In the effort of being honest, I have an admission to make. One that will make the words that follow seem like sour grapes.

I “applied” to work at Cracked.com.

Applied in the sense that I signed up for their developmental workshop message boards, where writers can pitch stories that might one day make the website and get them paid. I haven’t submitted anything yet (and probably won’t after this) because I was trying to come up with the perfect pitch. One that was factually correct, stood up on its own, and made its argument forcefully yet logically.

JF Sargent. No, really.

As it turns out, that wasn’t really necessary. JF Sargent, who just happens to the be the moderator of that above workshop, posted an article on the site last week called, “5 Reasons Superhero Movies Are a Bubble That Will Soon Burst.” In it, he compares the popularity of comic book films to the “New Hollywood” era of film making, the period from 1967 to about 1982 where young filmmakers made a big splash and changed the face of cinema. The five “reasons” are five similarities Sargent thinks he sees between the two eras. His theory is because the “New Hollywood” era of film making flamed out, surely the superhero film era is also on its way there.

On the surface, it seems like it has the makings of a well researched piece of film criticism, one so logically sound that it can not be questioned. I mean, if Sargent proves that  one era hit the same number of landmarks in  the exact same way as another era did, why, certainly if first era dies, the other one will die in the same way, right?

Well, it might, if Sargent hadn’t made any glaring factual errors, fudged facts and history, and used subjective logic and “proof” all along the way. There are so many glitches  that his arguments go from sounding the definitive death knell for the comic book film to being what appears to be a sad bit of “wishful thinking” journalism.

How many? Well, let’s make a list of our own by going through his text. And we don’t have to wait long. It starts with the lead paragraph:

If you’re a lover of comic books, fantasy novels, or sci-fi, you should be in heaven right now. All of Hollywood caters to your tastes. Hell, if you’re under 20 years old, you don’t even remember what it’s like not to have Hollywood throw $2 billion worth of blockbuster movies at you every summer (while the rest of us remember that as recently as 1994 they made a Fantastic Four movie so bad, it couldn’t even be released).

1. The poor quality of the Fantastic Four film played little to no role in the project being shelved.

I explained as much here, but let me give you the pertinent graph:

There are two schools of thought over why the film was not released. One was that Constantin never intended to release the film at all, and essentially lied to all parties involved in the production just so the film could be made. Another says that Avi Arad, who would become head of Marvel Studios two years after the film was due to be released and helped usher in the success Marvel has had in recent years, paid Constantin and Concorde to shelve the movie because he didn’t want such a cheap production to taint the brand. Regardless, the film was never released either here or abroad, and only exists in a popular bootleg version you can find at most comic book conventions.

Granted, the film was shot for $1 million dollars, a sum way under what it would take to make a good FF film. It was cheap and it looked it. But the main factors at play seem to be the ones mentioned above. And Arad’s reason for putting the film on ice, as described on the very Wikipedia page Sargent linked to, seems less about how bad it was, but how little money was spent on it.

This might be splitting hairs, but it goes to establishing Sargent’s bona fides. The fact that he just casually mentions that the ’94 FF film was shelved was because it was awful, without even presenting an existing opposing point of view, shows a tendency to present only the “facts” that support his argument. Not a good start.

And while we’re here:

2. Sargent uses Wikipedia as a source. A lot.

Not long ago I was in college. I wrote a lot of papers. Wikipedia was strongly frowned upon as a source of information. Why? Because it is crowd-sourced. Anybody can edit an article there,and you can have it say whatever you want. Therefore, it’s not always very trustworthy to back up your arguments. Granted, some of Wikipedia”s articles are sourced, but in that case its better to use the original source.

Sargent’s list begins in earnest by stating both eras began with a surprise box office hit out of the blue. For “New Hollywood,” it was 1967′s Bonnie and Clyde. For the comic book era? It was a bunch of films that came out in the early 2000′s that overcame the superhero film-light 1990s. Let me let him tell you:

This changed in 2000 and 2001 when X-Men, Spider-Man, and the first The Lord of the Rings came out. Remember that back then those geek-centric movies were all pretty risky investments for the studios. Not only was this the first time that either of those Marvel superheroes would be seen on screen, but the last superhero movie to come out at that time had been Batman & Robin, which, you know, we’d rather not talk about. As for The Lord of the Rings, the last attempt at an adaptation was a godawful cartoon that was made in the 1980s.

3. Spider-Man came out on May 3, 2002.

Before you call me a nitpicker, here me out. The reason I make an issue out of this is because it is key to Sargent’s comparison that each era begin with a “big bang” if you will–one or more films that were a surprise success. Now, since the “New Hollywood” era is traced back to just one film, it suits Sargent’s argument better if the three “superhero” films came out in quick succession. But they didn’t. It took three years for all the films mentioned to come out.  And really, there were only two that are legit, and they came out two years apart. More on that later. But Spider-Man definitely came out in 2002, even Wikipedia got that right.

4. What about Blade?

If Sargent was looking for a comic book film that fit his analogy to a T, Blade is it. It was the first film where Marvel took a more active role in the production of the film, marking a new attention towards fidelity to the source material that Sargent marks as a trademark of the superhero film era. It was also an unknown property without a huge built in audience, so it was not a lock that it would be a success. But it was, it debuted at #1 at the box office just like Sargent’s other examples and made a sizable profit. If there was a film that ushered in the era of the superhero movie, it was Blade.

Why didn’t Sargent use Blade as the start of the superhero movie era? Perhaps he just didn’t know that Blade was a superhero. Or, maybe, for his point to work, for the narrative he was trying to create to gel, he had to create some distance the “last” comic book film, Batman and Robin, and the comic book film’s resurgence. Blade wouldn’t work here because it was released in 1998 and Batman and Robin was released in 1997. That would have meant the superhero film bounced back just 14 months after it’s nadir. And that weakens Sargent’s point almost completely.

Some of you might argue that Blade is not a superhero. He’s a vampire who fights vampires with his vampire powers. That is totally different than a superhero who fights supervillains with superpowers! Okay, but what about…

5. Frodo Baggins, Superhero!?!!?

Listen, determining who is and who isn’t a superhero is a popular topic of debate in comic shops across the country. Is the Punisher a superhero? Someone will that because he wears a costume, yes. Others will say that he doesn’t have any powers, so no. Then someone will bring up Batman, who wears a costume but has no powers, is he a superhero? Someone will say yes because he fights super-powered villains. But, the Punisher fought super-powered villains…well, you get the idea. If your loved one goes to their local comic shop and doesn’t come back for hours, it’s probably because they got sucked into one of these kinds of conversations.

But if you were to go into that shop and say that your favorite superhero was good ol’ Frodo, all sides of the argument would stop fighting amongst themselves,unite, and start arguing against you.

I mean, granted, Frodo has a ring that makes him invisible, and he hangs out with wizards, but he resides in the fantasy/sword and sorcery genre, not the superhero genre. And while fans of one genre often are fans of the other, the genres are not interchangeable. It would be a huge stretch of logic to consider them so.

But Sargent needs big films and big franchises to provide the tools to work with. So, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Star Wars become superhero movies, even though they really aren’t. For the casual reader, this probably won’t matter much. But to fans of the superhero film, the inclusion of these films invalidates Sargent’s argument from the get go. Because he’s not railing against the superhero film, he’s really railing against a larger target–the geek culture film. But I guess that wouldn’t generate as many hits.

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Crow, The Mask, and Men in Black all came out in the 1990s.

Sargent likes to paint the 1990s as such:

In the ’90s, all of the major money-maker movies were Die Hard knockoffs (Con Air, Broken Arrow, Face/Off), sober explorations of tragedies (Dances With Wolves, Schindler’s List, Titanic), Adam Sandler being a dumbass, and Tom Hanks doing things that usually didn’t involve having superpowers.

First off, not including Speed in the list of Die-Hard knockoffs is a crime. It was Die Hard on a frikkin bus for goodness sakes!

Second, Sargent intends to show that the 90s were a dry period for the superhero movie. But they really weren’t. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Crow, The Mask, and Men in Black all could be considered superhero films (if Frodo’s a superhero, then so is Agent J). They all came from comic books. All their lead characters fought crime in different ways. And all of them were box office hits in the comic book film unfriendly 1990s. Each one had at least one sequel, which is more than you can say for Sargent’s examples. And, lest we for get, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and, yes, Batman and Robin all were released in the 90s and all made a profit (yes, even Batman and Robin, when worldwide grosses are added in).

You can take a lot of things from Warner Brothers’ President Jeff Robinov’s talk with Entertainment Weekly for their Summer Preview issue, which should hit subscriber’s mailboxes today and newsstands on Monday, but the main thing we’re taking from the interview is that we should never trust scoop from Latino Review’s El Mayimbe ever again.

Back in the beginning of March, El Mayimbe once again broke out the camcorder and gave us a video blog detailing some hot scoop regarding the tumultuous Justice League film. Unfortunately, that video has been taken down (surprise, surprise), but we reported on the contents of it here. Mayimbe stated emphatically that Christopher Nolan would be taking over a Joss Whedon-like supervisory role with Warner’s DC Comics films, that Zack Snyder would be on board as producer if not director for Justice League and that Christian Bale would be returning to the film as Batman.

Entertainment Weekly, which is part of the same Time Warner media conglomerate that Warner Brothers is, asked Robinov point blank about the rumor:

However, Robinov was unequivocal when asked if the rumor is true that Nolan will produce aJustice League movie, and bring Christian Bale back with him: “No, no it’s not.” (Nolan’s reps, who have previously declined to comment on that rumor, also confirmed Robinov’s statement and told EW that he definitely wasn’t involved with Justice League. Nolan is currently busy prepping his sci-fi film Interstellar.)

I’m sure Mayimbe will say these denials is just a smokescreen by the studio to throw people off the scent of his rumor. But Nolan is prepping Interstellar, and casting has already begun. It’s not logical that the director can have as hands on a role on the DC Comics film franchises that El Mayimbe claims while directing a new film at the same time, especially with a 2015 target date for the Justice League film.

This has come at the end of fairly bad stretch for El Mayimbe. How bad? Let’s roll out the “El Mayimbe Roll Call of Shame!”

•  June 5, 2012: El Mayimbe claims that four sources have told him that Black Panther will be the second film released by Marvel in 2014. We all know now that it is Guardians of the Galaxy.
• December 3, 2012: States Darkseid will be the villain in Justice League. And…
• December 13, 2012: States the movie will be based on three particular issues of the Justice League of America comic book. And…
• January 24, 2013: That the JL line-up will consist of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Flash. This version of the film was eventually scrapped, making these three rumors moot.
• January 29, 2013: Theorizes that Tony Stark will be headed into space at the end of Iron Man 3 based on a armor that showed up in a toy design. This has yet to be rejected, but as recent ads for the film show us, the armor could simply be part of the armor armada that Stark calls in during that big battle scene. UPDATE: We now know this one isn’t true either.
• February 4, 2013: A big one, where El Mayimbe states that Planet Hulk and World War Hulk will be the framework for Marvel’s Phase II and Phase III. This was shot down by Ain’t It Cool News and Joss Whedon. Mayimbe holds on to the idea that his version is still true, and gives reasons here.
• February 15, 2013: States Jason Momoa was offered the part of Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy. The part went to Dave Bautista. El Mayimbe states Momoa priced himself out of the role.
• March 3, 2013: The Nolan/Justice League thing we are talking about today.
• April 3, 2013: States the Controller will be a henchman for Thanos in Guardians of the Galaxy. Rumor yet to be refuted.
• April 8, 2013: Stated Evil Dead director Fede Alvarez is developing a film for Marvel, most likely Doctor Strange. Rumor yet to be refuted.

El Mayimbe has become the film rumor version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. And like that fable, there will quickly come a time when film sites like us will simply refuse to listen to him anymore.

Why is he so wrong so often? Is it like he wants us to believe, that he is right and the studios are lying just to make him look bad? Dubious. Are the studios changing their plans after lets the cat out of the bag? Even more dubious. Or are his sources at Marvel and Warner Brothers deliberately feeding him incorrect information just to discredit him? That seems more likely.

The truth will come out in the coming months and years. Maybe, flying in the face of all logic and all denials, El Mayimbe’s rumors will come true. We’ll see. But if that happens, I’ll be the first to apologize for being wrong, something El Mayimbe is reticent to do.

Well, now that that’s over, let’s go back to the Robinov interview. The other big news from the interview is that Robinov states that there will be an announcement coming in the next few weeks about Warner’s plans for films based on the DC characters, including what films they will be making. My guess this would come after The Man of Steel debuts on June 14th. No better time than than after a big weekend for your tentpole film to tell us where you’ll be going from there.

Robinov also states that starting with The Man of Steel and going forward all the DC films will not be standalone films but be open to be part of a shared universe. That goes for the new Batman films as well.

Be sure to check out this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly for more.

So, another year, another Oscars. If I had to sum up this year’s ceremony in one word, I’d have to say “boring.”

Which sometimes happens. There were really no surprises this year. Even Ang Lee winning Best Director–the biggest surprise of the night in the minds of some–wasn’t really a surprise if you knew the way the Academy thinks. The acting categories all went to the people were predicting, and no wild cards got up for a speech.

But what about Seth MacFarlane as host? I didn’t think he was a slam dunk perfect. It seemed like he made the decision to pretend the show took place in 1965 and ran with it.   This was not a good thing, because back then, jokes demeaning women, about how Jews run Hollywood, how funny foreigners are and that something being gay was a bad thing were considered funny back then.

Considering how many were expecting MacFarlane to be more outrageous, the non-PC focus of his jokes wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But still, it struck me as being uncalled for.

I know that humor is in the eye of the beholder. And I can see that his “I saw your boobs” song was meant in part to poke fun at the childish, puerile attitudes of men. And intimating that Jennifer Aniston worked as a stripper was meant be funny because  obviously, she hasn’t. But when he turned a Zero Dark Thirty outro into a joke about how women ruin lives he went back to the misogynistic well once too often. And going back so often took the jokes from harmless ribbing to somewhat insulting.

While we are talking about things that were insulting, let’s talk about Anne Hathaway’s nipples. When I signed on to Twitter to live tweet the Oscars, Anne Hathaway’s nipples were already a trending topic. It was reminiscent of the furor around Christmastime when another part of Hathaway’s anatomy made it’s appearance and was caught by paparazzi.

While the presses perverted desire to snap photos of famous women’s genitalia should never be justified, that incident could have been mitigated if, well, she just wore underwear. This time, I think the negative attention is especially unwarranted. First off, it is an uncontrollable bodily reaction ( yes, as my wife pointed out, there are appliques women could use to cover up the situation, but still…). Second, the problem is at least 50% caused by a seam in the exact wrong location.

There has been quite a ramping up of the backlash against Hathaway in recent months, and I think this might be part and parcel of that. But there was once a time where this sort of thing would not be addressed in public. Now, they are creating Twitter accounts about it. I think between this, MacFarlane’s jokes and the fact that the actress awards went to actresses playing a nymphomaniac and a prostitute, a gender studies major could write a pretty good thesis paper about this year’s ceremony.

Okay, back to the actual show. The rest of MacFarlane’s shtick was hit or miss. The Star Trek gag with William Shatner (whose age has caught up with him big time) was funny but ran on too long. He made jokes that were not only dusty in the 1960s (The Sound of Music one) but also the 1860′s (the John Wilkes Booth one). But he also made jokes that were hilarious, in particular walking off without introducing Meryl Streep after saying she needed no introduction.

As for the production itself, there were a lot of odd choices. Celebrating Bond through music was fine, and seeing Shirley Bassey sing was great, but she isn’t the only big name to ever sing a Bond tune, nor is she the biggest act (~~Cough cough~~Paul McCartney) to have ever sung one. Having other surviving artists sing a medley of Bond themes might have been a logistical nightmare, but would have been a better representation of the Bond music.

But, wait, there was another Bond song performed at the Oscars–Skyfall by Adele. That brings up another oddity with the ceremony, how they presented the Best Song nominees. Skyfall had a showcase performance in the middle of the show. The song from Les Miserables was lumped in with the salute to modern movie musicals. Out of the other three, the only one to get a performance was the one from Ted. The rest only got the Oscar equivalent of a truncated music video.

I realize that have all the Best Song nominees performed is a time suck of at least 15 minutes. But if you are going to perform one in its entirety, you should perform them all. This year was way too sloppy.

This all adds up to a rather disappointing show. Hopefully, if MacFarlane comes back next year, he’ll be just a little bit better and either be totally PC or insult everybody.

There was a bit of an Internet kerfuffle over the fact that the brunette Lois Lane will be played by the redhead Amy Adams in The Man of Steel. Well, brace yourselves, another kerfuffle is coming because it appears that the redhead Jimmy Olsen will not only be a brunette, but also…a woman! Batten down the hatches, prepare for the Internet outrage.

The whole ball got rolling this morning when Digital Spy noticed something in the cast listing on the IMDB page for the film. While the film features notable minor characters from the comic book Superman mythos such as Pete Ross, Kenny Braverman, and Steve Lombard, there was no Jimmy Olsen. There was, however,buried deep in the cast list, a Jenny Olsen, played by a brown-eyed, brunette actress named Rebecca Buller (that’s her to the left).

To say that Jimmy Olsen is a popular part of the Superman mythos would be an understatement. He is one of Superman’s longest-running supporting characters (officially debuting in 1941), and was popular enough to not only get his own series, Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, but also to have it run for 163 issue over almost 20 years.  So, the idea of a Superman film without Jimmy Olsen would be almost unheard of. So, this Jenny Olsen HAS to be the female version of Jimmy right?

The website uses the trailer to further sell the idea that Jenny has been switched in for Jimmy. There is a scene in the trailer, screencapped for you at the right, where Perry White is fleeing a destroyed Daily Planet. As you can see, he is holding on to a female employee who looks remarkably like Buller. Is that an I.D. lanyard around her neck…or is it a strap for a camera? And who else would Perry take such an interest in making sure that they are safe than Jimmy…er…Jenny Olsen?

Of course, this is all conjecture based on a single IMDB listing, and IMDB isn’t exactly the most accurate website around. Numerous news sites have tried to reach Warner Brothers for a comment, but as of yet they have not spoke on the matter.  But until they do, fans will proclaim their outrage on message boards and comment pages around the Internet.

Many casual fans of Superman might ask, “What’s the big deal? Why should this bother them so much?” And, speaking as a rather involved Superman fan, the film presentation of Jimmy/Jenny Olsen shouldn’t bother us too much. What makes the comic book incarnation of Jimmy Olsen so great, and this will be a gross simplification of the character’s 72 -year history, is that he gets himself into trouble that only Superman can get him out of. That quality will never translate over into a 2-hour Superman film where Jimmy is only a supporting character. This characterization at best will only be briefly touched upon, as we saw in Richard Donner’s first Superman film. Add to that the fact that Jenny Olsen is so far down on the IMDB cast list that she is likely to be an extremely minor character to begin with, so even if she was still Jimmy, it wouldn’t be close to the comic book Jimmy anyway.

However, while every cinematic appearance of Jimmy Olsen ends up being a essentially just a nod to the character’s comic book origins, it was at least a nod. This is at least the fourth break from comic book continuity that The Man of Steel has shown us, and the one that seems most arbitrary and hardest to explain away.

Yes, the redhead Amy Adams is playing the typically brunette Lois Lane and the African-American Laurence Fishburne is playing the typically Caucasian Perry White, but both are great actors with sterling resumes–complete with award nominations–and will bring a lot to the part (but, seriously, Amy, you couldn’t pick up a bottle of Lady Clairol for just this film?). The same really can’t be said for Buller, whose only other credit on her remarkably sparse IMDB page is one episode of The Playboy Club.

And while Pa Kent’s recommendation to Clark that he should have left the school bus full of kids die is extremely out of character, the quote very well could have been taken out of context or simply been Pa thinking aloud. There’s no mistaking the break from the original characterization that is Jenny Olsen. Making the character a female changes whatever dynamic existed between the character and Superman. Instead of the goofy little brother, you have a little sister. Think about how your relationship with your male friends differs from your female friends and you’ll get the idea. Granted, as I mentioned above, the character might not be in the film long enough where this dynamic comes into play, but if it does, it will not be the dynamic comic book fans expect or want to see.

And the change is completely arbitrary. If you wanted a goofy female character to work at the Daily Planet, you could have named her Jenny Coulson, Jenny Dogin, or Jenny Hogan. It would work just as well for the filmmakers and Jimmy Olsen fans would be a lot less ticked off.

Yes, this on the surface seems like much ado about nothing. But in the larger sense it is indicative of the problems Warner Brothers has adapting its DC Comics properties to the big screen. The Marvel films all have changes from the original source material, but no change is arbitrary, no change completely contradicts what makes the original text so popular, and more often than not the changes are an improvement. Changing Jimmy Olsen to a woman just for the sake of making the character a woman is an example that Warner Brothers really doesn’t have the same respect and understanding about its comic book properties that Marvel does. And until they can overcome this mental block in this area, they are never going to have the success that Marvel has.

Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn found out this week that things you post on the Internet last forever, and even if you try to kill them, your words can take on a life of their own.

A post Gunn made on his website back in February of 2011 has garnered him a fair bit of controversy with female members of comic book fan and professional community. When the controversy hit, Gunn removed the post from his site, but, the Internet being what it is, it still lives on in a cached form.

The post consists of the results of his second annual polling of his fans for the 50 superheroes, male and/or female, they’d most like to have sex with.

Personally, I have never been one to sexually fantasize about comic book characters. Yes, this might strike you as being hard to believe but I can’t get into that sort of thing because A) they aren’t real and B) they are usually drawn in such an exaggerated way that makes them seem even less realistic. But, hey, if other fans are into this sort of thing, more power to them.

So, if Gunn just stopped at running the list, it might have not received any attention. They’d even let slide the fact that he took pride in finding the most sexually charged images for the 35 female entries on the list.

But, unfortunately for Gunn, he had make comments on the entries to the list. And his comments start vulgar and get worse from there. Here is a sample, starting with the winner of the poll, Wonder Woman (WARNING: The language is crude and vulgar):

It gets worse from there. Men aren’t spared either. Here’s Gambit:

Zatanna (for the full effect, flip the words of the last sentence):

Invisible Woman:

Kitty Pryde:

Batwoman:

And, finally, Batgirl:

These are the most egregious entries on the list. Thankfully, Gunn appears to lose interest in including these pithy sayings after entry #25 or else there could have been a lot more.

As to why a blog entry that is almost two years old would get so much attention  comes down to two things. One, Gunn was just handed his highest profile assignment to date with Guardians of the Galaxy, a film many in the comic book fandom are eagerly anticipating and want to see done right. And, two, sexual politics are a hot-button topic in the comic book community after a tale of sexual harassment of a cosplayer at October’s NYCC  and two comic creators speaking out publicly about “fake geek girls,” attractive women who dress up as popular geek-centric characters just for attention and without any knowledge, affection or affinity for the characters or the worlds they live in. These examples are used to as an indicator of the misogyny of males in geek culture. Gunn’s post, though old, is simply another log to the still raging fire.

While Internet reaction might not have been immediate, it has been strong. Susana Polo of the The Mary Sue, a blog that looks at the world of comic from a female perspective, had this to say:

Lets be clear: there’s nothing wrong about running a poll for the most sex-able superhero on your site, especially one where you embrace the fact that Batman and Gambit come in within the top five. There isn’t anything wrong, in that context, of choosing art that sexualizes the characters in it. There isn’t even anything wrong with talking explicitly about sex in your commentary on the poll results. What’s wrong is the sheer amount of slut-shaming (on only the female characters) and anti-gay language that Gunn directs towards the majority of the male characters. These are not opinions befitting somebody who’s been given the task of bringing a major part of the Marvel Universe to the big screen (a set of characters, I might add, that includes a lesbian superhero couple, not that they’ll be appearing in Guardians).

The screenshot at the top of this post is the entirety of what he has to say about Batwoman, which is both a reference to the idea that lesbians just need a good (read: streotypically masculine) man to have sex with them and they’ll be “cured” of their homosexuality, a delusion at the heart of an innumerable number of rapes; and a dig at Nightwing, one of the few male characters in comics who has actually gotten away with being drawn for the female gaze. Apparently, having been depicted as a female sex fantasy occasionally (and still with nowhere near the frequency that any given female character is drawn for the male gaze) instead of a male power fantasy literally makes him a woman.

Rachel Edidin, who has worked in the industry as an editor at Dark Horse Comics among other companies, contributed this:

Gunn’s notes are fucked up and miogynist and homophobic.

They’re also over the top to an extent that can read as a parody of nonsense like this in comics media (not gonna name names, but we all know who we’re talking about here, right?). I’ve heard from a source I trust—someone who’s much more familiar with Gunn as a professional and person than I am, and who’s generally loathe to give quarter to assholes—that the post was likely meant to be satire, which I’m willing to believe.

Let’s run with that hypothetical for a minute. Let’s pretend Gunn’s intentions here were in fact to highlight and lampoon the rampant misogyny and objectification in comics media, where lists like this pop up with astonishing regularity (if usually marginally more work-safe official commentary).

If Gunn’s list is satire, it’s bad satire, because it skews incredibly close to material that’s not only already out there, but that comes from official media and in some cases industry professionals. There’s a significant slice of the comics community that is that misogynist and homophobic, and says so loudly and frequently. It’s telling, I think, that so many people took what Gunn wrote at face value: this is material we’ve seen before, again and again, presented seriously.

Heidi MacDonald, one of the leading names in comic book journalism and a woman who has worked as an editor at DC/Vertigo and Disney took a more cynical view:

I guess I’m jaded because what Gunn wrote is no worse than what 90% of guys have thought at some point, and probably 90% of the people who have directed superhero movies that we all loved in the past have made similar jokes. I mean, I’m not exactly sure that Sam Raimi wanted to do Kitty Pride in the butt, but I’m sure somewhere, at some time, he had a picture of the Invisible Woman taped inside his notebook. Maybe even right this very minute.

Which isn’t to say that Gunn doesn’t need to come out and say mea culpa and Gamora is his favorite Guardian and he supports Malala Yousafzai. It’s a good consciousness raising exercise, and a heckuva introduction to his future fan base. I just feel that the outrage energy is better directed at getting more opportunities for women and less at stopping men from having inappropriate sexy thoughts about imaginary women, because that will never, ever stop. Sorry.

Now, the story has gone beyond the realm of comic book fandom. The Hollywood Reporter has quoted Fred Sainz, vice president of communications and marketing for the Human Rights Campaign, who condemns Gunn’s words:

James Gunn’s blog post is offensive not just to LGBT people and women; but rather to anyone with even the slightest sense of decency. His tawdry post is not reflective of the character that someone charged with directing a film aimed at youth should exhibit. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Gunn has nothing better to do with his time than churn out graphic and homophobic dribble about imaginary superheroes.

Of course, if it was just this one post, it would still be fairly damning for Gunn. But the very next post, which was, of course, taken down by Gunn and can only be viewed in cached form, Gunn applies similar attitudes and language in listing the 15 super-heroines he personally would like to have sex with. And his most recent post, from July of this year, Gunn gloats over giving a female employee from the music department of the studio for his latest film,  Movie 43, a hard time after she tells him that the studio cannot use a the title Gunn submitted for a song he wrote for the soundtrack because it would be too offensive. The title? “That Gay Fucking Cat.” Classy. That post is still active on Gunn’s site…for now.

While most of Gunn’s critics are calling on him to explain his words and point of view (which, since his immediate reaction was to remove the offending blog posts and pretend they never happened, is unlikely to take place unless he is forced to do it), some female comic fans are calling for stronger action. There is currently a petition on change.org asking Marvel Studios to replace Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy and replace him with a director who has more respect for women. The petition already has 4,917 signatures as of this writing.

As of this writing, there has been no comment from Gunn or Marvel Studios in regards to controversy. But, since the casting process is beginning on the film even as we speak, neither party can afford to have such a controversy go unanswered. I would personally be interested in seeing how Marvel reacts to this situation, as it is the first public dust-up the relatively new studio has had to deal with.

UPDATE:

Shortly before 10pm EST, James Gunn posted this to his Facebook account:

It is fairly obvious that DC Comics and the adaptation of their characters to the big screen is in a state of disarray. This is especially confusing considering they are owned by a movie studio, Warner Brothers, and if anything, they should have an easy go of it when it comes to getting their films done right on the big screen.

But year after year, decade after decade, Warners and DC have shown a profound inability to take advantage of the burgeoning pro-comic book film market. Granted, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy was a success, but it is a rare exception over the last 20 years. For the most part, it has been mistake after mistake.

This post is a list of the ten biggest mistakes Warners has made in relation to its DC Comics films. Some of the items will be very specific mistakes, others more systemic ones, but all are reasons that have DC films playing catch up to the Marvel films.

Now, without any further review, the countdown:

10. Not exploring their rich catalog of intellectual property:

It’s easy to forget that Marvel’s rise to cinematic dominance didn’t begin with Spider-Man or even The X-Men. It began with Blade, a supporting character from a horror comic of the 1970s that didn’t have more than ten issues of his own title before he hit the big screen.

The thousands of characters owned by Marvel is one of the biggest reasons why Disney bought the company. You know what? DC has as many characters as Marvel, if not more. They have been in business since 1935 and have also bought out characters from other companies such as Charlton, Quality, Wildstorm and Fawcett. They have deep reserves of characters to choose from for film properties.

Let’s just take one letter of the alphabet at quasi-random: D. Now, lets take three DC characters from that letter at quasi-random. You have Deathstroke the Terminator, an ex-Special Forces officer who can use 90% of his brain to become a deadly mercenary. You have the Demon, a man from Arthurian times who is cursed to share his body with a demon from Hell. Finally, you have Doctor Mid-Nite, a doctor who was blinded by the Mafia but gained the ability to see in complete darkness. All of those three characters could be made into pretty good movies if given a chance.

But, as we’ll discuss later, even if they did mine their character reserves, there’s no certainty that the film would even get made–or that it will be any good.

9. The belief that if Camp was good in the 1960s, it would be good today:

No one can deny the impact and the popularity of the 1960′s Batman TV show. Even today, many mainstream news articles about comics have titles that start off with POW! BOOM! ZAP!

But while the campy style was a perfect match for the pop art world of the late 60s, comic books grew away from just being exclusively for kids. Ironically, it was DC Comics who led the way, with Alan Moore on Swamp Thing  and Watchmen, Frank Miller on Dark Knight Returns, Grant Morrison on Doom Patrol and Animal Man, and Neil Gaiman on Sandman. You can finally consider comic books a form of literature.

But film makers continually return to the idea that what the film audience really wants is their version of Adam West doing the Batusi. It took Richard Donner’s influence on the first two films of the Superman franchise to keep the producers from camping it up. Once he was gone, we get Richard Pryor skiing off the side of a skyscraper. Tim Burton’s dark and quirky version of Batman might not have suited all tastes, but it was better than what came after–lame puns from kitschy villains, “Holey Rusted Metal,” and the Bat Credit Card. Even Jonah Hex, who never had a campy period in the comics (unless you count that time he was sent into the future), gets translated to the big screen with hokey superpowers, cartoonish villains, and wacky, anachronistic weapons of mass destruction. He was even offered the title of “Sheriff of the United States” at the end of the film. Come on!

8. The “dark and gritty” plan isn’t a course correction, it’s overcompensating:

Warner Brothers Chairman and CEO Jeff Robinov has repeatedly said that he knows exactly how to make the DC Comics films more competitive with the Marvel ones–make them all as dark and gritty as Nolan’s Batman films.

That would be a great strategy if every DC character lent itself to being dark and gritty. They don’t . One of my major concerns with The Man of Steel is that it appears that Zack Snyder has taken Robinov’s words to heart. And Superman just isn’t a character that works as grim and gritty.

Another example of a film being off tonally is Green Lantern. This should have been a slam dunk hit. It should have been a blend of Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Superman. What all those films had that Green Lantern didn’t was a sense of awe and wonder. It’s hard for audiences to be impressed by the alien worlds your film is creating when the main character isn’t impressed. Ryan Reynolds’ Hal Jordon was grim, he was a smart ass, and he was determined, but he was also unimpressed by being taken to alien worlds no human has ever been to and seeing races no human has ever seen. If he sold what was up on the screen as being amazing, we might have been amazed as well.

Robinov’s idea to improve Green Lantern? Make it even darker and grittier. Yeah, that’ll work.

7. Keeping on letting franchises marinate in development hell:

What do the Flash, Sgt. Rock, and Plastic Man have in common? They are all DC comic properties that Warners has films in development for. What else do they have in common? The same films were listed as being in development in Comic Scene magazine issue#3, way back in 1988. Yes, those properties have been in development for almost a quarter of a century without heading to the silver screen.

You can add to that list Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Suicide Squad, Y: The Last Man, and the Green Arrow/Supermax film. Not all of them have been in development hell for 25 years, but they have all been in the works for a long, long time.

Marvel does have some projects taking their time getting to us (Black Panther, Runaways, etc), but they seem to have a fairly concise plan in effect to get their films into theaters. DC’s attitude seems to be if a DC film gets made, yay. If not, we’ll keep waiting. It’s hard to be competitive when you have nothing to offer into competition.

6. Using JUSTICE LEAGUE to launch franchises:

You get the feeling that DC/Warners expects Justice League to be a blockbuster on the order of The Avengers. Okay, maybe not becoming the third highest grossing film of all time, but certainly a big blockbuster success. Which is why they are pinning their dreams of multiple superhero franchises on that film.

Of course, what DC/Warners doesn’t seem to realize is that the reason The Avengers did so well is because the film was a culmination of years of Marvel films. Most of the characters were introduced in other films, films where they could receive an origin, a backstory, and develop their own personality. They came into the film as known commodities, and that means Joss Whedon was able to build a better story for the film.

Justice League might have some preexisting heroes join in. They’ll have a Superman , whose reboot should do good at the box office. But they’ll also have a Green Lantern whose film didn’t do so good at the box office. Could they reboot him with Justice League and start fresh? Yes, but they are already going to have to reboot Batman and set up plenty of the other properties they have in development as well. It’s going to be a busy film anyway, that would make it even busier. In other words, it will have less to draw people into than The Avengers and have to introduce a whole handful of new characters is such a way that audience would want to see them again. Good luck.

5.  Having people with no knowledge of comics interfere with films (Case Study: JONAH HEX):

If you were to read the script for Jonah Hex, you’d see an entirely different movie. It was one that skewed closer to the comic book version than the film and was more grounded in reality.

That script was the one that probably brought all the great actors to the cast (James Brolin, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender) and it appears that some, if not all, of that script was shot as the script’s ending becomes part of Hex’s fever dream in the final film.

However, the studio mandated reshoots. And you can see what was added by comparing the finished product with the original script. And what was added was all the things that made the film awful–the tacked on superpowers, the campiness, and the implausible scheme of the villain.

I don’t know whose decision it was to take away everything that made the comic book Jonah Hex interesting and special and add in a needless superpower and the other damning changes. Maybe it was some executive who though every comic book film hero needed superpowers, or maybe it was feedback from test groups that asked about the lack of powers. Or maybe both. But whatever was the impetus for the change, it didn’t leave a positive result.

Hey, even if they didn’t change the Jonah Hex script, it might have still have been a failure. But if it did fail, it would have been on its own terms.

4.  Getting Superman wrong again and again and possibly again:

Superman is DC’s big gun. He is the most iconic character to come out of comics. People all over the world love the character and find something in him they can relate to. He has been popular enough to last 75 years and could quite possibly last 75 more.

Which makes me wonder why Warners have worked so hard to screw the character up over the last few decades.

Richard Donner’s Superman films weren’t without flaws, but it seems perfect considering what comes after. As I mentioned above, Superman was turned into high camp after Donner left. Then the property went into development hell, which I spoke of here and here. We narrowly avoided having a Superman with a talking robot sidekick like in Star Wars or ditching his iconic costume for an all black ensemble, a la The Matrix. And worst of all, we came this close to having a Nicolas Cage Superman. But then the Superman we did get, brought to us by Bryan Singer, is best remembered as being a creepy peeping tom.

He is getting rebooted again, and the new film, The Man of Steel, appears to be in line with changes made to the character in the comic books. But he still appears to be too dark and too ponderous for the character. I am reserving judgement, but I’m not terribly optimistic.

Superman works best as the alien who becomes more human than human. He is the allegory for the immigrant experience, a Christ metaphor, and an example of environment winning out over heredity. He is a good and decent man who uses his awesome powers to save us instead of enslaving us. If you can’t make a good film out of that, you shouldn’t be making films.

3.  Hiring Joel Schumacher for BATMAN FOREVER:

Technically, this should have been lumped in with the next bullet point. But it is such a bad decision on Warners’ part, that it deserves its own entry.

On paper, Joel Schumacher didn’t seem that bad a choice. After all, he directed The Lost Boys and Falling Down, two films that had a tone similar to what you’d expect from a Batman film.

Warners hired Schumacher to lighten up the franchise and make it more toy-buying kid friendly. What he did was make a campy, fetishistic, weird pair of films. It took the Batman property back thirty years and also brought a fair amount of kink into it with the extended shots of the heroes’ crotch and ass during the obligatory “suiting up” montages and with the unnecessary nipples on the bat suit. It wasn’t what Warners was asking for, it wasn’t what audiences wanted, and it was a mistake on many levels.

2.  Not hiring the right person for the job:

On Friday, Laura Siegel Larson, daughter of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel issued a letter to Superman fans to give them her feeling on her family’s 15 year struggle to wrestle their half of the rights to Superman from Warner Brothers/DC Comics. Here is that letter:

LSL Open Letter 10.11.2012-1

Some might read this and feel sympathetic to Siegel Larson and her plight, and perhaps just a bit angry at Warner Brothers at their callous treatment of the Siegel family over the years. Others might read the letter and also get angry–at Siegel Larson, for playing to people’s emotions and twisting facts so her side of the matter appears in a more positive light. Others might read her defense of Marc Toberoff and wince, feeling sad that she would defend someone who might not exactly be working in her best interests.

Or, if you are like me, you have a mixture of all the above feelings after reading that letter. See, for as much as each side wishes to present the issue as a case of black and white, it’s not. The lawsuit to the rights for Superman, a struggle that will get more and more press as we come closer to The Man of Steel’s June 14, 2013 release date, is a sickening blend of grays. And the reason why there is so much debate and discussion over the issue is because there are valid talking points for each side. The purpose of this post is to present these talking points to you and explain why there are no easy answers in this conflict.

$130

The world of comic book collecting is ruled by the law of buy low and sell high. You buy a comic book for $3.99, and you hope that there is something about it–a variant cover, a new character being introduced, a popular storyline taking place–that causes people to want it. If it works out, you can triple your investment overnight, and, in rare cases, you can have a book worth hundreds of dollars in a matter of years.

This is the actual check used to buy the right to Superman from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. It recently sold at auction for $160,000.

This adds a bitter sense of irony to the Superman situation. Because, you see, DC Comics bought the rights to Superman from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938 for $130. To put that into perspective, if you factor in inflation, that would be around $2,048 dollars in today’s money. One of the most iconic, most recognizable characters in  pop culture across the entire world, and he was bought for less that what you’d pay for a top of the line high-definition television set today.

Why such a low price? Well, we must consider that the sale took place at the tail-end of the Great Depression. It was hard for two 23-year-old young men to haggle over money when unemployment was at 19% throughout the country.

And comic books at the time were a bit of a seedy enterprise. The medium got its start as publishers simply folded popular Sunday newspaper comics sections into a book form and sold it at newsstands. When the comic book format grew in popularity, publishers supplemented the reprint material with original material similar to the most popular comic strips of the day–hard-boiled detective stories in the mold of Dick Tracy, gag strips that resembled Mutt and Jeff, space epics akin to Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers and so on. Experience and quality of work weren’t important to the publishers, only speed and productivity. To keep costs low, they hired kids who would work cheap and be able to keep up with demand. Many comic legends such as Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert and Will Eisner started working in comics when they were in their teens. Others such as Bob Kane, Joe Simon and, yes Siegel and Shuster, were in their early twenties. Even though the publishers most likely weren’t paying these kids what they deserve, whatever they brought in help put food on their family’s table.

And, hard though it may be to believe today, at the time, Superman was a risky concept. It was quite unlike anything else on the market in the 1930s. Siegel and Shuster intended the concept to be sold to the more respectable newspaper comic strip syndicate but were turned down by at least two syndicates. DC Comics was at best a “safety school” for Superman. This could be another reason why the pair didn’t squabble over the price–they didn’t know if there would ever be any other takers.

Superman went on to revolutionize comic books, making the superhero popular, and becoming an indelible piece of our modern-day cultural landscape. But from the very beginning, you can say the poor treatment of Siegel and Shuster began. However, the company did not always treat the pair quite as bad.

Paupers to Princes to Paupers

Much is made of how much Siegel and Shuster were paid for the rights to Superman, and the many articles note that the pair were destitute during the later periods of their life, but what I find interesting is how much they paid while doing Superman. In 1940, the Saturday Evening Post reported that the pair were making $75,000 per year from Superman comics and merchandise, which would be the equivalent of just about $1.2 million dollars today. According to Larry Tye’s book, Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero, Siegel claims the duo were making half that. Even still, that would be close to $38,000 a year for both, $19,000 for each. It was probably a pittance compared to what DC was making off their works, but it was ten times the average yearly salary in 1940 of $1,900 .

The duo bought fancy houses with modern luxuries such as paneled bars and air conditioning. They would by fancy cars, mink coats and jewelry. Technically, they weren’t living above their means, but they weren’t truly prepared for their means to change. When the Saturday Evening Post article hit, Shuster’s eyesight was bad and getting worse–half of his cut of the contract was going to ghost artists who would trace over his loose outlines for the art. Unfortunately,  actions taken by the pair would jeopardize their employment as well.

Lawsuits

From the start, Siegel and Shuster were trying to sell DC Comics on the idea of stories based on Superman as a child. However, every proposal they offered was shot down. Imagine Jerry Siegel’s surprise when, after returning from service during World War II, that DC had started a Superboy feature based on his ideas with no input or involvement from either himself or Shuster.

Naturally, Siegel and Shuster were incensed. They sued DC Comics in 1947 not only for using their ideas for Superboy without their permission, but also to terminate their contracts with the company and get back the rights to Superman as well.

The courts were only partially in their favor. The courts disavowed their claims for Superman, but agreed that the had a right for compensation for Superboy. DC Comics settled with the pair for $94,000 in exchange for the agreement that Shuster and Siegel would give up all rights to Superman, Superboy and any auxiliary characters they created for the company. After legal fees, the pair took home about a third of that.

Siegel believed that after the lawsuit, he and Shuster were blacklisted in the industry. Shuster’s eyesight would make him leave the industry within ten years time. Siegel would work sporadically in comics for years afterwards, typically under pen names. The team would reunite only once after their tenure at DC was over, creating a forgettable character called Funnyman for Magazine Enterprises in 1948.

Joe Shuster, Neal Adams, Jerry Siegel and Jerry Robinson in 1975.

By 1975, Siegel and Shuster were in bad shape. They had once again sued DC for the right to the Superman copyright in 1967 and by 1973, they had lost their appeal. Their lawyers advise them not to go to the Supreme Court because the would not be able to afford the expense and that DC was likely to settle the case. Both were practically destitute (Siegel was complaining of money troubles as early as 1953). When no settlement came, the pair used the recent news that Warner Brothers bought the rights to Superman with the intention make a feature film to start a publicity campaign of their own.

Aided by Neal Adams, at the time DC’s hottest artist, and Jerry Robinson, who worked for DC by proxy in the employ of Batman creator Bob Kane, creating Robin and the Joker for Kane and who was a successful commercial artist and editorial cartoonist, the creators launched a media blitz, playing off the fact that Superman earned DC Comics millions yet his creators were living in poverty. The New York Times wrote a story on the situation that was picked up by papers across the country. Siegel and Shuster appeared on many popular news programs of the day. It became a public relations fiasco for DC Comics.

Throwing themselves on the sympathy of the American public worked for the creators, as DC Comics would settle with Siegel and Shuster once more. The company would give them a yearly pension of $20,000 a year for the rest of their lives, adjusted accordingly in regards to inflation (by 1988, the yearly total was up to $80,000). Their caretakers (wife Joanne for Jerry, brother Frank for Joe)  would get the pension if they died before them at a rate of $20,000 a year until 1985, then $10,000 a year until their death. The team would get health care coverage and would be credited as the creators of Superman in whatever medium he would appear from then on. But Siegel and Shuster were once again asked to state that they had no rights to the Superman family of characters.

It seem that the issue would be settled. And for all intents and purposes it was–for over twenty years. However, a new law passed just a year later would open the discussion again in the future.

The Copyright Act of 1976

The Copyright Act of 1976 was intended to protect corporate interests. The act was designed to extend the life of copyrights and delay copyrighted works from entering into the public domain. Before 1976, a corporation could hold a copyright for only 56 years (two, 28 year terms). The 1976 act extended the copyright protection for works created after 1978 to 50 years after the death of the author in case where the author owned the copyright, 95 years for anonymous works or works for hire. It extended the total copyright protection on works before 1978 from 56 years to 75 years.

However, that extension act allowed creators or their direct heirs who transferred the copyrights over to a corporation the opportunity to terminate, within a five year window,  that transfer after 56 years. The copyright for Superman turned 56 in 1994, which meant the Siegels had until 1999 to terminate the copyright. Joanne and Laura Siegel filed the termination in 1997 (Jerry Siegel passed away the year before). They would file a similar termination notice for Superboy in 2004.

The Shuster family missed out on this filing. However, the Copyright Extension Act of 1998 (also known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act (due to Disney’s lobbying for a change to copyright law) or the Sonny Bono Act (after the ex-pop star, then Senator who proposed the act)) extended the length of copyrights once again, but also extended the time creators can terminate their copyrights to 75 years and allowed executors the power to do so. This gave Mark Peary, Joe Shuster’s nephew and executor of his estate (Shuster passed away in 1992), another chance to file his termination paper work, which he did in January of 2004, with an effective termination date in 2013. If DC Comics did nothing, the Siegel and Shuster families would own 100% of the the Superman copyright by 2013. But, of course, DC Comics did not intend to go down without a fight.

The “Peanuts” Settlement

Even though DC Comics/Time Warner were publicly stating that Siegel and Shuster’s work on Superman was work for hire (a dubious claim because DC itself had made the fact that the pair brought Superman to DC part of the legend of the character’s creation), the corporation began settlement talks with the Siegel family.

Joanne (left) and Laura Siegel

According to documents found by Danny Best, as of 2001, a potential settlement was drawn up by DC, one which the Siegel’s lawyers at the time recommended they take, one Laura Siegel Larson referred to as “peanuts.”

What were the terms of this settlement? $3,000,000 immediately, at least $500,000 per year, 6% of all media and merchandise exclusively  featuring Superman or the Spectre (another Siegel creation owned by DC), 3% of any media or merchandise where Superman and Spectre shared a starring role with another DC character, and 1.5% of any media or merchandise where the Spectre and Superman were part of an ensemble cast. And DC would continue to honor the terms of the 1976 agreement, which were by this point up to $135,000 a year. DC did require the Siegels to transfer the full rights to Superman to DC in response to this agreement.

Once again, this would seem like peanuts in comparison to the billions DC rakes in with the Superman property. But I’d think even people who were highly allergic to peanuts would be willing to jump at the opportunity to be millionaires overnight.

But not the Siegels. They rejected the settlement that was all but approved and less than two years later they had new representation–Marc Toberoff.

DC tried a similar settlement with the Shuster family in 2005. The settlement had nothing to do with the Spectre, as Shuster did not have a hand in creating the character, and the per year payment would be $1 million, but the Shuster family would also get royalties like the Siegels. The Shusters also refused the settlement and, perhaps not quite a coincidence, signed on with Marc Toberoff as a representative.

Marc Toberoff: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing, or a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?

…or a wolf pretending to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing?

Prior to his involvement with the Siegels and the Shusters, Marc Toberoff was viewed as a staunch defender of artist rights. He was the lawyer who would represent Davids like the Siegels and Shusters against Goliaths such as the Time Warner/DC Comics conglomerate–and win. He won important decisions in the original creators behind the Dukes of Hazzard and Lassie franchises.

It was under his watch that the Siegel and Shuster families won an important victory in a court of law. He got a judgement that states that since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster reworked a series of trial comic strips into the story that became the Superman stories in Action Comics #1 and #2, they own the copyright to whatever part of the Superman mythos that appeared in those two issues. This includes, but is not limited to, Superman’s origin, his secret identity of Clark Kent, Lois Lane being a love interest, and elements of the Superman costume that made its debut in those issues. Everything that came after, the ruling states, was done as work for hire for DC comics.

It appeared that the Siegels and Shusters were well on their way to becoming part owners of the characters Jerry and Joe created, and that DC would be losing a large chunk of their most iconic characters. However, there was a startling twist in the offing.

One morning, top executives at Warner Brothers and DC came into work and were greeted by a package. The package contained a number of documents stolen from Toberoff in 2006 by an anonymous culprit. The documents were covered by a letter that contained a timeline telling an interesting story about what supposedly were Toberoff’s true intentions.

The timeline and supporting documents, which can be found here, paint Toberoff not as a valiant defender of an artist’s rights, but a sneaky manipulator who was out to make the most money at the expense of the Siegel and Shuster families. The timeline indicates that Toberoff wooed the families with false promises of a billionaire willing to support families’ in making a Superman film that would go into competition with any Warners’ Superman film, but ended up negotiating a himself a 47% cut of the Superman copyright as part of the “contingency” agreement Siegel Larson spoke of in her letter. The timeline also indicates that Toberoff has no intention of letting the families assume total ownership of Superman. It states that Toberoff is simply holding off negotiations for as long as possible so the settlement, and his enormous cut of it, will be even larger.

DC Comics immediately tried to gain the documents in the illegal package through legal means only to be refused by Toberoff on attorney/client privilege. Unfortunately for Toberoff, he tried to work with Federal authorities to investigate the theft. In the process, he releases some of the documents in question to the Feds to aid in their investigation, thinking that he could waive the attorney/client privilege for only that one time and only to that specific party. DC and, more importantly, the courts disagreed. They stated that once the documents were released to the feds, they should be released to everyone. DC then was able to get their hands on the timeline legally, and used it as the basis of a suit to get Toberoff removed case and/or the Siegel suit dismissed entirely due to his putting his own interest above his clients.

The Court of Public Opinion

Joanne Siegel and the character who was based on her, Lois Lane.

Laura Siegel Larson’s letter calls to mind a letter her mother Joanne meant to send to Warner Brother executives before her death that somehow was “leaked” to news organizations after her passing. There are a number of parallels–painting Warners/DC as bullies picking on sick women (with a list of medical maladies included in the text), a chastising of DC’s for going after Toberoff, and, most importantly, words about how DC looks to the general public.

In my opinion, both letters are attempts to garner sympathy and support among the general public, much akin to the public support in 1975 that helped Siegel and Shuster get their pensions and health benefits.  But there is one main difference, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman through their own talent, creativity and imagination. While they were living in poverty, dealing with deteriorating health, their greatest creation was earning millions for their former employers. They were victims of the great machine, two men who deserved better and a sympathetic public viewed them as such.

Meanwhile, in the comic book community, there are a lot of people who view the Siegel heirs lawsuit negatively. Whether it be the irrational “They’re trying to steal my Superman from me” internet trolls or the people who have serious issues with people who had little or nothing to do with creating the character reaping any sort of benefits, regardless if they were legally entitled to them or not (Joanne Siegel was the model for Lois Lane, but didn’t marry Jerry until 1948, a year after the writer stopped working on Superman full time. She was the only person in the lawsuit who could claim on having any influence on the final product). While there are many who support Laura Siegel Larson’s claims, there will never be a consensus of anger among fans  over the issue like the one that cause the PR nightmare for DC in the 1970s.

And as for the mainstream media picking up the issue as a cause celebre like they did in the 70s, well, in today’s 24-hour news cycle it’s hard for a story like Laura Siegel Larson’s to gain any traction. It simply isn’t sensational enough. Heck, it wasn’t even pressing news among the comic book blogosphere. The letter was released on Friday while a massively popular comic book convention, New York Comic Con, was going on. The Beat and Robot 6 wrote a blurb on it on Saturday, Siegel Larson had to e-mail Bleeding Cool  on Monday to get coverage, and, as of last night, Blog@Newsarama hasn’t covered it at all.

Personally, I think the Siegel and Shuster families should be sharing in the Superman wealth not only because they are legally entitled to but because Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster should have been sharing in the wealth when they were alive and it should have been a simple matter of the families inheriting their fortune. But the allegations about Toberoff concern me deeply. And the fact that Siegel Larson spends more time playing the victim card (while also playing the “David in the face of Goliath” card) than addressing the valid issues with her lawyer doesn’t sit well with me. It’s hard to feel sympathy for someone who is angry at a corporation that is cheating her out of money she deserves when she is defending a man who also is allegedly cheating her out of money she deserves.

There is a clock ticking on this issue, as the 2013 deadline is quickly approaching. Hopefully, there will be some kind of agreement, some kind of legal decision, that will benefit all parties. But judging on Laura Siegel Larson’s letter, we could be in for even more contentious legal wrangling for years to come.

Over its almost 90 year history, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, or MGM, has become a legendary name in the world of film. From film series ranging from The Thin Man  to Pink Panther  to James Bond series, from  movie musicals such as Singing in the Rain and The Wizard of Oz  to Best Picture Oscar winners such as Ben-Hur and Mrs. Miniver, MGM became known for classic cinematic fare.

Unfortunately, over the last several decades, MGM has become even more well known for its financial troubles. Year after year where box office bombs (Heaven’s Gate, anyone? How about Cutthroat Island?) outweighed box office successes and poor management decisions increased the studio’s debt. The once strong MGM entered a fight for its survival.

The years of financial struggle came to a head in 2009, as MGM CEO Stephen Cooper attempted to sell the studio to try and fend of bankruptcy. Even though MGM’s future looked bright–it still had rights to the newly rejuvenated Bond franchise, it had much talked about remakes of RoboCop and Carrie in the pipeline, and it owned a stake in the eagerly anticipated The Hobbit–and had a number of potential buyers, no deal could be reached for the sale. MGM’s  bankruptcy plan was approved on December 2, 2010.

As MGM entered bankruptcy, much of its operations came to a halt. Two films that were completed and set to be released–The Cabin in the Woods and Red Dawn–were put on hold, and development on the next Bond film and The Hobbit was delayed.

Typically, this kind of hiatus could be fatal for a film. Movies put on the shelf often stay on the shelf, and if projects are delayed, you typically lose cast and crew who can’t afford to wait for the project to restart. However, in this case, time spent in limbo did a whole lot more good than bad.

The Cabin in the Woods and Red Dawn were both scheduled to be released in 2010, but MGM’s financial troubles did away with that idea. By 2011, MGM was looking to sell distribution rights for the films. Cabin ended up at Lionsgate, a perfect fit for the horror homage/satire as the distributor is known for the horror films like Saw that Cabin was parodying. Red Dawn ended up at the relatively new FilmDistrict.

Both films had, at the time, young, unknown casts. This is where the delay helped because in between the time they were filmed and the time they were release, some of  the up and coming cast came up, so to speak.

Chris Hemsworth, who has a role in both The Cabin in the Woods and Red Dawn, was a relatively unknown Australian soap opera actor when he shot those films. His biggest American film role was a cameo in the Star Trek revamp as Captain Kirk’s father. But in 2011, he starred in Thor, one of Marvel’s “Phase One” superhero films. Thor tripled its production budget in grosses worldwide and established Hemsworth as a burgeoning superstar in the making and a hunky heartthrob for the ladies.

Red Dawn one ups The Cabin in the Woods when it comes to the little known actor to superstar quotient as it also has Josh Hutcherson in its cast. Unlike Hemsworth, Hutcherson got his start in Hollywood as a child actor and has an extensive resume to his name prior to shooting the Red Dawn, including the successful Journey to the Center of the Earth remake. But his casting as Peeta Mellark in the highly anticipated The Hunger Games adaptation shot him into super stardom as well. Unless something highly unlikely happens, when Red Dawn opens on November 21, it will feature stars from the highest grossing (Hemsworth and The Avengers) and third-highest grosssing (Hutcherson and The Hunger Games) films of 2012 in its cast. If even part of the audiences for those films carry over to Red Dawn, it should be a hit.

Another way the release delay should help Red Dawn‘s grosses is that it allowed the filmmakers to change the villain of the film from China to North Korea. In the time between when the movie was filmed and when it will be release, foreign markets, especially China, have become vital for a film’s financial success. Red Dawn should do much better in China now that their country isn’t the one viciously invading ours.

MGM made sure to keep hold of their interests in the Bond franchise and The Hobbit as they progressed through bankruptcy. Both projects were affected by the delay, but they too came out of the ordeal better than they went into it.

Development had started on Bond 23, which we now know is called Skyfall, before MGM entered bankruptcy. Sam Mendes was picked as director and Peter Morgan was chosen to write the script. However, when the project became delayed, Morgan had to leave the project before finalizing the final script. Rumor has it that Mendes worked on the script to the film during the time production was unable to go forward, calling on writers such as Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan to build up the characterization in the script.

Another benefit of the delay is that the film will be released in November 9, 2012, 50 years, one month and four days after the Bond franchise began with Dr. No. The anniversary was covered in all forms of media, and Skyfall was mentioned prominently in every article and news feature about the golden jubilee.  If the film was released years earlier, it would not have received the boon of so much free publicity. (The Cabin in the Woods also benefited with a load of free publicity due to its being released the month before The Avengers. In the promotional blitzkrieg for that movie, of course starring Hemsworth and written and directed by Cabin‘s co-writer and producer Joss Whedon, interviews would often refer to the earlier film, raising awareness of the film among a possible target audience).

While Skyfall lost a screenwriter, The Hobbit lost a director in the delay. Guillermo del Toro was originally slated to direct the Lord of the Rings prequel, but had to drop out when MGM’s financial quandary prevented the film from being green lit before the window del Toro allowed in his schedule for the film elapsed. The director’s departure left MGM and co-producers Warner Brothers searching for a new director. Eventually, the powers that be picked the executive producer of the film to take over as director.

Normally, when a producer replaces a talented and experienced director such as del Toro, the film is doomed with no hope for improvement. However, this time around, with no offense meant towards the skill and ability of del Toro, the producer will be an obvious improvement. Why? Because that producer is Peter Jackson, the man who brought Tolkien to the screen with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, winning three Academy Awards for its final installment, Return of the King.

With Jackson at the helm, The Hobbit trilogy will have a sense of continuity with the world Jackson built with Lord of the Rings. Again, no slight meant to del Toro, a director I admire and respect, something would simply be missing without Jackson in the director’s chair.

We are witness to the impossible happening–four films whose quality and/or box office potential were magnified by a studio’s bankruptcy. Too bad what happened to MGM was a stroke of luck, or else many other studios would pursue bankruptcy as a sure-fire way to turn their fortunes around.

Dear Warner Brothers,

Hi. How are you doing? Good I hope.

My name is Bill. I’m a comic book fan and have been for thirty years. I have been a film buff for almost as long. And I’ve been writing about both worlds for about as long as the Internet has been around, give or take a year or two.

I say this just to provide a little background to you. Because I have been meaning to speak with you in regards to your philosophy towards comic book films. And an article I read today compelled me to not wait any longer.

Over at Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston relayed an experience from an anonymous comic store employee whose shop was visited by a “fan” who had a pronounced lack of knowledge of comic books, but an overwhelmingly odd knowledge of DC Comics films. This fan, no, wait, let’s call him what he likely was–a badly disguised marketing researcher, asked questions such as “what superhero films have had good Facebook pages?”, “Do you think comic fans would accept a superhero film without Nolan’s involvement, would him serving as a producer suffice?” “What do fans think of Aquaman? He’s lame isn’t he?”, “What is regarded as the strongest lineup of the Justice League and would work as a film?” The marketer closed his survey with an intriguing question: “What would fan reaction be to a Justice League movie with Frank Miller’s name attached?”

I don’t pretend to speak all fans or comics, films, or comic book films. I speak for myself and hopefully other fans agree with my opinion. And my reaction to this news is that it could quite possibly be the worst in a long line of bad decisions your studio has made in regards to its comic book properties.

Now, I understand that you’re in a difficult position. You once had the superhero film market all to yourself with first the Superman films then the Batman films. Then Marvel went from being a laughing stock to becoming the dominant producers of comic book films and you ended up playing catch up. Marvel has just had their most successful film to date with The Avengers and the DC Comics film slate is in a state of chaos. You are rebooting the Superman franchise for the second time in ten years. The Batman franchise is coming off a successful reboot by Christopher Nolan and is in a state of flux. Sure fire franchise starters such as Jonah Hex and Green Lantern ended up D.O.A. at the box office. Suddenly, playing catch up became being so far behind that there is a danger that it isn’t even a race anymore.

And, to be brutally honest, it’s all your fault. The list of failed attempts at rebooting the Superman franchise before you settled on Superman Returns is legendary for how bad the attempts were. I read the original script for Jonah Hex and while it might not have been a hit, it would have been closer to source material. But reading that script, it was easy to see what the studio mandated reshoots got us–Hex’s superpowers and the campy “weapons of mass destruction” plot line. I also read the Green Lantern script and thought it had the potential to be a fun film. Unfortunately, what we got was a film lacking a sense of awe and wonder.

Listen, I can see why you think Frank Miller might be an exciting choice for the Justice League movie, a film that needs some excitement because it meant to act as The Avengers in reverse (Instead of individual superhero films leading up to one big team up movie, you’re having one big team up movie that will hopefully lead to individual superhero films). Miller is a legendary comic book creator and has become a filmmaker as well. He even works with green screen techniques in his directing, which is quick, cheap and one of the reasons why you hired Zack Snyder to do Man of Steel.

But there is one flaw in the idea. the present day Frank Miller is just terrible at what he does. He just is. Now, I have nothing personal against Miller, despite how Wikipedia might make it look. I came in a bit after his storied run on Daredevil, but I was right on time for his Batman:The Dark Knight Returns. I consider that series to be the second best comic book story of all time. But since 2000, Frank Miller has become a case of diminishing returns. I don’t know if it’s because of the auteur syndrome (where creative individuals have been told that they were genius enough times that they figure anything they create is automatically genius so they stop trying) or something else, but Miller’s output in the new millennium–Dark Knight Strikes Back, All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, Holy Terror–has been awful.

I mean, have you seen The Spirit? Obviously not, because if you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Watch it. Okay, that might be asking too much. How about you just go on Rotten Tomatoes and read some the reviews for the film? No, that probably won’t work either. How about you take a look at the earnings for the film?  Money, you’ll pay attention to that. I’ll give you a hint: the reviews were as bad as the grosses–completely horrible.

The Spirit shows what happens when Miller is given free hand to write and direct a comic book film adaptation. He took one of the most quirky and iconic comic book characters in history, paid no respect to the original version, and married traces of the character to his fetishes (namely, film noir and hyper-sexualized femme fatales), a Calvin Klein ad, and force fed the concoction through a MacBook. The result is something the was as awful as you would expect it to be.

And this was a character created by his friend and mentor, Will Eisner! What would he do to the Justice League, a concept he has no emotional attachment to? Well, we do have some idea based on how Miller portrayed the team in All-Star Batman, The Dark Knight Returns and Dark Knight Strikes Again.  Superman will be an ineffectual wimp incapable of independent thought, preferring to be led around by weaker men. Green Arrow will be a raving lunatic hippie. Wonder Woman will be a man-hating harridan. Batman will be a psychotic bastard. And the rest of the League will be made up of either sociopaths or feeble weaklings. In other words, nothing like the casual fan remembers them as being and not the type of characters that would be appealing to everyday moviegoers.

What’s that you say? You’ll never let that happen? Gosh, the only worse thing I can think of other than a Frank Miller Justice League film is a Frank Miller Justice League film after heavy studio meddling.

That fact that you might be considering Miller for this job tells me something I’ve always suspected–you think there’s some hidden secret to doing a successful superhero movie, and, by gum, you’ll try everything until you find it. Jonah Hex doesn’t have powers? All Marvel’s film characters have powers. Let’s give him some. Iron Man was a cocky and arrogant who is unfazed by whatever life throws and wields a powerful weapon. That characterization would work exactly as well for Green Lantern! The Nolan Batman films were dark and gritty. So, making the Superman film dark and gritty would mean that it will be just as successful! Joss Whedon, a Hollywood director who wrote comic books, leads The Avengers to over a billion dollars in box office receipts? Man, then fans would really flip if we got Frank Miller, a comic writer who is a Hollywood director, to do Justice League!

You are right though. There is a proven method of doing a comic book movie right, but it’s no secret. You get a talented and proven director. You get a great cast of actors. You get a great story that respects the source material while standing on its own as a film. You work with the comic book company to make sure the films stay on point. You don’t interfere unless it is to make any of the four prior things happen.  It’s rather simple, but it’s not easy. You need to invest the time, do the due diligence, and trust the people you’ve hired when your only instinct is to overrule them and make unnecessary changes. But if you do that, your films might just be the quality of Marvel’s or Nolan’s.

Thanks for listening to me, Warners. I know I might have come on a bit too strong. After all, you were just pooling opinions. But I just think hiring Frank Miller for Justice League would annihilate any chance you have of ever competing with Marvel’s film output. I felt I had to say something, as a friend, before it was too late.

Stay in touch!

Bill Gatevackes.

Will or he or won’t he? That’s the question surrounding actor/director Ben Affleck and Warner Brothers’ attempts to get a Justice League film on the silver screen.

Yesterday Variety broke the news that the studio was interested in having the director of The Town helm their comic book adaption, going so far as to sending the most recent draft exclusively to him. We talked about the story here.

However, later last evening, Deadline ran a story that poo-poo-ed the idea that Affleck would direct the film saying that they had been in contact with unnamed “Affleck reps” who stated “that it was not going to happen with him.”

Now it should be noted that Deadline’s report is not necessarily contracting Variety’s. If anything, it does state that the Variety piece was correct in stating that the script had been sent to Affleck and that he may be meeting with the studio about the project.

But Deadline’s post from contributor Mike Fleming tries to spin Variety’s story by saying that they were implying that Affleck was all but signed for the job when Variety neither stated nor implied anything of the sort.

When reading this type of reportage from Deadline – Well, others may engage in it on occasion, but this rule really applies primarily to Deadline – you have to keep in mind the volatile nature of its editor Nikki Finke. She is a woman who has warped from being a tenacious journalist to one with a sense of entitlement whose temper tantrums over an exclusive being given by a studio to any other outlet have only increased over the years. And while it is Fleming’s name on Deadline’s post, the vindictive, snide tone is pure Finke.

This is not the first time this week that Finke and her site have attacked a story from Variety. On Monday, Fleming denounced the trade’s report that there were some negotiations going on between Marvel Studios and Twentieth Century Fox over extending Fox’s film rights to the comic book hero Daredevil in return for allowing some villains from the Fantastic Four rights package which the studio owned. Never mind the possibility that he could have been fed a denial by the anonymous “Fox insiders” he quoted having an ulterior motive, like say the news possibly impacting the ongoing negotiations. The chance to take a cheap shot at a competitor and his former employer takes precedence over doing any type of journalistic follow up or analysis of the statement he had been given.

Not all of Deadline’s posts are as tilted as these have been, but it is always important to keep in mind when reading any site’s reportage, including ours, where the individual story stands in context with not only what other sources are reporting but what the individual site’s own reporting history is. And in doing so this morning, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that Deadline’s post is more a cheap shot than it is something that constructively contributes to the ongoing movie dialogue.