SPLICE TODAY: Characters vs. Trademarks

Entertainment companies want to reach out to an increasingly diverse and historically underserved audience. But in the age of remakes, sequels, and tentpoles, that rarely results in new characters. Instead it manifests in the laziest and most unsatisfying way possible: diversifying existing trademarks. My latest at Splice Today.

Culture Shock 04.02.15: 'iZombie' brings life to the undead

Rose McIver as Liv Moore in "iZombie." (Photo courtesy The CW.)

I believe it was the late philosopher of teenage angst Jason Dean, as played by Christian Slater in the 1988 movie "Heathers," who asked, "Now that you're dead, what are you gonna do with your life?"

Ah, that is the question — or at least it is for Liv Moore, who is not feeling quite herself these days.

Liv (Rose McIver, late of "Once Upon a Time" and "Masters of Sex") puts the lower-case "i" in The CW's latest comic-to-screen adaptation, "iZombie." The show is loosely based on writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred's 28-issue series published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint.

On paper, Liv seems to have it all. She has a loving and not-too-embarrassing family, a handsome and caring fiancé, and a promising career as a doctor in her future. Until, that is, against all her usual instincts, Liv accepts an invitation to a party, held at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe it's the right place at the right time, if a zombie outbreak is your idea of a happening scene.

So, Liv Moore — the name is a pun; get it? — wakes up the next morning dead, or rather undead, and with an occasional craving for brains with hot sauce, but otherwise just a little worse for wear.

Liv's new undead look — unruly white hair and a deathly pallor — even works for her. Put her in a hoodie, and she totally rocks shoegazer chic, which I read is making a comeback. It's a style that'll probably be all the rage among cosplayers on this year's sci-fi convention circuit.

Mind you, being a zombie entails some serious lifestyle changes. Liv abandons her hospital internship and gets a job as a medical examiner's assistant. Not counting state legislatures, morgues have the best stash of fresh brains just going to waste. Also, Liv dumps her boyfriend (Robert Buckley's equally punny Major Lilywhite) so as to avoid accidentally zombifying him.

With a regular diet of microwaved brains keeping her from going "full-on zombie" and frequent applications of bronzer, Liv passes for alive — emo, but alive. The only living person in on Liv's secret so far is Ravi the M.E. (Rahul Kohli), who thinks he might be able to cure her, but in the meantime, her condition makes for fascinating study.

Speaking of her condition, when Liv eats a person's brain, she also absorbs fragments of the person's memories and personality traits. Say Liv eats the brain of a kleptomaniac, she might find herself unconsciously stealing things. Say also the kelpto was murdered. Liv might have some insights into who done it.

In the comic book, Liv (named Gwen instead) works as a gravedigger so as to satisfy her hunger for gray matter. The TV's show's change of setting allows "iZombie" to double as a police procedural.

Enter newbie police detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), who could use a little assist making his way past the department's old boys club. A zombie assistant M.E. could help with that, only better not let on she's a zombie. Just tell Clive she's psychic instead. Cops really go for that "psychic detective" stuff, just like USA's "Psych."

There you have it. The perfect setup for a story about a woman who comes to find out only after she's dead that she rushed through life so fast she never stopped to smell the roses. So she uses her second chance to have a life worth living. If it seems a bit trite, it is, but Liv and her supporting cast are endearing enough to make it work. McIver's Liv is a pleasant change from the tedious slow-walkers over on AMC's "The Walking Dead" (and I'm not talking about that show's zombies). She's adorably morbid, and her banter with Ravi makes the show.

The recurring baddie, David Anders' dealer-turned-zombie Blaine, is also a blast, with his fatalistic plan to make the most of his situation by turning more people into zombies and then acting as their hook-up for prime-cut brains. The first lobe is free, but then you've got to pay.

It's Blaine who, briefly speaking as the voice of the show's producers, wonders aloud if zombies are past their sell-by date. I wonder the same, but if shows like "iZombie" can think up new twists, there may be some life in this genre yet.

Culture Shock 11.27.14: 'The Flash' hits the ground running

This is the fall TV season when the superheroes took over.

Superheroes already rule the box office, but now they're making a play for your television. Four of the five broadcast networks already air at least one series based on a comic book. The fifth, CBS, has one in development based on Superman's cousin, Supergirl.

Fox's Batman prequel "Gotham" and NBC's "Constantine" join The CW's "Arrow" and ABC's "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD" on the increasingly crowded airwaves, with ABC's "Agent Carter" and The CW's "iZombie" yet to come.

But the breakaway star of this year's pack is The CW's "The Flash." The series based on DC Comics' "fastest man alive" hit the ground running and quickly earned a full-season pickup after scoring the also-ran network's best ratings ever. (Sorry, folks, but there will be more "running" jokes.)

The most surprising thing about "The Flash," though, is how good it is. Coming up on its mid-season break, "The Flash" easily outdistances most of its competition, with the exception of "Agents of SHIELD," which, now in its second season, has upped its game to the point of becoming one of the best things on TV, regardless of genre.

What sets "The Flash" apart, not only from other DC Comics-inspired TV shows but also from DC's movies, is it's actually fun. It feels a lot more like a Marvel/Disney production than it does a typical, ponderous DC/Warner Bros. production.

A lot of that comes down to star Grant Gustin. His dorky-but-likable Barry Allen is closer to Spider-Man's alter ego Peter Parker than he is to the square-jawed stiff Barry Allen who first appeared in "Showcase" No. 4 back in 1956.

Unlike "Gotham," which has struggled to settle on a tone, or "Arrow," which after three seasons still can't bring itself to call its main character Green Arrow, "The Flash" never takes itself too seriously and eagerly embraces its comic book origins.

Sure there's a lot of science jargon and hand-waving exposition, but "The Flash" doesn't back away from being about a guy who became super-fast after he was struck by lightning and doused with chemicals during a particle accelerator malfunction. I mean, how else is a guy supposed to get super powers? Space aliens don't hand magic rings to just anyone, you know.

You get the feeling watching "The Flash" that this is a show that just might have the Flash face off against a talking, super-intelligent, telepathic gorilla. Then the show rewards you by teasing just that.

Am I the only one who nearly fell out of his chair when the show gave us a glimpse of a caged gorilla named Grodd just a few episodes back?

Like Marvel's movies, "The Flash," itself a spin-off of "Arrow," is seeding a larger superhero universe. Casual viewers won't get all the references, but for longtime readers of DC Comics, every episode of "The Flash" brings a new Easter egg.

The show has so far slipped in the alter ego (one of them, anyway) of the superhero Firestorm, and it built an entire story around two Captain Atom antagonists, Plastique and Gen. Wade Eiling. The same story even name-dropped one of Captain Atom's civilian identities, Cameron Scott.

All these nods to other superheroes, as well as to decades of comic book stories, come across a lot more naturally than they do in "Gotham," with its winking references to future Batman villains. (OK, we get it already. Edward Nygma is going to become the Riddler one day. Did you really have to give him a coffee mug with a question mark on it?)

Yet one thing all these superhero shows have in common is standout supporting players. "The Flash" has two of the best: ex-"Law & Order" star Jesse L. Martin as Barry's childhood guardian and Tom Cavanagh as the mysterious Dr. Wells.

If it can keep up the pace, "The Flash" looks to be in for a long and entertaining run.

Culture Shock 11.06.14: Book reveals Wonder Woman's secrets

The past year has seen a surprising surge in Wonder Woman scholarship, with about a half dozen books, at least, delving into one or another aspect of the character's rich history. And with Wonder Woman's 75th anniversary still two years away, more are in the offing.

The highest profile entry so far is Jill Lepore's "The Secret History of Wonder Woman" (Knopf, $29.95). Lepore, a Harvard history professor and New Yorker staff writer, offers what is the most detailed and compelling look to date at Wonder Woman's fascinating and controversial creator, William Moulton Marston, and the women who shaped his life, from his childhood until his death in 1947.

The basics are already common knowledge to anyone with an interest in Wonder Woman and access to Google. Marston, who wrote his Wonder Woman stories under the name Charles Moulton, was a Harvard-educated psychologist and author credited with helping develop the lie detector. In 1941, he turned to comic books as a way of reaching young readers, especially girls, with his vision of a strong, independent woman. And so Wonder Woman was born, appearing first in "All-Star Comics" No. 8 and immediately graduating to the main feature in "Sensation Comics" No.1.

Marston was also a practicing polyamorist with an interest in bondage and discipline. He lived with both his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and assistant, Olive Byrne. He had children by both, and both were instrumental in Wonder Woman's origin. His Wonder Woman stories are filled with episodes of bondage and spankings. Wonder Woman courted controversy from the outset, but especially after Marston's death, when her adventures became Exhibit A in Fredric Wertham's brief against comics.

Lepore takes us beyond the Wikipedia summary of Marston by delving into his private letters and journals, which previously had been seen only by members of his family. The Marston that emerges is more con man than scholar, a shameless self-promoter never above exaggerating his accomplishments in a usually futile effort to get ahead. His lie detector experiments were more pseudoscience than science, and until he created Wonder Woman, his career trajectory was one of downward mobility. Each university post was less prestigious and secure than the last.

Jill Lepore
Photo by Dari Michele

His inability to advance in academia is what led him to popular entertainment as an outlet for his radical ideas, first in the movies and later in comics, aided by the opening provided by Byrne's brother, Jack Byrne, an editor for the pulp magazine publisher Fiction House, which published comics starring one of the most popular pre-Wonder Woman heroines, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

For all his failings as a scientist, Marston was a successful and manipulative showman, with a remarkable capacity to lure the media to his dog and pony demonstrations. He brought hucksterism to comics long before Stan Lee created his carnival barker persona to promote Marvel Comics.

The deceit that permeated Marston's professional life extended to his family life. The polyamorous relationship at the heart of the family would have scandalized Depression era society, and it appears to have included a fourth member, Marjorie Huntley, whom the Marstons met before they met Byrne.  Secrecy was inevitable, but even the children, at Byrne's insistence, were kept in the dark.

Lepore also places Wonder Woman within the context of competing strains of feminism, finding in her the influence of both 19th century female supremacists and birth control activist Margaret Sanger, who founded what would become Planned Parenthood. Sanger was also Byrne's aunt.

Yet the Amazon heroine herself appears in Lepore's narrative mostly to show how Marston's ideas and home life informed his stories. Lepore's account falls short when she gets to the comics industry. She downplays other female comic characters, such as Sheena, and misses obvious connections. For instance, during a brief stint advising Universal Studios, Marston consulted on "The Man Who Laughs." That film's title character would directly inspire the Joker, but Lepore passes over the opportunity to even mention Marston's connection, however minor, to Batman's arch foe.

That aside, Lepore gives both fans and scholars a lot to digest. This is the start of a reexamination of Wonder Woman and her creator, not the last word.

Culture Shock 10.16.14: Cosplay isn't a sign of stagnation

Thinkstock photo

I've never been one for cosplay. Putting together a good costume takes a lot of time and money, to say nothing of sewing skills I'm sadly lacking, as my high school home economics teacher would attest.

The most dressed up I ever get for comic book or sci-fi conventions is a T-shirt emblazoned with some obscure pop-culture reference. But I've always envied people who have the time, patience and know-how to pull off a really great costume. Little did I suspect they were an indicator of economic stagnation and poor job prospects. Who'd a thunk it? So, imagine my surprise when I read an article at The Week headlined "Why the rise of cosplay is a bad sign for the U.S. economy."

The author, James Pethokoukis, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, makes a bold and, it seems to me, wrongheaded claim. It goes like this: More and more Americans, especially millennials, are into cosplay, short for "costume play." And this is because dressing up as fantasy characters is an escape from dead-end jobs and economic malaise.

But maybe I should let Pethokoukis speak for himself: "When you're disillusioned with the reality of your early adult life, dressing up like Doctor Who starts looking better and better."

Pethokoukis argues by way of analogy, noting that Japan has lots of young cosplayers, lots of underemployed young people and an economy that's been no better than anemic for the past 20 years. This, I gather, adds up to something, but I have no idea what.

Despite the nagging feeling there must be something more to what Pethokoukis is saying, if there is I can't find it. Taken as is, Pethokoukis' argument is so wrong I barely know where to begin, but I'll start with dollars and cents.

Cosplaying isn't for the poor of spirit or bank account. It costs a lot of money to make a good costume. Some cosplayers spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on their wardrobes. Some wear multiple costumes during the course of a weekend convention. Some even call upon the services of professional makeup artists. And none of that accounts for travel and hotel costs. Attending a sci-fi or comic convention isn't cheap, whether you're in costume or not.

Pethokoukis knows this and even refers to the "big bucks" cosplayers invest in their costumes.

Now maybe he assumes they all live with and sponge off their parents to supplement whatever money they make from their menial jobs. Regardless, it takes a wealthy society to be able to afford such pastimes. Cosplay isn't a sign of economic trouble, but a reminder of how rich we are, even after the Great Recession. But the problems with his argument don't end there.

It's hard to calculate how many cosplayers there are in the U.S., but we can at least get an idea of attendance at the conventions cosplayers frequent. Attendance at one of the largest, San Diego's Comic-Con International, has been growing for years, since well before the Great Recession. The fastest growth was from 2001 to 2005, when attendance doubled and reached 100,000 for the first time. Since the recession, attendance has hovered between 125,000 and just over 130,000.

That doesn't look like a post-recession flight from reality to me. It looks more like a trend line flatting out. But enough foreplay. Time to get to the crux of Pethokoukis' article, such as it is.

Though unstated, Pethokoukis makes a common but unwarranted assumption: that there is something special about cosplay. But the fact is, people escape mundane reality in lots of ways, and dressing up like fantasy characters is just one of them, albeit the one that's most easily ridiculed.

What if we applied the same illogic to jock pastimes that Pethokoukis applies to geek pastimes? Maybe we should be looking at the increasing popularity of fantasy football and baseball? Maybe the real indicators of a lousy economy are guys who turn their dens into shrines to their favorite college or pro football teams? Yes, these are expensive hobbies, too, but why let that stop us?

If Pethokoukis' argument describes reality, then cosplaying millennials aren't the only ones trying to escape it. Fortunately, they aren't the ones I think have taken a flight from reality.

Culture Shock 07.31.14: Wonder Woman plays hard to get

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in "Batman V. Superman:
Dawn of Justice."

For some inexplicable reason, Wonder Woman is a hard sell.

A movie that features a talking raccoon and Vin Diesel portraying a tree? Piece of cake. It's called "Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy," and it opens Friday at a theater near you. But a movie starring an iconic character known the world over? Yeah, I don't know about that. That's a tough nut to crack.

Superman has his own movies. Batman has his own movies. Even Iron Man, who was second-tier at best until Marvel Entertainment took a gamble on Robert Downey Jr., has his own movies.

But Wonder Woman? Too risky. So, Warner Bros. is giving Wonder Woman her big-screen debut as a supporting character in "Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice," currently scheduled for release May 6, 2016, depending on who blinks first, WB or Disney. (Disney has staked out the same date for Marvel's third "Captain America" installment. If I were Warner, I'd blink.)

Gal Gadot (of the "Fast & Furious" franchise) won the role, and the first image of Gadot in her Wonder Woman getup debuted this past weekend at Comic-Con in San Diego.

With all the color leached from her costume and a sword in her hand, this is a Wonder Woman who looks more like Xena, Warrior Princess than she does Wonder Woman. Too bad she arrives 15 years too late for Lucy Lawless to play the part.

Is it really so difficult to give us a Wonder Woman who looks and behaves like Wonder Woman? Does she have to look like she just stumbled in from the set of "300"? Given "300" director Zack Snyder is also directing "Batman V. Superman," that's probably a yes. But bringing Wonder Woman to life is something that has baffled Warner Bros. executives for years. They managed to drop the ball even when they had a Joss Whedon script.

The all-around cluelessness when it comes to Wonder Woman extends all the way down WB's corporate pyramid to DC Comics. Apart from William Moulton Marston (her creator) and George Perez (who revamped her in the 1980s), no one seems to have an inkling how to handle Wonder Woman. Recent portrayals in print depict her as a fierce Amazon warrior, which is clearly the direction Snyder's version is headed, too.

This Wonder Woman is more soldier than superhero. Unlike Superman and Batman, she has no rule against killing. It's all far removed from the Wonder Woman most of us grew up with.

If any character should have a moral code prohibiting the taking of human life, it's Wonder Woman. It makes more sense for her than it does even for Superman and Batman.

Although raised among Amazons, Wonder Woman's mission to "Man's World" — her whole reason for being Wonder Woman — is to embody a message of peace. That's explicit from her earliest stories in the 1940s on through most of the '80s. It's one reason why, through most of her comic book adventures, the only "weapon" Wonder Woman carries is her golden Lasso of Truth, which isn't a weapon at all.

I don't think anyone expects Wonder Woman to go back to her roots entirely. And no one — almost no one, anyway — suggests Wonder Woman go back to Marston's risque obsessions with spankings and female supremacy. It's a much simpler request: that Wonder Woman go back to being an optimistic, inspirational figure.

Wonder Woman left her home on Paradise Island, giving up her Amazon sisters and her immortality, to be an example of hope and peace in a war-torn world.

That was relevant during World War II, and it remains relevant today.

But if DC Comics can't figure Wonder Woman out, and if Warner Bros. can't figure her out, maybe it's just as well she isn't starring in a movie of her own. Do audiences more familiar with the heroic icon than the blood-soaked warrior want Warner's dark Wonder Woman? A Wonder Woman movie like that might just flop. (Or not. Who can figure out audiences, anyway?) And Wonder Woman would get the blame, even though the character onscreen wasn't really Wonder Woman.

And the naysayers would say, "See? I told you Wonder Woman was a hard sell."

Culture Shock 02.20.14: How fan fiction took over entertainment

At this moment, someone is probably writing "Sherlock"
fan fiction, which makes it fan fiction about fan fiction.

As production gears up for the next "Star Wars" film, the first under the Disney banner, experts are combing the vast expanse of "Star Wars" novels, comic books, video games and cartoons. They're deciding what to keep and what to discard.

What survives will be the official "Star Wars" canon — official in the sense it has Disney's OK. The remainder will be out of continuity and taking on, for practical purposes, the same unofficial status as the fan-written stories on the Internet.

Yet the new "Star Wars" trilogy will be fan fiction, too, in the dictionary sense. Disney has handed Lucasfilm's centerpiece to J.J. Abrams, a fan of "Star Wars" since childhood. Many of us Abrams' age have imagined the "Star Wars" sequels we'd like to see. He gets to make his.

It's a fine line between fiction and fan fiction. It's so fine that major entertainment companies have turned an amateur's hobby into a business model. And almost no one lining up for movie tickets or queuing up Netflix gives it a second thought.

Fan fiction has a poor reputation, and anyone who has read much of it knows why. When he was at the website Topless Robot, io9.com's Rob Bricken had a feature called Fan Fiction Friday. It was a weekly mocking of the worst of the worst. He took the column with him to io9, but it didn't last long there. Some things are too awful even for a Gawker Media-owned site.

But amateur-produced fan fiction is just the start. Look at the term "fan fiction" and what it literally means: fiction written by fans. That describes much of our entertainment.

Sherlock Holmes is the perfect example. Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, yet the Great Detective's adventures continue. Fans of the character have come up with their own takes, usually with the blessing of the Doyle estate, which demands only respect and a piece of the action. That has led to Nicholas Meyer's "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" (Holmes meets Sigmund Freud), films that turn Holmes into an action hero, and two television programs that reimagine Sherlock in the present day.

The entertainment giants who stride the present landscape will turn almost any intellectual property into a franchise. They prize name recognition above all else. And long-lived franchises are bound to fall into the hands of people who grew up with them.

Most comics published by Marvel and DC since the 1980s qualify as fan fiction, and that has had a stultifying effect on the art. Marvel Comics wished away Spider-Man's marriage to Mary Jane Watson because the publisher's then editor-in-chief wanted Spider-Man to remain the young, bachelor Spider-Man he grew up with.

That happens when fans call the shots: Nostalgia beats growth almost every time. Yet if the fan happens to be Alan Moore, then he might write a couple of the best Superman stories ever, which is exactly what Moore did in the 1980s.

Moore made a career of fan fiction. His "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is based on characters from Victorian novels that have fallen into the public domain. And Moore is neither the first nor last to raid Victorian literature. Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula" novels do it.

So, too, does Showtime's upcoming series "Penny Dreadful." The nice thing about public domain characters is you don't need anyone's permission to use them in your fan fiction.

That said, permission is getting easier to come by. Amazon.com has struck deals allowing writers of fanfics set in certain fictional worlds to sell their stories, with the rights-holders getting a cut. Want to write and sell your own "Vampire Diaries" stories? Now you can, if that's your thing.

There's a temptation to point to the rise of fan fiction as a sign of artistic decline or even the death of originality. But fanfic has been around thousands of years. The ancient Greeks may have invented it.

Consider a story that lumps together all your favorite heroes and sends them on a perilous voyage. You might call it fan fiction. The Greeks called it "Jason and the Argonauts."

Culture Shock 11.28.13: Lucas' 1974 'Star Wars' draft reveals what could have been

There is something a little bit different about Dark Horse Comics' latest "Star Wars" series, "The Star Wars."

Many of the names are the same, but they belong to different characters. Some of the places are familiar, but they go by different names. A few of the characters look like the ones we know and love, but as Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them."

And what is the deal with that extra "The" in front of "Star Wars," anyway?

"The Star Wars" isn't just any tale from George Lucas' sprawling space saga. It's the original, the "Star Wars" that could have been. It's Lucas' rough draft dated 1974, and despite some half-baked ideas and a lot of clunky dialogue (even by Lucas' standards), it's a fascinating glimpse at what was going through Lucas' head during the early stages of what evolved into his 1977 blockbuster.

Writer J.W. Rinzler and artist Mike Mayhew have adapted "The Star Wars" into an eight-issue miniseries, using Lucas' draft screenplay and some of the original concept designs by Ralph McQuarrie. (Those are the same designs Lucas used to sell 20th Century Fox on making what would become "Star Wars.") The first three issues are now on sale at comic book retailers and via the Dark Horse Comics app for Android and iPad.

In the '74 draft, "Star Wars" isn't yet its own thing. Lucas' influences are still too obvious, and "The Star Wars" reads like a patchwork. The debts to Akira Kurosawa's 1958 movie "The Hidden Fortress" — still apparent in "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope" and more so in "The Phantom Menace" — are glaring. The heroes' hideout is even called "the hidden fortress," making "The Star Wars" seem like almost a remake of Kurosawa's film.

The influence of Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels is also pronounced. In this draft, the Jedi are called the "Jedi-Bendu," a name that recalls Herbert's Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, who, like the Jedi, train from childhood to master superhuman abilities. The Bene Gesserit have "the voice," and the Jedi have their "mind trick."

As for the characters' costumes, with their flowing capes and headpieces, they look like they could have come from the set of an old "Flash Gordon" serial.

The most interesting thing about "The Star Wars," however, is it's as much like the prequels as it is the original trilogy. "A New Hope" and its sequels are the outgrowth of Lucas' best ideas, while the prequels sprang from the leftovers, the stuff that didn't make the cut the first time around. It's no wonder the prequels are so disappointing.

Luke Skywalker is still at the center of the action, but in the form of an older, wiser General Skywalker, who is more Obi-Wan Kenobi prototype than restless farmboy. That fits because he ends up paired with a brash, reckless young padawan named Annikin Starkiller, setting up the Obi-Wan/Anakin Skywalker pairing of the prequels.

The Death Star appears, although it isn't called that, as a launching pad for a planetary invasion rather than as a planet killer. Darth Vader is a battle-scarred warlord in a black suit, but not yet a cyborg Sith lord. The resident Sith is Prince Valorum, whose name Lucas would reuse in the prequels. And Han Solo? Well, he's a lizard-like alien who looks like he might have gone a couple of rounds with Capt. Kirk on Cestus III. (Oops. Sorry. Wrong franchise.)

At least Princess Leia is mostly her spunky self, and Lucas has the bickering between Artoo and Threepio — proof he can do good dialogue when he really tries — nailed from the start.

Because it's a mix of ideas from both the original and prequel trilogies, "The Star Wars" feels more like "Star Wars" than the prequels do. All we need now are some action figures.

Culture Shock 06.13.13: Return to 'Astro City' is long overdue

"Astro City" No. 1 (2013).

After such a long time away, the signpost is still familiar and reassuring.

"Welcome to Astro City.”

Three years is too long, but with industry upheavals and "Astro City” creator/writer Kurt Busiek's health issues finally in the rearview mirror, one of the most beloved superhero comics on the stands is back, with a new No. 1 issue — never mind this is the 60th issue overall — that picks up where the series left off and serves as a jumping-on point for new readers.

If you're new, not to worry. There's a tour guide, a fellow called the Broken Man, who looks like a blue-skinned, 1970s David Bowie and connects the dots like a deranged Fox Mulder. But the clue he may know what he's talking about is he seems aware he's a fictional character in a book, and it doesn't trouble him in the least. Not when there are other things to worry about, like the gigantic inter-dimensional doorway that has suddenly appeared, tall and proud among the futuristic skyscrapers of Astro City's gleaming skyline.

Just another day in Astro City, where superheroes are as common as pennies on a sidewalk and Earth-shaking events as frequent as government holidays.

Busiek and artist collaborator Brent Eric Anderson waste no time introducing new characters and reintroducing old friends. Making a madcap debut is American Chibi, whose appearance and perky personality appear to have sprung from a Japanese cartoon. And returning is the Samaritan, Busiek's version of Superman written properly.

But where Busiek is always best, where he works real magic and metaphorical heroics, is with the ordinary, average people who just happen to live in a world of the extraordinary.

One of the greatest superhero tales ever told is Busiek's "Astro City” story "The Nearness of You” (collected in the "Astro City: Confession” trade paperback), which focuses on an ordinary man haunted by dreams of a woman he never met. An ordinary woman. Not too beautiful. Not even his type, really. But the dreams leave him with an ache, a sense of something missing. It turns out they are memories of a wife he had in another timeline – a timeline rewritten during one of those reality-rebooting events superheroes deal with every few years.

"The Nearness of You” is not only a beautiful story with a perfect ending, which I won't spoil, and it's not only a look at the "collateral damage” superheroes cause, it's a gentle critique of the comics industry, which has fallen into an endless cycle of huge events, multi-book crossovers, and reboots that lead writers to retell the same old stories again and again.

DC Comics is more guilty of this than Marvel, and it shows. How many times has Superman's origin story been retold, with a few minor alterations here and there?

Published under DC's semi-autonomous Vertigo banner, "Astro City” is mercifully free of DC's regular continuity-rewriting antics. Also, despite his use of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman analogues in the guise of the Samaritan, Winged Victory and the Confessor, Busiek's writing has always seemed more Marvel than DC.

So it is with the new "Astro City,” which kicks off with a story that puts Busiek's spin on a typical 1960s Stan Lee/Jack Kirby tale for Marvel, complete with a character who could have been designed by "King” Kirby himself. Busiek's "spin,” naturally, is to link this all-powerful, cosmic being's story to that of an ordinary man on the street. Humanity and the problems and hopes of everyday people, even in the face of literally larger-than-life events, are what interest Busiek.

And they are why "Astro City” remains a cut above all those other superhero comics.

"Astro City” No. 1 is currently available in comic book specialty shops and on the ComiXology app for Android and iPad.

Culture Shock 02.14.13: Anti-comics crusader seduced himself

Fredric Wertham is shocked by what he sees.

Since his death in 1981, Fredric Wertham's reputation has taken a significant hit.

In the 1950s, Wertham, a psychiatrist, was a popular author and public figure, quoted in the media and giving testimony before Congress. His 1954 book, "Seduction of the Innocent," was the intellectual ammunition in the moral panic of the day — the crusade against juvenile delinquency. And Wertham placed the blame squarely on comic books.

Today his reputation is mostly that of a ridiculous crank, a puritanical moralist who tried to blame Batman and Robin for male homosexuality, Wonder Woman for lesbianism (and bondage and S&M), and crime and horror comics for every form of juvenile misbehavior imaginable.

As it happens, neither view of Wertham is strictly true. The truth, it seems, is far simpler.

Fredric Wertham was a fraud.

Carol Tilley, a librarian and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, went through Wertham's papers, which he left to the Library of Congress. In the papers devoted to "Seduction of the Innocent," she found evidence of a very different seduction, evidence she details in an article published in Information and Culture: A Journal of History.

"Lots of people have suspected for years that Wertham fudged his so-called clinical evidence in arguing against comics, but there's been no proof," Tilley said in a university press release this week. "My research is the first definitive indication that he misrepresented and altered children's own words about comics."

"Fudged" is a charitable word. Tilley found Wertham exaggerated claims, omitted critical information and altered his subjects' statements. In one case, that of a 13-year-old boy who sexually abused another boy, Wertham overstates the 13-year-old's interest in Batman and, far worse, leaves out that the 13-year-old was himself sexually abused by another boy. One might think history of sexual abuse would be more relevant than history of reading Detective Comics. Wertham thought otherwise.

The charitable reading of that is Wertham was himself seduced, possibly by the minor celebrity he attained as an anti-comics crusader, but most likely by his grand theory that one could explain juvenile delinquency just by pointing an accusing finger at that crudest and most commercial of pop art forms of the day, the lowly comic book. Nothing seduces an Ivory Tower-dweller quite like a grand theory.

Before Wertham, the moral panic he helped foment and the comics industry's craven self-censorship under the Comics Code Authority, comics were a free for all. Unlike broadcasters, comics publishers weren't regulated by the FCC, and unlike the movie studios they weren't beholden to the Hays Office. After Wertham, the vice tightened and sales plummeted. EC Comics, upstart publisher of still-influential horror titles like Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt, got out of comics entirely. The Comics Code, crafted by its more-established rivals, seemed written to put EC out of business.

Wertham lied. EC died.

Science is supposed to be objective. Unfortunately, science is full of scientists, who are merely human and subject to bias, preconception, hubris and, occasionally, even corruption. Another kind of seduction is the temptation to bend facts, omit facts and, yes, "fudge" facts in the service of a supposedly noble cause. And what could be more noble than saving children?

So one moral panic follows another, some promoted by left-leaning intellectuals like Wertham, some by social conservatives, and some by oddball alliances of the two. The targets change. One day it's comics, the next TV, the next rock music, the next Dungeons & Dragons, the next violent movies and now video games. The "science," however, is always suspect.

Wertham's seduction should prompt us to think twice when faced with his successors.

Culture Shock: 01.24.13: 'Dredd' lays down the letter of the law

In the near future, Mega-City One stretches across the Eastern Seaboard. Within its concrete and steel canyons, hundreds of millions of people live, walled off from the war-ravaged wastelands to the west. Outside is desolation. Inside is a vast, crowded, chaotic city-state beset by warring gangs.

The only thing keeping law and order are the judges. Each one is judge, jury and, if the punishment fits the crime, executioner. They are the law. And the most feared judge of all is Judge Dredd.

"Dredd" is the second attempt to bring the long-running British comic-book character to the screen. The first, 1995's "Judge Dredd" starring Sylvester Stallone, set new standards for bad decisions and bad acting. The new "Dredd" (Blu-ray and DVD) is at least respectful of its source material, but it never embraces the comic's black humor and subversive critique of authority. It has less ambitious goals in mind.

Take "The Rookie" starring Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen, cross it with the first "Die Hard," set it in the future, and you pretty much have "Dredd."

After taking down a van full of gang members high on a new drug called "slo-mo," which makes time appear to move in slow motion, Dredd (Karl Urban of the rebooted "Star Trek") is assigned to give a final pass/fail field test to a trainee judge, Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby of "Juno."

Anderson is a borderline case who shouldn't even have made it to the field-test stage, but she has a quality that makes giving her a final shot worthwhile: She is a mutant with psychic abilities, the result of her having grown up near the wall separating Mega-City One from the radioactive wastes.

But because this is a movie, it's not going to be a typical training exercise.

Investigating a triple-homicide call leads to Dredd and Anderson becoming trapped in Peach Trees, a 200-story skyscraper slum ruled by Ma-Ma (Lena Headey of "Game of Thrones"), a former prostitute who has built a criminal empire, including control of Mega-City One's slo-mo trade.

With limited ammunition and no backup, Dredd and Anderson must blast their way up and out of Ma-Ma's locked-down fortress, with her army on their heels and hundreds of civilians in the crossfire.

Headey is very good in her stereotypically male role as the ruthless, disfigured villain, and Thirlby gets the movie's best set piece when she goes inside the mind of Ma-Ma's top lieutenant. But most of the credit goes to Urban, who stays true to his character by never removing his helmet, even though it means he can act only with his chin. Urban's enigmatic Dredd, keeping his thoughts and expressions to himself, is a marked improvement on Stallone's screaming buffoon.

Director Pete Travis and his team, with a relatively modest budget, deliver a convincing post-apocalyptic setting and a few first-rate action scenes. In the end, "Dredd" is a perfectly competent and enjoyable action film.

The only problem is it could have been much more, and at no extra cost.

Since its inception in 1977, the "Judge Dredd" comic, appearing in the British magazine 2000 A.D., has been filled with political and social satire. It has attracted some of the British comics industry's top talent, and it helped inspire the politically aware comic books that took America by storm in the 1980s, from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen" and Howard Chaykin's "American Flagg" to Mike Baron and Steve Rude's "Nexus" and Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns." But you'd never get that impression from the movie "Dredd," which plays the absurd, madcap universe Dredd inhabits almost totally straight.

"Judge Dredd" co-creator Carlos Ezquerra says that when he created Dredd's costume, with its hints of fascist iconography, he intended it to be futuristic, but now some police actually dress the same way.

So, maybe "Dredd" the movie doesn't bother with satire because it's beside the point?

Culture Shock 01.03.13: The making of a modern Marvel

In 2009, Disney purchased Marvel Entertainment for roughly $4 billion. In 2012, the top grossing movie in North America was Marvel's "The Avengers," which took in more than $1.5 billion worldwide. Marvel is an entertainment giant, and its characters — Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man and the rest — are modern myths, as well as valuable intellectual properties.

That's a long way from where Marvel Comics began, with a magazine publisher looking to cash in on the latest gimmick, a frustrated novelist who happened to be related to the publisher's wife and a team of eccentric freelancers, two of whom would prove indispensable.

I've been reading Marvel Comics for as long as I can recall. But Sean Howe's recent book "Marvel Comics: The Untold Story" (HarperCollins, $26.00, hardcover) lives up to its subtitle. It tells stories about the so-called House of Ideas even I didn't know.

The publisher, Martin Goodman, pinched pennies, demanded layoffs and shamelessly followed trends until the fateful day his editor-in-chief decided he had nothing to lose by trying something new. That frustrated editor/writer was Stan Lee, who at 90 years old is still the face of Marvel, making cameo appearances in most of the company's films. The freelancers, especially Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, co-created most of the Marvel characters Disney paid $4 billion to possess. Then they both fell out with Lee and the company they helped build. Kirby subsequently spent years trying to get back his original artwork from Marvel.

Ditko, a recluse who prefers to let his work speak for itself, expresses himself today mostly through increasingly didactic, philosophical comics inspired by Ayn Rand.

They are figures as large as their creations, but their story is well known. What came before and after Marvel's Camelot period of 1961 to 1970 is less well publicized, but no less dramatic.

Last year, Disney purchased the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas, bringing Star Wars and Marvel under the same corporate umbrella. But the two franchises already had history. In 1977, Marvel's sales were in free fall, Howe writes, when Lee's successor, Roy Thomas, went after the "Star Wars" license. That decision's payoff helped keep the company going until its next big hit.

That hit was "Uncanny X-Men," which came into its own under the guidance of writer Chris Claremont and writer/artist John Byrne.

Through the '70s and '80s and into the '90s, Marvel was home to many talented artists and even more volatile personalities, even if they weren't as flamboyant as Lee and his bullpen of the '60s. Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter's regime set the stage for the industry's next two, transformative decades. The "Secret Wars" miniseries he scripted ushered in mega-crossovers, sprawling tales that invaded every other comic the company published and required readers to buy them all or risk missing out on a sense-shattering conclusion that would change everything.

Never lost in Howe's tale, however, are the bit players: the writers, artists and editors who met the deadlines and kept Marvel going in good times and bad, often sacrificing their health and better pay to stay in the medium they loved. Those cast aside included Don Heck, who drew most of the early "Iron Man" comics. Older artists lost work to hotshot youngsters like Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane, who later left to start Image Comics. Company loyalty goes both ways.

From there, it's a story of corporate raiders, bankruptcy, restructuring and revival. And some of the players are still with Marvel today, as the company settles into its role as intellectual property resource for Disney, while still publishing comics in an environment where paper is giving way to digital.

The form itself, sadly, is as disposable as so many of the people who created it. But its story, as Howe tells it, is as gripping as any of Lee and Kirby's cosmic epics.

Culture Shock 02.02.12: 'Shazam!' isn't just a magic word anymore

You can call him the World's Mightiest Mortal. You can call him the Big Red Cheese — his arch-nemesis does. But don't call him Captain Marvel.

The superhero some mistakenly called Shazam is getting a new name.

Now, the Superhero Formerly Known As Captain Marvel is, officially, Shazam. That means the arguments I've had about how his name is Captain Marvel and Shazam is just the magic word he uses to become Captain Marvel have all been in vain.

But how did we get to the point where a character who was once the world's most popular superhero can't go by his original name? It starts at the beginning.

Captain Marvel first appeared in 1940 in the pages of Whiz Comics No. 2. For most of the decade, Captain Marvel's comic-book adventures were so popular they outsold Superman's and inspired a 12-part Republic movie serial, "The Adventures of Captain Marvel."

This annoyed Superman's publishers at what would eventually become DC Comics. So, they sued Captain Marvel's publisher, Fawcett, for copyright infringement, claiming Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman. Fawcett dragged out the suit until the 1950s, when comic-book sales declined and Fawcett left the business.

Afterward, Captain Marvel's main writer, Otto Binder, moved to DC to write Superman, and when he did, Superman's stories became almost as bizarre and surreal — and entertaining — as Captain Marvel's had been.

So, who was copying whom?

In the 1970s, DC took the next step by licensing Captain Marvel outright and publishing new Captain Marvel stories. But by this time, Marvel Comics has come along and created its own Captain Marvel, the trademark to the original having expired while no one was paying attention.

Over the years, Marvel Comics had published several characters named Captain Marvel. Most of them are currently dead. But a new one always shows up or a dead one becomes temporarily undead just long enough to ensure Marvel Comics keeps the Captain Marvel trademark.

It's never-ending payback for DC's having filed that stupid lawsuit way back when.

DC can publish the original Captain Marvel, and it can call him Captain Marvel. But it can't use Captain Marvel as a title or on merchandise. So, since his revival, the original Captain Marvel has appeared in comics titled "Shazam!"

A '70s Saturday-morning TV show featuring Cap was called "Shazam!" too, and eventually people began to think the character's name was Shazam because that's what the title said.

It's like how some people think the name of the creature in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is Frankenstein, even through the book's title clearly refers to the creature's creator. We call these people "illiterates."

Also, for the record: Steely Dan is a band, not one guy.

So, DC Comics is finally giving in to the popular misconception. Now DC's Captain Marvel is Shazam. But I'm not sure this is an improvement. Apart from surrendering to people who can't bother to remember the character's real name — which is rather like letting the terrorists win — Shazam is problematic, too.

Anyone who grew up in the 1960s probably thinks of "Shazam!" as Gomer Pyle's catchphrase. (He was referring to Cap's magic word, but how many people know that?) And kids nowadays think of Shazam as a smartphone app that identifies music.

Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But is the same true for a Big Red Cheese?

'Uncanny X-Men' canceled with issue No. 544

Thanks to the events of the upcoming Civil War 2 X-Men: Schism, Marvel is canceling Uncanny X-Men. Issue No. 544 is the end... at least until a bunch of new X-Men titles with new No. 1s come out.

As Comics Alliance notes, this, combined with DC's renumbering of its superhero titles, means the longest, continuously running comic published by either Marvel or DC is DC/Vertigo's Hellblazer, currently up to a heady issue No. 280.

DC 2011 = Image 1992

The previews of DC Comics' upcoming new titles posted this morning at io9.com are really hammering home an unmistakable impression:

The future of DC Comics sure looks a lot like the 1.0 version of Image Comics from way back in 1992.

This shouldn't be surprising since Image co-founder Jim Lee has been given the keys to DC's kingdom, but it's still startling how '90s retro some of these books look. And I'm not talking just about original Image/Wildstorm characters Grifter and Voodoo of WILDCats getting their own solo titles set in the mainstream nuDCU.

No, I mean Rob Liefeld is back, and he's illustrating a new Hawk & Dove series, which will allow him to showcase his primary artistic talents: drawing angry, misshapen, bulging men with huge chests and drawing anorexic, misshapen women with huge chests.

Marvel Civil War redux

Marvel Comics isn't hiding the fact that next month's big X-Men event, Schism, is the X-Men's version of Civil War. It's right there on the promotional art.

Did the X-Men feel left out last time? Is that what this is all about?

Who wants to bet money this whole thing sets up the return of Professor X and/or Jean Grey, who has to come in and set things right? Even money?

It's the same, except longer

Someone else has probably had this realization, but it just dawned on me the other day when I was pondering all of the many, many things I hate about the yearlong, universe-spanning, company-wide crossovers Marvel and DC insist in inflicting upon would-be causal comics readers like me.

Remember how during the Silver Age and Bronze Age, it was really popular to have some superheroes meet, get into a fight because of some sort of misunderstanding/mind control/etc., and then eventually resolve their differences so that they could team up against the real villain? It happened all the time. (Especially if you were the Hulk. So many misunderstandings....)

That's basically the exact same story arc you get when you combine Marvel's Civil War and Secret Invasion. The heroes choose sides, face off against each other, and later join forces to battle the real enemy, the Skrulls, who had been manipulating events behind the scenes the whole time.

Only in the old days, it took one issue (maybe two) to tell that story. Now, it takes Marvel something like three years to tell the same damn tale.

Decompressed storytelling has definitely gone too far.

The anarchist politics of 'Watchmen'

From the archives: An article I wrote in 2009 (commissioned by Young Americans for Liberty) on the politics of Alan Moore's Watchmen, the movie version of which was just arriving in theaters around that time.

Culture Shock 06.02.11: Batman, Superman get the reboot

The rebooted Justice League of America.

(Image courtesy of DC Comics.)

Superheroes have never been more popular, with four big-budget superhero movies hitting screens this year. But the comic books that gave birth to those heroes are in desperate shape.

Sales of monthly comics are taking such a beating you'd think they'd made the Hulk angry, and the only bright spot has been an increase in sales of trade paperbacks collecting those same monthly comics. The two major publishers, Marvel and DC, have waded into digital comics, but neither has really taken the plunge.

Until now.

DC Comics made two announcements Tuesday. The first is, starting Aug. 31, DC will release digital editions of its comics on the same day the print versions go on sale. In a world of iPads and Kindles, that was bound to happen, and you can bet DC's chief rival, Marvel Comics, won't be far behind in making the same move.

The second announcement, however, is more baffling. It's a sign of desperation.

DC is rebooting its entire superhero universe. No one is safe. Not Superman. Not Batman. Not Wonder Woman. All of the company's superhero comics are going back to square one, which includes each of them getting a brand new issue No. 1.

But that's just the window dressing. Inside, familiar characters will be younger, their costumes altered. (They're intent on making Wonder Woman wear pants.) DC is, if not going back to the beginning, at least turning back the clock.

Apparently, DC's powers that be — primarily Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns and Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio — have decided they've done such a lousy job of running DC Comics for the past several years that the only thing to do is blow up their superhero universe and start over.

They're half right about that. Virtually the only readable DC superhero comic of the past decade, apart from an occasional gem like Paul Cornell's "Knight and Squire" miniseries, has been Grant Morrison's "Batman," which actually did something remarkable: It changed the status quo.

But changing the status quo is unforgivable when it comes to corporate-owned superheroes.

Morrison had a similarly adventurous run on Marvel's "New X-Men" in the early aughts, which Marvel promptly undid the moment Morrison jumped to DC. (Joss Whedon's followup, "Astonishing X-Men," was in some ways better, but it was also decidedly old school.)

Now, it looks like Morrison's hard work on Batman, which has included making the new Robin a son Batman never knew he had, is about to get rebooted into oblivion. (Maybe not, but I don't see how it squares with DC's announced plans.)

But as bad as most of DC's non-Morrison books have become, is wiping the slate clean, or almost clean, the answer? I guess it is if all you're comfortable doing is rehashing the same old stories: A new retelling of Superman's origin, with some new but pointless wrinkle?

How nice. I haven't seen that before.

DC has been rebooting its heroes every few years for the past 25 years. The only difference this time is they say they really, really mean it this time. For a promise of something new, it sure seems familiar.

Marvel has its own storytelling troubles, but at least it's trying.

With Marvel, it's typically the execution that undermines otherwise OK ideas.

But DC's reboot is just an old idea dressed up to look new. But at least you can read DC's new comics on an iPad. That way you can reboot them yourself.

Culture Shock 01.27.11: Death isn't really even trying anymore

Ever since "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" proved you couldn't keep an iconic sci-fi/fantasy character down, death has pretty much been a revolving door.

So, I wasn't too upset when The Associated Press spoiled the week's big superhero news by revealing — a day before the comic book hit the shelves — which member of the Fantastic Four was fated to die this week.

Spoilers: The Human Torch has flamed out.

OK, it wasn't too big a surprise, anyway. It was his turn. By my count, every other member of the Fantastic Four has either died or been presumed dead at least once. Most recently, the Thing died only for his teammates to break into heaven and convince God himself — who looks suspiciously like Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby — to bring the Thing back to life.

Johnny Storm's hot-headed alter ego was the only FF member who hadn't yet danced with the Grim Reaper. Now he has. So it goes.

Rest assured, however, that Johnny will be back. They almost always come back, even characters who are supposedly dead for good.

An old joke among comic-book fans is that no one in comics stays dead except Captain America's WWII sidekick Bucky, Batman's second sidekick Jason Todd and Spider-Man's Uncle Ben. At least that was the joke until Bucky and Jason both returned — and the less said about how Jason returned, the better. Only poor Uncle Ben remains a stiff, just to make sure Spider-Man never forgets that with great power comes great responsibility.

Bucky's return was especially fortuitous. He came back just in time to become the new Captain America when the original, Steve Rogers, died.

And not too long after Jason Todd returned, Batman kicked the bucket, too. But everyone still hates Jason — his death two decades ago was a contract hit ordered by readers who called a 900 number — so the original Robin, Dick Grayson, took Bruce Wayne's place instead.

Not that any of that matters, because Steve Rogers and Bruce Wayne are both back from the grave, and currently there are two Captain Americas (although Steve isn't using the name or costume) and two Batmans running around. And that probably means somebody else is going to have to die soon.

This all started in 1992, when DC Comics discovered it could sell a lot of books by somehow convincing people that it was really and truly killing off its flagship character. "The Death of Superman" was a big hit for DC and generated lots of free publicity.

Superman returned a year later, but since then, more characters than I can possibly recall have died and gotten better. Here's a sample:

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), the Flash (Barry Allen), Kid Flash, Superboy, Wonder Woman, and — from just among the X-Men — Colossus, Cyclops, Psylocke and Magneto.

At least two major X-Men characters, Nightcrawler and Jean Grey, are currently dead. But Jean is the Phoenix, and it's a running joke that she keeps coming back no matter how many times she dies. It's implied right there in her codename. It's her super power. (If only she had the superhuman ability to make the third X-Men movie watchable.)

DC Comics is even in the middle of a miniseries, "Brightest Day," that is specifically about characters who have died and come back: Aquaman, the Martian Manhunter, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, etc. It's really becoming ridiculous, and there are lots of characters I'm leaving out.

It's even spilling over to television. Just a week ago, the proposed Wonder Woman TV series from producer David E. Kelley was dead, having been rejected by every network. This week, it's alive and well at NBC.

So, yeah. The Human Torch died. And that was news — for a day.