“60 Minutes II” ran a somewhat unfocused segment last night about our little industry. The good news is, there was nary a “POW or “BAM” in sight. The bad news is, I wasn’t entirely sure what the piece was about.

It seemed to be about comics in general and Marvel in specific. There was a good deal of attention paid to the translation of comics into movies, including footage shot during “Daredevil” in which apparently Elektra was slugging it out with some muggers on what appeared to be Sesame Street. At first I thought the main impetus for the piece was the arrival of Spider-Man on DVD. Then the piece broadened to comics as Hollywood fodder, featuring lots of time spent talking to Avi Arad. Nice puff piece so far.

Then, abruptly, the piece did a 180 and the reporter was grilling an obviously uncomfortable Stan Lee as to the raging discontent he felt over the fact that he doesn’t see dime one from the Spider-Man film. “Do you feel you were screwed?” asked the reporter. Even if Stan did feel that way, he’s far too much of a gentleman–and too canny a businessman–to cop to it. Besides, it’s not exactly news. He’s had decades to come to terms with the fact that he doesn’t get a share in the billions that his characters have generated for Marvel. The most he would admit was feeling a little down about it. But the reporter then talked about how Stan Lee was “unhappy” over not getting his fair share of Spider-Man…except Stan didn’t say that.

Then he started asking Avi Arad about whether Stan had gotten his “fair share” from the film. Arad said Yes, he had. Of course, since Stan (as he himself made quite clear) worked as “work for hire,” his “fair share” is nothing. “Fair” has nothing to do with “just.”

So Arad looked bad and Stan looked not thrilled.

So the reporter had opened a significant can of worms. Was his next stop Paul Levitz to discuss Siegel and Shuster? Chris Claremont to discuss X-Men? Gerry Conway to talk about how much of his material was lifted for the climax of the Spider-Man movie without so much as a by-your-leave? No. Instead he interviewed Art Spiegelman about how comics were reaching more adult audiences.

Weird. If you’re going to do a story that makes people look bad, see it through. If you’re doing basically a puff piece, then go with that. Don’t produce a puff piece with delusions of hard-hitting reporting. It’s just annoying.

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Seems we’ve gotten a lot of traffic from a new weblog, iJournalista! and their coverage of what they call the Marvel Lovefest. Take a look– it surprised me.

I promised I’d give you guys an update as to Gwen’s status with New England Comics. Well, they didn’t call, so I guess she didn’t get the job. It’s entirely possible they simply didn’t need the additional help.

Still, I seem to recall someone here in the Boston area saying their local comic retailer wished that Gwen had applied at his store. Well, now’s your chance.

PAD

Eyewitnesses at various sniper shootings swore that the sniper drove off in a white van. Or a Burgundy Caprice. They were so sure, in fact, that police repeatedly caught the snipers at roadblocks but waved them through because they weren’t driving the cars that the witnesses were positive were connected to the shootings.

So all those witnesses were wrong. More people died because of that, actually. I’m not blaming the witnesses, God knows. It wasn’t their fault. It was a stressful situation.

But it leads me to wonder how many people are on death row…mostly because of eye witness testimony. And of those people, how many of them are physically larger than cars, and thus even easier to ID? I’m guessing none. How many of them are, in fact, smaller than cars and probably tougher to ID? I’m guessing all.

But hey, no one’s ever been wrongly executed because of misidentification. Right? We’re all certain of that. Why, we’re as certain of that as we are of what kind of car the snipers were driving.

The sniper’s been stopped. The death penalty lives on. And state governments remain the biggest serial killers in America.

Food for thought.

PAD

Got distracted by other stuff, so I didn’t comment on Buffy this week. Figured I’d combine it with Angel here (which I watched while taking a one-hour break from watching the Anaheim Angels, which somehow seemed Apropos, which is something else entirely.)

Buffy–Overall a solid episode. Loved the subtitling and the extensive sequence with the actors speaking whatever-the-heck-language that was. Anya’s song was blah, unfortunately, and her hair length didn’t seem to match that from “Once More With Feeling.” And the final sequence with D’Hoffryn finally made him seem like a genuine demon head of a vengeance clan, rather than the avuncular type he always is. However, the episode seemed less than the sum of its parts. How could Buffy have forgotten a sword thrust against Anya would be useless considering *we* all remembered having seen Halfax run through last year? “I’m just getting started,” quoth Buffy. What, she’s dragging it out? And the constant repetition of “it devours from below” came across ominous as first, but now it’s starting to sound like an impending case of virulent demonic jock itch. It’s almost as if they want to keep reassuring us that, yes, there is indeed an overall big bad this year (as opposed to the aimlessness that seemed to characterize last season) but enough already with the warnings.

Also, am I the only one who feels like the energy level of the acting is down? Certain cast members…well, it’s not like they’re phoning it in, but they come across more like actors who feel their series is winding down rather than their characters. Maybe they’re jet-lagged. I dunno. Only Marsters seems really on his game; whenever anyone’s in a scene with Spike, their performance level goes up a few notches. Otherwise they seem kinda blah.

Angel–Good characterization marking an episode that seemed mostly set-up. Wes and Lyla are turning into *the* fun couple of TV. These two play more headgames than the guys from “Highlander.” I thought Cordy was going to figure out Angel’s true nature when he didn’t reflect in that honkin’ big mirror she was looking in, but the “Am I a nun?” thing worked nicely too. Connor was actually tolerable. Now when the heck are they making Andy Hallet a regular? I haven’t seen this much lack of support for a regular recurring character since Tara…which is ominous, all things considered.

PAD