The Four Color Media Monitor

The Hollywood Reporter tells that the actor Josh Gad is working on a project originally pitched by Frank Miller, drawing from Jewish folklore, titled "The Writer":

In the intervening years, however, Gad found his voice, so to speak. Though Miller is not involved, the actor now has co-written a comic that will be published by indie powerhouse Dark Horse Comics starting June.

Written with Ben and Max Berkowitz, The Writer is a four-issue mini-series with art by Ariel Olivetti, a veteran penciller who has worked for Marvel and DC on such titles as Daredevil and Punisher War Journal. And it features a hero is looks a lot like Gad.

The comic introduces readers to Stan Siegel, an already established author known for his heroic and fantastical comic books. However, his life takes an unexpected and dark turn when he is plunged into a Nazi occult-fueled nightmare, filled with hidden identities, high-speed chases, and demonic chaos. The schlubby writer will be forced to becoming the hero from his pages and show that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Honestly, while Nazism is a serious issue, in an era where Islamic antisemitism (which was the focus of Will Eisner's last GN, The Plot) happens to be proving far worse, this strikes me as too much of a cliche. Not to mention that if modern writers, comics or otherwise, can't spotlight such an issue as jihadism, it makes the whole focus on Nazism into a joke, because how can we be convinced those writing about it really care beyond virtue-signaling? There is something in this news to consider, however:

The idea originated with the Berkowitzes, who grew up on a steady diet of comics, movies, Saturday morning cartoons and cereal. The brothers saw an alarming trend of characters having their Jewish attributes being erased in Hollywood adaptations.

“Jewish identities were being erased from comic to screen,” says Ben Berkowitz, who as a child ate the paper of a mini Torah in the hopes it would imbue him with powers. “We wanted to build a story that was representative of where we come from, all the mythology and folklore of where we come from, and have a character that is unique and fun and inspired by all the movies we saw as kids.” [...]

“I’ve always had a proclivity for mythological folklore and everything steeped religious dark arts, going back to my obsession with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the mythology of the Ark of the Covenant,” he says. “There’s a lot of movies and series and comics that deal with various mythologies, whether they be Norse or Christian, but not so much of the Jewish mysticism. What a fertile ground to create a character.”

Well no doubt, there's plenty of meat to that argument, and many Jewish producers doubtless lacked the courage to put their attributes into the screenplays too. Even so, anybody who can only consider National Socialism a wellspring for a tale of good versus evil is taking a super-cheap pathway. And while it's obviously dismaying if Jewish identities are being thrown out of Hollywood adaptations, they'd do well to ponder that Christianity's not so hot with today's far-left crowd either, yet even they never dare speak negatively about Islam. Then again, these Berkowitzes don't seem interested or brave enough to take issue with leftism either, so maybe that's telling a thing or two what their flaws are.

Good luck with their new GN. But it's decidedly a huge letdown they're not proving any different from many other scriptwriters sticking with cheap themes compared to more complicated ones.

Labels: history, indie publishers, islam and jihad, misogyny and racism