* Just a couple more thoughts about the passing of Bea Arthur: The Golden Girls‘ Dorothy Zbornak is one of the all-time great sitcom characters. Her staunch, iconoclastic personal and political progressivism undercut by her actual lived experience, she was easily embarrassed by her own mistakes and shortcomings but never less than passionately proud of the person she had become–and her potential to become something even more–despite them. Her ability to acknowledge her flaws but power past them made her the perfect foil for Rose’s naivete, Blanch’s narcissism, and Sofia’s provincialism, all of which she parried with her own trademark characteristic: bullshit-deflating sarcasm. As The Missus put it last night while we were discussing Dorothy, “They took the ‘straight-man’ character and made her funny.'” It was a brilliant maneuver brilliantly handled by Arthur, and I don’t think any sitcom has done it as deftly. There’s more value in a single Bea Arthur Golden Girls reaction shot than in entire episodes of How I Met Your Mother. She was the real deal.
* Mark Waid names names (Levitz, Ross, Jemas, Alessi, DiDio) in this uproariously candid interview with AICN. At this point Waid’s been off the reservation so long I’m not sure he remembers where it was, but even so, these kinds of comments still offer the frisson of on-the-record smacktalking in an sub-industry whose professional class rarely indulges in that sort of thing:
The biggest challenge [of working on 52] was actually, wisely, kept from us by Steve [Wacker, the series’ editor]. EIC Dan Didio, who first championed the concept, hated what we were doing. H-A-T-E-D 52. Would storm up and down the halls telling everyone how much he hated it. And Steve, God bless him, kept us out of the loop on that particular drama. [Subsequent editor Michael] Siglain, having less seniority, was less able to do so, and there’s one issue of 52 near the end that was written almost totally by Dan and Keith Giffen because none of the writers could plot it to Dan’s satisfaction. Which was and is his prerogative as EIC, but man, there’s little more demoralizing than taking the ball down to the one-yard line and then being benched by the guy who kept referring to COUNTDOWN as “52 done right.”
Place your bets on which issue that was. I’ve got a hunch myself.
* Related, in some ineffable way: Tom Spurgeon on how the direct market depends on the buying habits of a small group of big spenders whose spending might be getting less big.
* Also vaguely related, by way of contrast: Tom Spurgeon (again) on the 10 Best Long-Running Comics Series of All Time. A tough list to argue with, especially when you factor in his runners-up. Mostly, as always, it’s just a pleasure to read a long post in which Tom holds forth about a variety of different kinds of comics in short order.
* I feel like this is related too, somehow: Dan Nadel mulls over the life and career of Rocketeer creator and Bettie Page cultural archaeologist Dave Stevens. Dan’s read of Stevens’s aborted autobiography-cum-art book is that Stevens died disappointed that his output failed to live up to his ambitions; Dan then argues that those ambitions were inherently proscribed by Stevens’s own artistic and aesthetic self-limitations, primarily driven by nostalgia for an outmoded illustration tradition, and further, that those limitations were ignored and their ramifications actively celebrated by Stevens’s subcultural fellow travelers. It’s a depressing series of thoughts. But you know what? I still see it playing out today. Creators who act as though they know better continue to play squarely within the aesthetic and financial playing field of the direct market’s clients, despite any number of other options available at this point in the medium’s history. And new order cutoffs be damned, Previews will still be crammed full of work by writers and artists who you just wish would take their brains and think bigger thoughts with them.
* Also also related: Chris Butcher liveblogs the April Previews. Headscratching and hilarity ensues.
* The final vaguely related link: Curt Purcells reviews Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics from the perspective of someone who enjoys reading comics but finds himself so baffled by their current state that he can’t honestly refer to himself as a fan.
* Monster Brains previews Johnny Ryan’s upcoming non-stop-action comic Prison Pit.
* They’re remaking Videodrome. Oddly, I’m…kind of intrigued by the prospect of a thoroughly Hollywoodized versions of David Cronenberg’s orificetravaganza. The world could use a little more high-gloss perversion.
* Robert Rodriguez talks to AICN about the Predator sequel he’s allegedly producing, Predators. I’ll believe it when I see it, as I say. I hope it contains the words “get to the chopper” in some configuration if and when it gets made.
* Finally, a very happy birthday to TheOneRing.net, an amazing 10 years old today. That’s an uncountably long time in Internet years. And gosh, I actually remember checking the site out back when Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies were first announced in 1999, from the computer lab on Old Campus where I had to go to use the Internet because our ramshackle off-campus house didn’t have it. TORn was a trailblazer for franchise-specific fansites, becoming a genuine industry powerhouse as far as all things Rings are concerned without ever devolving into attention-whoring or the meanspirited aspects of fandom in the process. I’m grateful for it and wish them 10 more years of success.
7 Responses to Carnival of souls