Kyle Garret's Blog, page 16

Fixing DC (Comics)

Apparently, DC had a creative summit a few weeks ago.  While it's probably the kind of thing that's planned fairly far in advance, I would imagine the generally negative fan feeling towards DC -- supported by a handful of outspoken creators -- was a very big issue.

It doesn't look like the summit worked out too well.  Since then, at least three writers have walked off titles for varying reasons, one before a single issue was completed.

I love DC's characters.  I'd like to see them in good comics again.

Here are a few ideas on how to make that happen:

1) Let creators create.

This was the obvious one.  I'm not saying give writers and artists a blank slate to do whatever they want with these characters (although, really, if there was ever a time to indulge creators without constraints, wasn't the reboot it?), but the constant changing of plans we've heard so much about has got to stop.  Marvel looks like a creators' paradise these days, in no small part because it seems like they let their creators have some freedom.  Remender sent Captain America to another dimension, for crying out loud.

There's a second issue here that bothers me.  It looks like DC is taking advantage of "indie" creators.  Think of it this way: You want to create comics for a living, but your creator owned title sells just enough to break
even, which means you're still sweating away at your day job, while logging ungodly hours at night and on the weekends on your labor of love.  DC comes along and says, hey, we'll actually PAY YOU to do one of our comics, enough to cut back your hours at the aforementioned day job, or maybe even enough so you can quit, and suddenly you'd be making comics for a living.  Sounds awesome, right?  You just have to do exactly what we tell you to do.

What indie creator would say no to that?  And I don't blame them in the slightest.  In a lot of cases, putting up with DC's insane editorial edicts means these creators can afford to continue putting out their own books, not to mention the extra exposure a main stream comic gives them.  But they have no real leverage in that situation.  It makes what Fialkov did with regards to the Green Lantern books that much more impressive.

2) Scale down.

For the love of god, enough with the 52 fetish.  It's bordering on the obscene.  You don't have enough talent to produce that many titles that will sell.  You certainly don't have the editorial resources, it seems.  Even worse, you just simply don't have the characters for it.

You used to.  But the reboot erased all that.  The characters who can carry franchises right now are Batman and Green Lantern, the only two books that were somewhat shielded by the reboot.  Batman can have 7 or 8 spin-off books because there are enough characters in the Batman mythos to manage that.  The same goes for Green Lantern.

But the Dark line?  The Edge?  I think there are two titles left alive in the Young Justice line.  The material just isn't there right now.  Cut your losses and focus on making the titles that do work even better.

3) Build from the ground up.

I was re-reading Geoff Johns' run of the Flash recently, and noticed a note about something that took place in an issue of Impulse, a book that actually sold pretty well.  It was a book that organically broke out of the main Flash title.

You know why the Teen Titans worked so well back in the day?  Because fans knew who Kid Flash was, they knew who Aqualad was, they knew who Wonder Girl was, and they certainly knew who Robin was.  They had met all of these characters in supporting roles in comics that they already read.  Is it any wonder that Stormwatch isn't selling when it features a bunch of new characters and new versions of characters that haven't been seen in quite some time?

4) Build with specific creators

Part of the reason that Marvel's NOW launch has been at all successful is that they moved the Avengers guy
to the X-books, the Fantastic Four guy to the Avengers, the Iron Man guy to the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men guy to Iron Man, etc.  At the very least, they were going to bring fans in with sheer morbid curiosity.

DC had, at one point, 4 theoretical architects of their universe, and in three months, all but one of them will be gone.  Johns is busy keeping the core Justice League books alive, which is fine, but how long before the Green Lantern books take a downturn because he's no longer associated with them?

DC needs teams, and I don't mean in their comics.  As they consolidate their line, they can focus on their core franchises, at least until they're healthy enough to branch out.  I know, I know, I've said repeatedly that the future of the industry lies in genre diversification by the Big Two, and I still believe that.  But that also means putting big name creators on non-superhero titles, and you can't very well do that when a) you don't have a lot of big name creators and b) the ones you do have are all working on superhero books.

5) Stopping fixing things that aren't broken

I'm a broken record with this, I realize, but the whole "five year" rule has obviously not worked out.  Aside from the fact that there are about a dozen web sites out there that have attempted to track the stupid thing and determined that it's closer to 10 years, trying to compact the history of the DCU was just stupid.  Even if you ignore how rich that history was, there's the simple fact that two entire lines of books (Green Lantern and Batman) are trying to have their cake and eat it, too -- which is more or less throwing off all the other titles.

The focus from DC seems to be more on creating new takes on old characters and less on telling good stories.  That's a problem.  Because new version of old characters are going to alienate old readers, and bad stories are going to alienate new ones.  So far DC has managed to annoy everyone.

6) Make up your damn minds

Supposedly, the point of the New 52 was to appeal to a new audience, perhaps actually bring in some people who didn't normally read comics.  At the very least, they should be able to rope in lapsed comic book readers or people who knew the characters from television, video games, and movies, right?

Sure, until that Starfire fan reads the first issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws.  We're suddenly a long way from the Teen Titans cartoon.

Or what about someone raised on the Justice League cartoon?  Must have been a bit confusing to see that the Green Lantern who formed the Justice League was Hal Jordan and that there was no Hawkgirl to be found.

And I'm not even saying that they should be beholden to other mediums (certainly not the horrid way Marvel is), but if the whole point is to bring in some of these readers, why in god's name would you alienate them?  Either go all in or don't.  The half ass stuff is what has and continues to hurt them.

These are just a few suggestions off the top of my head.  I'm sure I could come up with more, just as I'm sure no one in any position of power will read this.  But I love the DC universe and I hate to see it go to hell the way it has.

I blog because I love.

What's Important 3: (Happiness)

“I was happy but happy is an adult word.  You don’t have to ask a child about happy, you see it.  They are or they are not.  Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not.  Talking about it is much the same as trying to catch the wind.”
-HenriThe PassionBy Jeanette Winterson
In the last installment of this apparently opened ended series of blog posts on "what's important," I talked about how difficult it is for introverts to be social on a whim.  I mentioned that it was particularly hard for me to be social on demand after being social for 40 hours a week at work.  Clearly, I surmised, my only solution was to stop working.
But that's not so much possible.
I've noticed something about my generation: we have no idea how to be happy.  Or, more to the point, we have never thought to make happiness a priority.
I think we might be the last generation to do this.  I think the generation that followed us were raised in an environment that emphasized emotional health as much as material gain, or even personal responsibility.  Really, being happy was fulfilling the obligation of personal responsibility.
It makes sense, if you think about it.  My dad once pointed out to some friends of his (in front of me) that their children were the first generation that really couldn't be more successful than their parents.  It's true, particularly if you come from a middle class background.  Look at how large the middle class was when we were born.  Look at how big it is now.  An awful lot of us are living below the standard we were raised on.
But that's what we learned.  We learned from our parents, who were exceeding the expectations of their Happyparents, that our goal should be to do the same.  We were raised to not only be tangibly successful, but to be responsible citizens, and those two things mattered above all else.  You were to get a job, have a family, and live up to the commitments that you make.  You had to represent your upbringing.
There's nothing wrong with any of that.  Perhaps the personal responsibility aspect was played up a bit more for me because I was raised in the Midwest.  Maybe there are people who were raised in other parts of the country whose focus was more on the material gains.  But in the end, you had to behave in a certain way and achieve a certain life for that life to be considered a success.
At no point in time did happiness ever really come into it.
Which, again, makes sense.  The definition of happiness has changed a great deal over the last hundred years or so.  The fact that each generation was able to improve upon the previous one on so many different levels (rights, education, money, etc.) was more than enough.  I would think that, on a very basic level, the feeling of moving the line forward was enough to make anyone happy.
But that doesn't exist anymore.  The best my generation could hope for is to live at the same level as our parents, and I think that's left a lot of us wanting more -- but having no idea what that "more" is.
I have a lot of friends with kids and if I've learned anything from them it's that the number one thing they want for their kids is happiness.  Oh, I'm sure there's an ideal situation in their heads as to the fate of their offspring, but when push comes to shove, all that matters to them is that they're happy.  There are no asterisks to that, which is something I don't think you could have said about the generation that brought us into this world.
If this is true, I should be ecstatic.It's a difficult thing to wrap your brain around, the idea that perhaps you have no idea what happiness means or, if you do know what makes you happy, no idea how to go about getting it.  Even if you're lucky enough to know what makes you happy and to know how to get it, there's a part of you that fights it, because happiness isn't a priority for you, or at least it shouldn't be.
Happiness is a byproduct, not a goal.
So when you decide that maybe, just maybe, you need to make happiness a goal, what do you do?  How do you figure out what things you're doing because you were told you were supposed to and what things legitimately make you happy?
Doing things to make myself happy generally makes me feel guilty.  As my mother would say when I refused to finish my dinner, there are people starving in China.  There are people starving right here, and yet I'm worried about my happiness.  I should be happy with what I have.

Which is a valid point: I should be happy with what I have.  Which then begs the question: am I not happy with what I have because it doesn't make me happy, or because I won't let it?

And that, I think, is the crux of the situation.
"Happy" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, who make me happy.

What's Important 2: The Social Tank

I'm a bit of a misanthrope.

I say "a bit" because the definition of a misanthrope is someone who hates and/or distrusts humankind, and I don't think that's entirely true in my case.  "Hate" is probably too strong of a word.  "Distrust?"  There's something to that.

The bottom line is that, if I have my way (which I rarely do), I would prefer to spend more time alone than not.

This can make life difficult when you're married to someone who enjoys having at least a little bit of a social life.

Over the last few days, I received confirmation of a theory I've held for a long, long time, something that I think applies to most introverts.

See, people sometimes paint introverts as unable to be social.  But that's not the case.  Introverts can be as social as anyone else, they just have a limit.  I only have so much socializing in my tank.  And if I use it all up, it's going to take time for me to refill.

Not that I really know how it works for extroverts, but I think it's the opposite for them.

Funny enough, it's entirely possible for an introvert to fool people into thinking they're anything but.  It's all a matter of timing and planning.

I have spent the last five days on a mini-vacation.  I only actually took three days off from work, but they
Borrowed from http://www.evercurious.comsurrounded a weekend, which gave me five straight days without a single work related activity.  I even set an out of the office message on my work e-mail, something I don't think I've ever done in my entire life.

My vacation is ostensibly over.  It's after six in the evening of my last day off, which means I'd be home from work by now, anyway.  I'm already panicking that I didn't accomplish enough over those five days.  I felt an incredible crush of failure and, for more than a few minutes, had a "what's it all about" moment.

That's a little bit of a digression right there is what that is.

Anyway, having the last five days off has underscored something I've always known, but never really embraced: working drains my social tank.

Here's the thing: I have to socialize at work.  Heck, I like it, as long as it's on my terms.  It makes the day go by much faster.  But I'm in an environment where even if I have nothing but dreary reports to do (and that is quite often my fate), I'm still surrounded by others.  By attention span being what it is, I engage with those others and it is, more often than not, perfectly fine.

But 40-ish hours of that a week is my max.  It's often more than that.  When the weekend comes or, heck, even weeknights, my tolerance to socialize with anyone other than my wife is about as close to zero as
possible.

Borrowed from http://wynbrand.wordpress.comHonestly, I like people, more or less.  And when I have the ability to be social, I like being social.  But when I don't, it freaks me out.  It's is almost unbearable.

Clearly, the solution, then, is to never go to work every again.

But that's not really an option for me.

There has to be a happy medium between working every day and being a misanthrope and being a destitute socialite, yes?

I'm working on it.  We'll see how it goes.

Happy Opening Day!

I should hate baseball.

I played it when I was little and stopped playing because I got bored -- and I was a shortstop.

I grew up in Northeast Ohio, which means I was born into a Cleveland Indians household.  They haven't won a championship since 1948 and have managed to find perhaps the most torturous way to lose the World Series in 1997.

There's no salary cap, so the players make ridiculous sums of money, paid by teams in large metropolitan areas who can afford to spend freely.  There's no such thing as parity.  The one year that there was even an ounce of it (the rule this year that teams had to give up draft picks as compensation for signing certain free agents) is already being taken away.

I really should hate baseball.

But I don't.  I love it.

Part of my love of baseball comes from the fact that there are an endless number of scenarios to think about.  I over think pretty much everything, but that's not even possible with baseball.  Every player, every position, every team, every manager, every general manager -- they all have stats and histories that can be dug into forever.  Trying to figure out any given moment in a baseball game is crazy, yet it's what we do.  People predict pitches, for god's sake.

It's a smart game.  There's so much strategy in any given baseball game, it puts all other sports to shame.  What the non-fan sees as a long, boring game, the fan realizes is a carefully executed, thoughtfully considered chess match involving a whole slew of people.

It's a long season.  Having the best starting nine in the line-up or the best starting five in the rotation at the beginning of the year ultimately means nothing.  Players get hurt, players have slumps, trades are made -- the
season is so long that even the worst team has an outside shot, even if it's not a particularly good one.

As my friend Matt pointed out, baseball is the only major sport that has no clock.  Baseball games end with the 27th out, which means you can keep playing as long as you earn it.  That is where optimism comes from.  There's cause and effect at work.  If you do well, you can make up any deficit; you're not fighting the other team and the clock.

Baseball reflects society.  That's not always a good thing, but more so than any other sport in America, it reflects our culture.  It changes as we do.  The history of the sport is the history of our country and I've always been fascinated by history.

Opening Day is always a holiday for me.  I take the day off and I watch 12 to 14 hours of baseball (with breaks here and there).  Being on the west coast, I can roll out of bed and start watching, as games sometimes start as early as 9 AM (the first game is at 10 this year).

April 1st.  The world is bright and shiny.  The impossible seems possible.  The flaws are dulled by optimism.

Baseball is back.

Comic Book Decades

Every once in a while, I'm at a loss for what to read.  It's not that I don't have options; I have too many.  Between literary fiction, non-fiction, YA, and a full range of comics, sometimes it's hard to know exactly what I want to invest my precious reading time in.

One thing I'm always in the mood for are Marvel comics from the 70's.  I could go on and on about my love of these comics, but I'll save that for another day.

Anyway, this got me thinking about how, pop culturally speaking, we like to define things in terms of decades.  It's most prominent with music, but we do it with television, fashion, etc.  We do it a lot with comics, too, the most notorious of which being the 90's, which we often blame for the comics' fall from the top.

It made me think about the past few decades and which comics I most associate with each.

A few caveats: I'm using publishers as my guide.  I know I could break it down further into titles or genres or what have you, but a lot of these decades are before my time and I simply don't know them well enough to dig that deep.

Along those lines, I'm skipping the 30's.  I know, I know, it's the decade that gave us Superman and Batman, but that's more or less all I know of comics published in the 30's.  While I'm no expert regarding other decades, I have at least some knowledge of, at the very least, what other publishers were putting out.

So, without further ado:

The 40's
Yes, I unceremoniously stole thunder from Batman and Superman by skipping the 30's, but they're a big part of the reason why I'm giving this decade to DC.

Here's the thing: I will always associate WWII with DC.  I realize that the patriotic icon of that era is Captain America, but the Justice Society, the All-Star Squadron -- these are the guys I link to that time.  I think it's because DC stuck with them decades later, often still telling stories of that time period, while Marvel never really went back with Captain America to such an extent.

I eat this shit up, which is why I was so disappointed when the new "Earth 2" book from DC has nothing to do with the superheroes of the '40's that I enjoyed so much.

The 50's
Oh, I love me some comics from the 50's, or, specifically, I love me some EC Comics.  They far and away
produced the best comics of that decade.  It was groundbreaking stuff featuring artwork that was above and beyond anything else that was seeing print.  The fact that they inadvertently led to the creation of the Comics Code just underscores their importance.

Honorable mention here should go to DC, given that they started what would become known as the Silver Age in the 50's.  Kind of a big deal.

The 60's
Kind of goes without even mentioning, doesn't it?  You just don't get any bigger than the start of the Marvel Age of Comics.

The 70's
Oh, yeah.  I realize, that as a business, Marvel shot itself in the foot in the 70's, to the point where it required an extremely firm hand to bring it back to life.  The lunatics really were running the asylum.  But that's why it was so awesome.

It's no wonder that Marvel became a symbol of counter culture given how obvious the drug use (and metaphors) was in these comics.  Crazy shit happened in Marvel Comics of the 70's, crazy shit that was completely unpredictable.  You want aliens?  Demons?  Monsters?  Maybe even superheroes?  It was a insane mishmash of genres that we just don't really see anymore.

The 80's
This was a tough one, actually.  This is the decade I started reading comics, and I read mostly Marvel books, so my sense of nostalgia wants to give these years to them.  At the same time, I know how important the burgeoning direct market was, particularly the growing independent comics scene.

In the end, though, I went with the company that not only dabbled in the aforementioned direct market, but also produced two of the seminal comics of all time: Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns.  DC also did a nice job of diversifying their line in the 80's, including a line of licensed books TSR books that I really enjoyed.

The 90's
You'd think I'd go with Image here, wouldn't you?  After all, they changed the face of comics.  But they're not getting the nod from me for this decade.

No way I can pick Marvel or DC here, obviously, given what happened in the 90's.  Well, not their main
lines, at least, because my pick for this decade is Vertigo.

Look at the books Vertigo published in the 90's.  Seriously, go Google it, because it would take up a lot of space for me to list them all here.  This was the heyday of that line and it was probably the one, specific location where comics were doing the most good for the medium.  People who never read comics were sticking their toes in with books like Sandman and Preacher.  Imagine if the rest of the industry hadn't gone batshit insane; Vertigo might have actually been able to expand our audience.

Not that Vertigo was exempt from the insanity of the 90's; you can find a ton of Vertigo mini-series from the 90's in quarter boxes.  But at least those books were trying something different.

The 00's
Like a phoenix from the ashes, Marvel came back to life.  And they did it the way they'd done it back in the 60's, by appealing to teenagers and having a little bit of an attitude while they did.  This time around, though, they also took a few pages from the 70's play book, and decided that maybe letting creators have room to create could actually pay off.

It's amazing to look at the books Marvel published at the beginning of the century in comparison to what they publish now.  Today's books seem so safe when compared to what they were producing ten years ago.  And look at the lines they created to try things: Marvel Knights, Ultimate Comics, Marvel Adventures, and MAX.  Sure, each line had varying degrees of success, but they weren't afraid to try new things.

If nothing else, Marvel gets huge credit for finally doing away with the ridiculous comics code authority.

The Teens
Even with DC's reboot, the Big Two are playing it pretty safe these days.  Their lines are dwindling down to just a few big brands under which all other books must live.  Make Batman an Avenger and I think we're pretty much covered.

The place for experimentation on a large scale is Image, who are currently owning this decade.  Creators' rights have never been as paramount and it's thanks to Image.  They're publishing books the Big Two would never touch by creators the Big Two would never touch in genres the Big Two would never touch.  It's hyperbolic, sure, but Image are doing more good for the medium right now than any other company, and I'm tempted to add an "ever" on to the end of that.

So those are the comic book lines I think of when I think of each decade.  Because that's how my brain works.

What's Important (aka Twitter Tortures Me)

The main appeal of Twitter, for me, is to get a glimpse into the life I wish I was leading.

The vast majority of the people I follow on Twitter are storytellers of some type, be they writers or artists, and I would say that the vast majority of them do so for a living, or at least manage to get by doing little else.  And those people often Tweet about what they're doing at any given moment, and it doesn't usually involve sitting in a cubicle, putting together Excel sheets of information they have no real interest in.

Over the course of any given day (and night), most of these creators will drop comments about what they're currently working, what their process is like, if they're going to make their deadline, when the next meeting is, etc.  It's like getting a glimpse into heaven.

Of course it's not real, I know.  The beauty of social media is that we can present only the aspects of ourselves we choose to allow the world to see, and with Twitter that's particularly myopic.  It's a 140 character window.

Most of the time I use these glimpses as motivation.  That's the life I want, I'd say.  That should be me, Tweeting about it's 9 AM and I'm sitting down to answer publishing related e-mails while drinking my coffee.  I should be editing and proofing and researching throughout the day and cranking out new pages through the night.  I should be part of a mutual admiration society with writers whose work I enjoy.

Lately, it's been equals part motivating and depressing.  My life seems to be settling into a mold and that mold seems inflexible.

Before I go any further, you should go read this brilliant piece by David Ferguson over on the Onion.  It was published on Wednesday, about a week after I'd started putting this blog post together, and it nails exactly where my mind is at these days.

Back?

One of the things you kind of learn as you get older is that there are fewer and fewer of us out there.  By "us," I'm referring to the people in Ferguson's piece, people who have figured out what it is they love to do and who are only able to do the aforementioned thing at night and on the weekends.  That's a hard row to hoe, and over time enough distractions pop up to make giving up that life not just easy, but preferable.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, either.  But it does suggest a certain extremism in place when it comes to "doing what you love."  At a certain point, it becomes all or nothing.  It's a simple matter of time.  There are only so many hours in the day, and, whether we like it or not, we only have so much energy.  What we have to do will almost always trump what we want to do because what we have to do keeps us alive.

That's where I'm at these days.  I'm getting older and my life is getting fuller, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  But it's making me anxious about doing the thing that I love.

Eleven years ago, I quit being in bands.  Even back then, I realized that I didn't have time to play guitar in a rock n' roll band and give my writing the attention it deserved -- at least not while working a full time job.  I referred to as crossing a river, and I could only take so many things will me to the other side, and the Marshall half stack just wasn't going to fit on my boat.

I doubt I'll ever stop writing, I just worry about the day when I get two hours once a week to do it, or when I have to choose between spending time with my wife and sitting at my computer.

As unrealistic as it is, I want that Twitter life, and until I have it, it will always torture me.

Why the Veronica Mars Movie Could Work (and others maybe not)

All of them could feasibly be in the movieI backed the Veronica Mars movie on Kickstarter.

I won't go on and on about why it's not the end of the world as people seem to be claiming it is (you can read a very nice response to that over here), but I will say that I spent $50 on a DVD, digital copy of the movie, PDF of the shooting script, and a t-shirt.  That's about what I would spend on those items, anyway, and that money is going towards getting a movie made about a character I care about.  It's a win/win, as they say.

VM's success has, of course, opened the flood gates for people to speculate on which other canceled television shows could make their return through Kickstarter.  I think the ones that are brought up most often are Firefly, Terriers, Chuck, and Pushing Daisies.

Firefly has already had one movie made, so the storytelling logistics are clearly not a problem.  Given that Joss Whedon's star is on the rise in Hollywood and that he's currently promoting a movie he made with his own money (Much Ado About Nothing), I can't imagine he'd need to use Kickstarter for a second Firefly movie.  He'd basically just need time.

I watched the first episodes of Terriers and Pushing Daisies and didn't really have the time to watch anymore than that, although Terriers appealed to me more.  I believe it was only on for half a season, so I would think a movie version would be pretty easy to write, given its lack of substantial back story.  I think Pushing Daisies was on for two seasons, though, so that might be trickier.

Beaver's dead and I doubt we'll see JackieChuck would be problematic, because it was on the air for 5 seasons and has a fairly large, established cast.  It would be really difficult to appease fans of the show while simplifying the story to the point where it would work in a movie.  It's probably not impossible, mind you, but it would be hard.  However, it seems like Zachary Levi (aka Chuck) is aware of this, as he thinks a Chuck movie should be distributed online, not through traditional methods.  A move like that would basically make the movie for Chuck fans.  Traditional distribution means theaters need to believe the movie will bring in a wide audience and make them money.  Online distribution doesn't care (more or less).  It's a smart idea from Levi, and proof that he understands his audience (and his show).

But if a show that was on the air for 5 seasons (91 episodes) would be difficult to turn into a traditionally distributed movie, then what about a show that aired 64 episodes aka Veronica Mars?  That's an awful lot of back story.  That's an awful lot of characters.

Here's the beauty of Veronica Mars, though: it can be distilled down to a very simple, pure essence, to the point that only one character actually matters (Veronica, of course) for a movie, and only two characters matter when it comes to making that movie feel like the television show.

That other character is Keith Mars, Veronica's father.

If you think that the most important relationship on Veronica Mars was the one between her and Logan, then you weren't paying attention.

Fans are obviously going to want to see characters from the show, but from a story standpoint -- and as a matter of theme -- only Veronica and Keith are truly necessary.  While Keith might not have been in the season 4 pitch video, I have no doubt that he would have been on the retooled show had it been picked up.  But that's a perfect example that the show can work without the expanding cast, or at least the one we saw for three years.

The show is about Veronica and how she's rebuilt her life after everything that's covered in the pilot.  She stuck by her father even when he was ostracized by the community, so that bond is foremost in any version of the show.  She lost all of her friends, so any new friends she makes are nearly as important.  The pilot isn't about Veronica falling for a boy, it's about her meeting Wallace.  Her relationships with Wallace and Mac are ultimately more important than anything she has with Logan, Duncan, Piz, or even Leo, because they're the relationships that last -- just like the one with her father.

Lamb is dead. Sorry, Piz and Parker, you're probably out of luckIt's actually kind of funny that Logan and Dick are in the Kickstarter video given that the two of them aren't really at the core of what the show is about.  They do bring most of the flavor, though.

Of course pushing the show forward in time to the 10 year high school reunion will allow them to bring back some characters.  It's interesting to note that the show will actually take place in the future -- 2016, to be exact.  Probably not enough to get us flying cars, but still something to consider.

So, yes, I think the Veronica Mars movie has every chance of not only being good, but also appealing to a wide audience, as long as it sticks to its core and doesn't pander to its fans.  Fingers crossed.

Rewatching Chuck (and fixing 2 big flaws)

Yes, it's another post about Chuck.  I realize that will send the vast majority of you hitting the back button.

I honestly don't even know what triggered my desire to rewatch the show from the start.  Maybe it was just the fact that it's been a little over a year since the show went off the air.  Funny enough, I started rewatching it long before the Veronica Mars movie news hit, so it wasn't even the glimmer of hope of a Chuck movie that caused this.

I've gone on (at length) about the problems the show ran into the longer it was on the air.  A lot of that can be attributed to the fact that it was constantly on the verge of cancellation; it was very clear that long term planning started falling apart after season two.

There were two major plot points over the course of the last three seasons that have always rubbed me the wrong way.  The first was the Shaw storyline from season 3, made even more unfortunate by the fact that it made up the bulk of the season, bringing down a decent number good episodes.

The frustrating thing about the Shaw storyline is that there was a really, really simple way of making it work: Shaw should have known it was Sarah that his killed his wife from the very start.  In other words, Shaw is a Ring operative when he joins the team, but the viewers wouldn't know that.  Suddenly his every move has motivation.

Part of the problem that so many people had with the third season was the division between Chuck and Sarah.  The fact that they were apart because Chuck chose being a spy over being with her was understandable, but they took it a step further and had the two of them start dating other people.  It felt completely unnatural, particularly because a) Chuck's the kind of guy who would spend months moping over Sarah and b) Sarah jumping into a relationship with Shaw felt incredibly forced.

But if Shaw was a Ring agent from the start, trying to date Sarah would have been part of his plan.  His reasoning would have been twofold: set Sarah up to suffer and keep Chuck emotional so that the Intersect wouldn't work.  They could have taken it a step further by having Hannah work for Shaw, if need be, underscoring Shaw's plan.

Shaw never tells the Ring that Chuck is the Intersect because it didn't matter to him.  He had no interest in hurting Chuck's family -- or even Chuck, initially -- and at that point in the show, Shaw still had a strange sense of honor.  He wanted revenge on Sarah and he wanted to take down the CIA for ordering the murder of his wife.

Chuck undergoes his red test during season 3, and Sarah spends a lot of time thinking about hers.  Say, for example, Sarah mentions how she'll never forget the distinctive necklace the woman she killed wore.  Chuck eventually becomes suspicious of Shaw (which everyone will assume is just jealousy), and towards the end of the arc discovers the necklace with Shaw's personal effects -- like the wedding ring he still holds on to.  Since Chuck knows that Shaw's wife was killed while deep under cover in the Ring, he pieces it all together and we get a big time reveal.

No forced relationships to keep Chuck and Sarah apart.  No "Sarah's real name is Sam" (not that my idea fixes that, but it was an awful storyline).  Actual, real surprise for the climax of the storyline.  A cohesive story that works organically.

That last point is important for the second plot point that drove me nuts.

At the end of season 4, we meet Decker, a villainous CIA agent who drives Chuck and the team out of the CIA.  Decker basically claims that everything that has happened to Chuck from day one has been part of a bigger story -- nothing that's happen has been a coincidence.  He even says that Chuck receiving the Intersect was no accident.

When that plot point plays out, however, it turns out that Decker simply works for Shaw, and absolutely nothing from the beginning of the show is connected in any way.  Decker is just helping Shaw escape so he can get his revenge.

It is, to put it mildly, a betrayal of trust.  The writers set it up to be the big secret of the show, something that would pull all five years together into one, cohesive storyline, but it wasn't.  It wasn't even close.  And it's over halfway through season 5.

But now reframe it with the new version of season 3.  If Shaw's ultimate goal was to destroy Sarah, what better way than to set up her then boyfriend/partner Bryce Larkin?  And if he's working for Fulcrum/Ring at that point, what better way to bring Orion out of hiding than by making sure that Orion's son gets the Intersect?

Shaw is the Ring's big gun, who was supposed to get the Intersect 2.0 at the end of season two.  But when that went south for them, Shaw had to make his move, both to bring down the CIA that ordered his wife's murder, and to get revenge on the woman who murdered her.

Presto! Everything's connected.  Even better, it's not a stretch to think that Shaw has shared intel with Quinn, the guy who was originally supposed to get the Intersect, the guy who is the final bad guy of the show, who actually does more to torture Sarah than Shaw ever does.

The kicker here is that it's not just a case of me wanting things to add up, it's a matter of giving fans what they were told they were going to get.

This is the problem with being me: these episodes have happened and the show is over.  All of this "if only" business really only serves to drive me crazy.

Blog Writing

There's a weird level of confession in blogs.

I don't think I've ever written a blog entry that didn't include some kind of comment about my life.  I like to think that a certain part of the appeal of reading this thing comes from my voice, and I realize as I'm typing that just how egotistical that sounds.  But I write about a wide variety of things, and the only thing they have in common is that I'm the one who wrote them.

It's the same way with my non-blog writing.

There's a part of me that's always wanted to be one of those brutally honest writers, although they seem to only really exist in fiction.  The idea of writing whatever I want without worrying about how it would affect others is appealing.  More importantly, the idea of writing whatever I want without worrying about how it would affect me is appealing.

I also don't like the idea that I pull my punches when I write.

But the fact remains that I do, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I've found that attempts at being brutally honest when you write involve placing emphasis on the former and not the latter.  Once you decide that you have a free pass to say what you want, you suddenly start framing things in the most shocking and inappropriate manner.  Looking through some of the older things I've written, this was definitely the case.

With fiction, however, you can try to hide a lot of that.  I think people who really know you will be able to see through any disguise, but at least the option is there.

Blogs, in general, are different.

They're weird creatures.  I would say 90% of them are confessional, virtual diaries that are censored for public consumption.  They're not fiction, but they're not truthful non-fiction, either.  They're half-truths and snippets of ideas.  It's well polished, written vomit.  Mull that one over.

That actually leads perfectly to the bigger issue: blogs are immediate, which means they're also hastily written.  I just said that blogs are well polished, written vomit, and if I had more time to think about it, I don't know that that's a phrase I'd stick with.  But I don't have more time.  This blog is going to be published tomorrow.  Even blogs I published a few weeks in advance don't get rewrites so much as polishes, and those are generally of the typo variety (and as many of you have probably noticed, I even miss those).

How much honesty is there in a blog?  I would argue that it's 100% honest, but that there are things I won't talk about, even if I want to.

So blog writing is confessional, but not to the extent of a diary, and it's created for public consumption, but not deliberated over to make sure that it's, well, any good.  This then begs the question as to whether or not writing a blog is actually a good way to get people interested in your writing.

I have no idea.  I like to think that the bits and pieces I put on this blog are enticing in some way, but I've yet to hear from anyone who has bought a copy of anything I've written because of reading this thing.  Then again, the free stories that I've posted on this blog have gotten a steady stream of downloads.  People generally take anything if it's free, though.

And if there is a greater example than this entry of how blogging can, more often than not, end up a rambling mess, I would be shocked.

The Best Justice League Team

Unlike the Avengers or the X-Men, the Justice League has a fairly iconic core team.  That's not to say that the original five X-Men aren't iconic, but that book didn't take off until most of those characters were replaced.  The Hulk left the Avengers early on, just as Captain America joined early on, and these days Marvel seems determine to rewrite history so that the Black Widow and Hawkeye were founding members.  No, the Justice League's core seven is consistent in a way that the iconic characters on those other teams aren't.

Funny enough, I started reading Justice League books during the JLI days, so I had no real connection to the Big Seven.  Part of that probably stemmed from the fact that DC was constantly trying to figure out just which seven people actually formed the team.  Why the quibbling between Black Canary and Wonder Woman, I'm still not sure.  I believe at one point it was even a Big Five, with Black Canary replacing Wonder Woman and Superman and Batman left completely off until later.

I loved the hell out of the Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire/Austen days, although I actually remember preferring Justice League Europe when it launched.  I think it was because there was more action.

Sadly, I don't think any of those teams cuts it as the best Justice League team.  They either consisted of too many obscure characters or bordered on Bendis-levels of sitting around doing nothing.  Sure, I love the second tier of Justice League characters as much as the next guy, but this is the premiere super team in the DCU.  It should be made up of premiere characters.  It was no accident that the Avengers became a hot commodity when Marvel's big guns joined the team.

The current version of the Justice League has been tweaked a bit and I'll be honest, I think it's awesome.  The Martian Manhunter is easily the least recognizable of the Big Seven.  He's an intriguing character, but he's never risen to iconic status.  Replacing him with Cyborg was a smart move on many levels.

I'm sure most people point to the addition of Cyborg as tokenism, but I would point out that Cyborg has played a prominent role in the DCU's forays into other mediums for a long time.  He was a part of the Super Powers Team back in 1985.  He was a member of the extremely popular Teen Titans cartoon starting in 2003.  He even got a live action part in Smallville.  He has far more of a mainstream presence than the Martian Manhunter, that's for sure.

There's also the fact that Vic Stone is still young.  Putting an 18 year old on the team gives us a new perspective on this modern pantheon of gods.  It's an angle that the original Justice League team didn't have.

So, yes, I like the new version of the team.  But is it the best?

There's only one other version of the team that would hold up and it is, of course, another version of the Big Seven: the JLA.

Years after the "Bwa-ha-ha" version of the Justice League had gone by the wayside, the team had languished in mediocrity.  There was really only one way of revitalizing it: bring back the big guns.  It was the perfect time, after all, as Warren Ellis had made wide screen superhero comics all the rage over in the Authority.

But this team has the Martian Manhunter, not Cyborg, so I must prefer the new version, yes?  Well, no.  The creative teams are a split decision (I prefer Morrison over Johns, but Lee easily trumps Porter), but if there's one reason to prefer the current team, there are two to prefer the JLA: Wally West and Kyle Rayner.

The additions of Wally West as the Flash and Kyle Rayner as the Green Lantern on the Justice League absolutely made the book.  Suddenly, you have these five, iconic characters working with two guys who were trying to live up to the guys who came before them.  The dynamic was perfect.  Wonder Woman refers to them as "the boys," as if they are the children to the rest of the team, but she doesn't mean it in a bad way.  They're the next generation, and I think the older generation are happy to have them.

The relationship between the two of them was also great.  Wally was the older brother who'd been sitting at the grown-ups' table for a while now and he wanted to make sure that Kyle knew it.  Kyle was the younger brother who couldn't believe he was "playing with the Beatles," and doubted himself whenever he was paired with anyone other than Wally.  They bickered and fought, usually during battles, and it was always entertaining.

In fact, the Kyle and Wally dynamic actually played upon a great aspect of J'onn: his straight man persona.  That was played up a lot during the "Bwa-ha-ha" days, but it actually worked better for me this time around, because it wasn't quite as goofy.

So, yeah, in the end, my Justice League of choice was the one that returned in 1997.  It's probably not surprising that, just like my favorite X-Men and Avengers teams, there's little chance that we'll ever see this one again.