Peter David's Blog, page 61

Fantabaires convention, part 1

Originally published December 3, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1359

November 4-5: Fantabaires is a convention that’s been held for the past several years in beautiful Buenos Aires in Argentina. The convention has generally run for about five days and drawn around 40,000 people. This year it’s scheduled for a mammoth ten day run, and the organizers are hoping to draw somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 people. The convention has offered to bring down Kathleen and me, and although a two-week absence from home is out of the question, I agree to come down for five days.

As departure day approaches, however, I get increasingly apprehensive since the airline tickets are nowhere to be seen. Finally, on Monday—three days before departure—I receive an e-mail informing me that the reservation has been made and I simply have to show up and get the tickets. The airline is Argentine Airlines. I endeavor to call Argentine Air to confirm the reservations and find out if there’s anything I should know about. I get a number for them from information, but the recording is almost entirely in Spanish. At the end, the voice switches to English and offers another number to call for more information, but the accent is so thick that all I can make out is “333.” I try twice more and pick up an additional “6,” and then give up. Best to keep my fingers crossed.

We arrive at the airport. Mark Waid and Devin Grayson, two other guests of the convention, are already there. They are hunched over a counter with several concerned/annoyed-looking Argentine Airline employees. It does not look good. We quickly discover the reason it doesn’t look good is that it isn’t good. Mark and Devin’s tickets have been canceled. No one at the convention mentioned to us that we were supposed to pick up the tickets no later than twenty-four hours before departure. When the tickets weren’t picked up, the airline canceled the reservation. Kathleen and I look at each other, aware of the fact that if Mark and Devin’s tickets are gone, the chances are sensational that ours are missing as well.

We have arrived at the terminal an hour and a half early, and that seems rather fortunate since it’s apparently going to take every minute of available time to sort things out. The ticket agents engage in much head shaking, scanning of screens, repetition of the word “nada” and talking of how it’s going to be difficult to achieve the same seat price again. This last is incomprehensible to me: The tickets were purchased at full fare in the first place because the convention waited for some reason until the last minute. It’s not as if a savings is being made.

With forty-five minutes before the plane is supposed to depart, Mark and Devin finally get their tickets. Then we step up with the exact same problem. The ticket woman looks like that guy from the poster for the movie Scanners. You know the one: The guy with the stricken look whose skull is about to explode. More gazing at screens as if they’re crystal balls, more head shaking, more nada. Despite the fact that I’ve no reason to, I feel intensely guilty. There’s no one in the world that feels more reflexively guilty for anything and everything than a divorced Jewish male. This time, however, the tickets are produced with more alacrity than Devin’s and Mark’s, probably because they’ve had practice in doing so.

Kyle Baker and his family are supposed to be on the flight as well, but they’re nowhere to be seen. Mark, Devin, Kathleen and I stand in the departure lounge, taking bets as to whether Kyle will make it or not. We envision him showing up ten minutes before departure and getting the same ticket clerk who will discover the same problem and this time her head really will erupt in a shower of blood and gore. We listen carefully for ambulances and screaming and loud Spanish profanity, but nothing reaches our ears, and then the plane is boarding.

Kathleen and I get to our seats. A woman who speaks no English is sitting in them. She produces a boarding pass that has the same seat number on it. We find the stewardess, who speaks slightly more English. She goes to the woman who pulls out the boarding pass again. By startling coincidence, the seat number hasn’t changed in the thirty seconds since she showed it last. The stewardess tells us to wait in the back of the plane. That the plane isn’t full, but we should wait there until she tells us to take a seat. We wait. We block people no matter where we stand. Finally another stewardess, looking irritated, asks us what we’re doing. We tell her. “Sit down somewhere now!” she says as if we’re recalcitrant kindergartners.

We find a couple of seats, window and aisle, on the side. Then a nice guy who has a row of four in the middle of the plane all to himself offers to switch with us. Between the tickets and the stewardesses, I’m now so paranoid that I say, “Why?” suspiciously.

“Well, you two look like you’re off on a romantic trip, and I thought you’d be more comfortable and happy spreading out in four seats than two,” he says. Immediately, because of my reaction, I feel guilty again, but since that’s my normal state of mind, I’m okay with that. We switch.

I’m more than a little worried about the flight, because of the recent crash of Egyptian Air Flight #990. Those people were just as comfortable, as carefree as us, and then, boom. I try to tell myself that the odds are in our favor: How often do you hear of two jumbo jets going down within a week of one another? It’s Garp reasoning, and not terribly morale-boosting. Over two hundred souls, gone, just like that. I’m beginning to develop a genuine antipathy for air travel.

The plane takes off without incident. At 35,000 feet, disaster strikes: We’re told that the inflight movies are Big Daddy and Wing Commander. I try to flee the airplane, but the seat belt holds me tight. Trapped with a lousy SF film and Adam Sandler. At least it’s not as bad as last time. Last time, I had a bulkhead seat with a screen not more than six inches away from me, and Happy Gilmore was the movie. There was nowhere else to look. (Okay, okay, I liked The Wedding Singer, but other than that…)

Since I can pretty much sleep in any position known to man, I remain sitting up while Kathleen stretches her Xena-height body across three seats and uses my lap as a pillow. I fall asleep during the first half hour of Wing Commander (as did many critics) and wake up for the last ten minutes of Big Daddy, before fading out once more. I feel as if I dodged a bullet. Perhaps the flight will be problem free after all.

The screaming wakes everyone at 5 AM.

It is the high pitched howling of a child, about eight years old, a little boy. At first I think the child is throwing a tantrum, but there’s something more in his voice than petulance. I realize, belatedly, that it’s stark terror.

Cabin crewmembers are running at high speed to the site. I crane around in my seat. Mark Waid is standing right where the screaming is originating from, a little off to the side. For a moment I think that maybe the kid just really, really hated Kingdom Come. But then I see that they appear to be ignoring Mark, focusing on someone that I can’t see in the seats nearby him. They appear to be shouting, “Mexico! Mexico!” For a delirious moment I think that the kid’s on the wrong flight and was supposed to be heading to Mexico, and we’re going to have to turn around and go back to JFK or something.

They’re not shouting “Mexico.” They’re shouting “Medico,” calling for medical help. Mark, making his way back to his seat, had just emerged from the bathroom when the chaos struck and consequently happened to be in a position to tell us exactly what had happened.

A little boy, traveling with his mother and grandfather, had endeavored to awaken his grandpa for some reason. His grandfather had not woken up. The kid tried, kept trying, shook him, pounded on his chest. No response. Suddenly fearing that his grandfather had died right there in the seat, it had been the child’s terrified scream of “Grandpapa!” that had startled the entire cabin to wakefulness. The cabin crew grouped around the old man, doing everything they could to get a reaction out of the old man. The child’s reaction was not misplaced; the guy wasn’t waking up. For long minutes they worked on him, giving him oxygen and the like, and then finally he stirred, his eyes opening and looking around, confused.

“A guy almost dying on the plane. That can’t be a good omen,” muttered Mark.

It got us wondering what they do with a body if someone does die on a plane. I naturally figured that they just stuffed it in the overhead compartments. But maybe, I reasoned, they just leave the body there. Put a pair of dark glasses, a hat on it, maybe toss a blanket in its lap. Since passengers would probably be upset, maybe they’d even have fun with it to try and lighten the mood. You know, like, “In preparation for landing, all passengers must have their tray tables in the full and upright locked position… except for Mr. Fedelman over in seat 32H, because, y’know, he’s dead, so what’s the worst that can happen to him? If he gets hit by a falling tray table, what’s he gonna do? Sue?”

We arrive at Buenos Aires airport. There is a gargantuan line at customs. To our left, we spot the kid, his mom… and the grandfather. He’s standing there on line, not even in a wheelchair or anything, as if nothing had happened. Tough old guy. In America they’d probably have him on a stretcher. Devin and Kathleen, meantime, are discussing excitedly about going to see cemeteries in Buenos Aires. Apparently, I am told, death is a popular part of the culture. Things are looking cheerier every minute.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

Just finished “Artful”

Just wrapped up a second and final pass on “Artful” for Amazon Books. Scheduled to come out June 24, 2014, it’s the previously untold story of the Artful Dodger, hunter of vampyres and other nasty things. I’m very pleased with the way it came out and hope you’ll all be buying it.

PAD

Body Dimorphism, part 2

Originally published November 26, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1358

We were talking last week about the subject of body dimorphism. (At least I was. I dunno, you may have been talking about something else entirely. It’s a free country. Talk about whatever you wish, and smoke ’em if you got ’em. Not that that should be taken as an endorsement of tobacco products. Good heavens, one has to watch oneself in the era of political correctness, doesn’t one?)

Anyway, much has been written on the message being sent today’s young girls in regards to the message being sent by wasp-waisted Barbies or heroines with hydraulic busts. But not a lot has been written about what young boys are being taught by what is becoming the standard of male musculature. This is represented by the broad-chested, pumped up male comic book heroes (as opposed to the fairly normally proportioned lads from the Golden and early Silver Age of comics) and the newer lines of action figure toys.

The body dimorphism poster boy is probably the Luke Skywalker action figure who, when he came out back in the 1970s, looked pretty normal… as opposed to the rippling pecs he sports nowadays. So we were talking to Mark Hamill to get his thoughts on the matter because… well… why not?

Interestingly, being a comic book fan of long-standing himself, Hamill’s impulse is to try and come up with a way that his character’s visual transformation actually makes sense from a continuity point of view. “The thing is,” he said, “in the larger scheme of things, it’s like the actual six and a half hours (of the original three Star Wars movies) is minuscule compared to the ancillary market of novels and games and comic books and card games. It’s gone on so long that they’ve had to come up with more storyline for my character than was in the three movies.

“I get the sense that it’s like supply and demand at its finest… or at its worst, depending on how you look at these kinds of things. It’s become such a voracious, pulsing franchise in America, like cowboys and Indians or Davy Crockett, that it’s pedal to the medal on all levels. Star Wars is in the food stores, the toy aisles, the clothing stores… it’s everywhere. It’s remarkable. They will exploit anything that makes money and push it to the limit so that you can’t even keep up with all the adventures. So who am I to criticize how he looks, because for all I know he’s gone out and buffed himself up so that he looks like that. It’s so funny because I was so immersed in it, but it ended for me just before Return of the Jedi came and went. There’s probably 95 percent of ‘my’ adventures that I have no knowledge of.

“In terms of George’s vast universe here, it’s transmogrified so far beyond what I thought of it when I was associated with it, that when you try to put it into perspective in your own life and own reality, something like that is one of a myriad of things that strikes you even as a student of pop culture.” For instance, Hamill feels that part of the current obsession with pumped up heroes is related to another aspect of pop culture, namely “the whole emergence of wrestling. I so don’t understand that. I’ve heard the analysis of how it’s soap opera for men, but it’s never appealed to me on any level. Which is funny, because I do like superhero comics.”

Hamill makes a valid point, as far as I’m concerned, regarding the popularity of wrestling. Whatever influence comic books may have, they pale in comparison to the widespread impact sustained by modern day wrestling. When kids hear the name “Steve Austin,” they’re sure not thinking of the relatively normally proportioned Six Million-Dollar Man. They’re thinking of one of a hoard of wrestling types, beefed up by God-knows-what to unheard of physical proportions. They see these folks stalking around, and they become the new heroes (and villains) and set a standard for physical desirability.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in top physical condition, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being concerned about having a well-shaped frame. But these guys can mightily blur the line between what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy.

Still, it’s not as if Hulk… sorry, Hollywood… Hogan… is the first of the sculpted media figures. Although, speaking of Hulk, go look at the first issue of The Incredible Hulk if you want to see what I’m talking about. What was incredible then would be pretty modest now. See how he’s built. He doesn’t look that physically imposing compared to what is now the standard for “normal” human superheroes. Yet in those days, proportionately, he towered over the Thing and dwarfed Spider-Man. Over the years, the Hulk has become more and more mammoth. Ron Garney’s current work on the Hulk is hailed for the way he manages to give the Hulk such remarkable mass, to the point where the reason Hulk has to smash is because he couldn’t possibly fit through a normal doorway.

That’s not meant as a slam on Garney’s view of the Hulk… he’s simply rendering what has become the industry standard for a character who, in the early days, looked not much different than the average wrestler does now. And fans are happy to see it, because that sort of gargantuan aspect is now what is expected of the Hulk. Probably one of the least popular incarnations of the Hulk, purely from a physical point of view, was when he was “Mr. Fixit” in Las Vegas. Although the gray Hulk was returned under Al Milgrom’s watch (a fact most people seem to forget), it was Vegas artist Jeff Purves who restored him to the more modest proportions of his earliest days. And a lot of fans complained he didn’t look… well… Hulkish enough. Years of increased mass have demanded a new standard for the character.

In any event, Mark Hamill remembers “how Hercules movies were big, so I think people are fascinated by bodies of great strength, be it Samson or Goliath or Hercules. So maybe it’s always been part of the culture, that sort of physical perfection, both males and female.”

What sort of conclusions can be drawn from this? What can, or should, be done about it? I’m not entirely sure what to suggest.

Or perhaps comic book publishers and artists can be asked to scale back the visualization of the characters so that they look more normally proportioned. After all, if Marvel can order a sweeping internal edict involving non-smoking among its characters, it can issue another that says that heroes who once had reasonable proportions should be restored to their earlier incarnations. John Byrne did that to a certain degree when he took over FF years ago, for instance. For the first time in years, Reed Richards looked like a skinny scientist rather than a body builder. Likewise his visualization of Spider-Man likewise looks more down to earth… uhm… ceiling.

Or perhaps wrestlers and wrestling magazines can go on a media blitz, explaining that kids should not be trying to emulate these body types, and talk extensively about the dangers of steroids and such.

Or perhaps manufacturers of action figures should roll back the physical models of the toys being manufactured so that, at the very least, toys based on actual people wind up have musculature emulating the actual people.

Or perhaps we should simply form a boy’s band. For I ask you, friends, how can any action figure hope to compete with a slide trombone?

Really, the only practical approach is the one Hamill suggests: “Just stay in touch with your kids and talk to them about those kinds of issues. As long as you talk to your kids about these things, you can sort of circumvent it as an issue. I think media is so pervasive in children’s lives, you just have to control it. Sometimes I think we made a horrible mistake giving them so much access to video tape recorders and such. Turn it off, go to the beach, play a board game, do a jigsaw puzzle.”

Then again, Hamill does have a unique problem. It was quite startling to his kids, growing up, to learn that not everyone’s father had an action figure of him.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. The foregoing notwithstanding, if there’s ever a Peter David action figure, you can count on it being pretty damned ripped. And it’s going to have hair.)

 

Body Dimorphism, part 1

Originally published November 19, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1357

“Ve gonna pump (whap!) you up!”

–Hans and Franz

 There are so many things in the world that females have had to lag behind males in achieving. Males had more privileges in voting, in job choice… you name it, and men have generally had the edge.

But there’s one thing that modern young ladies have had the edge on for quite some time, and that only in recent years are young guys starting to catch up. And that, kids, is body dimorphism.

Striving for an ideal of the human body is nothing new, of course. One need look no further than Greek statues to see ideally sculpted, muscled and fairly ripped men in various poses of sleek flawlessness. Women who were not only supposed to look like goddesses, but genuinely were goddesses. Perfection was presented in three glorious dimensions. However, whether Greeks of the time actually thought they were supposed to look like those statues, and did everything they could—reasonable and unreasonable—to achieve that look for themselves, I really couldn’t say. Perhaps there are expert historians who could provide an answer, but that’s a bit outside of my field.

Of more recent vintage, however, we hand our daughters Barbie dolls, and those wasp waisted, well-bosomed plastic individuals provide the idealized body type for young girls. And if the doll does not drive the message home sufficiently, then certainly a world filled with slim models draped in the latest revealing fashions certainly helps to let young ladies know where they stand, or at least where they should stand.

Boys, however, haven’t had it quite shoved so thoroughly into their faces… at least, not until recently. Now no one is saying that trying to care for one’s body or endeavoring to look good is a bad thing… certainly not at a time when the United States leads the world in obesity. But on the other hand, let’s take a look in our own little industry at the changes in the way that the human body has been represented.

Now there are certain givens, of course. Comic book heroines are hugely busted, equipped with breasts that would probably give the ladies a black eye while they’re running. Comic book heroes wear outfits that are exceptionally tight in the area of the crotch, so much so that one realizes that there can’t really be anything there since no bulge is apparent (which would, when you think about it, explain the hostility that prompts them to go out and beat up on bad guys. Perhaps they’re feeling inadequacy in other aspects of their lives.)

But that’s not what I’m focusing on at the moment. Instead consider the heroes and heroines of the Golden Age of comics.

A pretty slim bunch.

Wonder Woman, considering she was an amazon princess, was rather thin, her bust line nothing especially daunting (although understandable when one recalls that the amazons allegedly whacked off breasts so as not to have any impediment to their bow arms.) The heroes, by the same token, were quite slender. They weren’t 90-pound weaklings, but they weren’t exactly Hercules either. Even artists who were later known for their impossibly muscled characters, such as Jack Kirby, were producing heroes who were thin and wiry. Look at the early Sub-Mariner stories; Bill Everett drew a skinny little guy.

Geez, look at early Spider-Man, for pity’s sake. Thanks to Steve Ditko’s pencils (and, according to Stan Lee, his insistence that a Kirby-esque muscle man wasn’t what he was going for), Spider-Man was the Lieutenant Columbo of the superhero set. People took one look at this skinny guy and thought, “No problem,” right before they got their butts kicked. No less an authority on male physique than Princess Python (who, let’s face it, had “slut” written all over her) commented that she couldn’t believe how someone as small and unassuming as Spider-Man could possibly be such a physical threat, even as he juggled members of the Circus of Crime as if they were Styrofoam packing chips. It was part of what made early Spidey so appealing to geekish readers (no offense intended) who felt that their own less-than-manly physique truly hid the fighting heart of a lion… or, at the very least, an irradiated spider.

When was the last time someone took one look at Spider-Man and sneered that he didn’t look like much of a threat?

Some heroes even had loose fitting shirts or slacks instead of leotards. The early FF uniforms were practically baggy. Heroes of the Golden Age, and even unto the Silver, simply did not impress with their physicality. Instead they impressed us with their deeds, their heroics, and their pureness of heart and sincerity of purpose.

Now look at what we have, though. Heroes are almost uniformly well built, incredibly and hugely and impossibly muscled. Slim or physically unimpressive protagonists seem to be solely the province of the Vertigo line.

It’s a phenomenon hardly limited to comic books. Surveys were done recently of action figures, noting the manner in which their muscles have grown exponentially over the past twenty years. One figure held up as an example was the “Luke Skywalker” action figure. When it was first produced twenty years ago, the body was fairly slim, normal looking—not unlike the fairly slim and normal looking Mark Hamill who played him. The action figure disdained any sort of huge, heroic proportions. Not surprising, considering even Hamill didn’t realize—during auditions with the initial scripts—that his character was the central hero.

“I couldn’t get over the fact that the protagonist wasn’t in the usual mode of the action hero,” said Hamill in a recent phone interview. “I figured Harrison was the lead. That he was Flash Gordon and I’m the sidekick. Who knew?”

As for the action figure of the unusual hero, “The face was kind of generic. It didn’t look anything like me. I remember visiting the toy factory when we were over in Hong Kong, and I was surprised how CIA-like it was. You had to sign confidentiality, non-disclosure agreements. We couldn’t talk about what they’d seen. I asked them why the (doll’s) hair was yellow, since I always thought my hair was light brown. It was mostly based on the fact that since Harrison’s hair was brown (on the Han Solo figure) they wanted a contrast and they didn’t have a lot of choices. The color palette was really limited. It’s probably far more sophisticated now. I don’t think there was any attempt in those days to make it look like me. Now tastes have become so much more sophisticated. I’ve seen the recent 12 inch figures, and they’ve even put the cleft in the chin.”

The other things the recent Luke figures have are rippling muscles and a sculpted torso, totally different from Luke Skywalker’s first toy incarnation. Hamill pointed out that the new Luke Skywalker toys resemble “the redesigned figure with the bodybuilder torso” depicted on the early Hildebrandt poster… a poster which was not, incidentally, in the theaters initially. “People forget that the movie came out with no poster, but only lobby cards,” said Hamill. “At Grauman’s Chinese Theater the day it opened, they put out lobby cards because Lucasfilms was never happy with what Fox came up with. There was great dissension over whether to promote it as science fiction or Little Rascals in outer space.”

More thoughts on the muscling of Luke Skywalker and the lessons to be learned from pumped up heroes next issue.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

A Sensation at the Brooklyn Museum

Originally published November 12, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1356

We know what offends us, don’t we.

We know what public dollars should be made to support, don’t we.

I mean, it’s all so easy. We don’t know art, but we know what we like. And as comic book fans, we all know the importance and impact that artwork can and does have on the world of comic book literature. Oh, and it occasionally has impact on the real world as well.

I’ve spoken a number of times of censorship of comic books, and how we must be ever vigilant in making sure that Those Who Are Protecting Us From Ourselves are thwarted in their attempts to perform their self-appointed work. That we must beware those who support the concept of the First Amendment right up to the point where something is expressed that they find personally upsetting… not realizing that is precisely the type of speech or expression that much be protected the most assiduously.

First up, the Sensation Exhibit. Sensation—selections from the collection of Charles Saatchi, probably one of the most devoted collectors of the works of young British artists—features the work of forty-two artists. The title works on two levels: First, looking at certain pieces gives rise to fundamental sensations, feelings, and emotions. And second, they create something of a stir wherever they go. In England, for example, there was near rioting over a painting called “Myra,” a 396cm x 320cm portrait of 1960s child-killer Myra Hindley.

In the United States, on the other hand, we so value freedom of expression that we built a protection of those rights into the constitution. Granted, it was an amendment, a sort of legal afterthought, but heck, it’s there. So naturally, of all civilized countries, we should be ready, willing and eager to show the mother country just exactly how it’s done.

And oh boy, did we.

Before the exhibit even opened at the Brooklyn Museum, a piece called “The Holy Virgin Mary” by Chris Ofili caught the attention of New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. It didn’t catch his eye, mind you, because he didn’t see it. But he heard about it, and declared that it was a portrait of the Virgin Mary “smeared with elephant feces.” It didn’t matter that his wording was wholly inaccurate; the news media repeated that description in every report of the face-off, so much so that the perception became the reality as much as the belief that 1999 is the end of the century.

Apparently, you see, New York is filled with roving and heavily armed bands of art lovers. They patrol the streets, preying on the weak, the helpless, the young and old, those who are utterly incapable of defending themselves. And these predatory monsters kidnap their victims, put guns to their heads, and force them-despite many cries of protest and pleas for mercy-to go to the Brooklyn Museum and see Sensations. Yes, that’s right… if you don’t go to the exhibit willingly, you will be forced to see it whether you like it or not.

At least, that appears to be the mayor’s major concern. He was outraged, incensed, and stated that Ofili’s painting was an insult to Catholics everywhere. Never mind that Ofili himself is Catholic. Never mind that, for an insult to have any affect, one must actually be present at the insulting. They always ask if a tree falling in the woods makes a sound if no one is around. The answer is, yes, of course it does, don’t be stupid. But an insult, on the other hand, requires an audience. I can reel off a string of epithets about whomever I want in the privacy of my office, but if they’re not around to hear it, there’s no insult. So Catholics would actually have to physically be at the museum and see the piece in order to take offense; to twist the old joke, they would indeed have to come there to be insulted.

Giuliani, for his part, also took umbrage on behalf of taxpayers. Tax money, you see, supports the Brooklyn Museum. Tax money, quoth the mayor, should not have to pay for smut—or, more on point—what noted art expert Giuliani considers to be smut.

I’ve seen much debate about whether tax dollars should support the arts. My problem is that I tend to take a simplistic view of that question, which is actually what I do with most questions. That’s why I always laugh when people seem to think that I’m some sort of deep thinker. I’m not. I generally react purely from gut instinct. The closest I come to thinking is trying to determine why my gut reaction was what it was. In the case of government supporting art, my feeling is, well… government supports destruction. There’s war. There’s the death penalty. Government(s) oversee both. So if the government destroys… then the government is also obligated to create, or at least support creation. The army is the regimentation of thought. Government supported. Art is the elevation of thought. Should also be government supported. Yin and yang. The planting of a tree for every tree that is cut down. There’s sort of a karmic obligation.

Yet Giuliani feels that it’s unfair for those who would object to certain pieces of art to have to support it with their tax dollars. That’s nice. Meantime, over sixty percent of New Yorkers polled felt that the Brooklyn Museum should be allowed to display whatever they wanted to. Giuliani was acting contrary to their desires. His salary comes from tax dollars. So basically, sixty percent of New Yorkers were spending their tax money supporting someone who was acting in a manner contrary to their interests. Why should they have any less say in how their tax dollars were spent than the minority of New Yorkers objecting to artwork that no one was forcing them to see (the roving band of art psychos was a joke, in case you didn’t get that part.)

Me, I decided to see for myself. An art expert I’m not, but being Jewish, I could probably at least view the painting with some degree of dispassion.

I thought it was gorgeous.

The painting gives us an African interpretation of Mary, produced via paper collage, oil paint, glitter, polyester resin, map pins and, yes, dried elephant dung. A symbol of fertility and not uncommon in African artwork, you wouldn’t know what it was if you weren’t told. Two balls of dung serve as support for the canvas, and the third is on one of her breasts. She is surrounded by a collage of what, at first glance, seems to be ethereal winged creatures, but upon closer inspection is seen to be an assortment of buttocks and a few shots of female genitalia, clipped from porn magazines.

The thing is, when you view the painting, Mary herself absolutely glows thanks to the paint and glitter. The image of Mary virtually radiates purity. The “obscenity” is all around her, but she seems untouched by it, above it. The immaculate in contrast to the disgusting. It’s as if the artist is saying that, in a world where sexuality and coarseness is everywhere, the Virgin Mary remains an untainted icon. It is, in many ways, as reverent a rendition of the Virgin as anyone has ever seen.

But Giuliani wants it out.

“Myra” is even more breathtaking. A gut-wrenching riff on Pointillism, the huge painting is constructed entirely from children’s handprints, symbols of her victims. Like an outsized Lady Macbeth, she can never wash their stains from her. Some have objected to the size of the painting, saying that it elevates her to some sort of heroic status. They are wrong. First, there’s the logistical question: There’s simply no way to do a Pointillist rendition involving handprints—even kid-sized—without it taking up a chunk of room. And from the symbolic point of view, murderers such as Myra Hindley loom large in our consciousness. The immensity of their crimes fascinate us, are bigger-than-life. A large painting of her doesn’t serve as approval or lauding of what she did; it simply, mutely acknowledges that such crimes are so gargantuan that they cannot be ignored or forgotten.

Then again, art interpretation is a tricky business, especially when amateurs (which I definitely am) are involved. There’s a fine line between art and just yanking the audience’s chain.

For example: Looking at the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman, which depicted mannequins of naked little girls fused together with male and female sex organs in place of noses and mouths, part of me wondered whether the artists were trying to say that in today’s world, children lose their innocence at a young age and literally have sexuality thrust into their faces… or whether the artists were just trying to do some sick stuff to have a giggle, with no purpose other than to make people say “Yuck.”

If the latter was the case, they more than succeeded with “Great Deeds Against the Dead,” a life-sized, 3-D representation of the Francisco Goya piece of the same name depicting naked and mutilated war victims hanging from a tree. Actually, the thing I found most disturbing about that one was that my attention was caught, not by the bodies, but by the tree. And I thought, “Oh my God… it’s the base from my old Aurora Batman model kit, only it’s six feet tall.”

(Which is silly, of course. Blowing a Batman model kit up to giant size wouldn’t be art. Now if you’re Roy Liechtenstein and blow up panel illustration without so much as a by-your-leave to the original penciller, that’s art!)

Although I could see where Damien Hirst was going with his display of animal carcasses, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there with him. Actually, the piece that I found most riveting was “Dead Dad” by Ron Mueck, a three-foot long silicone and acrylic statue that was a perfect rendering of… well… a naked dead father. As if to say that death makes everyone… small, somehow. Small and helpless and unprotected, no matter how large they may have loomed in life.

Some pieces worked better for me than others, but overall I found it a stunning exhibition… because this is America, and we should be able to make up our own minds about things. In the meantime, Giuliani is so incensed that he is endeavoring to evict the entire Brooklyn Museum. Oh, but I’m sure he’s against censorship.

Just like the nice folks down in Columbia, South Carolina. You’re gonna love this piece off the AP wire…

Parents worried about the influence of the wildly popular Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling have persuaded the state’s Board of Education to review whether the books should be allowed in the classroom.

“The books have a serious tone of death, hate, lack of respect and sheer evil,” said Elizabeth Mounce of Columbia, one of the parents who addressed the board Tuesday.

The state board said it was up to local school boards to decide if the books were appropriate, but agreed to review them. “Censorship is an ugly word, but it is not as ugly as what I’ve heard this morning,” said board member Clarence Dickert.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I read the above sentence, I thought of Young Frankenstein, with Kenneth Mars bellowing in his thick Transylvanian accent, “A riot… is an ugly thing! And I think it’s about time that we had one!” Furthermore, let’s be candid: Someone named Clarence Dickert should not be on the school board. Why? Because you just know that this guy was made miserable as a kid in school. Being named Clarence isn’t bad enough… but Dickert? “Hey, Claaaarence!” those kids’ voices would float across the schoolyard. “Hey Clarence… does your Dickert? Haaahahahahaa!”

So here he is, now in a position of power, probably out to avenge himself on children everywhere by making their school lives miserable. Can’t blame him, really.

Someone buy him a ticket to Sensation. It’ll take his mind off true obscenities… such as Harry Potter.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

I Hate Being Cold All the Time

One of the side effects of the stroke is that it’s apparently destroyed my body’s ability to regulate temperature. I used to be something of a polar bear. Cold never bothered me. Now I get so cold so easily that if I’m sucking on an ice cube, I start getting the shivers.

Yesterday my inability to handle cold meant I couldn’t go to a parade that Kathleen and Caroline were marching in as part of Caroline’s girl scout troop. I drove them over to it and just the act of getting into and out of the car in the 30-ish degree weather was enough to reduce me to chills. So the prospect of standing outside for the duration of a parade simply wasn’t possible.

I hate my body.

PAD

Comic Book Relaunches

Originally published November 5, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1355

I had been planning to write about the exhibit currently under fire at the Brooklyn Museum of New York. However I realized I really shouldn’t do so until I’ve had the chance to see it myself, which I’ll be doing this weekend. So instead I’ll tap into the CBG topic for this week which is, so I’m told, relaunches.

The subtext to such a topic is, naturally, whether relaunches are a good idea or not. The short answer is, obviously, yes… when it works. A relaunch, unfortunately, is something that can only be judged in hindsight. There are all sorts of reasons to be opposed to a relaunch—a disrespect for the material that preceded, the confusion of renumbering, the “oh God, again!” feeling that it engenders in readers. But if the result is a cracking good story and a concept and execution that fires the imagination, all of the downsides will be forgiven. Still, at this point relaunches are regarded with such a guarded sense of uncertainty that one almost has to wonder whether it’s ever worth it.

Relaunches, to me, break down into two types. The first is a relaunch that takes a franchise character who has fallen on hard times, and even ceased publication, and starts all new adventures with an entirely new configuration for the character. The Silver age certainly falls into this category, with the all-new versions of Green Lantern, the Flash, the Atom et al. Obviously, that would have to be considered a “good idea,” since the result was the revitalization of the DC line for a new generation of readers. One has to wonder, though, how well the Silver age would have fared if there had been computer boards around to broadcast all the details months in advance and decide—before a single issue had come out—that the entire idea stank on ice.

With the Silver age, one had the feeling that what we were seeing was a rebirth that came about purely as a creative impulse and endeavor. A “wouldn’t-it-be-nifty-if-we-did-this” sort of mentality, with such filthy considerations as sales, money and profits not figuring into the relaunch at all. I wasn’t there, but I think I can take a guess and say that it was likely the other way around.

The thinking likely was, “Let’s find a way to make these characters profitable again.” Much like the creation of the Fantastic Four was motivated not by a collaborative lightning stroke from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but rather from publisher Martin Goodman trying to find a way to cash in on the success of Justice League.

Then again, as Gordon Gekko said, “Greed is good.” Sometimes the drive for money and sales results in creative brilliance.

The other type of relaunch is one in which the character himself (or herself) is still basically the same as before (same basic identity, same basic powers) but the title is being started once more in order to ballyhoo or accommodate either some cosmetic change or else a new creative team (or even individual) that the publishers feel will provide a sales bump. The problem is that while greed may be good, naked greed is chilly, and that chilling effect spreads to the audience which can’t help but feel that someone is trying to take advantage (that someone, of course, being the publisher.)

I’ve been front-and-center in two relaunches myself. One benefitted me… the other torpedoed me, which gives me a fair batting average, I suppose.

The relaunch that paid off for me was that of Aquaman. When I originally signed on to do the series, my first issue was going to be issue #13 or #14 (I think a fill-in was going to be run, I’m not sure.) My run on the book was to begin with a four-issue series-within-a-series, which was dubbed “Time and Tide” and would lay the groundwork for my take on the sea king. After that would begin my regular run.

However, the powers-that-be decided that my vision of Aquaman was so different from what had gone before (what, you mean piranha never ate his hand off in another issue?) that the book should be started over with a number one. Personally, I wasn’t awesomely in favor of it. The biggest problem we had to overcome with Aquaman, as far as I was concerned, was the perception that the character was a loser. You have no idea how many people, both fans and pros, asked me why I was “bothering” with Aquaman. “Aquaman simply can’t sustain his own title,” I was told. My concern was that, in order to be taken seriously, Aquaman didn’t need a new number one; he needed issue numbers. The higher the issue numbers, the more chances we had of shaking the perception that Aquaman couldn’t keep a title going on his lonesome.

I was overruled, however, because the sales and/or marketing department (so I was told) felt that there would be higher numbers for a #1 by me than there would be for a #14 by me. And so Aquaman started over again… twice… with Time and Tide made its own series, followed by the restart of the regular title. This might give him the dubious distinction of having the most #1’s with his name attached.

The other relaunch, the one I ran aground with, was the Incredible Hulk. The powers-that-be, bottom line, weren’t satisfied with the sales on the title. They felt that it should be pulling the same numbers as Avengers, Iron Man, et al… titles that had been relaunched with new creative teams and much hoopla. It was felt that dramatic changes needed to be made to the title. From this came the insistence that the Hulk be made mindless and savage again, which I resisted. In retrospect, though, I realize that there was more to it than the demands for the changes to the character. Marvel wanted to give The Hulk the same treatment it had given Avengers and the other titles, with much success. But Marvel couldn’t do that if the same old writer was on it, writing the same old character, because how does that justify the relaunch. So guess who had to go? The annoying writer who was standing in the way of the Hulk achieving the true sales greatness he so richly deserved.

So I went away and Marvel got to have the Hulk, and relaunch with the Exciting New Team it wanted… and sales dropped like a rock. And lo, there was much headscratching. What could possibly have gone wrong? Well, now with the advent of Paul Jenkins, writer of the award-winning Inhumans series, Marvel is endeavoring a re-relaunch-within-a-relaunch, with the Hulk becoming “Incredible” once more as of issue #12, and that issue being treated with all the ballyhoo of the original relaunch.

The ironic thing is, there were any number of times during my run on the series that Marvel could have “relaunched” it, because I “recreated” the Hulk several times. We could have relaunched for the Vegas story arc. We could have relaunched at the end of issue #377 after he merged into the “new Hulk.” But the numbering remained consistent and the story continued because we were trying to put across a sense that one was watching a character’s life unfold.

The problem becomes that when a character is recreated for the purpose of a new launch, the fans become weary, jaded, bored. It presents a choppiness to the character’s history. The emulation of reality is what helps sell characters as “real,” because in real life, one’s life tends to proceed in a steady manner, one day to the next.

When was the last time someone turned forty and suddenly announced, “Wait a minute! My life has sucked up until now! I’m relaunching myself!” and started counting his age over from zero? The consistency of issue numbering helps to simulate genuine passage of time for the character and bolster the “sense of reality.” Since the characters age very slowly (or not at all) issue numbers become the sign posts of seniority. But since we live in a society where age equals bad, there is a desire not to remind young readers that the characters have been around for longer than the readers have (“This is not your father’s Superman!”)

Personally, I think the attitude has backfired. By treating high numbering as anathema, by refusing to reinvent characters within the context of their ongoing series, publishers have served to undercut the sense of history that served comics so well in the past. Since readers don’t know where the characters came from, they have little interest or stake in where they’re going.

I certainly think it’s part of what’s hurt comic ordering so badly. Once upon a time, retailers ordered as a hedge towards future readers looking for the back issues. I’m not talking now about retailers who overordered by fifty, sixty copies of a title in hopes of jacking up the prices. I’m talking about retailers who ordered two, three or four copies, just to have them.

Let’s take a look at Spudman. Here’s Spudman, and the title is up to about issue 87. New writer/artist Arthur Gladhand is slated to take over the book. Arthur Gladhand is highly regarded. Once upon a time, the publisher starts Arthur with issue 88. This creates a great deal of buzz.

People try Spudman who have never read the series before. They like what they read.

What’s the next thing they do, if they’re collectors?

Well, if they never read the series before… they try to pick up the back issues. Or if they had read it but then stopped, they might try to fill in the gaps. Particularly if Arthur Gladhand is bringing in characters and concepts introduced during those issues. And the retailers have those back issues on hand.

But now let’s say the publisher relaunched the series with issue #1. People get in on the ground floor… and have absolutely no compulsion to check out back issues. They feel they have the whole run right in their hands, and needn’t bother with anything else. The series that came out prior to that are irrelevant, unnecessary, immaterial. By cutting off the numbering, publishers cut off any potential Spudman readers who might pick up those back issues. I’m not saying readers won’t. But there’s certainly far less of a compulsion.

So retailers cut their orders to the bone on the back issues, doing so with impunity, because the back-issue demand is drying up.

It may not sound like much… cutting back two issues here, three issues there. But multiply it by thousands of retailers, and make it part of a trend, and it mounts up.

Bottom line, the worshipping of relaunches over the continuation of a character’s ongoing adventures, his “life,” spits in the face of history.

And the longer it keeps up, the more of a chance there is that we’ll all wind up history.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

Peter David Books For Sale

Just in time for the Holidays!

Kath here.

We have finished our convention season for the year.

One thing I have been hearing from people is that they would love to get a signed copy of X for their Y but they never make it to conventions that Peter is at. So here is your shot at it and helping Peter’s recovery as well.

We have Crazy 8 books for sale at $20.00 per book.

Current titles available are

Camelot Papers

Hidden Earth Book 1: Darkness of the Light

Hidden Earth Book 2: Height of the Depths

Pulling up Stakes

Fearless (which Caroline will sign as well)

We have some of Peter’s adaptations which are $10 a piece.

After Earth: A Perfect Beast by Peter, Bob and Mike

After Earth: the Movie Adaptation

Fables: Bloodties (Very limited number)

We have his animation scripts for sale. These are $20 a piece.

Young Justice: Bloodlines

Young Justice: Secret

Ben 10: Prisoner #775 is Missing

Ben 10: In Charm’s Way

We have comic books scripts for sale. They are one for $15 and two for $20

X-Factor #39 (Theresa has the baby)

X-factor #40 (The Aftermath from #39)

X-Factor #45 (Shatterstar and Rictor kiss)

Inquire about other issues of his work

Postage is not included and will be added to the invoice. We will ship to other countries however we can not promise that it will make it by holiday X but we will try.

We take Paypal.

The e-mail address to write to for these signed objects is Padbook4sale@gmail.com

We will invoice you on the books and postage. If you want insurance or faster shipping, we will invoice you on that as well.

Thank you for shopping with us and I hope your holiday season is a pleasant one.

Kath

Censorship and Violence in Entertainment

Originally published October 29, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1354

It always starts in different ways, ways that you are always convinced cannot, will not, ever apply to you. Frequently it will begin in regards to some sort of subject matter that you actually applaud. You pat your elected representatives on the back and say, “Go to!” and consider your tax dollars well spent. It always seems to begin with the best of intentions, and as Samuel Johnson said, Hell is paved with good intentions. Curiously, he said nothing about the frequently-mentioned road to Hell, although Clive Staples Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, did have something to say about that oft’ taken pathway: “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

In 1950, there was a forty-seven year old Tennessee Democrat named Estes Kefauver, who—although he didn’t start it up—wound up heading a United States Senate committee for investigating organized crime. According to Harlan Ellison, one of the areas that Kefauver desired to investigate was magazine distribution. “Everyone knew at the time that the entire distribution industry was completely controlled by the Mafia,” said Ellison. “That’s what Kefauver was going after, those were the guys that he wanted. He didn’t really care about comic books at all. It was just a side issue to him, not really relevant to his goal of nailing mobsters who were running magazine distribution.”

But a subcommittee was formed and an investigation held, instigated and cooperated with by an assortment of individuals, each with their own agenda. There was, of course, Frederic Wertham, whose research into juvenile delinquency convinced him that there was a cause-and-effect between comic books and youths gone astray. This was a conclusion he drew primarily because kids had been arrested while carrying horror comics. Curiously, he never interviewed the millions of kids who read the exact same comics and never got into trouble at all; a reading of Seduction of the Innocent will indicate a thesis shot through with holes, bad research, and illogical conclusions. At the same time, as Mark Evanier described in such detail in recent issues, publishers saw Kefauver’s subcommittee as an opportunity to drive Bill Gaines and his horror publications out of business.

“Kefauver himself wasn’t a bad guy at all,” said Ellison. “He really just wanted to crack down on the Mafia, and he was right, they were running magazine distribution. I have no problem with Kefauver.”

Yet Kefauver’s good intentions resulted in the censorious Comic Code Authority, which clings to the industry to this day (although I should make note that I was recently informed by Tom DeFalco that the no-exit-wound, no-red-blood dictate was in fact an internal Marvel policy that DeFalco himself developed, which is not what I was told when the stories were being drawn. At the time I was told it was the CCA.)

So now you figure, it’s forty years later. Such things could never happen again. We can relax a little.

Nope.

Let’s look at two recent bouts with censorship, one that’s in the process of being short-circuited, another that’s still going on. In both cases, it’s proof that the fight for free expression is an ongoing one, and anyone in the comic industry who thinks that we’re invulnerable is kidding himself.

I have been following with interest the series of articles running in Variety (all written by reporter Christopher Stern) regarding the efforts of one Sam Brownback, Republican Senator from the great state of Kansas. In late September, Brownback endeavored to establish a Special Committee on American Culture, which was to have a broad mandate and subpoena power. Brownback is “a vocal critic of Hollywood, which he has suggested is responsible for creating a culture of violence and profanity that has undermined the morality of America’s youth.” Which is exactly what they were saying forty years ago, back when Brownback was—well—one of America’s youth.

The article went on to say that, according to spokesmen, “the special committee will also look at family issues such as out-of-wedlock births and divorce, not just the entertainment industry. The goals of the committee include collecting data on the impact of pop culture; exploring links between violent entertainment and crime; and investigating possible connections between explicit sexual material and teen sexual activity.”

It was also mentioned that the Federal Trade Commission is already investigating the entertainment industry in connection with marketing violence to young people. I didn’t know that. Did you know that? I read that tidbit and felt a distant chill. It also stated that President Clinton requested that the Surgeon General examine the effects of popular entertainment on youths, while Congress “is also still weighing a proposal to create a national commission on youth violence that would also take a look at popular culture’s impact on the behavior of the nation’s teenagers.” This, of course, as part of Congress’ efforts to do something (i.e., find a scapegoat) after the Columbine shootings.

Over subsequent weeks, the story became even more interesting. Brownback’s proposed special committee was downgraded to a task force, which is like a hurricane being reclassified as a squall. What caused him to back down? Senate Democrats, “fearful that the committee would become a forum for conservative critics of popular culture,” found a way—for possibly the first time in history—that liberals could actually take advantage of the power of the National Rifle Association. They insisted that any Committee incorporate, into its mandate, an investigation of handguns. It seemed an utterly reasonable stipulation. After all, copies of Omaha, Cat Dancer or a videocassette of Pulp Fiction didn’t mow down students at Columbine. They were shot. California Democrat Barbara Boxer, in a subsequent letter to Senate Majority Leader (and Brownback backer) Trent Lott, “I simply cannot understand how it is possible to create a task force that would study the causes of violence in America without considering the role of guns in society. If you were to leave guns out of the mix, I would be compelled to raise this matter on the floor of the Senate.”

Well, now Brownback et al had a problem. None of them wanted to be responsible for pointing any finger of blame at, or put the GOP in opposition to, the mighty NRA. Heaven forbid that the committee discovers that the availability of guns rather than Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a prime, if not the prime, contributor to teen violence.

As of this point, Brownback is reportedly having difficulty finding backers, even for the scaled down task force. “It’s not moving forward,” his spokesmen have stated, saying that the insistence that guns be incorporated into the mix “created a ‘hang-up’ for Brownback.” Oh yes, I just bet it did. I can’t help but feel that, because of guns, a bullet was dodged.

But that doesn’t mean comic book fans can breathe easily. There’s still the FTC, there’s still the surgeon general, and there’s still Brownsback, Trent, and others, looking to protect America’s youths from everything except that which can actually kill them. And if you’re under the impression that comic books are somehow going to be immune from that searchlight, well, remember… Kefauver was just out to get Mafioso running distribution. And look what that resulted in.

Then again, we have the Brooklyn museum, which is presently right on the firing line. More on that next week.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

My favorite movie cliche

Admittedly, there are many to choose from. There are whole websites dedicated to it. But here’s my favorite movie cliche/trope:

The bad guy shows off how much of a bad ass he is.

Here’s how it works: The bad guys assembles a group of underlings. He tells them his plan. Everyone seems to think it’s a good idea except for one guy who wants out.

The bad guy then kills him.

Curiously, no one ever protests this or freaks out. At least not at the time. Sometimes there are recriminations but nothing ever comes of it.

Let me provide some of my favorite examples:

GOLDFINGER: Goldfinger describes his intention to rob Fort Knox. One guy says he doesn’t want any part of it. He winds up compressed in his car at a local junkyard. (Granted, Goldfinger winds up gassing all of them, but the principle remains the same.)

KILL BILL VOL 1: O-Ren Ishii gets her mixed background dissed. In an interesting twist, she beheads the mocker and THEN lectures everyone.

THE PHANTOM: Xander Drax describes his plan to bring together the Skulls of Tuganda. One guy wants no part of it; Xander throws a spear through him.

THE AVENGERS: No, not that one. The British one. Baron DeWinter has everyone in teddy bear outfits and winds up shooting the complainer.

BATMAN: The Joker lays down the law and when one guy bucks it, the Joker electrocutes him.

And that’s not even counting the scenes where guys like Blofeld or Doctor Evil execute guys just cause they’re dicks.

PAD