More MARVEL madness looms next summer, with a reboot of “Spider-Man,” possibly another “Wolverine” (if the sequel’s Japanese production can get back on track after this year’s tsunami temporarily derailed it), and of course, MARVEL’s piece de resistance, “The Avengers.”

The Avengers represents the apex of MARVEL’s long term strategy for its movie properties: Each character will have their own series, as well as make guest appearances in other character’s movies. And all will join forces in the Avengers’ own series, bringing Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, and others together as a team, just like in the comics.

One of the great joys of reading MARVEL comics has always been the shared universe these characters inhabit; seeing them team up or face off in each other’s books made for a thrilling reading experience. That MARVEL is trying to replicate this phenomenon in the movies is daring, to say the least, and maybe unprecedented.

Though not without risk. Comic titles come out once a month; movies every two or three years, making it much harder to sustain interest in long-term plot lines without boring the audience and sacrificing valuable screen-time that could otherwise service the story at hand. Some MARVEL movies have already suffered as a result – one of the criticisms leveled at “Iron Man 2″ was that it felt more like a two-hour trailer for “The Avengers” (then two years away) than a stand-alone Iron Man adventure.

There are signs that MARVEL has learned the lessons of that film, however: “Thor” had the mix just about right, with references to Iron Man, Hulk and the larger MARVEL universe scattered throughout the film, easily recognizable to fans, but unobtrusive enough to be safely ignored by someone who has missed those other films. The “Thor” after-credits scene nicely set up Captain America,without detracting from the thunder god’s solo adventure. Indeed, most casual move-goers left the theater as the credits rolled, leaving the Easter Egg for the fans who knew it was coming.

Personally, I love what MARVEL is doing, and hope they can make it work. The universe Stan Lee and his titanically-talented artist cohorts created in the 1960’s is a vast, multi-layered, and fun place to visit, on the page and on screen. Hopefully, MARVEL studios will re-acquire the rights to all its properties (currently Sony owns “Spider-Man” and FOX owns “X-Men”) so they, too, can be folded into this incredibly ambitious cinematic experiment.

Excelsior!

Unfortunately, the latest superhero epic “Thor” doesn’t have that basic human appeal. Instead, it offers up the incredibly convoluted tale of a Nordic god who falls to Earth when his hubris makes him overstep his bounds and risk the safety of his home planet of Asgard.

—–

The movie kicks off quickly with some impressive fighting between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and a team of Asgardian super-warriors against an evil race known as the Frozen Giants from the icy realm of Jotunheim. The Frozen Giants are hoping to exploit the fact that Asgard’s aging king Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is attempting to hand over his power to Thor, and wage an attack on Asgard during the coronation ceremony.

The sneak attack provokes a desire for revenge from Thor and his closest warriors, and things go haywire when they act on it. As punishment, he’s cast to Earth (aka Midgard), where he crashes into the desert amid a furious flash of thunder and is discovered by a team of scientists that includes an astrophysicist named Jane Foster (Natalie Portman).

The crash rendered him without his magical hammer named Mjolnir (what IS it with all the convoluted names, too? They’re hard to understand, which only adds to the emotional coldness of the film) It’s key that Thor regain control of it if he’s going to save Earth from destruction by the Frozen Giants and forces unleashed by his own ruthless brother Loki, who learns some dark secrets about his own origin.

Thor is a pretty buff dude with a six-pack that could draw stares from The Situation of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” so Jane is instantly interested in the guy for more than his mysterious entrance. It’s in these scenes in small-town New Mexico that “Thor” has its most purely enjoyable moments, as the Nordic god experiences some fish out of water moments that inspire some hilarious comments.

But as the bad forces of Loki and the Frozen Giants come to a head and threaten Earth with a giant metallic, fire-shooting creature, the fact that this movie’s Earth locations are all in a desert town just makes things seem rather unimpressive. It’s hard to fear for the fate of all humanity when you’re only seeing a couple hundred rednecks leaping into pickup trucks to get out of the way of a single alien warrior that looks barely advanced over the aliens from 1950s sci-fi movies.

It’s also hard to buy into the idea that Thor and Jane have some fantastic romance when they basically hang out for a couple of days. This isn’t the long-burning passion that Peter Parker harbored for Mary Jane in “Spiderman,” or the magical love of Superman and Lois Lane. It’s two cute people who are kind of nice and basically have a case of the hots for each other – not a dramatic enough angle to sweep us up, with neither Hemsworth nor this year’s Best Actress winner Portman showing much range either.

The movie does have a humongous budget, but most of it is spent in the confusing, overdone battles between Asgard and the Frozen Giants in their otherworldly realm. Director Kenneth Branagh, who has spent half his career making Shakespeare movies including a four-hour version of “Hamlet,” is an odd choice for a superhero flick that’s lacking in Shakespearean emotions.

If only he could have brought any emotion at all to this film, “Thor” might have been a classic on the order of “Iron Man.” But if Marvel Films, the company behind “Thor”, doesn’t dig deeper in the rest of its planned bevy of superhero films, they’re going to run the risk of seeming all too ordinary rather than awe-inspiring.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the oldest son of the Norse god king Odin (Anthony Hopkins), is slated to take his father’s throne and reign in the heavenly kingdom of Asgard. But a long peace treaty with the defeated frost giants of Jotunheim is beginning to waiver, in large part due to Thor’s recklessness. To maintain the peace, Odin is forced to banish his obstinate and warmongering son to earth. Meanwhile, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s younger brother, begins positioning himself to take Asgard as his own. 

On earth, the banished Thor, with the help of the beautiful scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), must learn self-control and self-sacrifice, or lose his inheritance – and life – to his treacherous brother. 

This action-packed special effects ride boasts a strong cast and seasoned director. Kenneth Branagh is in the director’s seat, though it is far from his typical Shakespearean fare. He creates a visually stunning Asgard, combining the scientific sensibilities of medieval and renaissance Europe with hardened Norse style and modern theories on black holes. It gives Asgard a chiseled beauty, and creates a unique, believable realm for the gods. It’s good that so much time was spent on the details here, since most of the film takes place in Asgard, not on earth. The scenes in New Mexico are tiny in comparison, with a lonely western town and a make-shift S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) laboratory serving as the only real world settings in the film. Indeed, the film’s grandeur is only realized in its special effects. 

Hemsworth is a great Thor, arrogant and comically oblivious of earth’s customs. Hiddleston skillfully captures both the confused, timidly scheming early Loki and the fully-realized nemesis that he becomes, and Hopkins, as usual, nails his role. Some of the other Norse supporters in Thor’s troop of friends are a bit cliché and goofy, but it’s less their fault than the writers’, and Portman’s research partners Stellan Skarsgård and Kat Dennings are both great. In addition, Stan Lee and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye make sweet cameos. 

“Thor” is one of the most fantastic superheros. While others have some sort of scientific basis – they are brilliant inventors like Iron Man, genetic mutations like Wolverine or the product of science gone awry like Spider-Man – Thor, a god, is the intersection of science, magic and even a bit of spiritual force. As he says, “I come from a place where [science and magic] are one and the same.” But let’s face it, there’s a lot more magic, and that means viewers must suspend belief to a greater extent than in other films. Additionally, as the future king of the gods, Thor’s strength and skill are basically unmatched in Asgard, so while Loki’s trickery make him a formidable opponent, it’s clear that Thor is the stronger of the two. This means any climactic battle scenes have mostly predictable outcomes, though screenwriters Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne have found a way to deliver a surprise ending, and should be commended for it. But as a god among men, this challenge is sure to rise again in “The Avengers.” Joss Whedon will head that production though, and as a long-time fan of his work, I’m confident the challenge will be met and conquered.

—–

Knowing the “Captain America” trailer had been released last night, I headed over to YouTube to look for it, found this, and thought “Wow, this looks fantastic.” Then I thought, “Wait, isn’t that the guy from ‘Dances With Smurfs?’” — which saved me from looking like a total idiot.

As far as the actual trailer, sorry but when one of the first statements out of a director’s mouth on any project, much less a project titled “Captain America,” is…

“He wants to serve his country, but he’s not this sort of jingoistic American flag-waver,” [director Joe]Johnston said. “He’s just a good person. … “Yeah and it’s also the idea that this is not about America so much as it is about the spirit of doing the right thing,” the director said. “It’s an international cast and an international story. It’s about what makes America great and what make the rest of the world great too.”

…it has something of a dampening effect on my enthusiasm. The goodwill necessary to boost my excitement just ain’t what it was when the project was announced. Could be worse, though. Johnston could’ve made the Tea Party the villain.

Anyway…

—–

I feel better.

Thanks to political correctness, ours is a rough day for masculinity. Strong men are painted as tyrants, heroic men as ego-centrists, and moral standard bearers as bigots, or worse. This is particularly true in Hollywood, where a purposeful revisionism toward manhood has been under way for decades.

—–

Not surprisingly, big screen super heroes and mythic figures of valor – male figures – have been among the hardest hit by this revisionism. As a result, the mighty have learned to cry, the powerful to admit vulnerability, and the brave to second-guess themselves, all in an effort to win over the effeminized masses. And this is what makes the screenplay for the upcoming feature film, “THOR,” so wonderful: not because it carries on the ridiculous revisionism, but because it shatters it with a hammer blow from Thor himself.

Through its clear portrayal of an unapologetically strong male who comes to the rescue of female characters, risks his life in the defense of right and wrong, and loves his world (his realm) in an undying fashion, “THOR” promises to revitalize masculinity in 2011 the way “The Expendables” did in 2010.

Early in the screenplay we see Thor as a young man, and a citizen of the realm of Asgard, about to be crowned king of that realm by his father, Odin, who had been King of Asgard for some time. In that moment of passage, Odin’s words to Thor set the tone for the rest of the film — a speech about how responsibility, duty, and honor” are central to the charge Odin gives Thor, and as the screenplay unfolds, they are central to all that Thor does.

Yes, there are moments when a young Thor demonstrates the brashness of youth and launches attacks against other realms (particularly Jotunheim) that threaten the peace of which his father spoke. (Yet even in attacking another realm Thor never seeks his own glory but the defense of his people.)  Nevertheless, Thor’s father banishes him to earth for having “betrayed the throne” via his brash attack on Jotunheim, and in casting him to earth strips Thor of both his immortality and the powers that attended that immortality.

Once banished, Thor’s mortality is represented by the fact that he and his famous hammer are separated. From there the rest of the screenplay is ultimately the outworking of Thor doing what he must to recover his hammer, and thereby his powers. The catch is that the hammer can only be lifted by “one who is worthy.”

While on earth, Thor is befriended by a group of scientists, among which is Jane Foster: a female who never becomes a romantic love interest yet who loves Thor nonetheless (and by the end of the screenplay is loved by him in return). It is for Jane that Thor risks his mortal life more than once, and in risking himself learns what “responsibility, duty, [and] honor” really mean.

Moreover, through these risks Thor unknowingly proves himself worthy to lift the hammer once more.

As the screenplay approaches its final, climatic pages, Thor learns that his hammer had fallen to earth when he had fallen from Asgard. Thus he determines to retrieve it.

If the screenplay remains as it is, suffice it to say that Thor’s efforts to retrieve the hammer will provide movie goers with an excellent display of things like focused aggression, righteous indignation, and a proper use of one’s fists: for these things are all on display in Thor’s character, as he uses brute force, cunning, and unbending determination to break through a small army of men who are dedicated to keeping him from the hammer.

I will neither tell you that he reaches the hammer nor that he doesn’t: Nor will I provide the details of the many battles he wages along the way.

What I will tell you is that “THOR,” as presently scripted, promises to hit us the way “Rocky” hit us in 1976. In other words, it could be a movie that men who shun political correctness will enjoy for generations to come.

Apparently, Hollywood thinks a character called “Captain America” is too gauche for foreigners to handle. And so he’s to go nameless in such places as Russia, Ukraine, and South Korea. Once again, Hollywood shows that it’s ashamed of America, its traditions, and culture.

This film already raised eyebrows for patriots when the director said that his Captain America wouldn’t be that into America.  Last July, director Joe Johnston claimed that the Captain America in his film would not be a “jingoistic American flag-waver.” Johnston’s anti-American sentiment foreshadows the dropping of the character’s name from the title for overseas distribution.

I’d dare say that the new costume they designed for the captain of that unmentionable nation was created in an effort to mute the essential American-ness of its traditional comic book design, too. Not that the uniform looks ridiculous by any means. In fact, it edges toward the practical instead of the generally outlandish nature of most comic book costumes (including the original Cappy’s costume).

But the thing is the original Captain America costume is unmistakably a replication of the U.S. flag. The costume in the new movie goes out of its way to mute that effect. Where the original comic book costuming had many stripes dancing vertically across the abs, the new one obviates the effect of the stripes part of the good old stars and stripes. Further, the new costume has various leather straps and gears fastened about it, hiding the stripe effect even more so. On top of that, the red, white, and blue colors are more muted, darker than the original, more brightly colored scheme of the Cappy uniform. The uniform is also replete with pads emulating a 1940s era football uniform effect. These pads also help mute the American-ness of the design giving the eye much more to look at than the more blatantly flag-like costume of the original Captain America.

All of this is likely done on purpose so that foreign audiences can be less “insulted” that a hero would dare wear elements of the American flag upon his person.

Of course, it’s all marketing, we understand. Just as it was marketing when the 2006 re-boot film of “Superman” dispensed with the “American way” part of the line “truth, justice, and the American way.” Just as the 2007 “G.I. Joe” initially intended to excise the fact that G.I. Joe was an American soldier until protests made them back track.

It isn’t just the movies taking artistic license with comic book characters, either. Even the comic books themselves these days are turning out a far more Politically Correct (PC) product. For instance, last year Archie Comics introduced an openly gay character to Riverdale. Also in 2010, the Captain America comic book got into the anti-American action by having an issue where Tea Partiers were presented as a danger to America. Marvel later apologized for the attack on Tea Partiers. Finally, only a month ago, DC Comics introduced a PC hero in the Batman series that is unmistakable for its effort to avoid any real interpretation of world politics by introducing a new character in France that is serving under the tutelage of the American Batman. That new character was termed the “French savior” and is a Muslim immigrant from Algeria. Despite all the riots and troubles that radical Islam is causing France, DC chose to make a Muslim the “French savior.”

Sadly, our comic book heroes have been undergoing a PC-ing for years making them less heroic and more liberal every year. This new Captain America film is just one more effort in that campaign.

First the reality. The country of France is having serious domestic problems between its immigrant Muslim community and those natural-born, European Frenchmen. Immigrants have been rampaging across the country for several years now. Clashes between police and large groups of rioting Muslim youth have wreaked havoc on the Gallic nation. Violence is all too common — it is woefully common for hundreds of cars to be lit afire in these riots and dozens of arrests to be made. It has the country split and frightened.

It has gotten so bad in France that in some parts of its cities, those parts controlled by marauding gangs of Muslim youths, whites never enter for fear of their lives. Not only that but not even police dare enter these areas. This dangerous situation does not seem anywhere near being solved. In fact, it’s just getting worse.

Now for the fantasy: enter The Batman.

DC Comics recently launched a series called “Batman Incorporated.” Essentially, Bruce Wayne (well-known as Batman’s alter ego to comics fans) is cruising the world setting up a “Batman” for major cities across the globe. These Batman figures, though, will not be vigilantes. They will be sanctioned by whatever local police force is in charge of the area in which the new Batman is operating. In the case of Detective Comics number 12 (Part one) and Batman Annual number 28 (Part two), Bruce Wayne has come to Paris, France to find a “French savior.”

The story reveals to us a cult-like group that is assassinating France’s fringe political figures. The cult’s goal is to cause unrest and riots to be led by the murdered political figure’s followers. This group hypnotizes its members to kill and then to commit suicide so that the cult cannot be discovered.

First a “popular” French union activist “with ties to the French Communist Party” is murdered. Next the leader of a “break-away Neo-Nazi Party” is killed. Then Batman discovers that a “minor diplomat” from Saudi Arabia is targeted. Batman tries to stop the assassination but is too late.

Batman turns to a man that he helped police arrest earlier in part one. When first encountered the young man was dressed in a skin-tight, black costume and sported a face mask. Batman arrested him when this man tried to involve himself in some rioting. Batman didn’t know the young masked man was actually trying to stop the riot but later learns of his good intentions. Consequently the Dark Knight decides to put this man to work to help stop the cult that is assassinating French political figures and causing riots.

In the course of this story Batman, aka Bruce Wayne, decides that this man should become the French representative of Batman Incorporated. As Wayne styles the man, he’ll be the “French savior.” He ends up calling himself Nightrunner.

So what’s wrong with all this? Only that it is completely absurd and so badly misleads people from any understanding of why riots are really going on in France that it almost qualifies as a crime itself.

You see, DC Comics has decided that the “French savior,” the French Batman is to be a Muslim immigrant. The character’s name is Bilal Asselah and he is an Algerian Sunni Muslim and an immigrant that is physically fit and adept at gymnastic sport Parkour. Apparently Batman couldn’t find any actual Frenchman to be the “French savior.”

The whole situation is a misreading of what ails France. The truth is, neither communist Union members nor “Neo-Nazi” Parties are causing riots in France. Muslims are. Yet DC Comics is absurdly making a Muslim immigrant the “French savior”? This is PCism at its worst. Not only that but it is pretty condescending to France, too. France is a proud nation. Yet DC Comics has made a foreigner the “French savior.” This will not sit well with many Frenchmen, for sure. Nor should it.

As DC told the tale of this character’s origin, it badly downplays the seriousness of the actual racial tension in France. In essence, all you get from the story is that “they hate us, and we hate them.” There is no attempt at all to explain the real underlying problem. The true cause of the riots and violence between Frenchmen of European stock and that of immigrant Muslim stock is glossed over as if it doesn’t even exist. DC Comics makes the whole problem as simplistic as mere racism as if that is all there is to it ignoring the fact that Islam is the single most important factor in the strife.

Unfortunately, readers of Batman will not be helped to understand what troubles are really besetting France. In this age when Muslim youths are terrorizing the entire country, heck in this age of international Muslim terrorism assaulting the whole world, Batman’s readers will be confused by what is really going on in the world. Through it all DC makes a Muslim in France a hero when French Muslims are at the center of some of the worst violence in the country’s recent memory.

But it isn’t surprising for DC, a comic book company that has a character whose creator based it on “corporate greed.” Nor is it surprising in an industry where tea party members are made the enemy of super heroes. For the character based on “corporate greed” look up DC’s Larfleeze character and see the Marvel comic Captain America issue 602 where The Captain makes Tea Partiers into an enemy to America (Marvel later apologized). For that matter, check out the words of the director of the new 2011 Captain America movie who said that his Captain America won’t be a big “flag waver.” Imagine that. Captain America not being that into America.

These few examples aren’t the only ones, either. Among many other instances, last April the venerable Archie Comics announced they were adding a gay character and back in 2007 movie makers announced that they intended to remove all mentions of the U.S. military from G.I. Joe (they later relented to a degree).

It all adds up to a PCing of the American comic book industry that has been going on for far too long.

So here are my solutions. They have their own flaws, to be sure, but at their core they are designed to make the industry operate more efficiently and improve profitability. 

Let’s start with feature films. There is no question that the expensive blockbusters have a place in Hollywood. Big expenditures, big production values, big marketing campaigns. These massive undertakings attract big audiences and generate big revenues. Now, I could argue that there is enormous waste of capital in these endeavors, but the truth is that the studios already know this. The problem is that there are so many people that they must keep happy that nickel-and-diming these productions just won’t make much difference. Studios pay big directors and big production people the big bucks because they have the experience and stamina to manage these behemoths.

So let’s just leave these babies alone – particularly since Hollywood has caught on to the power of making movies based on pre-branded material.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you can market a property to people already familiar with the brand, you’ll have less work to do.  Hell, they finally figured out how to make a movie out of the game “Monopoly” – something I pitched when the project was at Carolco some 15 years ago.  Disney made the smartest acquisition move I’ve seen in years when it bought Marvel.  Not only did they get the material Marvel has already produced and has in the pipeline, they get a set of world-class producers such as Kevin Feige.  Marvel understands its universe and its audience.   Even the worst-performing of their movies makes money.

No, I’m talking about everything else. The entire system is a mess from an operational standpoint. We have to take the whole thing apart and redesign it. From Part 1, we learned that a piece of material has to go through multiple gatekeepers before it gets produced. Thousands of writers submit material to hundreds of agents, who filter the material to dozens of producers, who each have 40 projects they are developing, while trying to convince tens of executives to consider these projects, resulting in several dozen movies getting made each year.

Wasted productivity abounds. Enormous amounts of time are sucked up reading material, most of which doesn’t have a chance of being made. Even more time is used during “meet and greets” in which an executive who has liked a writer’s work will meet said writer at executive’s office and talk about how much they both love movies, each trying to impress the other and, if both are single, sussing out the odds of nooky. Then the writer gets sent off to come up with a pitch for something the executive wants to see made into a movie, and 98% of that effort goes unrewarded (excepting nooky scenarios). Throw in the amount of time everyone spends fighting traffic to go to lunch meetings or meetings at other studios, and the dollar value of this wasted productivity, if converted to cash, would provide every American with free health care forever.

And don’t tell me this filtering system works. Most films stink and most films lose money – a lot of money. It’s the blockbusters and occasional sleepers that generate Hollywood profits.

Here’s how I propose fixing this dysfunctional system.

The first thing that must happen is a complete overhaul of management-labor relations. Take a look at Southwest Airlines.  The company’s founder, Herb Kelleher, knew that if he made his employees feel like partners, he’d avoid the labor issues all the airlines had.  So while we’ve heard all about labor actions at the other airlines, have you ever heard about a Southwest strike?   Never.  And guess what?  79% of them are unionized.  This is a direct result of Southwest’s attitude towards employees.  A happy employee performs above and beyond expectations. That translates into a better product.

Hollywood has to transform its antagonistic employees into partners.  How?

As mentioned in my earlier articles, the fear inherent in the system results in the hiring of expensive talent in order to hedge bureaucrats against the loss of their job. So while there are talented “A-list” people worth every penny they are paid, it leaves a sizable talent pool underemployed. I call this pool the Bridesmaids (or Bridesgrooms, as the case may be). The Bridesmaids have the following in common: 1) Exceptional and proven talent, 2) Never had a movie produced or TV pilot go to series, 3) Stay in the game because they are so close to having a movie or series produced, 4) Are paid well, 5) Are consummate professionals and great team members.

There are dozens of these Bridesmaids.

The other pool is the Journeymen (or Journeywomen, see above parenthetical). They share all the traits of the Bridesmaids, but they haven’t yet had a shot at a pilot, have sold a pitch here and there, and have a modest rewriting or TV series staff career going. They are highly reliable, work quickly, and are hungry in a big way for the big dream.

The studios need to return to the system in place in the mid 20th-century with these pools of talent as their cornerstones. Hire anywhere between 50 and 100 Bridesmaid and Journeymen screenwriters. Filter out those that specialize in self-indulgent personal crap. Find the people who can deliver. Throw in a dozen young new talents with original voices. Keep the truly best A-list writers. Give them each an office in a central location, where they can all mingle, bounce ideas off of each other, bitch, moan, and do what they do best – create.

Give them weekend retreats at a nice resort with the marketing department. Educate the writers on how marketing works. Yes, we know success is random, but marketing is a mélange of science and art and when it works, it really works. Bring the writer into the process.

Oh, and pay those writers. Pay them well by American standards: $150,000 per year, plus WGA benefits, increases per inflation rate. If the film they wrote gets made, a bonus equal to 2% of the production budget. And 1% of gross box office. Yep, you heard me. A gross point (I can hear the screaming in the corridors of power now).  Why? Two reasons:

1) The total amount of money spent under this scenario will be a fraction of what is currently spent under the broken system.
2) It changes what is currently a highly antagonistic employer-employee relationship into a partnership. Everyone’s interests are aligned.

Yeah, I’m a writer, so I’m biased.  But that doesn’t invalidate the argument. Right now, most writers live in a world of hope. They waste productivity. Writers are regularly subjected to free rewrites, exacerbating their generalized rage disorders. The chances of a movie getting made are minuscule, writers know this, so they’re really only interested in getting paid out on their project. Total dollars earned are not reflective of total effort exerted.

Next, the studios choose what movies they want to make. They set up the parameters. The studio bigwigs are being paid a lot of money. With great salary must come great responsibility.  They want a thriller? Choose a writer and have him write a friggin’ thriller. Don’t waste time hearing a pitch. Make a decision.  The writer’s an employee.  He gets it. Let him write something cool.  If he doesn’t deliver, pass the project off to another writer to rewrite or kill it.

Can you imagine the levels of productivity a studio would see if a writer is handed a project that the studio has already approved of, that has a higher chance of being produced than under the current system, with a massive life-changing back-end as the carrot?

Wow.

I’ve also just saved the industry hundreds of millions of dollars since there will never again be a labor action, because any writer who complains about this level of treatment has bigger problems than anyone can ever solve. The directors never strike, and SAG/AFTRA is such a cluster f**k that they couldn’t even mount a strike if they wanted to.



Moving on:  When the studio is happy with a script, THEN a producer comes in. The studio selects the producer who is the best fit based on their prior experience. Producer doesn’t like the project? They can’t find the emotional connection to the material? It’s not something they want to do? Then they should pass. They shouldn’t fear being cut out of the system. They’ve been selected because of their past experience. They can take on another project. In the meantime, they are free to develop projects on their own with any writer they wish. Studios can provide various producers a modest discretionary development fund. Not too much. Enough to handle 4 or 5 scripts at a time. That forces the producer to concentrate on the material they love, enhancing their productivity.

Finally, allocate a minimum of fifteen percent of each year’s budgets to new producers, new writers, and new film-makers. You can’t innovate without new blood.

This system also eliminates 90% of the bureaucracy. Executives have been given impossible jobs that provide little room for advancement.  Now I’ve seen people advance, but it’s about as frequent as the screenwriter who gets a movie made.  Their job isn’t about getting movies made.  Their job is about keeping the job.  Who wants that kind of job? 

This is not to diss the execs.   Many of them are intelligent, highly capable, and enjoy movies.  The very best can, and should, become producers.  I believe that those that have talent can, and should, be allowed to utilize that talent in a way that allows something tangible to be created.  That way, their skills are put to tangible use, instead of them being wasted in a bureaucracy.

Next time: Fixing Television.

As the greenies would say, that’s unsustainable. Comic books used to be common. If you went in any kids house in the 50s or early 60s you would probably find some. Not so much anymore. Comics once sold everywhere magazines were sold. You could buy them in drug stores, supermarkets, seven-elevens, newsstands, even some liquor stores. But the so called “newsstand market” was a hostile place to comics publishers, and a shrinking one.

These days, it’s hard to find comics anywhere outside of the comic book store. That means that comics have become a “destination product.” It’s something you need to know where it’s sold, you have to physically go there and if you’re lucky, they might have what you’re looking for. However, most comics retailers order to sell out. So the odds are, you may be unlucky if you don’t come on “comics day,” the day the books come in from the distributor.

And that’s another problem with comics these days. There is only one distributor. When I got in the business in the mid 80s, there were around ten distributors. But over the years they all went under leaving Diamond Comics as the sole place publishers can distribute through to the “Direct Market,” as we call it. It’s like government run health care, if there’s only one place to go for your needs, you have to like their terms.

To complicate matters, the stresses of running a comics distributor in this economy has hurt the last remaining company. They have had their share of layoffs and warehouse closings. If that wasn’t scary enough for comics pros, Marvel just got bought by Disney, DC just reorganized under Warner Brothers, and long time publisher Paul Levitz was moved out. There is now a Hollywood person running DC. The future of the direct market may be uncertain at this point.

Marvel and DC are what we call the “Big Two.” They are the largest and oldest publishers in the business. They drive the industry. If they decided to pull out of the direct market for some reason, they would effectively be turning out the lights on the rest of the publishers. There are many other comics publishers, but they can’t live on the book store market alone.

This situation is reminiscent of the industry in the late 70s. Newsstand distribution for comics was dying off and Marvel and DC were on the ropes. DC was looking to go to reprint material. No new stories. But a couple things happened that saved comics at that point, the birth of the “direct market” and the success of “Superman: The Movie,” and a few years later, the movie “Batman.” These re-energized the business in a big way which lead to a new boom in the early 90s.

Besides distribution, the other problem with comics now is the cost. You used to easily be able to sample new comics because they were so cheap. Now, if you can find them, they cost so much it’s hard for the average person to give a new book a try. That makes it extremely hard for new books to make it. And the industry needs to ideas. It can’t rely purely on old characters to keep going.

Enter the digital age. When music downloading became popular, fans started scanning comic book pages and uploading whole comics series online to torrent sites. In Japan, they started making comics (aka manga) available for download on your cell phone. And many comics started to run exclusively on the Internet. Marvel even started making their books available on the web by subscription to the service.

Print is dying, not just for newspapers and magazines. The cost of printing and paper, the problems with accounting for sales and waste in the newsstand business is what made it unviable for comics. Newspapers, magazines and books have been feeling the pinch for years. But the digital age is showing them a new path to future growth.

Digital book readers like Amazon’s Kindle started to grow in popularity. Sony’s Reader looked to be a threat, but now Apple’s rumored tablet PC may become the iPod for readable media.

Tablet PCs will be the future of the personal computer, being lighter than laptops, having touch screen interfaces, it will be like having a notepad you can take anywhere and work on. Except it will have Internet access, it’ll be a computer and you’ll be able to use it to read any book or comic. You can read in bed, on the beach, the toilet, everywhere you can take a book or magazine.

According to the Chicago Sun Times, major publishers may even be working with a software company to bring comics to that medium. And this can be a game changer.

Like iTunes was to music, electronic publishing on a tablet PC will be much more appealing than reading a comic on a computer monitor. With a tablet PC, you aren’t stuck to your desk or a heavy laptop. The tablet PCs will be as light as a book. Lighter even.

But even better, the two strikes against current comics will be removed. They will no longer be “destination products.” You will be able to get them anywhere, download them from the net right onto your tablet. And they will no longer be cost prohibitive. You might even see the return of the 25 cent comic. Imagine that.

Books, magazines and newspapers will more than likely follow suit.

And the tablet won’t be the only place you can get your comics. Marvel has just signed a deal with a company called Panelfly to bring comics to the iPhone. Expect to see the software or a competitor migrate to Google’s Android, as that open source platform will become more ubiquitous than Apple’s.

So if the “big two” decide to bail on the direct market (which we all hope they don’t), there are still plenty of places comics can go to survive. If anything, the future of comics looks bright if they can escape the shackles of print media.

For traditionalists who like the old printed form, there will always be collected trades. Those are increasingly available in book stores which is the other place comics have migrated to.

The characters we now recognize as super-heroes crystallized with the debut of Superman in 1938. Representative of the American experience, Superman was the ultimate immigrant. Not merely from another country, the Man of Steel came from a whole different planet! With his success, publishers released a myriad of titles featuring crime-fighting patriotic adventurers who all fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” That included those who were born on an all-female island (the star-spangled Wonder Woman), from Atlantis (the Sub-Mariner), robots (the Human Torch) or even dead people (the Spectre and Kid Eternity)! Gaining super powers even reformed criminals as in Plastic Man’s case. 

America hadn’t yet entered World War II and super-heroes were already bashing Nazis. There were no isolationists in comics and when the Japanese attacked America the characters leapt into the fray, punishing Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini on seemingly endless covers. Individual comic titles sold in the millions and were read by all demographics. This era of comics was rightly dubbed the Golden Age. 

Super-heroes were the epitome of American Exceptionalism; there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do. In contrast, European fiction was rife with super-criminals, from Fantômas and Dr. Mabuse, on to comics with killer protagonists, most notably Diabolik. Murderers like Kriminal, Satanik, Killing and Fatalik followed. This could be due to the fact that after centuries of strife, as well as being on the losing end of two world wars, their culture was not as optimistic as the United States. 

Sales of super hero comics peaked after the war and many publishers transitioned to other genres like teen humor, funny animals and most ominously, crime and horror. 

Psychologists and social critics looking to explain the rise of juvenile delinquency latched onto the lurid content of comic books. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who had defended cannibals and child rapists in court, wrote the book Seduction of the Innocent, which posited that comics, especially of the crime and horror ilk, caused kids to go bad. He accused super-heroes of sado-masochism and defined the innocuous relationship of Batman and Robin as homosexual. 

This lead to the infamous United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954, ultimately chaired by the coonskin cap wearing Senator Estes Kefauver (D-TN). The bad publicity led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority by a cadre of comic publishers to self-censor their titles, similar to what the Hays Code did with films earlier in Hollywood. 

The net result was that comic book content was lobotomized and the medium limited to children and adults with arrested development. Super-heroes had mostly left the scene except for the triumvirate of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman… and their adventures were rendered mundane under the Code. 

The genre was revitalized in the late 1950s when DC Comics revamped its older characters for a new generation. Neoteric versions of the Flash, Green Lantern and more were introduced and, noting their popularity, Marvel Comics launched a new batch of characters in the early 1960s. They had the significant characteristic of “heroes with problems…” Spider-Man couldn’t get a date, Iron Man had heart problems and the Fantastic Four were bickering with each other. 

This appealed to eggheads and college students who preferred Marvel to the staid and conservative (read “square”) heroes at DC and Marvel started receiving positive press in magazines from Esquire to Rolling Stone. Marvel writer/editor Stan Lee got a lot of credit for the success, but it can’t be denied that the innovative and dynamic artwork of Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby is what primarily dragged readers into the “Marvel Universe.” 

Comic sales were atrophying in the 1960s with the Batman comic almost cancelled until the premiere of his groundbreaking TV series. Batmania hit the world and comic sales rose to 1940s levels with every publisher doing super-heroes again though sales soon dropped off again. 

The first generation of comic fans soon became professionals, aping Stan Lee’s work without his context and adding their own political and psychological attitudes. “Social relevance” was the rage, and while award winning and noted in The New York Times, these new themes did not translate to new sales. During this period, Green Arrow’s sidekick was revealed to be a heroin addict, vigilante heroes became killers and Iron Man was ultimately revealed to be an alcoholic.

Next: The Fall of the Super-Hero