Smirkus to Tour the Emerald City

Circus Smirkus, my favorite youth circus, is adopting an Oz theme this year:

Grab your Ruby Slippers and click your heels together, as Circus Smirkus goes "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" with a new spin on the Wizard of Oz. It will take acrobatic thinking, highwire hearts, and courageous clowns to embark on this Emerald City adventure! This time it’s all flying monkey business as we cartwheel down the yellow brick road to a new twist in the tale. Pull back the curtain and discover fun for the whole family as Circus Smirkus presents Oz Incorporated.

This circus tours New England each summer, with venues and show times on its website.

A Great Pig Story

I enjoyed Louise Erdrich’s memory of summer reading for the New York Times Book Review. She was reading well above grade level at about age nine:

And then I found “The Nylon Pirates,” by Nicholas Monsarrat. I thought it would be about pirates stealing women’s nylon stockings, which seemed shockingly tempting. It must have been the last straw, because the librarian refused to check it out for me.

Instead, she gave me “Animal Farm.” “Let me know what you think,” she said.

I loved it. “Well?” she said when I brought it back.

“A great pig story!” I told her.

She renewed the book with her special red stamp and handed it back to me. “Read it again,” she said.

The librarians in Erdrich’s story start out as trying to shoo her away from the adult books, at least without parental permission. But really they’re concerned that she read what’s right for her. This one chooses which adult book to recommend to young Louise—and makes sure she gets everything out of it.

Teen Titans Gone Bad

Every so often I’ve peeked in on Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans Go, and I’ve been increasingly disappointed. After watching the recent episode about Beast Boy turning into a gorilla and challenging Robin for alpha-male status, I’ve decided to give up on the series entirely.

There is, as far as I can tell, almost no heroism in Teen Titans Go. The plots are built around the boys’ gluttony, laziness, or egoism. (The female characters react but have rarely driven the action.) The cartoons end with few valuable lessons about life, particularly by the standards of children’s television, and no development from one episode to the next.

Every so often the cartoons show us a villain from the old Teen Titans cartoon. Usually that character has no lines, thus saving on voice-actor costs. (Most of the episodes have been performed solely by the regular cast. Scott Menville as Robin once did double-duty as that character’s rival Speedy.) But we rarely see the team defeat those villains. In some cases, they don’t even notice their old enemies. And in the gorilla episode, Beast Boy actually refuses to stop the bad guy.

There’s a lot of action in Teen Titans Go, to be sure, but these Titans rarely use their powers for anyone else’s benefit. Instead, they’re usually trying to get more stuff—especially food—for themselves. So far I’ve seen the team’s activity help Jump City only once as they defeated some sort of slime monster, and the story that followed was all about Robin trying to sneak out of doing the laundry.

And that’s just wrong. That’s not what Robin, or any other hero, would do. Those characters aren’t defined by their powers and abilities—they’re defined by what they do with those powers and abilities. A Robin or ex-Robin has usually led the Teen Titans not because his ego demanded it but because he’s devoted to justice and helping people, and ultimately more badass-effective than anyone else.

Of course it’s possible to create Teen Titans drama around leadership conflicts, insecurity, wish for recognition, and other foibles. But the best stories show that drama playing out within a plot of actual heroics—i.e., helping other people. The producers have presented Teen Titans Go as what the old team does in their off-hours, but their stories depict those characters as petty and foolish and ultimately unheroic.

All that said, the network just ordered new episodes, so the series is apparently working on a commercial basis. I suppose all those stories based around eating might do a good job selling fast-food and candy commercials.

Timberline and Sprayberry

Six years ago I marveled at the Dickensian names of two young actors in 28 Weeks Later.

Today I’m celebrating the Pynchonian names of two younger actors:

Cooper Timberline and Dylan Sprayberry

They play the young Clark Kent at different ages in Man of Steel. Both are acting in other projects.

For nostalgia’s sake, here are pointers to Marc Tyler Nobleman’s interviews with the actors who played young Clark Kent back in 1978.

The Spy Who Came In From the Web

This thriller starts with Steve, a former employee of a surveillance agency, contacting a libertarian-minded reporter and making a very public disclosure of government secrets. Though many professionals and outside observers say Steve’s revealed nothing new, the US government makes a lot of noise about arresting him. Steve holes up in Hong Kong with his Chinese-Australian girlfriend Rosalie and starts speaking to the Chinese press about what he spirited away from his last job on a thumb drive.

The Chinese intelligence agency decides to steal Steve’s thumb drives, figuring there’s even more information on them than he and the news media have revealed. Unknown to the Chinese spies, the US government wants them to do exactly that. The whole defection has been a way to get tracking software and bugs installed on those thumb drives into the mysterious Shanghai compound where the best Chinese hackers work.

But in the process of stealing those thumb drives, the Chinese intelligence agency kidnap Rosalie. Or were those men from Hong Kong’s criminal triads? Now Steve has to rescue his girlfriend without the help of US intelligence. Or was she an agent, too, just pretending to be his girlfriend and encouraging him to defect? And if they can’t get the thumb drives, will any of the government agencies be willing to work with Steve and thumb screws instead?

What’s New in DC’s New Digital Formats?

Wired reports on two digital storytelling techniques that DC Comics is touting this month. First up:

“DC2, which will feature “dynamic artwork” that unfolds as the reader taps on the screen. . . . Rather than flipping through pages, readers will “tap on the screen to bring the next element of the story to life, whether it’s a whole panel, or a word balloon or a sound effect,” DC Entertainment Co-Publisher Jim Lee told Wired. “What’s cool is that you really get to challenge the rules of traditional storytelling. You aren’t beholden to a strict left to right western culture narrative. You can have elements that leap back and forth.”

“Dynamic artwork” is making its debut in a comics adaptation of the 1960s Batman TV show. So I expect it will let readers make sound effects that say “POW!” and “BAM!” pop up over the art, amplifying the campiness those comics are probably seeking to replicate. But that wouldn’t really “challenge the rules of traditional storytelling.” Will it do anything else?

Already Mark Waid, John Rogers, and colleagues at Thrillbent.com have been exploring how to employ the technique of changes within a panel in a digital comic. Their storytelling remains sequential, but tapping to bring up new elements can move the story forward at a deliberate pace or draw our attention to particular details. It’s not a gimmick like the the picture-book apps where the young reader can poke around for an element on each page that moves or makes sounds.

DC’s other proclaimed innovation is “DC2 Multiverse, a choose-your-own-path format that will allow users to make decisions at key points that will unlock different storylines.” That seems like an actual challenge to traditional storytelling since it might affect character choices and endings—an author’s basic prerogatives. It’s no surprise that the tryout title for that format is a videogame tie-in, an entertainment medium that’s all about branching storylines.

Are Those Gargoyles? Is That a Mangaboo Sun?

From Flavorwire’s roundup of “Twenty Embarrassingly Bad Book Covers for Classic Novels”:

Some of the other covers on this list are simply out of fashion, or designed for other cultures. But a lot reflect the underside of digital publishing: outfits slapping any old art onto a public-domain text in order to squeeze a few dollars out of some bargain-hunting reader.

(Hat tip to Gili Bar-Hillel, whose Hebrew translation of The Marvelous Land of Oz will have a much more traditional John R. Neill image on the cover.)

A More Realistic Robin

Cartoonist Dan Piraro once again explored the nuances of Batman and Robin in today’s Bizarro.

And on his blog, Piraro reveals that he took another stab at the same joke in 2010.

“I’m going to see that tornado one day.”

Last week tornado chaser Tim Samaras died chasing a tornado in Oklahoma. The same storm killed his son, twenty-four years old, and a colleague.

National Geographic then ran an interview with Samaras about his work, some of which had been funded by the society:

How did you get into it?

My background is in engineering. And I've always had a fascination with weather.

I watched The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid and vowed to myself, "I'm going to see that tornado one day." Tornadoes have pretty much become a focus of my life.

Rationally, that makes as much sense as deciding to breed monkeys with wings.

G-Man, Come Home!

G-Man: Coming Home brings a lot of delights, but I found it less satisfying than G-Man: Cape Crisis. This book picks up just after the end of that previous volume when G-Man (Mikey) and his older brother Great Man (David) have regained the magic cape and belt that provided their powers. The world thinks of Great Man as dead, but that isn’t worrying him because it gets him out of the house.

One plotting problem for G-Man writer-artist Chris Giarrusso is evident on the back cover (visible by scrolling down on this page): he’s created a world that’s too fun for his heroes. Below portraits of the brothers is an assemblage of other characters with special powers. We see the boys’ five loyal buddies: Kid Thunder, Suntrooper Solazzo, Tan Man, Billy Demon, and Sparky. We see the seven Color Girls, who function as a single source of unfathomable energy and emotion (the way many middle-grade boys view girls). We see this world’s mightiest adult hero team: Racing Stripe, Miss Victory, Cool Wraps, Captain Thunderman, Lugg, Color Queen, and Suntrooper Captain Davis. Also on the scene but not shown are the boys’ mentor, wizard Glendolf, and the godlike creature they rescued in the last volume, Khrysomallos.

In sum, for something to threaten G-Man and Great Man in this volume, it would have to be tremendously powerful and/or to strip away those allies. The first bad guy (also shown on the back cover, the only antagonist there) has a giant robot. Well, in the first chapter he does. After the Color Girls bring him down, he has nothing on his side but a fake moustache.

The second antagonist is the head of the Suntroopers, upset that the boys’ magic cape and belt can negate his troops’ solar suits. The Suntroopers function in this universe like the Green Lantern Corps, a space-based patrol system. Everyone sees them as heroes. They would be a formidable enemy for G-Man and Great Man, except that, well, the boys’ cape and belt can negate the Suntroopers’ solar suits. Plus, the head of the force and his chosen deputies quickly come across as incompetent hotheads. There’s a moment at the end of chapter 3 when it appears Suntrooper Captain Davis will follow orders rather than protect the brothers, but otherwise that conflict, explained and re-explained, produces more parties at superhero headquarters than anxiety.

Furthermore, adults handle a lot of the major problem-solving in this book—often without even telling the kids. Almost needless to say, Suntrooper Captain Davis has a clever plan all along. “We didn’t have time to tell you the plan!” Captain Thunderman tells his son. Cool Wraps informs the brothers that he kept them “incapacitated so you wouldn’t accidentally give away the plan!” The result is less satisfying, as well as less nerve-wracking, than if the kids were on their own.

But then comes chapter 5, when G-Man and Great Man are on their own as their parents race off to the hospital to deliver their baby sibling. (No, David and Mikey didn’t see that coming, either.) This single issue has everything I love about G-Man: out-of-this-world plot twists, snarky humor, obdurate personalities, and family dynamics where no amount of friction can break the underlying bonds. The rest of G-Man: Coming Home has all that too, but not in such concentrated form.