My tentative return to wonderful world of comic book conventions continues in a few weeks when I'm a guest for all three days of Galaxycon St. Louis from October 10th—12th. If you're in the area, come by and say hello. I'll be there with my son Cody and we're looking forward to a great weekend of signing books and meeting the fine folks who read and appreciate my work.
It's a pity we can't count on you for the New York Comic Con, Mr DeMatteis.
ReplyDeleteMaybe another year...
DeleteIt is strange, for s a show set in Minneapolis, The Mary Tyler Moore Show has a shocking number of New York accents, and a shocking absence of Minnesota accents.
ReplyDeleteAny way Dematteis, here is a memory jog...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WXg6ZrS1xY
Jack
That was interesting...although, in many (perhaps most) ways far removed from my experiences growing up.
DeleteIt is a part of the episode of PBS show America Experience about the Hard Hat Riot. It premieres tonight tonight.
DeleteIf it makes you feel any better, it is also very different from my father's experience in a working class neighborhood in the 50s and 60s, especially the pat about respecting law enforcement.
In fact, he was the one who told me at 16 that if a cop stops me I should listen them and do whatever they say... because a bad cop can ruin your life, and judge as always believe them.
He even told me about a family member who was a cop in the park telling him how much people distrusted him...because less than 10 years before the Detroit PD was cracking skulls as strikebreakers for Ford and GM.
Yeah, bragging about a working class upbringing and saying you were raised to respect law enforcement is certainly not something I experienced.
Jack
Next I will tell you about how the Twilight Zone and its success was intrinsically tied to the election of JFK. Also, how you can use the lesson to map future presidents. Also, Forrest Gump is a part of it.
DeleteJack
The folks in the trailer seemed more like the men of my father's generation.
DeleteI can't say they particularly reminded me of my father, or his friends, or his brother.
DeleteThey DID however remind me of my career Marine uncle (by marriage), who grew up in the Woodlawn neighborhood in the Bronx. Albeit less racist. Of course he was born a few years early to be a Baby Boomer.
Also, kind of Archie Bunker.
Interesting side note, in prep for this, the PBS streaming had the Nixon episode (for obvious reasons) and the Disco Demolition Night episode. The latter of which because it focused on a similar idea of class tensions in teh past informing on the present.
Both are intresting... I had never seen Nixon joke and actually be kind of charming before...but eh Disco Demoltion Night one I think gave more of an insight than intended.
Everyone in it is making assertions, that it was racist, that it was sexism, that it was homophobia, that it was class exclusion at clubs. But interestingly, no one really offers any solid proof to ANY of those assertions.
But, I think the belief cheaper tickets leading to more beer consumed having a part is probably true.
I also learned about the Marvel Comics Dazzler, though not by anything they said. She was the Disco hero who debuted just after Disco died. I had never realized how fast the drop off was in listening to Disco was. It makes sense that Marvel could not read the writing on the wall.
Also, IF you ever read Steve Englehart's novel, "the Point Man," the main character is in the middle of a pickle at the beginning because he was laid off during a format change at his Rock radio station, That was also what caused the inventor to "Disco Sucks" to start the movement was when he was laid off at his rock station in favor of a disco format. Wonder if it was an inspiration.
Jack
Disco really took over the airwaves for a while. And then the rhythms were just absorbed into the mainstream. But for a time it seemed that (often embarrassingly) every artist had some kind of disco track out there.
DeleteOne interesting thing about the Disco debate is that it ignores a very likely possibility.. Disco's time was just up.
DeleteDisco died in 1979. LATE 1979. Historically speaking, there tends to be historical shifts near the beginning of new decades. Whatever disco started as in the Black, Latino, and gay communities, it had become hyper-commercialized that became watered down for mass consumption. In short, it went from a cultural point to a fad. More to the point, it was going to dance clubs. I was never a dance club guy., but the people who are age out of it. The new people coming in want something their own. It just seems that it is never brought up as an answer.
However, to me the real legacy of disco was an increased connection of pop culture to time periods. Also most an inverse of what came before.
For instance the Beatles, even for people who were not alive, the Beatles conjure up images of war protests and hippies... even if a majority of their listeners did not take part. The music of the 60s was a soundtrack to the events.
to be continued...
Disco on the other hand practically dominates the conversation of the 70s. If you say late 70s, you often think Disco before you think of the hostage crisis, or gas lines, or that beaver that screwed Howard the Duck out of the presidency... the real world stuff.
DeleteI think that idea of pop culture influencing the feel of an era and competing with events. Think of the following decade, after the disco era. Telling people in that weird generation between ours that the decade was not always great can be difficult.
to be continued...
Manufacturing jobs disappeared because of increased competition from the Japanese, the crack epidemic was raging, AIDS was killing people... all of which had the victims being blamed. But even members of that generation who were old enough to be in high school or college in the decade, because the pop culture painted such a different picture. NOT all, I want to make that clear, but a lot.
DeleteIt even effects the ability some people have to understand the pop culture. It can also effect how people interpret things. The Sopranos for instance.
Tony Soprano was a bad person. They took every chance to show people that. He was also a pretty not great gangsters, he was in the shadow of New York. His whole crew were kind of pathetic. Don't get me wrong great show, partially because that was the point.
But people cheered him on an thought he ruled.
In the first episode, a direct link is tied to the American dream and the pitfalls. However because it came out when those excess were being celebrated and much of the show in the post-9/11 media blitz of patriotism, many people were not making the connection.
Or THE SHIELD, not to be confessed with Agents of SHIELD. If you are not familiar, it is a series about an attempt to put the kibosh on a police gang led by the corrupt Vic Mackey.
Here's the thing, I grew up around members of the Detroit PD, which was one of the most corrupt police departments in America until it started getting cleaned up in the 90s. Even then, it took time to weed out enough people to get get it to function. Decades of only showing up only when you want also takes a long time to repair in neighborhoods left abandoned.
I say that to preface this, when I saw that show, admittedly years after it wrapped, I was not shocked. I knew Vic Mackeys. It is hard to fund a Porsche, a house, and two alimony payments on a cops salary. A friend of mine whose dad was a member of the Detroit PD... now a biker gang... found out as an adult that his parents marital problems was because his father had an affair, not visits, and affair, with a prostitute he started out black mailing.
However, most viewers did not have that experience, and the creators of the show were shocked that as they had Mackey do more and more villainous things, people were still cheering him on. They were not seeing him as a villain, and they were basing much of it off real problems in the LAPD.
Well, since the 70s, well cops who crossed the line were pretty popular. Law and Order cops do. The 90s were full of actual stories of cops that stepped over the line. The SHIELD only came out in 2002.
That having been said, it was also coming out during the shadow of 9/11, when the U.S. military... and American people...were will ingot accept shady stuff.
Also, I have realized that the Mary Tyler Moore show is the feminist Dick Van Dyke show. Both shows were sort of ahead of their time in their depicting of relationships, an equal partnership marriage with DVD and women in the workplace with MTM. They also...and this is the big one...had main characters who had comedic chops, but were really made stars by how likable and affable they were,
There is also a DVD show where Rob think he and LAura had their baby switched a the hospital, that had one of the first positive portrayals of a black mile class family, and MTM had an episode where Mary challenged anti-semitism.
This is of course not shocking, DD was one of Mary's first acting gigs, and she was very young when she got the role. It would only make sense that she would internalize lessons from the show reflecting what makes a success.
Bey you did not think you would read about Dick Van Dyke today. I mean... In now you hoped, but probably thought it would go unfulfilled.
Jack.
You can combine these ideas into a book called DISCO VAN DYKE!
DeleteI love the Van Dyke and MTM shows. They still hold up. And I remember that "switched baby" episode very well. It seems harmless now, but was groundbreaking then.
Another musical trend that defined the seventies and was, in some ways, a response to disco, was the punk/new wave movement. Thrashing away at the other end of the spectrum.
I would be remiss if I did not point out that punk predates the 70s, with bands like The Stooges, MC5, and Death. Well...Death formed in 1971, but still predated Disco.
DeleteEven if one does not like the humor of DVD orMTM, and I do, you still want to be with the main characters because they were very likable.
Seems strange when you consider how man lead characters are unlikable now. Especially since their unlikeableness is usually connected to an 'everyman vibe," and Dick Van Dyke was sort of the original TV every man. Yes, I am saying he was more of an every-man than Ralph Cramden.
Jack
They were certainly progenitors of punk, but the movement didn't solidify and have a broader impact till the 70s.
DeleteYes, they were incredibly likable characters. SEINFELD, which I love, was perhaps the turning point for characters not being as likable, although I'd argue that, overall, the SEINFELD characters were more likable than a lot of current comedy characters.
One of the things I like about ABBOTT ELEMENTARY is that, with all their flaws, the main characters are good and decent people doing their best. And immensely likable.
I couldn't find a schedule on the website. Will you be there all day on each day, or only during certain hours?
ReplyDeleteNo definite hours, Randy, but I should be there from late morning till four or five in the afternoon. (With breaks for lunch and panels, of course!)
DeleteOkay, thank you.
DeleteYou're welcome! And as soon as I have my panels set, I'll post them here.
DeleteWell, the term 'punk rock' originated in CREEM Magazine, in a article about Question Mark and the Mysterions. They also retroactively applied it to the Stooges and MC5, who they had covered intensely. Members of the New York Dolls, who many people mistakenly claim were the first punk band have called the Stooges and MC5 punk.
DeleteThey were demoted to 'proto-punk' to make the more commercially viable Ramones and far less talented Sex Pistols larger role as innovators.
Its fine Dematteis, everyone makes mistakes. I am told at least.
But, you ARE correct about the era that switched the everyman. concept. However, with Seinfeld... and Arrested Development even more so... them being kind of not great people was part of the joke. It is another thing when they have a character be aggressively unlikable, but still try and cast them as being in the right. No learning, no joke about them being bad people.
It is almost funny that when I was a kid, the Simpsons... which was the king of schmaltzy moments at the time... and always came back to showing they loved each other, had parents up in arms because on the way to those moments Bart would talk back to Homer or say 'damn'.
I have not seen Abbott Elementary... though I have heard good things. However, I might suggest Superstore. Which has a fairly likable cast, with some kooky quirks. For instance the main character (Jonah) is pretentious and views it as a temporary stop, but still really wants to fit in and have people like him. Amy is kind of prickly, but you realize it just takes her time to warm up to people... you know, like a New Yorker... because of the unfortunate circumstances that had her working at the store.
Jack
I love SUPERSTORE. We've watched the whole thing, from beginning to end, at least three times. (In fact, we're wrapping up a rewatch right now.) Wonderful characters, genuinely funny, and it manages to really say something about life in working class America without hitting you on the head.
DeleteI missed it when it came out, but streamed it ever since. This year in fact. It is very good.
DeleteI admittedly got choked up during the scene when Mateo was expected to be deported because Glenn will find out he is undocumented, only for Glenn to say it all checked out followed by, "Merry Christmas, Mateo."
A pretty beautiful scene for a show that had an episode with a plot line based around the store mascot being a cannibal.
It also felt like a real ensemble cast.
And now, you will spend all day trying to figure out what Superstore character corresponds to what JLI character.
Jack
Mark McKinney deserved an Emmy for playing Glenn. What a character, what a performance!
DeleteIn fairness, Mark McKinney has been great since Kids in the Hall
DeleteJack
I'm constantly delighted by his performance.
DeleteMr DeMatteis, I believe you worked on the Squadron Supreme back 1982. I would want to ask you what is your opinion about the latest incarnation of the team, from "Heroes Reborn" (2021).
ReplyDeleteI see this a big unsolved plot in Marvel and I see quite a lot of potential for futures stories. Mainly because it would be logical for the DC's pastiches to kinda start a war against all Marvel in order to restore their world.
Many say that this Squadron was more efficient than Marvel's superheroes in keeping the world safe, but I believe they were actually just "eliminating the competition" for their "master", Mephisto.
I've never read the stories you're referring to, so I have no opinion. Also: I only wrote the Squadron very briefly, in a DEFENDERS story, many years ago. And, finally, for legal reasons, I can't discuss potential story ideas with folks online. That's a bit of a minefield. Sorry!
DeleteThat's OK. I thank you for your reply, anyway.
DeleteBest wishes.
Best wishes right back at you. Sorry I couldn't have been of more help.
DeleteWell, if people are to discuss the Squadron, what did you think when you first read GRUENWALD'S Squadron Supreme?
ReplyDeleteDid it seem like it would be a major game changer... or just some of the best work your friend put out?
Jack
Didn't seem like a game changer at the time, just solid comics. Time has shifted that perspective.
Delete