I'm the Goddamn Moses

I'm not sure who Obama looks like more: Storm's older, similarly powered brother; or frakking Moses.

Either way, he gets my vote.

We knew it was coming, but still...

Damnit all the same.



As becomes incredibly evident with each passing year—and each passing movie season—they really don't make them like this anymore.

Aaron Sorkin, Back in the Saddle

The Studio 60 survivor writes a fictional meeting between West Wing aspirant Barack Obama and West Wing president Jed Bartlet:

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OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

OBAMA Good to get that off your chest?

BARTLET Am I keeping you from something?

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I didn't realize how much I'd missed dear old Josiah...

We won, bitches!

Okay, we co-won. But that totally counts!

I Need My Own Help

I've got a Blackberry. I didn't think I wanted one, but when work made it both easy and free—two things all but guaranteed to elicit a positive reaction—I agreed. I don't mind it, except for the crazy addiction to checking it all the damned time.

Anyway, I was in a restaurant, and the person I was dining with excused herself to hit the head (Why don't women ever refer to the bathroom as the head? For that matter, why the hell am I?). When I checked my email, the one at the top of the queue made me think I was in the middle of some crazy time-travel adventure.

The sender was "Bernardin" and the subject was "Help."

Of course, when I opened the message, it was from my mother, looking for advice on buying my wife a birthday present. But for the briefest of moments, I actually thought I was sending myself messages from the future...and I desperately needed my own assistance.

I read too many comic books.

The Smartest Thing I've Ever Done

In the course of the three years I've been running this blog, I've gotten more than 31,000 visits. And I've always thought that, by and large, people kept coming back because they vibed with what I'm putting out there. Sure, some entries have gotten more play than others—the "What Went Wrong With The Highwaymen" series was a gangbuster—but I always thought that it was the words that struck a chord with readers.

I was wrong.

See, about a year ago, I wrote a post about potential casting for The Highwaymen movie, and when musing about who'd be good for Grace—our third lead, a young redhead who learns she's more than meets the eye—I ran the following picture of That '70s Show's Laura Prepon:


And that's what drives about 80 percent of my traffic: people Google-searching for pictures of Laura Prepon. (Rhinoplastique shows up right at the top of the second page of the image search.) Nice pic, to be sure. I've got a pretty good eye—maybe I missed my calling as a soft-core photo editor. Or I should turn this blog into a comic-book-adaptation-casting-think-tank, replete with lots of pitchers of well-endowed young women.

So, hey, welcome to the party, redheaded-ex-sitcom-babe fetishists. Hope you stick around to, you know, read. After all, you only need the one hand to scroll.

RIP David Foster Wallace

Damnit.


I can't say that I was a huge fan. I only ever read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, but I loved it. I can say this with conviction: There are stories in that book that changed the way I look at life. Albeit in small ways, but still.

Damnit.

And if it was, it'd make $100 million...

No wonder there's so much fucking of the Matt Damon.

ROBIN BANKS: The Proposal (Finally)

Okay, after a good long while, I've finally knocked this thing out. This is the same kind of one-sheet we used to sell The Highwaymen and Genius (and a couple of other things I can't talk about yet), so it's worked for me in the past. So, let's see what happens, shall we?

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ROBIN BANKS AND THE LIBERATORS
A proposal for a six-issue mini-series
Written by Marc Bernardin

“They say that a person is trapped by their name. That what a man or a woman is called has a quantifiable impact on the future he, or she, can make for himself. My name is Robin Banks. Guess what I do for a living?”

It's hard goddamn work being an independent woman in 1960s America. A mere 40 years after being granted the right to vote, many women are still seen as second-class citizens. A career that doesn't involve an apron is rare, and equal pay in the workplace is a mirage on the horizon. For all of its mod, retro-futuristic hipster-Vogue cool; for all of its free love, Civil Rights fervor; the '60s could feel like a prison for a forward-thinking female. A prison that Robin Banks wants to break out of.

Robinson Banks—named for her father's favorite literary character—is a safecracker. There's not a lock she can't get through; she's got the tools and the talent. But she's fed up working in a field dominated by men…men who, more often than not, spend more time looking at her ass than keeping an eye out for the cops. Her last straw: She's hired by a two-bit meathead for a safe job. She does her thing and gets into a super-tough old safe. Problem: The damned thing is empty. Turns out, they weren’t hired to break into the safe…they were hired to steal it. The contractor is a collector, and this safe is a lovingly restored safe once blown by Butch and Sundance. Can't put a scratch on it. Such is her life: surrounded by idiots who don't pay attention to what matters.

After some quick thinking—a little plastique and a laundry cart does the trick—she gets her payload out, safe and sound. But that's it. Robin tells Manson—the criminal-world version of an executive recruiter—that she's out. She's going out on her own: finding her own jobs and working them with her own crew. A crew made up entirely of women who all share her “slippery morals.” A driver. A pistolera. A demolitionist. And a heartbreaker—who breaks bones pretty good, too.

Of course, her success—she pulls off the Great Train Robbery (by stealing the train) and stealing the Monaco Grand Prix trophy (by winning the race)—doesn't go unpunished for long. Manson puts together a very special crew designed to put Robin and her Liberators out of business. Permanently.

ROBIN BANKS AND THE LIBERATORS is a high-fashion, high-tension, high-camp swinging-'60s book about very pretty girls doing very bad things.

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So, there it is. Let's see what happens next.

RIP Bill Melendez

Damnit.

Warren Likes It

Are you still not voting for Genius? If Internet Jesus says you should, well, then, you should.

Kirk = Awesome

I'm sure this has been lying around the internets for evuh, but I just found it and it made me titter.

There Are No Words

Just...look at 1988's Brightest Young Stars:



I find it hard to believe that this isn't Debbie Allen's fault.

GENIUS: The Whole Damned Thing

If you want to read it, and haven't been able to make it to a comic book shoppe, or if you weren't sure you wanted to drop the money on something you thought you might not like...

Here's it is, the first issue, free of charge. Go and read, and tell me what you think.

Never thought of it that way...

I was watching Hard Knocks: Training Camp With The Dallas Cowboys on HBO a few minutes ago—always a terrific series, and even better this year with outsized people like Terrell Owens, Tony Romo, and Jerry Jones front and center—and one of the players said...

"You've gotta hate to lose more than you love to win."

Feels like dime-store motivational psychology, but that doesn't mean it's not on the money.

Is it Wrong...

...that I watched all of last night's Democratic National Convention coverage and the lesson that I took from it was:

"Hey, Chelsea Clinton's kind of hot."


No, I don't think that's wrong. Shallow, but not wrong.

Villains Deserve Stories, Too

When we unleashed Genius upon an unsuspecting populace we expected it to be a divisive book. It is, after all, about a young woman who kills cops. (Actually, let me clarify: That's not what she does, that's what she's willing to do. There's a difference.) We knew some people would respond to the story and the storytelling, if not the subject matter, just as we knew that some people would hate it, occasionally sight unseen. The first page is a litmus test: If you can get past the splash image of a cop getting his jugular perforated, then maybe you can understand what we were going for. If not, no harm, no foul.

Is she a bad guy? I honestly don't know. As with all things, it depends on your point of view. They always say that every villain is the hero of his or her own story and if we identify with that story, he or she becomes our hero as well. George Washington was a villain to the British. Luke Skywalker was the villain to the Empire.

But even if Destiny Ajaye is a villain, even if she does vile things for reasons known only to her, that doesn't mean her story shouldn't be told. Lest we forget, the entire Star Wars saga tells of the creation, and eventual redemption, of Darth Vader. The villain.

If you don't like Genius, that's fine. Feel free not to like it because you don't dig on the writing, or the art, or the execution. I am secure enough in my own self-worth to weather such criticism—in fact, I welcome it. But I call bullshit if you don't like it because of who Destiny is or what she does (and I've read or listened to more than one review that took that kind of offense). Especially if you're a comics fan.

If you're the kind of person who can read the gazillionth issue of Superman, where Big Blue faces off against the intergalactic despot of the month; if you can read Black Adam, where a genocidal maniac searches for his lost love; if you can read any issue of The Punisher—you know, starring the vigilante who kills, wantonly, and remains the hero of his own book…if you're that guy, or gal, then you don't get to whinge about Genius' content.

For the record, let me be clear about something: I have nothing but respect for police officers. They do a job that I'd never volunteer for. I know more than a few and would trust any of them with my safety, and that of my family. But I'm not blind to the fact that there are some cops who don't live "to protect and serve," just as there are some politicians who take money for votes, some teachers who don't give a shit, some clergymen who molest children, and some firemen who are dicks. They are human beings, and they have their foibles, just like anyone else. To say that they can't serve as antagonists in a story with an inverted protagonist is both narrow-minded and reactionary.

So, hey, vote for Genius if you liked it; or understood what Adam, Afua, and myself were going for; or just want Top Cow to continue publishing comics that aren't afraid to reach for something...and, in so doing, risk failing in the attempt. If you don't want to vote for it, that's fine, too.

But don't withhold your vote because you think the subject is unworthy of consideration. Because, frankly, there is no such thing.

A four-year-old on 'The Clone Wars'

I took my son, Luc, to see—as he calls it—"the Lightsaber movie." After about 15 minutes in, he turns to me and says:

"This doesn't make any sense."

If a kid can't make heads or tails of your kids movie, then something's very, very wrong.

The Cover to Push #1 Sure is Purty

In case I haven't mentioned it, Adam and I are writing a six-issue miniseries that'll serve as the prequel to this Chris Evan-Dakota Fanning superheroish movie called Push, which comes out next March.

To give you an idea of how crazy the schedule is, we signed on to do the book a couple of weeks before San Diego. The deadline for the first script...was a couple of weeks before San Diego. We've been working double/triple time to get this thing done—as all six issues need to be out before the movie opens. First two issues ship in November, I think. I can't keep it straight—we're just putting the words on the page.

But the art team on this'n is spectacular. The incomparable Jock is doing the covers (which, if judging by the first issue's, will be all kinds of shades of awesome) and a dude named Bruno Redondo is doing the interiors—and, like our Highwaymen artist Lee Garbett, this guy could work in the States for as long as he wants to.

Seriously, I'm done with Michael Phelps

If I had the power at my fingertips, I'd send in the hot hail.

Yes, he's a great athlete. Yes, he may be the best swimmer in history. If I was on a doomed oceanliner, I'd be Rose to his Jack if he'd freestyle us out of there. (I'd even let him sketch me nude, if he wanted to.)

But he is not, as some dick claimed on The Today Show on Wednesday, The Greatest Athlete in the History of Everything. A) That's a claim impossible to defend, as comparing him to Michael Jordan, Pete Sampras, Tiger Woods, or Muhammad Ali is like deciding who'd win in a fight, Moby Dick or King Kong. B) Despite what I just said, it's still just plain wrong, as there ain't nobody hitting him while he's swimming.

Beyond that, he's not even the greatest Olympian. To me, those who are chosen to represent their countries in the Olympic Games should not only be the best athletes and competitors within the borders of the nations they call home, but they should be the best people—shining examples of what it means to be an American, or a Lithuanian, or a Nigerian.

It's a lot to ask of someone who has spent the better part of his or her life apart from the populace of the country they represent, holed up in gymnasiums, or swimming complexes, or weight rooms training for those brief minutes where they either win or go home. But that is what it means to be an Olympian. And that is why we're so betrayed when they let us down, like Marion Jones or Ben Johnson or most of Germany's female athletes in the '80s.

So, for my money, these two guys will stand forever on the Olympic podiums, speaking volumes without saying a single word: