Happy Halloween, Y'All

Hulu test

NBC's new video hub is sorta-live, so let's see if this works:



EDIT: It seems to be working just fine, and they fact that they're letting me embed the entire pilot episode of Airwolf is kind of ridiculous.

I've Been Tagged, Apparently

First time for everything, I suppose. Here's the deal, as presented to me by Ken Lowery's Ringwood:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

You can leave them exactly as is.

You can delete any one question

You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.

You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.

You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

The initial statements/questions:

My parent is: NONE.

1. The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers.
2. The best romantic movie in historical fiction is…Cold Mountain.
3. The best sexy song in rock is…Gloria, by Patti Smith.

My parent is: Ringwood. Here's his stuff.

1. The best epic song (over six minutes in length) in rock is... "November Rain," Guns N' Roses. C'mon, "Hey Jude" and "Freebird" (but only when it's over the last minutes of The Devil's Rejects!) are a bit obvious.
2. (Mockumentary = deleted. Quite the dead end, that.)
3. (the mutant) The best End of the World concept album in Science Fiction is... Year Zero, by Nine Inch Nails. Considering how extensively Trent Reznor and co. built their world, calling it a mere concept album may not be enough. It's a staggeringly thorough and compelling piece of fiction.

Okay, so here are my answers:

1. The best epic song (over six minutes in length) in rock is... "Layla," by Derek and the Dominos. (I almost went "Since I've Been Loving You," by Zeppelin, but I changed my mind. For no good reason.)
2. (the mutant) The best pure sci-fi TV show concept is... The Six-Million Dollar Man. (Seriously. The ways that idea could be exploited is ridiculous...and it's ridiculous that Bionic Woman isn't a thousand times better, given the fertility of the idea.)
3. (the new one) The most formidable superheroine in comics is... The X-Men's Storm. (Especially after Claremont stripped her of her powers, forcing her to learn hand-to-hand combat as well as battlefield strategy. And then she got her powers back. Positively bad-ass.)

Now, for the people I'm tagging:

Adam Freeman. Cowriter on The Highwaymen and Monster Attack Network.
Joshua Hale Fialkov. Elk's Run. Postcards. All-around gentleman. Newlywed.
Neil Kleid. Brownsville. Ninety Candles. Bon vivant. Renaissance Man.

More Love for the Finale

From the San Antonio Express News' René A. Guzman:

"This has been by far the best limited series of the year and the only thing wrong with this last issue is that it has to end. Highwaymen has been more about humor and action than emotion, but you actually get a bit more of the latter in this issue. I say a bit because it delivers the former in grand style. Kudos to Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman for a rollicking read and to Lee Garbett for the kind of sharp but fun art perfect for the tale. Buy all the issues now, or at least mark your calendar the millisecond you find news of the impending trade."

Sometimes, I Just Don't Understand America

I was watching an episode of Bones the other day. Which I like. No problems with the show itself. This particular episode was about the murder of some dude who was into "pony play." Which, if you didn't watch that particular episode of Real Sex, involves men and women who pretend to be horses and riders. They wear bits and saddles and the whole shebang. And then, they have sex.

Anyway, the episode opened with a dead body found in the woods. Dessicated skin, maggots crawling around gooey eye sockets, amputated feet. Then, Bones and her team start the investigation, which includes cutting open the stomach to see what the deceased ate last (answer: hay).

In other words, the most disgusting things you can imagine seeing were on Fox at 8:00pm. Family hour.

How did we get to the point where we're willing to tolerate, nay, encourage (through viewership) seeing the retch-inducing inner workings of the human body after it's been violated—and people freak out over the sight of an exposed nipple? How is seeing the unadorned interior of the body more acceptable than seeing its unadorned exterior? How is the feeling of disgust better than the feeling of arousal? Really, what's worse for your kid to watch: people having sex or people committing murder? Which would you rather they emulate? And if the question is one of morality—and you know who I'm talking to—which is the worse sin?

Again, no problems with Bones. Or CSI or Crossing Jordan or any of those gross-out procedurals. Just a problem with us. What the fuck is wrong with this country?

And That's All Folks...

Highwaymen #5 was on stands yesterday, and with that comes an end to our first mainstream comics series. It saddens me, a bit, to note that we won't get to tell any more stories with these dudes—not unless there's some crazy twist of fate and #5 sells, like, 20,000 copies. But that won't happen, so I'll just take some solace in knowing that we did a pretty good job, our first time out, and that the people who did read the book seem to have dug it.

To wit:

IGN's Richard George says, "This series has been a great deal of fun. There have been a couple points where I felt the momentum dragged a bit, but overall Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman have delivered a fast-paced action story that didn't insult the reader.

Being the last issue of the mini-series, things wrap up fairly well. I won't say everything is happy by the last page, but there's no way you'll feel cheated or dragged along to some unannounced sequel. This one is done in five, folks. Bernardin and Freeman do leave room for future installments however, and I certainly wouldn't mind that.

If you haven't read this series, it's basically some sort of mixture of old buddy cop movies like Lethal Weapon or perhaps Die Hard 3. You could probably throw films like Speed in there to some degree as well...and a bit of James Bond. That's basically all there is to it. This is a love letter to all of those classic action films, featuring great chemistry and gripping action. I was impressed with how familiar these heroes felt, though I'd pin that on the fact that this is very much an homage. But it doesn't feel too derivative either. If you skipped this, and don't want to hunt for back issues, pick up the trade. You won't regret it."

And here's CBR's Hannibal Tabu: " What a way to go—Monroe and McQueen are still blowing stuff up and tossing around bon mots as they fight their way towards fulfilling their mandate, as the last member of a black ops government project learns how to stand up for herself. This is a great last reel to an action movie, and even in its confrontations the chatter is kept concise and smart. Fast moving, smartly conceived and well executed (the part with the rope is especially fun on rereads)."

Highwaymen #5 Preview

The final issue is out next Wednesday, Oct. 17th, but here's the first three pages—ganked from Wizard. (Shhh.)

Get Thee To A Pitchery

So, as I said, I was in Los Angeles last week. (Or maybe the week before last...can't remember.) I was out to do some Hollywood pitching. Keen readers of the blog will know what we were pitching...shouldn't take a genius to put two-and-two together.

The pitches went well, I think. Everyone said they went well, and that's really all I've got to go on. Since this is the first time I was "in the room" with the express purpose of selling people on ideas, I've got no real frame of reference.

But the pitch process is a ludicrous one. We're writers, right? And we write. We've spent long hours hammering away at a keyboard, grafting fragments of ideas so they resemble a coherent story. That's what we do.

So if someone wants to see if an idea has enough meat on its bones to justify spending millions of dollars on to make a movie, if they can't read a script, they want a pitch. Which is fine. Totally understandable.

What I don't really understand is why that pitch needs to be delivered verbally. Why we needed to spend weeks writing a pitch that hit all the right notes, laced in all the character arcs and emotional beats, and hit the action sequences in a non-exhaustive manner—only to then have to memorize the whole thing so we could deliver it in an 18-minute monologue. (Or, since there was two of us, a duologue.)

Why couldn't we just email them the pitch?

I get that, in the days of the old studio system, people like Jack Warner were shepherding hundreds of movie ideas at a time, and wouldn't have time to read hundreds of proposals for new projects. So he'd ask for the "pitch." "Okay, these two lovers ended their relationship badly. He fucked off to Morocco to open a bar. She joined the French Resistance. Sorry, forgot: Nazis. And she needs travel papers, and only he can get them. Thing is, she's in love with another dude. Sad, sweet, darkly funny. And it'll end in an airport...maybe."

But today? No reason why we couldn't email them a document they could read in less time it takes us to pitch, and wouldn't suffer from nervousness, brain-farts, or mysterious chest colds. We're writers. We write. We're best when we write. (Except for those of us who used to be stand-up comedians, and know how to work a room like a motherfucker. P.S.: Thanks for the tips, John.)

I get that they want to meet you, and make sure you smell like a person who showers regularly, and don't have a third eye, or extra digits. But couldn't that happen after they read the pitch?

It just seems to me that it's another example of Hollywood's vise-like grip on nostalgia. This is the way it is done because it's the way it's always been done. Same reason every script has got to be written in 12pt courier. If it isn't, readers won't read past page one, and it'll die at the bottom of a recycling bin, even if it is the second coming of Casablanca. (And this, despite the fact that no one writes on a Smith Corona manual typewriter anymore. We just have to pretend we do.)

So, yeah, we pitched, and we did well. Things are "happening." But I can't say that I had an erg of fun doing it. Because this process isn't set up to be fun. But I'm damn glad I did it.

Lag Time

It's been something of a crazy couple of weeks. In LA the last week of September, and then, as soon as I got back into the office, I found myself doing a completely different job. (Which is a pseudo-direct result of my week in LA.) I'm now working for EW.com, editing a bit, and writing a whole lot more. I've still got my fingers in the stew that is "paper EW," but I've got a whole lot of learning to do. Which is one of the reasons I took this new gig, the learning.

Reminds me of an interview Harrison Ford gave to Letterman a coupla years back. Ford told Dave that he was learning to fly a plane. When Dave asked him why he'd do that, Ford replied: "Because it had been a very long time since I learned how to do anything new."

So that's what's been swallowing my time. But whenever I feel bad about not blogging for a while, I just turn to good ol' Josh Friedman...who hasn't filed a new post since New Year's Day.

So there.

Don't Go Away, Renee

Was watching the premiere of Life the other day. You know, the NBC genre show with a British actor playing an American? Sorry, let me be more specific: the cop hour with Band of Brothers' Damian Lewis as a wrongfully imprisoned police officer who's out of the hoosegow and back on the force as a detective. (Not to be confused with Bionic Woman, starring Michelle Ryan, or Journeyman, starring Kevin McKidd—apparently, some casting director summered in the UK.)

So, our hero—who's so indelible I don't remember his name—is saddled with a partner. A sullen Latina who drinks too much, is muy promiscuous, has a father who won't talk to her, and might have had something to do with her dead partner.

In other words, she's Renee Montoya from Gotham Central, minus the homosexuality. And, since I think we can all agree that being gay is just one element of one's psychological makeup—and not even the most important—she's Renee Montoya.

=

I always wondered why no one moved on a Gotham Central TV show. Seems tailor-made. You've got a recognizable subject matter (inner-city police precinct), terrific characterization (the aformentioned Montoya is but one of a stellar cast), and the patina of newfangled glitz without ever having to show Batman if you don't want to. Or, you treat him the way he should be but never is: as a creature of shadow, who you never entirely see, but the spectre of whom hangs over everything.

I was told a few years ago that A) the powers that be wanted to save all the Bat-heat for the then-nascent Batman Begins and that B) Birds of Prey scared everyone off.

Which, honestly, is too bad.

Heresy

Let me just get it out. I'll bet that no one, 15 years ago or so, would've listened to Nirvana's Nevermind and thought to themselves, "You know who's gonna emerge as one of America's last great rock stars? The fucking drummer."

But, seriously, Dave Grohl is the genuine goddamn article. I've had Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace on a loop for the last four days. It's a beautiful album: hard when it's supposed to be, soft when it wants to be and—here's where the heresy truly comes in—I think Grohl's a better songwriter than Cobain was. Yes, he had more time to mature and ferment, and his doesn't seem to be a life of harsh torment. (And, yes, Courtney Love is nowhere near him.)

You watch the Foos in concert and he is everything a frontman oughta be: passionate, frenzied, and willing to shred his voice to tatters every night. Honestly, I can't think of a band I'd want to see live more than the Foo Fighters. The hardest working bar-band in show business. And when he's not banging away at the guitar, he's playing drums on other folks' albums. (Can you imagine being the drummer in the Foos? Knowing full well that your boss can do your job way better than you can?)

Every drummer pounding away in a shitty high-school band ought to have a temple to Grohl in their closet: he has shown you the way.

Great Moments in Fatherhood

I'm flipping channels this morning, and I come across the first Star Wars (Episode IV, which will forever be known as "the first Star Wars"), right about the part where we first see the Death Star, floating in space. My three-year-old son, Luc, looks at the TV and says "That's a moon."

And I get to say, "That's no moon...that's a space station."

It all comes around.

Out of the Box

I'm going back to Cali, y'all. (I simply cannot resist a little LL plug. A weakness, I know.)

Heading out on Monday, back on Friday. Pitchery is afoot. If I can, I'll keep you updated. But you know how these things go.

So, be good, for goodness sake. And I'll see you when I see you.

Casting to Type

Working, as I do, at the magazine where I work (wow, that's a nonsensical phrase, but I'm gonna keep it in there anyway) for the last 12 years, I've seen a lot of magazine covers. A lot. We're a weekly, after all. Somewhere around 500 issues, give or take.

And when I saw the mockups for the cover of this week's issue...


...two things crossed my mind:

1) It's good to see an Asian face on our cover. There aren't a lot of occasions for us to do that, seeing as there isn't a multitude of Asian movie/TV stars. We cover the business, and it's not our fault if the business doesn't give Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian, or Taiwanese actors much work. (Yes, I'm sure I left out a whole host of eses. I know. Sorry, thespians on Surinam.) The last time we had Asians and nothing but Asians on the cover was an Oscar Race Begins issue, with Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So, yay for diversity.

2) Masi Oka will have James Gandolfini's career, but with less awards. By that, I mean to say that he'll do great work as one overwhelmingly ethnic character—and never move beyond that. I think Gandolfini probably came to terms with that. Could be what was behind the salary renegotiations: "If I'm never gonna get to do work this good again, I wanna get paid." And everything we've seen him in where he's not playing a mobster has been underwhelming: The Mexican, The Last Castle, All the King's Men. Granted, those movies sucked but, more importantly, you didn't buy him in them. That's the problem with creating an iconic, enduring character: you can never escape it. Will Masi be able to get out from under Hiro's shadow? Would you want to see him playing, I dunno, the romantic lead, or the smart tech dude in a heist thriller, or the gay best friend? He might be able to do all of those, and do them well, but I think we'll always see him squishing his eyes, shouting "Yataaai!"

The Big Question: Clarification

It seems, in tracking what's become the news story of the cycle—and, apparently, it's a slow cycle if The Highwaymen not selling can spur such discussion—people have misinterpreted the events to draw the conclusion that Wildstorm cancelled the book. Which is not the case.

We were engaged to do a five-issue miniseries. Which is exactly what we wrote, what Lee Garbett drew, and what Wildstorm is publishing. Were there conversations about possibly continuing the series beyond those five issues? Absolutely. But doing so was always contingent on sales.

Wildstorm solicited five issues of The Highwaymen, and that's precisely what, to steal liberally from Tina Fey, our dozens and dozens of readers will get.

The Big Question: Part Deux

A lot of people have chimed in, both here and on Heidi MacDonald's The Beat, with their theories as to why The Highwaymen didn't sell.

To sum up:

• No one wants to try anything new, so new characters by new creators...nuh-uh.
• Wildstorm, as a brand, doesn't inspire consumers to buy anymore.
• The wait-for-the-trade mentality + hatred of the miniseries format = no floppy love.
• The retailer incentive for issue #1 didn't extend to issue #2.
• The cover for issue #1 didn't stand out.
• Readers didn't respond to the concept.

Most of those I'll concede, with the exception of the last two. I liked the cover for issue #1 and while the design might've been a little conventional, I'd have thought the name-brandness of Brian Stelfreeze would've made up the difference. And, anecdotal and empirical evidence both point to readers absolutely responding to the concept. And to the execution. I guess we were laboring under the misguided theory that "good will out."

Maybe, finally, the answer to the "why" is: The market just isn't set up to support a book like this because, ultimately, the readers don't want a book like this. If they did, there'd be more of them. There'd be more romance books, and more action books, and more war books, and more straight sci-fi books, and more police procedural books. I'd say it was as myopic as TV, but then you'd have to posit a TV landscape where there were only sitcoms set in a bar.

But the market, with the rarest of exceptions (e.g., Y: The Last Man, Criminal, Walking Dead, Fell, Casanova, etc.), wants superheroes and only superheroes. Especially superheroes they already know. And especially if there's a possibility that they're zombies.

The Big Question

Given the news of the post below, a fella could ask himself, "Why?"

Not, "Why isn't Wildstorm going to do another arc worth of Highwaymen stories." I know why. Because it didn't sell. We moved a hair under 10,000 copies of issue #1. At the time, we were told that was as good a number as one could expect for a book about two characters no one had ever heard of, created by three guys no one had ever heard of.

But issue #2 took a 40% dive—which would be fine if we were a movie; that's considered a pretty good hold in week two. However, we're not a movie. And it's not enough to warrant doing more. I get that.

So, the question is, "Why didn't it sell?"

Did we not spread the word adequately? I'd like to think we did. We did oodles of press, interviews with anyone who asked. Had pieces up on Wizard.com, Newsarama, CBR, Silver Bullet, IGN, and Broken Frontier. Some mainstream press, too, in EW and a couple of news syndicates, which got us into a whole host of regional papers. We did in-store signings and convention appearances, a couple of podcast interviews to boot. DC gave the first issue the better part of a page in Previews, and seeded house ads throughout the bulk of its books the month before it came out. It's possible we could've done more—a cross-country tour would've been nice, but not in the cards...and we all can't have Warren's internet presence, not overnight—but we didn't let it stumble out there without any support at all.

Was The Highwaymen simply a bad comic? I'd almost say that's a more important concern, except for the fact that there are tons of shitty books that do/did better than ours. So quality does not insure sales. But, judging by the overwhelmingly positive response we've gotten from almost every critic who's reviewed it, quality was not our problem.

Was it the subject matter? Were potential readers turned off by the cast, a pair of old dudes, one white and one black? Was ageism or racism a factor? No way to be sure. Though, we've been told, in pitching other books, that black characters just don't sell. Even Blade, with three hit movies behind him, can't keep ongoing-series hope alive.

Can a good action-adventure book that received a decent PR launch about a pair of racially diverse seniors who aren't superheroes fly in today's market? I guess that's the $64,000 question.

And I guess we got our answer.

The Word From the Mountain

From the Jim Lee panel at the Baltimore Comic-Con, via Newsarama:

"The Highwaymen will conclude its arc and then end, Lee said, noting that the series was a great read but hasn’t performed well sales-wise. After the series is over, Lee said that they’ll be working with the creators again."

Well, there you have it. We're glad we got to tell the story we set out to tell. If you find us at a convention bar one of these years, we'll tell you what would've happened...if you buy us beer. And nachos. Definitely nachos.

I Honestly Don't Know What To Make Of This

Two minutes from Southland Tales, featuring a very dirrrty Sarah Michelle Gellar:

If You Thought I Gave Up on the Pimpery...

Johnny Bacardi digs himself some Highwaymen #3:

HIGHWAYMEN #3: Wonder of wonders, we actually get some explanations and answers in only the third chapter, something which flies in the face of normal shoot-em-up comics/movies/TV series of this ilk. Livelier than last issue, to boot, oddly enough, with fewer improbable stunts. I think this one is going to be all right. B+