Ted Turner Invented CNN, and Changed My Life
By Dan Brown CNN is partly responsible for me becoming a journalist. Which means Ted Turner – the hard-driving businessman who launched the Atlanta-based all-news channel in 1980 – is partly responsible for me being a journo. Turner died Wednesday at age 87. Media reports described how, among other accomplishments, he was the driving force behind CNN. Keep in mind, the 24-hour news format was a novel one at the time it began broadcasting. The only all-news outfit I can recall predating CNN was the CKO radio network here in Ontario. As a little kid, it took me a while – even though I delivered The London Free Press in the 1970s – to wrap my head around the idea of a radio station, then a TV channel, airing nothing but news. Who would watch that? Well, I started watching CNN when my family got a grey-market satellite dish. A lot of rural families, like ours, were early adopters since they didn’t have access to cable. There wasn’t a lot to watch out in Coldstream. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, that huge black metal dish was my gateway to the world, introducing me to channels like MTV, Comedy Central, and HBO. Then, with its coverage of the first Gulf War in 1990-91, CNN became must-watch TV. Such CNN journalists as Peter Arnett refused to leave Baghdad before the U.S. assault on Iraq, and as has been stated elsewhere, often brought viewers the news of attacks and military maneuvers before they were announced by the Pentagon. For an audience raised on traditional network coverage, it was an exciting time. The channel’s derisive nickname, Chicken Noodle News, disappeared quickly after that conflict. I had been a “news junkie” up until then, reading every newspaper and magazine I could find. CNN opened up a whole new world of possibilities to me. If the plucky news channel had a personality like a human being, it was a can-do, anti-establishment vibe. By the time of the O.J. Simpson trial a few years later, I was a full-fledged CNN fan and well into my two years at Ryerson University’s journalism school. I loved CNN’s little quirks, like how there were multiple on-air personalities with alliterative names, including Catherine Crier, Sherri Sylvester and Valeria Voss. I landed an interview with chief political correspondent Candy Crowley a few years into my career, and she conceded Ted Turner might’ve shown a preference for journalists with monikers like his own. Eventually, my career took a bit of a left turn from newspapers and I had the opportunity to work for a satellite network myself. As a senior writer, I toiled at NewsWorld International, headquartered in Toronto, which served world news to an audience of American viewers. The rumour at the time was then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld had one of the TVs in his Pentagon office tuned to us. Now, readers perusing this column in 2026 may feel that CNN is too slanted in its coverage. If you want to slam the network Turner started, go ahead. I don’t watch it much now, haven’t for years. The change in my viewing habits has nothing to do with CNN being left wing or right wing. It has to do with the proliferation of panel shows – CNN is more like a chat network than one that sends reporters out into the field to find interesting stories in far-flung locations. Most of its programming involves partisan talking heads. In the old days, panelists on those shows were typically experts who covered a specific subject matter. They have been replaced over the years by experts who don’t want to describe reality as it is, but instead seek to create a new reality by means of their punditry. Recently, I saw someone on X saying CNN should launch a panel-free version of its service. That is actually what it did at the outset and for many years after, time enough for me to fall in love with broadcast journalism as deeply as I already was with print. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group.
The very best of FCBD 2026
By Dan Brown Free Comic Book Day came and went on May 2. Before the annual giveaway unfolded at L.A. Mood, I published a preview of some of the freebies that were going to be handed out to customers. Now that the event has passed, I’ve had a bit of time to sort through the rest of the sampler comics I picked up on the weekend. Here are a few additional thoughts, including my very fave of the bunch! That would be Tales of a Gen-X Nothing, which comes from London creator Jeff McClinchey. It is a slick, entertaining mini-comic about . . . how to make mini-comics. The art is vivid. The writing is funny and crisp. Even better, it might inspire some youngster in Southwestern Ontario to try her or his hand at creating their own comic stories. You might recall in my preview column I mentioned how, among this year’s free comics, there was a strong theme of comic education. That is, as a group, the books handed out this year were designed to help new readers understand how the conventions of comics work – with the unabashed goal of making kids into fans. In his own eight-page, black-and-white sampler, McClinchey goes one additional step by showing readers how they can take an idea, then turn it into a piece of sequential art with all the requisite beats. “Hi, I’m Jeff and I make comics,” his cartoon self (who looks kinda like the Dude from The Big Lebowski) explains on the introductory page. McClinchey’s goal, he tells readers, is to “create a series of zines to encourage making comics.” Borrowing from comic pros like Brian Azzarello and using cinematic lingo (wide shot, full shot, close-up, et cetera), McClinchey gets into basic panel theory. “Pro tip: Ask creators how they create,” he advises in one square box with a block border. Tales of a Gen-X Nothing (a borrowed title that echoes Judy Blume, a Generation X touchstone if there ever was one) is clean and expressive. I’ve been collecting comics for decades but even I got excited by McClinchey’s advice. He also preaches patience, telling young creators not to try making an epic in the first go. “Give yourself a fighting chance!” he cautions. I look forward to future releases with more of McClinchey’s advice! Other notable FCBD titles include: Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King: It feels like there’s an FCBD tradition in recent years of publishing one freebie with an evocative cover featuring Conan. This year, it comes from Roberto de la Torre and shows our favourite barbarian baptized by a waterfall in which the bodies of recently dispatched enemies float. The Cimmerian: Kuthal of the Dusk: I recommend this one for the precise lines from artist Stevan Subic that put me in the mind of Esteban Marato. What is the difference between this title and the Conan comic mentioned above? The stories under the Cimmerian banner include more adult content with uncensored violence and sex. Flash Gordon: If you liked Princess Leia’s torture droid from the first Star Wars movie, you’ll dig this issue, which sees the storied pulp hero busting out of a prison on Planet Death manned by many-armed synthoids, who keep Flash docile with forced injections. Artist Will Conrad’s lines convey action better than almost every other creator involved with FCBD this spring. This one is jumping! Aquamanatee: Aimed at early readers (5-7 years of age), this DC joint is mostly a goof on all of Aquaman’s previous sidekicks. There’s Meg the Megaladon, Super Squid, Clawdius the Lobster and on and on. I guess no one takes Aquaman as a superhero seriously, so why should kids? Let's start the scorn early! I would love to read your mini-reviews of this year’s FCBD releases, and hear your thoughts about the upcoming stories being teed up in these mini-comics. Meet you in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: The Bad News Bears are Stoics
By Dan Brown You may not remember the ending to The Bad News Bears, released 50 years ago this month. You might have faded, jumbled memories of the film about a group of rough-and-tumble kids playing baseball concluding with an on-field celebration in which 11-year-olds dump bottles of beer all over each other. Maybe you’ve even convinced yourself the ending was a happy one, that it ends with an impromptu party on a dusty baseball diamond in Southern California because the scrappy misfits beat the odds to triumph over a squad of bullies and their bully coach. You’d be wrong. The Bad News Bears ends with the lovable losers – losing. And that’s the main reason it earned its place in movie history. If Bad News Bears ended with a final-inning, come-from-behind victory, as so many baseball movies do, it likely wouldn’t be considered a masterwork, a classic of the genre. Nor would it have spawned two sequel features, a network TV series and a 2005 remake. If you don’t think I’m being straight with you, go back and watch it again with adult eyes. It’s true the motley crew do slowly turn their losing season around, performing well enough to secure a spot in the last game of the summer for a chance at the youth-league title. But, like the title character in Rocky (which came out a few months later in 1976), the Bears don’t have what it takes to win. They fall short. Like Rocky, they have to settle for a moral victory. So The Bad News Bears is a movie about losers made for losers – which is most of us, because life isn’t about winning big. It’s about doing your stoic best in the face of unfairness. “Everybody on my team gets a chance to play,” Coach Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) snarls in the final inning of the climactic game. Not just the elite players. Not just the stars. All of us. I’ve always thought there’s an even more instructive scene about the spirit in which Bad News Bears was made, earlier in the story. It’s when Tanner Boyle (he’s the kid famous for his bigoted rant against pretty much every minority) gets a burrito at the same stand as Timmy Lupus, his fellow Bear. The pathetic Lupus attracts the attention of two players from the rival Yankees, who steal the cap off his head, then put it back on him after they’ve filled it with ketchup and other condiments. Tanner sees all of this from another picnic table, and even though he considers Lupus a “booger-eating spaz” he rises to his weaker teammate’s defence. Tanner smashes his burrito into the one bully’s face to avenge Lupus’s honour. But that’s as far as he gets, because the bully – who is a much larger boy – then stuffs Tanner into a green plastic garbage can, ending the fight. On one level, it’s just a funny scene. On another, it’s an example of stoicism. There’s no way Tanner was going to get the better of the bullies, but he fights on regardless. He knows he’s going to lose, he’s fully aware he doesn’t have the size to beat them, but when he sees injustice he presses on anyway. In this way, Tanner is an illustration of Ernest Hemingway’s dictum that, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” You may think of it as a dumb 1970s comedy about sports and kids and baseball and swearing and drinking, but the real message is simply, “Be stoic” We can all do that – just like the Bears – when the odds are stacked against us, no matter that we’re grinders rather than marquee players. In common with other classic sports pictures, it’s a metaphor for this crazy thing we’re all trying to get through called life. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group.
GRAPHIC-NOVEL COLUMN: Latest Volume of Palookaville is Classic Seth
By Dan Brown Palookaville 25 is classic Seth. The newest book from the father of Canada’s autobiographical comics school has three parts. It opens with the latest instalment in Nothing Lasts, based on Seth’s coming of age in Southwestern Ontario, then eventual move to Toronto. Next is a section about a sculpture Seth fashioned that sits by a bus stop just outside the Art Gallery of Guelph. It ends with Owen Moore, a fictional account of Dominion’s most celebrated painter, which originally appeared in serial form in the Walrus. You may know by now how Dominion is sort of like Seth’s version of the Marvel Universe. It’s a Canadian city of the 1950s that never existed, yet which we can all recall fondly. It’s the playground for the comic creator's imagination and nostalgic impulses. You might think, because the bookends of this volume are one true story and one fictional tale, that they have little in common. Fact is, they are both equally constructed. Nothing Lasts kicks off with an affair Seth had with an older woman at a Tilbury restaurant where he worked in his teen summers. It then transitions into a reflection on how he felt when he first moved to Toronto in 1980. The mostly small, cramped panels narrating his doomed puppy love give way to larger, more open frames that reflect the vibe of the big city. And funny thing, when Seth relocates to the Big Smoke he stops obsessing about his summer romance, if you can call it that, as he falls for Canada’s biggest city. What I especially appreciate about this chapter of his life story is the manifold footnotes he includes at the bottom of each page. They remind me of the explanatory material Marvel was notorious for packing into its comics in the 1970s to keep readers informed of connections they may have missed between other characters and plots. He also points out that the act of putting his memories on the page is fraught with complications. “I remember nothing,” he mentions at a crucial point in his narrative. He questions his own recollections at another point by saying, “It’s a muddle.” He contradicts himself, expands and explains his memories, revises them, then invites the reader to stop reading if they don't like his fragmented style. “Here, in this comic memoir, I can ramble as much as I want. Digress to my heart’s content,” he concludes. “And if you don’t like it, well, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.” In Owen Moore, which is made up of 10 one-page chapters, Seth creates an equally detailed history – of a person who never existed. Moore, we learn, painted Dominion street scenes. He had little success when he was alive, and by the time he had been discovered he was too far gone in his mental decline to provide answers for eager interviewers. Seth informs readers that Moore grew up in Corktown, a satellite community that was eventually swallowed up as Dominion grew. The character became an artist after experiencing a “vision of cosmic mundane perfection” while sick as a child in 1909. He grew up to be a Sunday painter who worked as a streetcar ticket taker during the week and was devoted to his indifferent mother. “He never married,” the narrative voice tells us, “That is, if his diaries are to be trusted.” None of this is real or true, of course. Just the result of Seth’s pure imaginings. Seth sets up Owen Moore as Dominion’s most famous artist, but the truth is much more complicated than that because it’s Seth himself, and not any of the characters he’s created, who is the most famous artist to come from Dominion. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: I Hate To Say It, But Spaceballs Isn’t Funny
By Dan Brown As you may have heard, there’s going to be a sequel to Spaceballs, the Mel Brooks Star Wars parody that debuted a long time ago in 1987. Brooks and the cast (a mix of old hands and newcomers) have been doing publicity to drum up interest in the upcoming film, dubbed The New One, which will land in theatres April 23 next year. Providing movie theatres still exist. I suppose, as a sci-fi fan, I should be eagerly anticipating The New One, which promises to bring more Star Wars jokes and new pop-culture references to the big screen. But can I let you in on a secret? I don’t find Spaceballs funny. It might be familiar. It might even be fun to watch. But it ain’t funny. You likely have fuzzy memories of the gags written into the Spaceballs script. For instance: *Pizza the Hutt, the alien glutton who finds himself delicious.. *Barf, a half-human, half-dog alien hybrid who is his own best friend. *Dark Helmet . . . a villain played by Rick Moranis who has a giant helmet. *Daphne Zuniga’s Vespa is a Druish princess. *The Yoda figure is called Yogurt. *The Schwartz is a mystical power derived from merchandising dollars. And so on. Jokes like these are fine. Some of them even bring a half-smile to my face. But not a one of them is hilarious. Spaceballs has certainly achieved a kind of cultural staying power. Somewhere on this planet, on some channel or network, Spaceballs is playing right now. And by dint of ubiquity, it is one of those so-so motion pictures that we convince ourselves is remarkable. Like the Austin Powers films, it achieves influence just by enduring. But it’s not a comedy that achieves greatness. It’s not even the greatest Mel Brooks comedy. It doesn’t break new comedic ground like, say, Blazing Saddles. There’s nothing in Spaceballs to compare to the Blazing Saddles campfire scene where cowboy after cowboy farts until the joke is beaten into the ground, then they let more farts rip and it becomes funny all over again. Talk about audacious for the times! The Star Wars spoof also lacks a weirdly intense lead character, like Gene Wildern, who turned in such a great performance in Young Frankenstein. Besides, if Brooks had been itching to take on Star Wars, he wouldn’t have waited until four years after Return of the Jedi appeared in theatres. By then, the George Lucas trilogy was already retreating from the public consciousness. (Spoiler for younger readers: Star Wars came back!) It’s certainly not the greatest Star Wars parody, either. In fact, you could argue that the definitive comic spin on Star Wars still has yet to be made. There’s been a long history of attempts. The 1978 short film Hardware Wars was the first try, followed when the internet was in its infancy by the 1997 online short Troops. The slam against Lucas is that he takes his space opera too seriously. Look at the fact he never mocked his own creation the way the Star Trek brain trust does with its animated series Lower Decks. At least Trek’s producers realized the comedy potential of poking fun at themselves. (Granted, Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville beat Lower Decks to the punch by three years) Of course, some crusty Star Wars fans would likely say the Book of Boba Fett itself was an inadvertent self-parody! There’s no shortage of Star Wars material to work with, so how about it, Hollywood? Just mocking The Phantom Menace on its own could inspire so many laughs! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
Free Comic Book Day 2026 Preview
By Dan Brown It lives! Free Comic Book Day will return May 2 at L.A. Mood Comics & Games. I got my hands on some of the freebie sampler comics that will be handed out, so here are a few preliminary thoughts for those preparing to attend the event otherwise known as Geek Christmas. And remember, these mini-comics will be around only while supplies last, so be sure to get to 100 Kellogg Lane early on the first Saturday in May for the best selection! I think the big headline this spring is that many of the FBCD comics have a special focus on comics literacy. What I mean is, they are aimed at young readers and include helpful information about comics lingo, how comics are structured, and so on. The whole point of FCBD is to create new fans while giving existing fans reasons to be pumped about new stories that are coming soon from your favourite publishers. So if you’re the parent of a budding comics fan, you’ll want to pick up these books in particular. I wish I had had this kind of resource when I was eight years old! The Stitch (of Lilo and Stitch fame) booklet, titled Best Food Forever, includes a two-page spread showing how an unfinished comics page goes from rough sketch to line art to a finished inked page. With gorgeous illustrations by Nao Kodaka, the Stitch sampler comes in manga form and also includes a back inside cover that answers the question, “How do you read manga-style?” for those who have never encountered the Japanese storytelling format before. The Marvel comic featuring Spidey and His Amazing Friends gives definitions for industry terms such as panel, word balloon, and caption. It also provides proof that the days of Peter Parker being the only Spider-Man are long gone! The chibi cast includes Spin, Ghost-Spider and Symbie, all different versions of the character that has been around since 1962. The FCBD Pizza and Taco floppy goes an additional step by having the two characters create a comic of their own. “Panels are the boxes that break up a comics page,” one footnote explains. The anthropomorphic food items instruct readers how to fold three pieces of paper to construct a homemade comic. Speaking of young readers, one of the highlights among all of this year’s freebies is the Whole Wide World of Mabel Mulligan. It’s about a fourth-grader who would rather be alone with her stuffy Badger than with so-called friends who call her “weird.” As her summer vacation beckons, Mabel is excited to learn her family plans to renovate their attic, so Mabel can at last have her own room, separate from her tyrant little sister. It’s an enchanting story. Every fandom under the sun is represented this FCBD. There’s one starring He-Man, as well as comics featuring the Avengers, Garfield, the creature from the Alien franchise, Predator, the Planet of the Apes gang, Archie and his friends, Jem and the Holograms, Sonic the Hedgehog, the Power Rangers, Street Fighter, and Megaman. In my eyes, the best of the lot is the one based on the 1980s superhero TV series The Greatest American Hero. Readers with long memories will remember this show about an ordinary guy who gets an alien supersuit but misplaces the instructions. It has gorgeous art from Alper Gelcel with strong writing by Don Handfield. The story picks up when the hero returns to Earth after decades spent off-world. The intuitive panel sense the creative team displays is the strongest I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a slick little book. I hope to see you at L.A. Mood in early May! Don’t forget the store is partnering with the London Children’s Museum, also housed in the historic Kellogg’s factory. The museum promises a “celebration of storytelling and creativity through hands-on activities, special guests, and a special gift from our friends at L.A. Mood Comics & Games!” Plus, as in previous years, there will be sales galore! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
