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Read more about the article The Most Fantastic Genre

The Most Fantastic Genre

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZGqSRtDbEw]

PopCultureShock posted this great little clip about the new Blue Beetle — Mexican-American Jaime Reyes — and Junot Diaz’ Oscar Wao, wherein Diaz notes:

“The most fantastic genre can’t keep up, or refuses to keep up, with how much our country has changed. And so people can dream about aliens, and they can dream about all sorts of things and magical rings, but they can’t dream about brown and black people being protagonists, you know?  It’s remarkable.”

Diversity in comics remains a tough slog — Firestorm was cancelled, Blue Beetle doesn’t sell very well and what ever happened to the much-hyped lesbian Batwoman series? — and the DC Universe has historically been much whiter than Marvel’s, but the first two years of Blue Beetle proved that minority superheroes could carry a series — from a quality perspective, at least — as long as the writer and artist focused on telling good, entertaining stories.

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Read more about the article Poetry: Where Your Vote Really Counts

Poetry: Where Your Vote Really Counts

Tired of the never-ending Democratic Primary and annoyed that, in the end, your vote might not really count anyway if the Super Delegates opt to nominate the candidate not in the lead when all is said and done? As in many other aspects of life, poetry offers a much-needed alternative. Blogsboro.com is running an election for the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere and Tony Brown, a good friend and worthy candidate, is currently leading the race by a narrow margin over someone named Rob McClennan whom, in the spirit of Presidential elections, I know nothing about and won't bother to…

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Read more about the article Go see Liberty City

Go see Liberty City

Liberty CityI went to see Liberty City last night, April Yvette Thompson’s multi-layered, one-person account of her upbringing in the infamous Miami neighborhood during the chaotic 70s, told against a backdrop of the rise and fall of the Black Power movement, the Crack epidemic and the Liberty City Riots that led to Miami being declared a disaster area, literally and figuratively. Co-written and directed by an old friend of mine, Jessica Blank (The Exonerated; Almost Home), I went mainly to support her work but came away amazed by Thompson’s acting prowess.

I’ve seen a handful of one-person shows over the years — real ones by real actors, not the self-indulgent features-on-steroids many poets have put together* — and am always impressed by an actor’s ability to believably portray multiple characters with a minimum of props and costume changes, but in Liberty City, Thompson pulls off six major characters (and a few minor ones) without making a single addition to or subtraction from her attire to delineate them, relying soley on vocal inflections, body language and an amazingly expressive face that ages, de-ages and changes genders without ever missing a beat. Her story is a riveting one that weaves her family history with that of Libery City‘s into a 90-minute, intermission-less collection of increasingly emotional (though impressively restrained) anecdotes that lead to a conclusion that is simultaneously heart-breaking and hopeful, and more than a little bit timely.

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Read more about the article Hollywood Democratic Debate

Hollywood Democratic Debate

It was a surprisingly substantial, mature discussion of actual issues between two very Presidential candidates with minimal interference from the moderator, who turned out to be Wolf Blitzer, not Anderson Cooper as I’d thought it would be.

Highlights:

  1. Health Care: The difference between them seems subtle on the face of it but I think it ultimately comes down to a question of Clinton’s approach seems to assume significant compromise will be required so she padded her proposal a bit (the way I used to approach the first round of my marketing annual budget), while Obama wants to cut to the chase and put forward a plan that is palatable to all from the beginning and puts us on the quickest path to a health care plan that can eventually lead to true universal health care.
  2. Immigration: Obama took the high road, saying it’s wrong to scapegoat immigrants as the reason unemployment is so high amongst African-Americans, while Clinton, shockingly, implied it was okay to blame immigrants. It’ll be interesting to see if the California media picks up on that in tomorrow’s coverage and if it gets any play in the Latino or African-American community.
  3. Iraq: Obama’s “Ready on Day One vs. Right on Day One” was the closest thing to a clean shot to the chin either candidate landed tonight. Blitzer pushed a little too hard on questioning Clinton’s naivete over trusting Bush’s word by voting for the war resolution, to the point where the audience booed him, but it was a valid point. 

Both candidates avoided any major gaffes or faux pas, going out of their way to be as cordial and respectful as possible, to the point where I can almost see myself shifting back towards being relatively comfortable voting for Clinton in November if she ends up being the nominee.  I still don’t see an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket happening, though.

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Read more about the article Are You a Bad Monkey?

Are You a Bad Monkey?

Well, are you? Matt Ruff has written three of my favorite books, including one of my all-time favorites, Fool on the Hill. One of the coolest birthday presents I ever received was a signed copy of his Sewer, Gas and Electric [Whoops!] Fool -- Salomé actually mailed my dog-earred copy to him and he signed it and mailed it back! I'm a terrible fan, though, as I didn't realize his latest book, Bad Monkeys had been released yet. It's now on my wish list and I'll be ordering it this weekend. You should do the same! Side note: His website…

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Read more about the article Calm down, people

Calm down, people

“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope!”
— Barack Obama

Anyone falling for the media spin that Hillary Clinton’s victory last night in New Hampshire was an upset (or even a comeback) is suffering from a seriously short attention span. She was leading pretty comfortably there before Iowa and managed to salvage a 3% victory over the upstart Barack Obama who, I think, got a little caught up in the hype around the historical import of his candidacy and coasted a little bit. She did it through a mix of old school political strategy, going negative against Obama in the final couple of days, and an accidental slip of her robotic demeanor that revealed the human being underneath. Anyone who thinks the latter will come to define her campaign moving forward is crazy.

That said, I think her narrowly winning NH is a good thing for Obama as he will benefit more than her from an extended campaign that runs, at least, through Super Duper Tuesday — I refuse to call it Tsunami Tuesday — because it will give him the opportunity to clarify a couple of things about himself, including the simple fact that on the political experience front, he trumps both Clinton and Edwards, as Phil West pointed out on his Obama blog:

But the top three Dem candidates actually have very similar resumes, despite Clinton’s familiarity with the White House from having lived in it. All three are lawyers who have folded activism in some form into their legal careers. If you’re looking at their careers as elected officials, Obama actually has the edge, having spent a decade in either the U.S. Senate or the Illinois legislature, whereas Clinton is on her seventh year as a U.S. Senator (with no prior eleced office) and Edwards served one six-year term. 

Speaking of Edwards, I’m glad he’s not dropping out yet because his voice is an important one to have in the mix and my guess is he will continue to target Clinton as the “status quo” candidate, allowing Obama to focus on representing his campaign’s powerful message of hope. His speech last night was arguably as good, if not better, than his speech Iowa as it had a slightly harder edge to it, challenging Americans to stand up and be heard, to not let anyone tell us what can’t be done, echoing JFK’s “Ask not…” with his own catchphrase, “Yes We Can!”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe751kMBwms]

Check out the full text of Obama’s “Yes we can!” speech.

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Read more about the article Hater Blog: Levitz or Quesada?

Hater Blog: Levitz or Quesada?

Dick Hyacinth of the entertaining guilty pleasure and recent addition to the Blogs of Note, Dick Hates Your Blog, has been running a series of "Hate Polls", pitting the likes of Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Brad Meltzer and Joe Quesada against each other for the title of Most Hated in Comics. Last week, after Quesada soundly thumped previous reigning champ, Millar, he asked who else might be a worthy challenger to the formidable DaQ and my comment was one of my favorite ever, as succinct a description of the "Big Two" as I could imagine:Yes, Levitz is whom I'd put…

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