Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

Writing About New Orleans

Ah, New Orleans. The old hometown. It’s a cliche and perhaps a crutch to write about your place of origin, even when it’s by reputation one of the most interesting places on Earth (which is overblown, but that’s a topic for another time).

The truth is always stranger than fiction, though. I grew up in the suburbs outside the city, spent my twenties navigating its oddball neighborhoods, and eventually left because it was my firm belief that you can’t really learn anything about yourself unless you get out from where you’re from.

It’s funny, but when I left the city was going through this exciting outsider-art/music Renaissance - in the late 1990s cool stuff was happening seemingly on every corner, with new and in some cases truly inspired people stepping into the scene at the time. There were these unofficial clubs sprouting up off St. Claude heading toward Algiers where people like Quintron the organist and his friend Miss Pussycat would stage really odd musical puppet shows. The Shim Sham Club was hosting burlesque shows and some outstanding rock-n-roll. And as always the Uptown art scene was first-rate.

There was this energy around the city that seemed driven by outsiders who nonetheless had an appreciation for what had gone before. I distinctly remember seeing a three-piece outfit called Fireball Rocket backing venerable New Orleans R&B great Ernie K-Doe on several occasions. Imagine Southern Culture on the Skids riding support behind a slightly less crazy James Brown, and you get the picture.

Good times.

Still, I had to get away. The manner in which I left and the circumstances I found myself in when I arrived in Austin, Texas (just days before September 11th, 2001) weren’t ideal. But how do you know who you are when you stare into a hall of mirrors, forever reminded of and confronted with all the mistakes you made? Sure, there were joys, too. But leaving gave me a perspective that I use as a writer.

Now that I’ve studied a little bit about the city’s history (particularly the rough-and-tumble period of post-Civil War New Orleans), I incorporate that knowledge without getting wistful about it. That’s something most people who write about New Orleans do - there’s always this sideways glance to remind the reader of the greatness of a bygone age. But what about the people who actually live there? Not the daguerreotype sepia tones of what somebody wishes the place was.

What is that town actually all about?

Sometimes I wish I knew. And cracking that code, that’s been a lifetime mystery that lately has occupied my thoughts and writing time. Hopefully, I’ll be able to nudge something out of this process that people will enjoy.

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

What Price ‘Secret Invasion’?

I don’t ordinarily use this space for anything other than provide clues as to where my writing comes from (and to post the occasional book review). But I saw this thing on TV yesterday that just about made my eyes bleed, and feel compelled to get the word out about how confusingly bad it really was.

I’m talking about the final installment of Marvel’s Disney+ series, ‘Secret Invasion’. Haven’t seen it? That’s okay, because there’s other stuff going on out there. Last weekend’s ‘Barbenheimer’ event captured a lot of movie press and eyeballs, no doubt on account of a mixture of merit and marketing. And I think that’s great - the film-going public should support what it finds value in.

Oddly, there’s still an MCU out there. And Disney/Marvel is still connecting the dots between its various film- and television properties in an attempt to corner a superhero market that appears to be vanishing like the evening tide.

Or are they? You could’ve fooled me with episode 6 of ‘Secret Invasion’. Five weeks of pointless deaths (who thought it was a good idea to bump off MCU stalwart Cobie Smulders?), meandering plots and enough characters to fill out an AI-generated cast of thousands, and all we get at the end is just another CGI slug-fest. Yeah, the dude who played the main villain did some nice emotional work opposite Samuel L. Jackson’s venerable Nick Fury (we’ll get to him in a bit). But what was the payoff? Come to find out he wasn’t even talking to Fury - since the Skrulls are shape-shifters, all he did was hand the reins of ultimate power to a disguised Emilia Clarke, who spent the previous five episodes gathering power-ups like Pac-Man gobbling little glowing balls. The two fight to sufficiently dramatic background Muzak, and anyone paying attention knows what the eventual outcome’s going to be.

Good guys win. Bad guys don’t. All that’s missing was a sky-beam.

And this after more than a month of “grounded” scenes such as Fury hanging out with his heretofore unknown Skrull wife, who mostly mopes around her fancy house mooning over how hard it is to get a guy like Nick to settle down. Or Clarke sulking like her agent talked her into this mess, and now she’s considering giving him the heave-to.

What makes it worse? The whole time we’re led to believe this is all supposed to be leading up to some great climactic moment that’s worth hanging around for. But not only is there no payoff, there’s not even a coherent plot to thread it all together. Stuff happens, purple blood flies, and people shuffle through one joyless moment after another.

And then there’s the character assassination of a great actor.

I’ve been a Samuel L. Jackson fan since ‘Pulp Fiction’. At his best Jackson is one of the most truly riveting performers of the last 30 years. But even when he’s picking up a check, the actor always seems to find something interesting to highlight about his role, giving the audience a reason to either root for or revile him.

But ‘Secret Invasion’ delivered the one thing I’d thought an impossibility - it found a way to make Samuel L. Jackson seem boring.

Sheesh, what a frickin’ mess. This thing’s earned its 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

You like alien invasion stories? Tell you what. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of my new novel Artichoke Stars and Chicken Fried Shark, available on Amazon. And I’m not saying this because I’m this great writer and want your business (okay, actually I do want your business). It’s because gambling on my book (or just about anybody else’s alien-invasion book for that matter) may be a better use of your time and money than spending it on whatever it is they’re doing at Disney+ nowadays.

Or, go see the Barbie movie. Or Oppenheimer. Whatever. Just let sleeping Skrulls lie.

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

Lords of Misrule Review

Most people associate my hometown of New Orleans with the Mardi Gras - the floats, the doubloons, the debauchery. And as a survivor of numerous Carnivals, I can attest that all of those things are absolutely real (especially the debauchery part). But there’s a dark and secretive heart beating behind all the pomp and general insanity. Lords of Misrule by James Gill seeks to peer behind the veil of what Mardi Gras is really all about.

What fascinated me about this book is the way the author breaks down the city's history as it relates to Carnival time, particularly its pre-Civil War origins as an expression of the cultural and economic power of a cabal of elitist men of property and privilege. Gill confirmed something I suspected while growing up traversing the conflicting ley lines delineating the rules of race and class in New Orleans - there's a small group at the top who live differently from the rest of the population, and it’s hard to get into that winner’s circle. Only the right sort of person is allowed into the Boston Club and others of its ilk.

Moreover, this group jealously guards their secrets. In the early 1990s, New Orleans City Council member Dorothy Mae Taylor attempted to desegregate the old boys' clubs behind the upper-crust Comus organization, an event that resulted in Comus suspending its street parade, a decision it has never wavered on. Angry words were thrown back and forth, and various demagogic caricatures such as infamous white supremacist David Duke capitalized on the resulting furor. Gill does an excellent job here recollecting the sordid details and the players on all sides of the debate.

This period was one I was aware of while a young man living in and around the French Quarter at the time, but I never stopped to think about what such a challenge to the barons of the Boston Club actually meant from a cultural standpoint. In the early 90s, no-one would've thought to take Robert E. Lee from his spot atop the pedestal in the circle that used to bear his name; today, the idea such an edifice ever existed is anathema to many people.

Gill’s book should be of interest to anyone not from the region or interested in the intersection of politics, culture and history. As a read it’s a bit dry. But the book is well-researched and even-handed in its pursuit of understanding the mysterious world behind the masks of Mardi Gras.

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

Hunger Games Review

            Suzanne Collins’s signature work rips the bandages off every wound and psychological dysfunction known to humanity in its relentless portrayal of a young woman’s steadfast determination to survive. And by survive, I don’t simply mean in the arena of death that takes up much of the book’s page count – this is a character study wrapped in an action/adventure tale which dredges up every emotion protagonist Katniss Everdeen struggles with, whether it be anger or love or – most importantly – her ingrained need to protect those she loves.

            By this point the tale is a familiar one. Katniss, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks in a dystopian post-apocalyptic America, volunteers in place of her younger sister to participate in the titular contest, a brutal mix of Survivor and to-the-death gladiatorial struggle. In the course of this adventure, she makes allies even while wondering whether those allies can be trusted. She battles not only to win the games but along the way also takes what digs she can against the oppressive system that has forced her into this predicament. By the end of the book, her ultimate triumph is hardly assured – that resolution is put off for another volume in the series.

            As an author I’m a huge fan of Collins’s prose – Katniss’s story is lean and cut close to the bone, with not a sentence nor plot point wasted. And the heroine herself is someone worth rooting for. Nothing is handed to this young woman, neither in battle nor in love.

And it’s Katniss’s confusion over her obvious crush on childhood friend Gale that causes perhaps the greatest conflict in her mind and heart when over the course of the Hunger Games she meets and befriends Peeta, another Hunger Games contestant who has carried a torch for her since they were kids. Which of these young men does she really resonate with? Both? Neither? Katniss’s struggle in the one area of her life she can’t resolve with a well-placed arrow shot is palpable and at times truly heart-wrenching.

I seldom run across a book I simply can’t put down; the Hunger Games was one of those rare times. And I seldom do a five-star review but this book is one that everybody ought to read. I give it my highest recommendation.

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Jack Kirby - All Hail the King

            Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to draw like Jack Kirby. I mean, those who know the man’s work know that’s an impossible task, right? If you’ve ever sat down and tried to copy out the lines off one of those brain-blasting splash pages Kirby did in the 1970s for DC or Marvel – something out of, say, OMAC or Eternals – you’re aware of the power and scope of the man’s vision. They call this man the King for a reason – he was the best and most inspired and inspiring artist of not only his but every generation of comics creators. Nobody else could do what he did, do it longer, or with such incredible consistency over a half-century or so of output for nearly every major American comic book company. The man simply defined the medium.

            I liken Jack’s reach to what Jimi Hendrix’s might’ve been on the guitar had the latter not passed from this Earth all too soon. But such comparisons don’t quite describe the full arc of his work. Because a funny thing about Jack Kirby is not simply the impact of what he did in comics – he also transcended the printed page of four-color inks on poor paper stock, expanding out into the larger realm of American culture itself.

            First there are all the characters he created. You know Captain America, right? What about Marvel’s Thor, its Fantastic Four, its Silver Surfer? The original X-Men team, anyone? You know how all these and other characters have leapt from the comic-book page and onto the big screen in the last two decades, resulting in literally BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the pockets of the companies that released them? None of that happens if Jack doesn’t sit down at his drawing board decades earlier to create or co-create these heroes and villains. Without his guiding vision writ large through his unmistakable pencils, they never see the light of day.

            There’s more. Familiar with the Star Wars franchise? Perhaps you’ve seen a film or TV show, played a video game, or bought an action figure of Luke or Leia or Rey or whomever. Go to a Disney theme park and they have a whole section on Star Wars including life-size mock-ups of the Millennium Falcon along with actors dressed as the characters; at Disneyland, you can get your picture taken with R2-D2.

            You know this stuff, right?

            You probably also know that auteur George Lucas created the world of Star Wars and the initial characters that breathed the franchise into existence. Perhaps your blood’s been chilled by the sinister presence of the armored, masked villain Darth Vader, or the incomprehensible menace of the Death Star. Maybe you’ve cheered on Luke Skywalker’s heroics or laughed along with the antics of Chewbacca. And if you’re a hardcore Star Wars fan, you’ve quite possibly pondered the mysteries of the Force.

            Let’s give the credit where it’s due – for the breadth of his imagination, Lucas is rightly regarded as having impacted the way Americans in particular think about and enjoy entertainment.

            Interesting thing, though, is that if you delve into the work of Jack Kirby, you find ideas and characters that are oddly similar to those of Lucas’s signature achievement. Specifically, check out Kirby’s early ‘70s DC run on something that’s referred to among comic fans as his “Fourth World” series of interrelated tales involving a group of superhuman beings the New Gods. Among others, Kirby included the following into this mythos:

·         Introduced the Forever People, a group of teen demigods whose ranks included a lead hero named Mark Moonrider and a huge guy with a furry headpiece on his head called Big Bear.

·         Created Darkseid, an ultra-villain with tremendous physical strength and intellect who’s obsessed with something called the Anti-Life Equation, something he can use to destroy all independent thought in the universe. He has a troubled son named Orion who was raised by his chief antagonist High-Father, a bearded holy man who is forever communicating with something called the Source.

·         Darkseid rules a planet called Apokolips, world whose surface appears to be covered in craggy metal, further disfigured with several energy-emitting gaping holes.

Notice any similarities to stuff from the wider culture from the last fifty years?

Is Mark Moonrider a dead ringer for Luke Skywalker, or perhaps Orion? What about Big Bear and Chewbacca? High-Father and Obi-Wan Kenobi? Can a comparison be made between the Source and the Force? Is Apokolips the Death Star, or Darth Vader himself a knock-off of another, pre-Fourth World Kirby Marvel character called Dr. Doom?

Is it of any significance that all of the above Fourth World ideas were things the King constructed whole-cloth out of his head at least five years before the first Star Wars movie came out?

Now, don’t get the wrong idea here. George Lucas came up with his own mythos and characters and, again, rightly should be celebrated for those accomplishments. But a funny thing about the creative process are the influences you absorb when you’re in the process of creating.

Based on the above evidence, you can’t tell me Lucas didn’t crack open a couple of Jack Kirby comics before charting the adventures of Luke Skywalker and his crew.

Jack Kirby belongs right up there with the greatest American artists, musicians, poets and others who’ve shaped our culture. He taught us about the gods, and about the grit and pluck of guys like Steve Rogers who could challenge divinity. He was a futurist who predicted things like AI and robotics and questioned the very nature of existence itself.

And I haven’t even touched his contributions to romance comics, boy-team-adventurer stories, magic, or any of the other genres he either invented or had a heavy influence on.

Please, if you’ve never done so, go on Amazon or go to Barnes & Noble or just for Pete’s sake drop by your local comics store (who need your business), and get something of this man’s work. It really doesn’t matter what you pick up – OMAC or Boy’s Ranch or Devil Dinosaur are all amazing. The best thing about his work is anybody, literally anybody, can enjoy a Jack Kirby comic – he created something for just about any taste as long as you have a thrill for discovery, adventure, and wonder.

None of us would have the same dreams we have if it weren’t for Jack Kirby.

All hail the King.  

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ - a Review

This book was not what I was expecting. Based on my experience of having seen the film adaptation thirty years ago, I anticipated more of a thriller with a strong critique of religion and what are thought of as traditionally patriarchal societies, painted in the broad strokes of the handmaids' blood-red costumes and their tenuous position in the world of Gilead.

Instead, 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a deeply personal and paranoid work by Margaret Atwood. A first-person narrative, the book features little to no dialogue and a lot of details about the dystopian society of Gilead that are difficult to consider. We get all Offred, all the time - her every observation, feeling, desire and fear. It's a claustrophobic memoir of one woman's uncertainty about the psychotic world in which she lives. Will she live? Will she die? And what do those concepts mean in a world that is so tightly controlled, its moving parts forever sawing each other's legs out from under the next person either above or below them in the hierarchy?

Atwood's book is not a tome to be taken lightly; you have to be willing to take a deep dive into treacherous waters with the main character, and that's not a task for the faint of heart. In the balance, I would recommend this book not only for the disturbing questions it asks about the ability of human beings to descend into collective insanity; but also for it's willingness to dive into a headspace where there are no simple answers, a place of moral quandaries cast not in red but in maddening shades of gray.

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Writing the Craig E. Higgins Way: Part 1 - “The Process”

A lot of people who don’t write often ask me, ‘Hey, what’s your process, man?’ It’s a perfectly reasonable question. And since I’m in the process (see what I did there?) hawking my upcoming novel, ‘Artichoke Stars and Chicken-Fried Shark’ I thought it a good idea to share with you, my humble reader, exactly what it takes to write a ‘Craig E. Higgins Novel’. Think it’s easy? Not even with ChatGPT, my friend. So, read on while I regale you with the basics of (drum roll) … My Process (Part 1)!

Step 1: Get up stupid-early in the morning - One thing ChatGPT can’t do is be your alarm clock - I’m usually awake by 3 AM or so. I know this sounds insane but that’s the time when the world’s asleep and nobody can bother you while you’re digging into the weird stuff in your brain.

Step 2: Hot Chocolate - The little AI gremlins can’t make you a go-beverage, either. And you totally need that. I make my own hot chocolate with baker’s chocolate, milk and a few other things (recipe later this week). Now, if you’re a coffee drinker, you can substitute your favorite cafe au lait or what have you, and that’s fine. But do yourself a favor and get tanked up before you start.

Step 3: Two Thousand Words or Bust - When you get to working be sure and set a goal or benchmark for how much you’re going to get typed out that session. I like two thousand words - cranking out at least that many gives me a sense of progress even if I don’t write anything anyone will see. That benchmark is a Stephen King canard (and I have no idea on how he came up with this particular number), and maybe your number will be smaller or greater. But set a bar and stick to it. And add to that benchmark as you go.

Don’t be wishy-washy about Step 3; I’m serious about this.

More on My Process next time!

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America After Vietnam

I think a lot of Americans living today don’t know that much about the 1970s, and especially what the mood was like in the country at that time. I was among that generation whose childhoods were colored by two oppressively monolithic events - the defeat in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon’s resignation of the presidency post-Watergate.

It wasn’t a happy period.

I mean, the mood at the time was understandable. America was supposed to be the place of happy endings where the good guys won and the bad guys went to jail. That was the world as my father’s generation understood the world: apple pie, hot rods, Vince Lombardi’s Packers winning another title, Marilyn Monroe’s uncooperative skirt under the subway vent. Nothing ahead but a perpetual red, white, and blue afternoon with hazy edges shaded in bedraggled sepia tones.

America before the Southeast Asian conflict (or war, or invasion, or however you look at it) never took into account the day when we would be the ones sulking with our tails between our legs, defeated by essentially a peasant army in black pajamas wielding second-hand Soviet- and Chinese equipment. The same USA that helped smash Fortress Europe in World War II couldn’t properly dispense with one long jungle trail.

By 1975 (I was six years old, then) it was all over. America pulled out of Saigon in a flurry of helicopters frantically scrambling to bring as many as could travel out of the hands of the advancing North Vietnamese army.

None of this was supposed to happen. But, happen it did.

And it was like this pall settled over the country in those years. The defeat had people pointing fingers at each other, at the soldiers who fought, and at the politicians who’d prosecuted the war. It’s true that Nixon hit the door after a scandal involving burglars busted while casing the Watergate building in DC, but it may as well have been a vengeful judgment by the American people upon Tricky Dick what truly did him in, at least in terms of his presidential legacy. Not that he ever got in any real trouble.

In the end the good guys lost, and the bad guy got off, Scott-free on a helicopter ride of his own.

And then everybody got real bummed out. That was the condition of things culturally until the end of the decade.

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Carter vs. Reagan

The 1970s in America were a strange time - it was like the Technicolor excesses of the previous psychedelic decade had gone sour like spoiled milk, then reduced to sepia-toned chasms of autumnal despair. Which is a fancy way of saying that it sucked as a decade to grow up in. Sure, there were tons of fast-food places to eat at (and the corresponding litter cluttering the highways), and plenty of great rock-n-roll (along with its vampiric other-counterpart, disco).

But there was this ghost in the room, especially as the decade wore on. And it’s name was Vietnam. Dressed in camo fatigues and armed with an M-16 rifle, the specter would sputter blurry recollections about burned-out huts in the jungle, or good-time girls leaning against beaded-curtained doorways in a now-forgotten place called Saigon. As a kid like I was then, you got the impression that Vietnam wasn’t simply a war America, land of the Big Mac AND the Super Bowl, lost - it was this middle finger pointed at the nation’s jugular, it’s own Shakespearian accusatory figure casting a curse on the country that had led down such a thorny path paved with Bouncing Betties and MIAs.

Ultimately, it was Vietnam that spawned the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Now, when I talk about Carter I’m not talking about his politics or religious beliefs or any of that - I’m talking about Carter as a cultural figure. See, the problem the former governor of Georgia ran into when he took on the top job was that he was not only following one of the most deeply-hated men in American history in that office (a man who was proud to call himself a Dick); he also had to heal a nation that had just gotten its head handed to it by a peasant army half-a-world away. Nobody in America could deal with that reality. Nonetheless, Carter tried to make the country face its fears.

It didn’t go well.

And I think that’s why he folded like a house of cards in the face of the political assault that was the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was everything Carter wasn’t - well-dressed, perfect hair, practiced way of speaking that came from being part of the old Star System in Hollywood. And he’d been governor of California, back when that really meant something. All Jimmy Carter could point to during his presidency was a peace deal between Israel and Egypt, the significance of which was muted by the numbing effect of the Iran hostage crisis. THAT thing was a slow IV drip of cyanide into Carter’s time in office - the longer the hostages stewed in Tehran, the more the American president appeared weak and ineffectual. Impotent even.

And so, Reagan beat him in 1980. Not long after that, Iran released the hostages; probably a coincidence, in retrospect.

But that election, that year of 1980, was a real tipping point. It was the moment America gave up its fascination with browns and oranges, with glitter balls and prowling land-yacht cars, and went full-tilt Red, White, and Blue.

The die was cast in a way that still affects how we live; it was a moment that’s had an extended shelf life, for good or ill.

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

Roy Thomas - Architect of the Bronze Age

As someone who as a 70s-era kid picked up random issues of Marvel or DC, it’s long saddened me how little most people know about comic book history before Robert Downey Jr.’s snarky movie interpretation of Tony Stark. When it comes to the source material, the only actual creator most MCU fans are familiar with is probably Stan Lee. And that’s cool and all, but this is where the film boom of the last two decades failed: it never connected the people in the seats with key originators like Roy Thomas.

Thomas started out as a fanzine guy from Missouri. Arriving in New York in the mid-1960s, he briefly worked for DC Comics before heading over to Marvel. And it was there that the small-town Midwestern kid essentially took over writing chores on a number of books that Stan Lee had been scripting previously.

And with this handoff, friends, a figure enters into the comics arena who was perhaps it’s first great writer and idea-man outside of Jack “King” Kirby - simply put, American comic books wouldn’t be the same beast were it not for Roy Thomas.

It was Thomas who first lit a fire under ‘X-Men’, which up until his arrival had been a second-rate ‘Fantastic Four’ ripoff; the creator really upped the stakes in terms of characterization (playing up the buddy-angle between Hank McCoy and Bobby Drake, introducing love interests for both, fleshing out Scott Summers’s and Jean Grey’s relationship), villains (Sauron, the Living Monolith), and full-tilt action, especially toward the tail end of his run when management finally got the book a first-rate artist in Neal Adams.

You like those ‘Avengers’ movies Marvel puts out? Fine, but give credit to Roy Thomas for codifying the dynamic of that team during his lengthy tenure on the title. He created the Vision, paired the android up with Wanda, centered Black Panther in a number of key storylines, and in general kept readers guessing from month to month with the Avengers’ constant membership flux facing off against truly menacing threats like Ultron.

But it gets better.

As the decade wound down, replaced by something known in comics circles as the Bronze Age (the 1970s, basically), Thomas took on more of an editorial role at Marvel even as he continued to push the envelope in terms of what kinds of stories and characters could show up in the company’s offerings. Conan the Barbarian got a huge publicity boost thanks to Thomas and artists like Barry Windsor-Smith and John Buscema throwing their all into telling the dread Cimmerian’s story. And Thomas did something that few creators in mainstream American comics ever accomplish - he created his own genre. With a book called ‘The Invaders’, Thomas told World War II-era stories featuring Captain America and other heroes, adding an element of historical/speculative fiction to four-color tales about people in tights.

This is a blog post, so I’ve got to cut the tape somewhere. But, seriously, whether you like comic book movies or the source material or you just want something to read that will invigorate your psyche, pick up a Roy Thomas story. I would especially recommend his 60s-70s Marvel work, but of course a creator as prodigious as this wasn’t done when he hung up his pen at the House of Ideas - among other things, Thomas later returned to DC and made an impact there, as well.

Comic book movies are great, but source material matters. A lot of people have worked on this stuff over the decades, but there are few that deserve universal respect. I would count Roy Thomas towards the top of that hallowed list.

CEH

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Wong is the Blue-Collar Sorcerer Supreme

Benedict Wong is the MCU’s blue-collar Sorcerer Supreme, the people’s champion.

Recently, I’ve read and viewed a lot of opinions on the Marvel Cinematic Universe(MCU) and its much-maligned Phase Four content. In fairness, some of the new MCU stuff doesn’t hold up compared with the first decade or so of films. But I don’t think it’s right to say everything they’ve done is awful. With so much film- and streaming content coming out, even a company as cookie-cutter as Disney/Marvel has to occasionally get it right.

Case in point: Benedict Wong’s MCU character, Wong. Going back to the first Dr. Strange movie, the actor has built up a consistent set of performances that make the Sorcerer Supreme one of the most relatable people in franchise history. Lately, Wong has been in just about everything (Shang-Chi, No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness) Marvel has put out, and I think relatability is a big reason for that.

Think about this for a second - if you watched Multiverse, you know the scene where Stephen Strange tosses aside his cocktail to go fight the one-eyed critter, right? Okay, so when Strange and America Chavez are getting tossed around like rag dolls, who shows up with the energy whip to wrangle the beast and get the good guys on the winning track? Wong, that’s who. Don’t tell me you didn’t get a jolt out of watching the dude with the average-guy build and no-BS demeanor take charge of the situation!

Wong doesn’t mince words or put on airs, and can’t even get the egotistical Dr. Strange to do the bowing thing (even though it’s customary). All the Sorcerer Supreme does is get the job done. Y’know, because he’s a hero.

In these new movies, I think of Wong as the guy who doesn’t really care about who gets the credit as long as the world gets saved. He’s completely unpretentious, and you can’t help rooting for him even when he’s rigging a for-pay fight with the Abomination in Shang-Chi. We never get a backstory, but I imagine Wong as like this truck driver from Hong Kong who somehow finds out he has this potential for being a great sorcerer. So, what does he do? Wong gets out the spell books, puts in the study time, and becomes a superhero. Never gets his own movie, but ends up being one of the best things about everybody else’s.

So, for my money Wong is the real hero of Phase Four - he’s the blue-collar Sorcerer Supreme, the people’s champion.

Go get ‘em, Wong.

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My Favorite 4th of July Song

My favorite 4th of July song is, appropriately enough, titled, “Fourth of July”. Written by songwriter/guitarist Dave Alvin in the days when Alvin was in a Los Angeles-based band called the Blasters, “Fourth” starts out with this lyric,

She’s waiting for me,

When I get home from work,

Aw, but thing’s just ain’t the same,

That’s the setup - we get a couple whose relationship is on the rocks. Functional? Maybe, maybe not. Definitely not ideal. Next set of verses, and we find out the guy gets, “her cheek, when I want her lips,” and that they “gave up trying so long ago.” Certainly, these two are out of the candy-and-flowers portion of their love affair. Valentine’s Day is in the rearview mirror, and now they face the hangover that for whatever reason looms on Independence Day.

This is the kind of stuff that speaks to the lyrical titan that Alvin truly is. Haven’t we all been there? I know personally I’ve had that punch to the gut, that realization that comes from having missed one cue too many, or forgetting a special date, or just plain acting like an idiot to the point that spark of love flitters out the window one bad afternoon.

Yeah, yeah, I know this all sounds pretty bleak. Thing is, Alvin’s hero redeems himself when he apologizes for, “whatever happened.” It doesn’t matter at this point who said what, or did what - if these two are going to make it, they have to let “whatever” go.

Alvin has so many great songs like this. His musical world consists of blue-collar California towns filled with one-room apartments and juke joints and industrial parks. It’s a slice of America that persists on the margins. But it’s real, just the same.

Happy 4th, Dave Alvin. And thanks for the song.

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

Upcoming Anthologies …

Looks like some bits from my current manuscript are going into pre-promotion thanks to the wonderful people at Henderson Writers Group (HWG) and Southwest Writers (SWW).

  • HWG has pushed me to become a better writer, and I’m pleased to announce a chapter of my work will be in their Writers Bloc Twelve, 2022 Anthology.

  • SWW has informed me I will be a finalist in their annual writer’s contest this year. It’s my hope they will also print a section of my manuscript in their 2022 anthology as well.

    So, good things are happening - we’re getting the word out, and people are responding. Thank you so much HWG and SWW for giving my work a spot in your publications!

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

Robert E. Howard

When I was a kid and well into high school, one of my favorite fictional heroes was Conan the Barbarian. Thick-hewed, bronzed, and with a head of jet-black hair, Conan punched, hacked, thieved, and conquered his way through an endless series of tales in the 1970s, mostly comic books. This treasure trove existed primarily thanks to the efforts Marvel Comics’ writer/editor Roy Thomas, who adapted and wrote new stories for the tough-as-nails giant from the fictional land of Cimmeria both in mainstream color- and more lurid black-and-white magazine-rack offerings. I loved those books, especially the earliest stuff Thomas did with artist Barry Windsor-Smith. Conan was as different from superheroes as Danny Trejo is from Brad Pitt - Batman might beat up the Joker; Conan would take him off the board with a well-placed sword thrust, then usurp a the crown of Aquilonia for good measure.

But it wasn’t until I was about ten years old that I got my hands on some short stories written by the man who created this fictional titan, Robert E. Howard. Somebody, possibly Ace Books, put out a series of compilations of stories by Howard and some later writers of the Cimmerian’s tales which I collected with a fervor I don’t ever recall having for comics. I’ll never forget the introduction to those Conan collections, a brief biography of this enigmatic creator. Two things stood out to me about Robert E. Howard - he was from Cross Plains, Texas, and lived a short life, just 30 years. In that brief time, he created Conan along with other two-fisted tough guys such as Kull and puritan gunfighter Solomon Kane. Gripping tales of warriors and wizards and bejeweled kingdoms full of “spider-haunted mystery” - this man packed a lot into his fiction, basically inventing the sword-and-sorcery genre in the process.

I don’t feel I ever really understood Howard, though, until I moved to West Texas around 2010. There, on the bleak, featureless landscape of the Plains, I experienced firsthand the canvass on which Howard sketched out his hero of the Hyborian Age. It’s no accident that some of America’s most inspired creators are from this region (Howard, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings) - out in the Flatlands, there’s just dust storms and Jesus and whatever dreams you can fashion into existence with a typewriter or guitar or paint brush.

Howard’s writing still informs my own. I wish I could craft a fight scene the way he could. And I wish I had one-tenth his prodigious imagination.

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Craig E. Higgins Craig E. Higgins

Art Bell

Art Bell squatted like a blood tick on the AM radio airwaves in the 1990s.

Art Bell squatted like a blood-tick on the margins of the AM radio airwaves in the 1990s. Back then, most people hovering along the options on that part of the dial listened to Rush Limbaugh’s rightist diatribes, or Dr. Laura’s “Go take on the day!” platitudes.

But me? I kept AM on late, until midnight. Then, Georgio Moroder’s pulsing synths would spill out of the tinny radio speaker - Midnight Express, naturally. And as the music died down the star would go into his schtick. Art Bell, the man who provided a space on talk radio for conspiracy theorists back when that usually meant well-meaning UFO nuts and not wild-eyed blowhards obsessed with the idea the Feds were putting something in the water to make the frogs gay. Deep of voice and with a born announcers gift for inflection, Bell was the ultimate poker player when it came to appearing to sound as if he took every single one of his guests and callers to be completely truthful and believable in the things they said. Which, you know, was pretty tough in some cases. It’s almost thirty years on, but I still recall one regular Boston caller on the “Wild Card Line” insisting he was prone to fits of werewolf-ism.

Bell never laughed at the guy or treated him like a kook - the Boston Wolfman was treated with the same respect as Michio Kaku or Waylon Jennings or some brothel owner in Pahrump, where the host hosted his fabulous late-night program.

Pahrump. Sounded like an extinct form of donkey, maybe. But it’s a real place - remote, desolate, better known for the infamous Bunny Ranch than the rustic charm of the surrounding mountain ranges. Only a guy like Art Bell could appreciate such a place, and give it a personality on the national airwaves. Nowadays I don’t live that far away, out here in the Nevada desert. That fact still seems like a strange miracle to me. It’s almost as if Art Bell’s voice drew me out here for reasons I don’t think I could wrap my head around if I tried.

Bell died a few years back. If I’d known he still lived in the area, I would’ve tried to visit with him. Makes me a little sad we never had a chance to speak. Then again, sometimes when you meet your heroes, come to find out they walk in feet of clay just like you, me, or the Boston Wolfman.

Some people are better appreciated with distance, and a perspective of history. I think Art Bell was probably one of those people.

But I miss his show.

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