“Respect My Craft” – Scott Wilson

In this consumer-based industry, it can be easy to forget the years of hard work that the people in the business put in. Behind every panel, it takes a skilled writer, artist, inker and colorist to make the product complete. Behind each scene goes hours of preparation. Hush Comics’ “Respect My Craft” articles will dive into the history of these comic book and pop culture greats that will hopefully give a new perspective on how the men and women behind the pen (or stylus) contribute to the collective awesome-ness of the nerd world, or at least give you a reason to invest in their work.

 

Click on the link to take you to all of our Denver Comic Con “Respect My Craft” articles

 

Name: Scott Wilson

Profession: Actor

Notable Work: The Walking Dead, CSI, The Great Gatsby (1974), In Cold Blood, The X-Files, The Last Samurai

“I didn’t expect to live forever. I will remain a fan of the show even when I’m no longer on it. And [Glen Mazzara] said…it’ll either be episode 11 or 12. Eleven comes, I’m alive. Twelve comes, I’m alive. Thirteen comes, I’m alive. So he says look at you, you’re still alive. I said, ‘Yeah. I’m talking to my savior!’” – Scott Wilson

Chances are the majority of Scott Wilson fans going to see him at DCC this year came to love him as Hershel Greene on The Walking Dead. There was something so warm and familiar about the character that viewers came to love him just as much as the fictional characters he shared the screen with. While that may be the character with the biggest impact he’s played in recent history, Scott Wilson has been captivating audiences since 1967.

Scott Wilson was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1942 and he spent his whole life there unit he hitchhiked out to LA one day on a whim. Wilson was supposed to attend Georgia Southern University and study architecture, but instead met up with some friends in LA and literally drunkenly stumbled into acting. He fell in love with acting and then dedicated five years of his life to studying and perfecting his craft. In 1967, Scott Wilson appeared opposite Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in The Heat of the Night. That same year, he wowed and terrified audiences as Richard Hickok in In Cold Blood. After that, he continued to grab major roles in many films, including The Great Gatsby, for which he earned great critical acclaim, and The Ninth Configuration, which he received a Golden Globe Nomination for. Along with a thriving movie career, Wilson also made several notable appearances on popular TV shows like The Twilight Zone and The X-Files.

There is a noticeable somberness and subtlety to Scott Wilson and all the character’s he plays. He stole the hearts of TWD fans everywhere and even though comic readers knew he had to die, they were still not prepared for his departure. He was the moral compass, and one of the few characters that never let the world he lived in diminish his ability to live, love and forgive. So much more of the love that Hershel encompassed came from the man that Scott Wilson is. He’s been described as wise and extremely kind hearted while also being very serious and thoughtful about every move his character makes – not to mention he’s been married to the same woman for nearly forty years, which is a true statement of genuine character in the Hollywood world.

Scott Wilson’s range is all over the map and he nails every aspect of every character he plays. He can play a horrifying cold-blooded killer as well as a loving and wise father with both performances entrancing his audiences. Wilson has worked steadily in Hollywood since the late sixties, always taking roles that excited him and he respected. He never really became a household name, but he acted for all the right reasons. He finds passion in his work and he loves to investigate and learn the characters he brings to life on the screen. He is one of Hollywood’s great characters actors, which may be the best class to be among.

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None of the media in this article belongs to Hush Comics; it all belongs to their respective properties.

The Walking Dead Review “Us” S4E15

Eugene leads into this episode entitled “US” with a great quotable. “That there is a video game worth the pre-order.” Those of us that pre-ordered The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct can disagree. We find Abraham, Tara, Eugene,  Rosita, and Glenn on the road. Abraham is focused on completing his mission to get Eugene to Washington. Glenn is focused solely on finding Maggie. Once he finds her note on a TERMINUS sign, he takes off running. 

Daryl is still trying to fit in with Joe’s band of roughnecks. He is a wolf amongst a pack of dogs. After tracking a rabbit  for an entire morning, Len shoots the cottontail before Daryl and claims it as his own. The dispute quickly escalates as Len antagonizes Daryl about losing Beth. Joe intermediates the dispute and lays out the law of the group before Daryl has an opportunity to plunge his knife into Len’s chest.  “I laid out some rules to keep things from going Darwin every couple of hours.” Who knew that rednecks had such a large vocabulary? Just a quick comic book reference, there is one other guy who loves rules, and his name is Negan. However, Joe is definitely no Negan; he likely just represents the need for humans to keep rules to avoid plunging into mass chaos.

Carl and Michonne are bonding by walking the train tracks Stand By Me style. They share a tender moment after Michonne loses a bet, and gives Carl one of the few candy bars she has left.  Our band of Walker killers seems to force the kumbayah feel a little, but we are see them begin to normalize after the trauma of losing everyone at the prison. The whole scene with Rick, Carl and Michonne feels like a cheap novelty. After missing them in the previous three episodes, it really sucked to see our main protagonist as nothing more than a plot piece.

Abraham has the one-liner of the entire show, “I don’t give a monkey’s left nut!” To persuade Abraham to keep going, Glenn offers to give Eugene the riot gear in exchange for their help; let me just say that Glenn + riot gear = badass, but Eugene + riot gear = fifty more pounds of dumbass. Abraham’s group decides to split from Glenn and Tara when they come to a railroad tunnel that is infested with walkers. Glenn will stop at nothing to save Maggie, so he ventures in with Tara. Tara confesses her part in storming the prison to Glenn. Glenn has already forgiven her and is ready to move past what happened with The Governor.

Len is clearly over-compensating for the size of his bow. After setting up camp in a garage, Joe’s group lays claim to cars and goods, Daryl, in an act of defiance doesn’t lay claim to anything. Len accuses Daryl of stealing from him, when confronted he is outed as a liar and pays Joe’s price. He is beaten to death. Daryl sheds no tears and the group hits the road again.

While Rosita is driving, Eugene decides to trick her into doubling back for Glenn. When they reach the other side of the tunnel they are met with a big surprise. Glenn and Tara find themselves stuck between rocks filled with Walkers, and a hard place. When facing this wall of Walkers trapped beneath the fallen tunnel, Tara gets her leg caught underneath rubble and Glenn refuses to leave her. Regardless of the circumstances he won’t compromise his morality; he is no Shane. Walkers swarm the two of them, and the situation looks hopeless when, “Blam, Blam, Blam,” Maggie to the rescue, along with Sasha, Bob, Abraham, Eugene and Rosita. They make short work of the Walkers and we get the reunion we have all been waiting for.  Glenn quickly makes up a story about finding Tara on the road to protect her from Maggie. If Maggie knew that she was partly responsible for Herschel’s beheading, there may be more than a “Call Tyrone” domestic dispute.

At the end of the episode we find out that Joe’s group is tracking Rick because of the encounter at the house in “Claimed,” where Tony (the Chuck D lookin’ guy) spots Rick. We are unsure if Daryl knows this, but there are enough clues to assume so. Is Daryl using Joe’s group to find his lost friend’s?

Maggie and Glenn’s group combine forces and decide to trek forward to TERMINUS. The name TERMINUS is derived from the Western and Atlantic Railroad  through Georgia in1836. The area was named as the end point to the railroad. It was renamed, Atlanta, in 1847.  Our survivors arrive at the “sanctuary” and find a hippie commune. The gates are not locked, there are flowers growing everywhere, and oh snap! Is that Star Trek The Next Generation’s Tasha Yar? I mean, is that Denise Crosby? Things can only get weird from here on. TERMINUS has to be a trap. It seems too good to be true.

Hush Comics gives “Us” a C for it’s lackluster… everything. The groups coming together for some reason or another in Terminus, but everything leading up to that point felt forced, illogical and uncharacteristic. Sure, there’s certain lesbian tension between Rosita and Tara, and yeah, there are a lot of skeletons that need to come out of the closet, not to mention Glenn and Maggie’s heart-felt reunion. As disappointed as we were, the ends kind of justify the means here. The Season 4 finale is gonna end on a crazy note. We predict that Daryl will have to kill Tony to protect Rick. Maybe Terminus really is the safe haven it claims to be and the war they bring to the doorstep puts them all in deep doo doo. Maybe Beth will show up on a dinner plate, where Terminus is full of cannibals. We do know there’s no gray area here as the Survivors reach the literal “end of the road.”

All media credited to AMC Television and Image Comics

Written by John Soweto

The Walking Dead Review “The Grove” S4E14

“The Grove” follows a similar formula to the last few episodes; where we slowly build a journey for each of the groups that have split after the mid-season finale. It’s served a good purpose of individually developing the characters, but it hasn’t pushed the story along at all; you’ve either loved the past six episodes or you hate them. It’s a style that’s heavily popularized Game of Thrones, where multiple parties push towards an inevitability (Terminus/Sanctuary in TWD‘s case), but the journey there is what drives the inching story.

Starting out the episode is a lot of small talk: Tyreese’s cut on his arm, Lizzie playing I Spy, and a lot of commentary about how Mika doesn’t have a “mean bone in her body.” We even get a bit of comedic relief by watching a walker fall down. Really though, this week’s episode of The Walking Dead stank of death from the moment it started. We join our makeshift Brady Bunch (Tyreese, Carol, Lizzie and Mika) as they settle down for a while inside of a house right off the tracks to catch their breath. Yeah, that worked out greeeeat, guys.

To spoil or not to spoil…. ugh such a tough decision. SPOILERS, it is! We’re gonna toot our own horn here, as we called the dramatic outcome of this episode a month ago. Lizzie has just become such a handful emotionally to deal with, and the resurgence of Carol and her “do what has to be done” attitude spelled certain doom for Lizzie. After she almost murdered baby Judith in “Inmates,” there are so many things that foreshadow the death of Lizzie and Mika. Hindsight is 20/20, but here are a list of the times, in this episode alone, that spelled R-E-D-R-U-M for Mika:

• Lizzie, AKA Son of Sam, says she can hear the walkers talking to her. From that line alone, it was obvious she was going to start killing bigger things than rats and little baby bunnies.
• The death stare that Lizzie bestows upon Mika when she mentions Lizzie’s tolerance for dead rabbits.
• Lizzie plays tag with a walker, hysterically threatens Carol when she kills the walker, and then calmly tells Carol “she knows what [she] has to do now.” Now I’m no therapist, but I can read between the lines enough to know that Lizzie was in trouble. Mother of the Year candidate Lori Grimes would have known. Just sayin.
• The real moment we knew Mika was a goner was the when she decided to tell Carol that she needs to stay a good person, and that she feels bas for the people who try to kill her. It’s an ideal that has befell Dale and Herschel before her – thus dubbing it the Summer Santa Syndrome.

Even baked pecans cannot quell Lizzie’s bloodlust. Her twisted, constipated mind believed that walkers were people inside. And she went to abhorrent measures to make her point. What I love about the scene – sorry, that is a poor choice of words; there is nothing satisfying about the scene… what I appreciate about the scene is how well it mirrored the scene in the comics books. Aside from the Michonne/Governor scenes, these were the most horrifying pages in the entire series. In issue #61, brothers Ben & Billy were in a similar situation – they had lost their father (Lizzie and Mika lost their father, Ryan, in “Infected“), had been adopted by Dale and Andrea, and had ended with Ben standing over Billy’s massacred body.

The reaction that Carol and Tyreese have is much different from the book, and all the more powerful because of it. The comic book parents, Dale and Andrea, have no idea how to deal with the slaughter, sheltering Ben from the rest of the group (not well enough). However, the show takes the most difficult road possible, and “does what has to be done.” It’s an especially strong move seeing as Tyreese is standing nearby, holding a baby and watching on as Carol did the deed. The actual mercy-kill is one of the most saddening things in the whole series. The complete Of Mice and Men inspired execution of Lizzie was a poetic ending for a misunderstood, but dangerous, character.

Just look at the flowers, Lennie!

The conversation between Tyreese and Carol in the woods was a poignant moment in the episode.  While it is a nice sentiment that one day this will all be over, Tyreese sees the it for what it is.  The world is haunted, and there is nothing they can do to change that.  The walkers will be there when they die.  And it will be hard to forget all the things people did and had to do in order to survive.  It was an appropriate reflective moment about survival and afterlife for the show.

Carol has grown more than any other character in the series – from battered wife to emotional rock. Overwhelmed with it all, she even decides to tell Tyreese the truth about Karen and David. She slides Tyreese the pistol and tells him to “do what he’s gotta do” – it’s kind of a theme here. Tyreese, of course, forgives her. They head off together down the tracks and back on the route to Terminus. This was definitely a growing issue for Carol, and hopefully whoever left the Peletier bandwagon in the mid-season can hop back on.

“You look at the flowers, you risk your life” – Herschel’s ghost

The loss of Mika hit extra hard, as she had been indirectly and directly compared to Sophia throughout the fourth season. She is now 0/3 in keeping children alive, so I’m hoping this brings out a badass-ness in Carol we haven’t gotten to see in some time. Judith has Tyreese and Carol, but who will take Griselda Gunderson? Doesn’t this world already have enough orphaned dolls?

Griselda Gunderson – forgotten victim of the zombie apocalypse

Hush Comics gives “The Grove” a solid A. The emotional maturation of Carol and Tyreese gives Walking Dead fans something to chew on until we all reach Terminus in the finale (I mean, what else could the finale be alluding to?). Where previous episodes have straddled the line between filler and fundamental development, “The Grove” remains safely on the correct side. The Walking Dead also continues to push the envelope with sick new ways to show off walkers, this week with walkers that have been char-broiled from the house fire (we can only assume it’s the same house that Bethyl set ablaze in “Still“). With only two episodes left, we will turn our attention to “Us” next week. Just like in the first half of Season 4, I’m fearing that they will speed up everything, sacrificing for a logically consistent finale. We’re optimistic, though, that the road to Terminus will keep us on our toes.

All Walking Dead media credited to AMC Television.

Photo from Of Mice and Men film credited to MGM Studios.

written by Sherif Elkhatib