trump-hill

On conservatism, Trump, and why I’m voting for Hillary

Politics is a passion of mine. I’ve always been interested in world events and the players who shape them. I don’t see politics as a sport or an interest or a hobby. This statement may anger some people I care very much about, but I must say it: politics isn’t something that one can have the luxury of “not being interested in.” Politics shapes our society: it sets the terms of our freedoms, our opportunities, our successes.

I earned a degree in political science and I have worked in a political environment for nearly a decade. I study politics every day — something far above and beyond the level of engagement I think every citizen should have. So maybe I talk a bit too much about politics for your tastes. That’s OK, and I’m sorry for being overbearing.

But I do think there are some critically important things we do need to talk about during this presidential election cycle.

I am a Democrat, a progressive, a liberal. I am strong in my convictions and I can lay out arguments as to why I stand for the positions I support. Nonetheless, I am always open to new information and different perspectives, meaning I have not always held the same opinions and won’t always hold the ones I hold now. But I am constantly in search of what is right for me, and in that search, I have always — since 1988, at age 4 — found my home in the Democratic Party. My loyalty, though, is not to the party, which may change, but to the ideals currently underlying it.

I have known many Republicans and even been friends with a few. Despite our differences, I have always been able to find common ground with everyone I’ve ever engaged in an extended conversation about politics. I truly believe that if we sit down and listen to one another, we can continue to have a beautiful, vibrant, incredible United States of America. After all, that has been our map to success thus far.

But there is a stark divide in this country. It is a divide that has always existed but only sometimes rises to the surface like it has now. It’s a divide that is not attributable to politics or government or banks or the establishment. It is a divide that is genetically coded into human beings:

We are divided by an instinctive drive to hold the levers of power for ourselves and for those we identify as a part of our tribe.

This drive to horde power is something those with the power can ignore when they are unchallenged. But every few decades, societal changes compel those with power to reckon with the prospect of sharing that power with a new group. It happened in 1776 when colonists rebelled against the king, in 1828 when the common man rebelled against old-money politicians, in 1860 when the enslavement of man was no longer sustainable, in the early 1900s as Roosevelt challenged the monopolies of business, in 1932 as the other Roosevelt secured a New Deal for the impoverished, and in the 1960s as we began to confront our festering racial disparities.

In 2008, the United States of America elected a black man to be president. The country convulsed with pride and patted itself on the back about how it had finally put racism firmly in the past. But over the subsequent seven-plus years of the Obama administration, as the demographics of the country have continued to change and as those who have been without power for centuries see a beacon of hope that they too may one day rise up, the power structure has been challenged again.

The old guard feels the threat, and the wheels of resistance have churned into motion. Government has ground to a halt. And a very bad man is channeling the fears and anxieties and disappointments of a portion of the nation that has never had to worry about these issues before into a toxic and dangerous presidential campaign.

I do not blame my Republican friends for this state of affairs even though it is the Republican Party that is preparing to nominate this very bad man for president. Like many of my Democratic and independent friends, most Republicans just do not prioritize their time to critically analyze what their political allies and heroes truly stand for; they have other things going on in their lives, like day-to-day struggles to feed and clothe their children or the demands of an 80-hour-a-week job. Unfortunately, that ignorance — and I mean a lack of extensive, specific knowledge, not an implication of stupidity or laziness — is easy to exploit so that those with power can keep the power.

There’s no delicate way to say this, but I think it is a self-evident truth: those who have held power in the United States of America since its founding have been straight, white, male Christians. Let me be clear: straight, white, male Christians are not bad people (hell, I am three of those four things myself). But they’re also not better people; they’re not people who are more deserving of power than any other group of people. And their behavior and their instinct to maintain that power is not a product of their sexuality or their race or gender or religion, but of their human nature. That is to say: if any other group of people had founded this nation, that group would behave exactly the same way; for evidence, look at the Middle East, East Asia, Africa, or anywhere else on the globe.

If there is some higher calling for humanity, it must be to overcome at least some of our animal instincts in order to create a less violent world. We can codify those efforts through morals or religions or constitutions, refer to them as God’s calling or as humanist rationality. The terminology and the structures don’t particularly matter, but I believe a vast majority of humans agree with me that less violence — not just physical violence, but mental cruelty, emotional warfare, and every other manifestation of unkindness — is a common goal that we can agree on.

Unfortunately, the temptations of power can blind us from seeing when we are working against that goal. As I said earlier, I have been thinking about these things on-and-off-but-mostly-on for nearly 30 years. And I have recognized some very ugly truths about the political spectrum.

To be a conservative is to believe that the current power structure in society does not need to change. This is not an opinion, but an actual definition of the term. A conservative believes that the status quo serves society best. Therefore, it makes sense that conservatism attracts those who already hold power.

Conservatism also attracts those who don’t appear to hold power, in the sense of occupying high government posts or having millions of dollars, but who benefit by being a part of the tribe of people who do. These people — the hard-working, blue-collar, good people who populate small towns across White America — fear that the power and security they do have, no matter how little, will be taken away by some other group.

This is where the concept of “white privilege” enters the conversation, and that is far too expansive a topic to dive into here. Suffice it to say: poor white people (again, I have been in that group) face very real challenges and struggles in their lives, but their race is not one of them. And because we share the same skin color as those who have held power, we are welcomed into the tribe. The arguments of conservative politicians include us in their vision, even as conservative policies continue to subjugate the poor to the power of the old guard.

When a power shift, real or perceived, reaches a certain tipping point — say, with the election of a black president — maintaining the status quo no longer serves the interests of those who have until now held the levers of power. In this climate, those who used to be drawn to conservatism feel that ideology was ineffective at protecting them. Consequently, they turn to conservatism’s cousin on the extreme right wing: reactionary politics.

Reactionary politics is a type of populism. Populism is an appeal to the broadest swath of people possible: a political approach to complex problems that offers simple, and therefore incorrect, solutions. Populism takes several forms, but one form is the exclusionary populism of reactionary politics.

Reactionary politics thrives on identifying an enemy that can be blamed for our problems. Because our most basic human instincts tell us to trust those who look like us and distrust those who don’t, reactionary politics almost always places the blame for our problems on those others. That simple answer is very comforting and appealing to those who feel down and out. And suddenly, our agreement to seek a kinder, less violent world is clouded by the promise of regaining that power we once seemed to have.

The man leading the field for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 is practicing reactionary politics. Even in times when reactionary politics are not in vogue, this region of the political spectrum always has inhabitants. These include the anti-immigration advocates, the Christian Dominionists, the white nationalists, and the outright racist white supremacists.

Even if Donald Trump himself is not a white supremacist, his rhetoric and policy proposals match the reactionary dreams of the racists and the bigots, so this is naturally his base of support. Despite being on the right wing, reactionaries like Mr. Trump do not need the same ideological purity as traditional conservatives to be accepted by the voters. They just need to assure the public that they will turn back the clock on all the “bad” things that have happened in the past few years. And in times of change such as this, the reactionary base of support expands by attracting the angry and the hurting — people who do not identify as racist — good people who are taken in by a false promise that if we just strip the power back from those other people, everything will be fine again.

The Republican Party has never been comprised of a majority of racists. But it has been the party of conservatives — status quo protectors — whose natural allies are the reactionaries. The politicians in the Republican Party have known this fact and they have long supported power-structure-protecting policies couched in friendly, appealing language (tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, “smaller government” that creates homogeneous governmental units where it is easier to keep a grip on power) while at the same time holding onto the support of the reactionaries with coded language and dog whistles (“taking the country back” and “protecting our values”).

(Please don’t interpret this to mean that I believe my Republican and conservative friends identify that way because they want to protect a pro-white-male status quo; I know that they believe in tax cuts and smaller government and other conservative policy positions because of a belief that they are the best tools for a just society, just as sincerely as my friends on the left believe in their principles.)

Now, the polish is off, and the reactionaries see no need for coded language. Now, Mexicans are rapists, Muslims should be deported, and Christians are under constant, premeditated attack. Reactionary politics is appealing to our basest instincts: to blame the new, rising classes for our problems when the real culprit has been the structure that made us feel empowered while we were really being exploited by those in control.

A lot of ink, pixels, and breath have been expended in comparing Mr. Trump to such infamous figures as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Such comparisons have been deployed far too frequently in our political discourse over the past decades — so frequently that we are now in a boy-who-cried-wolf conundrum. In the case of Mr. Trump, there really is evidence that a wolf lurks in the forest. It is simply an historical fact that the fascist dictators of Europe rode a wave of reactionary politics to power. The threat is real.

To be a progressive, on the other hand, is to advocate an inclusive power structure. It is the reason the Democratic Party of the 1960s onward has been an alliance of women, people of color, those of faiths or nonfaiths that emphasize inclusion, the non-cisgendered and non-heterosexual, and other historically excluded groups.

It’s certainly true that some in the Democratic Party simply want access to power so they can deny it to others. That’s one of the reasons why my loyalty does not lie with the party, but with the ideals. Progressivism as an ideology rejects the notion that expanding who has access to power is a zero-sum game that results in less power for those who used to be in charge. Alternatively, progressives can acknowledge the zero-sum nature of power but choose to reject the idea that one group or another should have exclusive access to that power. Maybe spreading our power around does dilute the power for ourselves or does make our success more difficult, but damn it, that’s the right thing to do for humanity.

So the thesis here is that I am asking you to reject the conservatives and reactionaries who would protect the old, exclusive power structure. But isn’t Hillary Clinton a part of that power structure? Isn’t Bernie Sanders the only candidate in the race who is challenging the status quo while rejecting reactionary politics? It’s a tempting thought, but it just isn’t so.

It is certainly true that Mrs. Clinton has had power for decades: as First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State. But holding power is not the same as denying power to others. Throughout Mrs. Clinton’s public service, she has supported policies that expand opportunities to women, to people of color, to people with different genders and different sexual orientations and different abilities.

And, importantly to me as a student of politics, Mrs. Clinton has fought those battles smartly, with a long-term strategy to expand opportunity to more people.

Of course, it is true that a long-term strategy is ugly when looked at over the short-term. In retrospect, the Clintons’ support for aspects of welfare reform, a disparate criminal justice system, and other Third Way policies don’t fit the mold of progressivism. But those compromises were elements of political relationships that allowed for the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the earned income tax credit for low-income Americans. I acknowledge the tragic reality that a smart compromise for a comfortable politician can still be a life sentence for a troubled teenager. But in a diverse, free society in which half the elected Congress supports even harsher, race-based punishment, you are sometimes lucky to be offered half a loaf.

It is also true that Mrs. Clinton has changed positions over time. The cynic finds an easy way out when he claims that someone changes her mind because she gets a campaign contribution. And sometimes the cynic would be right. But I urge you to rise above cynicism and do a deeper, impartial examination of the entirety of a person’s career and ideology before diagnosing a disease.

Consider that another trade-off of being a successful politician who is able to fight for change is the ability to get elected. And for the entirety of Mrs. Clinton’s career, getting elected has required a lot of money — amounts of money that are only obtainable from large corporations. That paradigm may be changing now, as the success of Sen. Sanders’s grassroots fundraising shows, but it’s not how it has worked for 30 years — and I must remind you, it hasn’t worked yet in a presidential campaign. It’s a terrible system, but let’s indict the system, not the candidate who has no other way to succeed.

I do not believe Mrs. Clinton has changed policy positions due to campaign contributions or because she has no moral compass. In fact, I do not know anyone who was born with all the right opinions. And I don’t know any better sign of a mind that is closed to facts and self-examination than a person who clings to outdated perspectives. So when I look at the pattern of Mrs. Clinton’s policy shifts through her 30-year public life, I see a woman who has always shifted to the more progressive position. She is evolving with the nation, with me — with you.

“But Bernie has always held these progressive ideals!” In many instances, yes. In some others, no. And in terms of translating those ideals into policy changes … I’m still waiting. I am hesitant to use the names in the same sentence because their intentions are so diametrically opposed, but Mr. Sanders, like Mr. Trump, is a populist. His brand of populism is inclusionary instead of exclusionary, but it is still offering simple solutions to complex problems.

Sen. Sanders is a good, honorable man, and a reliable progressive. If you choose to support him, I respect that decision. But, as I urged with Mrs. Clinton, please survey the entirety of Sen. Sanders’s public life, including his ability to effect tangible change.

Polls today that show Sen. Sanders beating Mr. Trump by larger margins than Mrs. Clinton are simply fantasy, as Mrs. Clinton has had her numbers suppressed by national-level GOP attacks for 24 years, whereas Sen. Sanders hasn’t even seen the start of it. Consider the political reality he will face when the Republican Party unloads its full arsenal on a man who most people believe is a socialist, whether the label is accurate or not, in a country where Gallup found that 50 percent of people would never vote for a socialist.

Mrs. Clinton is not an ideal candidate. She has made too many poor decisions that have left her exposed to questions about her trustworthiness, even if those questions are almost always a part of a long-term, coordinated political sabotage. But I have not yet developed the ability to conjure from thin air the perfect candidate, so I’m left evaluating the choices I do have. If you are a dedicated progressive, I may be asking you to take half a loaf by voting for Mrs. Clinton. But politics is people, and if you want purity, you’re going to have to change human nature.

My appeal is this: understand what conservatives, reactionaries, and progressives stand for. Then calmly, coolly consider the consequences of a reactionary being elected President of the United States in 2016, and determine the best strategic choice for preventing that outcome.

I hope this long-winded screed hasn’t been too insufferable. Many people are built out of genetic material that makes it easier to set all these issues aside than to fret over them. But for whatever reason, I cannot. I have a biological need to spew this out into the world, imperfect as it is, for my own selfish reasons. To write this feels cathartic for me. I think it’s because the United States of America is my home. And I can’t deny that I am indeed only a human being, and that means I have an instinct to protect my home.

So please reject reactionary politics. Mr. Trump the Person is only fighting for the interests of one person: Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump the Candidate is using reactionary politics — an appeal to white power — to secure those interests. We must save this nation. This is not a drill.

nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo pushes writers to write novel in one month

Behind every television show, movie, or book I enjoy and then obsess over each week in this space, you will find an intense creative process, embarked on by a writer with a vision and a pen (or a typewriter or a MacBook). As someone with academic degrees in writing and a love for fiction, I’ve always fantasized about creating my very own novel. I have made a few feeble attempts in the past, littered with false starts, discarded drafts, and even one manuscript that made it all the way to chapter 3 before the flash drive was misplaced, likely never to be seen again.

But this month, I’ve had a good excuse to throw myself wholeheartedly into a brand new attempt at achieving my dream.

Writing a 50,000-word novel in a month is a daunting task, yet that is precisely what you commit to when you sign up for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is a non-profit organization that, according to its mission statement, “organizes events where children and adults find the inspiration, encouragement, and structure they need to achieve their creative potential. Our programs are web-enabled challenges with vibrant real-world components, designed to foster self-expression while building community on local and global levels.”

Of the many programs NaNoWriMo offers, one of the most popular takes place every November, when writers the world over sign up with the goal of drafting a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 p.m. on November 30. I had never participated in NaNoWriMo, though I know several people who have done it multiple times. About two hours before the calendar turned over to November this year, I decided on impulse to make the plunge. I had no outline, no concept — I didn’t even know who my characters would be — but I decided to give it a shot. If I were ever going to write a novel, I might as well start now.

I spent a large portion of Day 1 cleaning my room and organizing my computer, making sure I had a comfortable place to work. By the time I finally sat down to write, I still wasn’t sure what I would be writing about, but I thought I knew who I would be writing about. There’s a character that had been floating around in my head for a couple years. I didn’t know her story yet, but I knew she wanted it told. By the end of that day I had written over 1,200 words. Not bad considering I hadn’t had a clue what I was going to write about when the day began.

The NaNoWriMo goal is to write at least 1,667 words per day in order to reach 50,000 by the end of the month. I set my goal at trying to reach at least 2,000 per day, knowing that most novels tend to average much more than 50,000 words (especially if you happen to have the middle initials R.R.).

Throughout the first week, I was pretty successful at attaining my goal word count. By the end of Day 7, I had over 14,000. It was rather exhilarating for me to look at that word count and know that I had created all that. My master’s thesis had been over 27,000 words, but a large percentage of that was research-based, not entirely creative writing. So 14,000 words on a creative writing project was a big deal for me, and that was just the beginning.

I’m usually the type of person who likes to have a plan for everything and, in the past, that was my approach to creative writing as well. I would formulate an outline in my head of what I wanted the story to look like — sometimes more detailed than others — and then attempt to write to the outline. As you can tell from my earlier confession of never finishing anything I’ve started, I wasn’t ever very successful that way.

Since I had signed up for NaNoWriMo without any planning, I decided my entire novel would be written that way. I’ve rarely sketched out what I’m going to write more than a day ahead — and, most of the time, I don’t know where it’s going when I sit down. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered that outlining may not be all it’s cracked up to be. I’m more than halfway toward the 50,000-word goal and I still don’t know from day to day what twists and turns it’s going to take. Writing this novel has been like an archaeological expedition — I don’t know where the story is going, or how it’s going to end.

I have always had this lingering doubt in the back of my mind that I would never actually be able to write an entire novel because, while I might come up with good broad strokes for a novel, I wouldn’t be any good writing the smaller details and the less action-oriented scenes. I’ve never thought I would be very good at coming up with pages of dialogue or crafting realistic conversations between characters, but I’m doing it. Each day I sit at my computer with no idea what’s going to happen next, and I slowly uncover my characters’ next moves. Sure, it’s just a rough draft, and I guarantee it’s not National Book Award material, but I’m having fun discovering my characters and proving to myself that I can do this.

Some days I can average 1,000 words per hour and other days I stare at my computer screen for what seems like hours and only get 600 words written. It hasn’t always been easy, and there are some days when I just can’t figure out what my characters are going to do next. But I keep persevering because this goal is one worth achieving.

As of this writing, my novel is at just over 33,000 words, I just started chapter 14. This is officially the most I’ve ever written on one project, and while I’ve slowed down a little, I am not even close to giving up, which is the biggest accomplishment I’ve made so far. While I’m a little behind in my goal, I’m still within sight of finishing the 50,000 words by November 30, and that will be a huge accomplishment.

If I’ve learned anything this month, it’s that I can surprise myself with how much of a Big Thing I can do if I set my mind to it and really commit. I’m so glad I took the leap and signed up for this. While I haven’t done much other than work, sleep, and write this month, at least by the end of it, I’ll have succeeded in my goal of writing a novel, and that means a lot this girl who has dreamed of being a writer her entire life.

Maybe this novel — or a subsequent one, when I’ve honed my skills a bit — will inspire another fangirl like me.

pokemon

Pokémon’s popularity due to simple escapism

It’s the second-most successful video game franchise in history. It’s spawned a television show, toys, over a dozen movies, toys, trading cards, toys, and more and more games. But the success of this juggernaut comes from something incredibly simple.

Why has Pokémon caught on so much with each new generation, and why do some of its original fans still play the games nearly 20 years after their introduction? Because the games offer a simple, magical tale that every kid and kid-at-heart loves to experience. And with two new games coming out this week, the franchise remains just as good as it has ever been.

The first generation of American Pokémon fans experienced the game in its simplest form: on the original Game Boy or Game Boy Pocket, with simple graphics and a game engine that strained itself to the point that glitches were inevitable and considered a normal part of the game. The feeling today’s 20-somethings experienced as children entering into this magical world of special creatures is impossible to relate to anyone who never experienced it.

Imagine you are between the ages of 5 and 12 and you are told about a mystical land, resembling our own but inhabited by creatures called Pocket Monsters — or Pokémon, for short. You are now being given a license to travel the world and befriend these unique monsters. You will raise these animals as pets and help them unlock their fighting potential. Success means the monsters will evolve into stronger and fiercer fighters, but their loyalty to you will remain strong.

And you can capture and raise as many as you want. In fact, finding many monsters is encouraged, because you are also on a scientific mission to gather information on these creatures. That’s right, at age 10, you are being sent out into the world, alone, to train monsters with superpowers to fight each other. For science.

Fans of the game will never forget that first agonizing choice. Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle. Grass, fire, or water. Most kids I knew picked Charmander, probably because he evolved into a freaking dragon, but my choice was always between the grass and water Pokémon. Ultimately, being the hipster that I am, I chose Bulbasaur, and despite my awareness that he is only a fictional monster, I’ve always felt a strange defensiveness toward the toad with a plant in his back. Other players of the Pokémon games could relate the same feelings.

We were told back in the last century that there were only 150 of these monsters, and it was our journey to capture them all. But soon, rumors grew that there were secretly more Pokémon out there that we’d never heard of. As a 10-year-old boy, this was like finding out there was a second day of the year when Santa Claus would deliver presents. We would scour the grass outside of Viridian City or Lavender Town, hoping to spot a Pokémon not mentioned in the official lists. Sadly, the only unlisted monster we could ever find was the MissingNo., the Pokémon created by a freak glitch in the game and now a legend in its own right.

As it turned out, the rumors of new monsters were simply a brilliant marketing ploy. The success of the original Pokémon Red and Blue (Green in Japan) versions of the game guaranteed sequels. First, there was Pokémon Yellow, which acted as a direct tie-in to the television series and eliminated the agonizing first decision by forcing you to take Pikachu as an initial Pokémon, but this game offered no new creatures. Following Yellow version, however, GameFreak and Nintendo released Pokémon Gold and Silver, featuring 100 new Pocket Monsters. In order to complete your mission to catch ’em all, you would need access to at least four versions of the Pokémon game. And so it goes.

Today, the games still require several versions in order to capture every Pokémon, which is an admittedly diabolical, business-savvy move. But despite the obvious money grab in the overall scheme, the games remain popular and, perhaps more importantly, they remain fun.

Nearly 20 years after Red and Blue’s introduction, those of us who have stuck around have come to accept that we will never again experience the feelings we had when first encountering Articuno or Mewtwo. Nothing about the games feels as mystical as it once did, and many longtime players have turned the games into math tests. But we continue to play, perhaps chasing that high that we can never again attain. Or perhaps we simply enjoy the games in a new way now.

The newer games work hard to add new levels of depth to the games’ story lines, whether through legends on the origin of Pokémon, or by adding moral ambiguity to the villainous factions’ intentions. This week, Nintendo will be releasing remakes of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire versions, which were the first games to add this small layer of depth to the story.

Whereas Gold and Silver were direct sequels to Red and Blue, Ruby and Sapphire were fresh starts — and the first Pokémon games to a new generation of fans. For the older fans like myself, the games’ villains were an odd addition. Unlike Team Rocket, who sought only world domination, Teams Aqua and Magma appeared to be fighting for more noble goals: Team Aqua aimed to expand the oceans, while Team Magma aimed to expand the world’s landmass, both supposedly driven to better the world for life. Though their ideas were ultimately poor, and their methods atrocious, their intentions at least seemed pure.

But more importantly for the older fan base, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire were the games that truly added new levels of strategy to competitive battling. No longer were victories determined strictly by levels and the rock-paper-scissors game of elemental types. Special abilities and character traits guaranteed that each Pokémon was unique, and the traditional ways of battling were no longer valid. Double battles, introduced in this generation, also required much more strategy. Battles were no longer simply fire versus water, but fire and electricity versus water and grass. In succeeding generations of Pokémon games, strategy became even more important to competitive battling, leading to the creation of an entire subculture devoted to Pokémon breeding. Yes, it’s as exciting as it sounds.

But investing in strategy and learning the proper methods of Pokémon breeding are not necessary to complete the games. At their core, Pokémon games are still about simple myth and unending fun. The game can be mature for those who want it that way, but for kids picking up the game for the first time, that magic is still there. Only now, in order to catch ’em all, players must find 721 different species of Pokémon. That’s not even mentioning mega evolutions and different forms of other Pokémon.

I can only imagine the magic kids feel when they first experience Pokémon through these new games. The heart of it is still there, the mystery of it is still profound, and the level of fun the games brings about will never disappear.

Chesnaught, Fennekin, and Froakie will never replace Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle, but to a new generation of fans, they are their first Pokémon. In 10 years, Pokémon X and Y may be remade for a new generation of fans, and today’s new fans will look at the new game with a sense of nostalgia, remembering the day when they took their first step into the grass with their very first Pokémon.

john-constantine

Meeting Constantine through Hellblazer comics, NBC series

I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately. When I got home from New York Comic Con, I was in the mood to do more comic reading, so I signed up for Marvel Unlimited to read through much of their back catalog. I’m in the middle of Civil War and plan to tackle the “Infinity” story lines next. My plan is to work my way through the stories Marvel is planning on adapting to film first, then go back to as many other titles as I can.

I also took advantage of a sale DC Comics was recently having on their John Constantine titles and bought several collections of the early Hellblazer comics that established the Constantine character. Prior to watching the pilot of NBC’s Constantine, my knowledge of the character was limited to his appearances in Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman comics and the movie starring Keanu Reeves, which I’m sure many true Constantine fans would rather forget.

While I had never read any of the Hellblazer comics, I’ve always been intrigued by the character — especially once I started hearing about the new series. Before the Constantine screening at NYCC, one of the emcees asked the audience what they liked about Constantine. The girl who answered the question described him as being a “selfish coward,” which intrigued me even more, as that wasn’t an image I had associated with him up to this point. Clearly, there was a lot about Constantine I did not know.

When I found out about the DC sale on the comics, I couldn’t resist buying some to get an idea of what Constantine is really like. I was also curious to see how the show would compare to the comics — though I wouldn’t be nearly as critical as any of the fans who have been reading the comics for years. I have recently finished reading the first collection of Hellblazer, which includes Hellblazer #1-9 and Swamp Thing #76-77. So, here are some thoughts on Constantine and the Hellblazer comics coming from a first-time reader.

By the time the Hellblazer comics debuted in 1988, Constantine was already an established character, having made several appearances in the Swamp Thing, beginning with Swamp Thing #37 in 1983. I know even less about Swamp Thing than I do Constantine, so the overall arc of those two issues and how they fit in with Constantine’s arc at that point was a little lost on me — I didn’t put all the pieces together until I started the second volume of Constantine comics — but I learned a lot about Constantine just within the first issues of his series.

What I learned in reading the first nine issues of Hellblazer was that the girl at NYCC was right on target with her description of Constantine. He is a selfish coward — and a few other things I won’t put into print. Yet, oddly, I can’t help but like him. He has a certain “irresistible charm,” as Constantine himself puts it.

The first few issues of Hellblazer appear to be standalone stories. It isn’t until about halfway through the collection that the reader starts to notice the pattern and the thread that ties them all together. The last few issues are one continuous story, as Constantine tries to outmaneuver forces of heaven and hell in order to maintain balance on earth.

The nature of Constantine’s character becomes fairly apparent right from the first issue, as he willingly sacrifices the life of a man who has been his friend since childhood in order to stop a demon. It’s clear Constantine feels guilt over his choice, but he doesn’t hesitate in making the difficult decision. Constantine lives in a world where he is forced to frequently make choices between what’s best for one versus what’s good for everyone. This can make him seem callous and cold, but these are decisions that must be made, and he shows he is capable of making them.

However, not all Constantine’s decisions are for the good of the many. Constantine’s cowardice is more apparent in the fifth issue, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” which adds a supernatural twist to post-traumatic stress. Constantine hides and watches as a man caught up in a war flashback rapes and murders his own wife. Instead of stepping in to save the woman, Constantine maintains his cover.

“No way I can go charging into their movie,” Constantine said. “It’s too bloody dangerous.”

Later, he acknowledges his own weakness, as he watches the woman’s attempt to defend herself.

“I should help her do the bastard, but I still can’t move — at least that’s what I tell myself.”

These very different aspects to his personality help to make Constantine a fascinating character. I can’t wait to learn more as I continue through the comics.

The Hellblazer comics are pretty dark — lots of demonic activity and mutilation, murder, and more. According to series star Matt Ryan at NYCC, the series has not been cleansed for television — this is the Constantine fans have been reading about. It will be interesting to see how closely the show follows the comics, and what NBC will let them get away with. I’m even more excited about the show now that I’ve been reading the comics.

Ryan as Constantine was a terrific casting choice. He seems to understand the character and really embodies Constantine’s attitude well. Even the way he walked out on stage at NYCC reminded me of Constantine. The success of the series really hinges on whether fans can accept the actor as their beloved comic book character, and I think they found the right man with Ryan.

After reading the first issues of Hellblazer, I started to pick up on the elements of the comics that are making their way into the series. I was particularly amused to discover Constantine’s response to where he came from: “The sordid passions of my parents” was taken directly from the comic — though in the comic, the line belongs to Zed, one of Constantine’s associates and an occasional lover. We caught a glimpse of Zed and one of her talents at the very end of the pilot episode, then had more of an introduction last week.

Looking closely at the artwork scattered around Zed’s room, you’ll find multiple familiar images if you’re a fan of the comics. Even I was able to recognize several, and I’m only up to Hellblazer #12. But I saw the cover of Hellblazer volume 1, as well as the grotesque form of the four British Boys the demon Nergal molded together and sent after Constantine in one of the early issues. It’s these little Easter eggs and attention to detail that make the show fun to watch.

Constantine’s history with Newcastle and young Astra was a large plot point in the first episode of the series, but I’ve only just begun to learn more about what happened in Newcastle in the second volume of the comics. It appears NBC has tamed down Astra’s story a little — they seem to have left out the abuse and her involvement in creating the original demon — though more could be revealed as the series progresses.

Another great piece of casting was Jeremy Davies as Ritchie Simpson. I loved that I immediately recognized Ritchie when I was reading the comics. I couldn’t remember his name from the series (despite having watched the pilot three times), but Davies’ look was so much like Ritchie in the comics that I had no doubt this was the right character. I read all Ritchie’s lines in the comics in Davies’ voice, and really do think he was a great choice. This week we’ll see the introduction of another character from the comics; I’m looking forward to seeing what the show does with Papa Midnite.

It’s still early to say that NBC’s Constantine won’t disappoint fans — and I’m probably biased since I watched the pilot before reading the comics — but I believe the cast and creators are at least trying to create a faithful adaptation of comics, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s coming, both on television and in the comics.

occupy-fawkes

Fifth of November: Untangling truth from Vendetta

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November.

It is fitting that American elections are held during the first week of November — the one time a year when we hear the name Guy Fawkes as we chat briefly about overthrowing governments and installing anarchy. We salivate over how great V for Vendetta is, and how we’d like to head our own utopian government. But, ironically, very few people actually know what happened on the Fifth of November that we’ve come to commemorate.

Sure, some are aware that November 5, 1605, was the day Fawkes tried to bomb the English Parliament, but far fewer know why — or, really, anything else about the man whose face has become a symbol for activists and anarchists everywhere. So, who was Fawkes? What is it he fought for? What is it we are really celebrating? How did he become the symbol we know today? And what are the differences between Fawkes and the fictional character V?

At the turn of the 17th century, Europe was tearing itself apart. Increased literacy and education led to the questioning of traditional religion and its role in state politics. Protestantism was on the rise, and the rift in Christianity left many countries with factions feuding over religious dominance. Henry VIII of England wanted to marry his love, Anne Boleyn, but the Pope refused to annul the king’s wedding to Catherine of Aragon. To get around that complication, the king split from the Pope, who had once called Henry the “defender of the faith,” and the Roman Catholic Church entirely, declaring himself the head of an independent English (or Anglican) Church.

In the coming decades, each subsequent English monarch changed the official religion in some way, including reestablishing the supremacy of Rome for a time. In this environment of constantly shifting religious alliances, it was inevitable that many would take sides and fight for their version of the Christian faith. Under James I, Catholics had hoped to see a move toward greater Catholic religious tolerance. They were disappointed. Anglicanism continued to reign, and the Bible was translated into an authorized English version that bears the king’s name. But some English Catholics were no longer content to wait for the afterlife to see the Protestant leaders judged. And in 1605, one group of conspirators planned to retake the throne for Rome.

The Gunpowder Plot was the attempt by English Catholic subversives to bomb the House of Lords, theoretically leading to the death of King James and the installation of his young daughter, Elizabeth, as a Catholic queen. Fawkes, who many imagine as an anarchist, was in fact among the conspirators hoping to establish a Catholic theocracy. Fawkes was put in charge of guarding the explosives, but he was captured, causing the coup to fizzle out before getting anywhere.

Fawkes was tortured, under the king’s orders, to compel the man to give up the names of his co-conspirators. While his resolve remained strong at first, the increasing brutality of the torture eventually broke Fawkes. To understand the full scale of the beating Fawkes received, one must only look at his signature before and after his torture. Fawkes and his cohorts were tried and sentenced to death, with the added humiliation of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Fawkes, defiant to the end, evaded part of the punishment when he jumped and broke his neck, avoiding having his guts and testicles cut apart while still conscious.

Not long after the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, November 5 was declared a day of thanksgiving to celebrate the king’s survival. The holiday acquired the name of Bonfire Day because crowds would burn effigies of Fawkes and the Pope. Unsurprisingly, this worsened the bad blood between the Christian sects.

Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Day has evolved over the centuries and taken on new meaning as public opinions and sympathies have changed. For the first several centuries, the holiday was very obviously a celebration of the plot’s failure. When the monarchy did temporarily fall midcentury, the focus ceased to be on the survival of the king, but on the supremacy of Protestantism and parliamentary rule. Today, it is harder to pin down whether folks are celebrating the survival of English government or the idea of destroying it.

Either way, Fawkes became a symbol, with his name and likeness surviving long after his execution. In fact, the word “guy” is derived from the effigies of Guy Fawkes. The effigies were often made by children out of old clothing and called “guys.” The term became a pejorative for poorly dressed men, though it evolved in time to mean any male, losing its negative connotation.

Over two centuries after the failed plot, in 1841, William Harrison Ainsworth’s historical romance Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason was released, portraying Fawkes as a more sympathetic character. Fawkes continued to appear in new works over the next century, but none would do as much for the man’s image as Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel of the 1980s, V for Vendetta.

V for Vendetta was Moore’s first attempt at writing a continuing, serialized story. The story, as written in the comic, is set in the dystopian future of 1997. English fascists have overtaken the country following a devastating nuclear war. The state suppresses dissent, eliminates the ethnically diverse, and broadcasts the government’s message everyday. Essentially, the government is a cross between that portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 and Adolf Hitler’s Germany.

The party in power, Norsefire, meets its match in the anarchist vigilante, V, who dons a cloak and Fawkes mask as he takes to the streets, killing men and women who performed great evil on him or mankind. Unlike traditional heroes, V is not squeamish about killing; rather, death is all he seeks for his adversaries.

V is an ambiguous character with a shrouded backstory and even more mysterious morality. The vigilante is a victim of fascist concentration camps and experimentation. The experiments appear to have had an effect on his mind, possibly driving him mad, though he sees his mission with absolute clarity of purpose. V seems content with becoming a monster himself in order to combat the monsters of Norsefire. V strikes terror into the hearts of the fascists in order to inspire the masses and find vengeance.

While the true story of the Fifth of November can be seen as a dispute between Protestants and Catholics, or between conventional authority and subversive terrorism, V for Vendetta is about a battle between fascism and anarchy — two words with less than favorable reputations. Moore, an anarchist himself, crafts his hero around these principles and even takes time to dispel certain ideas of anarchism. In the novel, V explains that chaos is not the anarchist system; rather, a functional anarchist system would grant great freedom, not the looting and destruction that follows the immediate fall of government.

Moore also does much to make the reader question V’s methods. Moore and Lloyd raise some of the same difficult questions through V as the actions of the Gunpowder Plot raise, such as: When is violence — even murder — acceptable?

In the 2006 film adaptation of the graphic novel, the Wachowskis clung to the principle that killing in the name of freedom is acceptable — and, according to Moore, kept little else from the source material.

In an interview with MTV, Moore explained his problems with the film adaptation.

“It’s been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country,” Moore said. “In the film, you’ve got a sinister group of right-wing figures — not fascists, but you know that they’re bad guys — and what they have done is manufactured a bio-terror weapon in secret, so that they can fake a massive terrorist incident to get everybody on their side, so that they can pursue their right-wing agenda. It’s a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England].”

Moore’s criticism of the movie is accurate, but a bit close-minded. While the graphic novel was about 80s-era Thatcherism, the film was intentionally made to evoke images of the modern world. And, in fact, the film’s message had a greater impact than the original creators could have ever hoped. It made their hero and his signature mask into an icon of defiance. The visage of Fawkes, long burned in effigy with feelings of malice, has been adopted by groups such as Anonymous and the Occupy Movement as a symbol of their fight against oppression.

As Moore explained in an interview with The Guardian, “Suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta, I would in my secret heart of hearts, have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world … It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.”

But if you are going to don a Guy Fawkes mask to make your political point, it is important to remember the differences between Fawkes and V.

Fawkes was fighting for Catholicism, not anarchy. It could be argued that the Gunpowder Plot was about religious liberty, but it could just as easily be said that Fawkes and the conspirators were looking to establish a different — but still oppressive — theocracy. Still, Fawkes works well as a symbol in opposition to the status quo.

Fawkes was not a sole man on a mission, but rather part of a team — and not even its leader. V, on the other hand, is as alone as a crusader can be. V actively tries to become the symbol that Fawkes became and chooses to use his legacy to change the minds of the world.

It is unlikely that Fawkes ever saw himself as any type of progressive, such as V. Rather, he was a reactionary, fighting for things to return to the way they were a century prior. Still, his act of defiance, which had been derided for centuries, has become an inspiration to all of those looking to fight against the machine. His spirit lives on in the progressive aspirations of the antihero of V for Vendetta, as the film advocates for racial equity, gender equality, religious tolerance, and even sexual orientation and transgender rights.

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History of The Flash, Part II: The Silver Age and Beyond

This is part 2 of a two-part exploration of the history of The Flash, a comic book character brought to life on television screens this season on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. EDT/PDT on The CW. Read part 1 here.

Perhaps it’s his ability to travel through time, or maybe it’s because he’s so fast, but The Flash always manages to be miles ahead of superhero trends. During the Golden Age of Comic Books, the first man to bear the title of The Flash, Jay Garrick, set the standard for specialized superheroes, helped build the first superhero crossover team, and raced to astounding heights of popularity. But as the business faded, so did The Flash.

The end of World War II precipitated a decline in the popularity of superhero comic books. The medium switched its focus from superheroes and profited off of romance, horror, and other genres. Unfortunately for the industry, the increased popularity of horror comics gave ammunition to Fredric Wertham, who began a crusade against the industry. His book The Seduction of the Innocent accused the comic books of creating juvenile delinquents.

To combat the charges, the comic book industry needed heroes. But with superheroes fading into oblivion, the genre needed a bolt of lightning to revive it. Luckily for superhero fans, that bolt of lighting struck, hitting Barry Allen, and creating the second Flash.

It was 1956 and editor extraordinaire Julius Schwartz set out to revitalize the dying superhero genre. He tasked writer Robert Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino with recreating The Flash as a more contemporary hero. The team, along with writer John Broome, created a much sleeker hero, sporting a bright red spandex suit accented with lightning bolts.

Introduced in Showcase #4, the new Flash was Barry Allen, a reputedly slow and deliberate police scientist. In his origin story, Allen is struck by a bolt of lightning and doused with chemicals, with the combination somehow giving him super speed. Allen dons a red costume and takes to the streets of Central City to fight crime. Interestingly, Allen chooses his name by taking it from his favorite comic book superhero, Jay Garrick. In establishing Garrick’s run as the Fastest Man Alive as fictional within the fictional world, DC marked a new beginning for comic books. In time, the introduction of Barry Allen came to be seen as the beginning of the Silver Age of Comics.

The origin story for the new Flash changed the formula of superhero stories. A stronger emphasis was placed on scientific explanations for superpowers and supernatural events, though very few of these explanations could survive professional scientific scrutiny. The pseudoscientific stories led to the creation of items such as a ring containing The Flash’s costume and a cosmic treadmill that allows Allen to travel through time.

Real science, however, is never far from a Flash comic. Allen is a scientist after all, and he often uses his scientific mind to defeat his opponents. Soon, a laundry list of superheroes, mainly created during the Silver Age, would be able to list their profession as “scientist.”

The popularity of The Flash and the increased attention being paid to superheroes led to Schwartz’s edict to revive the Justice Society of America. Since the original JSA included Garrick’s Flash, it was inevitable that Allen would be a member of the new team. Gardner Fox, the creator of the Garrick incarnation of The Flash, was assigned the task of reviving the team, and he renamed it the Justice League of America. Flash joined the A-list team of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter, debuting in Brave and the Bold #28 in 1960.

The Justice League team proved a hit, quickly gaining their own title that sold incredibly well. DC publisher Jack Liebowitz bragged to Marvel owner Martin Goodman about the JLA’s success, leading to Goodman assigning his editor, Stan Lee, to create his own team of superheroes. Marvel’s subsequent creation, the Fantastic Four, introduced in 1961, followed the examples of the Justice League in its team format and The Flash in its emphasis on pseudoscience. With the Fantastic Four, The Flash, and the Justice League, superhero comics were on the rise again.

Also in 1961, Allen took part in an historic story, meeting up with Garrick, the Flash of the Golden Age, who, it was explained, existed on Earth 2, a parallel world to that which was home to Allen. The comic introduced to audiences the now-popular idea of a multiverse.

The following years in the comic book industry saw a lot of changes, including a shift to darker, more realistic comics. For Allen, the shift was evident in the apparent death of his wife, Iris West, at the hands of the Reverse-Flash. When Reverse-Flash attempted to duplicate his actions with Allen’s new girlfriend, The Flash appeared to kill his rival, crossing the line that superheroes were supposed to respect.

DC’s continued attempt at fostering realism raised questions about complicated continuity issues. The company decided to make a bold move by rebooting the combined universe. The idea was to streamline the characters’ histories and form a more coherent world that would compete with Marvel. Part of that new world would be a sense of history, legacy, and real stakes. To reach all of these goals, the company needed to make a bold move. It needed to kill Barry Allen.

Crisis on Infinite Earths is perhaps the biggest event in comic book history. The Crisis is brought about as the Anti-Monitor sets out to destroy alternate world after world. The Anti-Monitor specifically targets The Flash, believing him to be the greatest threat to his plans due to his ability to travel between dimensions at will. Anti-Monitor’s fears prove valid, and Allen is able to stop the monster’s antimatter cannon, but the hero seemingly dies in the process.

The end result of the Crisis is a singular world and continuity, changing Garrick from an alternate world Flash to the original Flash from the 1940s, whose heroic actions inspired a young Allen to adopt his name. Now, with Allen gone, his heroism would inspire a new generation’s hero to adopt the moniker of The Flash.

Wally West, Allen’s nephew, was introduced as The Flash’s sidekick in 1961. Dubbed the Kid Flash, West gained his powers in the same convoluted process as his uncle. West was a founding member of the Teen Titans at a time when teen superheroes were growing in popularity. In the wake of his mentor’s death, West took up the mantel of the Scarlet Speedster, becoming the new Flash.

West’s ascension to a top spot on DC’s roster of heroes set a new precedent for comic books. Due to the incredible popularity of the men behind the masks, the big two of superhero publishing made a point to never allow their protagonists to age. By establishing “The Flash” as a legacy name, and Garrick and Allen as history, DC Comics made a major shift in superhero storytelling. In the coming years, other heroes would be replaced as well. Kyle Rayner would become the new Green Lantern, Dick Grayson would become Batman, and even Marvel would replace Steve Rogers with Bucky Barnes and, more recently, Sam Wilson as Captain America.

West’s two-decade run as the Fastest Man Alive also introduced a new concept to the DC Universe: the Speed Force. The Speed Force is an extradimensional power that is used as a shorthand answer to explain away the physics-defying powers of DC’s speedsters. West’s connection with the Speed Force gives the hero new powers, including the ability to take away and share speed itself with others, and it led to West finally being able to achieve the high speeds of his predecessor.

For a brief period following DC’s Infinite Crisis, a fourth man took up the mantle of The Flash. Bart Allen is a hero from the 30th century with an incredibly confusing back story that exemplifies the worst of comic book writing. His time as the Scarlet Speedster was short, as the character was killed off after 13 issues and replaced by the returning West. But West’s new run would be short as well.

Under the direction of Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison, DC decided to revive the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen. Barry returned during DC’s third Crisis event, Final Crisis, and played a major role in the company’s biggest subsequent events, Blackest Night, and Flashpoint. These three enormous event stories shook the foundations of DC Comics, with Flashpoint effectively rebooting the entire DC canon.

The reboot, though unpopular with purists, has proven to be a big success for DC, with the “New 52” brand outselling its predecessors in many cases. The decision to reboot DC’s entire lineup came as a result of the enormous success of superhero movies around the world — though, ironically, that success is primarily thanks to Marvel Studios.

But with The Flash joining Arrow on The CW, in addition to Fox’s Gotham and NBC’s debuting Constantine, it is clear that DC is beating Marvel on the small screen. The new small-screen Flash follows Allen as he learns to become a hero in a world of super-powered criminals. The series promises to be the first true superhero show in the era of good visual effects, and it will change the perception of heroes on television.

In addition to his new show, The Flash will finally make the jump to the big screen, with a solo movie starring Ezra Miller coming in 2018. The Flash’s first movie represents a rare time when the hero has been behind the curve of the superhero industry. However, The Flash’s new TV series is likely to prove that the Fastest Man Alive is still the trendsetter of the superhero genre.

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Watching Walking Dead while hating blood, guts, gore

I am not a fan of entertainment that is excessively gory, bloody, or anything along those lines. I’ve never seen any of the Saw movies, and I have absolutely no desire to watch them. I like scary movies in general, but I draw the line when people start getting hacked to pieces. I’m too squeamish for all that gore.

But I love The Walking Dead.

A couple years ago, I was watching an episode — I can’t remember which one, but it wasn’t long after they reached the prison — and my mom and my brother were just watching me watch it. I had to keep hiding my eyes and turning away from all the nasty, gory stuff. Eventually, this conversation took place:

My mom and brother, in unison: “Why do you even watch this show?”
Me: “Because it’s awesome, and I love it! I just don’t like the blood and gore.”
Mom: “But that’s all this show is about!”
Me: “No it’s not! It’s about the people and their relationships with each other and surviving!”

That’s the short answer to their question, but it touches on the heart of why this show is so good, and why it’s become so popular with such a wide audience. It isn’t a show about zombies. (In fact, if you pay attention, they never even refer to the undead as “zombies” at any time in the series.) The Walking Dead has some of the most compelling story lines and characters on television, and if it were just about the zombies, 17 million people wouldn’t have watched the fifth season premiere, where the main threat was another group of humans.

One of the taglines for The Walking Dead is, “Fight the dead, fear the living.” If you’re a fan of the series or the graphic novels it is based on, you know this statement is absolutely true. The “walkers” (as the don’t-call-them-zombies are termed) are just background for the story of the people who are surviving — or, in some unfortunate cases, aren’t. In the last couple of seasons, especially with the introduction of the Governor, we’ve really started to see just how much more dangerous other humans can be.

The walkers just want to eat you, but humans can plan and strategize and manipulate. Humans can move faster, drive vehicles (and tanks), and use weapons. They can deceive and lay traps. Compared to the human threats on this series, the walkers are easy to take care of — a headshot is all it takes.

The other day, a friend was telling me that some of her friends were getting frustrated with the show because they have deviated from the zombie part of the story. In my opinion, those viewers are missing the entire point of the series. Even in the comics, the greatest threat the survivors face is not the undead but the other human survivors. I don’t think this show would be nearly as compelling if the primary threat was always the walkers. Sure, I get worried when there’s a chance someone’s going to be killed or bitten, but it’s so much more interesting when they’re facing an enemy that can think and plan — someone who is also fighting for a cause and has more motivation to win.

This is what I love most about The Walking Dead: the fact that it is about the humans — the survivors. Despite my love for genre television, I wasn’t a big fan of zombies before the series began — mostly because of my issues with blood and gore — but the previews made the show look intriguing, so I thought I’d check it out. I was hooked almost immediately — despite the scene where the walkers tear into that poor horse.

The characters on The Walking Dead are probably some of the most well-written on television. Some series can go an entire run without their characters showing any evidence of change or growth. However, not one of the characters in The Walking Dead is the same person he or she was prior to the zombie apocalypse — and, more importantly, who they were when the series began. One of the best examples would be Carol. When we first met her, she was a mother married to an abusive husband, and now she’s the bad-ass who single-handedly engineered the escape from Terminus.

At New York Comic Con earlier this month, the cast was asked to talk about the journeys their characters have taken to this point. Melissa McBride, the actress who portrays Carol, teared up describing Carol’s path “because I love her so much.” Of all the characters in the series, Carol has come the farthest — and is one of the best, in my opinion.

Another one of the reasons I love The Walking Dead is because I can never predict where the story is going or what is going to happen next. I’m the kind of person who is always trying to solve the mystery first, or guess what’s going to happen next, but I just can’t do that with this series. I haven’t read all the comics — I’m slowly working my way through them — but even if I had, I still wouldn’t be able to predict everything, because the show doesn’t always follow the comics. This is one of those times when I am completely OK with that. I love that I can enjoy the comics and series separately, and one isn’t necessarily going to spoil the other.

For those who wish they would follow the comics more closely, this is your season. According to the Walking Dead panel I attended at NYCC, this season will follow the comics more closely than they have in the past.

Lastly, I love that this show is so real. I don’t mean real as in “I expect the dead to rise up any day now,” but the tone of the show and the way the characters behave and react to situations (even the “villains” of the show) are all extremely realistic. This is exactly how you would expect human beings to act when faced with a world where the living are quickly becoming outnumbered by the dead, and you have to fight to survive. People will go to any length they see necessary to survive. Some of those methods may seem horrifying to outsiders — and the audience — but to them, their actions are imperative to their own survival.

Even the horrors committed by the people in Terminus, which makes me shudder just to think about, are justified to them. These people didn’t start out that way; they were once kind and welcoming — until they were treated as prey and forced to become hunters. Every character on the show, good or evil, is a product of his or her environment. Even Rick Grimes, our good-hearted protagonist, has made questionable decisions that he felt were key to the group’s survival or to protect his family. This struggle is what makes this show so raw and so real.

I recently read an article from Entertainment Weekly that posed the question, “Are we all numb to the atrocities of The Walking Dead?” The article was referring particularly to the final moments of Sunday’s episode, which was pretty horrifying — and we’re only two episodes into the season. But it also called to mind the scene from last season, when Rick ripped out a guy’s throat — with his teeth! — after the guy and his gang of humans threatened to violate Rick’s son, Carl.

I’m not entirely sure I would even agree that Sunday’s episode was more shocking than seeing Rick tear a guy’s throat out; both scenes were stunning and horrifying, and both demonstrated how far the survivors have come from civilized society. They are horrifying because they break our expectations of how people should behave, but one isn’t necessarily worse or more shocking than the other; they simply portray different aspects of the depravity that comes with the world they are now living in.

It is true that the series does feel the need to up its game and be more shocking with each new twist. Every series has to fight inertia and tries to build on the drama, or the action, or whatever it is that people like about that series. However, I don’t feel like I’ve become numb to the horrors The Walking Dead is portraying on screen. I still flinch and close my eyes when we see a particularly disgusting walker death, just as I would have in season 1. The Well Walker would probably shock and gross me out just as much now as it did back in season 2; in fact, I was having traumatic flashbacks to that episode during the food bank scenes this past week.

If we were all truly becoming numb to the atrocities in The Walking Dead, I think the smaller, more human moments that are still prevalent within the series would have less of an effect on us. However, the reaction to the reunions at the end of the fifth season premiere proves we still feel. Sophia walking out of that barn will break my heart each time I see it, and I will always cry every time Daryl cries. As long as we’re still affected by these small human moments — and as long as they still exist within the series to remind us the survivors are still human — I don’t think we’ve become numb to anything.

At the NYCC panel, season 5 was described as “kickass” and “relentless” but also “heartbreaking” and “devastating.” The fact that this show can bring out those more tragic emotions in its fans proves they are anything but numb to what goes on in this show.

And honestly, if we were become numb to the horrors we’re seeing in The Walking Dead, then we’re missing the lesson of the series. In the season premiere, Rick didn’t want to worry about freeing any other prisoners in Terminus, but Glenn insisted, saying, “That’s still who we are, it’s got to be.”

Despite all the horrors they’ve faced — and Glenn had just come within seconds of having his head bashed in and throat slit by the Terminus people — Glenn understands that the survivors can’t let their enemies change them. They can’t become numb. They still have to hold on to some of their morals. And if we’re becoming too numb to the atrocities on The Walking Dead, aren’t we taking Rick’s path more than Glenn’s?

The mere fact that we can have long, deep discussions about topics such as this in relation to a television series like The Walking Dead proves that there is so much more to this show than zombies, blood, and gore. And that is why I watch The Walking Dead.

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French experiments in The Secret Place, but still succeeds

Entertainment-seekers on this side of the Atlantic Ocean tend to demand a standoff, a car chase, or some other dangerous and potentially violent incident to satisfy our American desire for drama. Irish and British consumers seem to have a more nuanced understanding of drama and suspense, allowing their artists to create compelling works of fiction that don’t rely on pyrotechnics and explosions to hold the readers’ attention.

Irish author Tana French consistently uses this more understated approach to great effect. In The Secret Place, the fifth installment in French’s “Dublin Murder Squad” novels, the author demonstrates her knack for creating suspense in subtle ways.

Like the rest of her novels, The Secret Place can be read as a standalone, though readers would benefit from the groundwork laid in earlier books in the series.

Read Curiata.com’s review of Broken Harbor, French’s previous entry in the series.

The primary narrator of The Secret Place is detective Stephen Moran, who was first introduced to readers in French’s third novel, Faithful Place. Other returning characters include detective Frank Mackey, who is making his third significant appearance in the series, as well as Mackey’s daughter, Holly, who debuted alongside Moran in Faithful Place.

The Secret Place begins with Holly Mackey bringing Moran, who is now working cold cases, a clue to a year-old unsolved murder that took place at Holly’s boarding school: a photograph of murder victim Chris Harper with the words “I know who killed him” taped over it. The photo was pinned to a board known as the “Secret Place,” where students at the school could anonymously confess secrets. Moran, along with the lead detective of the case, Atoinette Conway, head back to the school to follow up on the lead Holly has given them.

Unlike most of French’s lead characters, Moran doesn’t have a tortured past to draw from. Still, he is clearly a flawed character. Moran has never been able to create a close connection with a friend. He is also trying to prove himself worthy of joining the Murder Squad.

Conway also has something to prove; as the only female member of the Murder Squad, she has struggled with the fine line between proving her competence and fitting in. The boarding school murder has been her highest profile case, and it has gone unsolved for a year. The dynamic between Moran and Conway as they learn to work together creates an interesting contrast with the cliques among the girls they interact with at the boarding school.

French has a unique and often beautiful style of writing. She is able to make even the most mundane details seem fascinating and relevant. The unfolding events of the novel take place over the course of a single day, the bulk of which is spent interviewing witnesses, without much real action. Yet French is able to make every conversation compelling.

French also has a talent for description. Early in the novel, when referring to the impact a photo continues to have on Holly and her friends even after it has been deleted, French writes, “The photo isn’t gone. The faint rank smell of it is still stained onto the air. Becca breathes shallowly, through her mouth, but it greases her tongue.”

Imagery like this is what makes French such an interesting writer and her books so enjoyable to read. She draws the reader in with these vivid descriptions and makes the audience feel like part of the investigation — which also makes it really hard to put the book down.

With The Secret Place, French deviates slightly from the usual structure of her novels. Instead of a single first-person narrator throughout the entire book, The Secret Place alternates between Moran’s narration of events in the present and a third-person narration of the school year leading up to the murder under investigation. Through these flashbacks, the reader gets to know Holly and her friends and learn the story behind the murder just as Moran’s investigation uncovers the details. This technique helps to increase the tension of the novel as the reader gets closer to the truth. It also gives an interesting perspective on the investigation, giving the reader a window into all the characters and motivations involved.

Another way French deviates from her usual style — and the only flaw I can find in this novel — is in a strange suggestion of the existence of the supernatural. Her previous novels have all been strictly grounded in reality, but some of the interactions between Holly and her friends in The Secret Place hint that they have discovered telekinetic abilities. With the rest of this novel being so realistic, that one piece of fantasy seems a little jarring and out of place.

French never addresses whether these special powers are real or if the girls just have overactive imaginations; in fact, the descriptions of the supernatural are presented in such a way that one could argue they never actually occurred. This aspect of the story is minor and doesn’t affect the outcome at all. Because of its seeming insignificance and the unanswered questions it leaves, this plot point feels like the weak link in an otherwise extremely well-written and engaging novel. And if that’s the only flaw, then I would have to deem this novel an overall success in the genre of crime fiction.

Charissa recommended the first “Dublin Murder Squad” novel, In the Woods, back in June as part of our ‘Summer Reading Series’.

If you’re already a fan of French’s writing, you won’t be disappointed with this latest installment, despite the differences in style between this and her earlier novels. And if you’ve never read anything by French but you’re a fan of clever mysteries or British drama, then I can’t recommend this novel — or any of French’s other works — enough.

French has some of the most developed and compelling characters I’ve read in modern fiction; they’re all flawed, but fascinating and so very real. Her plots are also not predictable or formulaic. So put down James Patterson’s thousandth novel and pick up something truly original.

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Star Wars Rebels promises to fulfill Lucas’ original vision

Star Wars Rebels is the latest entry in the expanding Star Wars universe and is on track to be another Lucasfilm hit. The animated series was introduced on the Disney Channel this summer with a collection of shorts, leading up to a television movie pilot that aired October 3. Audiences got to preview an episode of the first 16-episode season October 11 at New York Comic Con.

The series, which began October 13 on Disney XD, is set five years before Luke Skywalker leaves Tattooine and documents the rise of the Rebellion while focusing on the ragtag crew of the spaceship The Ghost. Rebels is guaranteed to be another strong chapter in the overarching saga, and while the Star Wars universe has been greatly expanded in books and comics before, Rebels has the unique opportunity to fulfill George Lucas’ original vision for the Star Wars movies.

When Lucas first conceived of the Star Wars world, he had planned to create a series of movies that would pay homage to the adventure comic strips of his youth — namely, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Lucas’ small group of heroes would face easily defined villains and take part in swashbuckling adventures across unknown worlds, full of alien species and languages incomprehensible to viewers. Each story, brought to life in either nine or 12 films, would be unique, with only a common threat binding the episodes together.

But as the films evolved, their premise did as well. As explained in The Secret History of Star Wars by Michael Kaminski, the movies changed from a collection of unique adventures into a larger epic about a single family, with only casual glimpses of the original, episodic nature Lucas had planned. Specifically, the movies became The Ballad of Anakin Skywalker, as he grew into a hero, fell to the Dark Side, and was redeemed in his final hours.

While the original Star Wars can still be viewed as a simple adventure movie, the release of Empire Strikes Back and the prequel trilogy changed the tone of the movies into one defined by moral ambiguities, political intrigue, and an interconnected world. Each installment had to have meaning in the larger story, rather than be like Lucas’ other creation, Indiana Jones, whose adventures are all distinct.

In order to create his grand epic, Lucas made the decision to abandon his strictly serial premise, and his original stories were left to history. Until recently.

With the recent acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney, it was only a matter of time before the series’ publishing license for comic books was moved from Dark Horse to another Disney subsidiary, Marvel. Before losing the license, however, Dark Horse paid homage to the man who had built the galaxy far, far away with a new graphic novel.

The Star Wars is an adaptation of Lucas’ original 1970s screenplay — a story much more in line with the adventure serial Lucas originally hoped to film. The comic feels like what would happen if all six Star Wars movies so far were squashed into one, nearly incoherent, story. All of the signature traits of the movies are there, but it feels as though the entire story is just a single, complex mission, with many more to come later.

The Star Wars, however, is a one-off story, and the adventures won’t continue, despite the comic’s final page claiming otherwise. The exploits of Annikin Starkiller, General Luke Skywalker, and the six-foot-tall lizard, Han Solo, are finished.

Nonetheless, Star Wars comics have existed for decades and will continue next year at Marvel, with titles following Darth Vader and Rebels’ protagonist Kanan.

Comics did a lot to inspire Lucas to create the world he did, but he was a filmmaker above all else. It was always his dream to bring the excitement and intrigue he experienced on the pages of comics to the screen.

The Clone Wars cartoon series came closest to fulfilling Lucas’ vision. The successful show, which followed the heroes of the Galactic Republic as they faced the forces of the Separatists, utilized numerous characters and told as many stories. Some were complex, political thrillers, while others were classic, swashbuckling missions. Every story, however, felt like part of the larger whole; each entry mattered to the progression of the Clone Wars.

The new series, Rebels, however, follows Lucas’ original concept much more closely and delivers a satisfying, episodic ride that doesn’t always have to feed the larger story. Conceptually, Rebels is meant to bridge the gap between film Episodes III and IV by showing the strengthening of the Empire and the rise of the Rebellion. But the show is undoubtedly more in line with the spirit of the original trilogy. Rebels does not focus on politics like Clone Wars, but it revisits the philosophy of the Force, the nature of loneliness and teamwork, the tragedy of losing an entire culture, and the heroism of the unlikely. Whereas the prequels and Clone Wars brought to life villains whose motives could be seen as just, the original trilogy — and now Rebels — emphasizes flawed heroes whose actions are questionable but whose end goal is usually noble.

The spirit of Lucas’ original vision goes deeper than just antiheroism and the serial nature. The visuals and the individual characters or Rebels closely mirror early work on the Star Wars movies as well. The look of Rebels is based on the original concept art of Ralph McQuarrie. This includes protocol droids that more closely resemble the robots of Metropolis than C-3PO, and Zeb, the alien companion, whose species, the Lasat, is based on the original design for Wookiees.

Kanan leaps straight off of the pages of Lucas’ original screenplay. Halfway between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, Kanan is identified as a cowboy Jedi, a man who was trained as a peacekeeper but finds himself on the other side of an open rebellion. His uncertainty in his abilities, coupled with his unconvincing brashness, makes him eerily similar to Annikin Starkiller and the movies’ Luke Skywalker.

Joining Kanan is the pilot of The Ghost, Hera, whose voice actress, Vanessa Marshall, said at NYCC that Hera is second only to Han Solo as the best pilot in the galaxy. Marshall sees Hera as the cross between Han and Princess Leia: she’s brash, powerful, and extremely dedicated to her crew and her mission.

Rounding out the cast are the younglings, Ezra Bridger and Sabine Wren. Ezra will fulfill the role that the Skywalkers held in the movies: the young student working to get past his arrogance and become something greater. Sabine, however, appears to be unique to Rebels. She is a Mandalorian artist who uses her skills to paint anti-Empire propaganda across the galaxy. Where Sabine goes in the future will be one of the show’s most intriguing questions.

Rebels has infinite potential to be something special in the Star Wars galaxy. It will be the first on-screen story not to focus on the Skywalker family but on the regular folks who have been impacted by the Empire’s tightening grip. It will feature swashbuckling excitement and flawed heroes, and it will examine what it takes to turn quiet dissent into open rebellion.

But, perhaps most importantly of all, the show will be a fun adventure that can stoke the imagination of child and adult alike — which is what Lucas has wanted out of his creation all along.

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Exclusive: Librarians cast previews series, with photos

TNT is expanding a successful television movie trilogy into a weekly episodic TV series this winter. The cast and executive producer of The Librarians appeared at New York Comic Con last Sunday to preview the series for eager fans and speak with press including Curiata.com.

The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, an original, made-for-TV, action/adventure film, debuted on TNT in December 2004. The movie introduced Flynn Carsen, played by ER veteran Noah Wyle, as the man chosen to be the librarian of a secret archive of powerful objects. Wyle himself has described the films as Indiana Jones — if the role of Jones were played by Don Knotts.

The film was a big success for TNT and was ranked as the No. 1 movie of the year on basic cable. It spawned two sequels, The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines, which premiered as cable’s No. 1 movie sequel of all time in 2006, and The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice in 2008.

This December, a decade after the premiere of the first Librarian film, TNT is bringing the Library back with an all-new, 10-episode series. Wyle will return as Flynn, albeit in a reduced, recurring role. John Larroquette stars as the reluctant caretaker of a new cast of Library workers, similar to Bob Newhart‘s role in the movies. The series will feature appearances from Newhart and Jane Curtin, reprising their roles from the films.

Lindy Booth, Christian Kane, John Kim, and Rebecca Romijn round out the cast as characters who work for the Library but — importantly — are not Librarians. The Librarian is a position similar to that of the Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in that there is only ever one at a time.

Those four cast members were joined by executive producer John Rogers at NYCC to explain a bit about the series.

“When the show starts, we’re not librarians,” Kane said of his, Booth’s, and Kim’s characters. “We’re next in line.”

If anything were to happen to Wyle’s Librarian, one of their characters could be the next to step into the role. And when the series starts, the lives of all the potential Librarians are in jeopardy.

According to Rogers, you don’t need to have seen any of The Librarian films in order to enjoy the series; everything you need to know will be recapped in the opening.

“We went back and looked at the Eccleston Doctor Who reboot,” Rogers said, referring to the relaunch of the classic British sci-fi series in 2005, nearly 16 years after its last episode. “The trick is don’t explain it: show it. Audiences are smart; genre audiences, in particular, have been watching variations of these things for a long time — they’re smarter than you, they’ll figure it out, you don’t have to spoon-feed them.”

Rogers believes that, at least with the first couple of seasons, a series should be primarily standalone so fans can jump on board at any point without feeling out of the loop.

“It’s cool if you watch one or intermittently, but you’re rewarded if you watch all of them,” Rogers said.

The Librarians was filmed in a relatively short period of time in order to work around Wyle’s schedule and ensure he would be a part of the series. According to Rogers, there was never a question of Wyle’s involvement.

When he first heard of the series, Wyle’s initial reaction was, “But I’m the Librarian,” Rogers told fans.

Wyle won’t appear in every episode, but his absences are a plot point: he’s out on a mission that runs parallel to the main story line of the show.

Romijn plays a counterterrorism agent who is recruited to protect the potential librarians. Romijn describes Eve Baird as a skeptic who was very reluctant to join the team.

“I get invited to work at the library, I don’t know why; I don’t necessarily want the job, but I’ve received this mysterious invitation,” Romijn said. “I am the guardian of the Librarian — he doesn’t want me either.”

Before long, Eve’s job expands beyond protecting the Librarian.

“We discover that the Librarian and the Librarians-in-training are all in danger, and so I become the guardian to the Librarians-in-training as well,” Romijn said. “Early on, I’m in charge of them, and they’re not prepared for the danger out there, and I have to train them … we really become a family.”

Playing the protector of the group wasn’t too difficult for Romijn, as she has portrayed several physically commanding characters in the past — perhaps most famously that of Mystique in the X-Men movies. Last year, Romijn also did a lot of weapons and mixed martial arts training for her role as Michelle Maxwell on TNT’s King & Maxwell.

“Our job is to run around the world and collect dangerous magical artifacts to keep them out of the wrong hands, and there are all these people chasing us and in pursuit,” Romijn said. “I am sort of there to fight them off.”

Romijn’s two favorite episodes of the season are an episode involving fairy tales, which the entire cast seems excited about, and the Christmas episode, featuring guest star Bruce Campbell.

“But the one I can’t wait for the fans to see the most is the finale, because there’s a huge payoff in the finale,” Romijn said.

Romijn is joined in the Library by Kane, who plays Jake Stone, an Oklahoma oil worker with a high IQ and an extensive knowledge of art history. Kane has worked with Rogers, the executive producer, before in his previous role on Leverage. In that series, Rogers tailored the role to include many of Kane’s own interests. Kane acknowledged Rogers did the same for the character of Jake.

“John Rogers wrote the role as an art history major and I was — at the University of Oklahoma, I was an art history major,” Kane said. “So he kind of incorporated that into the character. And the guy’s from Oklahoma, which I am, and my dad is a hard-working, blue-collar oil man. … So he almost started me right there as Christian Kane.”

When he’s not acting, Kane is also a singer and songwriter who has showcased his musical talents on the small screen in the past. So will fans of Kane’s music get to hear him sing on The Librarians as well?

At NYCC, Kane looked around to where Rogers was sitting before answering with a definite “Yes.” Not this season, Kane said, but if the show continues, he is positive viewers will get to hear him sing.

In his previous role as Eliot on Leverage, Kane played the “hitter” of the team — the guy who was always ready for a fight. But while Jake can hold his own in a bar fight, he doesn’t have the technical combat knowledge Eliot had.

“It’s tough for me, because I have to unlearn everything I did for five years on Leverage,” Kane said. However, he’s been enjoying the change of pace. “It’s been fun to walk in someone else’s shoes.”

But that doesn’t mean you won’t ever see Kane fight.

“I told John … why would you fix something that ain’t broke?” Kane said. “Let me just throw punches, man, that’s what I do.”

Rogers assured Kane he’d get to do some fighting, but warned Jake’s skills would need to grow over time.

“So you see me get better at certain things, and you see me picking up things along the way,” Kane said. “I’m sure that, as time goes on, my character will progress.”

Kane compared his character’s potential progress to that of Wyle’s throughout the course of the Librarian movies.

“When the first Librarian came out, Noah Wyle was a dork … now he’s Indiana Jones,” Kane said, concurring with Wyle’s own characterization. “And it was fun to watch Noah progress along that way; now he’s just a badass.”

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The cast of TNT’s upcoming series The Librarians spoke with Curiata.com and posed for photographs at New York Comic Con last Sunday.

Another character with a special skill set is Cassandra, played by Booth. Cassandra is a synesthete: she has sensory hallucinations related to certain actions.

“All of her senses are sort of cross-wired in her brain: sees numbers as colors, science is music, math smells like breakfast,” Booth said.

Synesthesia is a real phenomenon, and Booth said she did a lot of research on it before playing Cassandra.

“Cassandra does have a very extraordinary version of it. Hers is much more extreme because it’s television, and we do things like that,” Booth said. “It’s a cool thing to play with because it lets me play, lets me express things in different ways that you wouldn’t get to do with a character who sees things through normal eyes.”

According to Booth, Cassandra is probably the “most psyched” to be joining the Library team. Prior to meeting Wyle’s Flynn, she viewed her ability as a curse, but he teaches her that it can be a gift. Because of this, Cassandra quickly forms a bond with Flynn.

“But, weirdly, she really does bond with Jacob Stone,” Booth said. “He’s able to understand her family situation and no one’s really been able to do that for her. And he sees her gift and he tries to understand it, and, again, no one’s ever tried to understand Cassandra.”

Even though Cassandra and Jake form a bond, the actors behind the characters seem to be on opposite ends of the physicality spectrum.

“There was a lot of resentment that I seemed the least physical person on the set, and yet, somehow, I have all of the fight scenes in the first season, allegedly,” Booth joked.

However, when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, Cassandra has a lot more to learn than Jake does.

“Cassandra fights like a girl,” Booth said. “She fights like me. It’s not good. Sometimes she wins, but it’s mostly by accident when she does. … I think a lot of the comedy from Cassandra comes from these weird physical situations she manages to get herself into and tries to get herself out of.”

Fans of Booth’s quirky character from the short-lived October Road, take heart.

“There’s an awful lot of Pizza Girl still inside me, and I think that Cassandra is just like her weirder, smarter sister in some way,” Booth said.

The final member of the team is played by Kim, who has acted in his native Australia but is a newcomer to stateside television. Luckily for him, a very supportive cast has guided him through the process of filming for American TV.

“I feel like Noah took everyone under [his] wing, but me more so just because I was the new face,” Kim said. “I got a lot of advice from him on set. Christian was amazing. … The entire cast — coming into a cast where everyone’s … more experienced than I am … was an advantage.”

Kim dealt with a certain amount of hazing on set, being the rookie as well as the youngest cast member. He recounted one story involving Kane in particular.

“In the library, there’s a rotary phone, and I was just kind of checking it out, I hadn’t really seen or used one of those ones,” Kim said. “Christian comes over and Christian goes, ‘Yeah, we used to have cords on phones. We used to have wires.'”

Kim feels especially privileged to get to work with an actor like Larroquette in his first big role.

“You’ll get to see later on in the season, I have a very fun scene with John Larroquette, and to get to work with an actor of that caliber — they’re all amazing actors, the entire cast — but to get to work with him day in, day out, for an entire week was … amazing,” Kim said. “So that particular episode was one of my favorites.”

According to Kim, his character, Ezekiel Jones, is “too curious for his own good.”

“When he sees something that interests him, he’ll do everything he can to get involved in that,” Kim said.

Ezekiel is very loosely based on a real thief in Europe who stole a jewel just to prove there were holes in the museum’s security. Kim keeps that aspect of his character in mind while he’s acting.

Fans of Leverage may recall Rogers’ extensive blog posts and Q&As after each episode. He is hoping to do something similar with this series, as well.

“We’ve already recorded a series of video logs with each of the writers that talk about the episode coming up,” Rogers said. “Hopefully … after every episode, we’ll be able to do a podcast … [and/or] we’ll be answering questions on the website again.”

“I like the dialogue with the fans,” Rogers added. “It means people are watching.”

The Librarians premieres December 7 on TNT.