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To Be Continued #2 – Introducing the author and his comic book resume, as fan and creator

April 8th, 2013 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

TO BE CONTINUED… was Dwayne’s weekly opinion column on the comic book industry, hosted by Psycomics.com from October 1999-February 2000. Pasted below was his second column, “Introducing the author and his comic book resume, as fan and creator.” Read on-

To Be Continued #2

I was at the corner store with my Dad. I’ve never liked candy but he was determined to get me something. He picked out a SUGAR AND SPIKE comic book. I don’t remember ever seeing a comic book before then, much less showing any interest in one. But as long as Dad was offering, I decided I prefered ADVENTURE COMICS, featuring the Legion of Super Heroes. My reasoning, as I recall, was that it contained more superheroes and therefore was a better value (in addition to which, the big fat guy who bounced like a ball seemed… intriguing). Anyway, Dad buckled under the pressure and bought both. By the time we got back to the car, I was hooked for life. And that’s when I fell in love with comic books.

I learned to read from comics. I learned to dream.

I imagined that babies could talk to each other, that men could fly. That good does triumph, inevitably, over evil.

When I got older, I wanted to be Spider-Man, because all the other kids thought he was a geek, too. Then I wanted to be the Black Panther, who possessed a dignity and strength that I wished were mine.

Comics took me to places that never existed and made me believe in things that could never be true.

But should have been.

Most of my old comics are landfill now. Although to be fair, Mom did warn me she’d toss them if I didn’t clean up my room that very moment. But it doesn’t really matter that I lost them because I remember. Those dreams will always be with me.

And then I got a chance to share my own dreams. Thanks to Greg Wright, I got a chance to pitch some SOLO AVENGERS stories to Marvel Comics. A few weeks later, I created and wrote DAMAGE CONTROL, a sit-com set in the Marvel Universe about an engineering firm who cleaned up the debris left behind after all those senses-shattering battles. A little later, I joined Marvel’s staff as an assistant editor to Bob Budianski. I worked on Movie tie-ins, Marvel Press Posters, trading cards, toys, licensing guides -pretty much anything that wasn’t a regular monthly comic. While I was there, I continued to freelance as a writer, turning in scripts for SHE-HULK, IRON MAN, DOUBLE DRAGON, AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT, MARVEL SUPER HEROES, POWER PACK, GIANT MAN, ST. GEORGE, HELLRAISER, CAPTAIN MARVEL, WHAT IF?, WEST COAST AVENGERS and several SPIDER-MAN “custom comics,” (you know, like SPIDER-MAN AND WHITNEY HOUSTON FOR UNICEF). I also got to write my personal favorite, DEATHLOK.

After leaving staff, I kept working doing freelance for Marvel but I also branched out to do work for other companies. I wrote PRINCE and THE DEMON for DC Comics; MONSTER IN MY POCKET, BACK TO THE FUTURE (where the movie’s screenwriter, Bob Gale had the annoying habit of correctly pointing out which of my jokes were lame) and ULTRAMAN for Harvey Comics; and SOLAR, THE TICK and X-O MANOWAR for Valliant/Acclaim. In-between, I wrote and edited comics for several other companies, too.

I’m probably best known for teaming up with Denys Cowan, Derek Dingle and Michael Davis to form our company, Milestone Media, Inc. I served as Editor-In-Chief and created or co-created ICON, HARDWARE, STATIC, BLOOD SYNDICATE, XOMBI, SHADOW CABINET, DEATH WISH, WISE SON, HEROES and the rest of the Dakota Universe for Milestone. Milestone was an attempt to have greater creative control over our work and to increase the number of minority characters and creators in the field. These goals were widely, and sometimes willfully, misunderstood. I’m sure I’ll talk about this some more in future columns. For now, I want to focus on the pleasant side of it all. Over the course of Milestone Comics’ four-year run, I was privileged to work with dozens of terrific creators, making some damn fine comics. With any luck, we’ll see those characters again one day. As rough a run as it was for me personally, I’m still in love with comics and making them for Milestone is still the most fun I’ve had in my entire professional life.

Almost as much fun as reading SUGAR AND SPIKE.

***

I guess the point of all that was to demonstrate that when I talk about comics, I can speak from any of a number of different perspectives. I’ve been a fan, who couldn’t understand why the companies were doing such awful things to my favorite titles. I’ve been a writer, who was sure that my editor was screwing up my work on purpose, simply to torture me. I’ve been an editor, frustrated by the unreasonable and incomprehensible demands of my publisher on one side, and the petulant refusal by my creative team to do anything I asked them to do, ever, on the other. I’ve been a publisher, trying to make payroll while wondering why my editors seem determined to run stories that drive away advertisers, while refusing to take the very sensible action of doing a company-wide crossover every month. Whichever hat I’m wearing at any given moment, I think the other three guys are the worst possible combination of insane and incompetent. It’s probably not that simple. On the other hand, I’ve been wrong before. We’ll talk it over in the weeks and months to come.

***

Next time, I’m going to tell you about an endless summer, blacks in comics, the Incredible Hulk vs. the Mighty Thor, a trip to the “good comic store” and most importantly of all, how Don McGregor’s BLACK PANTHER changed my life. Until then, this is TO BE CONTINUED…

Dwayne McDuffie, creator of DAMAGE CONTROL, ICON, XOMBI and STATIC, has gone to comic stores hundreds of times since that first one but he never again brought home so much good reading for a quarter. Or bought gum for his cousin Raynard with the change from the quarter.

Essay: “Catching Lightning in a Bottle (and Other Moral Victories)”

February 4th, 2013 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

Dwayne wrote this, explaining-

“Catching Lightning in a Bottle” is both an introduction to the STATIC SHOCK: TRIAL BY FIRE compilation, it also sort of serves as a FAQ about the origins of the chracter.


Catching Lightning in a Bottle (and Other Moral Victories)

If you’re a STATIC fan from back in the day, it’s good to see you again. I know we’ve got a lot of catching up to do but first I want to welcome our new readers, who probably only know about Static from the TV show. I’m going to take a moment and bring them up to speed. I know, I know but we’ve waited over three years for this moment, what’s another few hundred words? Just bear with me, won’t you?

I have a good friend who is fond of repeating the aphorism, “moral victories don’t count.” I couldn’t disagree more, not only do they count but in the long run, they’re the only kind that matter. Case in point: Milestone Comics. In 1992, I joined forces with three extraordinary men, together we set out to change the face of the comic book industry. This proved to be somewhat more difficult than we had anticipated.

Although Milestone’s sales were always respectable, we never set the world on fire. Our books lacked the speculator heat and collectable foil covers that drove the market in those days. Moreover a small but vocal group of people, including some readers, retailers and fellow professionals, found our very existence suspect. All sorts of bizarre, even sinister, motives were attributed to us. We battled against those impressions when we had the time but mostly we kept our eye on the ball. We figured our product would speak for itself, if we got it out there. So we did, every month for five years. Good comics, exactly the way we wanted to do them. Moral victory, folks.

Milestone’s story is an adventure worthy of any of our heroes. Against enormous odds we set out to accomplish something both unprecedented and important. The results were 250 comics that respected our readers’ intelligence, from a company dedicated to the idea that if you want fresh water, you have to draw from new wells. STATIC is character-driven, exciting, inventive and above all fun, as good an example of our values as one could choose. It’s a particularly fitting standard-bearer for what we hope will be Milestone’s 21st century renaissance. With the rebirth of STATIC as STATIC SHOCK!, the adventure continues.

STATIC SHOCK!: TRIAL BY FIRE is the long-overdue collection of the first four issues of the late, lamented STATIC monthly comic, created by Milestone and distributed by our long-time partners at DC Comics. In my years as Milestone’s Editor-In-Chief, I’ve made my share of mistakes, ask anybody. But on occasion, I’ve also shown flashes of inexplicable brilliance. STATIC was the occasion for a number of such flashes. I had already written the series bible (which included beautiful character designs by co-creator Denys Cowan) as well as Static’s origin story arc for the first four issues when I belatedly realized that there was no way I could write four books a month (I was already writing HARDWARE and ICON and co-writing BLOOD SYNDICATE) while simultaneously learning how to run a comic book company. I needed help. That’s when I had my first really good idea.

I’ve known Robert L. Washington III since he was about eight years old. Even as a child he was one of the most brilliantly creative people I’d ever met. I’d caught up with Bob again after he grew up and moved to New York. Only a couple years earlier, I’d introduced him around at Marvel Comics. He’d had a couple of nibbles but hadn’t yet landed a major assignment. All the better for me.

Bob took my outline and ran with it, adding his own totally unique spin to STATIC. In addition to frequently topping my one-liners with better ones, he reworked our villain Hotstreak (you probably know him as F-Stop), adding the very cool gimmick that Static deduces in issue #2. He created Tarmack out of whole cloth. He replaced Static’s brother with two sisters (the second sister seems to have gone the way of Richie Cunningham’s big brother on HAPPY DAYS). He gifted Virgil with his own encyclopedic knowledge of comics, sci-fi, gaming and other fan-boy ephemera. And when I told him that I wanted this series to be as much about Virgil and his friends as about Static and his adventures, Bob made me watch about 18 hours of DIGRASSI JR. HIGH. Much cribbing ensued.

After co-scripting the story you’re about to read, I left STATIC in Bob’s obscenely talented hands. If this collection does well, perhaps future volumes will collect Bob’s solo work on this title. I know I’m not alone in my desire to see it all in print.

My second really good idea was listening to my old Milestone partner Michael Davis, who brought to my attention an incredible young artist named John Paul Leon. These days, John is best known as the artist of Alex Ross’ EARTH-X. Back then, all he had was a portfolio full of Xeroxed samples. Really good Xeroxed samples.

I’m told that John doesn’t like to look at his early work anymore. While I’ll stipulate that his talent has grown tremendously since 1993, I don’t care what he says, I adore this stuff. As you will plainly see, when John drew the first four issues of STATIC, he was already a genius. He’s an expert storyteller who creates living, breathing characters. He can draw action and he can draw human drama. He can make a bad scene work and a good scene sing. Best of all, while some of his influences might be apparent, even at this early stage of his career John’s stuff doesn’t look like anyone else’s.

Before I slip a disc from patting myself on the back for all my good ideas, I should direct your attention to the rest of the STATIC team. Veteran inker Steve Mitchell helped our talented newcomer past some of the rough spots and just generally made great pages look even better. Color Editor Noelle C. Giddings hand-painted these comics, routinely achieving the kind of look usually found in top of the line graphic novels. Letterer Steve Hayne somehow found room for way too much dialog and still managed to keep it off of the art. Shawn Martinbrough pitched in with an ink job that foreshadowed his own remarkable talents. STATIC is a three time winner of Parents’ Choice Honors and also racked up 5 on-line fan awards, including two for “best new character.” Hardly surprising results from a team this good.

A final note to our new readers, if you only know Static from the show, you’ll quickly notice some differences between what you’re about to read and the Static you’re acquainted with. Don’t study on it, the differences are superficial. In every important way, this is the Static you’ve come to know and love, only more so. Consider this a hit of uncut funk.

If, after reading TRIAL BY FIRE, you find yourself craving more STATIC SHOCK! (which, of course, you will) you can watch his animated adventures every Saturday on the Kids WB! And if that’s still not enough, I’ve re-teamed with John Paul Leon for the all-new STATIC SHOCK!: REBIRTH OF THE COOL mini-series, on sale very soon. Get it wherever you bought this book.

With the continued support of fans like you, our moral victory can eventually be counted as a victory of the other kind. will our succès d’estime be reborn as a big fat commercial hit? We hope so. And you know what that would mean, right?

More new adventures.

It’s all in your hands again, folks. Enjoy.

Dwayne McDuffie
Chicago, IL
June 8, 2000

Dwayne McDuffie is the co-creator of STATIC, the Milestone Universe and Marvel Comics’ DAMAGE CONTROL. He has written several episodes of the STATIC SHOCK! animated series and continues to serve as Milestone’s Editor-In-Chief.

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Edgewise #9 – Odds and ends. Whenever I do one of these columns, you know what that means…

December 24th, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

The last of Dwayne’s Science Fiction and Fantasy column, formerly hosted at FantasticCon.com-

Edgewise #9

This week, I misdirect your attention with some odds and ends, while I desperately try to think of something new to say about STAR WARS.

***

A number of readers seem to be under the impression that the title of this column is supposed to refer to either the tone of its contents or my demeanor. Nope. I think the pop culture sense of the word “edgy” went out with the macarena and anyway, I’ve been on my very best behavior here. Edgewise refers only to me getting a word in same.

***

A paragraph was dropped from my (mostly favorable) review of THE MATRIX. The gist of it was this; no conceivable variation of the line, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” is clever. It wasn’t even clever in THE WIZARD OF OZ, where at it least had the virtue of freshness. Really, if that line is anywhere in your script? Cut it.

***

In the now-classic second installment of EDGEWISE, I inadvertently referred to the second movie in the PLANET OF THE APES series as “ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES.” Of course I meant to say “BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES.” This is the first error I’ve ever made in my entire life. Now I know how the rest of you must feel.

***

Apropos of nothing but the preceding item, John Rozum, writer of the late, lamented XOMBI and X-FILES comic books, used to refer to the seventies’ spin-off TV series as “Starsky and Hutch On The Planet Of The Apes.” It made me laugh.

***

I want to do a column about the single strangest show in TV history, LIDSVILLE but the cruel and tyrannical overlords at FANTASTICON claim this show is outside my purview. What do you guys think? It’s an action/adventure show about hats. I mean, c’mon!

***

The McDuffie Genius Grant is a cash award of one dollar American that I give solely at my own discretion to anyone who does something that I think is particularly bright. Today I’m announcing a special McDuffie Genius Grant to anyone who can figure out a plan to prevent the seemingly inevitable extinction of the comic book medium. If you can save my industry, I’ll pay you five bucks cash money from my own pocket. Serious inquiries only. And hurry, SPAWN’s under a hundred thousand copies a month, we can’t have much time left.

***

That about does me for this week, be here next time when I explain at length how STAR WARS ruined prose SF. Can THE PHANTOM EMPIRE make things any worse?

Dwayne McDuffie is the creator of DAMAGE CONTROL and the MILESTONE UNIVERSE. He once wrote a comic book where SPIDER-MAN called on the GHOST RIDER to help explain bicycle safety to children.

Edgewise #8 – More STAR TREK movies. What has the author gotten himself into?

November 12th, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

More of Dwayne’s Science Fiction and Fantasy column, formerly hosted at FantasticCon.com.

One editor’s note – I’m fairly certain Dwayne made a typo in the story below about Halle Berry. It was Star Trek VI, not V, where he had his hilariously loud encounter with Halle Berry. But that’s a story for a future blog. Back to Dwayne’s column-

Edgewise #8

As I’m writing this, THE PHANTOM MENACE is still over a week away and that means just one thing. Yes, it’s back to my seemingly endless overview of Star Trek.

I’ve previously reviewed STAR TREK, the original series (thumb’s up) and STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (thumb dislocated). Let’s whip through as many movies as we can this week, shall we?

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN

This is probably the best of the movies, although I’ll accept arguments for IV. The cast is all in fine form, everybody’s got at least one good bit and Ricardo Montalban’s Khan is the single best villain in the entire series. Let’s face it, Mr. Roarke’s got it all. He’s got the accent, he’s got the pecs, he’s got the worm that crawls in your ear and later crawls out for no adequately explained reason unless, like Paul Winfield, you shoot yourself with a phaser first (And how cool was that?). Also, everybody gets jackets and Mr. Spock dies for a while. Rent it and watch it again. It’s still good.

STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK

It’s an odd-numbered one. Nothing more need be said but why let that stop me? They find him. Big surprise. What we’re they going to do, give us all our money back afterwards? Maybe they should have anyway.

STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME

They have to go back in time to get a whale. Unlike the previous entry, this one’s funny on purpose. I laughed a lot but I still wonder what the whale said to the pissed-off cosmic thingy that came to Earth looking for its buds, the whales. “Don’t worry about it, big guy, the humans hunted us to extinction. Go home.”

STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER

This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen that didn’t have Jeff Conaway in it. On the other hand, at the premiere, big-time movie star Halle Barry mistook me for Michael Dorn (the actor who plays “Worf”). Like I was going to correct her. On second thought, it was a fine film.

STAR TREK IV: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

This should have been the last time we saw the original cast. A very strong entry, entertaining and thematically sound, it was both textually and metatextually a fitting send-off for our old friends. So of course they had to go to the well just one more time…

But my review of STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, and my fan boy scheme to ret-con it out of existence, will have to wait for a couple of weeks. Next time, I’ll talk about STAR WARS, if I can get a ticket. Two weeks hence, we’re back in the saddle with a quick pass at the rest of the STAR TREK movies and a look at STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.

Dwayne McDuffie is the creator of DAMAGE CONTROL and the MILESTONE UNIVERSE. If you know Halle Berry, please don’t tell her that was me.

Edgewise #7 – Edgewise Virtual Mailbag

October 1st, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

More of Dwayne’s Science Fiction and Fantasy column, formerly hosted at FantasticCon.com-

Edgewise #7

Okay, no goofing around this week, let’s jump right into the EDGEWISE VIRTUAL MAILBAG.

Dear EDGEWISE,

What’s all this stuff you keep writing about superintelligent brains secretly running FANTASTICON? Isn’t it just a cheesy literary device that’s long since ceased to be funny and yet continues to waste over a quarter of your meager space every week? You don’t really expect us to believe this nonsense?

-John Rozum, California

No I don’t and neither do the brains. In fact, they’re counting on it. But, you got me, they aren’t really brains. They’re extradimensional creatures whose true shape is too horrible and complex for our puny, human minds to fully grasp. Who’s got the space to describe all that every week? H.P. Lovecraft stories with less plot than a MARS ATTACKS trading card often spend thousands of words just describing the tentacles. I’m doing you a favor here, show some appreciation.

Dwayne,

How about naming some of your favorite science fiction authors?

-Ray Washington, Michigan

Well, I read almost everything, until STAR WARS and the dreaded fantasy trilogies ruined the medium. Off the top of my head, the stuff that stuck with me includes Harlan Ellison, Robert Sheckley, Robert Heinlein (with an explanation) and Robert Silverberg. Anybody named Robert, apparently. My favorite science fiction novel is Frank Herbert’s DUNE but I was 12 when I read it, which probably explains that.

Mr. McDuffie,

Reading your column, I notice you don’t seem to like much of anything. How about naming some SF TV series that you think are worth our time.

-Virgil Hawkins, Dakota.

That kind of depends on how valuable your time is, doesn’t it? Actually, I think I’m relatively easy on this crap. Here’s the stuff I’ll watch if I’m not doing something else: XENA, FUTURAMA, DEEP SPACE NINE, BUFFY, the SUPERMAN cartoon – I’m probably forgetting a bunch of things. I’m reconsidering FARSCAPE, either it got funnier or I’m just getting used to the Muppets. I also recommend COPS, which takes place on a parallel Earth where the police are always trustworthy, patient and helpful. A little over the top, even for sci-fi but what the hell.

Dear Edgewise,

Isn’t it true that all of the letters in this weeks’ column are fake, even this one?

-Dwayne McDuffie, Florida

Well, yes. I thought it would kill some space and maybe encourage my readers to send real letters. So far, I’ve only received one legit letter. Even though it was unsigned, I guess it’s only fair to print it:

Dear so-called Dwayne,

You suck!

True, but only as a physical manifestation of a deeper emotional connection. And that’s all the time we’ve got for now, see you next week.

Dwayne McDuffie has every hope that by the next time he does a Virtual Mailbag, you guys will have come through with at least two or three pieces of real mail. I mean, this was downright pathetic.

Edgewise #6 – THE MATRIX, and the death of superhero comics

August 20th, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

More of Dwayne’s Science Fiction and Fantasy column, formerly hosted at FantasticCon.com-

Edgewise #6

I don’t care what the superintelligent, disembodied brains who run FANTASTICON have to say (and FANTASTICON is not, as is rumored, merely a front for said brains plans to conquer and build military staging areas on our “primitive but strategically important planet”). I’m taking a break this week from my recent, ongoing struggle to review all of STAR TREK “before they make any more.”

I know, I’m relieved too.

WARNING: If you haven’t yet seen THE MATRIX, tread carefully, all right? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I used to write comic books for a living and if years of precipitously dropping sales weren’t enough to depress me, I had to go sit through THE MATRIX, only the most recent of a spate of “comic book movies” that’re way more enjoyable than your average actual comic book. Just shortly before the Earth finished cooling, when I was but a editor-ling at Marvel Comics, I was taught comic books’ main advantage over moving visual media was that “comics have an infinite special effects budget.” For what it’s worth, I thought our main advantage was the interplay of prose and pictures unique to the medium. The argument, such as it was, is now moot. See what happened is, the movies finally caught up to us visually. It’s pretty clear now that any image you can think up can be done on film. All I could think of, watching folks leap through the air from building to building and running up walls and swinging from ropes in front of explosions is this: This may actually look cooler than when Ditko was drawing Spider-Man. Okay, it ain’t as cool as Kirby yet but give them a couple of years. I hereby pronounce big, dumb action as a comic books’ raison d’être, dead and buried. It is now the proper province of 100 million dollar plus movies. Mainstream comics better find something else to do, before everybody’s got a DVD player.

Meanwhile, some very quick thoughts on THE MATRIX. Yes, it is very much like GHOST IN THE SHELL, but has anybody noticed how much the plot mimics the origin of Marvel Comics’ DR. STRANGE? I guess the comic-bookness of the affair shouldn’t surprise me. I know at least one of the Wichosky brothers (co-creators of THE MATRIX), wrote some damned good HELLRAISER COMICS for Marvel (Ahem, I wrote some stories in the same crossover. I’ll be expecting my 100 million dollar movie to be along presently). The most pleasant surprise, though, is that the much ballyhooed “secret of The Matrix” pays off as one of the coolest evil plans to take over the world I’ve ever seen. Go figure. On the other hand, human beings make really crappy batteries. Everybody repeat after me, the value of a battery is not how much current you can get out, it’s how efficiently it stores the energy you put in. Humans store energy only slightly more efficiently than a hot towel. Especially really skinny humans like Keanu Reeves.

Edgewise #3 – Farscape

June 18th, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

More of Dwayne’s Science Fiction and Fantasy column, formerly hosted at FantasticCon.com-

Dwayne is dead wrong about FARSCAPE

Edgewise #3

Last time I promised I’d be talking about STAR TREK but any dedicated reader of this column should know by now that I am easily distracted and seldom keep my promises. Anyway, I was only going to talk about STAR TREK to kill time. What I really wanted to do was review a contemporary genre show (in contrast to my usual habit of writing only about things that happened before you were born). So I watched X-FILES three weeks in a row (I’d never watched the show before, at least not all the way through) and mostly liked it. I was going to write about why I liked it but my Fantasticon overlords, possessed of intellect vast, cool and dispassionate, told me that my first review shouldn’t be too positive, or I’d lose the respect of my new audience. Fortunately, that’s not a problem this time.

FARSCAPE is one of a number of new series that recently debuted on cable’s Sci-Fi channel. The Sci-Fi channel, once merely a home for awful reruns of science fiction programs, has now upped the stakes considerably by co-producing awful first run science fiction programs. By this standard, FARSCAPE succeeds admirably.

Before we go on, I should introduce you to Dwayne McDuffie’s first law of enjoying science fiction and not being such a damned nerd: It doesn’t require a great deal of intelligence to prove that a Science Fiction story can’t happen. You can’t look smart doing it. You don’t.

Hence, never tell me there’s no sound in space and that I therefore shouldn’t be able to hear the spaceships whizzing by. Don’t tell me that you can shoot a bullet straight through a gas tank and it won’t blow up the car. And for God’s sake please don’t tell me you figured out how fast Warp nine is and have therefore determined that the starship VOYAGER should be home already. I mean really. Spare me. That being said, the premise of FARSCAPE was so stupid, I came very close to changing the channel to a dreaded seventh season episode of HOMICIDE (the program formerly known as “the best damned show on TV” and currently known as, “I wonder if NASH BRIDGES is any good tonight?”).

In FARSCAPE, astronaut and “his own kind of hero” John Creighton has a radical theory: If you accelerate towards a big mass, like a planet, you’ll go really fast. Apparently, gravity is related to acceleration. I’m with him so far. John tests his brilliant supposition by going up into orbit and dive-bombing the Earth in a special craft of his own construction. The experiment doesn’t end up in the way I would have expected: the creation of a big crater with a very flat spaceship at the bottom. Instead, the ship opens up a wormhole and transports our hero light-years from home, into the middle of cosmic jail break. He also accidentally kills the brother of this guy dressed like Rick Moranis in SPACEBALLS. He swears revenge. Not Rick Moranis, the other guy.

Our hero is captured by a diverse crew of alien inmates; one blue, scaly girl, who is sometimes naked; one Rasta-dred, PREDATOR-looking guy; two “cute” robots; one regular-looking space babe, for romantic interest later, I presume; and a couple of Muppets. I would have bitched about the Muppets looking all fake and whatnot but I’m giving the producers extra credit for the lack of aliens that look like humans with bones in their forehead. Despite all of this going on, other than when he gets a Babel fish stuck in his ear, our hero basically spends the entire hour in jail, waiting for something to happen. I know how he feels. Big pass on this one, folks.

Dwayne McDuffie is a founder of Milestone Media and has developed a bad habit of running long on these columns. For your information, you got 120 words for free this week

Edgewise #2 – Sci-Fi Movies on TV

May 7th, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

Dwayne’s Science Fiction and Fantasy column, hosted by FantasticCon.com-

Crappy Sci-Fi movies on TV. I like em.

Edgewise #2

Last week, I told you a little bit about myself and my relationship to SF literature. This week, I had intended to talk about old SF television, as a segue to me trashing THE X-FILES. Unfortunately, I’ve enjoyed the show each of the last three times I’ve watched. My employers, captains of the mighty starship we call FANTASTICON, have informed me that if my first review is a good one, you guys’ll lose all respect for me. So I’ll be back with a review as soon as I see something that’s suitably stinky. Shouldn’t take long, this is the science fiction beat, after all. If worse comes to worst, I’ll watch one of those Thursday Night Movies on UPN.

The first science fiction movie I can remember going to see was ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, a film about superintelligent talking apes in the future. I had a great time until the very end, when a nuclear weapon detonated, destroying the entire Earth (a pretty neat trick for the SECOND film in a five-part series). I tell you that only to tell you this: don’t take small children to see movies where the Earth blows up at the end. I didn’t get a full night’s sleep again until I saw THUNDERBALL on TV. James Bond didn’t let HIS nuke blow up. If James Bond had been in THE PLANET OF THE APES, we’d probably still have the Statue of Liberty in one piece. My point? Charlton Heston’s always been a loser.

I didn’t often get to go see SF movies, my folks had little tolerance for the genre. So I got most of my SF fix from the tube. Pickings were much slimmer than they are these days, though. So I watched anything that wasn’t on at the same time as something my dad liked; THUNDERBIRDS, a space drama starring, so help me, marionettes (worse, when the puppets picked up an object, like a glass of water, their puppet hands would temporarily be replaced by human ones; DR. WHO, a show my friends thought looked cheesy but I thought was cool; STAR TREK, a show I thought was cool but in retrospect, looks awfully cheesy, even digitally remastered; LOST IN SPACE, a show I hated but watched diligently in the hope that this week, the Robot would shoot electricity out of his claws. It didn’t happen often enough, for my taste. Usually, the bad guy would just pull the Robot’s “power pack” off of his side and the robot would slump helplessly, bereft of juice. Okay, I can see this happening once, but every week? Couldn’t they have just duct taped the battery on?

Oh, good God. I’m almost out of space again. I didn’t even get to talk about Monster Week on the 4:30 movie (always culminating on Friday with DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, quite possibly the greatest film ever made). Okay, next week I’m going to step into it good fashion. Anyone up for trashing STAR TREK?

Dwayne McDuffie is a founder of Milestone Media and has unaccountably agreed to do this column every week. This will be a lot easier if people like you write in so he can do a “Reader’s Mailbag” feature every so often, thus lessening his workload.

Edgewise #1 – Sci-Fi and a scary Libertarian fascist author

March 26th, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (Comments Off)

Another one of Dwayne’s classic essays-

EDGEWISE is my late, lamented (well, I miss the checks, anyway) Science Fiction and Fantasy column, hosted by the good folks at FantastiCon.com.

Edgewise #1 – Dwayne launches his sci-fi media column and confesses his affection for a scary Libertarian fascist author.

Edgewise #1

Welcome to the first installment of Edgewise, a regular column by yours truly, wherein I spout off profoundly about all things fantastic. Or spout off fantastically about all things profound. One things for sure: I’ll be spouting off. Our topic of discussion will be fantasy and science fiction in the media, including film, television, books and comics. Since I’m doing this on a web site, I suppose I’ll also comment on the bewildering mass of converging technologies that some folks call “new media.” So yes, the continuing adventures of Laura Croft will be addressed at some point, should I ever manage to get out of the practice room in her house. Or work the controller (Don’t give up hope; my ten-year-old nephew has promised to tutor me, in return for my arcane knowledge of long division. I have already learned how to hold the controller right side up. Stay tuned).

So who am I to be telling you what I think about Science Fiction? For one thing, I’m a fan. Ive been hooked since that day in second grade I discovered the “Heinlein shelf” of juvenile novels in my school and read them all “in order” (for some reason, these generally unrelated novels had numbers on the spine. I knew what I had to do). Even today I occasionally discover one of Heinlein’s creepy, right wing ideas, still lodged in my head, imprinted on my innocent young mind while I was only trying to find more stories about kids in space. Brrrr. But I’m okay now, a card-carrying member of the liberal media. You know about us, right? The internet is just crawling with us lefties. Anyway, shortly after my Heinlein gorge, I hit the motherlode. A friend of the family gave me a whole grocery bag full of science fiction paperbacks; Ace Doubles; novels and short story collections by Asimov, Clarke and Bradbury; A wonderful stack of Robert Sheckley; an anthology called DANGEROUS VISIONS, that we’ll come back to when I have more time; a bunch of adult Heinlein novels (including FARNAM’S FREEHOLD, a book so paranoid and racist that it would have driven me to join the Black Panther Party in retaliation, if they’d taken eight-year-olds); Hal Clement’s A MISSION OF GRAVITY; “Doc” Smith’s purple cosmic sagas; and a lot of André Norton. Can’t win ‘em all. I began a love affair with written Science Fiction that lasted until STAR WARS redefined the genre into stuff that I’ll look at in a movie theatre but certainly won’t waste my time reading.

Speaking of crap I enjoy looking at, I haven’t yet touched on the TV and film of my youth, a dark age so primitive that science fiction fans watched the Six Million Dollar Man on TV because that’s all there was! Unfortunately, I’m running long, so that’ll have to wait until next time. Also next time, I’ll talk about some stuff that came out after you were born, good stuff like BUFFY and BABYLON 5 and stuff I can’t believe they didn’t cancel already, like NIGHTMAN.

Dwayne McDuffie is a founder of Milestone Media and has written more comic books than you’ve read, unless you’re something of a social misfit. If so, that’s okay, he loves you anyway. But go outside, get some sun, meet some people. You’ll be glad you did.

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The McDuffie Genius Grant

January 30th, 2012 | Posted by Eugene Son in Columns and Essays - (0 Comments)

Dwayne wrote the weekly TO BE CONTINUED… column on the comic book industry, hosted by Psycomics.com from October 1999 through February 2000.

This is To Be Continued… #1 – introducing the column, what to expect, what’s coming up. It also is where Dwayne presented what he called “The McDuffie Genius Grant”.

Read on…

To Be Continued… #1

Well you’re here, so either you like comics as much as I do or you haven’t the slightest idea how to use a search engine. A hint for those of you in the second category: if you’re looking for Kurt Vonnegut, try searching for “comic novels,” instead of “comic books.” One last tip before you go, if you’re considering reading GALAPAGOS? Don’t bother. It’s just more evidence that anybody’s capable of a bad outing.

And speaking of bad outings, now that we’ve ditched the Lit Majors, I want to welcome the rest of you to the first installment of my column. I’m Dwayne McDuffie and this is TO BE CONTINUED…

•••

Okay, here’s the premise, “TO BE CONTINUED…” is a weekly opinion column on comic books and related topics. My opinion. Frankly, I’m biased as Hell. Hope you’re okay with that. Every week, I’ll ramble on for a thousand words or so about anything crossing my mind that I can remotely connect to comics. I’ll gush over my favorite titles and creators. I’ll discuss comic adaptations to other media (“BATMAN AND ROBIN baaad. BLADE goood”). I’ll regale you with inside stories on how comic books are created. I’ll tell tales out of school about some of the people who make comics (for starters, I’ve seen some of the biggest names in the industry, very, very drunk). I’ll talk about my personal experiences with comics, as plain old reader/fanboy, as writer, editor, publisher of my own comics and eventually, as DC Comics’ whipping post. I’ll also bitch about the state of the industry. Probably a lot. And while whining isn’t ever pretty, it can be pretty entertaining, at least when I’m doing it.

What I won’t be doing is reviews, because this site already has at least two of the best reviewers in the business. I hate not being, you know, the best there is at what I do. Besides, if I did reviews, I might have to lie to you about how much I like the work of friends of mine. Actually, even the converse can be a problem. For instance, the phenomenally talented writer/artist Ho Che Anderson is one of the biggest pricks I’ve ever met. If I reviewed his work, I might be tempted to lie to you and say it’s awful, just because he’s awful. But that would be wrong, his stuff is uniformly wonderful. I’m going to try very hard not to tell any lies in this column. Feel free to remind me I said that whenever you catch me in a whopper.

•••

While I’m being all truthful and whatnot, you should know that the only thing I like more than love or money is free stuff. I do a science fiction column on another web site and I’ve learned to my great pleasure that sometimes when I mention something, I get sent free stuff by the people who make it. I intend for that to be the case here as well (especially since I’ve unaccountably dropped off of all of the major publishers’ comp lists).

I think I’ve come up with a way to improve the whole “getting free stuff” process. Here’s the deal: If you’re a comics publisher who wants some electronic ink, e-mail me. I’ll send you an address and you can send me your books. If I like them, I’ll gush about them. Example: “Everybody should go out right now and buy Kyle (WHY I HATE SATURN) Baker’s latest graphic novel, YOU ARE HERE. Kyle draws better than everybody who can outwrite him and writes better than everybody who can outdraw him. In fact, no self-respecting comic library is complete without all of his graphic novels. And while you’re wallet’s out, the outrageously gifted Kris (MANYA) Dresen has just released a collection of her exquisitely-drawn and extremely funny MAX AND LILY strips. Surf over to Manya.com right now and pick up a copy or three, or I’ll come over to your house and hit you.”

Now, if I don’t like your stuff, relax, I’m not going to embarrass you. I’ll still mention your book, I just won’t gush. The educated reader will quickly come to understand what that means.

The good news is that at TO BE CONTINUED… the graft works both ways. In order to solicit mail from you guys, I’ll periodically have contests and the like. in addition, Every six weeks or so, I’ll devote this column to answering your letters. Whenever I do that, I’ll pick a winner and give away something cool, like hardcover collections (I’ve got some doubles), signed comics, or original art. Maybe I’ll use this to unload the box of hand-autographed Stan Lee photos I recently turned up. I must have cribbed those from Marvel when I worked there many years ago.

•••

Finally, The McDuffie Genius Grant is a cash award of one dollar American that I give solely at my own discretion to anyone who does something that I think is particularly bright. Today I’m promoting a special McDuffie Genius Grant to anyone who can figure out a plan to prevent the seemingly inevitable extinction of the comic book industry. If you can save comics, I’ll pay you five bucks cash money from my own pocket. Serious inquiries only. And hurry, SPAWN’s under a hundred thousand copies a month, we can’t have much time left.

•••

And I don’t have any time left, either. Next week, I’ll tell you a little bit about myself and answer the burning question, “Who the Hell does this guy think he is to be telling me about comic books?” If you can’t wait a whole week to find out, you can jump over to my home page right now and learn more about me than either of us will be completely comfortable with.

But for now, this column is TO BE CONTINUED…

Dwayne McDuffie is the creator of Marvel Comics’ DAMAGE CONTROL and Milestone Media’s ICON and STATIC. He’d like to remind you that the opinions expressed in this column are solely his own and do not necessarily represent those of Psycomics or Psylum.com, particularly the cheap shot at Ho Che Anderson.