Bill Roundy Summarizes Christmas

Buttersnatch Preview #2

The next several pages of Lord Buttersnatch's Fairy Detective Troop are up. I'm calling this a preview since we're not yet into the meat of the story, but Adrien has some amazingly lovely artwork, depicting the crumbling fairy capital of Arcadia City.

New material (Act I, scene I) here

or

Start at the beginning

I Love Dinosaur Comics

Zombies v. Vampires

The Economy

Still trying to figure out what happened to the economy?

This American Life told it best here and especially here.

But for those of you who prefer everything in the form of crudely drawn comics, then have I got the powerpoint slide show for you.

A Softer World

I forget about A Softer World for a couple months and then I catch up and I wonder how I ever let it go. It manages to channel the bleakest sense of humor of anything I've ever seen. It's not dark, not morbid, but bleak, mournful, resigned. It's like the soldiers in the trench, cracking jokes about catching crabs. The world is ending and the meaninglessness of it all is laid bare, so you might as well fart.





















As much as I hate it, don't neglect the alt text.

Robin in the Rye

I don't know why this exists, but it pleases me greatly.

Who's Feeding Shawn, December 2008

I'm talking rss and lj feeds, of course. I eat food because of New Jersey medical schools.

Hold the Reset Button, Arlo and Janis, A Softer World, Devil's Panties, Freak Angels, Garfield Minus Garfield, We the Robots, Comic Foundry (r.i.p.), Myriad Issues, Rocketship, The Beat, Warren Ellis, act_i_vate, Doonesbury, Sinfest, Webcomics, Achewood, Calvin and Hobbes, Cat and Girl, Dinosaur Comics, Official Gaiman, Perry Bible Fellowship, Questionable Content, Something Positive, Unshelved, Wondermark, xkcd, and I get email updates (like a savage beast) from The Amazing Adventures of Bill

More on comics v. television

Tucker Stone has a few ideas about using the creative process behind television as a model for comics. I'd argue that the problem he presents has a lot more to with DC's editorial decisions than comics as a whole, but it's worth a read.

Also, someday soon I'll finally do the post bitching about DC's editorial decisions.

http://www.comixology.com/articles/162/Family-Meeting

Gaiman Explains Things Well

If you're out of the loop on comics in legal news, then you may have missed the arrest of Christopher Handley. The case is unique because he's not a retailer nor an artist, but a collector jailed because he was found to own materials considered distasteful. The CBLDF is acting as special consultant, but the case is especially tricky to defend because the art contains pornographic images of children and the material described is obscene by virtually all standards of decency. It's the kind of case that has stalwart first amendment advocates asking, "Is this worth defending?"

The answer, of course, is that the question is never,"Is this obscene?" but always,"Why do we have the first amendment?"

I'd go on, but really Neil Gaiman explains why we must "defend the indefensible" better than I ever could. He touches upon the history of censorship (particularly in relation to comics). It's a moving piece and I highly recommend you take a few minutes to read it.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html

A Rant About the Place of Comics in This Our Modern World

As I'm quick to point out, I didn't grow up on comics and until I was involved with the direct market, I never went into a comics store on a Wednesday. So the summer blockbuster "events" of Final Crisis and Secret Invasion came alongside my first exposure to reading new material as it came out.

Well, I've now been out of the direct market for three months and I'm behind on virtually everything I'd been reading except Final Crisis. And my reaction at this point isn't "Good goddess, I need to catch up." It's "damn, Secret Invasion is still dragging out?"

This isn't about cost- I can't even drag my ass to websites to download issues. And you might say quality is to blame, but I used to read them duly and very happily when they were at arm's length.

The real hurdles my interest faces are effort and amount of story. And I think this speaks to something larger underlying the industry and the direct market.

Television serves as an easy analogous comparison to comics, because it's similarly serialized with small chunks of story adding up to a larger narrative. But comics is a niche market, whereas television is big business. What gives?

Now, remember, television and the modern comic book both come out of the 20th century. For decades comic sales were on the magnitude of millions of copies. The explosion of superhero films shows it isn't a matter of interest in the material. People will pay money to see spandex-clad figures punch each other. But Heroes garners 13 million viewers per episode, while Secret Invasion tops charts at 1% of that number.

Well, television is accessible to me at any moment. I don't need to head out to the comics shop and hand anyone money. Hell, with VCRs, TiVo, and streaming video online, I don't even need to plan ahead when I'm going to watch. I'll point out that my alma mater, Midtown Comics, is doing well selling mail order weekly and bi-weekly subscriptions. And Marvel is putting toes in the water towards online distribution. So I think there are fixes to the issues of effort.

But (and this is the "but" I was really building towards), with television, each week I get an entire story or at least a satisfying narrative unit where themes develop and something resolves. Each week. Whole story. With comics, each month I get a scene. For taking time after work to head to a store, shell out $4, I get a snippet of story. 22 pages isn't even 22 minutes.

I think it's no wonder where the direct market stands today: teetering slowly back and forth with the explicit aim of some publishers (and merely the aspiration of others) to serve as an IP farm, selling their characters up the chain to more popular and profitable media. And who is buying comics: the fanchildren who will see their favorite characters through any storm. I don't mean to be dismissive of this group: they're ones with a lot of patience and a lot of interest. And the current strategy of the Big Two is to bleed these loyalists dry: tying together as many of their books as they can and forcing fans to follow a maximum number of titles.

I don't mean to act like a prophet of doom, ranting with a "The End is Nigh" sign on a street corner. I'm just seriously considering what the 21st century has to offer. And, remember, I'm speaking about the place of the direct market. Graphic novels are doing relatively well, selling in book stores, located in libraries and classrooms, and webcomics are a burgeoning field. I don't want to make the ole life blood argument about the direct market, but, simply as an audience member, I'd like to see the medium survive and even thrive.

There's my jumble of thoughts for the day. Maybe tomorrow I'll take the time to unravel them and formulate a list of "What needs to be done."

Until then, may you consume satisfying units of story.

October Sales Figures

Sales figures are up for October, but no one's quite certain what they mean. The top is rattled a little bit. Series always suffer downward slopes and we're hitting the 2/3 marks for the big events, but the effect seems slightly more dramatic. The surprising news, though, is how well things are going in spite of that, especially for tier 2 and tier 3 books.

As Heidi points out:

Obviously, rising comics prices had much to do with it, but as we pointed out earlier, and Miller affirms, the overall sales on the chart were much higher than in the past, with even the #300 book selling over 4000 copies. In January 2005, the #300 comic sold 679 copies.

Maybe I'm just a goddamn optimist, but it's an exciting prospect to me when more niches can thrive within the already niche market of the comic book.

Lord Buttersnatch's Fairy Detective Troop

For those who might not know, for a frighteningly long amount of time A.J. Dibble and I have been working on a webcomic entitled Lord Buttersnatch's Fairy Detective Troop. I'll probably be making a slightly louder announcement once the first scene of act one is complete and we're into a bit more of the meat of the story, but if you'd like to peruse the prologue, it can be viewed at www.buttersnatch.com.

Election Cartoons

In the wake of November 4th, we've been getting a lot of political cartoons that are schmaltzy and, in a way, obvious, while at the same time inevitably eliciting moist eyes at the historicalness of the triumph.

But I've got to say, Tatsuya for the win.

Sandman Live Reading

Saturday night I attended a live stage reading of two issues of Sandman in honor of the series’ 20th anniversary. The two issues were "Three Septembers and a January", the story of Emperor Norton I of the United States of America, a real historical figure, and "The Golden Boy" based on the DC Comics character Prez, the first teenage President of the United States. I’ll get to some thoughts on the event later, but I wanted to discuss something that happened during the Neil Gaiman Q&A after the reading. In the only question related to the performance, Gaiman was asked whether he’d prefer to live in a country run by Norton or by Prez. And his answer was Norton. He felt that Prez, a gifted, charismatic leader, created in citizens the sense that he could solve all their problems for them. While Norton, on the other hand, would oversee a country where people would have to solve their problems themselves. It highlights the fact that the choice of doing these two issues ties in not only to Sandman’s anniversary, but also to this past week’s election.

Gaiman’s point is something to keep in mind as the U.S. moves forward in the weeks and months to come. It seems like a number of supporters of Barack Obama hold the view that once he steps in, he’s going to solve all our problems. Not all of them do. And I’d be surprised if Obama himself did. There has been a significant change, no question. For the past eight years we’ve had to deal with a leader who created problems and who often created obstacles to our attempts to solve them on our own. But Obama’s a leader, not a magical creature capable of granting wishes. His ability to inspire large numbers of people to get involved may be the greatest skill he brings with him into office, because that’s what it’s going to take to really turn things around. One leader making decisions on his own while everyone else watches and admires him isn’t going to do it. As many have said, what’s going to come is going to take a lot of hard work, not just by the new President but also by everyone who voted for him.

Okay, enough politics. On to the show itself. As I said, the two issues “Three Septembers and a January” and “The Golden Boy” were clearly chosen, as I said earlier, partially for their relevance to current events. “The Golden Boy”, the more relevant of the two, would seem to be a less than ideal choice for the format used. Seven actors sat on the darkened edges of the stage and read their roles as the panels from the comic were projected onto the screen. “The Golden Boy” involves large amounts of narration, delivered by a narrator depicted as a wizened Asian mystic. So this resulted in several pages at a time of only one actor reading narration alone. While the moments of dialogue in between were well done, it’s a curious decision to do “The Golden Boy” rather than an issue that would have meant more interaction between the performers.

The performances themselves had a mixed effect, although this isn’t something I can really lay at the feet of the actors. The otherworldly figures at the core of the Sandman stories have such an image built up around them that there’s almost no way to satisfactorily portray them in a live performance. Delirium and Despair especially I’ve always pictured as having voices so inhuman that they’d probably require some form of electronic enhancement to be convincing. Racheline Maltese, the actress who played both Desire and Delirium, was spot on with Desire, but something was missing from Delirium. I think possibly the only way to correctly pull off the character would be to take Summer Glau, ask her to do something similar to her performance as River in Firefly, and then pump her full of incredibly potent narcotics just as she’s about to perform. And even that might only get you halfway there. Dan Green as Dream himself was good, but it’s hard to step into the role of such an iconic figure and deliver everything that a reader has built up in their minds. The performers excelled more with the other roles. Ollie Wyman’s Emperor Norton was what I thought to be the best execution of a character by any of the actors. And exchanges between Wyman’s Norton and Tom Wayland’s King of Pain, Wayland’s Prez and Dan Green’s Richard Nixon, and Prez and Greg Abbey’s Boss Smiley were the best moments of the performance. And it was these exchanges between characters that really made the comic come alive effectively in a way that I wanted to see more, a sentiment Gaiman himself echoed after the performance. It’s a way of presenting comics I’d never encountered before and I’m not aware if it’s been done extensively anywhere else. But it would be something I’d certainly see again, given the opportunity.

Ravi's New Favorite Webcomic

I'm really enjoying No Need For Bushido. It's been a while since I've since such a horribly mismatched team, so much humorous fighting, and a decent plot. The only thing I do not like, and in fact hate, are the weird (and rare) interjections by Matrix like characters:

http://www.noneedforbushido.com/

Anti-Comic and Gamer Discrimination

Christian's still hate gamers... and don't want gamers to feed starving children?

From http://www.giantitp.com/
10/31/2008

As has been reported by a few other gaming blogs and news sites, the Charity Auction at this year's GenCon Indianapolis was held to benefit Gary Gygax's favorite charity, which I will not name here for reasons that will soon become obvious. The fine folks at GenCon raised over $17,000 for this charity, which helps starving children in impovershed areas of the world--only to have that money actually turned down by the charity. The charity refused due to the fact that the money was raised partly by the sales of Dungeons and Dragons materials, which as we all know, puts an irrevocable taint of evil on the filthy lucre that us demon-worshipping gamers might want to use to, say, donate to starving children. Not only is this a slap in the face to every gamer, but it is especially insulting to Mr. Gygax himself, who I understand donated to their cause many times over the years. Plus, I'm sure the children who would have gotten food or clean drinking water with that money would be sort of upset, too.

I bring this story to your attention not simply so that you might let the people at this charity know how you feel (especially if you have donated to it before, as many did in the wake of Mr. Gygax's passing), but so that you would be aware that there is an alternative charity that I would personally recommend (based on our own charitable giving) if you have a desire to donate money to help starving children. Plan USA is a worldwide charity aimed at helping those who live in poverty and/or have suffered from a natural disaster, particularly with monthly sponsorships of individual children. Since the money of D&D players is clearly not welcome at this other charity, I can't recommend Plan USA highly enough to those interested in giving anyway. At least if you choose to donate through them, there's no chance your generous gifts to the starving children of the world will be rejected due to your weekend hobby.

My New Favorite Comic Book Character

So this past week I read Geoff Johns' Final Crisis tie-in "Rage of the Red Lanterns". What follows is possibly the only enjoyment I got out of it, and therefore once you look at it you should have no need to read it yourself:





















In case you were wondering, it's vomiting its own corrosive acid blood. That's the only meaningful (and I use that word with great hesitation) appearance of that character in the entire book (I think it may show up in one other panel). Needless to say, DC clearly needs to give this character (whose name I did not catch, and so I choose to call it "Whiskers the Blood Kitty") its own limited series.

This is the reason I read Cat and Girl

http://www.catandgirl.com/view.php?loc=670

Give It Up Already!

I don't normally read the newspaper comics these days (I get my news, like I get my daily comics, online), but whenever I'm around physical newspapers I feel compelled (as if by demonic possession) to read each strip. While I always find myself saying, "Arlo and Janis... fantastic!"the act of reading Ernie Bushmiller and Mort Walker never fails to upset me. I mean, how do these people have jobs? How have they not been stoned to death in the streets?

That's why things like Marmaduke Explained and the Dysfunctional Family Circus delight me so. If the original strips are supposed to speak to the child in me, it's the puerile adolescent that responds. Of course, there's also the brilliant, subtler protests of works like 5-Card Nancy and Garfield Minus Garfield.

I Don't Get It

Dave Prude once commented,"People don't read New Yorker cartoons to laugh. They read them to feel smug for understanding the joke."

At least the New Yorker seems to be aware how oblique they get. Here's a quiz testing your ability to comprehend the worst of them.

I should add that, lately, all I've been doing is reposting the best of The Beat.

He might not have used the word "smug."

A question

Mr. Morrison, how can I enjoy your work so much when I can't understand a thing you're saying?

Childishness at its finest

Chip Zdarsky's ideas for Marvel comics

http://stevetastic.com/ccomix/my-marvel-comic-ideas-journal

For those who like nostalic mashups and meta humor

Kevin Cannon's recent 24 comic, Blotchmen

http://www.freshmanforlife.com/search/label/Blotchmen

Please excuse the lack of updates

...but I make no promises about the future.

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2971

The return of laughing out loud - current events edition

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-09-22

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2939

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2940

FUNNY SHIRT BONUS

Bride of Laughing out loud

http://www.scarygoround.com/?date=20080916

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/skinhorse/series.php?view=archive&chapter=32483&name=skinhorse

http://www.thedevilspanties.com/d/20080916.html

Ravi's Choice Picks

Tsk.
I'm looking through all this, and I'm seeing little mention of some of my favorites:

FABLES
For those of us into trades, I would strongly suggest Fables: Legends in Exile. The premise of this series is that many well-known fairy tale characters were chased out of their world and into ours by a malevolent being called "The Adversary." Now Prince Charming, the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, the Three Little Pigs, and many other European favorites are living together in New York City. So far this series is up to ten trades (I believe there will be around twelve total). The first two-trades present interesting plots and character development before diving into the main story arc. I won't mentioned more because I don't want to ruin any surprises. My only complaints about this series is that the art, though beautiful, is inconsistent. A character who is drawn as a towering piece of muscle-meat, may in the next frame look quite skinny. Otherwise, this series is my ongoing favorite.

PREACHER
A vampire, a hitwoman, and a preacher with special abilities go on a journey to kill God. Ennis' writing is hysterical and Dillon's art is beautiful. This series was one of my first guilty pleasures in life: incest, sex, violence, drugs, a rock & roll legend named "arseface", and a woman made entirely of uncooked meat are only a few of the pleasures waiting within. One caveat: I started reading this series with the second trade. I don't think the first trade is necessary at all, nor is the style quite consistent yet. Take my advice, go right to the second. The details will fill themselves in anyway.

PUNISHER: WELCOME BACK FRANK
Another Ennis & Dillon tag team. I hate the Punisher character. I never found him remotely interesting. However, this series is more of a dark comedy than the Punisher's brooding boredom. I think the best fight scene in all of Marvel history is also in this trade: Punisher vs... not Wolverine, not Hulk, not the little boy down the street, but the red scare parody avatar himself: "The Russian."

FLIGHT (Series)
Comics loosely related to flight and created by many authors. There are some strong vignettes in these, that I find quite inspiring. I can't believe how much some of these authors fit into a few pages. Then again, I could do without others.

WEBCOMICS
A few gems that have been missed:

Dr. McNinja
A Ninja-Doctor takes on a variety of villains including Dracula and Paul Bunyon, and yes, the obligatory Pirates. However, this series is well penned, both in terms of art and text, and updates three times a week--more than enough to keep my attention.
http://www.drmcninja.com/

El Goonish Shive
Superheroics, weird science, and constant gender bending. I like the older parts of this series the best. These days, the art is much better, but after the first story-arc concluded, I don't see where the plot has to go.
http://www.elgoonishshive.com/

SPACE WALRUS
This comic is made by my friend Justin and one of his friends. It's more of a gag strip than anything else, but having a squid, a walrus, a bagel, and Proust in space makes for some interesting set-ups right off the bat.
http://www.spacewalrus.com/

Laughing out loud

http://friendlyhostility.com/d/20080905.html

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=349

http://www.octopuspie.com/2008-09-08/192-uhh/l

I read a lot of webcomics...

I read a lot of webcomics daily, 58 at current count, so here are links to individual strips that made me laugh out loud recently:

http://mitchclem.com/mystupidlife/89/

http://www.scarygoround.com/?date=20080828

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-08-26

Why did Virgin even try?

Heidi MacDonald talks about Virgin's death and how it came as a surprise to no one.

Everyone's commenting (with more than a hint of smug comfort in their voices) on the inevitability of failure when a company views comics as a stepping stone to movies. But what amazes me isn't that they couldn't compete with Marvel and DC, but that they attempted it at all. When Virgin Comics was first announced, there was a lot of chatter that they might be able to bypass the direct market entirely, distributing through Virgin Megastores. And using Virgin Group's vast treasury, they could have had an unprecedented ability to market comics to a wide audience. Instead the company played the game that's set up to sell Batman books.

Webcomics, woo!

Hey, folks on this blog! Comment or post with your webcomics links!

I'll start. This list is haphazard- it's got gag-a-days next to complete literary comics next to experiments in the medium. Everything, though, I love or have been meaning to love.

A Softer World
Amazing Adventures of Bill
Back Stage
Cat and Girl
Copper
Dinosaur Comics
Freak Angels
Garfield Minus Garfield
Hold Reset
Immortal and Fear, My Dear
Jellaby
Nowhere Girl
Ojingogo
Order of the Stick
Perry Bible Fellowship
Queen of Wands
Questionable Content
Something Positive
Templar, Arizona
Unshelved
Vulcan and Vishnu
We, the Robots
When I Am King
xkcd

Kirkman's Call Out Fallout and (my attempt at) the State of the Industry

Two weeks ago, Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead, Invincible, newly made Image partner) released a video statement encouraging the stars of the industry to focus more on creator-owned work. Very specifically it suggests if you've made a name for yourself in DC and Marvel and you want to work on your own projects, you should go ahead.

This struck me as odd because it seemed so obvious that it didn't need to be said. Of course DC and Marvel pay better and they have fun toy boxes of characters, but what artist would only aspire to work on others' creations? That's like being a captain who doesn't want to explore uncharted waters. And I don't know what successful work-for-hire creator (excepting perhaps Johns) hasn't also done a hefty share of creator owned works. It seemed to me like Kirkman was pussy-footing around a rather benign (and obvious) call out, both in his video and in his followup interview with Word Balloon.

Apparently though, anything that resembles an attack on the mainstream ruffles feathers. Robert Scott responds as a retailer with some interesting and valid comments on problems of small press, but misses the point.

Firstly, Kirkman's advocating to creators, not retailers. He suggests writers and artists who can sell books based on their reputations should cash in on their own names, rather than let companies do it. Financially, owning your IP means an investment in yourself. WFH pays bills, but, as Millar tells, it doesn't work as a long term strategy. And creatively, freedom is worth a lot. Restrictions have their place and everyone has a Batman story they want to tell, but I've never known a writer who's isn't brimming over with their own ideas.

But secondly and more broadly, the industry needs very desperately to focus more attention on strong material that will attract new readers. From the Word Balloon interview: "I see problems and everyone else sees problems. And everyone seems to be waiting for someone else to fix them... we should be talking about it." The industry is teetering. It's heading into a transitional stage and people should think very hard about what comics will look like in the next few years.

Here's where we stand right now (in my estimation):
-DC character breaks virtually all movie records, DC comics fail to capitalize
-Marvel's movie studio has huge successes
-Marvel events continue to dominate sales, but fail to capture Civil War numbers
-Tokyopop takes big losses, Virgin closes up shop, Platinum may be in trouble
-"Independent comics" score a number of a huge successes, including Walking Dead, Y the Last Man, Fun Home, Fables
-The graphic novels are big business, often bypassing the direct market entirely
-Popular webcomics attract hundreds of thousands of readers, many launch succesfully print books off of web success
-Watchmen print run of 900,000 copies after a 2 min trailer, currently in legal battle to exist
-Big companies joining the digital game, Zuda attracts (mixed) attention

I guarantee I'm being short sighted here and missing some large factors, but the question is: what's bringing new people into comics? Movies, the web, and a handful of (usually more literary) independent series. What's not? DC and Marvel whose business strategies seem be based primarily around cannibalizing their existing customers by tying together as many of their books as possible.

If we care about the future there's a lot that needs to be done:
-Companies need to figure out a suitable strategy for online distribution. I don't know what it'll look like, but it won't resemble their paper distribution (and probably will be distinct from current web models for long form comics like act-i-vate).
-The entire direct market (but I'd place the onus on Marvel, DC, and retailers) needs to court new readers and present them with easy entry points. The focus should be on turning public attention (such as movies bring) into book sales as well as better marketing at children.
-Creator owned comics, including webcomics, need to hoist themselves to professional standards. As Scott points out, this means better marketing, realistic distribution schedules, and strong editorial backing.

And I'll tell you what we don't need:
-Incentive covers. Seriously, did we learn nothing from the 90s?

Too Good, Too Bad

From Kiel Phegley’s coverage at CBR of a DC panel at Toronto’s Fan Expo

The idea of killing, reviving and rebooting characters multiple times became a central focus of discussion after a fan asked Didio why DC was constantly second to Marvel Comics in terms of sales. Didio took the question as an opportunity to address what he thought was one of his company’s problems over the past few years, which in his words was “My problem with us is that we reboot the characters too much.

“What happens is that if a character doesn’t work, we go, ‘We got a brand new direction to put him in! We’re moving him into something new! We’re going to try something brand new and different! We’re going to throw everything out and start over again!’ We make that mistake, but what that does is, it alienates fans.

“Our biggest mistake is that we don’t continue and build on…what we should be doing is let it sit for a while and then come back with a good strong story with what’s going on. That’s what Geoff [Johns] does. That’s Geoff’s secret weapon. He doesn’t throw it all out and start all over. He builds on what’s existed and makes it better…We get too worried about the minutia…all we should be doing is telling great stories with our characters.

D.C. has run into a glut of good fortune lately, and I’m betting that it may all lead to a problem and serious decision making very, very soon. On the one hand, you’ve got the Batman: R.I.P. story arc, written by Grant Morrison. Morrison’s one of the current gods of the fanboy pantheon, and one of the few who’s been working recently for DC and not Marvel. He’s one of the company’s big guns right now, and they need to continue to be thankful they can somehow get him to work for them. I haven’t been reading the story regularly myself. I’ll admit that Morrison’s good, but not at the top of my personal list of preferred writers. In addition to that, my constantly held belief that 22 pages every one or two months is a frustrating and ineffective way to tell a story holds even more true for anything Morrison writes. It’s all complicated in such a carefully designed manner that it often feels like nothing’s happening until it’s almost over and the pieces start to come together, so I’ve already decided to wait and catch this one in a trade collection.

But the problem with the arc isn’t how dense the plot’s become. The problem is that it’s crashing head-on into the wild success of the Dark Knight, the motion picture event that’s put Batman back into the eye of the general public and pushed DC’s superhero properties front and center on the stage of upcoming Warner Bros. films. With public interest in Batman at what may be an all time high, DC would probably want an accessible version of Bruce Wayne’s dark, brooding hero available on the shelves for fans of the film who aren’t that into comics to pick up. After all, Marvel’s had a fair amount of success timing the new launch of an Iron Man series to coincide with the success of their biggest summer blockbuster. But instead, DC’s got Morrison’s Batman: R.I.P., which is quite possibly the worst introduction into the comic universe to give someone whose most recent exposure to the character was Christopher Nolan’s film. They’d read one or two issue, have absolutely no idea what’s going on, and then stop paying attention to the character all together. What’s more, the upcoming plan for the aftermath of the series seems to be another arc, entitled “Batman: Battle for the Cowl”, in which various other figures will attempt to take on the role of Batman as Bruce Wayne is out of commission. Exactly the opposite of the direction Didio seems to be encouraging his creators to take in the above quoted sections. And how did fans react to this at the same event?

When pressed on the issue of new DC buttons promoting Nightwing possibly taking over the role of Batman, Didio again asked the audience which of the supporting Bat-characters should replace Bruce Wayne as the Dark Knight. The majority of the crowd agreed Bruce should not be replaced, and then Didio admitted, “I have no idea what those buttons mean.”

I don’t know what DC’s options are into terms of what’s been completed in their production schedule and what can still be altered. And I’m not usually one to argue that comics characters should never be changed. I’m usually on the side that says real, meaningful change happens far too little in these storylines, and I’d usually be applauding an effort like Morrison’s. But this is clearly, at least from a business standpoint, terrible timing for DC. If they want to ride the coattails of the Dark Knight into a lasting increase in readership for Batman, they need to put Bruce Wayne back under the cowl and return to roughly the status quo as soon as possible. The success of the Dark Knight has at least something to do with the fact that Batman is one of the few DC characters the company had gotten mostly right to begin with. Or else they’re likely to alienate fans in just the way Didio speculates they will.

(This will eventually be crossposted at my other site, www.holdreset.com, as I plan to do with all comics related posts)

Lunchtime Reading, part 3

Uncanny X-Men: I've always wanted to like the X-Men more than I've actually liked them. Social awareness interwoven with costumed melodrama has a certain appeal to it. It's a shame that I came in during the hologrammed angst-fest that was the 90s. I've been meaning to approach the classics for a while (and of course Morrison's run), but haven't gotten around to them. I enjoyed bits and pieces of the Endangered Species backups, but Messiah CompleX failed to hold my attention.

All this is leading to say again that I love golden boy Fraction and really wanted to be excited by the new direction. 500 came. Sentinels and Magneto. However the issue was dressed up, it didn't bring anything new to the table. 501. They're excited to be somewhere new, but people still don't like them. Ho hum. Also, they have a lot of money and nice stuff. Sigh.

For the record, here's what I want to see in the San Franciscan X-Men: X-Men are welcomed into the city. They declare their new home a mutant haven. Mutants from across the globe endure great stresses trying to reach them. This causes clashes with those that hunt them (justly or unjustly) including foreign governments and federal agencies. They're welcomed, but infighting occurs quickly. Not everyone can be saved. Clashes break out and, because these are mutants, the scale of the destruction affects San Francisco. The city is concerned they can't control themselves. And they can't. Hmm... Maybe I do miss the angst-fest.

Astonishing X-Men: Normally, I don't complain about artwork, but Bianchi isn't doing it for me. The figures are fine, but in issue 1, the new X-base (whatever it's called) seems more like something out of a high tech science fiction story set thousands of years in the future. The spaceship graveyard and the scavengers living off it is the kind of brilliantly aware idea that should be fueling superhero universes (of course world governments need a place to abandon downed alien crafts and of course impoverished people will be living off the scraps). The characters, despite Ellis's best efforts, do still sound like an Ellis characters.

Wolverine: Fun. Superhero western. Old, pacifist Wolverine (and blind Hawkeye) travel across a future wasteland shipping mysterious cargo. Descendants of the Hulk rule as hick land barons. Superhero cults survive where superheroes failed. But as I believe Dave said, "Millar's great as long as you can keep him away from fight scenes."

Fantastic Four: Uh... I don't really have anything to say here. Millar continues to be ridiculous and bring a good time. I've never read much FF4, but I'm digging it.

Kick Ass: While we're talking about Millar... this is doing what it sets out to do really well. Better than I expected. Kid decides to be a superhero. Gets hurt horrifically and repeatedly, but attracts a cult following. It's not great, but there's something really satisfying about it. Perhaps, the horrible satisfaction in watching someone fail and the genuineness of that failure making their endurance that much more sweet. I still don't know if this book can keep it up. The follow through seems doomed to fall short of the setup. I'll keep reading to find out, though.

Batman: Gotham After Midnight: I'm very much a writer's reader. I have a vast appreciation for inventive artwork (even more than for skillful artwork), but I'm usually more impressed by words than pictures. This, however, would thrill me if I ignored the words. OK, maybe it thrills me more when I ignore the words. The haunting cobblestone streets of Gotham, full of shadowy criminals and a horror-movie Batman. Beautiful.

Femme Noir: There's more Will Eisner in this book than in The Spirit these days. Pulpy goodness.

Rasl: I think the story and the art are beautiful, but each issue feels sparse on content. I'll be excited when it's finally collected, but reading it scene by scene over the course of months will just frustrate me.

This looks like a job for breathing!

Chris and I were discussing how frost breath really is Superman's oft-forgotten, D-list power and I thought: Wouldn't it be great if Superman teamed up with a hero whose only power was frost breath?

Just imagine: Superman flies in, punches the giant robot through a wall. Mr. Coldy breathes frost at it. Superman shoots his heat vision. Mr. Coldy breathes frost at it. Superman breathes frost at it. Mr. Coldy sighs, "I hate you so much."


Then again, I'm holding out for more super-weaving.

Lunchtime Reading, part 2

My introduction by way of collected opinions continues!

Invincible Iron Man: A few days ago I would've said, "This book is fair - not amazing, but issue two was fantastic."But now issue two has gone and broken my heart. You see, in it we see a group of Filipino super-heroes taken down by suicide bombers. I was enamored by the concept that of course the rest of the world has its heroes, we just don't usually read about them in our American comics. Even if they we meet them just before they're lost, it felt like it was bucking the usual trend towards Eurocentrism. And the funeral scene following was beautiful.

But then I came across the message boarders (such as here) who point out that the depiction of the Philippines failed to be accurate at any level. And that's sloppy work on both Fraction and Larocca's parts. Sloppy to the point of disrespectful. This is especially disappointing to me coming from Fraction, not only because I have immense respect for his work (Casanova is magic), but because he's known for doing meticulous research (with works like Five Fists of Science) and has mentioned a desire for more diverse voices to be represented in mainstream comics.

So I'm not certain how to feel. The idea behind the scene is at odds with its execution. It's especially disheartening when that idea was the high point of the comic thus far.

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge: Phew. Let me mention something I'm digging. Geoff Johns is a writer I never paid much attention to until just very recently. He's working entirely within the bounds of the supers genre (and not pushing the bounds or stepping outside it like Ellis or Morrison or my usual favorites) and producing gems. I realize DC aficionados will wonder why I'm catching on so late, but, like I keep saying, I'm not a huge genre fan and am eager for compelling super hero stories.

Final Crisis #3 Addendum: Finally, something's happening and the disparate stories are starting to point somewhere. I may actually keep reading after this month.

Anna Mercury: Here's the problem I've been having lately with Warren Ellis. He's prolific and writing totally different characters in totally different settings, but somehow I feel like I'm reading a single story.

God, I'm focused on the negative here. I understand why message boards a reduced to such smarmy hate-fests: it's easier to focus on what's wrong than the praise what's working.

So let me try again: There's a lot that's compelling about this book, both in terms of the writing and the art. In fact I kinda wish it were more focused on its pulp roots. The action sequences are enticing and our titular heroine with her vast red tresses is sexy. I like the idea of base control watching over her like an astronaut, but don't really want to hear their story; I just want to follow hers.

Comic Book Comics: Industry history from the Action Philosophers folk. This is especially interesting to read after having just finished The Ten Cent Plague. Where that book glossed entirely over super heroes and was academic in its approach, Comic Book Comics is more than happy to tell Kirby anecdotes in its madcap style. If you're looking for an in depth analysis of those early years, I'd recommend Hajdu's book, but if you're mostly after entertaining juicy bits, this is a lot of fun.

Batman: Morrison has a mad and noble goal with Batman as well as All Star Superman. He's dissecting the characters with the assumption that every issue of backstory happened. He's not rejecting "continuity" or even brushing it under the carpet. This isn't simply a matter of parading out old cast or events, but trying to understand the mind of someone with such an array of experiences. Superman gets presented as someone for whom the extraordinary becomes routine and Batman, well, Batman is more complex and layered than ever.

The narrative has been hard to follow at times. This could be that I'm missing plot on the pages of other bat-books or it could be Morrison's arcane style, but, honestly, it's mostly been engrossing even when I'm completely lost. Well, maybe, those latest RIP issues have been pushing my tolerance for confusion.

Lunchtime Reading, part 1

As a teenager in the 90s, I'd read a small number of hologrammed X-Men comics and followed the death of Superman (then attempted and failed entirely to follow his rebirth), but, despite my well-rounded geekiness, I never thought much about comics. It was 2003 (perhaps) when a friend handed me Watchmen and then Dark Knight Returns. These being heroine of the sequential art form, I was hooked fast. In the ensuing years, I was introduced to other classics like Transmet and Sandman, but, even when I set my sights on writing comics, I was never a Wednesday regular.

One year back, I started working at Midtown Comics' cavernous warehouse and lunchtime gave me unfettered access to new books. If I ate quickly, I found I could read two, sometimes even three issues in a sitting. The simple act of reading comics in issues (rather than trades) was new and startling and it suddenly hit me that this was how most mainstream comics fans did it, consuming snippets of story week by week. Never having been the biggest superhero fan (or as I'm fond of saying these days: I'm very interested in superheroes, just not when they act like superheroes), it took me some time to figure out what I liked amid the sea of titles.

Now, soon to be saying farewell to Midtown, I offer my thoughts on what I'm reading these lunchtimes.

Amazing Spider-Man: As stated, I didn't grow up a fanboy. When I thought about superheroes, I thought about the X-Men or Batman (or perhaps derisively of Superman). I did not think about Spider-Man. When I started at Midtown, One More Day was underway and my co-workers were writing angry letters. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd been tossing bricks through Quesada's window. They described the story to me and I agreed. It sounded dumb. It sounded like a cop out.

Then I met Dan Slott in a writing class and the man was thoroughly entertaining. He had an obvious passion for the character and it was impossible not to get swept up. So I picked up an issue. And it was fun. The hard reset button on continuity seems like a fine notion to me now, kicking the character back to the basics and keeping it focused and entertaining. I can't remember who asked the question, "When did comics stop being a world you wanted to escape to and become a world you wanted to escape from?" but Amazing with its current team manages to capture that classical sense of wonderment without being cheesy. It hasn't all been gold, but I'll repeat myself: fun.

Screamland: Classic horror movie monster ennui. I'm sold right there, but for the rest of you: Mournful, tragic, and hilarious this beautiful Image book follows the lives (ahem) of Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman, Dracula, and the Mummy. Their heydays as movie stars playing themselves are over and now they're wrestling with their dying careers and their own egos. The last issue disappointed, but a trade appears to be slated for October and if the image of a bitter and alcoholic Frankenstein's Monster in therapy provokes a reaction then I heartily recommend.

Secret Invasion: Marvel's summer blockbuster. I'm reading it, but I'll admit I have trouble caring. As Chris said, it's like watching the Marvel universe play a game of mafia. It has a few moments, but the skrull goal of confusing Earth's superheroes succeeds only in confusing me. The fanboys seem very keen on discovering who's a skrull, but I find it artificial and unsatisfying.

But what really amazes is that Marvel sees this as a story to welcome in new readers, to bring in the non-comics superhero fan. I find that goal... misguided. It's playing off several years of continuity and the primary appeal seems to be in watching the payoff of seeds planted long ago. But their sales are strong, so what do I know?

Final Crisis: I love Grant Morrison. I love him mostly for his iconoclasm, but the likes of All Star Superman prove he can work his magic within the mainstream. But I defy anyone with less knowledge of continuity than Morrison to make sense of this book. He's always been a writer better at packing a story with fascinating ideas than coherent narratives, but he should know when to pull back. I want to like it, I really do, but even with the aid of annotations, I fail.