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VOL. 46 | NO. 28 | NOVEMBER 11-24, 2026
News & Views
EDITORIAL Editor in Chief - Steve Neavling
Feedback ............................. 10
ADVERTISING Advertising Executive - Jessica Smith
Cover Story Motor City Comic Con ........ 15
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NEWS & VIEWS Feedback Right-wingers lose their shit over Democrats trouncing Republicans at the polls in Michigan. “lol - the libtards will riot when the election is not certifiable - it was a trap retards. Enjoy the show.” – @faull_tim, X “So you’re saying electing a terrorist that hates everyone is rejecting hate. You can’t make this retarted shit up.” – @CapronStac78893, X “Welcome to michiganistan.” – Mike Forcum, Facebook “And they opened the door to the entire breakdown of our society and a Islamic takeover.” – Myke ForRestt, Facebook “Hey Metro times go fuck yourself!
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Anybody affiliated with those @TheDemocrats is trash and garbage and you want to make excuses for those losers … I think we should take it to the street.” – @RockinRevArt, X “So why hasn’t gas gone down?” – @Brian M Zerkel, Facebook “The left doing what it does. Continuing the great divide!!!.” – @purveyor_of_fire, Instagram “That makes no sense. Real Americans love this Country and want the best for everyone. What American Patriots detest are those who are trying to destroy this great Nation.” – @MarkLyo22328519, X “The Dems are the party of hate. You blue fucks have no idea what just woke up in this country.” – @jayjam1981, X Have an opinion? Sound off: tips@detroitmetrotimes.com.
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by steve neavling
Motor City Comic Con
peared from Comic Con. The guest list includes Jim Starlin, who helped create Marvel characters including Thanos, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, and Shang-Chi; Detroit artist Arvell Jones; Harley Quinn writer Jimmy Palmiotti; and dozens of other writers, illustrators, and creators. Globke says organizers try to mix bigger names with smaller artists, writers, pencilers, and inkers rather than treating the comic side of the convention as an afterthought. But for a lot of people, Comic Con has become as much a social event as anything else. Globke says she knows fans who “only see each other at our show every six months,” after forming friendships over the same movie, character, comic, or game. “As the fandoms expand, everybody gets to meet new people,” she says. For many longtime fans, Comic Con is now something they share with their children. Globke recently met a father who was buying admission tickets and told her he had been bringing his children to Motor City Comic Con since they were young enough to get in free. They’re adults now, and they’re still going together. “People start going and they grow up and they start bringing their kids,” she says. Cosplay has developed its own scene within the convention. “The cosplay community has its own community within Comic Con,” Globke says. Fans sometimes arrive dressed as a character, then get the chance to meet the actor
has something for every kind of nerd The long-running convention returns to Novi with actors, comic creators, wrestlers, gamers, cosplayers, and decades of fandom under one roof.
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otor City Comic Con still has plenty of comic books. It also has Jesse Pinkman, President Bartlet, Starlight from The Boys, Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Michael Myers, the Steiner Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog voice actors, video game tournaments, cosplay contests, movie screenings, and too many collectibles to mention. Since it launched in 1989, the convention has exploded in popularity by widening its focus from comic books to the much larger world of pop culture. Motor City Comic Con returns Nov. 13-15 to the Vibe Credit Union Showplace in Novi with one of its broadest lineups yet, bringing together actors, comic creators, wrestlers, voice performers, gamers, cosplayers, artists, vendors, and fans whose interests stretch far beyond traditional superhero comics. “I think that what has really changed now is we’ve kind of expanded our audience into all things pop culture,” says Abby Globke, show manager for Motor City Comic Con. “Of course, we still have a comic book presence at the show, and we still bring in invited comic guests, and they do panels and that kind of thing, but we’ve expanded to encompass all things pop culture.” Just look at this year’s celebrity lineup. Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad appears Saturday, while West Wing fans get Martin Sheen and Richard Schiff. Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, and Nathan Mitchell represent The Boys, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans can meet James Marsters and Juliet Landau. There’s also Chad Michael Murray and
James Lafferty from One Tree Hill, actors from Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, Walking Dead cast members, horror actors including James Jude Courtney, and University of Michigan wrestling legends Rick and Scott Steiner. Globke says organizers try to balance what’s popular now with shows and movies that have held onto devoted fans for years. “We look at what fandoms are really popular or what shows kind of have a legacy following,” she says, pointing to The West Wing as an example of a series that has been off the air for years but still has a strong following. Newer shows such as The Boys bring another generation of fans. Comic books, meanwhile, haven’t disap-
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by steve neavling who played that character. Globke recalls one particularly elaborate Halo costume, complete with a large armored suit and a glowing blue sword. “People build some really elaborate stuff,” she says. And you don’t have to spend the weekend waiting in autograph lines. This year’s convention includes screenings of Space Jam and It, with cast members participating in panels at Emagine Novi before the films. There are also video game tournaments throughout the weekend, cosplay contests for adults and kids, and a children’s area with activities such as LEGO Pinewood Derby-style racing and slime-making with the Ghostbusters. The screenings offer another kind of nostalgia. For a movie like Space Jam, released in 1996, some younger fans have never seen it in a theater, while older ones may not have watched it on a big screen in decades. Globke says franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, and Star Trek seem to endure regardless of what else is popular, while television shows such as One Tree Hill continue attracting loyal fans years after they ended. Meeting someone connected to one of those shows or movies can make the relationship with it feel different, she says. “It makes whatever that person is in feel a little bit more real,” Globke says. “It kind of gives you a personal connection to that show.” The celebrity suddenly becomes a person standing in front of you instead of someone who has always existed on the other side of a screen. “It kind of takes that wall down,” she says. That may also explain why a convention filled with wildly different fandoms works at all. People may arrive for completely different reasons, but nearly everyone has something they’re passionate about. “Everybody at Comic Con is nerding out about something,” she says. And chances are, someone else there is nerding out about the exact same thing. “You will never be the only person who likes something at Comic Con,” Globke says. “There will always be somebody else there who likes the same thing that you like.” More information and the full schedule are at motorcitycomiccon.com. Motor City Comic Con runs Friday, Nov. 13, through Sunday, Nov. 15, at the Vibe Credit Union Showplace, 46100 Grand River Ave. in Novi. The convention runs noon-7 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
The man behind
Michael Myers
understands fear
James Jude Courtney talks trauma, the nervous system, acting, and why horror can bring people together before his Motor City Comic Con appearance. James Jude Courtney, who portrayed Michael Myers in 2018’s Halloween, Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends, will appear on all three days of Motor City Comic Con, Nov. 13-15, at the Vibe Credit Union Showplace in Novi.
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ames Jude Courtney has spent years frightening people. He’s also spent much of his life trying to understand fear, trauma, and the way the body carries both. Courtney is the 6-foot-3 actor and stuntman who disappeared behind Michael Myers’ expressionless, ghostly white mask in 2018’s Halloween, then returned for Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. Next week, he’ll trade the streets of Haddonfield for Novi, where he’s appearing all three days of Motor City Comic Con, running Nov. 13-15 at the Vibe Credit Union Showplace. In a nearly hourlong interview with Metro Times, Courtney spoke with remarkable fluency about fear, trauma, the nervous system, and human behavior, explaining how that knowledge has helped shape his decades-long acting career. Courtney’s approach to Michael Myers, for example, goes far beyond figuring out how to walk slowly and look terrifying while holding a kitchen knife. He talks about the nervous system. The way trauma can linger in the body. The psychology of fear. Why people willingly pay to be scared. Why firefighters, paramedics, combat veterans, and emergency room doctors seem drawn to horror movies. And why understanding all of that has made him a better actor. For the 69-year-old Courtney, those subjects are central to his acting. Michael Myers, after all, gives an actor almost nothing conventional to work with. “As an actor, you have three vehicles: you have your body, you have your face, you have your voice,” Courtney tells Metro Times. Put on the mask and stop talking, he explains, and two of those three disappear. “You’ve just got to be in your truth constantly,” he explains. “It’s deep, man. It’s deep.” Courtney doesn’t reduce Michael to a one-di-
mensional killer. What scares us about him, he believes, is that we can’t figure him out. “I think it’s the unknowable,” Courtney says. “You never see his eyes. You don’t know what’s going on there. There is no reason for what he’s doing.” Michael is terrifying because he’s “unknowable” and “unstoppable,” Courtney says. He doesn’t need to sprint after you. He doesn’t need to explain himself. He just keeps walking. And killing. And walking. Courtney connects that to one of those universal nightmares in which you’re running as hard as you can, but somehow you can’t escape. “Have we all had those dreams, though, where we’re running and we can’t get away?” he says. “It’s in our psyche. It’s in human experience.”
Finding Michael without imitating him When Courtney was preparing to play Michael in David Gordon Green’s 2018 sequel to John Carpenter’s original Halloween, he faced an obvious problem. Nick Castle had already created one of the most recognizable physical performances in horror history in the 1978 film. Courtney needed to make audiences believe this was the same Michael Myers 40 years later without spending the movie doing an impression of another actor. So he watched the original. Once. Courtney says an old piece of acting advice taught him that truly emulating someone doesn’t mean copying the way the person walks or talks. The trick is figuring out something deeper about them, then allowing the physical behavior to follow. “I just kept reaching into what Nick created,” Courtney says. Then he spotted a brief moment in the original film, with Castle’s Michael walking through a backyard. “I went, ‘I got it,’” he says. After that, Courtney says, he stopped study-
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ing the walk. “I didn’t practice my walk,” he says. Instead, he took what Castle had created and allowed it to be “filtered through my 40 more years of life and experience.” Courtney’s background helped. He had spent decades acting, performing stunts, studying martial arts, knife fighting, and learning how people move when violence isn’t pretend. Courtney also had an unusual source of inspiration for Michael’s efficiency. Years before Halloween, he lived for about six months with a former mob hitman whose life story Courtney was trying to turn into a movie, and they talked about “the methods of killing. The lesson stuck. Courtney says the window killing in 2018’s Halloween remains one of his favorites partly because it reflects what he learned: Get in, do it, disappear.
Danny McBride understood the scare Courtney also has high praise for the somewhat unlikely team that helped resurrect Michael: Green and Danny McBride. McBride was best known for comedy when it was announced that he would co-write a new Halloween movie. But to Courtney, comedy and horror aren’t nearly as distant as they appear. Great comedians, he says, tend to be unusually perceptive observers of human behavior. McBride particularly impressed him. Courtney describes him as quiet, someone who isn’t fighting to be the funniest person in the room. But when McBride speaks, “he just nails it.” Courtney noticed the same instinct in the screenplay, particularly in the way McBride and Green would let the audience relax before attacking them again. One of the first things Courtney told McBride was how much he loved the construction of the scares. “You would relieve the tension,” he recalls telling him. “Setups are what comedy is all about, isn’t it?”
The journalism school graduate behind the mask Courtney’s analytical approach to acting may make more sense when you learn what he studied before heading to Hollywood. Journalism. Courtney graduated from the University of South Carolina’s journalism school in 1981. He had wanted to make movies since childhood but didn’t see film school as a realistic option. Journalism appealed to him for another reason. He saw similarities between reporting and filmmaking. “We’re looking for truth,” he says. Journalism taught him to look beyond what someone was telling him. Who owns the publication? What does a source want from the story? What lies beneath the obvious narrative? “Our job is to go deeper than just the story,” Courtney says. “As a filmmaker, we’re looking for that truth.” It’s a revealing way to understand Courtney’s
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approach to Michael Myers. He didn’t want to copy the walk. He wanted to figure out what was underneath it. What happens to your body when you become Michael Myers? Courtney’s interest in fear extends well beyond movie technique. He has spent years examining his own trauma through therapy and other forms of self-exploration, partly because he believes understanding himself makes him a better actor. That becomes especially important when the job requires inhabiting someone as violent as Michael Myers. Courtney says there are moments when an actor’s body responds to what’s happening in a scene even though the rational mind knows none of it is real. Asked whether he has to go somewhere dark to play Michael, Courtney doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah,” he says. How does he come back? “I breathe it in, and then I breathe it out.” At least, that was the intention. Courtney says he would consciously put the character down at the end of a shooting day and again when production wrapped. It wasn’t until the trilogy was over that he realized some of it had stayed with him. “I didn’t really realize until it was all over that I was still carrying a piece of it,” he says. Courtney says somatic therapy and other therapeutic work helped him recognize trauma in his own life that he hadn’t previously understood as trauma. That self-examination serves two purposes, he says: living a happier life and becoming a better artist. Courtney is also fascinated with why human beings deliberately seek out fear when they know they’re safe. A study of people going through a haunted attraction found that enjoyment seemed to peak at a “just right” level of fear. Another study published this year followed hundreds of people through a high-intensity haunted-house experience and found their heart rates became synchronized during parts of the experience, particularly among people who were socially close. A 2021 study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that horror fans reported greater psychological resilience during the crisis. Courtney has developed his own theory by meeting the people who love Michael Myers.
‘I was not prepared for the love ’ Courtney has met countless fans since becoming Michael. What struck him wasn’t how scared they were. It was how many seemed to find something comforting in horror. He says he regularly meets firefighters, EMTs, police officers, ER doctors, and combat veterans who are horror fans. Some veterans, he says, have told him they will return from combat experiences and watch frightening movies. Courtney began wondering whether voluntarily entering a frightening but safe environment gives
james jude courtney
Courtesy photo
people a way to confront difficult emotions on their own terms. “There’s something going on there,” he says. He also quickly discovered that playing one of cinema’s great killing machines inspires an extraordinary amount of affection. “I was not prepared for the love,” Courtney says. Some encounters became much heavier than the autograph-and-selfie routine he expected. Fans have told him, “You saved me from suicide.” Initially, he didn’t know what to make of that. But the more people he met, the more he became convinced that horror can provide something beyond entertainment. It’s an outlet, a community, and, for some people, a way of processing experiences they may not otherwise know how to talk about. That helps explain why Courtney talks about fan conventions with so much enthusiasm. For a weekend, people who might otherwise have almost nothing in common gather because they love the same strange things. At Motor City Comic Con, someone dressed as Michael Myers might find themselves geeking out with a Sonic the Hedgehog fan. It’s a place where people can forget about political, racial, and religious divisions. “Everything falls away,” Courtney says. “There we are having a shared experience with something we have a passion for.” That’s why Courtney tries not to turn his convention table into an assembly line. He makes a point of looking at people. “I realize that most human beings don’t feel seen,” he says. “I know what it feels like not to feel seen.” So even if he has only a few minutes with someone, Courtney wants the person standing across the table to know he’s there with them. “I see you,” he says. “I only see you for a few minutes here, man, but I want you to know I see you.” It’s an unexpectedly tender philosophy from a guy whose most famous character hides his eyes behind a horrifying mask. Maybe that contradiction isn’t really a contradiction at all. Courtney has spent years trying to understand what frightens people. Now he seems just as interested in what brings them back together.
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WEED
IN LOVING MEMORY OF OUR DEPARTED OWNER, DANNY OVERSTREET, WE EXTEND A SPECIAL VETERANS DAY SALUTE TO THOSE WHO HAVE SERVED OUR COUNTRY. YOU ARE ALWAYS WELCOME HERE.
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Metro Times is launching its first cannabis week.
SHUTTERSTOCK
Meet the first brands joining Metro Times Cannabis Week From pungent flower and flavorful live rosin to cannabis-infused drinks, the inaugural event puts quality first. By Steve Neavling Michigan has no shortage of weed. The trick is finding the best cannabis in an industry inundated with mass-produced mids. A flashy bag and a big THC number don’t translate to quality. The difference often comes down to the people growing it, the genetics they choose, and the care they put into getting the finished product onto dispensary shelves. That’s the idea behind the inaugural Metro Times Cannabis Week, which runs Nov. 16-22. We want to introduce consumers to some of the best cannabis in
Michigan, with big discounts that make it easier to try something new. Our first group of participating brands includes some of our favorites in Michigan: Tip Top Crop, Wojo, Utopia Gardens, Hytek, Local Grove, One Garden, and Emerald Canning, the company behind Armada Beverages, Mary Jones, and Highly Casual in Michigan. Each will offer specials during the event, and buying those featured products earns consumers points toward rewards from Metro Times. We’ll announce more participants and details next week.
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MUSIC
Pretty Island started as a solo project.
JOSHUA BERRY
Pretty Island found each other at the right time
The Detroit trio turned writer’s block, heartbreak, and friendship into a 14-song debut album. By Jeff Milo
“It’s going to be a band…” Linda Ann Jordan said this out loud two years ago, before she’d even asked anyone else to join Pretty Island. And this isn’t the first time she’s manifested a band. The first sprang out of carefree experimentation more than a decade ago and formed mostly out of the urgency of a surprise deadline, but this time around, there’s a more distinctive surge of intentionality – maybe even a yearning – to connect, and to share. And, most definitely, to harmonize. Pretty Island started as a solo project for the Detroit-based singer/songwriter after “...a real dry spell of writing music,” Jordan said. “I had just moved into my own house, by myself, after the end of a six-year relationship and found myself just…alone! Kind of, like, on an island… But, once I had my own space, the songs just started coming again. They just poured out of me pretty quickly.” Lauren Milia, meanwhile, had met Jordan several years earlier and had similarly felt like she was fighting through a prolonged writer’s block. She’d been playing music all her life, first viola in school and then guitar as she got older. “I mostly played quietly in my room,” she said, “so no one could hear, and wrote sad songs about unrequited love…” After a few stints in some bands and some wry songs, including one about a bong, Milia had mostly stepped back from music and
started a family. “It wasn’t until I started playing with Jordan in Pretty Island,” she said, “that, somehow, I felt like I could write again.” “(Milia) started showing up to our practices with a new song every time,” Jordan exclaimed. “Then I was like: well, I better keep writing more, TOO!” Then Linda checked in with an old friend and former collaborator, the talented multi-instrumentalist and singer Dina Bankole, who currently plays in “quite a few” other bands, such as Phased Out. The pair had worked together in the early 2010s, booking and performing for music festivals like Mittenfest and events for the Seraphine Collective, back when Bankole was drumming for the indie-pop/punk trio Casual Sweetheart. “I’m always looking for opportunities to do and learn new things on drums and guitar,” said Bankole, “especially as I’m self-taught on both. I find that just trying things out and jamming is a fun way for me to naturally acquire new techniques.” “It all fell together very naturally, after that…” Linda said.
Melody is simple; never contrived Jangly, bittersweet, and super melodic. Pretty Island blend lyrics that are wistful and acerbic with warm major keys and soaring harmonies – you’d swear it
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was almost breezy until that one turn of phrase kinda bites you. “Sunday,” one of their earliest songs, has a lilting, hypnotic sway that grew out of Jordan just strumming and vocalizing alone at home, but you can hear and feel how it’s given radiance by Milia’s buoyant bass peeking over the tune’s plaintive shoulders and beckons it along over Bankole’s shuffling beats and emphatic cymbal raps. “I love that dichotomy of having really cutting lyrics, but it’s still a song you can bop to,” Jordan said. “Something I love so much about music is the way that the melody enhances the lyrics and vice versa,” said Milia, “and how they can both hit deeper, sometimes.” “Musically,” Bankole said, “(Jordan and Milia) are quite different, but lyrically they both have this incredible ability to write brilliant love-unlove songs.” Jordan and Milia praised Bankole’s versatility and easygoingness, but as she put it, “I always want to mix things up,” adding, “I appreciate the different genres that they gravitate towards, from Lauren’s 90s cool to Linda’s twang. I’m grateful they allow me to add my harmony parts and make suggestions from behind the kit. They’re both amazing songwriters!” Whereas Milia will refer to Bankole as ‘the pro’ and Jordan will concur that their drummer ‘keeps them honest…,’ there’s also a surplus of self-deprecating modesty amongst them; thus, these healthy validations tend to pass around them like a hot potato, which then just doubles the potency of their endearing charm as a band.
Too Hard to Let Myself Down Though they claim that most of their practice sessions can devolve into gossip sessions and indulgences of saké, the trio’s seriously gotten down to business – a drive that was no doubt nurtured by how quickly their chemistry congealed, as people first and song makers second. After just 18 months, they already have a packed 14-song debut album ready to go, titled I Could Love You, (pressed at Third Man Records, to boot,) and capped off by a release party at Paris Bar on the Friday after Thanksgiving. They recorded with Kate Derringer (of Shadow Show) at her loft space studio in Eastpointe, located above an Italian restaurant. “It was so fun,” Jordan said, “but also I had never recorded at this level before, with this much precision. I also realized how much goes into making a big product like this, and how much of a group project it really is, not just the members of our band contributing our parts and opinions, but also (Derringer) recording us, and then Fred Thomas, who’s been a huge inspiration to me, was excited to mix it, and our friend (Allison Vince) made this beautiful painting for the cover art.”
“I feel like I just completed a huge project,” Milia said, reaching for the quickest analogy, as she’s also been balancing graduate school with Pretty Island. “Only, the presenting isn’t as scary as when I do it at school.” While Bankole has a longer local band résumé and touring experiences, this is, comparatively speaking, the biggest musical project that Milia’s been a part of, and brings personal and sentimental gravity for Jordan, since it all started with her. Perhaps it’s fate that the right conditions of mutual encouragement could finally manifest through the three of them joining forces. “I think it’s because we have a lot of love for and trust in each other,” Bankole said. “Serendipitously, we’re aligned in our goals and willingness to try new things and take risks.” But that also doesn’t mean there isn’t added urgency to this big moment. “I wanted to get all the songs we possibly could onto the album because it feels like a particular snapshot in time,” Jordan said. “Some people suggested saving a few for the next one, but I’m like we don’t know when the next one is gonna happen…I want the next one to happen, of course, but I was adamant about getting them on there. Because it just seemed like all 14 of these songs just fit together in this era; that they kinda belonged together.” And maybe that’s also part of the spark for this band: that it seemed like these three had always belonged together. And now, here we are. Pretty Island - Album Release Party: I Could Love You - Fri., Nov. 27 at Paris Bar - 8pm
Upcoming Shows Frontier Ruckus Sat., Nov. 14 at the Magic Bag w/ Samantha Cain and Dick Texas: Frontier Ruckus is a prolific indie-Americana ensemble, and they’re reuniting with longtime member Anna Burch for this special night.
ADULT. Sat., Nov. 21 at El Club w/A Place to Bury Strangers: The epic dancepunk/darkwave duo continues releasing amazing and haunting electronic haunts and putting on sense-stretching performances. Don’t miss it.
Jill Jack Sat., Nov. 21 at The Garden Theatre: The veteran Americana-rock singer/songwriter celebrates the release of her latest album, Wildflower.
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