Chris Dee's Blog: Chris Dee's Cat-Tales Blog, page 14

Overheard at Gotham City Comic-Con

New York Comic-Con took place this past weekend, and it got me wondering what might happen when its counterpart occurred in the “real” Gotham City of Cat-Tales.

That awkward moment when your street clothes are mistaken for cosplay…

It’s not easy being green.

Another day, another awkward series of misunderstandings on the con floor.

Her skin is not green, it’s alabaster, damnit!

Well that’s just silly, 2 out of 17 Farnsworth inventions actually work.

Madness is the Escape Hatch

The Arkham Origins panel at NYCC had an absolutely breathtaking moment when Troy Baker, the new voice-of-the-Joker read a passage from The Killing Joke. If you’re one who’s gobsmacked that anyone other than Mark Hammil can voice the Joker, go away. You don’t belong on my wall.

The rest of you, just LISTEN. Listen to what happens when an ACTOR meets WORDS and feel the tingle. Unlike a lot of the lionized dark ones, Alan Moore is truly a f-ing wonderful writer.

NMK Inc. A History

NMK Inc. A History

Long before it was a Cat-Tale, it was a corporate entity with a myriad of crimefighting uses.  Chris Dee provides a quick review of the company and it’s many incarnations since it’s creation in Book 5: Not My Kink.

Flash the Bat-Signal, Jim Gordon is back in Cat-Tales

Cat-Tales began with this whopper in The Gotham Post

I’m often asked what I would do differently if I was starting Cat-Tales today. I tell them honestly: Not much, but the big difference is that James Gordon would be police commissioner.   Cat-Tales began when he had resigned after being shot in the ill-conceived Officer Down storyline, an event that was instrumental to getting that Runaway Snowball of WTFTM rolling that sparked A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation in the first place.

It was right for the time.  It was right for the Catwoman story being told, and it was right for the meta commentary on DC Comics that is the series’s raison d’etre.   But it’s not quite right for an ongoing Batman series.  For years, I’ve planted my flag on the principle that stories have certain elements that are not negotiable, and where Batman is concerned Jim Gordon is one of them.  That’s his chair.

He has been present in the series, as Barbara’s father and retired commissioner.  It’s been wonderful, because the decision and his status as a retiree brought a depth to his relationship with Bruce.  Still, I’ve missed him on that roof.  Four stories ago in The Gotham Rogues the first clue dropped:

The man who had served as police commissioner since Jim Gordon retired wanted Batman to know he was being vetted for a Presidential Appointment to the Department of Justice… In all probability, Gotham would have a new police commissioner by the end of the year.

From the beginning, Commissioner Muskelli was established as a political animal.  The change was easy to set in motion, and with so much drama in that tale, I trusted that the significance would be missed, or if noticed it would be quickly forgotten.  Things have developed slowly, through Wayne Rises and Inside an Enigma.  Now, at last, in the new story that begins today, Jim Gordon is back on the job.

Jim Gordon is back. When he resigned, Catwoman was an anonymous cat burglar. Now she’s Selina Kyle, living with Bruce Wayne, and running this company that’s messing with Ra’s al Ghul. There might be a learning curve.

Not a Twinkie

Man of Steel screenwriter Davis S. Goyer took advantage of the lull before a new Bat-trilogy Blu-ray (new packaging or something) to remind us all that Superman kills now.   The notion that he wouldn’t is “a rule that exists outside of the narrative.”

Let’s cross the street where they’re not quite so confused, shall we?  A couple weeks ago, a friend sent me this great trailer for Lego Marvel Superheroes.  I’m not a Marvel, I’ve never particularly clicked with their characters, but watching this just makes me feel good:

I think it’s the same reason I enjoy the Marvel movies.  It’s so unabashedly enthusiastic about being a superhero vehicle.

DR. DOOM:

Dr. Doom’s Doom-Ray of Doom

ORCHESTRAL HORNS:

BWOMG-BWOMM-BWOMMM

This clip is fearless about standing center stage and bellowing out what it is.  Superheroes in Legos, the bad guys versus the good guys.  Nobody here is running away from it.  Nobody is ashamed of it or afraid of being silly.  Nobody is pretending this is serious fucking business.

Isn’t that refreshing?  I don’t think anything with Batman that I’ve seen in a decade has made me feel as good as this 2:05 of characters I don’t give a crap about.

As I was sitting there, fingers poised over my keyboard trying to find a way to express that succinctly in order to share the video on Facebook, I found myself looking at a Twinkie.

Facebook being Facebook, I found myself looking at a Twinkie

Maybe it was the history of those old time Hostess ads in comic books, when the heroes distracted the villains with delicious cakes and fruit pies.  Maybe it’s the fact that Twinkies were out of production for a while there and their return was announced right after Man of Steel, prompting more than a few comments that if they’d only come back sooner, Zod could have been handled the old-fashioned way and all that destruction porn could have been avoided.

Whatever the chain of associations, it led to an analogy that can explain the divide in superhero comics and movies.  I find food analogies cut through so much faux intellectual B.S.  You can convince otherwise intelligent people of a lot of absolute nonsense using phrases like “a rule that exists outside of the narrative,” until you apply the principles to something they understand on such a basic level as food.  Maybe you don’t know why the Miller apologist is wrong, maybe you don’t know how to construct the counterargument, but once you get that applying those principles amounts to serving bleu cheese and chopped liver on a Triscuit for Christmas dinner, you do know that is a really bad idea.  Whether you can articulate the reason or not, you’re gagging.  You know there has to be something very, very wrong in any chain of the logic that ends in this being a tolerable plan.  You know you’re not going to serve it to your kids, no matter what argument it makes or how big its advertising budget.  It’s a part of our make-up they haven’t broken: if it makes you wretch, don’t eat it.

So, back to the Twinkie.  Is there anybody reading this who doesn’t know what they are?  Sweet yellow cake with a white, sweet cream filling that may or may not be vanilla-ish flavored.  It’s a kid’s food, most of us ate them and remember them fondly.  There were knock-offs and generics.  There are also some very prestigious restaurants that have made a gourmet version.  (Think champagne cake with a filling of blancmange infused with vanilla and cognac) and less prestigious ones serving up the traditional twink deep-fried, a substance so orgasmically sweet and rich it became an analogy for… well never mind. They’re good.

Now here’s the thing, if none of that sounds good to you, then you don’t like Twinkies.  It’s okay, none of us are judging you.  For most humans, sweet is the first set of taste buds to develop.  We go for it and it’s nature’s way of telling us: eat the berry not the bark.  But if for whatever reason you don’t like sweets, then you don’t like Twinkies.

Superheroes, like Twinkies, are certain things.  They’re fun.  There is humor and color and life in their stories.  Even when there’s angst and horror, it gets broken up with a little f-ing fun.  Burton knew it.  Schumacher absolutely knew it.  He made the worst goddamn Twinkie any of us have ever seen, but it WAS a Twinkie.

Print comics have succeeded in convincing what politicians call “the base” that Twinkies don’t have to be sweet, they don’t have to be made of cake or have cream filling, and it is just so silly and childish and stunted to imagine they do.   And, as in politics, ideas that go beyond ‘completely wrong’ into the land of 2+2 = cream cheese nonsensical can be accepted inside these little bubbles of true believers, but they run into trouble when they come out here into the real world where reality is in play.   That’s why they have those names.

Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?

The DC movies have been serving up pickled coffee beans and calling them Twinkies.  They’re not, and those of you who cannot let an un-Nolan thought (or an un-Miller thought or an un-gogglewhore thought) pass without comment are not going to argue it into being one.  You like the pickled coffee beans, we get that.  Some of us do too on occasion.   I like bitter and I like sour from time to time.  But not in a Twinkie.  Those things are not Twinkies, no matter what it says on the box or how big a name the director is, how big the advertising budget is, or how you choose to belittle those who refuse to validate your delusion.

Originally published as Not a Twinkie on Blogger

Actually Not To Be Panicking

Something quite interesting happened Friday night.  It’s a story of hope, involving DC Comics.  That’s worth returning to a topic I thought I was long finished with.  It starts with a website the mere existence of which means the core dysfunction that drove me off years ago has only gotten worse.  It’s called hasdcdonesomethingstupidtoday.com.  Seriously, I thought it was a joke too, but try the link, it’s real.

This website has a counter indicating, as the name suggests, how many days it’s been since the last act of stupidity as covered by an underlying website called The Outhouser.  DC has had a bad couple of weeks leading to multiple resets in a single day.  (And no, this has nothing to do with Ben Affleck.  Let the man be.)   This incident is only tangentially related to the dramas that caused the multiple resets; you can read about those here if you care.  It has to do with the underlying problem and, more importantly, its solution.

For me, it began with a Saturday morning email that big dramas were about to erupt.  It seems there was an article on the mother site where Gail Simone “fan favorite writer and vigilante crimefighter addresses the DC marriage controversy.”  It took a blog she wrote and then commented/extrapolated in such a way that is common on the site, but in this case it was murky where Gail’s remarks left off and the commentary began.  Clearly nothing malicious, but it seemed to Gail that a journalist ‘just made stuff up’ that she never said.  After tweeting this, she publicly asked the article’s author to message her.  His editor saw that request first and responded.  The article was taken down until it could be edited.  (That’s not a euphemism, it’s back up.)  With apologies on one side and gracious understanding on the other, the whole thing was over in about 20 minutes, drama free.

Quite honestly, without DC Comics being involved, I’d still applaud.  Check it out: two rational adults setting something civilly and amicably on the Internet.  It’s better than YouTube kittens.

So, what about that email?  That was sent to me in the period between Gail’s request for a DM from the author and the editor’s response.  It said basically “Look for a counter reset in 3… 2… 1…”

My reaction, without knowing any of these particulars, was PFFT.  I told my buddy that, while I don’t know Gail personally, I’d seen her on Twitter for over a year and a lovelier woman you simply won’t find.  She has a sense of humor and a rational perspective, and I’ve seen her laugh off plenty of trolls, bigots and creeps who simply weren’t worth engaging.  I knew she wasn’t about to turn into Linda Blair and start spewing pea soup and obscenities over a simple misconstruction.

Now, what’s important here isn’t the lack of another negative PR episode involving someone at DC Comics.  It’s that I knew there wasn’t going to be one before I clicked a link.  I knew because the way this woman conducts herself in public, as well as the material she writes, tells me that she’s not that kind of person.

Back to DC proper.  Several people have tried to position themselves as the voice of reason over the past few weeks (or maybe they’re just fence sitting) saying that DC has a PR problem, an image problem, a perception problem, etc.   The implication is that it’s not the men at the top, the decisions they make, ideas and attitudes that prompt them or the way they choose to express those ideas that’s bringing the tempest upon them; it’s the failure of the marketing and publicity departments who don’t have their backs.  It’s their job to foresee these issues before they occur and be there to give the right spin.

Technically, I suppose it’s true:  In the same way I instantly gave Gail the benefit of the doubt because she comes off like a good person, we all assume the absolute worst whenever someone from DC editorial or management speaks because we think they’re assholes.  Those last 5 words can be described as ‘an image problem.’ But to say that image problem is the problem is, well it’s rather like this:

Maybe the impression so many of us have that this company is nothing but the corporate embodiment of a petty, insecure man-child lashing out maliciously but impotently at all that confuses and frightens him isn’t quite as important as the reason we have that impression.

Originally posted as: What if they gave a PR Disaster and Nobody Came? on Blogger

 

Like I Haven’t Looked at All That

Like I haven’t looked at all that, marriages and all that-and what do you get for it? What do you get?

I’ve had my fun with DC Comics tripping over themselves all month.  They’re an entertainment company and it’s the first time in over a decade they’ve actually been entertaining.  But c’mon, do you really think if I cared what some nimrod from Team Readers-Be-Gone had to say about marriage, you wouldn’t have heard at least ONE song from Company by now?

Gallery Spotlight: Goodnight, Kitten

Goodnight, Kitten by Remidar

“Goodnight, Kitten” a sweet Bruce & Selina companion piece to “Morning, Handsome” both by Remidar in the Cat-Tales Gallery.   Selina has been living in Wayne Manor since Highland Games at the top of Book 3. There are a number of bedroom scenes since then.  Chris chose one from Go Rin No Sho to illustrate the touching intimacy of the moment captured in this beautiful illustration by Remidar.

Gallery Spotlight: Perfect Gem

Perfect Gem by Shisa Ai in the Catwoman Black & White Gallery

What if they gave a PR Disaster and Nobody Came?

What if they gave a PR Disaster and Nobody Came?

Two rational adults setting something civilly and amicably on the Internet.  It’s better than YouTube kittens.