West Coast Sunrise

Back when Disney bought Marvel, I said “Now we got us a fair fight,” and almost immediately afterwards, I retracted it. Because Disney has always been integrated and focused when it comes to synergy: getting the movies, the toys, the theme parks, the music CDs and the TV shows working together and feeding into each other, which leads to more toys and DVDs and games… Hell, Disney was the first movie studio to embrace television while the others were running scared. Walt used it as an outreach to build interest in his nascent Disneyland project at a time when other studios were still clutching at Cinemascope, Technicolor and 3D to win their losing battle against change.

I said “fair fight” because with the Disney buy, Marvel now had that same corporate synergy muscle as DC did with its parent Time/Warner. I retracted because while Disney has historically known how to use that muscle, TW has not. Well, the Times maybe are a-changing.

There were a couple tantalizing developments in comics news this mont. Arkham City released 2 trailers—that was very smart because, while the game is quite a ways out yet, people are shopping for new computers and game systems now. The timing also perfect in order to remind everyone at this festive time of year when our credit cards are out how much we like Batman. Meow.

The interesting thing about the Arkham stuff is the subtextual (and in some cases brazenly textual) thread running through the audience reactions: as long as it’s not from the comic book division, it’s probably good. As long as it’s not comic people behind it. If it’s Nolan or Rocksteady Studios (Arkham Asylum) or the new cartoon The Brave and the Bold or even that live show in the UK, it’s assumed to be fine. It’s assumed to be Batman. If it’s from the comics, the default is that it’s bad. If it’s not, the default is that it’s okay.

Whew.

Okay, moving on to the second development: Conan O’Brien paid a visit to the Warner Bros lot which is only a few steps outside his studio… and is the home to DC Comics.

*Jim Aparo look of astonishment.*

What’s that? It is? The Warner Brothers lot is the home to DC Comics? Heeeey, it is. Because “DC Comics” is now DC Entertainment, and the last few months have seen an overdue flushing of New York positions and reassigning everything except the comics themselves to the West Coast, under the Warner Bros part of the company in practice as well as in name. A part of the company that… how to put this delicately… knows what it’s doing. Didio’s merry band came up with “Superman walks across America in a hoodie” and “Diana gets a new outfit.” They were the last major comic company – scratch that, they were the last comic company – to go digital. Alterna Comics got there first. You could get Jesus Hates Zombies on Android and iTunes while DC was still running plays from that 1972 playbook of theirs.

Team Coco paying a visit to DC Comics home on the Warner Bros lot is huge because, to paraphrase one of those non-subtext critics, the DC whose home is on the West Coast is able to achieve a cross-promo spot on Conan to chat with an animator, drop the names of the Big 3, and plug The Green Lantern. Welcome to the 21^st Century, DC. Most of you are going to like it here.

Now then, Cat-Tales update. Well first, I do apologize to all those who rely on this blog for Gifts to Make Your Catwoman Purr for not finding out about nOir Jewelry's Long Claw ring until a reader informed me. Then again, might be for the best. Now you'll have something to exchange after you return that iPod-Docking Toilet Paper Dispenser.

The holidays are always a slow season for the tales, so I took advantage of the lull to roll out a few updates. Support for Social Networking is much improved. You can now share, tweet, stumble upon, email, and otherwise distribute individual tales, selected spinoffs, as well as the CT Collection as a whole. Selina decided to answer some reader letters in Ask Catwoman, Random Equinox finished his spinoff Don’t Fear the Z, and oh yes, if you missed Christmas in Gotham, the Cat-Tales Visitor Center will be decked out for the holidays until January 5^th.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Harvey Dent/Two-Face's Rum Balls

Harvey said he’d brought the rum balls.
He failed to add that he/Harvey had gotten into a bit of a spat with he/Two-Face in the making of said rum balls, the former insisting they were too moist and adding more flour, the latter that they were too dry and adding more rum, until each was the size of a golf ball, weighed half-a-pound and contained a full shot of rum."
-Chris Dee's Cat-Tales #13: Knight Before Christmas

Harvey Dent/Two-Face's Rum Balls
(which Chris suggests making with bourbon and without the multiple personality disorder)

2 cups finely crushed vanilla wafers
1 cup finely chopped pecans
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 tbls honey
2 tbls cocoa
1/2 cup myers rum
more powdered sugar to coat finished balls

Combine first 5 ingredients, hand mixing as you go, then begin adding rum a little at a time, hand mixing until moist but not wet.  Roll into balls, then roll in powdered sugar until coated.  

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Gift ideas to make her purr

'Tis the season.  If you're shopping for someone with a Cat-Tales sensibility (and aren't the undisclosed buyer of the Platinum Panther Cuff from the Duchess of Windsor's Cartier collection) then you may want to consider one of the following gift ideas for those of us without the use of Bruce Wayne's Amex:

A Christmas Miracle:  DC gets it right.  It took them more than 10 years to offer the right costume AND the right attitude, but here she is, from DC Direct: A Classic Catwoman with the Jim Balent costume and a true naughty grin.  If your comic shop is like mine, they were promised waaay back in August, but we have assurances that they are finally here in December, just in time to make your cat-lover purr.

Then there's the Sony MicroVault, as featured in Cat-Tales  It's Selina's very own solution to the bleeding edge Bat-Tech in CT#52: Vault, and it's also the best little flash-drive you will ever own.  The original,available here, had some compatibility issues, so the next generation might be a better choice.  Either way, there is more than enough room to pack even the smallest purple drive with the complete Cat-Tales Collection of Ebooks. 

If you're fond of another aspect of the Catverse, consider the inspiration for so much of the Catitat in Selina's favorite show: Big Cat Diary.  The 2-DVD set is Region 2, so if you're in the U.S. you need the ability to unlock foreign regions on your player.  There are a number of other options, including Video on Demand and an old-fashioned hardcoverbook.  (Yes, they still sell those at Amazon. I was surprised too.)

And finally, if you can't find just the right image - you can always commission it.  Dustin Nguyen is one of hundreds of magnificently talented artists who can create images of unspeakable beauty.  If they're pros, you might never know the "unspeakably beautiful" part by what they produce for DC.  They may have a purring purple soul.  You'll never know until you ask.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

You're a fine one, Mr. Grinch

I never watched Glee, but I was in the room recently when a friend was watching the latest episode on Hulu. On headphones, I didn’t hear a thing apart from the occasional laugh, muted. Then there was a loud one. I looked up and saw this…

I didn't have to watch the show, I knew EXACTLY what they were doing. That's The Grinch That Stole Christmas, fondly remembered Dr. Seuss Xmas tale from all our childhoods. Later my friend talked about "how well they did it" and how they "did the whole thing" - from a character wearing the reindeer antlers and dog ears pulling the sleigh to plucking the ornaments off the tree.

Friend: And just when you're thinking "There should be a Cindy Lou Whoo"...

I mention this because there is a misconception out there among some big names in comics that people are "bored" with the very elements that MAKE THE STORYVERSE WHAT IT IS. That's why there is a wail of protest every time they announce the next big stunt that will fuck up the comics for another year and postpone the return to what it is SUPPOSED TO BE. Because these core things they are changing are not repetitive and boring, they are ritual and reassuring.

Bruce Wayne is Batman. Joker is his nemesis. Catwoman is his adversary/love interest. Jason Todd is dead.
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Batman.

"Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it?" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't perform A Christmas
Carol.

"Face it, Tiger... you just hit the jackpot!"

Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Spiderman.

"It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope." Nobody is looking for reinvention here. They got it right the first time, and that's why these stories last.

When it's right, don't reinvent, recapitulate:

Here endeth the lesson.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

You Are What You Eat

Had some interesting responses to the last blog Please Drink Responsibly, so I decided the central idea was worth revisiting from a wider perspective than writers or comic folks.

Briefly: you’re only as good as what you take into your system.  If you do anything creative, then you’re drawing on your imagination in a very special way and it is not a good idea to poison it.  Well duh, it’s never a good idea to chug poison, right?   The disconnect seems to be in recognizing the imagination can be poisoned and that these things are.  Consider an athlete who ate a steady diet of Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day.  Would you be surprised when he failed to win a marathon?  Would you be surprised if he fell down dead at Mile-18?  Of course not, because we all get that an athlete is using his body to do what he does, and we all get that the cigarettes and junk food are not good for the whole air in/air out/blood pump/muscle flex process.  Problem is, few of us see our imaginations that way and far too many of us act like it doesn’t matter what we take into it.

First Principle: anything you do that’s creative comes from your soul – Okay, that’s a big word.  Forget the soul.  But there is a part of you that’s… better.  When you create in any medium, whether it is writing or painting or music, you hook that magical sacred part of you up to the Universe and channel something that is bigger and greater and infinite… Hell, I don’t know what it is, but it’s the reason it’s good to be alive.  Bob Fosse called it Joy.   And when it comes through YOU, you infuse it with your ideas and your emotions and your life experience and everything that makes you who you are.  It makes your story, your song, your sculpture or performance unlike anyone else’s.  And it’s your imagination – the part in all of us that first looked up at the stars instead of down at the dirt – that’s the core where all this happens.  So what you’ve got laying around in there matters.  If it’s Michaelangelo and Mozart and Dickens, great.  You’ve got more options than someone who only has Daniele Steele and Nickleback, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have a database of classics to draw on.  What is the end of the world is if you’ve got steaming piles of dog shit in there.

Now, for any newcomers to this blog, I write a metafiction series about Batman, and yet, I haven’t looked at a current comic in at least 4 years.  The reason is that the current output at DC is toxic and I won’t pollute my imagination with it.  This is more than not wanting to give DC Comics $2.95, what economists call “Dollar Votes,” in favor of making more of the same.  It isn’t about money, it’s about poison.

Someone sent me a link a while back to a website that posts scans from the current comics, and I can tell you right now that if I’d followed that link, that would have been my day.  Why?  Because if you step out of your house in the morning into a steaming pile of dog shit, that’s where your focus is going to be for quite some time.  The unpleasantness of the initial experience stays with you—in this case, my anger and disgust at whatever went on in those pages.  That’s going to come out in the writing.  Then there’s the smell that lingers: I would be aware if I used certain characters, alluded to certain ideas or events, everything would have a resonance in relation to their crap.   Now, your story should be your top priority, not an editor’s agenda, the marketing or the merchandising.  The story.  Making anything else a priority is a mistake, making their story the priority?  Hell no!  (We won’t even discuss the practice of, having cleaned off your shoe, going into a forum of people discussing the dog crap as if it’s fine French perfume:  Eau Merde de Fifi.)

Look, there are people out there who thrive on anger and disgust.  I find it doesn’t lead to creative output.  I find it leads to stuff like this:

Those who do create from those negative places, their stuff doesn’t last.  Occasionally, if the timing is just right, it will make a splash for fifteen minutes, but before too long, its popularity wanes and future generations just laugh at the goobers who found it profound or shocking. 

It’s the stuff that comes from the good place that lasts:  from a sense of play, loving what you do, loving the characters, loving the process of creation and being excited to share it all with an audience—it’s that love and joy that is infectious.  Love of the characters, celebrating them, holding up the essence of what they are supposed to be, what we’re all supposed to be...  The stories that last have always been about the same things: heroes, redemption, coming of age, going home, the power of love.  We tell the same stories over and over again because they are true, because they are universal, because they resonate in our core.   And that’s where we connect as human beings.  That connection, that’s everything.  That’s why we do this. 

The people I talked to after Please Drink Responsibly are not in comics.  They are in another industry that is broken in ways nobody fully understands, but where everyone recognizes that something is profoundly wrong.  Look, I don’t know if any one artist can hope to fix a broken system, but we are all in the business of “making a hat where there never was a hat.”   Who’s to say we can’t?  It starts with making that connection.  And to make it, we’ve got to detox, folks.  We’ve got to stop taking in poisons and polluting our imaginations with the artistic “product” of people writing comics or making music the way Pumpkin the Pekingese takes a dump.  If you’re one of those saying they read/saw/listened to such-and-such “and of course it sucked LOL,” stop laughing.   “Of course it sucked” means you knew better before you took that thing into your head.  You went right past the surgeon general’s warning and you took that poison into your system anyway.  You are what you eat. 

All that said, Cat-Tales had a fabulous week.  Electron 29 posted its final chapter, which means it is now available in one complete download as ebook or print-quality pdf.  As if that's not enough, Book 5 is ready!  That's the compilation of Cat-Tales #51-59 including fan favorites Riddle Me-Tropolis, Vault, War of the Poses, Armchair Detective, Not My Kink, Do No Harm AND alternate-reality game fodder I Believe in Harvey Dent - all that in one compact ebook download - or, naturally, print-quality pdf.   Just in time for Christmas.  Meow.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Please Drink Responsibly

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There is something profoundly wrong with people who don’t like Dickens, but even they allow that A Tale of Two Cities has one of the greatest openings in the English language. The Great Gatsby opens well too, and is also one of the rarest of rarities: a spot on perfect movie. AMC has a collection of films called “Essentials,” films from Casablanca to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that everyone should know. They are part of the collective vocabulary. They are required for cultural literacy. In literature there’s the Five Foot Shelf. In music, it’s Synchronicity and The White Album, South Pacific and Into the Woods. If you seek out what’s good in many fields, you feed your imagination and will be a better artist for it.

That’s the positive side. The flip side is also true. Imagine a professional athlete that ate nothing but Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Would any of us be surprised if this guy failed to win the New York marathon? For that matter, would any of us be surprised if he failed to finish and fell down dead at Mile 18? No, of course not. Because this guy who uses his body to do what he does has been pouring poison into it.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, a composer, a creative in any field, then your imagination is the bread and butter machine. Since you’re also a human being, it is the most magical and sacred part of you. That alone is a good enough reason not to flood it with poisons, but I’m talking about something beyond just being human. I am talking about being a creative. The imagination is what stretches beyond the literal and mundane and the goings on in your digestive tract. It is what connects with something higher and better, and channels a little piece of the infinite when you make something that wasn’t there before. If you pollute it with garbage, the result will be the artistic version of that wheezing pathetic “athlete” gasping his way through the race.

No, I do not read comics anymore. It’s more than not giving DC even $2.95 worth of encouragement for something that is truly bad, it is declining to live on a toxic waste dump. It is refusing to take poison into my imagination. Not only is it bad for me, it’s going to be bad for anything I write.

You are what you eat. And drink. We’ve all seen the creative output of the drunk drivers out there, professional and amateur. It’s time for those of us who are not three sheets to the wind to start staging some interventions.

But let’s return to the Best of Times, because there is a new artist to welcome to the Fan Art Gallery, and she’s certainly kept her imagination fueled with the best of raw materials. Check out the beautiful work of Anya Uribe, an absolute master of feminine curves, color and form.

The Virtual Visitor Center is decked out for the holidays. In Second Life, as in Cattitude, as in Real Life, Cartier wraps itself up in a bow for Christmas. More information on the Cat-Tales website, or residents may teleport directly to the Visitor Center.

Random Equinox even has an update for his spinoff fic: Don't Fear the Z.  And as if that wasn't enough, we had two lovely developments over the Thanksgiving break: The Macy's parade was good enough to open with Aviator Snoopy, providing yet another opportunity for the slow-witted to realize that the inspiration for the Catwoman abomination--the virtual SIGNATURE of the new direction that failed to grasp anything that defined Catwoman and got absolutely everything wrong--was, in fact, based on a cartoon dog. How symbolic do you want it? They didn't understand anything at all about Selina, right down to the CAT in Catwoman. A symmetry such as makes the angels weep, if it wasn't so effing sad. And, finally, the forum's running gag of Batman's Black Friday Protocol finally has some artwork:

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

( . )( . )

I’m pretty sure the most popular entry in this blog is the one from late April: Women Lacking Complexity—For SCIENCE! about blogger Jen McCreight’s initiative Boob Quake.  Wow, who would have thought it?  The most popular blog was about tits. 

Yes, there are two big issues looming when it comes to women and comics.  Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical flourish, there are two.  Let’s deal with the D-cups first, because there is a reason they go on the cover.  Men like breasts.  A couple months ago, Warner Bros posted screencaps to Arkham City, the sequel to the Arkham Asylum computer game. 

The gullible souls who bought into the Brubaker/Cooke scam and continue to think flat-chested and short hair are the hallmarks of a dynamic empowered woman started frothing at the mouth:  Look at those breasts!  How can it be!  It is the goggle-whore costume we have all been trained to defend as practical no matter how nonsensical the word is as applied to any costume in any comic including the one this displaced.  It is black and not purple, she has no long flowing hair cascading luxuriously out the back of her cowl, how can she have breasts that can be seen without special lenses?!  It does not compute.  The horror, the horror!  How dare they defame the good name of Catwoman by giving her a figure men will enjoy looking at!

I really had hoped the Iranian cleric that started the whole Boob Quake thing would have woken those silly women up.  Because if you buy into the idea that boobs are bad and there is something wrong with men who like them, then you’re standing with Fahas Ahardtime Acceptinghalfthehumanrace-majad.  That doesn’t strike me as very enlightened or feminist, ladies, but hey, you don’t see the problem with the whore either, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. 

For those who aren’t irrevocably committed to the doctrine of Men Suck, let’s briefly revisit why the male of the species like the breasts.  I’m sorry Notting Hill fans, there is a reason and it’s not “because they’re stupid.”  It’s because we’re primates.  For a long, long, long, long time, the male approaching a female for mating purposes is looking at a rump.  Now fast forward a few million years.  We're all walking upright. What in the general vicinity of the new eyelevel looks like that? There’s nothing perverse about it.  Men notice cleavage.  Put it on the cover, they’ll notice your cover.  That’s not an automatic sale, but it gets their attention.  What you do then is up to you.

Which brings us to the second issue when it comes to women in comics: who they are as opposed to how they look.  Let’s start with a quote from a creative writing forum, which was sent to me after the recent blog on Fridging:

“As it was explained to me by a comics professional years ago at a convention panel on the topic, the vast majority of comic writers are men who simply don't understand women. Since they don't understand women (and earn more by churning out stories as quickly as possible), they save time by reducing women to cliched roles as either the girlfriend or the victim.”

I include the elaborate provenance – that this is something told to a reader in a con/panel situation—because there is always the possibility that it is simply not true.  That it was given in the context of “Look, we don’t serve up all these rapes and murders because we’re sad little trolls who can only feel like men by bringing down women.”  If that was the tone of the panel, then this could have been presented as a simple expedient.  Rather than debating if there is any palpable difference between murder of Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis and the murder of Duncan in the Scottish play, the above quote diffuses the situation quickly without controversy by playing into the widely held preconception of comics writers as arrested adolescents.

The irony is if that's true and not an invented excuse, it’s completely unacceptable.  Women are 53% of the population.  You can’t be a professional writer in any medium and “simply not understand” half the human race.  You’re going to embarrass yourself, embarrass the idiots who hired you, and you’re going to fail—over and over and over.  So let’s cut these guys a break and reveal the key to writing women that both men and women in the audience will love.  Then everybody can do it and that removes "I don't understand lumpy people" as an excuse.  The following has been said elsewhere, but never as well as by the late Harold Ashman:

“In every classic musical, one of the first three songs belongs to the heroine.  She comes downstage, often sits on a convenient planter or bale of hay, and sings about what she wants from her life.  And the audience falls in love with her… and they spend the next three acts rooting for her to get it.”

It is, honest to god, that simple.  And that complex.  Start with what she wants.  If Cattitude succeeds where others have failed, it is because it is grounded in what Catwoman wants from stealing: a restoration of the love and safety she felt as a child, which she came to associate with the wealth and comfort she knew in her parents’ home.  I cannot accept that the ability to pee standing up somehow short-circuits the ability to understand that simple human motivation.  What we want is seldom a function of gender.  The best art and jewel thief in the world comes from privilege and not poverty because the root associations make sense.  If any man wants to step up and explain what in his anatomy would screw with anything that shampoo simple, I would be fascinated to hear it. 

Food, shelter, love, freedom, a sense of self-worth.  None of them have anything to do with reproductive plumbing.  If you “simply don’t’ understand” women, then you simply don’t understand people and if that’s the case, you have no business writing at all. 

Now, if you don’t get a particular subset, join the club.  Twilight fans, the gals who take the Sex and the City bus tour, the Real Housewives of anywhere… Don’t ask me, fellas, I’m as confused as you are.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Fat is Flavor

Chef Josh Grinker recently blogged a list of “Things Chefs Don’t Want You To Know.” The explanation for #1 (There is butter in everything) began like this:

In every culinary school in America, they hammer home the same three-word mantra to students day after day, year after year, until it’s like a little voice in your brain that guides virtually every culinary decision you will make for the rest of your career: 'Fat is Flavor.'

Now, this isn’t a cooking blog, and if there are any nutrition proselytizers out there who want to make the case for their fat-free, salt-free, gluten free, lentil and tofu roulade being just as tasty as a deep dish with pepperoni and sausage from Giordano's, they can lump it. Because there are two key elements in Grinker’s statement which are the gateway to serial success or—in DC Comics’s case—serial failure.

First of all, the three little words are true. I could spend a day perusing the Good Eats clips on youtube for Mr. Science-style demonstrations explaining that reality molecule-by-molecule, but again, this is not a cooking blog. The point is, regardless of what you say on the convention floor, no matter what you put in the press release or tell the columnist from IGN, and no matter what would be convenient for you personally or professionally, no matter what creates a political pain in the ass for you personally or professionally, the bedrock principle on which you base your decisions has to be TRUE. One example off the top of my head: readers like the theme rogues. You can accept that and build your one year arc around Croc, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Joker, Harley Quinn, Riddler, and Two-Face and be on your way to the hit of the decade, or you can reject it, stage a parade of faceless mobsters and serial killers, and then grouse that grumble that you’re never as popular as that other guy.

Assembling the list of wrong ideas DC has about life, the universe, and everything would be a daunting task, and not necessarily a productive one. Because the second key in Grinker’s statement is that repetition of the founding principle(s) until it becomes an instinct. There are some major figures out there who are so consistently wrong in everything they say and do, they’ve definitely got the instinct mechanism working, it’s just based on faulty base principles.
From "Bruce Wayne is the mask" to the fallacy of Millerism, they have core ideas, those ideas just happen to be wrong. But there are others who have no little voice leading them in any direction. They go from mediocre to pretty good to clinically insane, from really bad to slightly above average to “oh hell, the syphilis got to their brain.” That is the mark of a writer, editor, or manager who is stumbling blind. They have no root principles, so every choice brings them back to square one. They’re a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel, and whatever gusts hit them last will determine where they go next.

Look, things do change in this world. One of the major reasons the Titanic went down is because everything Captain Smith knew was wrong. It was based on based on 30 years of experience, but on that ship on that voyage in those waters: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But here’s the catch: other things do NOT change. There is a reason the term is bedrock principles. Some things simply are, they are constants, they do not alter. “You know how you cook a great steak? You slather it in butter, throw it on the grill, paint it with more butter.” Because fat is flavor. The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can’t. Can they make it so we don’t like sweet anymore? No, no they can’t.

Find the true bedrock principles, repeat them until they become a little voice in the back of your mind shaping every decision you make, and you might just rock the world. Insist that fat isn’t flavor… well, enjoy your empty restaurant.

Meanwhile, the Cat-Tales kitchens are bustling these days. Electron 29: Chapter 4 is out. Compilations of Books 1 through 4 are out in ebook formats for Kindle, Sony, Nook, iPhone/iPad/iPod, and pretty much everything as well as new print-ready pdf editions. Individual Tales 1 through 50 are also available, and several have new covers showcased here, here, and here. The last ten tales (through #60) will be out - both individually and as the Book 5 Compilation - in time for Christmas. New installments of both spinoffs: Capes & Bats by Wanders Nowhere and Don’t Fear the Z by Random Equinox are in the pipeline and may actually be out by the time you read this, and an amazing new artist is soon to debut in the Fan Art Gallery. And oh yes, Batcatfever will kill me if I don't mention that the forums have been quietly devouring the latest snippets from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Are We Having Fun Yet?

This past weekend saw the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and while I enjoyed it tremendously, what really struck me enough to blog about was the post-rally press conference with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Listen to Stewart’s description of “the hardest thing to pull off” and if you have time, go on to part two and listen to how many times the word “joy” comes up.

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
Press Conference - The Hardest Thing to Pull Off
www.comedycentral.com
Rally to Restore Sainty and/or Fear The Daily Show The Colbert Report

(Link to Press Conference for those who cannot see the embedded video.)

Bob Fosse used to say “Without Joy, the work is meaningless.” Anyone who is familiar with the man’s work knows he didn’t mean happy-happy joy-joy, carousel horses and candyfloss. Fosse’s work was dark enough to satisfy the lost generation of comics readers that came of age under Miller, but it never left you feeling you needed a shower. Because of that Joy. However dark it got, the work came from the good place. It came from that higher, spiritual thing inside all human beings that artists use to connect with something greater when they create. It did not come from a damaged soul trying to make up for its deficiencies. That shit never lasts. It can make a splash for a moment, but then it fades because it lacks that indefinable Quality, that mystic thing that endures. Whatever that thing is, it comes from the part of us that is better, not worse. It comes from what makes us alive. It comes from what makes it GOOD to be alive. It comes from Joy.

So today’s big question for the 4-color comic crowd – the ones still reading DC’s monthly output but more importantly to the ones writing and drawing them – is this: Are you having fun yet?

I would like to draw attention to two Bat-groups who certainly are:

Batman: The Brave and the Bold have not only embraced the lip twitch, they have committed Pink Batman, Singing Joker, and Bat-Mite riffing on Mxyzlptk. What’s more, they make it work. Something most of us would have thought impossible, because Batman is such serious fucking business. But no, time after time, week after week, these guys have lifted the layers and layers of dark and gritty godawfulness that have been accumulating since the first crisis, and they have restored that magical joy-thing inside all characters and stories that endure.

Club Batman. This is a group in Spain which is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a series of Bat-art expositions that will simply blow your mind. From Aparo to Breyfogle, these guys know how to relish what’s good, how to savor and celebrate the character they love. In short, they know how to be fans and rather than fanboys. Feliz Aniversario, Club Batman. Here’s to 20 more years.

And me? Well, I’ll be honest, there’s more frustration than joy when I can’t eek out a blog entry. I resist the idea of blurting out a list of stuff that’s going on if I can’t make it interesting, and making it interesting takes a fair amount of time away from getting the stuff DONE. It’s like the Captain Obvious observation that if you’re constantly tweeting and updating your Facebook profile, you’re not actually doing anything except tweeting and updating your Facebook profile. So this will be brief, and if it’s not that interesting, that is the reason why.

Ebooks are now available for the individual tales up through Book 4, as well as newer higher quality pdfs for those readers who prefer the feel of actual paper in their fingers. The compilations—both ebooks and pdfs—are up on the website for Books 1 and 2. 3 and 4 will be along soon. They’re in the pipeline, I just need a few hours sans interruptions. Heh. Heheh. HAHAHHAHAHAAAA! Now that’s comedy. (Seriously though, maybe this weekend.)

Chapter 4 of the latest tale,  Electron 29, is also nearly ready for release. About 98% there, I’d say. Also waiting patiently for its turn at a ride on the unicorn (read: an hour of my uninterrupted, undistracted freetime).

In the meantime, there is a new spinoff to enjoy. Random Equinox has begun Don’t Fear the Z, examining the events of Don’t Fear the Joker from the POV of our favorite band of ex-henchmen lair-builders.

In SL, I’ve begun interviews for a virtual assistant and some voice talent, which in the long run should mean more free time to focus on the writing, but short term… woof, not so much.

So that’s the Cat-Tales catch-up. There are 2 or 3 things/people I’m waiting for in order for other things to move forward. In the meantime, I’d like to borrow a cup of Joy if anyone can spare it.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The Fallacy of Fridging

This is dedicated to the ones who scream “Fridge” if anything bad befalls any female character in any context… 

The Overthinking It Flowchart of Female Characters
from Overthinkingit.com

Fridging, for the happily unenlightened, is taken from the title of an essay "Women in Refrigerators" which deconstructs female characters who are killed, raped, or otherwise brutalized... but mostly killed and decapitated so their heads can be left in the hero's refrigerator.  The complaint--and it's a fair one up to a point--is that the women and their deaths are just plot devices.  It's not the story of their deaths, it's the effect their deaths have on the hero.

Of course the same can be said of Duncan or Hamlet's father, but nobody ever bemoans king-snuffing. 

Look, I know these Fridge-Screamers are good people, most of them, and they’re honestly trying to help, but the fact is, they are the problem, not the writers. These well-meaning souls seem to think they are educating the rest of us by dissecting women’s roles in fiction in the ways shown here. In their minds, it’s writers putting women in these categories that keep them from being full and equal human beings alongside the men. We who might actually enjoy these outings are like savages worshipping a radioactive idol, not realizing that the glow we find so fascinating is bad for us.

Well, sorry, fact is, the Fridge-Screamers are the ones who have a faulty understanding. Because the thing that keeps these women from being full and equal human beings is that THEY’RE NOT. They’re not real! They are CHARACTERS. Characters in stories are going to repeat certain patterns and fit into certain roles. You accept that in order to experience the story in the same way you buy a ticket to a movie. It is literally the price you pay to get in on the experience. We could play this same stupid game with the men, because they too have a role to play in any story. But we don’t dissect them for 180 kinds of imaginary subtext simply because they have testicles—and that is the only thing that is keeping them on a higher shelf than the women. The women aren’t as real because of these analysis matrices taking everything they say, do, or wear out of the context of the story and run through the defensive paranoia filters of every silly blogger out there who read the syllabus for a women’s studies course one time and imagines she has amazing new insights.

Look, there are misogynist trolls out there masquerading as writers, as editors, as movie directors. They are not hard to identify. That seems to be the problem, actually. Sally Sophomore doesn’t feel like an enlightened intellectual pointing to the sky and saying “It’s blue.” On the contrary, there is a predisposition to reject the obvious simply because everyone can see it. “All you people, the peasants, you think the sky is blue because that’s what your eyes tell you. You’re not as wise and wonderful as me. I am one of the elite who can appreciate the particular un-blueness that so eludes your simpleton mentality.” While Sally is harmless (annoying as hell, but harmless), she does contribute an awful lot to the noise pollution that keeps real issues from being discussed. That’s a pity, but hey, that’s the Internet.

It is Monday, so a brief CT update is order. I really don’t know where to begin at this point, which probably explains the diatribe on Sally. I guess Electron 29: Chapter 3 would be a good start. That’s out! I don’t usually release stuff over the weekend, and I know how it slips by a few readers when I veer off schedule that way, but the way things are going, I can’t be that choosey about when things get done. Anyone who misses an update, hey, there’s the newsletter, the forums, Twitter, ffnet author alerts, and this paragraph. If all that escapes ‘em, DOUBLE CHAPTERS NEXT TIME! Woohoo! They can have a Cat-Tales readathon.

Anyway, one of the main reasons for the big time crunch is the ebook conversion. The Book 1 compilation as well as all the individual B1 tales are done, and Book2 is so far along that it will probably be up on the website by the time you’re reading this. That brings us up to the present, but things don’t line up for the future by themselves: writing on chapter 4, conversions of Book 3, prepping the fan art gallery for a new artist, all these things are in the pipeline, along with one other treat I’m trying to arrange by Christmas… *stops and takes a deep breath* …which is why I can’t afford much blog time to shout out to all the Purple Catwomen at New York Comic Con...

The forum's own "Glitch2" as Eddie in this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldofrandsom/5063929074

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwick/5066797000/

...Let alone recap “Why men like boobs” for the new crop of terminally confused whackadoodles. I’d like to, along with a few other issues that cropped up over the summer, but the Tales come first, and the commentary on non-tales matters comes second. Today we got Overthinking It out of the way. It’s a start…

That said, Kitty can really use an extra set of hands. So… I’m thinking it might be time to get an intern again. Since we now have a virtual visitor center in Second Life, I’d prefer an SL resident. If you’re interested, stop by the Cat-Tales Visitor Center in Second Life and send me a notecard. If you’re not in SL, you can send me a PM through the forum, but I’m giving preference to SL people on this one.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The Week in Cat-Tales

Whew.  I got Reputation in place with the ePub format and new PDF.  It’s going to be better all around, but damn, it is going to be a lot of busywork.  The client’s better downshift for a couple months so I have time for the Everything Else of Cat-Tales besides the writing.  On the writing end, I got Chapter 2 released, and the response to that has been very gratifying.

I was particularly delighted to hear from a reader who recognized the homage to the UK series Hustle. 

Any of you Americans who like the Timothy Hutton series Leverage, you might want to stop right here because if you ever saw Hustle, you would no longer find Leverage watchable.  Hustle chronicles the adventures of a crew of long con players in London.  They are real con artists in that they do it for profit, their own profit.  They con people who deserve it, but they’re seldom avenging a specific victim of their mark.  Leverage wallows so much in the terrible pain the marks have brought to people, it dampens the fun factor considerably.  Hustle also has no car chases, gun battles or big explosions.  It may come as a shock to US writers and producers that the elegance and fun of the con itself—not to mention the appeal of the characters—can carry a one hour show.  Guess what, it can, it does, and once you’ve had the good stuff, you’ll never be able to drink that swill again without knowing it’s swill.

Anyway, big fan of Hustle, and the “Riddler’s lost his mojo” element of Electron 29, as well as the Love Diamonds angle in Not My Kink are both loving homages to a show that gets that key ingredient that is as necessary for Catwoman as for a good heist movie: the fun of being bad and getting away with it.  Meow.

There was also a little something in Chapter 1 that is, not so much an homage, but an old-fashioned Cat-Tales commentary on a comics-related issue.  One of my email correspondents was SO CLOSE in saying one aspect of Bruce’s ranting on the plane had some significance outside the tale, but they didn’t guess what it was referring to.  I’m going to give him a little more time to get it, since it is also one of my “cleaning out the closet” bullet points, and I’d just as soon save them for another day.  I will say that, even though there’s a little subtext to the things Bruce said on the plane, that doesn’t mean they’re not relevant to the story.  But readers will learn more about which of those dots connect in Chapter 3.

Short entry today, new week, new month, lots to do.  Ciaomeow everybody!

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Capes, Bats, Cats, Covers... Not so much with The Closet

I certainly hoped to get in a quick comment on all the stuff that has been going on this summer which certainly warranted a purr or a scratch, but for which I didn't have time.  A metaphorical closet-cleaning to match the physical one.  Unfortunately for my mental closet but fortunately for Cat-Tales, there has been - yet again - too much going on to bother with the knucklhead stuff.

1.  The new Cat-Tale: Electron 29 hit the cyberstands last week,  and as anyone who has written Edward Nigma will tell you, he doesn't sit quietly in the back of your head waiting for you to finish other things before you start on his next chapter.  If you don't start writing, he'll start without you.  Meh. 

2. Wanders Nowhere has released a new installment of his Dracula in Gotham fic Capes and Bats.  Much as I want to gush, you simply will not believe me.  Believe the forum: "This little tale created an imagery and gravitas in the first chapter that the graphic novel storytellers of Gotham have been trying to do for decades" "Gorgeous prose" "Masterful".  'Nuff said.  Read it, just read it... in time for Halloween because we're not done yet and... Whew... *fans self*  just read, trust me.

3. We're getting ready to welcome a new artist into the fan art gallery, and that requires a little more work backstage than a busy girl could want in the midst of #1, 2, and 4.

4. EBOOKS!  Yes, the new ePub format is going to make mobile readers very happy and it's also given me an opening to redo the printable pdfs and kindle documents so we have some consistency.  Win-win, but it's the sort of thing where the first few will take a while, but taking the time to do them RIGHT will make everything go much smoother down the line.  In that spirit of doing it right, I want to give the individual story pdfs their own covers.  Right now, they use the square ones from the website and it's okay but the images are not made for the medium and it shows.  Now, I don't plan to do this for all the tales, but Cat-Tale #1 is, of course, a special case. So I have 4 possible covers up, and I am opening it up for a vote.  Please don't worry about the words of the title "A Girl's Gotta Protect Her Reputation."  They will be placed better on the final image, whichever it is to be.  Just vote for your favorite image. 

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Cleaning out the Hell Mouth (Not a Metaphor)

Writing is a more complicated process than most people think.  Many readers certainly come to the conclusion that there is a lot of me in my Selina, and of course there is.  It doesn’t stop there, however.  There’s a lot of me in Bruce, in Alfred, in Eddie and Harvey, in Talia, Whiskers, Sly, Luthor, Ivy and Ubu.  All the characters come out of the 9th circle of the Dee brain. 

One of the details I do share with Selina is a hell mouth closet.  It is not a metaphor, it is – or was – all too real.  Last week, I cleaned it out.  Again, this is not a metaphor.  This was a very real exercise in sifting through clutter, throwing out stuff, and sneezing a lot.  I am happy to say I have a hell mouth no more.  Yay for the nice walkable path down the center of the storage bins, which could be thinned a little more if I want to spend a month on ebay, but I don’t.  So for now, we’re good.

Except for one thing: comics.  All the comics remain out here in the non-closet world.  Those from the closet and those that were never returned to it after being pulled for reference in this fic or that.  They’re going to be here for a week or two.  Some to be filed or refiled, some to get broken down into smaller boxes.  Some will be going into their first box from the land of “stack and drawer”   It’s going to be interesting.  When it’s over, there’s another smaller closet I have my eye on (not a hell mouth, we’ll just call it Jersey).  Once the comic boxes are arranged, I’m hoping to purge its contents and put the boxes in there. 

What does any of this mean for Cat-Tales?  Well, there could be an upswing in silver age influence if I get to reading as I work.  I don’t think Selina will be cleaning out her hell mouth again.  She says once was enough for that kind of thing.  So long as Catwoman has one and only one origin, she sees no need for more than one voyage of discovery into that closet.   That just leaves the sneezing.  Some character sneezing his head off could have enormous comic relief possibilities, but it’s unlikely I’m ready to see the funny since it was only about 72 hours ago I was the one doing the sneezing.  Still, one of these days, somebody… probably Oswald.  Heh.

So that’s the art follows life side of the equation.  Life also follows life, and there is going to be some metaphorical closet cleaning too.  Because the long, hot summer is drawing to a close and not only are we a little backed up on Cat-Tales, there is a certain backlog on blogging.  I’m hoping to get them all out of the way in a few quick entries. 

You have been warned.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The Long Hot Summer

The conclusion of Don’t Fear the Joker is finally out, and at first, I was amazed at just how long this tale has taken to complete.  Then I factored in how much has been going on besides writing the main story.  Earlier in the year we had the flashy stuff like the Second Life Visitor Center opening, video wallpaper and other website upgrades, and of course those delicious Cat-Tales Cocktails in the making.  The last few weeks it’s been more low-key but still quite vital:

First, proofing edits complete on Demon’s in the Details, which means a spiff new 6.625 x 10.25 (comic size) pdf for anyone who likes reading hardcopy, as well as Kindle and Mobi versions for the growing numbers that want to read on the go.  All of that is standard for each completed Cat-Tale.  What’s new for Demon is an ePub format.  This is the only file currently available in this format, so we can work out the kinks before rolling it out for all 60+ tales and compilations.  Anyone using Stanza and/or Safari on their iPhone or iPod should try it out here.   Users of the Droid Kindle app and other mobile readers should also give it a try and let me know what methods work best for you.

Speaking of proofing, we’re coming up on the end of Book 5, so that means a new compilation and a logical time to make the jump to providing the complete books available for Kindle.  Now, remember the scene in Empire Strikes Back where Yoda maintains that size shouldn’t make any difference?  If you can Force-float a pebble you can levitate the X-wing?  Well, it’s a theory, but it sure is intimidating.  Luke-like, I am going to try, but Kindle folks, please be kind on the off chance that I can’t get work out a proper table of contents/bookmark menu.

And finally—you didn’t think we were done yet, did you?—Finally, the social networking world has changed since I installed the “Add this” buttons, and it’s definitely time for some new options there so the tales can be easily shared on Facebook, tweeted, and otherwise passed around.  Expect these upgrades to roll out slowly and quietly in the next few weeks.  

As for what else I’ve done with my summer vacation, this season’s recipient of the DC Comics Shoe Fund is Kenneth Cole. 

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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This Week in Cat-Tales

It’s been a while since I logged a general catch-up entry.  I’m reasonably sure I mentioned when Armchair Detective and Not My Kink were released for kindle and mobile readers, but so much was happening in that window, putting the finishing touches on the Second Life Visitor Center and working on the pictures for the Cat-Tales Cocktails, they may have gotten missed.  In any case, edits are well underway for CT 58: Demon’s in the Details, so that should be released in just a few weeks. 

Better still, I got myself a new phone, an Android platform.  There’s a Kindle app, so I should be able to test the phone features much better now.  For example, visiting the Cat-Tales homepage, I see that not all smartphones will direct to the mobile-friendly menu page, only the iPhone does.  The rest of you (who are now the rest of US) can continue to use the iPhone button on the bottom menu until I get an automatic redirect in the works.

Also, the new chapter of Don’t Fear the Joker is out today. I know many readers were expecting this next chapter to be the final one, and I actually did consider it since CH9 is quite short.  But not only is it a complete chapter/installment on its own, there is one other non-Gotham, non-story consideration.  As forum followers are aware, my A/C gave up the ghost on August 1st, timing that IMO shows a truly Jokeresque sense of humor, and since the coming and going of repairmen is apt to slow down the progress of Chapter 10, I figured it was better to get this out there.  All of you can cackle with Mistah J while I keep Cashmere from hogging the sweet spot in front of the fan.

‘Til next time, Ciaomeow as we say in the real neighborhood.  And stay cool.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com  
cattales.yuku.com 
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Comic-Con Tweets

If you have an iPhone to give away, you can get thousands of people at Comic-Con to tweet anything you want.  Next year, I’m buying a couple dozen for:

Didio looks like he’s aged 30 years since September. 

Twilight fan panel canceled after CosPlay mishap.

Comic-Con fun: ordered a Cattitude at the Marriott bar in front of Matt Idelson.

Unless you’re dressed as an Imperial Storm Trooper, DO NOT go in Room 26AB.

Grant Morrison has the cursed monkey’s paw.

Three things that should never go together: IMAX, vampires and nachos.  I’m just sayin’

Jim Lee is HOT.   
(Not giving away a phone for that, it’s just a personal observation.)

Bride of the Demon was only written to make editor O'Neil get past the Bat/Cat and settle down to do his effing job.

No, seriously, my Uncle Larry was dead for 3 days and he looked better than Didio looks now.

Just saw a Xena, a real Catwoman and two Hulks beating up a goggle-whore in Ballroom 3.  WIN!

Comic-Con fun: ordered a DEE-vious at Hilton bar in front of Will Pfeifer.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach is HOT.
(No giveaway.  Again, just a personal observation.)

Those were the droids you were looking for.

Unless that hazmat suit is real, DO NOT go in Room 8.

Ferregamo, Manolo Blanik and Jimmy Choo recognize DC Comics w/ special merit award.

There is no such thing as a Lego Amazon.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Harvey Pekar Dead at 70

One of the real annoyances with the fustercluck that is DC Comics of the last decade-plus is the scope of their wrong ideas.  It wasn't just a particular writer here or a specific storyline there.  It was an all-encompassing atmosphere of WRONG, a virtual monsoon where ALL decisions and attitudes were doomed to fail because they were built on core principles that were faulty.  

A perfect example was Will Pfeifer's passive-aggressive attempt to paint any alterntaive to the East End goggle-whore excrement as boring.  It went something like "Panel 1: Selina pours coffee.  Panel 2: close up on the handle."

Telling example, as that cup of coffee is certainly an emblem of real life, an aspect of storytelling which eludes the year long crossover crowd.  "Realism" is not making everyone a psycho, a pedophile, a prostitute, or a serial killer. Realism is drawing those links between the fictional creation on the page and the living people reading it.  Bruce Wayne shaves in the morning.  It doesn't negate the fantastic larger-than-life stuff, it grounds it in something we can all relate to.

Harvey Pekar is dead at 70.  He wrote the autobiographical comic American Splendor, but more than that, he saw potential in the comic medium to tell stories beyond pulp horror and fantasy.

Pekar felt that the medium could be put to wider use, and he played with panels as a storytelling vehicle for more than a quarter of a century.

Without men like him, we'd be nowhere.  Without those who stretch and explore, who fiddle with the dials and see what something can actually DO beyond whatever we've been doing, without those guys, we'd be absolutely nowhere.  We'd still be in the trees.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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A Tale of Two Press Releases

Last week saw some big news from both comics giants. Let’s compare, shall we?

Marvel is forming a TV division to develop its properties into live action and
animated offerings for that enormous television audience. They named Uncle Jeph
(that’s Jeph Smallville-Lost-Heroes-The Long Halloween-Hush Loeb to the uninitiated) to head it. Back
when Disney first bought Marvel, I said “Now we got us a fair fight.” I meant
that Disney had the synergy of a multi-national corporation that has its fingers
in many, many pies, a depth and breadth that Marvel lacked, and a knack for
getting all those diverse operations working together to make the most of their
properties. I know some of us wrinkle our noses when we hear our beloved
characters described as “assets” or “properties,” but honestly, as a fan as well
as a stockholder, I am all in favor of Disney’s efforts to get every dime they
can out of every character they own. A higher ROI for me as a stockholder means MORE
STUFF for me as a fan. It really is a win-win if the company knows what
it’s doing.

And this is where I planned a contrast with Time Warner, which has that
diversity in terms of the divisions listed in its balance sheet: there’s a movie
studio and television as well as music and publishing, even if some are on life
support.  But they’ve never been able to get it all working together very
effectively. Even
after Martha Stewart gave them a humiliating billion dollar tutorial on the
process, they just don’t get the click going: strip the old science fiction
series that had a cult following, build a new
audience for new merch and a season-by-season DVD release, soundtrack, new novels, games, and
then potentially a new series or feature film. As I said, that’s the compare and
contrast I had planned, until *koff* the Amazon made her appearance. Thursday,
DC announced their plan to give Wonder Woman a new origin and costume. They
announced in the mainstream media, which is usually an indicator that they know
their readership is long gone and they have to venture out into the world beyond
Wizard, CBR and IGN to get a message through. (c.f. previous week's Superman article in USA
Today.)

It’s not the nature of the Diana news that interests me, however. Like West
Wing’s Bruno Gianelli, I only have so much RAM in my head. I have to prioritize.
I have to throw some things overboard. One of the things I've chosen not to care
about is whether or not Diana of Themyscryra gets a new outfit. The thing about
this episode that did get my attention was the contrast with Disney/Marvel’s
announcement in, well... scope. The latter is moving with a sure hand into new
waters where movies, video games and even theme park attractions feed into each
other, creating a capital-F Franchise that is more than the sum of its parts.
And the reactions to the news are a beautiful illustration of reaping what you sow:
“OMG, he wrote Teen Wolf? I didn’t know that!” and “Wasn’t Heroes great!
Remember those viewing parties we had? Did you know Tim Sale did the paintings
for that show?” “Long Halloween was the best comic I have ever read in my life.
10 years later, it’s not dated either.”

Meanwhile DC is creating this tempest tiara in a teapot, working a shrinking
readerbase into a lather over a “controversial” new costume. The only people bothering
to fight over this are that 1% of 1% of 1% that didn’t write this guys off by
2007. And in contrast to the Jeph news, reactions include the phrases “latest
atrocity” “You read it for me, I’m afraid to look,” and “Oh good God, what are
they doing now?” Says to me that 1% of 1% of 1% who haven’t jumped ship aren’t
exactly enthusiastic. Is it possible the only reason they haven’t jumped is they
don’t know how to swim?

Maybe it’s not a fair comparison. I would probably be the first taking the new
regime to task if they tried moving forward without setting their house in order
first. There are too many sins unadmitted and unatoned, so much so that if a
typo slips into one of these articles: “Superman is Daily Planet reporter Bark
Kent” everyone’s first assumption is that they’re replacing Clark in a new
campaign to stick it to the old school fans. That is a problem that should
probably be addressed before trying to weave the comics into the movies,
cartoons, and gaming worlds where these characters thrive. But they better do it
fast because Jeph is getting a head start, and history has shown us when he
comes out of the gate strong, there’s no stopping him.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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*Discreet cough* Oh Mr. Nolan, A Word in Your Ear

There’s an ad out right now for Netflix or some similar outfit that talks about the different levels a good children’s movie should have: accessible to kids but with more going that speaks to adults. The Toy Story universe is a perfect example, it has its own analogy for
Death, for God's sake. While the toys can cease to exist by being utterly destroyed, that’s not it. They might fear winding up on Sid’s worktable and having fireworks strapped to their ass, but that’s not a fate that is going to befall every toy. There is a different reality, a painful one that every one of them will have to face sooner or later: the children who play with them will grow up. They all know it, and like us living folks and the Grim Reaper, they try not to think about it. There is a REASON the staples of our popular storytelling revolve around heroes who can die but don’t, who come through dangerous situation after dangerous situation and always come out triumphant and unscathed—and that reason isn’t because car chases are cool or explosions look awesome on the big screen. It’s because we are all food for worms and we know it. As always, those who understand the moving parts that make a story work will keep on pulling off these amazing hits, while those grasping desperately at stunt after stunt will keep on failing.

Pixar is one of those who understand. They succeed more often than is statistically possible, and a huge part of that is drop-dead perfect storytelling. When they made Toy Story 2, there were exactly two sequels to spectacularly popular movies which were recognized as better than the originals: The Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back. John Lassiter, et al STUDIED those movies, not in a dumb superficial way but by delving into their structures and content: how much of the first films were referenced, how much was built on, how much was new. Not just churning out more of the same. Not trashing everything that made the originals what they were. Theme and variation, theme and recapitulation. It was a magnificent effort, and the results were amazing. Toy Story 2 is a damn good movie. So is 3, btw, but I’m talking about first sequels for a reason.

There is now a third movie sequel that is significantly better than the original. It’s
The Dark Knight. The difference is that the original was no Godfather. Batman Begins was not a great movie. It was good, but it was seriously flawed—and while certain fanboys may start to howl at those words, Christopher Nolan and his band are certainly not among them. They know their first film was flawed because they set about fixing every single one of its shortcomings in the second. They even TOLD US that’s what they were doing. What was it Bruce said stitching himself up? “I learn from my mistakes.”

NOW, not in 2005 but now, today, Christopher Nolan is in that same position as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and John Lassiter. He’s made the perfect Batman movie. How in the name of Robert Abraham Kane do you top it? I say take a page from Toy Story and analyze those two great sequels: Godfather II and ESB, and also--this is important--forget Batman Begins ever happened. Calm down, I’m not saying scrap its continuity. I know that kind of talk makes the fanboys heads explode. I’m saying for sequel-writing purposes, Batman Begins is no foundation. Approach B3 as a second movie with the goal of surpassing
TDK as if it was the only Batman movie ever made. All Begins had to do was be better than Schumacher. The aforementioned Netflix ad can do that much. The video for the Batman rollercoaster at six flags that instructs you how to use a seatbelt—better than Schumacher. So making Begins posed none of those expectations challenges. Then, making
TDK, begins left you with a nice checklist of errors to fix. That isn’t the case here.
TDK was perfect. It was PERFECT. So this is terra incognita, Mr. Nolan, and it’s time to turn our attention to Pixar’s approach, looking to the great sequels and cracking the code of what made them work. That done, that formula achieved, apply it to the “original” --but that original to be drawn upon and built upon is
TDK.

One woman’s opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary, except in Wisconsin. Batteries not included.

In other news, not a lot of writing happened last week. The triple release of the visitor center, the cocktails, and the new website burned up a lot of purple kitty energy. But not to worry, ground is broken on Chapter 7, and now that The TBA that Ate Tokyo is TBA no more, everything will be going a lot faster.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The week... Oh for Bast Sake! NOW WHAT?

Okay then, so much happened in Cat-Tales last week I didn’t even manage to get a blog out. I had another chance to play my friend’s Lego Batman game, and as Classic Catwoman, I opened a can of whoopass the goggled pretender—not once but many times, shocking my friend with the violence of a purple cat crossed. It would have been a very cute and entertaining entry, but nobody got to read it because I was more than occupied prepping for the big rollout over the weekend. In case you haven’t seen it:

• The website got a makeover, including some spiff video wallpaper that did not shoot or edit itself.
  
• Armchair Detective and Not My Kink are out for Kindle and Mobi. 
  
• Cat-Tales opened a virtual Visitor Center in Second Life (otherwise known in these parts as the TBA that ate Tokyo).
• Shane Sahr, the rockstar bartender at Seattle’s famous Tini Bigs Martini Bar, released a quartet of Cat-Tales Cocktails that are too sinfully indulgent to be believed. 
  

Now, that’s a lot to get ready, particularly when one of my clients had a press thing and needed a little extra web-work himself. Pulled it off though, got everything together, produced the triple launch without a hitch. Got some nice screenshots of the visitor center, got a new headshot of myself as a pixilated person IN the visitor center, got pictures of the criminally indulgent Cat-Tales Cocktails that should have you all on a plane to Seattle just to order one of these babies. I was all set to get up this morning write up a killer entry about the whole thing when…

Sean Hayes… dressed as Spiderman… singing Don’t Rain on My Parade

Picture a close-up on Chris with a strange little twitch above her right eye. "That’s… Sean Hayes… That’s… Radio City Music Hall… That’s…"

I’m a theatre-gal, folks. Remember
Reputation?  It takes a certain kind of mind to come up with an idea like "Cat-Tales: An Evening with Catwoman", and that’s a mind who’s spent an awful lot of time backstage. I’m also hip deep in comic book superheroes. Sean Hayes hosting the Tony Awards, covering Streisand, dressed as Spiderman, that’s not something someone like me can me can just IGNORE!  For the love of God and Stan Lee, that’s like… for 30 years we’ve all assumed the ’66 Batman was lightning in a bottle, a product of time and place that, if there is justice in the universe, should never be attempted again. But Sean Hayes? Don’t Rain on My Parade? CAMP LIVES, folks. Superhero Camp is alive and well and heading for the Lunt-Fontane.

And y’know what? I’m fine with it. Perhaps the most resilient aftereffect of Miller on the Bat mythos and comic books in general is this overblown seriousness. Maybe it’s not as corrosive to the soul as the other stuff, but it is every bit as damaging to the genre as a whole. It simply isn’t necessary to take this all so f-ing seriously 24/7/365.  It is permissible to lighten up and have a little goddamn fun, and by NOT doing so, a lot of people who would be fans are shoo'd away - because unlike the fanboys who keep enabling this crap, we demand our our entertainment make us FEEL GOOD. The new Brave and the Bold cartoon gets that.  The DC vs Marvel guys on YouTube certainly get it.  Hell, even the uber-realistic Nolan movies get it.  Look at Liam Neason’s face when Bruce finally makes his costumed entrance in Batman Begins. They get it.  They ALL get it.

Perhaps that's why Batman can thrive in movies, in cartoons, in games, and (humbly) in prose fiction, in everywhere EXCEPT the comics medium where he began, is because those guys are the only ones locked into this mindset that Batman is a serious-fucking-business. Maybe if we can just get them to unclench, to embrace the lip twitch and all that it implies, there’s hope.  If not, we can just keep showing this:

and get days of free entertainment watching them try to prevent their heads from exploding.  That could be fun too.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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The week in Cat-Tales – Lego Catwoman sold separately

Wow. Just… WOW. Chapter 6 of Don’t Fear the Joker – RELEASED! Yippie! Unfortunately, I missed this Remidar’s release of this stunner from Something Old by about 2 hours…

So even though it didn’t get into the newsletter, it is up in the fan art gallery, and if you haven’t paid a visit recently, GO, lots of lovely new pieces are there.

I also get to do a Josh Lyman victory lap calling VICTORY IS MINE, VICTORY IS MINE! (Bring me the finest bagels and muffins in the land.) My victory? I beat the editing software into submission, which wasn’t nearly the torture test I was expecting, and then got the damn thing exported – which was completely the torture test I was expecting.

Rounded off the week by getting to play some Lego Batman. Now this game is not new, and it’s certainly not in the Arkham Asylum league for eye candy and general Batty goodness, but then it’s not supposed to be, they’re LEGOs. And they’re fun! As Game Radar put it:
"[Lego Indiana Jones] was about paying homage; Batman is about embracing the dizzying, if essentially silly scope of his universe. Sure, it may not revolutionize the LEGO formula, but if this is the price to see Batman finally done some virtual justice, then so be it."
I know the big disappointment in the original Dave School Lego Batman was the goggle-whore. Lego Batman: The Game has the workaround. The default is still the regrettable biker-chick get-up that is an insult to the good name of Catwoman, but a simple code unlocks a variety of additional characters, including a properly purple Classic Catwoman.

Go to upper level of Batcave
Go to bat computer
Step through to "Enter Code"
To unlock the Classic Catwoman enter: M1AAWW

After that, select her for your first mission, and if she is in the right position among the characters (I think it’s the #4 slot), she’ll be featured on the splash screen introducing the mission. The text gives background on the villain to be faced in that mission, which is Clayface. Ignore that and watch her – let’s just say all the sass and attitude CT readers have come to recognize as the real Catty.

A couple touches that I really enjoyed – in a number of those intro shots, Batman has a twitch smile. Okay, technically it's an asymmetric mouth (See above, they’re LEGOs) but it LOOKS like a lip-twitch. I also had to laugh when Robin the circus kid walks the batline like a highwire while Batman has to pull himself across underhand.

Happy Cat-Play everyone. See you next week.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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Lost in Cat-Tales

The Lost finale was last night, and considering the number of comic book writers who took a turn on the island, I figured it was worth an evening of my time, if only for blogging purposes today. I hadn’t watched for the past few years. The one time I looked in, I saw some kid (who I think might have been the French woman’s son) strapped into the eyelid-propper torture chair from Clockwork Orange. “Yeah, okay…” and I went on my way. For the past few years I have been very nicely holding up the show as an example for non-comic friends to see what most comic writers do: take everything that brought the audience in in the first place and wreck it.

So I went into last night’s viewing in pretty much the same spirit that I went to see the first Iron Man film: not expecting to have a wildly good time. Like the first Iron Man, I was pleasantly surprised. First, ABC did what they learned in that very first season with Lost and Desperate Housewives: shows that had too many secrets, mysteries, and half-told backstories for the average viewer to keep track of, particularly over the mid-season mini-hiatus. As I said back then, it wasn’t a case of thinking the audience was stupid, it was a simple acknowledgement of the fact that this is just a TV show and people have lives. For every person who can identify all the record albums in the hatch, there are 100,000 who have to remember to pick up the dry cleaning. So those recaps were very important, but there was a downside. Every time they necessarily began with the plane crash and the introductions, so every time they necessarily reminded you how good the show was in the beginning, why you came to like it, and that automatically drew attention to how far it had drifted off course.

Last night’s recap had none of that subliminal trouser-dropping. It wisely edited out as much of the dross as it could, so if you didn’t know any better, you’d think the show had never lost its way. One of the execs proudly declared “The mystery of the show is ‘Who are these people?’” as if they’d known it all along. Daniel Dae Kim (the actor who plays Jin) smilingly remembers that Season One was his favorite.

With that recap bringing the rest of us up to speed, so we could enjoy the finale alongside the die-hards who never left, the last chapter of this 6 year story commenced. I found it to be extraordinarily well-written. /spoilers follow/ Little structural touches like the “Sideways” Jack restoring Loche’s legs at the same time Jack is gearing up to kill Loche in the main timeline, that isn’t something we see very often in this arena. I was also impressed by the theme explored. Scratch that – I was impressed by the writing chops they brought to the task. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but in my experience, comic writers as a breed don’t do too well when they tackle the big meaning of life stuff. As for the theme itself as a resolution for the series, I find it strangely fitting. Yes, we all die, but in the world of Lost there was an actual rule to that effect. Honest to god mandate of the writers room: you could snuff anybody except the dog.

The USA Today commented that the finale “like anything that is earnest and hopeful” will attract mockery in certain quarters. While I don’t feel it deserves it, I would like to submit the following to the Millerites and misanthropes who are currently firing up their 2-cycle weedwacker intellects for the task: We all die—except for the golden lab.

As for Cat-Tales… Okay, briefly: Seriously productive week. Chapter almost done. One possible additional scene I may tag on after the proof and polish run. I figured I’d decide later and sent it out to the betas for some pre-proofing commentary. That’s an unusual practice for me, but schedules (mine and theirs) are like the tides: they wait for no man, and they don’t stop for oil spills. I finished some video capture and cataloging that video for a TBA. Editing is next. Followers of the Dark Knight ARG know that I’m no stranger to simple video and not-so-simple Flash, but that was two laptops ago and, more to the point, there’s a new generation of software to contend with. Kitty is a little intimidated by an interface that looks like the cockpit of a 747 compared to the stuff I was using, but hey, gotta take the leap sometimes, right? We also had a little upheaval with the old forum problem. The All-Seeing Oracle could post regular messages but not create polls, so I had to step in there, just for the week. And it looks like we’ll be on a Wednesday-to-Wednesday schedule for a while with the caption contest. Got some stuff in for one of the summer projects—YAY—and what’s unbelievable is, as much as I was looking forward to seeing what this person came up with, it completely exceeded my expectations. I’ve said it before, it’s going to be a very purple summer. Meow.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

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