THE NEW NORMAL

LegalDispatch 117

Howdy.

How’s your week been? Mine’s been focused on additional revisions to PROJECT MARBLE (Netflix movie), Last Flight Out (Netflix pilot), the outline for PROJECT SINISTER (Marvel comic), and the lettering draft for the Jedi Knights story that’s appearing in Marvel’s Free Comic Book Day Star Wars issue.

The latter was just announced this week. Star Wars artist supreme Phil Noto drew the cover:

This FREE book also includes stories by the illustrious Alex Segura and Charles Soule, both of whom I’m proud to call my friends. Star Wars with friends and writers I hold in the highest regard — it really doesn’t get better than this.

The Jedi Knights story that I wrote has been illustrated by the forthcoming book’s regular artist, Madibek Musabekov. Somehow, we managed to pack action, humor, a new combat use for the Force, and further development of the series’ first ongoing subplot/mystery into only six pages.

Here’s the official synopsis:

LUKE SKYWALKER finds himself in a wretched hive of scum and villainy facing off against pirates! JEDI KNIGHTS QUI-GON JINN & TENSU RUN are on the hunt for the villainous CORLIS RATH! Who is the mysterious VANEE and what is his connection to DARTH VADER & KYLO REN?

I’ve also dived back in to the prose novel I’ve been working on. It’s been a little tricky setting aside the time I need with everything else that’s going on, but every minute spent on it is joyful and a continuous reminder that I see my long-term future as a writer (read: retirement?) in prose.

Oh, I should also probably mention that I’ve come aboard a Netflix (damn, that’s a lot of Netflix-ness lately) project. This one’s a bit different for me insofar as it’s a TV pilot (which means still in development) written by a writer/director. I’m helping him flesh out some concepts and writing the series format. It’s a multi-genre piece based on a really cool role-playing game. All in all, it’s very much in my wheelhouse and I’m truly enjoying the process, particularly collaborating with the aforementioned-but-unnamed writer/director. Call it PROJECT BRIMSTONE.

Yeah, I’m very aware that my plate is filing up fast. And, per usual, I’m only sharing with you the part of the iceberg that’s over the water-line. While I feel tendrils of stress beginning to creep in, they’re tempered with the gratitude that I’m lucky to be working at all given the landscape these days…

FEEDBACK

This humble newsletter continues to get a lot of great feedback in recent weeks. Let’s dive in…

KJBeelz writes:

The best person I’ve ever known was a straight white male — my father, a scientist and amazing man. He was born in 1931, so you might have expected him to have old fashioned attitudes, but he did not. Instead, as a man in a very senior role, he promoted and encouraged women scientists. He told his daughters they could do anything. He was a constant source of love and support, thoughtful about the state of the world, compassionate to the vulnerable and focused on ensuring the wellbeing of his family. He died eight years ago and my mother, my sister and I talk about him constantly as if he were still here, because we wish so much that he was. 

All of this to say: every time someone stigmatizes the straight white male, I think how they would look at my dad as just another old white man — or ‘stale, male and pale’ as the saying goes — and I am pushed away from considering myself part of their team. I will never be able to support any group that judges all other groups by their age, sexual orientation or the colour of their skin - no matter how virtuous that group considers themselves.

Your father sounds like he was a remarkable man. And your words are beautiful.

I’ve been well-schooled in the position that “reverse sexism” and “reverse racism” are oxymorons because racism and sexism depend on societal structures and systems that don’t prejudice white men. Fair enough. But while reverse [fill-in-the-blank]ism may not be real, hypocrisy certainly is. Can we at least agree that it’s something we should endeavor to avoid rather than indulge?

Hal writes:

I have been sitting in “The let-them-burn-it-all-down-and-laugh-as-the-flames-singe-them-first stage” as you put it since Wednesday. Every time I heard news on the next cabinet pick, I saw the flames get higher. The kicker was the pick for Attorney General. A true smack in the face to all the truly neutral dedicated Justice Department employees. Now it will be an arm of the MAGA party and a way for the convicted felon to try to get revenge on his “enemies,” plus keep said AG nominee out of prison also. 

I had a quite a few right leaning friends and co-workers, who had voted for the con-man-in-chief in 2016 and 2020, but after the 2020 election denial, said that they wished the now-convicted felon never ran for president.

Tell ‘em the line forms behind me…

They were able to see the damage he did to the country. They didn’t vote for him again. It still amazes me that so many American were/are so blind to how he wants to and is going to destroy everything our democracy and republic was founded on now that all branches are MAGA red. 

I'm right there with you in the “The let-them-burn-it-all-down-and-laugh-as-the-flames-singe-them-first stage.”

Thanks for writing. Since you did, Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for Attorney General. My therapist saw this as “a real win” and took a lot of joy in it. I… did not? Don’t get me wrong: Gaetz is a monster and the most unqualified skel to ever be nominated for federal office of any stripe (and believe me when I tell you, that’s a competitive field). So while it’s, of course, terrific that he’s withdrawn as AG headed for a long and profitable career as a Fox News commentator, it’s not like he’s going to be replaced by Lina Khan (to take one example). In fact, Trump quickly followed up by nominating Pam Bondi, former AG of Florida and long-time Trump ally.

Those flames just keep getting higher…

Norman Anderson writes:

I look forward to every newsletter that you post not only for the information on what you are up to and the cool project insights and the “Behind the Scenes” of the various projects that you have and are involved with, but also the interaction with your readers. You engage us on a personal level and make us feel less alone. Thank you for the Arrow BTS and thank you for everything that you do.

Thank you very much, Norman. I really appreciate you saying so — and I appreciate even more folks such as yourself who subscribe to and engage with this little newsletter.

Nandini Bapat writes:

Absolutely take time for you and your family. I think it’s easy for people who naturally give so much to feel like they have to keep giving even when life taxes them out emotionally or physically. Continue to take time for you and know that we’re all working for a better world. I know that's why I do what I do. <3 And thank you for not letting the negativity and hopelessness of this situation get the better of you and go down that very red rabbit hole. Having common sense prevail among so many people I know makes me hopeful for the future and I hope it gives you hope too.

And if you start feeling hopeless, I highly recommend checking out Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh)’s 'Leopards Eat My Face' videos. They are delightful and have been keeping me laughing and smiling in the last couple weeks! ^_^ 

Thank you for the recommendation, Nandini! I hope that I correctly linked to it above.

Steve Bearfield writes:

Hey Marc! I've been reading your newsletters the past couple of weeks and feeling very much the same, especially this week’s and being in the “Let them burn it all down” phase. My like-minded friends tell me that is the Gen X in me, which is probably not wholly inaccurate. Anyway, the reason I finally decided to send you a comment is because I wanted to express something to you. I met you for the first time at NYCC in October, and I have to say that I walked away from our conversation not only feeling validated in my political perspectives, but also feeling very inspired as well. For a brief refresher, you asked me where I was from (western central Pennsylvania) and after responding, you immediately asked who I was voting for (Harris/Walz).

I remember this interaction well! It was great to meet you and chat with you. (Though, in my memory, I didn’t immediately ask who you were voting for. There were a few seconds of inner turmoil over whether to roll those particular dice. ;)

What followed was an unimaginable conversation with someone who’s writing I have enjoyed for many years. Thank you for being so engaging.

That’s incredibly kind of you to say. Thank you. As regular readers of this newsletter may have divined, I decided to do more comic book conventions in 2024. I’m still dial-tuning the right way to do them to be properly remunerative, but I’ve really found that what I “get most” out of the experience is interacting with fans such as yourself. It’s a gratifying and humbling thing, and a wonderful antidote to the toxicity of (some) online discourse.

I am not normally one who speaks publicly about my political or religious beliefs. From a young age, I learned from family members that those were matters discussed in private and with family. I have always been the one in the family to buck trends and norms to create my own path in life. Our conversation got me to finally open up and voice my opinions in more public ways (socials mostly). It has cost me friends and family, which is not entirely unexpected, but it has gained me new friends.

WOW. Thank you for sharing that. That is amazingly inspirational. I’m blown away.

It also speaks to a theory that I have about how we all became so fractured and tribalized. At the risk of being reductive, I think it all started when we stopped talking to each other. Once it became socially unacceptable to “talk politics,” we stopped talking altogether, at least as regards subjects of consequence. And as a result, we deprived ourselves of the necessary discomfort that stems from having our world views challenged.

The day after Trump was elected in 2016, I expressed this very notion in the episode of Arrow that I was writing:

Thank you for leading by example that it is necessary to speak publicly and with passion about one’s belief system.

Thank YOU for reminding me that it’s important for all of us to do so.

Lastly, on my 4+ hour drive home from New York, I reflected on the many great moments I had in a very fast paced two day adventure at NYCC. I met so many creators, writers and artists alike, who I have admired for many many years now. I want to write stories and I’m doing my best to create time to work on ideas. Our conversation inspired me to carry on and not be so shut away from people. If you could engage and for the most fleeting of moments form a connection with a nerdy bullied fat kid from Deep Red Pennsyltucky, then I need to put myself out there too. I want to do that with stories, be they comic book, script, or novelization. So, Thank You for being You. I truly hope that our roads cross again some day, and I get to tell you face to face, “Hey I finished that story.” Take care Marc and keep sharing your truth...many of us are listening!

Thank you, Steve. Your post moved me in ways I can’t even describe. For sure, it made my day more than you could possibly imagine. I look forward to seeing you again and learning about what you’ve chosen to write.

FROM THE VAULT

Does anyone remember The Hozen from Arrow Season 2 et seq.? I’d totally forgotten about it until I was rooting around my hard drive to find something to post from the vault for this week’s edition.

(TRULY) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

This week, The Atlantic confirmed what most television and film writers have long suspected: Our material has been used to train several artificial intelligence systems.

It’s a distinction without a difference, but in the interests of full disclosure, the systems aren’t being trained on our scripts, but rather, on dialogue from those scripts (in the form of subtitles taken from a website called OpenSubtitles.org).

According to the Atlantic, this material has been used to train Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s LLM (Large Language Models), and even my beloved Apple’s iPhone AI.

The article — which you can read here — includes a database that can surface which shows and movies have been, ahem, borrowed. Spoiler: The episode of Arrow that I referenced above as well as the critically-acclaimed Green Lantern movie are among the works of mine that have gone into “training” artificial intelligence.

Doesn’t say much for the future of AI, does it?

I’ve been asked what recourse writers have for this… violation. The answer, as far as I can discern, is “none whatsoever.” All of the scripts in question were written under the Writers Guild of America’s Minimum Basic Agreement with the studios. Under that agreement, the studios pay into the WGA’s health and pension fund in exchange for the copyright on all work performed for WGA signatories (i.e., the studios). I’m oversimplifying decades of labor negotiations, but the point is this: Studios own the copyright on all film and TV scripts, not the writers. So from a legal standpoint, I don’t believe I or any other writer has legal standing to sue the tech companies in question. Rather, that remedy lies with the studios themselves. Will they take steps to protect “their” intellectual property?

I’m not holding my breath and would recommend that you inhale as well.

Be good to each other.

Best,

Marc

Encino, California

11..22.24

COMING ATTRACTIONS

A regularly-updated list of upcoming releases and events:

FAN EXPO NEW ORLEANS (January 10-12, New Orleans, Louisiana)

STAR WARS: JEDI KNIGHTS #1 (March 5, 2025)

STAR WARS FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2025 (May 5, 2025)

GALAXYCON DES MOINES (September 12-14, Des Moines, Iowa)

GALAXYCON ST. LOUIS (October 10-12, St. Louis, Missouri)