Tag Archives: Susan Karlin

The ‘Lasso of Truth’ and the lie detector have a common origin

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There’s a fascinating June 17, 2016 article about Wonder Woman’s seventy-fifth anniversary (points to anyone who her recognized her ‘Lasso of Truth’) by Susan Karlin for Fast Company,

William Moulton Marston—an attorney and psychologist who invented a systolic blood pressure deception test, the precursor to the modern polygraph—created Wonder Woman as a new type of superhero who, beyond her strength, used wisdom and compassion as weapons against evil—not to mention a magic golden lasso to compel people to tell the truth.

“Marston recognized not only the thereto untapped commercial market for a strong female superhero, but also the powerful potential for comic books to educate and inspire. He understood that education and entertainment need not be mutually exclusive,” says Vasilis Pozios, a forensic psychiatrist who cofounded [Broadcast Thought; mental health-and-media think tank with three forensic psychiatrists – H. Eric Bender, M.D., Praveen Kambam, M.D., and Pozios], which uses media and comic convention panels to educate about mental illness, and author of Aura, an award-winning comic about bipolar disorder.

The article has various versions of Wonder Woman images embedded throughout and it includes a few nuggets like this about her and her originator,

Wonder Woman is the only female comic book character to have her own stories continuously published for the past three-quarters of a century, spawning numerous other incarnations, including the hit 1975-1979 TV series starring Lynda Carter, and finally a big-screen introduction in this year’s [2016] Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

…

Marston, who was strongly influenced by the women’s suffrage movement, devised that WW’s would lose her strength if men bound her in chains. Initially controversial due to a look inspired by pinup art and bondage intimations, she emerged as a symbol of equality and female empowerment—gracing Ms. magazine’s inaugural cover in 1972—that resonates today.

I gather this Wonder Woman 75th anniversary is going to be celebrated over a two year period with DC Comics hosting a 2016 Wonder Woman 75 San Diego Comic-Con panel and costume display and then, releasing the first (and fortuitously timed) Wonder Woman feature film starring Gal Gadot on June 2, 2017.

Do read Karlin’s if only to catch sight of the images. I have written about Wonder Woman before notably in a July 1, 2010 (Canada Day) posting featuring a then new makeover,

wonder_woman_makeover

I wasn’t thrilled by the makeover and was not alone in my opinion although reasons for the ‘lack of thrill’ varied from mine.

Superman remade for contemporary audiences amid massive comics relaunch

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I am constantly fascinated by how the publishing industry is changing so this caught my attention. DC Comics, or DC Entertainment as they are now called, are relaunching every comic book title (52 in all) they own, starting August 31, 2011. The relaunch, all the comics restart at no. 1,  features both print and digital versions. Among other titles, DC Entertainment owns Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Justice League.

Heidi MacDonald in her September 2, 2011 article for Salon.com interviews Jim Lee, DC’s co-publisher and an artist on Justice League,

The reason for the relaunch has been stated as keeping current readers and getting back lapsed readers. I know it’s only been two days, but how’s it going?

Someone commented, “Where are the reviews by the new readers?” And my counter is, well, [laughs] I think a new reader isn’t going to read it and then run to the computer and write an online review! They are reading it for entertainment and they don’t know you’re supposed to put them in bags and boards.

To me, there’s a definite silent majority that doesn’t check out websites or tweet about it. It’s a tough group to measure. That said, based on recent numbers, certainly Justice League No. 1 has surpassed the recent highs in comics sales. The second printing is already sold out, we’re doing a third. And Action No. 1 and Batgirl No. 1 have also sold out [from the distributor]. I’ve heard anecdotally from retailers, from texts and tweets, about first-time comics readers. It looks very positive.

It’s also setting records digitally. I can’t give numbers, but on the first day it set a record for us.

Once you compared the volume of DC’s digital comics sales to dental floss. Is it up to dental tape now?

It’s too early to say. The goal isn’t to increase one pipeline vs. the other. [emphasis mine] Everything is designed to increase the overall size of the pie.

How do you see print and digital evolving together either in the short term or long term?

Obviously there are going to be some people who convert from print to digital. They may already have done that or are doing that. When Justice League came out [in digital form], there was already a pirated digital version that had been out for six hours. For me it’s all about giving people who want digital comics a legal alternative. And I think that’s an important decision for the health of our business. At the same time I don’t think you can go digital and say you’re trying to reach new readers without going out to promote this as we have. The TV commercials we’re doing have a pretty extensive buy list of mainstream cable shows. There are a lot of good things happening. We’ve brought a lot of good creators to the books, we’ve promoted the hell out of it and made it as easy to buy the comics as possible, and I think that strategy is paying off.

This relaunch comes at a time when the comic book industry is faltering. From Rob Salkowitz’s August 30, 2011 article for Fast Company,

Why is a media entity as large as DC and an industry as widespread as comics publishing still wrestling with the problems of digital distribution in 2011?

The short answer is that the retail distribution system for comic books is tied up in a fist-sized knot and has been for the last two decades. Starting in the 1980s, most comic publishers discontinued newsstand sales, where unsold issues could be returned for a refund, in favor of a “direct market” system that shipped exclusively to specialized comic book stores on a non-returnable basis.

But it turns out there is a problem distributing your product exclusively through independently owned retail stores run by and for your products’ biggest fans. Despite the efforts of some active and visionary retailers, the odor of overgrown adolescent male hangs heavy over many comic shops, creating a forbidding environment for women, kids, and casual fans who might have an interest in the material but don’t want to put up with old-school comic book culture.

(It seems the characters in The Big Bang Theory [US television programme] are not quite as outrageous as one might think.) At any rate, Salkowitz regards this attempt to include a digital version of an issue as part of a strategy to migrate from print to digital,

So here we are in 2011 and the industry is just beginning to seriously discuss real, commercial models for digital comics. It’s a critical moment. If Hollywood money and the bookstore channel dry up before publishers have successfully migrated their audience (and their revenue stream) to digital, they will be stuck with the same dysfunctional retail system and an acutely shrinking, aging audience.

Will DC’s move signal the beginning of the next era for the comics industry, or the beginning of the end? In classic comic cliffhanger style, we’ll have to wait for the next issue to find out.

This contrasts with Lee’s assertion (in the interview with Heidi MacDonald) that one format is not intended to displace the other.

This relaunch also affects the stories. Susan Karlin interviewed Grant Morrison, author of Superman No. 1, 2011, for her August 29, 2011 article for Fast Company,

On Sept. 7, DC Comics will launch the revamped Action Comics, written by veteran comics auteur Grant Morrison–hot off his lauded new book, Supergods. Morrison has the superhuman task of reinventing one of the comic world’s–and popular culture’s–biggest characters for the 21st century, and, in the process, trying to write a new chapter for the struggling comic book publishing industry.

“I felt the weight of history with this one,” says Morrison in his soft-spoken Glaswegian lilt. “I wanted to do something that was as much a part of these times as when (Action Comics) first came out. Superman has always been the champion of the oppressed. I wanted to move away from the standard superhero tales and in the direction of folk tales in the vein of a Paul Bunyan.”

In the revised version, featuring art by Rags Morales (penciling), Rick Bryant (inking), Brad Anderson (color) and Patrick Brosseau (lettering), Morrison pares down the convoluted narrative that began overshadowing the Superman myth. “It had become a pro-wrestling contest between characters– who was stronger, faster, bigger,” he says. “I wanted to evoke a more universal human Superman, who was less of a costumed figure representing patriotic authority, and more about struggles on the street.”

… Superman’s fighting crime, of course, but the authorities are suspicious of his powers. He’s misunderstood. He’s different

It seems this focus about ‘fear and suspicion’ of the superheroes is to be found in all of the ‘new’ comics. From the MacDonald article,

When you first see these heroes, because of their powers and wearing masks, and not using their real names, the public is anxious and fearful about them.

I wonder if Morrison, Lee and the others involved in this relaunch recognize that these feelings of fear, suspicion, and anxiety might also describe the comic book industry as it grapples with the changes in publishing and distribution.

God from the machine: Deus ex machina and augmentation

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Wherever you go, there it is: ancient Greece. Deus Ex, a game series from Eidos Montréal, is likely referencing ‘deus ex machina’, a term applied to a theatrical device (in both senses of the word) attributed to  playwrights of ancient Greece. (For anyone who’s unfamiliar with the term, at the end of a play, all of the conflicts would be resolved by a god descending from the heavens. The term refers both to the plot device itself and to the mechanical device used to lower the ‘god’.)

The latest game in the series, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a role-playing shooter, will be released August 23, 2011. From the August 16, 2011 article by Susan Karlin for Fast Company,

The result—Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a role-playing shooter that comes out August 23–extrapolates MicroTransponder, prosthetics, robotics, and other current augmentation technology into a vision of how technologically enhanced people might gain superhuman abilities and at what cost.

… “We built a timeline that traces the history of augmentation, creating new things, and predicting how would it get out into society. We wanted to ground it in today, and make something where everyone could say, ‘I can see the world going that way.'” [Mary DeMarle, Human Revolution’s lead writer]

Human Revolution, although the third in the series, is a prequel to the original Deus Ex which took place 25 years after Human Revolution.

I’m glad to see games that bring up interesting philosophical questions and possible social impacts of emerging technologies along with the action. In a February 3, 2011 interview with Mary DeMarle, Quintin Smith of Rock, Paper, Shotgun posed these questions,

RPS: Finally, with anti-augmentation groups featuring in Human Revolution, I was just wondering what your own opinions are on human augmentation and human bioengineering are.

MD: Oh, gosh. Well I have to tell you that the joke on the team is that for the duration of this story I’d be supporting the anti-technology view, because most people on the team wouldn’t be anti-technology, and it’d help me make the game more human, you know? And now that the project’s over I bought my first iPad, and I have to admit I’m suddenly like “You know, if I could get one of those InfoLinks in my head, it’d be really useful.”

But you know, all of this stuff is already out there. We already have people putting cameras in their eyes to improve their vision. [emphasis mine] The technology’s there, we’re just not aware of it. As far as our team’s technology expert is concerned, human augmentation’s been going on for decades. If you look at all the sports controversy regarding drugs, that is augmentation. It’s already happening.

RPS: But you have no qualms with our using technology to make ourselves more than we can be?

MD: From my perspective, I think mankind will always try to be more than he is. That’s part of being human. But I do admit we have to be careful about how we do it.

In my February 2, 2010 posting (scroll down about 1/2 way), I featured a quote that resonates with DeMarle’s comments about humans trying to be more,

“I don’t think I would have said this if it had never happened,” says Bailey, referring to the accident that tore off his pinkie, ring, and middle fingers. “But I told Touch Bionics I’d cut the rest of my hand off if I could make all five of my fingers robotic.”

Bailey went on to say that having machinery incorporated into his body made him feel “above human”.

As for cameras being implanted in eyes to improve vision, I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has information about this. The only project I could find in my search was EyeBorg, a project with a one-eyed Canadian filmmaker who was planning to have a video camera implanted into his eye socket to record images. From the About the Project page,

Take a one eyed film maker, an unemployed engineer, and a vision for something that’s never been done before and you have yourself the EyeBorg Project. Rob Spence and Kosta Grammatis are trying to make history by embedding a video camera and a transmitter in a prosthetic eye. That eye is going in Robs eye socket, and will record the world from a perspective that’s never been seen before.

There are more details about the EyeBorg project in a June 11, 2010 posting by Tim Hornyak for the Automaton blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website),

When Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence was a kid, he would peer through the bionic eye of his Six Million Dollar action figure. After a shooting accident left him partially blind, he decided to create his own electronic eye. Now he calls himself Eyeborg.

Spence’s bionic eye contains a battery-powered, wireless video camera. Not only can he record everything he sees just by looking around, but soon people will be able to log on to his video feed and view the world through his right eye.

I don’t know how the Eyeborg project is proceeding as there haven’t been any updates on the site since August 25, 2010.

While I wish Quintin Smith had asked for more details about the science information DeMarle was passing on in the February 3, 2011 interview, I think it’s interesting to note that information about science and technology comes to us in many ways: advertisements, popular television programmes, comic books, interviews, and games, as well as, formal public science outreach programmes through museums and educational institutions.

ETA August 19, 2011: I found some information about visual prosthetics at the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) website, We can rebuild you page featuring a TEDxVienna November 2010 talk by electrical engineer, Grégoire Cosendai, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He doesn’t mention the prosthetics until approximately 13 minutes, 25 seconds into the talk. The work is being done to help people with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that is incurable at this time but it may have implications for others. There are 30 people worldwide in a clinical trial testing a retinal implant that requires the person wear special glasses containing a camera and an antenna. For Star Trek fans, this seems similar to Geordi LaForge‘s special glasses.

ETA Sept. 13, 2011: Better late than never, here’s an excerpt from Dexter Johnson’s Sept. 2, 2011 posting (on his Nanoclast blog at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE] website) about a nano retina project,

The Israel-based company [Nano Retina] is a joint venture between Rainbow Medical and Zyvex Labs, the latter being well known for its work in nanotechnology and its founder Jim Von Ehr, who has been a strong proponent of molecular mechanosynthesis.

It’s well worth contrasting the information in the company video that Dexter provides and the information in the FET video mentioned in the Aug. 19, 2011 update preceding this one. The company presents a vastly more optimistic claim for the vision these implants will provide than one would expect after viewing the information in the FET video about clinical trials, for another similar (to me) system, currently taking place.