*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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Porn

Several people have sent me the trailer for this Batman XXX: A Porn Parody that is making the rounds, and a few have suggested I take up my sword and lead the charge. What’s interesting is that some assume I’d be leading the charge against it and others assume I’m all for it, but despite that 180-degree difference of opinion, both sides seem to think I have a sword.

Okay, technically, I do. Remember that “shoe fund” I started years ago with money I no longer waste on comics? I’ve used it to acquire some serious movie props over the years, including (the in-joke of all time for Cat-Tales readers) a pair of hero swords from Batman Begins. Oh if Mr. Didio’s stockholders only knew. I mean seriously, primo memorabilia with a documented provenance does not come cheap. I realize they’d only have my word for the fact that the money was diverted from comic purchases, that every penny of it would have gone into their coffers if Didio & Co. hadn’t screwed the pooch so completely on Batman and Catwoman. But c’mon, look at the amount of time and creative energy I have put into these characters over the past 9/10 of a decade. Don’t I look like one of those people who keep the comic shops in business? And, as I’ve stated many times, I’m not a Marvel gal. So you do the math.

Anyway, point is, I do technically own a sword or three, but I can’t say I have an opinion on Batman XXX to bother unsheathing one. I admire their cojones in putting out a press release for it. That’s not something fair-use dwellers normally feel comfortable with. But that’s about it. I thought I might use the opening to talk a bit about fair use, but come on. If you clicked on a blog entry called PORN and got a dissertation on copyright infringement, I think you’d be justified in slapping a bait-and-switch tag on this entry. So let’s talk porn, just bear with me if I take the occasional detour into the dry stuff. It will get back to the Bown-chicka-wow-wow momentarily:

First: I am not a lawyer. I did, however, have an uncle who was a member of the Pennsylvania Bar and passed on to me the only true thing you will ever read about the subject on the internet, the one thing that all of the hangers on, support staff and friends of the practicing attorney never quite get: any time a lawyer speaks in absolutes, they are on the clock. If Action X is absolutely illegal at all times, in all states, and under any circumstances, if Person Y is absolutely within his/her rights and all culpability falls on the other party, that lawyer’s meter is running. Off the clock, there is always a trialable issue, a question of fact for the jury or judge to determine, a grey area or a mitigating factor that indicates, at the very least, it’s time to challenge the established precedent. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s the nature of the beast: if everything actually was as cut, dried and never-changing as the meter-running advocate pretends, there wouldn’t be two sides to argue. Not only would none of them have a job, there wouldn’t even be a need for the process they’re all a part of.

So let’s dispense with this notion that copyright is gravity, and let’s take a short break to cue up the bump-and-grind soundtrack, because you were all patient for that last part. Now then…

DC Comics, a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., owns Batman. (Bown-chicka-wow-wow…)

I don’t. (Bown-chicka-wow-wow…)

The kids running around in their backyard right now playing Justice League, they don’t. (No music here, there are kids playing. Pretend we’re talking about the census until they’re gone...)

The couple cosplaying Batman and Catwoman prior to making love in their own bedroom, they don’t own either character. (Bown-chicka-you get the idea…)

And the makers of Batman XXX, they don’t own the rights to anything either. So what is this “ownership” exactly, and how do we reconcile it with this thing called the human imagination and the way it responds to storytelling?

(Yes, this is where the porn comes in. Really, trust me.)

First, stories are meant to capture our attention and excite our imagination. So the kids playing in the back yard and the couple roleplaying in bed are, bottom line, using DC’s products in the way they are meant to be used. It worked, imaginations are engaged and running wild with what they have been given. And even though some copyright holders may be unaware of it, that is absolutely what they want. It’s the reason Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are still going strong after decades when Farthest Star and The Gray Prince are not. Enforcing your rights as an “owner” is a tricky business in this arena, because it’s not like somebody trespassing on your land to fish in your stream, shoot your deer, or eat grapes off your vines. Just consider two shampoo simple extremes:

Of course LucasArts is going to go after a virtual world offering a complete roleplay environment when they’re gearing up to launch their own official MMORPG.

Of course too, they’re not going to touch Randy picturing Leah in the gold bikini when he’s trying to get off. That’s between his ears, beyond their control, and none of their damn business, thank you Captain Obvious.

So let’s start adding stuff and see when it becomes their damn business… Can Randy bring his girlfriend into this process? Can he ask her to call him Han? Can he ask her to actually wear a gold bikini rather than just imagining her in it? Can she add silks to the bikini and braid her hair? Can a third party participate if everyone is a consenting adult? Can that third person just watch if that’s their thing? (BTW, if at any point you’re googling copyright law to find the answer to these questions, you need to call your credit card company right now, get your limit raised and go buy yourself some perspective, some common sense, a sense of humor, and a good therapist.) What if Randy and his girlfriend are into the virtual worlds and make a private area where they can do this same thing with avatars that look more like Han and Leia than their pudgy middle-age bods will allow in person? Where exactly is the line between OF COURSE SHUT IT DOWN and OF COURSE, IT’S NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS? Even in these extreme, absurdist scenarios, that line is a slippery little sucker and it keeps dancing around.

But wait, we’re not done yet! There is still fair use to discuss, which is what I do (Don’t leave, we’ll get back to the porn shortly). I criticize DC Comics and they way they have consistently mishandled the legends that are an important part of our collective psyche. I say look at this guy who has a track record for making female characters prostitutes, that isn’t someone you allow to establish the origin of a woman’s icon. I say look at his take on heroes in a myriad of other writings, that isn’t someone you allow to write the bible on your hero. I say look at this former writer-turned-editor using the bully pulpit to trying and insist his characters into importance: mandating plotlines that eviscerated where the story had gone naturally and organically in order to force relationships, both romantic and adversarial, with his own creations. I say look at that editor’s successors piling degradation upon degradation on certain characters in order to punish the fans of those characters for not accepting a new direction despite a full court press of manufactured hype. I say that these people have abdicated their responsibility as caretakers of our legends and are not fit to be their custodians. That’s one woman’s opinion, and the right to express that opinion in whatever manner I feel will be most effective is the essence of what fair use is about. It’s protected speech precisely when the opinion expressed is one the copyright holders won’t like.

Which brings us back to the porn, because it brings us to The Streisand Effect, which I have to believe is what Batman XXX is banking on. Basically, you file a cease and desist or a DMCA, and rather than making the offending thing go away, you propel it into a stratosphere of fame and recognition that even Superbowl ads can’t always deliver. The most recent episode:

Ralph Lauren had a new ad out with an impossibly skinny model in it. As Boing-Boing put it, “Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis”. The ad was highlighted on PhotoshopDisasters, as an example of (we really hope) bad Photoshopping. However, Ralph Lauren filed a (bogus) DMCA takedown notice on the post, which has since been removed.

That’s the end of it, right? Post removed, story gone. Ha! BoingBoing has now covered the story, as has the Huffington Post, TechDirt and others. Ralph Lauren filed a DMCA complaint against BoingBoing, but their ISP (Canada’s Priority Colo) knows what they’re doing and didn’t remove the post. They spoke with BoingBoing about it, and decided (rightfully) that the post can stay.
–thestreisandeffect.com

The BoingBoing blogger was then invited onto the Rachel Maddow Show to discuss American companies that respond too quickly to these DMCAs and the troubling implication of a practice that puts the burden of proof on the accused and not the accuser. And of course, every time this discussion escalates or takes a new turn, there’s that picture again displayed for a new and larger audience. 

Is there a wrap up to all this? I’m not sure… Maybe it comes down to maturity. Cut free of all the job titles, jargon and dollar signs, there is an inherent childishness running through these stories. In Ralph Lauren’s behavior with the photo, in Denny’s when he became editor, and in DCs when their new direction didn’t fly. In The Lion in Winter, Queen Katherine says “A nation is a human thing. It does what we do, for our reasons.” A woman finds it hard to love the son she was carrying when her husband took a mistress. She favors the other boys over him and the father overcompensates, favoring the other way – and when that man is a king, the rivalry that ensues brings civil war. Today, corporations have more power than most nations, and what was true in 1183 hasn’t changed: they do what we do for our reasons. Some of these guys, they really need to grow up.

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

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No Love Letters Today

Okay, first, Windows Vista sucks. I can’t think of many things that get a week off to a more aggravating start than having to do that new profile copy/paste dance with 4+ gig of files just to get around that corrupted profile glitch. I had enough computer issues last year that I’ve been putting off Windows 7 for the obvious reasons: give them time to work out the kinks that sneak through every MS release, and giving me time to get other stuff done before embarking on the thrilling adventure of earning another @#($U@(* operating system.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is today’s blog may be a little late, since the start of Monday morning was postponed by 3 hours. Woof. On the upside, not only were last week’s forum/yuku problems resolved very nicely, we now have the fantastic ability to open up to non-yuku participants. You can now log into the Cat-Tales forums and this blog with a Facebook, Twitter or Google UserID, as well as LinkedIn, WindowsLive, Yahoo, MySpace, AOL, WordPress and OpenID.

The temporary outage did zonk out the caption contest, but I have it on good authority that the All-Seeing Oracle is scouring the net for a good panel to make up for lost time.

In other news, I made some good headway on Chapter 6, as well as finishing the proofing edits for Cat-Tales #56 Armchair Detective – which of course means there is a new pdf, kindle and mobi version available for download.

And of course, more backstage stuff for the website. Kitty needs a nap – if only somebody told Vista. Again I say “woof,” but we’ll get’em.

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

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This week in... Screw it, a love letter to Remidar

Don’t let anyone get away with saying comics aren’t an art form – and that includes the faux intellectuals who will sometimes allow that the stuff in that museum in Brussels is art, but not the lowly American stuff and certainly not anything pertaining to *sniff* superheroes.

The art of the comic is in the created colloid of words and visuals to create a new thing that is more than the sum of its parts.  I got my first taste when Thundering Monkey began using Poser to illustrate his favorite Cat-Tales moments.  Then Dorothy Rose got me into the hard stuff when she took the first paragraphs of A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation to create a graphic novel-style prologue for the CT series.  That brings us to last week’s addition to the fan art gallery.  This breathtaking jewel from Remidar:

That, my friends, is the work of a true artist.  See, for me, the art begins before pencil is touched to paper.  It begins with the sensibility that chooses that precise psychological moment.  “Just me, down here, with the bats.”  That’s just… damn.

And that’s why this week, rather than make a big todo about the reception of Chapter 5 (which Joker is trying to take all the credit for, btw, despite the fact that it’s the messages on Selina’s voicemail generating all the buzz), I’d like us all to take a moment and drink a virtual toast to our favorite artists. 

Words and pictures, guys.  Words and pictures.

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

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