Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...
I've had a fair degree of that over my life, but mostly when I'm among a kind of broad audience. What hit me with these was that they all came from ostensible geeks, but geeks who just didn't like my particular flavor of geekdom. And that brought back the same feelings of rejection that I got for decades before I found a community that... well, I wasn't exactly embraced, but I was at least allowed to sit at the table.
But dredging up some decades-old feelings of "go away; we don't want to have to even see you here" on top of the general stress and anxiety of [waves at everything] is a bit much for me right now, so I'm going to avoid being online as much as I can this week. I'll return to blogging next week.
But since it's now Black History Month, go find some comics by Black creators and read them in the meantime.
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...
The basic plot of the series is that Simon Williams, a very modestly successful actor, hears about an upcoming Wonder Man movie, reviving a franchise he loved as a kid. With the help of fellow actor Trevor Slattery, he works hard to land the lead role and not get in his own way, which is what has been the primary reason he hasn't become more successful already.
That's it. No major villains, no end of the world scenarios, no superhero origin story. One guy, trying to get his dream job.
In a lot of ways, this doesn't feel like an MCU project because of that. The past several years of movies and shows have been this interconnected web of continuity, and there was a lot cross-referencing plots and story arcs. While Wonder Man is clearly and overtly connected to the MCU -- primarily via Ben Kingsley's protrayal of Trevor -- the smaller, human nature scale of the story grounds things in a way that make it feel somewhat separate from the MCU.
What also separates the show is that there's very little in the way of super powers. They establish he does have them in the first ten minutes or so of the show, but it's something he tries hard to keep under wraps. (More on that in a bit.) The impact this has on the show is 1) I'm sure the visual effects people were relieved they didn't have another She-Hulk situation on their hands where every second the character was on-screen meant hours and hours of computer work, and 2) it more importantly puts the focus on the character development, and not the theatrics. And that they've got Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Kingsley in the two lead roles is what really sells the series.
Because of the story's focus on character, that puts the onus of success very much in the hands of Abdul-Mateen's and Kingsley's performances. They don't have special effects or even flashy costumes to hide behind; Simon is in a sweatshirt and jeans for much of the show! And they both deliver some excellent performances, especially when they're able to play off one another. The actors seem to have a chemistry as much as their characters are supposed to. Of course, Kingsley has a long enough history of great performances that I don't think anyone would doubt his abilities, but I was particularly impressed with Abdul-Mateen. His heartfelt moments were indeed quite heartfelt, but what struck me too was his ability to intentionally depict a mediocre performance. The character is an actor, so Abdul-Mateen is repeatedly required to act like he's acting. But not acting badly; he can't take it to that extreme. It has to be a performance that would work well enough to get him acting gigs with speaking roles on a TV show, but not so good that he outperforms the ostensible star of said show. It strikes me as a very fine line, and Abdul-Mateen walks it well.
This does lead me to one of the issues I had with the show, though. Namely, that there was a not insubstantial part of it that did feel a little too inside-Hollywood. Again, with Simon as a working actor, we're going to see a lot of usually-behind-the-scenes stuff like auditions and rehersals and contract discussions and such, and that's fine. But there also seemed to be a number of elements that were added in seemingly narcissistic, self-referential manner mostly for the amusement of other people who work in Hollywood. The inclusion of Joe Pantoliano, for example, doesn't add much to the story -- it does add some depth to Kingsley's character, but the one or two lines that do that don't warrant an entire third of an episode. (Pantoliano's performance is fine, by the way. The issue I have is more about the scene's inclusion in the first place, not its execution.)
That was the big stand-out in that respect but there were other lines and references I caught that felt like they were included for the sake of people who work in Hollywood, and most of the audience wouldn't catch. Beyond just phrasing and lingo to make it seem authentic. I know enough about writing and performing that I caught some of them, but I strongly suspect the whole self-tape studio sequence has slew of in-jokes that I completely missed.
Along those lines, the show overtly references -- and tries to parallel in some ways -- the movie Midnight Cowboy. While that is indeed a piece of classic cinema, do audiences today know it at all? It was an X-rated film in 1969, so to have seen it in theaters when it came out, you'd have to be at least in your 70s now. And it doesn't seem like the type of film most people would come to casually; it's not exactly an uplifting, feel-good movie so the people who seek it out are doing so for its cinematic merits, not because they want something to zone out on after a long week at work. So even with the overt references to the movie here, they seem more self-referential.
I also felt the "Doorman" episode was entirely unnecesary. There's a couple references earlier in the show about how it's almost impossible to be an actor with superpowers because of a "Doorman Clause." The "Doorman" episode explains that through a flashback with the character Doorman. While it was kind of interesting to see a D-list character like Doorman get an MCU appearance, the entire episode could've been covered with a couple of additional lines of dialogue. We didn't need an entire episode to go off on a tangent about characters that aren't involved in the main plot AT ALL.
To offer some praise in the same vein of "stuff that I expect most viewers won't catch," I quite liked how they leaned into Simon's Haitian-American background. Obviously, the comic version of the character is Caucasian, but there's never been anything about him that was strictly racially driven. So conceptually, the race-flipping for the show doesn't detract from any character elements from the comics. But what I found pleasantly surprising was some of the subtle layering that helped to round out the character. Some of it was small stuff, like when he made a casual reference to his agent about code-switching or the brief shot of family members donating clothes in a plastic barrel to send back to Haiti when they visit Simon's mother. Stuff that goes by quickly enough that it probably doesn't even register for viewers who don't get it, but will absolutely look/sound more authentic to those that do. Even the thematic notion of Simon having to keep his powers in check when he gets angry has some racial undertones to it for people of color. (Go back and read my piece on the Hulk metaphor for more on that idea.)
Despite my criticisms, though, I rather enjoyed Wonder Man overall. It's a unique take on superheroes for the MCU, and it stands out as both very much centered in the world built in and around superheroes but very grounded in its avoidance in showcasing that. A show like Daredevil is grounded in its street level realism. Daredevil has powers but they're not grand or showy, and his primary villain is basically just a mob boss. And it takes the approach that "grounded" means "gritty" -- that you're seeing the dirt and grime that inhabits the real world. Wonder Man isn't dirty like that. Simon's apartment is a little messy, but the world for him is still pretty clean superficially. At least the parts that matter; the dishes are done, they're just not put away. He's in a world where your co-workers see the nice wall of books behind you on your Zoom call, but not the absolute disorganized mess of life just off camera.
There's a lot of Hollywood shown in Wonder Man, and we all know the stereotypical artifice of that. But isn't that what we all do? We present our life's highlight reel on social media while in reality we're scrambling to get the dog walked and the car fixed and didn't-I-just-buy-AA-batteries-where-the-hell-are-they all while maintaining a day job that leaves us too exhausted to do anything over the weekend besides crashing on the couch. I think that's the grounded reality of Wonder Man. The show has some really fun moments, just like we do in life, and it's got messy family drama, just like we do in life, and it's got that one friend who does okay but just can't quite get his act together, just like we have in real life. It's a good show. It could be a bit tighter in places, but it's solid. It's more focused on character than any Marvel show since Moon Knight, I think, and definitely makes for a nice -- and unique -- addition to the MCU.
In 1963, MSgt. Percy Brown Jr. interviewed Swinnerton for Armed Forces Radio. Comics fan Milt Kagen, who helped arrange the interview in the first place, saved a tape of the program. It's the only known public audio recording of Swinnerton.
But that's not courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is not the opposite of fear. Courage is having the inner strength to do something IN SPITE OF fear. In order to be courageous, you need to be first be fearful of something so that you can overcome that fear.
You can still be heroic without being courageous, mind you. Superman is very heroic. He goes around saving people all the time. But it's not courageous for him to stand in front of a bank robber's gun since he knows that his skin is hard enough to deflect every one of the bullets without so much as leaving a bruise. Heroism ≠ courage. And it's fear without courage that's driving a lot of our problems today.
"I don't really know any gay people. Their culture includes things I don't understand. I don't know what to say or how to act when they display those cultural touchstones that are unfamiliar to me."
"I don't really know any Black people. Their culture seems different than mine, and I do not want to risk theirs superceding mine. I'm very comfortable with my own culture, and not comfortable with theirs."
That's essentially what racism and homophobia and that kind of hatred all boils down to: a mechansim for justifying treating someone poorly because they look/act/sound a little different than what you're used to. They're reacting out of fear. They're reacting fearfully because they have no courage. They fear what they don't know or understand, and don't even have the courage to try to learn about it. They don't have the courage to say, "Just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong." They don't have the courage to say, "Just because it's different, it doesn't invalidate my preferences."
And perhaps that's part of the problem in comics. There are so many out there that talk about heroism, but don't touch on courage. Spider-Man doesn't fear going against the Green Goblin. Batman doesn't fear confronting the Joker. Those characters are/were absolutely acting heroically, but not courageously.
I can't help but wonder, then, if we would see fewer instances of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in the comics community if the stories were less focused on heroism, and more focused on courage.
(Full disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter at a level that I'm actually drawn into the book itself.)
Silvani has divided the book up into three sections: History, Piracy 101/How to Pirate, and Individual Pirate Profiles. Not surprisingly, the History section covers the history of piracy dating back to the dinosaurs (well, not quite) and covers piracy all over the world, not just those who sailed in/around the Carribbean in the early 1700s. The Piracy 101 section is all about the day-to-day lives of pirates, mostly relaying how awful everything was and that the only reason a pirate would put up with that was because their other options were even more awful. And the Profiles section, of course, designates a few pages each to several of the most famous pirates throughout history.
The text is largely written independent of the art in a kind of omnsicient narrator approach. But rather than just rattling off dull dates and statistics like Ben Stein, Silvani has a fun, casual style that includes self-corrections, deliberately bad jokes, and a generally satirical tone that often mocks the actions taking place in the art. Art which, in turn, also frequently mocks the narration.
In fact, the style and general approach remind me very much of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the World books, just with a narrower focus and on much better paper. While we don't see a narrator in the same way Gonick handled his work, there's still the sense of talking to the reader and the 'actors' in the story sometimes recognizing their role and responding to the narrator or the reader. Like Gonick, too, Silvani also includes a variety of gags in the background throughout the book; the racous partying and massive fight scenes in particular lend themselves to any number of visual Wile E. Coyote style jokes.
The actual research here is all solid to boot. I've done more than a little studying of actual piracy, and I was generally impressed with the details Silvani included. If I had to make a criticism of the content, I would say that Profiles section feels a bit too Euro-heavy. Silvani does call out, for example, Zheng Yi Sao in the History section, but she's only given 2/3 of page there and no separate write-up in the back. The Profiles are generally the Carribbean pirates you might already be familiar with: Blackbeard, William Kidd, Anne Bonny, etc. Similarly, other non-European-born pirates are noted in the History section but aren't reflected in the Profiles. No Black Caesar or Diego de Los Reyes, or Ipseiodawas either. Obviously, there wouldn't be enough room to list EVERY pirate and I get that there are many that we simply don't know much about, but while the main book is relatively diverse, that doesn't extend to the Profiles section.
Overall, Pirates: A Graphic History (But Not THAT Kind of Graphic) is a really fun read. Plenty of solid info there if you're not already super-familiar with the topic and it's still handled in a very fun and entertaining way if you are! I'm not sure about the full breadth of distribution, but Silvani is selling the book from his website (signed!) for $30 US if you're interested. I believe all his Kickstarter ones have been sent out, so he should be able to get to 'regular' orders fairly quickly, I should think.
