Month: January 2017

John Ostrander: Quo Vadis 2017?

by John Ostrander

Well, it’s 2017. The very first day. It’s the time of year when folks look backwards into what has been, and try to give it some perspective and look forward to what may come. It’s also when some folks make resolution of what they’re going to do differently now that they have a clean slate. I don’t. It’s not that I don’t have many faults to correct (I do) but I know I won’t even remember them in a week or so, let alone keep them.

What I’m going to do is look forward, not with predictions, but what I would like to see in the coming year in pop culture.

I’d like to see the Fantastic Four published again— but only if Marvel remembers what they’re about. This isn’t just a team, it’s a family. You can’t remove one and plug in someone else. And family is often messy. One of the great things about the FF in its early years was that they didn’t always get along. That resonated. Later, it became a cliché but that’s because the squabbling felt pro forma and not organic. Squabbling became part of the formula instead of revealing character and relationships. It wasn’t new; it became rote. read article

What Hollywood Can Learn from Super Villains & Videogames

If you hear this guy say, “Galactus hungers!” sorry, but it’s already too late to run.

Considering the way Marvel’s supervillains have taken over TV and films as well as comic books, these wrong-headed evildoers must be doing something right.

If somebody could just tell us what it is, so we could use the info for the benefit of our own writing careers…oh, and humanity too, of course.

Oh. Hold on. Lookee here – somebody has: read article

Spidey Memories

Posted on Facebook by bestselling mystery author Robert Gregory Browne, a frequent collaborator back in my TV animation writing days and still an occasional contributor to TVWriter™.

Let’s hear it for Spider-Man Unlimited!

Weirdly, SMU, which has become a cult fave, was a show I ran at pretty much the end of my career, not at the beginning, which was a more usual route for TV writers back in the day. Now it’s a highly respected arena all its own, a niche where top writers can have long and rewarding careers…as it should be.

Larry Brody’s Poetry: ‘I Live in a Haunted House’

by Larry Brody

NOTE FROM LB: 

I’ve decided to move on from Kid Hollywood and the Navajo Dog to the next, equally unsuccessful book in the series, called, not so oddly, The Return of the Navajo Dog. The picture above is, in fact, that dog, about halfway through the lifetime she spent with me.

We’re in Colorado there, and Dineh – the Navajo name for Navajo, which was the only name Dineh would respond to – had just growled the kind of growl that would terrify any being, alive or dead, sending a poor, out-meaned, full-blooded coyote slinking away from its kill. read article

LB’s Current TV Fave

People are always asking our Beloved Leader, LB, what his favorite TV show is, and he always responds by getting all pissed off and grumbling or ranting about how “creativity shouldn’t be a competition!” and other Brando-esque phrases.

Not one to be so easily put off, this TVWriter™ minion did some nosing around and went to the Information Fountain of All Things Larry Brody, his awe-inspiring wife, Gwen the Beautiful. Here’s what we wheedled out of Ms. the B: read article