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Brainiac On Banjo: Tiny Heroes Vs Tiny Minds

Brainiac On Banjo: Tiny Heroes Vs Tiny Minds

Posted on by Mike Gold

Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign your children have waited to see. The morning will come when the world is mine; tomorrow belongs to me. “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” written by John Kander for the play “Cabaret.”

I loathe going to movies alone. If the flick is great, I wanna talk about it. If the flick sucks, I wanna commiserate with a friend. Most movies are somewhere in between, and if I picked the right companion the after-movie discussion can be better than the viewing experience itself. In seeing Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, I was joined by my dear friend Martha Thomases, of DC and Marvel fame. We’ve enjoyed some great movies together, although some would be defined by critics as shitty.

Is a movie shitty even if you had a good time? Well, perhaps by consensus, but that should not humble your experience retroactively. Portal-to-portal, going out to the movies these days is an expensive proposition: the old phrase “coming soon to a theater near you” is obsolete because the vast majority of humanity no longer lives near a movie theater (Martha is a lucky exception). So when you add up all of your expenses, assuming you are willing to pay the going theater rate for a quarter’s worth of pop corn, seeing any movie in the theater is likely to cost the better part of a mortgage payment. Of course, those few surviving movie palaces of yesteryear are now showing live theater and kinda-live concerts, so we’ve got to shoehorn ourselves into little boxes made of ticky-tacky and endure twenty minutes of commercials before we get to the trailers.

But it’s a choice we, as the paying audience, choose to make. Not so much the movie critics. They have to see damn near everything, and I sympathize. They’ve been subjected to so many flickering images it’s a wonder they’re not all epileptics. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Tiny Heroes Vs Tiny Minds” →

So Long and Thanks for the Fish, Man #081: Tired of your Marvel Malaise

So Long and Thanks for the Fish, Man #081: Tired of your Marvel Malaise

Posted on by Marc Alan Fishman

The murmurs and mumbles of mediocrity started as early as Thor 2: The Dark World. They got louder with Black Widow. Louder still with Eternals. Then came the ire and fanboy rage over She-Hulk. And now it’s perhaps getting a bit too loud over Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. 

I’m sick of it.

In my day (shh, Mike Gold. Shh.) comic book movies were — at best — loud, kitschy affairs. For every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or ’89 Batman… we also got Howard the Duck, Superman III and IV, and Captain America. In the 90’s, Batman plummeted in quality, and was met by early CGI nightmares like Spawn, or obnoxious barely-based-on-their-source popcorn flicks like Judge Dredd or Tank Girl. And while these films were watchable… they were hardly of a caliber that one could present opposite more lucrative blockbuster sci-fi and action romps.

And then came Marvel.

It started unassumingly with Blade. Unlike so many neon-lit counterparts released prior… Blade felt like a horror action-movie. It was clearly inspired by the comic book origins and broad strokes of the character, but made smart choices in costuming, sets, and the watered-down plot. It wasn’t hokey. It was a blueprint.

1998’s Blade begat Bryan Singer’s X-Men. Similar to the vampire hunter… these were well-dressed (“what, you’d prefer yellow spandex?”) superheroes with well-thought-out effect work that made their mutant abilities feel believable. Combine this with the gravitas and star power of Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan, and slowly but surely, the zeitgeist was changing. 

Take a side-step from the mainstream, and you could see Hollywood begin to lean into the pulp and paper world. Ghost World, From Hell, Road to Perdition, and my personal favorite American Splendor showcased that comics beyond the punchy kind would also be applicable to mainstream (if a bit arty) America. But I digress.  Continue reading “So Long and Thanks for the Fish, Man #081: Tired of your Marvel Malaise” →

With Further Ado #238: Red, White, and Nostalgic

With Further Ado #238: Red, White, and Nostalgic

Posted on by Ed Catto

When Jack Kirby returned to Marvel Comics in the mid-70s, it was a big deal. Marvel Comics told me, and my friends, it was a big deal, and our local comic shop owner, Kim Draheim, told us too.

And it’s almost pop-culture heresy to write this, but at that time – we just didn’t get Kirby.

• Black Panther, with the Golden Frog and all that, was a nutty book and nothing like the Don McGregor Panther series we had so thoroughly enjoyed.

• The Eternals was kind of fun, but it seemed so set apart from the rest of the Marvel Universe. And when one hero finally showed up, the Hulk, it was a just robot. What a rip-off!

• Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy kind of turned into a punchline in our comic shop too.

• Most disappointing was Captain America. For years were riding along with Steve Englehart, exploring big ideas about patriotism and forgotten corners of the Marvel Universe. Sal Buscema’s Sharon Carter was the very best super-hero girlfriend at that time, and we grew to love her too. And the Nomad saga, despite swapping artists at the end, was the first (and still the best) of many super-hero identity fake outs.

At first, when Kirby burst back onto the Marvel scene, especially with the Madbomb issues in Captain America, we were intrigued. It made sense that Jack Kirby should get another crack at the character he co-created (with Joe Simon) all those years ago.

But oh, so quickly, we lost interest. Why did Cap all of a sudden talk like my grandfather? Who was this new female lead, revolutionary Donna Maria Puentes, anyway? Where was Sharon? And although I’ve come to really enjoy it, Kirby’s bombastic art – at that time – just wasn’t doing it for me. My friends and I weren’t mature enough to get it. “Why couldn’t he draw more like Neal Adams?”, we wondered. Continue reading “With Further Ado #238: Red, White, and Nostalgic” →

Brainiac On Banjo: Are YOU… Verified?

Brainiac On Banjo: Are YOU… Verified?

Posted on by Mike Gold

Trumpets and violins I can hear in the distance, I think they’re calling our names. Maybe now you can’t hear them, but you will. — Jimi Hendrix, Are You Experienced?

I suspect you’ve heard of Meta, but if you haven’t, it has nothing to do with DC superheroes. Less than nothing, when you think about it. “Meta” is the incredibly stupid and highly misleading name that Facebook and Instagram owner “Mort” Zuckerberg gave to his company in late 2021.

Meta is an evil corporation. They follow you wherever you go on line. When you use their stuff, they record where you are, who you are, where you go, what you like, who you like, what you buy, when you’re not home, when you are home, your credit card numbers, your phone numbers and your email addresses and those of your friends. If you masturbate, they know which is your favored hand and if you do not, they’ve got pills and ointments to sell you. I do not know if they have recorded the date and time of your last bowel movement, but I have asked. These bastards have more on each of us than the FBI ever had on John Gotti.

Now Zuck has figured out a way to screw us out of another $150 or so a year, thrusting his grimy waxed paw so deep into our pockets he now has an imprint of our car keys. It is quite impressive that he has chosen to follow the lead of the biggest, most obnoxious and cheesiest hustler who does not yet hold elective office. Then again, who among us would be surprised to discover Elon Musk and George Santos are, were, or soon will be the same person? Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Are YOU… Verified?” →

With Further Ado #237: Start-Ups & Second Acts in Geek Culture

With Further Ado #237: Start-Ups & Second Acts in Geek Culture

Posted on by Ed Catto

One of the many great things about Geek Culture is the opportunity for “second acts”.

There’s an old gag that posits 97% of all comic fans want to work in comics, and the other 3% are lying. There’s probably a lot of truth in that.

I would guess the numbers aren’t as high for something like the music industry, for example. I love listening to music, but I have no talent and little aptitude to create music. I even hum off key.

This weekend, Saratoga Springs celebrated the annual Chowderfest. It’s an incredible time, as just about every restaurant and bar erects a Pop-Up to serve their own version of chowder. This annual event attracts so many locals as well as folks like us, who traveled there for the festivities. There were so many people enjoying this event. Along with so many tasty chowders. There were also long lines, more than a few hoisted beer mugs and lots of smiles. Continue reading “With Further Ado #237: Start-Ups & Second Acts in Geek Culture” →

Brainiac On Banjo: Will A.I. Ruin Life As We Know It?

Brainiac On Banjo: Will A.I. Ruin Life As We Know It?

Posted on by Mike Gold

Copycat tryna cop my manner. Watch your back when you can’t watch mine. Copycat tryna cop my glamor. Why so sad, bunny? Can’t have mine. — “Copycat,” Finneas Baird and Billie Eilish O’Connell

© responsible-ai.org

There’s been considerable flutter about artificial intelligence (A.I.) and its invasion of the creative communities, including the comics medium. Artists are concerned that their original work will be pirated, and writers are concerned that they will be replaced.

Microsoft Office is going to add A.I. text generation to its pull-down quivers perhaps as early as next month, much to the delight of English teachers all over the nation. To my fellow professional writers with even entry-level scruples: there’s no need to bother with those ink cartridge refills.

I totally understand these concerns. I completely agree with the dismay and concern shown by informed people and, in fact, being apprehensive about A.I. taking over the world in not necessarily a sign that you’ve watched too many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. However, I yam what I yam and, therefore, I need to point out two categories of perspective.

Number one. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Ask anybody from Hiroshima or Nagasaki. You can’t un-invent stuff, and I’m not being paranoid when I ask the question “do you really think nobody on Earth has been playing around with cloning humans?” If you think that’s preposterous, then explain George Santos to me. This does not mean we should just give up; it means the solutions to this problem have to be ferreted out.

Number two. This is more complicated. It might sound like an apology or and excuse — history is like that sometimes. It is neither. Just a bunch of historical facts. We have had similar work-stealing devices ever since Ben Franklin caught a head-cold.

The photocopier was invented in 1938, and I suspect the second image generated by the machine was a shot of somebody’s ass. Be that as it may, the machine impressed proto-nerds and higher-contrast copies of buildings and other background folderol were deployed by some of those with artistic inclinations. Is this theft? Somebody else did the work. And if it is theft, what about guys like Stan Drake? My respect and admiration for this comics art master has no limit, yet routinely he used xerography for backgrounds. He also produced a beautiful comic strip, The Heart of Juliet Jones, for 36 years.

Technology marches on. The purpose of a lightbox is to allow artists to put a piece of drawing or tracing paper over an extant image and trace the work and then deploy the copied art in their “new” work.

The Artograph was this huge machine — it’s gotten smaller — that projects establishes artwork so that the technician can trace it with the added benefit of enlargement or reduction — and even distortion, if you, like most artists, are into fooling around a bit.

As for scanners, well, I haven’t clocked this but I think it is safe to say that virtually all artists who pay their utility bills own and use one… as do counterfeiters of currency, diplomas, passports and the like. I suspect George Santos has a scanner.

Granted, theft of work by A.I. is easier, more convenient, and takes a lot less artistic skill than most of the aforementioned devices. Isn’t that the purpose of technological advance?

Artograph Model 1000

And then… there is deepfake, something Dr. Sivana and Lex Luthor might have dreamed up while sharing a prison cell.

Deepfake scares the ever-lovin’ shit out of me. It will, I predict, be the dominant form of campaigning in 2024. Now unscrupulous people — well, they’ve got scruples in the way both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Doctor Doom have scruples — can fake videos of people so that they can say anything the faker wants them to say and then slam that onto “social” media where it will be passed around faster than Hunter Biden’s laptop dick pix. (Those clips of Kamala Harris screaming “slow death to white Christians” are not real, folks.)

So stop worrying about how some hack has ripped off your “Hoppy the Marvel Bunny” drawing. With deepfake, our world is truly fucked. I’ve longed for an American Flagg movie, but certainly not like this.

Now that Microsoft has incorporated cutting edge A.I. software into its Edge browser, its bloated, expensive but popular Microsoft Office, and its previously little-used and hardly-remembered Bing search engine, artists have a new camaraderie with the entire community of writers. Usage of their glandular version of OpenAI instantly skyrocketed among developers who can access it presently; the rest of us will have to wait a couple hours. Google has its own A.I. software doing the work of hundreds of soon-to-be unemployed humans. I understand it’s not as good as Microsoft’s A.I, but my definition of “good” might differ from that held by developers.

Well, that’s how irony works. Most A.I. writing these days requires very heavy editing, but if you compare it to the stuff we saw just a couple of years ago writers have every reason to be concerned… as do those who manufacture keyboards.

For better and for worse, A.I. is part of the fabric of our day-to-day reality. But let me ask you a question. Do you think this very piece, the one you are still reading, was written by a man… or by a machine?

So Long and Thanks for the Fish, Man #080: “FOConMO”

So Long and Thanks for the Fish, Man #080: “FOConMO”

Posted on by Marc Alan Fishman

rejection from comic consAs I age like a fine wine, I’m realizing my anger is receding into solemn contemplation. Not unlike Bruce Banner? I’m always angry at something. Be it the GOP and their unending campaign against logic and reason, to more simple things… like my four year old refusing to poop in the potty. But I’m not writing this week about poop, the potty, or the GOP — which I’d like to point out is quite interchangeable these days. No folks, today my idling ire is aimed at comic cons. More specifically? Juried comic cons.

It never fails: with a solid third of my social media follows dedicated to the pulp-and-paper-pals I’ve made in my semi-career in comics, on any given weekend, my feed becomes choked with con content. This morning, as I cracked open Adobe Illustrator to begin working up some new PokeMashups, I also checked in to Facebook to see what’s shaking. The Northwest Indiana Comic-Con (NWI) kicked off, and in six pulls of my scroll wheel, no fewer than a dozen posts shared out photos and optimistic words signaling the masses to head out to Schererville, Indiana for a day of fun. And with that deluge of content, I closed Facebook in an immature huff. 

To know that there’s a comic con not twenty minutes from my house that Unshaven Comics will never* attend grinds my gears. Doubly so when I see other south suburban cohorts proudly tabling. So why the asterisk? Well kiddos, I admit: we didn’t apply to the show this year. So, I’m being half-cheeky half-angst-filled over my assertion. For all I know? Had we applied for a table, we would have been welcomed with open arms. But you know what George Bush Jr. says: fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again. Continue reading “So Long and Thanks for the Fish, Man #080: “FOConMO”” →

With Further Ado #236: Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell

With Further Ado #236: Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell

Posted on by Ed Catto

It seems like there are too many liars around us all the time. Politicians usually get lumped into that category, but lately George Santos has been showing other politicians how to really do it.

Closer to home, maybe you’ve been lied to. And maybe you were lied to by someone you trusted. That’s never a pleasant experience.

And that brings me to Action Comics #1051 and the course correction for all of DC’s Superman titles. I do understand that the rest of the world is trying to decipher James Gunn’s plans for the DC Cinematic Universe (including Superman’s and Supergirl’s roles in it all). But l have always been more a comics-first kind of guy.

There was quite a bit of hoopla of author Brian Michael Bendis coming to DC and steering the good ship Superman. He really changed the game as Superman revealed his identity to the world. Bendis talked and wrote extensively about how he felt it was important that Superman be his authentic self. And how for so many young kids, introduced to superheroes by Iron Man and the Marvel heroes (many of whom don’t maintain secret identities), the pretending to be meek thing is incongruous. Continue reading “With Further Ado #236: Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell” →

Brainiac On Banjo: Should Hope Reign In Burbank?

Brainiac On Banjo: Should Hope Reign In Burbank?

Posted on by Mike Gold

Hope for the best, expect the worst! Some drink champagne, some die of thirst. No way of knowing which way it’s going. — Mel Brooks, Hope For The Best (Expect The Worst)

When Warner Bros Discovery revealed James Gunn and Peter Safran would be running their all-new DC Studios (as if there’s more than one), many of us lifted their faces out of our own puke in the hope it was the dawning of a new day. Well, with luck, it will be… although you can’t really blame us for taking a wait-and-see attitude.

I certainly appreciate and trust James Gunn. I love his work on the Guardians of the Galaxy and Peacemaker, and his The Suicide Squad was great fun. Better still, he treated my oldest friend and honored collaborator John Ostrander right, and that means so much to me I’d throw Gunn’s bail.

What I do not trust is, in order: 1) The “Hollywood” bureaucracy. 2) Warner-anything merging with anybody, be it Time Inc, America Online, AT&T or Discovery. Each merger made things worse for creators and end-users alike. 3) Warner Brothers Discovery in particular, and particularly how they turned the ridiculously overpriced HBOMax into a ridiculously overpriced, frustrating, mindless, and ultimately useless turd rapidly floating downstream into the sewer. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Should Hope Reign In Burbank?” →

With Further Ado #236: Double Fisted Action and Few Laughs

With Further Ado #236: Double Fisted Action and Few Laughs

Posted on by Ed Catto

January is a great month for reading, wasn’t it? February is too. So, here’re three wonderful books that you should know about.

The Big Bundle
By Max Allan Collins

It’s so good to start the year off with another Nate Heller thriller. Like so many in this series, this mystery is brilliant. It’s hard to believe, but about 35 years ago I stumbled across Max Allan Collins’ first story featuring Heller. I had enjoyed the Ms. Tree strip, written by Collins and illustrated by Terry Beatty and Collins’ Batman adventures (although not everyone did.)

Nate Heller is a fictional detective, a hero yet a flawed person full of many regrets, who typically gets involved with the biggest cases and personalities in the last 50 years. Collins has written stories where Heller gets involved with the gangsters who ‘created’ Las Vegas, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Marilyn Monroe’s death, Huey Long’s assassination and more. And just when you think Collins has exhausted all the good stuff, the next novel comes roaring back.

The latest historical adventure, The Big Bundle, has a lot of roar in it. This one focuses on the Greenlease kidnapping in the 50s. I didn’t know anything about this one, and I don’t know much about St. Louis’s history, despite visiting the city a couple of times. My trips there were nothing like Heller’s, though. He gets into it all in a way that turns what you thought was going to be a casual read into a “I can’t put this down” book.

These Heller books are meticulously researched with juicy details. I found myself pausing to run down little rabbit holes along the way. For example, Heller rides the historical landmark Angel’s Flight. It was described in such a way that I had to learn more about this narrow gauge funicular railway. When I’m reading, I usually like to leave my cellphone in the other room, but with this Heller mystery, I had to keep it handy for additional research. Collins tends to introduce me to so many fascinating places, events and people.

As a writer, Collins always finds innovative ways to describe people and settings. This is a crime thriller to be sure, but I often pause at the clever descriptions. For example.

The hero walks into a diner and Collins gives the reader something to think about and to remember:

”The bedraggled adults in booths and at tables were like predictions of how the town’s teens would turn out.”

Or earlier in the novel, as Heller meets a key character:

“In his mid-thirties, my host was of average height and weight with a squared-off head and a rounded jaw, his forehead so high it was like his features had slipped down too far on his oval face.”

After reading a novel like this, my pal Mike Gold used to always make the joke “If you only read one Max Allan Collins novel this month, make it this one.” The gag still holds up and it’s truer than ever.

Title: The Big Bundle
Author: Max Allan Collins
Publisher: Hard Case Crime (Titan)
Hardcover:‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10: ‎ 1789098521
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1789098525

Levon’s Prey
by Chuck Dixon

Back in the day, it seemed like you could “always” pick out a Chuck Dixon comic story because it would open in the middle of an action scene. That wasn’t always the case, but it seemed like it. And despite that, I always loved Dixon’s writing for his nuanced, tight-lipped characters more than his action scenes. He’d always get to the heart of the matter and then present it all in a way that you’d not forget anytime soon.

Levon’s Prey is the latest in long series. It’s subtitled as “A Violent Justice Thriller”, and that’s truth in advertising. It’s actually the second latest, as I’m one book behind. The 11th, Levon’s Range, was published late last year.

I almost wish the books were published in the old paperback format – so you could put them in your back pocket and carry them with you. They are each a quick and compelling read – the kind that make you smile, make you worry and make you cheer on the good guys.

And as a father of daughters, I especially can relate to Levon. Although I’m not nearly as tough as Levon. Not by a longshot.

Title: Levon’s Prey
Author: Chuck Dixon
Publisher:‎ Rough Edges Press
Paperback: ‎ 174 pages
ISBN-10: ‎ 1685491219

The History of Stand-Up: From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle
by Wayne Federman

Auburn Public Theater hosted USC’s Professor Wayne Federman recently. As an expert in comedy and standup, he gave a greatly abbreviated version of his USC course to a local crowd. It was fascinating. I liked it so much I wanted to fly to LA and figure out a way to audit the course. And I don’t even consider myself a stand-up enthusiast.

His book, The History of Stand-Up: From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle, was eye-opening. I didn’t realize how little I knew about Stand-Up. Oh, I guess I’m pretty good with understanding the radio comedians, and guys like Steve Martin were where it was at for me and my gang back in the day. I think I bought my brother a Steve Martin LP for Christmas one year because I wanted to listen to it.

Federman, who as you can imagine is hilarious onstage, keeps it light, bright and fascinating. This was an enjoyable read and never once did I have the urge to ask, “Is this on the final?”

Title: The History of Stand-Up: From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle
Author: Wayne Federman
Publisher: Independent Artists Media
Paperback: 180 pages
ISBN-13:‎ 979-8706637026
ASIN:‎ B08YRP1R2G

Pour a glass of your favorite beverage, put your feet up and enjoy a little reading.