthetical remark perfectly clear: Manga are not comics. Both manga and comics are forms of graphic storytelling...but so are kids' picture books, but we wouldn't call those comics. (At least, I don't think most of us would--God knows what Deppey might think.) I think of the relationship between Euro-American comics and manga somewhat the way I think of the relationship between Euro-American drama and kabuki--both are forms of theater, but kabuki is not a form of drama in the traditional Euro-American sense.

But let's go directly to some of Deppey's specific comments, beginning with what I consider to be his "money quote":

With the emergence of manga as a dominant force in the American bookstore market, domestic comics producers are at long last questioning their previous publishing strategies.

To which I have to ask, "dominant over what?"

Certainly not over prose. Over American comics? OK--but so what? The bookstore market has never been where American comics make their money, and is unlikely to be anytime in the near future. American comics are based on a periodical format, not an album or collection format. Some might argue that's a failing, but unless they're interested in financing the shift to a different publishing model and revenue stream, the argument is a moot one, for now.

Deppey's explanations for that so-called dominance are equally bogus. He points out the success of manga among girls and attributes it to the form's "concentration on human interaction." First of all, the so-called success is pretty puny--most girls are still not reading any form of graphic storytelling, much preferring prose by a wide margin. The percentage of girls buying and reading manga is probably smaller than the percentage of boys buying and reading comics, and almost all of those girls are participating in a fad, not a movement.

At one level, Deppey even admits this, saying: "Scratch a modern-day manga fangirl, and you're likely to find someone who watched Sailor Moon when she was young." Might as well say, "Scratch a modern day male comics fan and you're likely to find someone who watched Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends when he was young." But the percentage of either group of viewers who moved on to reading graphic stories is in the single digits.

So what is the appeal of manga to this female crowd? Simply put--it's not American. It's foreign, it's exotic. To really get into it, it helps if you are willing to put in a lot of time learning at least rudimentary Japanese or learning about Japanese culture. The manga fangirls, to use Deppey's term, are the same group of girls who would have gotten into French cinema two decades ago.

I have two sons, one of whom is about to graduate from high schcol. (The other graduated two years ago.) I've watched their friends and what they're interested in. The manga fangirls fit the pattern I've just described--every one of them. And they're a tiny clique within the high school crowd of this typical suburban school district. The American comics industry has missed out on them? Small loss--in two years, virtually all of them will have given up on graphic storytelling in any form. And a prediction--there really won't be any big wave behind them...because nothing that's come from Japan in the past decade comes close to having the impact Sailor Moon had, and without something like that to stimulate interest, there's no market for the manga.

Further prediction: In five years, the currently burgeoning manga sections in bookstores will dwindle to two or three shelves...and the titles on the specialized anime racks in places like Suncoast Video will merge back in with the science-fiction or animated titles. The boomlet of interest in Japanese graphic culture will have died.

In the end, Deppey returns to the Journal's favorite whipping boy for the failure of American comics to succeed--the lack of a "single creative vision":

The vast majority of manga being reprinted in the United States reflect the vision of a single creator or set of creators. This isn't quite as inflexible a rule as that statement makes it sound -- many manga studios more closely resemble the "communal assembly line" employed by Will Eisner than they do a single artist sitting at a drawing table -- but even if the guiding force behind a given story (the manga-ka) is merely plotting and drawing the main characters' faces, there's still a single guiding force behind the story.

He contrasts this to a leading American title in this way:

If the X-Men films convinced you to pick up your first X-Men graphic novel, however, you'd be in for an entirely different experience. Your first exposure would depend upon which author's version of the series you pulled out of the stack, be it Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar or Chuck Austen, and the artwork would likely change from one artist to another within the book's pages. If you remained interested enough by what you read to buy a second one, that second volume would be as much of a crapshoot as the first, unless you very carefully observed which names were on the spine each time you invested your hard-earned dollars on a new book. The replaceable nature of the writers and artists, as dictated by the work-for-hire business practices upon which Marvel depends, actively discourages casual readers exactly to the extent that casual readers can never be sure what they get when they open an X-Men book.

The answer to this problem, it seems to me, is something that I know is antithetical to everything Deppey and the Journal believe: The return of a strong editorial hand in American comics, so that there is a consistent vision--the editor's. Of course, to the Journalistas, that's blasphemy...despite the fact that every successful periodical publication in history has benefited from such a strong hand--whether it was Harold Ross on The New Yorker, Henry Luce on Time, or even Gary Groth on The Comics Journal.

There's lots more I could get into about why manga and comics are two different forms of a larger medium (and maybe I will in a later posting), and about why the very different marketing and publishing models of American comics and manga imports make any comparison of their respective publishing success an "apples and oranges" thing.

For now, let me end this way: Manga is not, and never will be, the salvation of the comics form in America.

Riddle Me This...

2005-05-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

By now, you've all heard of the death of Frank Gorshin, and there are others, including my friend Mark Evanier, who can talk about the man and his life better than I.

So let me talk about his most famous role. By the time the Batman series debuted in 1967, The Riddler was a minor and mostly forgotten villain in the Batman rogue's gallery. He hadn't appeared in a story in something like 15 years...so using him in the very first episode could be seen as something of a surprise. The Riddler's schtick had largely been given over to the Joker, after that character, in the aftermath of the Comics Code, had metamorphosed from psychotic murderer to "Clown Prince of Crime".

But Gorshin's portrayal of the Riddler succeeded in reviving him. In fact, I'd argue that Gorshin is tied for best portrayal of a classic villain coming out of the Batman TV show. (He's tied with Julie Newmar as Catwoman, of course.) It wasn't just the twitchy, manic nature of the persona, either--the laugh and the grin. It was the sense of malevolence that played under all that. Gorshin knew when to turn off the clown act, narrow the eyes and smile with menace, not mirth. Of all the recurring Batman villains, Gorshin's Riddler was the one you truly believed was a bad guy.

Jim Carrey, in Batman Forever, almost makes it work, too. But he doesn't know when to stop being over the top...and so his Riddler comes off as a second-rate version of the Joker, instead of a menace all his own.

Six-two and even....

2005-05-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

You'll get that headline reference if, like me, you're old enough to remember the gawd-awful Dick Tracy cartoon series from the '60s.

Anyway, seems Warren Beatty who produced, directed and starred in the (better-than-its-reviews) big-budget feature film version 15 years ago, is now taking Tribune Media Services to court over the rights to make a sequel.

It's a short AP article, so here's the whole thing:

Beatty Sues for Rights to Dick Tracy

By RYAN PEARSON
.c The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Dick Tracy isn't on his way - at least not to movie theaters any time soon. Warren Beatty wants to make a new movie featuring the comic book detective but has been thwarted by Tribune Media Services, which claims control over Tracy's character.

Beatty, in response, has sued the Chicago-based company for $30 million, saying Tribune violated a complex agreement regarding the Tracy rights.

Under the 1985 agreement, Beatty took control of the Tracy character from Tribune but was required to give it back at the company's request under several conditions and following a two-year notification process.

Beatty gave the rights to The Walt Disney Co. and in 1990 starred in and produced ``Dick Tracy'' for Disney. The film, which featured Tracy's catch phrase ``I'm on my way,'' made more than $100 million.

In 2002, according to Beatty's lawsuit filed Friday in Superior Court, Tribune took back control of Tracy and notified Disney - but not through the process outlined in the agreement.

Disney rejected Tribune's claim and gave Beatty back most of the rights this month, his attorney Bertram Fields said Monday.

Beatty is now ready to make another film and ``has a very good idea'' for the story but has been held back by Tribune's claim, Fields said.

Fields said Beatty's original agreement with Tribune was negotiated specifically to allow the 68-year-old actor a chance to make another Tracy film.

``It was very carefully done and they just ignored it,'' he said. ``The Tribune is a big, powerful company and they think they can just run roughshod over people. They picked the wrong guy.''

Steve Tippie, vice president of marketing and licensing for Tribune Media Services, said he had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

Worst thing about this is that the lawsuit will probably keep the Tracy property in litigation for years...and by the time it's settled, no one will care about making another movie of the character, with or without Beatty.

More on the Doctor

2005-05-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, I posted about the new Doctor Who series on BBC. The good ol' Beeb is now posting--for free--some Who novels in e-format on its website, here.

I haven't read any of these, but if you're a Who fan, you might check them out.

Star Wars Influence Idiocy

2005-05-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

Every time Star Wars makes the news, some no-nothing comics fan comes up with this particular piece of nonsense--that George Lucas was influenced by or, sometimes, actually "stole" his concepts from Jack Kirby's work in the 1960s and early '70s. The latest version of this tripe is here.

George Lucas certainly was aware of Kirby's work to some extent...but I suspect he was far more familiar with the King's Golden-Age and '50s material than with Doctor Doom or Darkseid. (Lucas, after all, is in his early 60s and his peak comics-reading years would have been when he was somewhere between 9 and 15--putting them at roughly 1951 to 1957.)

Furthermore, since Lucas has clearly established his debt to the old movie serials and Japanese cinema, Darth Vader's costuming can be explained by both. The mask and cape motif was a frequent villain's gear in serials...particularly those dealing in the "red herring" plot, where the villian is a masked man who might be one of three or four seemingly harmless characters. And the particular style of Vader's mask and helmet have far more to do with Japanese armor than with anything either Doom or Darkseid ever wore.

Oh--and the heroic son who is the offspring of the great villain? If you think Kirby was the first to come up with that one, you need to get out a little more.

Are the SF Writers Out of Touch?

2005-05-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

With the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith just weeks away, science-fiction writers are apparently taking the opportunity to use the publicity to tout their own work, while simultaneously denigrating the very thing that gives them that chance.

Case in point: Episode VII: Revenge of the Writers

In the article, the SF writers complain that Lucas's saga isn't really SF, at least certainly not representative of the science-fiction being turned out in print today.

Money quotes:

"That's the past of science fiction you're talking about," said Richard K. Morgan, the British cyberpunk-noir writer whose most recent novel is "Market Forces."

That kind of cute, sunny woodsiness [eg, Ewoks] seems particularly out of place in current science fiction. For as sci-fi has turned inward, it has also turned darker. "It's a rather quieter and more disturbing kind of science fiction," Mr. Morgan said.

"Star Wars" can hardly be called quiet or disturbing. But there is a film, made around the same time as "The Empire Strikes Back," that does fit that description: "Blade Runner." Many people, including Mr. Morgan, consider the film, directed by Ridley Scott, to be one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, because it was as much about what's inside as what's outside. It, not "Star Wars," was truly ahead of its time.

"You've got the gun battles and all that stuff," Mr. Morgan said, "but the movie is very much about internal factors, like robots yearning to be humans."

"And even now, 20 years later, it still looks like the future," he added. "That's a neat trick."

And, as I note, maybe that's the problem. I stopped reading modern SF when it became clear to me that nobody writing in the genre has a hopeful outlook for the future any longer. Everything's dark and distopian. Nobody's writing about the joys of spaceflight and exploration, about the ways in which technology can make our world better not worse.

I once complained that it was mistake when DC Comics assigned Keith Giffen, a self-proclaimed technophobe who didn't even own a computer, to write and draw the previously sunny future of The Legion of Super-Heroes. He promptly turned the United Planets of the 30th Century into a political and ecological disaster zone. No surprise.

Over the past quarter-century, prose SF writers have done the same with the once attractive futures envisioned by Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and others. And they wonder why the general public prefers George Lucas's vision?

Libraries and Graphic Novels

2005-05-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Not much to add here, but this article advises librarians on how to display and catalog graphic novels, apparently a booming area for them.

Marvel's Movie Future

2005-05-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

By now, most of you have seen this, since it got picked up not only by the comics and entertainment sites, but by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well.

The problem I see here? What does Avi Arad, who comes from the old Toy Biz, know about making movies? Yeah, I know he's had producer credits on the Marvel-based films of the past few years, but that was a contractual thing--he never really had anything to do with the things a real producer does: choosing directors, casting, setting budgets. At least, that's how I understand it.

Marvel expects that producing its own slate of films will permit it to obtain greater participation in all revenue streams related to its films and the opportunity to begin building its own film library. The finance structure will also allow Marvel to receive a producer fee for each film and retain all merchandising revenues. Paramount will receive a distribution fee for each film it distributes and will retain worldwide distribution rights in sequels to the films covered under the agreement.

I think the key to this agreement is in this paragraph--Marvel feels it got burned by the deals with Fox and Sony over X-Men and Spider-Man, respectively, in which it got only a small piece of any revenue that could be tied to the movie versions of those characters. So, now it gets everything and Paramount gets only fees.

What's Paramount getting? Good question. I suspect, with that sequel rights clause in there, it's getting a shot at some direct-to-video stuff that might follow, as well as maybe some possible programming for its burgeoning TV networks (CBS, UPN, MTV, Nickelodeon, etc.)

Habemus Papem

2005-04-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

I grew up a Roman Catholic, with my formative years spent in Vatican II, in the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI.

It was not their reformative movements that drove me from the church; it was the opposition to further reform--the opposition to openness, to lay involvement, to sexual liberation. (For the record, I've been a practicing Episcopalian for nearly 20 years.)

This new Pope confirms all my worst fears for the future of the church I once counted as my own. You only need to read his words from the sermon he gave before the conclave opened--one his fellow cardinals must have heard and agreed with to elect this man--to know that any further reforms in the matter of celibacy and gender in the priesthood, in the matter of ecumenicalism, in the matter of tolerance for those of other faiths and other positions even within the church is doomed while this man rules the Vatican:

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.

This is an anti-modern speech; a speech that turns the church back more than 40 years.

2005-04-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

In today's Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Jane Eisner takes up the issue of Congressional action to legalize the "sanitizing" of films and TV shows on DVD for family audiences. Eisner writes, in response to director Marshall Herskovitz's comment that such editing is "morally wrong":

But if that business is providing a sought-after service--one that is, arguably, a social good--is that still morally wrong? Film sanitizing wasn't available decades ago because the technology wasn't available. It wasn't necessary [emphasis in original] because television and films more accurately reflected community standards and values than they do today.

...it's hard to oppose giving parents the tools to exert some control in their own homes.

Those tools already exist--they are called the on/off switch and the channel selector. Furthermore, for any DVD that must be bought or rented, the answer is even simpler--do not buy or rent those that might contain material offensive to you. But do not insist that you be offered bowdlerized versions of those films so that you might enjoy them without the questionable (to some) contents.

Would you suggest that it is OK to offer a version of Huckleberry Finn in which Huck speaks perfect English and never refers to his companion Jim as a "nigger"? Or that we publish an edition of Shakespeare in which the bawdy comments of the gravedigger in Hamlet or the doorkeeper in MacBeth are eliminated?

Furthermore, if it is permissible to create altered versions of some mature-targeted films to make them more palatable to a "family" audience, is it not then equally permissible to create altered versions of family films that would be more attractive to older, more mature audiences? Why not a version of The Little Mermaid in which Ariel's strategically placed seashells are missing? I'll bet you there's a profitable audience for that.

[This post consists largely of a letter sent to the Inquirer and Eisner.]

I'm Back!

2005-04-01T12:39:00.000-08:00

I didn't intend to take a two-month hiatus from posting here.

No, really, I didn't.

Life got away from me; nothing in comics or politics seemed like something I wanted to talk about around here (the Schiavo case merely frustrated me, both as a religious person and a political one); and some of the stuff I might have wanted to comment on were covered far better in other places, making whatever my own contributions might have been seem irrelevant.

But this week a trio of things (see below) came to my attention and so I'm here again.

Hopefully, stuff like this will continue to crop up and intrigue me enough to talk about here.

Comics and Academia

2005-04-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

We all know that comics have been getting much more interest from the academic world in recent years. An example is this review of several books about comics--examined from varying viewpoints--published in the journal College Literature and available on line at 24-Hour Scholar.

It's quite lengthy and it's somewhat difficult to decide what's worth quoting from it to give a feel of its style and content. (Suffice to say if you find The Comics Journal's prose stuffy and less than lucid, you'll find this at least equally difficult.)

Intellectuals and Comics--a Discussion

2005-04-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

“For a bulky segment of a century, I have been an avid follower of comic strips — all comic strips,” Parker wrote. “This is a statement made with approximately the same amount of pride with which one would say, ‘I’ve been shooting cocaine into my arm for the past 25 years.’”
Tracing the literati’s views on comics over the past century repeatedly reveals the same divisions that Parker located within her own soul: an avaricious appetite for them combined with a feeling that they’re wicked.

That quote from the female member of the famed Algonquin Roundtable of New Yorker contributors opens a discussion of comics and how they are viewed by the intelligensia that appeared originally in the Toronto Star and is available on line here.

Its authors, Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester, maintain that this level of conflict has risen and fallen through comics' history, with the high points of appreciation for the form coming in the Jazz Age, the '60s and today, and the low point coming--as expected--during the post-war Wertham-driven years.

But, they conclude with the following:

Yet surveying the long history of intellectuals and comics, we shouldn’t assume that this current resurgence of praise will be permanent. As we’ve seen, intellectuals are fundamentally divided about the worth of comics, and there is always the possibility of a backlash.
Perhaps a backlash wouldn’t be such a bad thing. There is value in an art form being perceived as dangerous. After all, being compared to marijuana and cocaine has done comics no long-term harm.

Who's On First?

2005-04-01T11:51:00.000-08:00

In the '80s, I came close to being a professional Doctor Who fan. I wrote many articles for Starlog about the series, interviewing cast members, writers and producers. I contributed the text articles for Marvel's American reprints of its British DW comics. I was very disappointed by the last seasons of the old series (never thought Sylvester McCoy was up to snuff as the Time Lord), but still unhappy when the BBC took it out of production.

Now, as many others have already reported, Doctor Who is back on the air, produced out of BBC Wales, with actor Christopher Eccleston in the lead as the tenth Doctor. Now, it appears Eccleston, afraid of typecasting, is bowing out after only one season of 13 episodes--details here, as well as speculation as to his successor.

With the exception of the one-shot American co-produced TV movie with the ninth actor in the role, no other "official" Doctor has had such a short lifespan. (There have been a number of "unofficial" Doctors, in radio plays, and in the two feature films with Peter Cushing.)

The new series is set to run on CBC, for those in that country and on the northern borders of the US; no word yet on whether it will show up on any US outlet--though, if the BBC is smart, it will get it on to the BBC America cable net forthwith.

Marvel: Good News and Bad News

2005-01-22T08:23:00.000-08:00

Which of these is good news and which bad news may be up to you.

First:

Marvel is seeking to increase its presence in the bookstore market, as described here:

Marvel Enterprises, Inc....has entered into major licensing agreements with four of the world's leading publishing houses: DK Publishing, Harper Collins, Meredith Books and Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books as part of a strategy to increase the presence of its leading character franchises in various mass market book publishing formats. The agreements were announced today by Tim Rothwell, President of Worldwide Consumer Products and Bruno Maglione, President of Marvel International. Collectively, the new publishing licenses will bring the Marvel Universe to broad consumer audiences and demographics by establishing a significant presence in the largest mass-market book categories including adult novelizations, children's fiction, all-age non-fiction compendiums, as well as pre-school novelty formats and picture and sound storybooks.

Back when I was writing regularly for Comics and Games Retailer, this is the kind of announcement that would make some direct market comics retailers go ballistic. They would accuse Marvel (or DC or whatever publisher was making the announcement) of "not dancing with the guy who brung them"--of taking the market for high-end comics material that had been built by direct market retailers and cannibalizing it by giving better deals and products to places like Borders and Barnes & Noble, major book retailers who could offer margins and volumes that no direct market retailer could possibly even imagine. Add in that the major book retailers all deal in returnable product (and hence are never stuck with unsold merchandise) and the DM guys saw this as nothing less than traitorous.

Of course, somehow or other, the disastrous consequences for the direct market that were predicted from these deals never materialized...either because the publishers were quite willing to offer the same product to the DM on the DM's usual terms, or because the number of hard-core comics fans who are ready to abandon their regular sources for comics and rush to the bookstores instead is so small as to be non-existent.

Me? I figure anything that increases the number of potential comics readers can't be a bad idea.

Second:

A court has ruled that Stan Lee's contract with Marvel, a deal made when he dropped his exclusivity with Marvel, entitles him to 10% of Marvel's profits from certain movie-related merchandise:

A Manhattan federal judge ruled that Lee is entitled to a potential multimillion payday from Marvel Enterprises of profits generated by the company's television and movie productions - particularly the box-office smash ``Spider-Man,'' which earned more than $800 million worldwide, and its hugely successful sequel.

"It could be tens of millions of dollars," Howard Graff, attorney for Lee, said Wednesday. "That's no exaggeration."

The Monday ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet found that Lee was entitled to a 10 percent share of the profits generated since November 1998 by Marvel productions involving the company's characters, including those created by the prolific cartoonist.

Ignoring for the moment that Lee isn't a "cartoonist" and that some versions of this story talk as if it had something to do with Lee's rights as a creator (or co-creator) of the characters--it doesn't--I still figure this is a good thing for anybody working in comics. Anytime a court says a company has to honor the terms of a contract, and interprets those terms in favor of a creator or employee, it bodes well for future disputes between the creative side and the publishing side.

There's been a lot of nonsense on the Internet along the lines of "What about Ditko?" Yeah--Steve Ditko morally deserves some share of the pot as a creator. (Actually, I think John Romita deserves even more of it, in terms of the movies--most of what we've seen bears a stronger resemblance to his version of Peter, Mary Jane and company than to Ditko's.) But this wasn't about creator rights under copyright law; it was about the terms of a specific employment contract.

Will Eisner, 1917-2005

2005-01-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

Will Eisner, the universally acknowledged master of the comics form, died Monday evening, January 3, after complications from quadruple by-pass surgery on December 22. He was 87...though you'd never know if you'd met him in recent years.

A detailed biography can be found here. And my buddy Mark Evanier has some reminiscences here.

I don't know what I can add to those. I interviewed Eisner about a decade ago in my post as editor of Wizard, and he was absolutely gracious to me in our phone chat--although he didn't know me from Adam and the mag at the time was still a struggling start-up, not the industry power it would become. He seemed truly glad to talk to anyone with an interest in the comics form, no matter the time or place.

And he was still working, right up until his hospitalization. His last graphic novel, The Plot, will be published by WW Norton later this year.

What the Dickens?

2004-12-23T13:15:00.000-08:00

I fell in love with A Christmas Carol 'way back in grade school...but I didn't really read the actual novel until college--when I discovered the darker, deeper parts of Dickens' beloved story.

Most stage and film productions leave out the scene I quote here--though the better ones, such as the ones starring George C. Scott (my personal favorite) and Patrick Stewart, make a point of including it. I think it sums up a lot of Dickens' points and that it has special meaning even now. (If you see a political point to that, so be it).

"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking
intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, and not
belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"
"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Scrooge started back, appalled.
"Spirit! Are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware of this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."
"Have they no refuge or resource?"
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on Scrooge for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.

I'll be gone for the holiday weekend, but hope to post a few times in the next week. In the meanwhile, Merry Christmas, and God bless us everyone.

McFarlane: Chapter 11

2004-12-21T05:40:00.000-08:00

The publishing side of Todd McFarlane's vast enterprise has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as a result of the $15 million jury award in the suit by former hockey player Tony Twist, in which Twist charged McFarlane with using his name without permission and harming his off-ice earning potential. McFarlane created a Mafia killer named Tony "Twist" Twistelli in his Spawn comics series and said publically that the character was named for the real-life Twist. The official story of the Chapter 11 filing is here.

Naturally, this is being discussed all over the web-world of comics. My buddy Mark Evanier weighs in with this:
...if the Twist judgement stands, it's going to scare a lot of authors and artists off from doing things that might prompt some public figure to sue, claiming an infringement on his or her right to merchandise his or her name or likeness. I'm usually skeptical of "slippery slope" arguments but this one seems more slippery than most. I don't like seeing Todd lose this one and I have the feeling that if he does, this case is going to be the keystone precedent in several that will be less arguable in terms of eroding the First Amendment.
Mark's a smart guy with an insider's knowledge of the entertainment biz, but I've gotta disagree with him on this one. Todd acted without thinking when he acknowledged in print--more than once--that the Twist character in Spawn was named for the hockey player. That made any later argument for coincidence impossible...though Todd reportedly tried that route at trial.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that Todd and I have had some run-ins in the past, mostly over his famed "debate" with my long-time friend Peter David a decade ago.

In other news on this front, The Beat over at comicon.com has a list of some of the creative people who might be affected by this bankruptcy:

According to court papers, McFarlane Productions has the following outstanding debts, besides the Tony Twist $15 million decision and $683,901 owed to McFarlane Toys.

Angel Medina -- $3,960.00
Brian Haberlin -- $13,600.00
Brian Holgiun -- $8,800.00
Comicraft -- $2,200.00
Danny Miki -- $4,070.00
Greg Capullo -- $18,250.00
Greg Scott -- $1,750.00
Jay Fotos -- $5,600.00
Tom Orzechowski -- $2,200.00
In addition, an unspecified amount is owed to Neil Gaiman as a result of his successful lawsuit against McFarlane.

And, finally, another buddy, Bob Ingersoll has some thoughts. Bob's a lawyer, a public defender in Ohio and not a bankruptcy expert, who also writes the excellent "The Law is a Ass" column for Comics Buyer's Guide. Bob's comments were originally posted at Tony Isabella's message board:

I don't think this is really all that much of a misfortune to Todd. As a lawyer, I've seen this ploy used often. Even though I work in the criminal defense side of things, I do know what's going on over in the civil world. And, as I said, I've seen this ploy used by others many, many times. I doubt this "hardship" is much more than a legal ploy by Todd to avoid paying people. He owes Tony Twist 15 million. He owed Neil Gaiman several thousand. He owes several other comic creators creators a combined debt of several thousand more (including more than 10 thousand a piece to both Angel Medina and Greg Capullo). By filing Chapter 11, Todd can keep doing business, delay paying his creditors and probably force them to accept pennies on the dollar of what they're actually owed.

While I don't cry over the fact that Tony Twist won't get much of the 15 mill he's owed...I do bemoan the fact that several comic creators will continue to be taken advantage of by McFarlane; that great champion of creators rights.

Would Ditko Approve?

2004-12-15T22:25:00.000-08:00

"The Incredibles" suggests "a thorough, feverish immersion in both American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand," writes A.O. Scott in The New York Times, referring to the founder of "objectivism," a philosophy anchored in capitalism and atheism.

When I read the article the above comes from, courtesy of The Christian Science Monitor,
all I could think of was Steve Ditko's early version of the Question, his Mr. A, and the rumors as to disputes about heroic philosophy that engendered his parting of the ways with Stan Lee and Marvel.
Is The Incredibles based on objectivism? Is it an anti-liberal screed promoting the concept of an absolute meritocracy? I don't think so, although certainly any story about heroes fighting against a society that devalues them will have overtones of that.

I'm a life-long liberal; I'm also a guy who went through school as the quintessential over-achiever. Skipped a year in elementary school, honors student in junior high and high school. My elder son is following that pattern--graduated fourth in his class from high school, dean's list at college. I'm completely in favor of a merit-based system of rewards.

But I'm also aware that "merit" means more than high grades, or outstanding achievement on the athletic field, or getting the highest salary. There are more things that deserve "merit" than those. Doing good works is merit-worthy. Doing the best you can with a limited ability is merit-worthy. The classic "A for effort" should not be denigrated.

Making an effort is worth celebrating. Should we not applaud the amputee who walks on his own...even if that stride is clumsy and slow? Or the learning disabled person who reads and writes, even if that literacy is at a level several years below his chronological age?

So, yes, I cheer for my academically gifted child, but also for my dramatically gifted other son. I celebrate the idea of the hero who stands above others by dint of his superior abilities...but I also celebrate the idea of the hero who stands above others by dint of his superior efforts.

To do the former is not to elitist; to do the latter is not elevating mediocrity.

An Apology

2004-12-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

I said I'd be gone for two weeks, in order to get away from the politics of the election. It's been six weeks, instead.

Real life got in the way, a bit of writer's block as well, and quite frankly, nothing in the realm of comics or other entertainment much inspired me over the past month-and-a-half. That changes now--I'm going to endeavor to post at least every other day, right through the holidays. (Christmas weekend excepted--I'll be on the road. Not quite over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house, but visiting relatives anyway.)

Men of Tomorrow: A Review

2004-12-13T14:17:00.000-08:00

Their relationships with masculinity, sexuality, power, individuality, violence, authority, and the modern fluidity of self were so tangled and so heartfelt that their work spoke to the anxieties of modern life more sympathetically, more completely, more acutely than they could have foreseen in their most inflated summer daydreams. With the passage of time, their creations become only more relevant. They forecast and helped shape geek culture. They laid the template for the modern concept of the entertainment franchise. They created the perfect packageable, marketable fantasy for the culture of consumer narcissism, They spawned artistic subcultures. All without quite knowing what they were doing. All by rushing frantically forward, trying to stay a step ahead of the wolves, santching at the cultural scraps they found around them on the Lower East Side and in Glenville and the Bronx and shaping them into something that could be sold quick and cheap. All by banishing yesterday from conscious thought and draming of the score they would make tomorrow.

That's the concluding paragraph from the Prologue to Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book. It pretty much sums up the thesis of the book--that the men who created comic books (and he includes the businessmen and editors as much as the writers and artists) created much that we think of as modern popular entertainment.

It's a masterful volume that debunks some of the myths of the industry (Jerry Siegel's famed tale of coming up with Superman all in one fevered summer night is pretty much of a piece with George Washington and the cherry tree) while providing useful background on the familial and business connections of the writers, artists, editors and publishers of comics from the 1930s until the 1980s.

One of the best elements of Jones' work is that he avoids the frequent fan tendency (a tendency that life-long familiarity with comics only exacerbates) to see the world in black-and-white, good-and-evil terms. While not dismissing the unfairness of the treatment Siegel and Shuster received from DC Comics--especially after 1948--Jones also recognizes the businessman's point of view and explores it, without casting the likes of Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz as somehow living embodiments of Lex Luthor or the Kingpin.

Jones sees the risks the early publishers took in chasing their own dreams, and putting into print the dreams of their creative teams...and sees the forces, personal and financial, that pushed those men--and their successors--to protect their investments in these risks once they had paid off so handsomely.

At the same time, he observes and records how much of their own lives and dreams the early writers and artists poured into their creations and why so many of them have fought so hard to protect their less financial but more personal investments. It's this even-handedness that makes the book so welcome--it's not a tirade or a screed for or against either vision of the comic-book business.

If Men of Tomorrow has a fault, it is this: Jones' treatment of the resurgence of the comics in the 1960s is overly Marvel-centric. He virtually ignores Julius Schwartz's reinvigoration of the superhero genre at DC, except to note the long-told story that it was the success of Justice League of America that spurred Martin Goodman to get Stan Lee to create new superheroes. Yes, Lee, Kirby and Marvel in general rethought the superhero, made him fit even more into "geek culture" than before; but they would have had no market into which to sell their efforts if DC and Schwartz had not modernized the Golden Age characters first.

All in all, Men of Tomorrow is a worthy addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in how comics have shaped today's world of entertainment.

More on Jones

2004-12-13T14:11:00.000-08:00

While I'm on the subject of Gerard Jones--he had an interesting column in the op-ed section of Sunday's Philadephia Inquirer, apparently reprinted from the Los Angeles Times.

Here's an excerpt:

"When I was a teenager, superheroes were obviously about being queer," David says. "Clark Kent shedding that hideous blue suit and shooting into the sky in his tight? What else? But overshadowing that joy that fear that people would learn the truth--until that moment in Spider-Man 2."

What moment? Read and find out.

Who in Four Years?

2004-11-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

I promise--this is my last political posting for at least two weeks. I need time to absorb and digest the events of the past 48 hours.

Besides, I've been neglecting the entertainment side of this 'blog.

Anyway--the following was written in response to some comments at the weblog of my buddy Jack Curtin:

So--who can the Democrats run for president in four years? Not Edwards--he will have to carry the baggage of this campaign and could not possibly win the primaries, let alone the general election.

But like Pierce, I think we need somebody with the ability to boil down his positions to a few brief sentences...as bad as I think that style of campaigning is for truth in the body politic. The problem, of course, is that thinking people KNOW that solutions to this nation's problems cannot be reduced to bumper stickers...and those of us in the progressive wing of American politics are, above all, thinking people.

That's OUR problem...and it was Kerry's. WE saw that his "nuanced" way of looking at things was the way to examine a problem and find the right answers. But the other side of the nation's political spectrum wants answers NOW! and is unwilling to wait for a thoughtful response--they demand immediate action, even if it turns out to be disastrous.

So--who should run in 2008? I suspect that, like the pre-Carter period, we'll have no idea until somebody seems to emerge from the pack, probably someone nobody has even considered yet. I heard Matt Lauer suggest to Barack Obama this morning that Obama is presidential material...but I don't buy it in this political atmosphere. A liberal black man with a "strange" sounding name? He'd be lucky to carry Illinois and New York. Chris Matthews has been suggesting--though without supporting--Hilary Clinton...and as my wife said, "This country isn't ready for a woman president, not after THIS election."

I think we'll all be surprised--perhaps not pleasantly--at who emerges in the Democratic Party over the next four years. Actually, I'm more concerned over who the GOP will choose to follow Dubya. Can you imagine one of those new nutjob senators elected last night running?

Unfortunately, I can.

Superman Found?

2004-10-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

I'd been holding off on this until I saw a confirmation in something other than a website, but I guess USA Today is good enough.

Sometime soap actor Brandon Routh has been confirmed as the Man of Steel in the forthcoming Brian Singer-directed film. He looks the part, pretty much, and he's the same age Chris Reeve was when he was cast (24). The on-line campaign to put Smallville's Tom Welling in the role seems dead in the water.

Now, does he have Reeve's acting chops, to pull off the Kent/Superman dichotomy? Good question. But maybe he doesn't need them. George Reeves never did a whole lot to separate the two personas, but he was perfectly believable in both roles. To my mind, so was Dean Cain--you don't have to play Kent as a wimp to make it work.

Reap the Whirlwind?

2004-10-19T16:40:00.000-07:00

By now, you've all probably read or heard about this article from the NY Times magazine by Ron Suskind.

Its picture of a faith-obsessed George Bush, a man who seems convinced that he is doing God's work, indeed that God is specifically telling him what to do, leads me to envision a paraphrase from Livingston and Lee's play Inherit the Wind:

Is that the way of it? God tells Dubya and Dubya tells the world? Is that the way of it? Then let us have a new book in the Bible...the Book of Dubya! We shall split the Pentateuch and slip you in neatly between Leviticus and Deuteronomy!
Dubya, Dubya, Dubya Almighty!

Apologies if that's not exactly what Henry Drummond says in the play...I'm working from memory.

Irv Novick, 1916-2004

2004-10-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

While not trying to turn this blog into the official list of recently deceased comics-related folks, I can't ignore the death of comics veteran Irv Novick, as reported by my friends Mark Evanier and Tony Isabella.

I always thought Novick was the best of the post-Neal Adams Batman artists and the best of the post-Infantino Flash artists as well.

That the man could also handle war and romance merely indicates the breadth of his abilities, a breadth that most of the "hot" artists of the past two decades cannot match.

Christopher Reeve, 1952-2004

2004-10-11T04:23:00.000-07:00

It's not often that an actor who portrays a hero on screen becomes one in real life.

Through a tragic accident, and his dogged determination that it not rule his life, Christopher Reeve did just that.

For a generation of fans, Chris Reeve was the Man of Steel; for a generation that followed, he was the personification of heroism because he used his paralysis and his fame to advance a cause--finding a cure for spinal injuries like his, whether that was through new technology or new biological discoveries such as stem-cell research.

All those who play Superman in the future have an enormous legacy to live up to.

Comics--Present and Future?

2004-10-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

An old on-line acquaintance--John R. Troy--ran across this blog by accident and sent some food for thought.

(John and I were once both active participants in the GEnie comics community. GEnie--how many of you remember that on-line service?)

Anyway, here are some of John's comments and questions:

I noticed that Marvel has gone through a major revision with the rise of Joe
Quesada and (for a few years) Bill Jemas. I was wondering what you thought of
the various changes they made to how Marvel comics are created. I noticed they
are moving away from continuity-rich stories and reduced crossovers, so I think
that's a good idea. However, I've also been critical of some of the policies
they instituted--such as forcing all books to be silent a month, mandating
things like no footnotes and for a time all books having all lower case fonts,
and especially Jemas attacking retailers and the like. What are your thoughts of
the Ultimate Line? The Marvel Age "retelling" of stories? The various ways to
push more "manga-like" stuff? How about radical reboots like Silver Surfer,
Thunderbolts, etc.
John doesn't mention the one Marvel policy--one they seemingly don't really admit to--that I detest: Planning everything to go into trade paperback, so that the monthly periodical versions seem long, drawn-out, slow to develop--in other words, simply paced very badly.

To answer his questions, though: I think the Ultimate line is okay, for the most part, but it's a grimmer, dirtier, less upbeat look at superheroes than I'd like. That's an odd direction to take on a line of books that was originally intended to bring younger readers back into comics...but the plans for mainstream marketing of the Ultimate line seemed to fall apart within a year, so the line was forced to rely on the direct market after all...and the late-teen/early-twenties DM demographic wants down and dirty, so that's what they're getting.

Which may be why the Marvel Age line was developed--to try again to produce a series of titles that "restart" the Marvel Universe from the get-go but with a style and feel that pre-teens and young teens can get into. Once again, without mainstream marketing, I don't see how this can work.

Manga seems to be hot, so naturally Marvel is trying to use it (and use it and use it). But superheroes have never seemed like a natural for the manga look, to me. The stylistic conventions of manga always seem to work against the superhero motif as I see it. If the basic idea of the superhero is to place your costumed characters against a background of real-world events and elements, the manga look just makes everything look outsized and wild, not just the lead character.

I've never been opposed to reboots, radical or otherwise. I think comics always need to periodically reboot their major icons for the new generations of readers. Hell, Superman went through at least three, maybe four, stylistic versions in his first 30 years.

Why is the market so hostile to older writers and artists? I notice everybody
wants a "fresh take" on things. It seems like a once-popular writer is disliked
by fans now. Writers don't come with expiration dates, so I can't see why people
are so hostile to Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Peter David, etc. So too with
artists.
I don't think it's the market that's hostile to older creators; I think it's the editors. And I don't think it's a sales question, either. (The sales would follow if these projects were given the same promotional push the stuff by the new young turks is given.)

I suspect the editors are uncomfortable working with creators who are older and more experienced than they are, who have a track record and an institutional knowledge of what works and what doesn't. Plus, they feel out of synch with guys who have a cultural background that predates Quentin Tarantino and Survivor; who can quote (both literally and creatively) material as diverse as Casablanca, The Martian Chronicles, and Bewitched.

Do you think the Superhero as such will survive? I realize that the
companies have invested in the major ones as Icons, but I am concerned that it
doesn't have the same appeal anymore than it did in the 40's and 60's. Younger
people seem to focus on manga now, and I can't discount it as a fad, probably
because it might resonate more with the young audiences. I have to think younger
people find some aspects of the genre ridiculous--and I actually think the
audience for SH comics starts now in the teens rather than pre-teens, and wants
a little more realism. Some old icons end up losing their perpetual
status--nobody reads a modern comic of Buck Rogers.

I think a modern Buck Rogers comic could be a major hit--if the creative team knew what they were doing. (Personally, I'd take a hint from the recent Sky Captain movie and make it a period piece, entirely--complete with '30s style art along the lines of either Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles or Alex Raymond.)

I've already said my piece about manga. I think it resonates with younger people because it's theirs, in the same way that current rock resonates with them and classic stuff from the '60s and '70s doesn't. (There are exceptions to that, of course--the percussion line in my son's marching band are all major Billy Joel fans, for instance.)

The older teen audience wants more "realism" (although realism and superheroes are, to a large extent, contradictions in terms). But the industry can't survive on just the older audience; it has to have a breeding ground where younger readers are introduced to the form. Reading comics (both in the sense of liking them and in the sense of knowing how to follow the story on the page) doesn't necessarily come naturally to everyone. My wife, even after 23 years of marriage to me, still has difficulty tracking the story on a comics page sometimes. You have to start kids off with the "easy" stuff and then let them graduate to the more complicated layouts and designs.

That's what made the Weisinger Superman line such a success for young kids. As artist/writer Dan Jurgens once pointed out to me, every panel in a Weisinger story gave the reader the same info three times--

Caption: Superman lifts the ocean liner from the surface...
Dialogue: Must get the ship out of the sea!
Picture: Superman raising the ship above the water

This reinforced the idea that the story was told in words and pictures...so when the kid moved up to the somewhat more sophisticated Julie Schwartz-edited comics and later the Marvel line, he already had the idea of how it all worked together.

What do you think of the whole rise of Manga in bookstores and in popular
media? Just a fad, or a new trend that will change things for the industry? I
think fans like this stuff because they are usually NOT trying to create a
perpetual franchise--when the story is over it ends and thus characters can die
within the storyline, something franchises don't have (don't kill the villain,
we need him for the toy line). Maybe they can also do more sophisticated stuff,
or maybe fans better identify with them. Or they represent more genres?

I think the American image of manga is like the American image of British TV...because only the best stuff gets translated, we get the idea that all of it is like that. But British TV is Benny Hill and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire alongside Monty Python and Hercule Poirot. Manga has its share of Kickers, Inc. and Brother Power the Geek, too.

First Comp, First Trophy

2004-09-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

The Ridley Raider Band performed in its first marching band competition on Saturday, Sept. 25, garnering a darn good 77.75 score. We were unopposed in our size class, so we got the trophy by default, but that score indicates a solid performance.

The season ahead looks very promising.

Oh--and Ridley's football team won that night, too, despite the absence of the band. That makes the football team record 4 and 0 overall, 3 and 0 league.

For more about the Ridley Raider Band, check this out; for more about marching band competition in general, try here.

Jesus Christ, Superman--NOT!

2004-09-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

Despite earlier reporting that had James Caviezel all but sleeping in the red-and-blue tights, it now seems that that may have been wishful-thinking on the part of somebody.

The following is from Walter Scott's "Personality Parade" in Parade magazine yesterday:

"The closest James...has come to playing a cartoon hero is a project he's considering titled M, based on a French comic-book series.....

Scott essentially says Caviezel has never even been approached about playing the Man of Steel.

An Apology

2004-09-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry that so much of the blog has been political in recent days.

Maybe when the election is over we can get back to comics and other "real-world" stuff!

CBS Won't Vouch for Memos

2004-09-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

--but, at least for this mild-mannered reporter, questions remain.

Here's what the AP is reporting:

"We should not have used them," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said. "That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

CBS also said it was commissioning an independent panel to review the incident, and would announce the name of the participants shortly.

....

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," [Rather] said. "It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."

....

Rather this weekend interviewed Bill Burkett, a retired Texas National Guard official who has been mentioned as a possible source for the documents. His interview was to be broadcast on "CBS Evening News" on Monday.

CBS said Burkett acknowledged he provided the documents and said he deliberately misled a CBS producer, giving her a false account of their origin to protect a promise of confidentiality to a source.

So--what are my questions:

Who was Burkett's "source"?
Why did that source cobble these things together?
Do these still fairly represent the thought processes of Killian at the time, as some have suggested they do?
Why were "Buckhead" and the other wing-nuts so quick at being able to denounce them as fakes (IOW, did some of them have inside knowledge that they were "unreliable")?

The answers await...and probably will not be known until after the election.

GIs Told: Re-Up or It's Iraq for You

2004-09-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

According to the Rocky Mountain News, soldiers at Fort Carson have been given something of an ultimatum--re-enlist with your current unit or you are more than likely going to be transferred to a unit headed for Iraq...where you'll be stuck for a minimum of a year.

Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.

Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

.....

The form, if signed, would bind the soldier to the 3rd Brigade until Dec. 31, 2007. The two soldiers said they were told that those who did not sign would be transferred out of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

....

"They told us if we don't re-enlist, then we'd have to be reassigned. And where we're most needed is in units that are going back to Iraq in the next couple of months. So if you think you're getting out, you're not," he said.

The brigade's presentation outraged many soldiers who are close to fulfilling their obligation and are looking forward to civilian life, the sergeant said.

Gee, and the Pentagon insists that Kerry's announcement of their "secret plan" to expand the forces in Iraq after the election is wrong.

GOP Claims Dems Plan to Ban Bibles

2004-09-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, that headline is accurate and not an exaggeration. The AP reports:

Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.

The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda."

What's more, the RNC isn't even attempting to deny it's their work:

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Friday that he wasn't aware of the mailing, but said it could be the work of the RNC. "It wouldn't surprise me if we were mailing voters on the issue of same-sex marriage," Gillespie said.

Same-sex marriage may be a legitimate issue in this campaign--although it shouldn't be--but banning the Bible is not. The only people even suggesting such a thing is possible are the GOP operatives who turned out this despicable mailing.

What do you think are the chances that Dubya will denounce this? Yeah, that's what I think, too.

"Shocked, shocked" once again

2004-09-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

The LA Times reports:

It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service — a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.

But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Times has found.

Yes, that's right, the mysterious "Buckhead"--who challenged the authenticity of the TANG memos within four hours of CBS airing its story--is a Republican operative. Gee, whoda thunk it?

Reached by telephone today, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he is Buckhead, but declined to answer questions about his political background or how he knew so much about the CBS documents so fast.

"You can ask the questions but I'm not going to answer them," he told The Times. "I'm just going to stick to doing no interviews."

Think that might be because we'll find out stuff MacDougald wants kept hidden? Like maybe he had a hand in getting the dubious memos made and into CBS's hands in the first place? Or, alternatively, that he knows they're real and can actually provide a provenance trail?

And, of course, the RNC continues to deny knowing anything about any of this. Yeah, right.

Ridley 20, 'Haven 3

2004-09-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

Let me explain:

I've never really been a football fan; never even attended a football game at any level--high school, college, pro--until my elder son began to play in Ridley High's marching band. I've now become a Ridley football fan.

One of our arch rivals over the past six years has been Strath Haven High. 'Haven had--until last week--not been beaten in a regular season game for the past 74 games! Another Central League team, Conestoga, narrowly beat them last week.

Tonight, we handed them their second defeat in a row...and more than a defeat, a rout. We held them to a single field goal, while we scored three touchdowns plus a couple of point-after kicks for a score of 20 to 3.

It was a wild game...both crowds were geared up, both bands played almost constantly. At the end, the Ridley fans stormed the field as our band played "Nah Nah Hey Hey Goodbye"--something I hadn't heard us play in several years.

Next week, the band has its first competition of the season. I'll report on that, too.

Not to Mention All Those Penny Jars at Home....

2004-09-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

This is short, so I'll quote the entire AP piece here:

Cheney: Economic stats miss eBay sales

Associated Press

Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

San Jose, Calif.-based EBay Inc. is an Internet auction site where anyone can sell just about anything, including clothing, cell phones, jewelry, memorabilia, trinkets and automobiles.

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch" he and President Bush are with the economy.

"If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at
lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said in a statement.

"Out of touch" puts it mildly. "Off the wall" is a better description. The amount of money changing hands on e-Bay, or all of the various cyber auction sites combined, is an eyedropper in the sea of this economy. Might as well include the relative pittances I and others make with through the Google Adsense program on sites like this one.

If Cheney thinks including those figures in the official economic forecasts would help the Bush campaign, he should go right ahead. But the difference between 0 and 1/1000 of one percent is statistically meaningless.

The Electoral College--why we need it

2004-09-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Unlike most liberal Democrats, I am a firm believer in the Electoral College. I think a nationwide popular vote count for president in a close election would be a recipe for disaster. (The Gore Bush difference in 2000 was only one-half of one percent nationally; want to go through Florida 2000 on a nation-wide basis?)

I won't go into all my arguments here--I'll simply direct you to Tony Isabella's message board, where a fascinating discussion of the EC is taking place. Look for the thread called "GOP mayor/elector may vote against Bush".

A Failure of Courage?

2004-09-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

Edward Wasserman's column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer takes the news media to task for its failure to stand up to right-wing criticism:

News then becomes a negotiation - not a negotiation among discordant pictures of reality, as it always is, but an abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience. News of great significance becomes not an honest attempt to reflect genuinely contradictory realities, but a daily bargaining session with an increasingly factionalized public, a corrupted process in which elements of the news become offerings - payments really - in a kind of intellectual extortion.

There was a time when newspapers called a lie a lie, when a public official who spoke an untruth was challenged to back up his statement, and the paper supplied--in its news pages, not just editorial or commentary--the documentation to show that his lies were exactly that.

Today, newspapers (and all other media) deal instead in "on the one hand, on the other hand" journalism, in which the lie and the response to the lie are treated as of equal value, when it is no longer said, "This is the truth." The only truth now is that someone said something--whether that something is verity or not is beside the point.

This is not journalism, it is merely record-keeping, a variation of the kind of transcript kept in a trial. It simply records what people say, not whether what they say is truthful or even if it makes any sense.

A Visit to Muppet Labs....

2004-09-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

Two Muppets named top scientists

EXETER, England (Reuters) -- Muppets Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker defeated Dr. Strangelove, Dana Scully of "X Files" fame and Star Trek's Mr. Spock to be voted Britain's favorite screen scientists. They beat their closest rival by a margin of 2 to 1 and won 33 percentof the 43,000 votes cast in an Internet poll published in Monday.

Spock came in a distance second with 15 percent followed by The Doctor, from Dr Who, who garnered 13 percent. Scully, the only woman in thepoll, came in sixth.

"They are accessible, humorous and occasionally blow each other up,"said Roland Jackson, of the British Association for the Advancement ofScience (BA). The balding, white-coated Honeydew and flame-haired, bulging-eyed Beaker created an array of crazy gadgets on the popular television show. "They're the kind of scientists you would like to be but never quite dared to," said Alan Slater, a scientist at the University of Exeter in southwestern England.

The poll, sponsored by the BA and the BBC cult television website gave the public five weeks to choose their favorite scientist from a shortlist of 10 that included Dr. Evil from the film "Austin Powers," Dr. Frankenstein, Frank N. Furter, of the "Rocky Horror Show Picture Show," Dr. Emmett Brown, of the film "Back to the Future" and Q of James Bond fame. Results of the poll were announced at the start of the week-long BA science conference here.

Asking the right questions

2004-09-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

My buddy, Jack Curtin, has an interesting list of questions over on his political blog, The Great Disconnect.

Here's a sample:

Is there anybody--and thankfully this question isn't clouded with issues about heroism or morality--who truly believes that Dick Cheney is an inspiring and courageous leader?

Anybody?

Is there anybody who doesn't think that Zell Miller is, in addition to being a quisling and, y'know, a flip-flopper extraordinaire, insane?

Anybody?

I'm a middle-aged, unrepentant liberal child of the Viet Nam era. Jack is even older--and more unrepentant than I am. His blog should be required reading.

Too Wide a Net?

2004-09-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

For all of you who think that the protestors in NYC this week were treated well--because the broadcast and cable news media didn't tell you otherwise (or much of anything about them)--maybe this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer will change your minds.

(Even the Inky--usually a good source--seems to be "hiding" this story, if only inadvertantly. It's not among the stories listed on its "Election 2004" page and I had to "sign in" to get the online version, as opposed to most of the other convention coverage which is open to all.)

"I didn't even know about the protest," said office worker Salter, who was released shortly after 2 p.m. and greeted by cheers from the crowd at Collect Pond Park. "They closed off streets and took everyone in. You cannot do that. You cannot say 'there's a lot of people in the street' and round them up."

Civil rights attorneys have accused the city of deliberately and indiscriminately rounding up large numbers of protesters by corralling them with orange plastic netting or blocking off streets, then detaining them for days to keep them from protesting again. They said a similar tactic was used in Philadelphia during the 2000 Republican National Convention.

...

Yesterday, a new group joined the crowd at Collect Pond Park - protester parents demanding to know what the police have done with their children.

They called their children the "disappeared" - scooped up while protesting throughout the city and detained for more than 40 hours.

"I've been trying to find him for two days," said Connie Steensman, a management consultant from Manhattan, of her 17-year-old son, Richard Prins. When she called for information, she said, she was told the protesters would be held until George Bush left New York.

The "disappeared"--that used to be a term we only applied to people arrested in banana republics.

Early Halloween?

2004-09-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my wife for pointing out this site to me.

I'm not sure what the point of it all is, but hey....

Required Reading

2004-09-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not handing out assignments, here.

But an interesting discussion has come up regarding required summer reading for school students on rec.arts.comics.strips, in regard to this week's (8/30-9/4) storyline in the strip, Zits, by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman.

So here's my question: If you have kids of middle school/junior high or high school age--or if you are in that category--did they have required summer reading, and what was it?

E-mail me with an answer.

Jesus Christ, Superman?

2004-09-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

According to imdb, actor Jim Caviezel, best-known for his role as Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and previously seen in the title role of The Count of Monte Cristo, is all but signed to play the Man of Steel in the forthcoming film, currently planned to be directed by X-Men's Brian Singer.

As noted in the imdb story:

...according to respected comic book author Mark Miller, Caviezel's participation is all but guaranteed. He writes, "You remember I told you to relax about Superman? That a very, very trusted and experienced director we'd all love was coming over? That everything would be fine? Well, my same good buddy has informed me that Jim Caviezel is officially the new man of steel and what a perfect choice he is. Expect an announcement shortly."

All I can say is: Nothing is definite in Hollywood until papers are signed (and maybe not even then), and I hope this story is wrong.

Nothing against Caviezel as an actor, but I think casting any recognizable movie star as Superman is a huge mistake. The role requires such an incredible suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience that anything that yanks them out of the movie--like the sense of "Hey, that's Jim Caviezel!" or worse, "Hey, that's Jesus!"--destroys it.

There are immensely recognizable actors who have stepped into superhero roles without that problem. Michael Keaton made it work in the first two Batman films--but he was all-but unrecognizable under the mask anyway. The film flopped at the box office, but Alec Baldwin was an admirable Shadow...and again, makeup hid his features when in costume. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen made Professor X and Magneto into flesh-and-blood people in the two X-Men films so far, despite their instant recognizability--but I doubt Caviezel is in their class as an actor. And neither Xavier nor Magneto have to wear that incredibly iconic suit.

Will Caviezel be Kal-el? Boy, I hope not.

At Long Last, Sir, Have You No Shame?

2004-08-31T17:25:00.000-07:00

As reported on CNN:

Delegates to the Republican National Convention found a new way to take
a jab at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam service record:
by sporting adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on them.

Morton Blackwell, a prominent Virginia delegate, has been handing
out the heart-covered bandages to delegates, who've worn them on their chins,
cheeks, the backs of their hands and other places.

...

[Former Sen. Robert] Dole was sharply criticized by Kerry backers when
he questioned whether Kerry's wounds were severe enough to merit a Purple Heart.
He said Monday night that "you can't control delegates."

"I'm certain there's no possible connection" between the Bush
campaign or Republican leaders and the bandages sported Monday night, he said.

"The last thing President Bush or anybody in the campaign wants to
do is stir this up."

Sure, sure--we're all shocked, shocked to find gambling going on.....

Elmer Bernstein, 1922-2004

2004-08-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post something on this for several days, but real life kept getting in the way.

Elmer Bernstein, one of the great film composers, died last Thursday. He was 82.

I first became interested in film music in my teens, listening to the scores of favorite movies such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (Korngold), The Sea Hawk (Steiner), Captain Blood (Korngold again), Casablanca (Steiner again), and later The Thief of Bagdad (Rozsa). That interest blossomed in the '70s when John Williams' stirring scores for Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Superman became popular hits.

As I got older, my taste in films matured...and though those great old action flicks are still among my favorites...I finally picked as my fave film of all time To Kill a Mockingbird (probably influenced by the fact that the novel is my favorite book of all time). Elmer Bernstein's simple, affecting score for that movie can still conjure specific images and dialogue to me.

Combined with the recent death of Jerry Goldsmith, the film world has lost two titans of its musical heritage.

Do You Have to Buy in Bulk?

2004-08-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

Costco Begins Test Marketing Caskets

Further comment seems unnecessary.

Chartered to Fail

2004-08-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

Back to the subject of education and the right-wing's continued failure to support public education and, indeed, to hasten its failure.

I wasn't at all surprised by the findings of this report; I've suspected them all along:

The data show fourth-graders attending charter schools performing about
half a year behind students in other public schools in both reading and math.
Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth-graders attending charters were
proficient in reading and math, against 30 percent who were proficient in
reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional public schools.

Because charter schools are concentrated in cities, often in poor
neighborhoods, the researchers also compared urban charters to traditional
schools in cities. They looked at low-income children in both settings, and
broke down the results by race and ethnicity as well. In virtually all
instances, the charter students did worse than their counterparts in regular
public schools.

And yet, conservatives continue to tout charter schools as the wave of the future. This is particularly strange coming from a political viewpoint that demands accountability of public schools and rises in righteous indignation whenever anyone suggests that taxpayers ought not have control of their school budgets.

But here they are supporting a system that pulls public--taxpayer--money away from the publicly controlled, professionally administered school system and puts it in the hands of rank amateurs who are not required to meet any of the standards the public schools must meet.

And now it's clear they aren't doing the job.

Conservatives will argue, "It's all about choice!" OK--then my choice is not to give my taxes to failures that I have no control over.

Continuity Doom?

2004-08-16T05:22:00.000-07:00

All right, I'll admit it--there was a time when I was a completely continuity-obsessed comics fan.

I devoured the couple of issues of Mark Gruenwald's fanzine Omniverse; I worked for a couple of years on an index to DC's Silver-Age Green Lantern, attempting to work all his guest appearances into a workable timeline. Post-Crisis, I tried to come up with a history for the Justice League that allowed virtually all of their published adventures to remain "in continuity," finding substitutes (or somewhat different plot points) to make up for the absence of Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman (since the official line is that the latter two did not join the group until much later and that WW didn't exist until the appearance of her first post-Crisis issue).

But, within, the past decade, I have become convinced that Marvel and DC's--and their fans'--insistence on that kind of history, so that anything that contradicts a past story or editorial statement about a character is either forbidden or declared a "retcon", is both stifling creativity in the superhero genre and turning away new readers. Combined with the modern "never-ending" story in superhero comics, so that a new reader rarely finds himself at the beginning of a story, but always in the middle, continuity as used and defined today is no longer a tool but an impediment.

Let's make something clear--I'm not suggesting that it is advisable for the basics of a character or concept to be so completely flexible that the reader can never be sure if he is reading, in issue #144, about the same character he encountered in #131. Some things--basic powers, names, relationships with supporting cast--should certainly be consistent from issue to issue. But the operative word there is "consistent".

Consistency merely assures the reader that Clark Kent is Superman, that he is an alien from Krypton with certain "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." Continuity insists that a writer in 2004 portray those powers and abilities as they were portrayed 20 years ago, even though only the most hard-core of fans can recall the specifics of a two-decade-old story.

The most recent continuity argument came up when DC and John Byrne decided to revive the Doom Patrol...and treat them as never having existed in the DC Universe before. Fans--at least the vocal ones--were up in arms. "What about Gar Logan--Beast Boy/Changeling?" they cried. That member of the Titans had a history--a continuity, if you will--that involved certain members of the DP. But even the most recent of those stories were, by now, thirty to forty years old, and the most recent appearances of Logan certainly didn't depend upon them.

In fact, save for Logan, the DP had made damned little impact on the DC Universe, even in its halcyon days of the 1960s. They were produced out of the Murray Boltinoff editorial office back then, and Boltinoff pretty much ignored all the other DC titles, except when ordered to do otherwise. The original DP ended in 1969 with the death of all the members (a death later retconned in the 1980s, so that certain members would survive)--and in its less than a decade of publishing history, the encounters of the DP with the likes of Flash, Superman, etc. can be counted without exhausting the fingers of both hands (and virtually all of those encounters occurred in the pages of The Brave and the Bold, a title continuity fans generally ignore, anyway).

So, why shouldn't a new reader get a new Doom Patrol? One that includes the memorable characters of the original--for those of us who'd like to see them again and in their prime--but that doesn't depend on a forty-year history and allows the new reader to be introduced to them as fresh?

Because long-time readers remember it differently? Because it spoils the old stories for them?
I'm reminded of the story of a writer, asked if the movie versions of his books had "ruined" them, who responded, pointing to the bookcases in his office, "They haven't been ruined. See, there they all are."

For those who prefer the historical Doom Patrol, I say, "Those stories have not been spoiled. Go to your collections--see, there they all are."

Straining at Gnats

2004-08-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

I was raised as a Roman Catholic and a pretty active one. I "fell away" after college, not attending any church until after I got married and became an Episcopalian (or, as Robin Williams calls it, "Catholic Lite--all the ritual, half the guilt").

When people ask me why I stopped being a Catholic, this is the kind of thing I point to:

The Diocese of Trenton has ruled that the First Communion of a girl with a digestive disorder is invalid because the host she received was not made of wheat.

Her mother is calling on the Vatican to reverse its ban on wheatless Communion wafers, saying the Monmouth County girl's condition prevents her from consuming even a small amount of the grain....

...the diocese has informed the Waldmans that Haley's Communion was not sacramentally valid because church law requires that every wafer contain at least a fraction of wheat gluten.

"Hosts that are completely gluten-free are invalid matter for the celebration of the
Eucharist," Trenton Bishop John Smith said in a statement released yesterday.

Jesus didn't think highly of the kind of people who put strict observance of the Law above normal human decency. Those were the Pharisees he kept railing about. One of those statements is the source of the headline on this piece:

Blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
--Matthew 23:24

The Football Game Will be Played Before and After the Half-time Show

2004-08-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

If you had told me, six years ago, that I would now be the webmaster for a high-school marching band (here), or that--for some three months out of every year--all my weekends would be spent cheering that same band at football games and marching band competitions, I'd have called you nuts.

But yet, here I am, about to embark on my seventh season as a "band parent"--and a damned active one, too!

Band camp starts in ten days. I'll spend part of that time taking pictures to post on the website. First football game--or, as we band parents like to call it, "first performance"--is on September 3. Two weeks after that, is the first band competition, as the Ridley Raiders travel the highways and byways of the Delaware Valley region to show their skills and be judged against the marching bands from other high schools. (Think the "Battle of the Bands" shown in Funky Winkerbean and you'll have some idea.) I'll be at every game and every "comp"--taking pictures and cheering.

It started when my older son, Brian, entered high school and joined the drum line. Unsure of marching band when he started (he'd only been in a stage band until then), at the end of his freshman year, he told me, "I'm going to be drum major before I graduate!" And damned if he wasn't--in a season when the band won more awards than in any season in the past 20!

His younger brother, TJ, was never an instrumental musician...but he liked the idea of marching band, having seen his big brother in it, so he also joined the drum line, quickly becoming an experienced percussionist--to the point that the percussion instructor thinks he may eventually be a better drummer than Brian!

So, here I am, a band parent, with two seasons left. What the hell am I going to do with my falls when TJ graduates?

Picking a Big Blue Boy Scout

2004-08-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

AP is reporting about the problems in finding someone to play Superman:

Although it would seem to be a natural for any actor, some of the very
things that make "Superman" an ideal role on the surface - massive worldwide
exposure, guaranteed sequels and becoming the face of a pop-culture icon -
can also be counted as potential drawbacks.

And if fans don't like the movie, you become their nemesis.

I dunno about that. Remember all the fan fuss when Michael Keaton was named to play Batman? Fans were certain it would be a joke, a farce, a return to the days of Adam West and Burt Ward. That the director was Tim Burton--then mostly noted for oddball stuff like Edward Scissorhands--didn't help matters.

But the fans were wrong...and many of those who spoke so vehemently against the choice now defend that first Batman film as the sine qua non of comic-book based movies.

I suspect the new Superman will be somebody--like George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Dean Cain and Tom Welling--that most of us have never heard of. But of the actors I have heard of and heard mentioned for the part (although not in the article referenced above), I think George Eads (of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) comes closest to my view of the Man of Steel.

"...Does Whatever a Spider Can..."

2004-08-10T05:26:00.000-07:00

Finally saw Spider-Man 2 yesterday.

An explanation is in order--my younger son, TJ, who is decidedly the more gung-ho about movie going between my two boys--was away at a summer theater school all of July, and we'd promised not to see the Spidey film without him.

The CGI stunts still have problems, to my eyes--too often the swinging scenes are obviously digital and any time Doc Ock picked up another human being (Mary Jane outside the restaurant, the two passengers on the el train) it was clear even to my tired, middle-aged eyes that the human in his clutches was CGI creation, at least as clear as it always was to me that whenever one of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion monsters picked up a real human that human turned into a puppet as well.

I think the solution to the swinging scenes is more blur; the images are too crisp for the speed Spidey's moving at.

OK--having gotten the technical issues out of the way--I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It's a combination of several different motifs from the classic Spider-Man stories--something going haywire with Peter's powers, Peter quitting to have a "normal" life (including a scene that virtually duplicates a famous scene--Peter walking away from the garbage can with his Spidey suit hanging from it [Amazing Spider-Man #49 or #50, right?]), and a climactic sequence that includes echoes of the famous "lifting the huge piece of metal" scene from Amazing Spider-Man #33.

One interesting point from a film-making standpoint--the director and writers choose not to cut directly from Spidey's heroic triumph against Doc Ock to the closing credits. Instead, we get a very comic-book like "epilog" that ties up a number of the sub-plots from the story...and gives us a new one to spur the next film.

All-in-all, I give this three-and-a-half stars out of a possible four.

(BTW, anyone else think Peter's no longer hiding anything from his Aunt May in this storyline? Whether he knows it or not?)

Fay Wray, 1907-2004

2004-08-10T05:15:00.000-07:00

Hollywood's original "scream queen", Fay Wray, who made her mark by bellowing terror at King Kong, died yesterday in New York. She was 96. A complete obituary is here.

My momories of King Kong revolve around growing up in New York and TV's Channel 9 there, WOR-TV. Channel 9, in my youth, was known for just two things--carrying the Mets and Million Dollar Movie, an odd tradition of running the same movie afternoon from Monday to Friday. (The show's theme was the Tara music from Gone With the Wind--I was in my teens before I knew that lush string melody as anything else.)

Anyway, King Kong was a frequent film on that schedule, so I got to see it pretty often. Later, by my teens and 20s, the station (by now WWOR) began an equally odd Thanksgiving tradition: In an apparent effort to schedule against the football showing on all of the major stations, Channel 9 turned turkey day into Ape Day. They started with Kong in the early afternoon, then segued into Son of Kong, followed by Mighty Joe Young.

Must admit, for a non football-fan like me, it provided some entertainment before and after dinner.

"Your Representative's Judgement"

2004-08-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.--Edmund Burke

That is one of my favorite quotations on the nature of representative democracy...and I bring it up now because of a recent development in my home state of Pennsylvania.

As some of you may have read in the recent news, Pennsylvania recently legalized slot-machine gambling. The idea is that the revenue from that source will be dedicated to reducing property taxes in our school districts, the main source of funding for education in this state.

I'll be happy to debate whether property taxes make any sense at all in the modern era another time, but for now let's stick to the issues connected to this new law. In order to get its share of the new money, each school district must do three things:

1. Enact at least a .01 percent earned income tax;
2. Once the gambling revenue is flowing, keep all property tax increases to a figure at or below a state-determined inflationary percentage; and
3. If a proposed tax increase exceeds that state-determined percentage, put the school budget to a referendum.

That last is something that the hard-core conservative element in this state have been crying for for years,and it is at the heart of my opposition to the entire deal.

Can any of you imagine that such a referendum would ever pass? And, more importantly, why are school taxes singled out in this fashion? Why not require referendums on virtually every tax, from the federal income tax down to the local charges for garbage pickup?

My understanding of representative democracy is that we choose our representatives--in this case, school board members--through periodic elections. (In my district, the nine members each serve a four-year term, with four of the members chosen in one year, and the other five chosen two years later.) We presumably choose them to make decisions--including tax decisions--for us, in part because they will have the time to spend on these issues and make the informed decisions that we, in general, cannot.

If we disagree with their decisions, our recourse is to vote them out of office in the next election. That is what we do with state legislators, city councilmen, etc. Why is it that only school board members are being considered as unable to make the informed decisions for us...and that we must have the ability to override their judgments?

I suspect it is because what the hard-core conservative element in this state--or any state with a similar requirement--really wants to do is starve public education out of existence. They would be much happier with a completely private educational system, because then the duty to improve the lives of the least among us would no longer be their concern.

Not that it concerns them overmuch right now.

Who Owns Superman?

2004-08-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

Newsarama is reporting that the Siegel family heirs--who have been negotiating with DC Comics for their half of the rights to Superman for the better part of a decade--are now going to add Superboy to the mix, as the end of the pre-1978 56-year copyright term nears. And, in accordance with the changes wrought in copyright law in 1995, Joe Shuster's estate is now claiming the other half. (Previously, the Shuster estate was barred from making a claim because the law permitted it only for surviving spouses and children; Shuster had none. The 1995 law extended that right to the estate.)

So, who owns the rights to Superman? For the time being, we must presume DC Comics still does--as it continues to publish the character's adventures, and there has been no legal challenge to those publications by the Siegels or Shusters.

Newsarama says that may change as the heirs have hired a more "aggressive" lawyer. On the other hand, do the Siegel and Shuster heirs really want to become the publishers of Superman? Wouldn't it be more in their interests to negotiate a deal with DC--either an outright sale, or a licensing agreement (similar to the one the William Moulton Marston estate reportedly has regarding Wonder Woman)?

Part of the comics community always argues for "creator control"--in this case, actually, "creators' heir control"--of a character or concept. But is that really the best outcome in this case? There's no evidence that either the Siegels or the Shusters have any experience at either creating comics or publishing them. Isn't the best-case scenario for everyone--DC, the Siegel/Shuster estates, Superman fans--to leave the character in the hands of the corporation that has done pretty well by him all these years? And simply pay the estates a proper amount for the rights--admittedly a figure probably in the tens of millions of dollars over time?

I happen to think a licensing deal is the best resolution here--it provides the heirs with a steady income and doesn't deplete the DC coffers all at once.

What do you think?

Welcome--I'm new to this!

2004-08-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

Hi!

Though I've been writing professionally for 30 years, this is my first attempt at keeping up this kind of a journal.

Comics fans will recognize my name from Comics Buyer's Guide, Comics & Games Retailer, and Wizard, where I was the first editor some ten years ago. I know I'm noted for being opinionated and stubborn in those opinions when it comes to what I think comics should be and where they've gone wrong--both aesthetically and commercially--over the past two decades or so. I've expressed those opinions--in no uncertain terms, I'm afraid--in places like the newsgroups in the rec.arts.comics area and the discussion pages at http://www.comicon.com.

Comicon.com is also where you're most apt to find me pontificating (as my wife calls it) on politics. I'm a life-long Democrat and unashamedly liberal, so don't be surprised if a little Bush-bashing goes on here during this election season.

Well, that's enough to get this thing started. Don't know if I'll post every day, but I'm sure going to try to.