I'll get back to print in the next day or so, but I wanted to dive into a few things-on-film for a moment.
(I quite imagine there will be SPOILERS here, so be careful, kiddo!)
THOR: Saw an advance screening on Saturday morning (10 am, what an odd time for a preview screening!), and yeah, pretty decent film. My reaction could possibly be the result of low expectations -- I mean, seriously, did anyone ever think there could possibly be a Thor movie based on the comic, prior to 3-5 years ago? Let alone a good one?
It largely kept my attention, and it has some astonishing design on display -- I particularly liked their interpretation of the Rainbow bridge -- but while it won't win an Oscar or anything, it will keep you chewing through your popcorn just fine. I'll call it an easy GOOD.
It has problems, to be sure. For the first thing, I couldn't figure out Loki or his motivations AT ALL. Loki *should* be the master trickster and manipulator, but as on display here he was far more capricious than clever, actually telling his family about his betrayals, rather than playing it off. Plus the denouement was a PHYSICAL FIGHT between Loki and Thor which is... well, that's just stupid, isn't it?
I also think that most of the earth-based stuff really didn't work -- part of that stemming from the SHIELD-centric nature of the earth stuff, part of that from giving Jane Foster a comedy-intended sidekick -- but mostly going off the Odin arc.
Odin, as we all know, sends Thor to earth to learn humility. In the comic, Odin does so by binding Thor to a mortal man, where here he just depowers Thor entirely. The thing of it is, when Thor eventually regains his powers, I can't see HOW he learned humility? There's a thing that happens that I think is meant to be "ultimate humility", but it really isn't. Let's try this for a strained metaphor: it's like I take you to a batting cage, but put you in handcuffs. Yes, sure, you will then learn "I need to use my arms in order to hit a ball", but you still aren't even a single step closer to learn HOW to hit a ball.
Then there's the whole Big Kiss at the end, and, again, I was thinking "where the hell did THAT come from?" -- it's not like there's ANY reason for Thor to be majorly into Jane like that was presented on the screen. And, anyway, he should have a thing for Lady Sif, shouldn't he?
I mean, I guess if felt to me like the movie was still getting rewritten up to the very moment they shot it, or something. Or maybe a bunch of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor, or something? If you know the story that already exists, in terms of Loki's motivations, Odin's or Jane's actions, whatever, then you see that they "got to where they should be", but what's ACTUALLY UP ON THE SCREEN doesn't really support any of that happening.
I also thought it a smidge unusual that there was much taken from THE ULTIMATES, rather than Stan & Jack proper -- particularly that interrogation sequence, and the implication that Thor is just nuts (except that the audience, in this case, KNOWS he's who he says he is, so it kinda doesn't work), and the look of "Hawkeye" (who I don't think is actually called that in the film -- just "Barton")
But despite all of that, I still liked it fine -- and seven year old Ben who I was with proclaimed it EXCELLENT! which is maybe all that matters?
Last note: because of the preview nature, and wanting to sit in our 4-person group, rather than scattering in the theater, we ended up in the first row, which is normally just fine, but in this case, made the 3-D nearly unwatchable. It was 100% fine in any dialogue scene, but once things switched to heavy action, with shaky zooming cameras and all of that usual modern film trickery, it was nearly impossible to tell at all what was going on. I imagine it was better if you were in the "sweet spot" of the middle of the theater, but, based on my experience, I absolutely suggest trying to find a non-3-D showing.
BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD: Not any particular episode, really, but this whole new season has been pretty batshit insane, so far. Absolutely embracing the Morrison-thought that every Batman story is true, we've had utter insanity like adaptations of the Bat-Manga, Bat-Boy and Rubin, and Scooby Doo team-ups; we've had a joker-POV episode (including changing the opening titles to be "The Joker: The Vile and the Villainous") where, among other things, he entirely explodes Kamandi's future; we've had mummy-Batman, and Aqua-Batman, and a really really fucked up episode where Batman becomes a Vampire and kills all of the JLA; hell we've even had an episode with (cowboy) Vigilante breaking out a git-tar and singing about the legend of the blue and the gray.
This show is OFF THE CHARTS CRAZY, and in an utterly great way. I'm horrifically disturbed it hasn't been picked up for more, because this is everything you want in a Batman cartoon (that isn't TAS) -- this is KITCHEN SINK BATMAN. I truly hope they put out a complete series boxed set at some point, because this is just way too good of a show to not preserve. I love this show, and will give it an overall EXCELLENT rating.
A GAME OF THRONES: I love love love love love the books (even if I'm afeared JJM is going to croak before he finishes all seven), which I would liken to the same kind of thril you get from WALKING DEAD -- that is, NO CHARACTER, even the leads, ARE NOT SAFE, and the most crazy fucked up shit happens to these people. I was pretty nervous about the show, but, so far (I've seen the first two), I'm thinking its doing a really good of adaptation of the books. Adaptations are always hard, and usually butchered, but they got the gist pretty close here.
If you've seen the show, but not read the books, then I really urge you to pick up the books; and if you've done neither, then, yeah, pick up the books. EXCELLENT stuff there.
I'll give the show a VERY GOOD, mostly because I don't care for how they framed a few shots (the finding of the direwolves was pretty weak), and I'm largely unsure if the actress playing Daenerys has half of the chops needed to make it work -- her thread in the novels is my favorite, and so far my lest favorite in the TV show. Peter Dinklage is AWESOME as Tyrion, though.
ACTION #900: I'm putting this in the "television" column mostly because of the crazy coverage the news media put on this. When I read the comic (before the story of Superman's citizenship broke) I thought "Man, is that a poorly phrased way of putting that" because OF COURSE Superman isn't a US Citizen -- he's a citizen of the world, and always has been.
SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, anyone? Here: from wikiquotes:
*****
Superman: Madam Chairman, I don't represent any one particular country, but I'd like to address the delegates.
U.N. Chairwoman: Well, in that case, you will need a sponsor. [ALL delegates raise their hands] I believe that will do. Please.
*****
Superman is not an American, per se, and hasn't been for at least 24 years (and I'm certain I've read 60s era comics espousing the same principle, so probably more like 40+ years)
Either way, "Superman" couldn't possibly be a citizen of anything -- it's an assumed name!
I was out all week, so spent tonight in, recharging. I usually try to avoid the capsule reviews-- I don't think I'm very good at those. But I thought I'd try again tonight. My apologies before we begin-- I can't really promise much here. Just some randomly selected books I've read in this past month, I think...
The Lil' Depressed Boy #3 by S. Steven Struble & Sina Grace: I have no idea what this is, but it's published by Image Comics apparently. Impulse buy. It's about some hipster whose body looks like it's made out of dirty socks, and his cutesy relationship with some random girl with a nose-ring. There are "jokes." Then, the random girl invites him to a party, where him and some other random hipster bond over the fact they hate the other hipsters at the party for being hipsters-- it's not clear if either the characters or the artists creating the book realize the fact that those characters are at the party themselves makes them hipsters, too. Or the fact that one of them is named Jetson...? Oh, whoops-- spoiler warning. Anyways, then the band The Like shows up. Which is an actual band-- I went to one of their shows at the Viper Room, like, six or seven years ago. Afterwards, River Phoenix and I overdosed on heroin in the bathroom. That's just the sort of lifestyle I live--you probably guessed that. So, anyways-- that happened. I guess...? Mostly, this fucking comic book just made me feel old.
The Blue Estate: The Rachel Situation #1 by Victor Kalvachev, Kosta Yanev, Andrew Osborne, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, and Robert Valley: Oh, this was a very nice looking comic, as you'd expect with the art team they lined up-- Victor Kalvachev, Nathan Fox, Toby Cypress and Robert Valley. I like all of those guys-- well, Kalvachev was a new name for me, but the latter three are all welcome names; Valley, especially, I wish would do more work as his MASSIVE SWERVE comics are such eye-candy. Again, published by Image. The story-- it's "Tarantino-esque." Back in the 90's, and a little bit even in the 00's, there was this genre of bad movie, the Tarantino-esque movies, hyper-active psuedo-crime things that were nothing like actual Quentin Tarantino movies but were all labeled "Tarantino-esque" in reviews or overly optimistic marketing material. TWO DAYS IN THE VALLEY, LOVE AND A 45, BLOOD GUTS BULLETS & OCTANE, LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN, VERY BAD THINGS, SMOKING ACES, 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG, SUICIDE KINGS... pretty much all of them were useless, though I was probably a little more fond of THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD and WAY OF THE GUN than I should admit to, today.
This has that same thing of ... a large number of "outrageous" characters colliding in lieu of a story being told. But I don't think that's a formula that's been done to death in comics, so I'm fine with the idea of sticking around for more. It's pretty, and I'm shallow. And I don't know-- bigger than life crime weirdos... That's a genre of comic I guess I'm generally in for. I think I'd rather read Grotesque Crime than another "Oh, I'm sad about having sex with all of these women something something whiskey something something murder" Jim Thompson impersonation. Which isn't to say that I'm going to avoid the next CRIMINAL but...
ACTION COMICS #900 by Paul Cornell, Pete Woods, Jesus Merino, Paul Dini, Richard Donner, Gary Frank, David Goyer, Geoff Johns, Damon Lindelof, Ryan Sook, Brian Stelfreeze, and More!: I guess people are all worked up about the "controversy" of this issue. There's a story where Superman renounces his U.S. citizenship, which has random people mad on account of politics or whatever. Mostly, I'm just confused on a nuts-and-bolts level: in what capacity was Superman a citizen of the United States, to begin with? Was Superman paying taxes? He wasn't paying taxes pre-Crisis, but I don't know about the status of those loopholes post-Birthright. Or if he's a citizen-- did Superman have a driver's license? Why would he bother-- hello, Superman can fly? Or even if Superman got pulled over, and he didn't have a driver's license-- it's not like a cop's going to give Superman a ticket anyways. What kind of horrible human being would give Superman a ticket? Forget about the ingratitude that would take-- politically, that's just career suicide. Or if Superman was a citizen before, was he voting twice? Was he voting one time as Superman, and a second time as Clark Kent? That's voter fraud. Was Superman committing voter fraud?
So, I'm just confused by the whole thing. But if nothing else, seeing people talk about Superman is just fun for me because... It's like... Marvel can kill the Human Torch, right? Marvel can kill the Human Torch, and have Doctor Doom stuff his dead body full of dog poo, so that his funeral is ruined by the stench of canine feces-- which is what I assume is what happened in the Jonathan Hickman FF; I'm pretty close, right? Based on the other Jonathan Hickman comics I've read, I'm going to go ahead and assume the death of the Human Torch in some way or another was reminiscent of dog shit. (Oh, that's a joke. Or... that's 55% joke. That's more joke than not-joke...). But anyways, they can do all that, and publicize it in the NY Post or whatever-- but all Superman has to do is mutter about politics for, like, fucking TWO panels in the back of a 96 page comic, and people care a billion times more. So: I think that's kind of neat, how much more people care about that character than ... than well, sanity or perspective, as it turns out, but...
How about the rest of that comic, though? I liked that Brian Stelfreeze pin-up; it's a shame Ryan Sook's work is being overshadowed; I like Pete Woods, generally-- it's a shame he's moving on. I thought the lead story was a cute end to the long-running Lex Luthor plot-- I don't have a theory as to why, but the best Lex Luthor stories tend to build to a "How ridiculously far can we take it to show how much Lex Luthor hates Superman?" ending. (Well, one of my favorite Luthor stories ends with Superman helping Lex Luthor to celebrate Einstein's birthday, but...). That's sort of the classic ending for that character, which is weird to me because... I like Luthor for being the "Scary Dad" to Superman's "Good Dad." I like him best when he's just a scary, bald psychopathic genius that terrorizes Metropolis because he hates people and wants to conquer them all. I'm not as interested in the "villain as shadow version of the hero" idea that I think modern comic writers are maybe overly-obsessed with. But that ending for Luthor does just tend to work, so there's something to it, something I must be wrong about...
Green Wake #1 by Kurtis Wiebe, Riley Rossmo, Kelly Tindall, and Jade Dodge: Another book published by Image. I read some review that was flipping out about this so I picked this up, though I forget now who did the review. This might be something, though. It's sort of in a Dylan Dog vein, about an investigator in a supernatural city of secrets, dealing with a rash of strange murders. The art is by Riley Rossmo, who's improved pretty significantly since Cowboy Viking Ninja, where I thought his work was underwhelming. I liked that he's cast everything in these sickly green hues, everything pustulent and wet, everything dying and diseased. I'm not sure what I make of the story yet-- it's all still a little vague by the end of the first issue. But I thought as a total package, it conveyed a mood successfully, at least. People flipped out hard for NONPLAYER but I got more of a buzz off this, though maybe just by virtue of getting to discover it for myself rather than have to cope with that much hype. I mean, it's early though. Still, I hope this GREEN WAKE thing turns into something...
Hulk #31 by Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman, Elizabeth Breitweiser, Ed Dukeshire, and Pals: Oh, I had liked the couple issues I'd seen of Jeff Parker & Gabriel Hardman together on AGENTS OF ATLAS, so I thought I'd check out what one of their HULKs felt like. Apparently, there's a Red-colored Hulk, who I guess is General Ross...? He's a Red Hulk now. And he's fighting army guys in the desert now instead of the Green Hulk. Which, you know, seemed like a reasonable premise for the Hulk. It fit the basic parameters of what I'd expect from a Hulk comic, you know? Except at the end, a lady version of the Watcher turns up. Which is gross because then the reader is inherently invited to think about what it'd look like when Watchers fuck one another. Giant, hydrocephalic baldies grunting over one another-- that's just gross. I never wanted to imagine Ed Asner fucking Sinead O'Connor, but here we are. Thanks, Incredible Hulk!
Anyways, blah blah blah, they kept Elizabeth Breitweiser on the team, which I think was key. I think she's probably the key part of what I dig about that team actually, more than Parker or Hardman. Those guys are fine, and what have you, but I actually think Breitweiser's taking them from a 6 to an 8. There's just a layer of textural information that I suspect she's bringing to the pages-- smoke and dust and debris-- that I think that I'm responding to more than all that words/drawings bullshit.
Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker #2 by Joe Casey, Mike Huddleston, Rus Wooton, & Sonia Harris: The first issue of this Image comic got by me, so I picked up the second one. This was just gibberish, though, impenetrable. I'm going to go ahead and assume it'd have been legible if I'd read the first issue, but-- oh well...? It was kind of neat to look at, at least. At one point, it seemed like it was about to turn into Smokey & the Bandit, and I got excited about that, I suppose. Sure: there was a big rig in some of it-- I like the big rigs. I think people overlook how much this country depends on its trucking infrastructure and takes it for granted-- especially right now with these gas prices. I mean, it'd be nice if they eased up on the crystal meth, and maybe murdered a few less hookers, but... pobody's nerfect. So, yeah: after the comic was done, it ended with 6 pages of Joe Casey writing about how he feels about Art, which made me laugh at least after 20-something pages of ... whatever was going on here (?). I thought the discordance of that was entertaining, at least.
Next Men #3, 4 and 5 by John Byrne, Randa Pattison, Neil Uyetake and Chris Ryall: I always assumed that me having liked NEXT MEN back when, that just said something about where I was at mentally, at the age that I read it. Because the other John Byrne comics I've read, I've not really connected with, to put it in a polite way. But five issues in to the revival, from IDW.... I'm not really sure what's going on, but I'm kind of right back in it. I don't know what it is exactly about NEXT MEN that I respond to, where his other comics have left me so cold. There's just something fucking trashy about it, especially, especially in its earnestly serious moments. These issues have featured the Next Men taking on slavery, Elizabethan sexual hypocrisy, and the Holocaust, which... I know we're supposed to never forget the Holocaust but can't we make an exception where Next Men comics are concerned? And the great thing about it is it's all presented seriously...? I don't really know if it's naive camp or deliberate camp, but I think or at least hope that it's the latter. To the extent it even matters.
Uncanny X-Force #7 by Rick Remender, Esad Ribic, John Lucas, Matthew Wilson, VCs Cory Petit, Jared K. Fletcher, Jody Leheup, & Pals: I got this because I noticed Esad Ribic drew it. That's just one of those automatic buy things for me. The story is that the X-Force team are wandering around in some surreal space, fighting some guys, until Deadpool's homosexual panic leads him to decapitate a senior citizen, at which point the comic ends. I guess meat-headed bros might find that kind of thing funny...? Remender's usually pretty strong on long term plotting, so maybe this is a good comic in all of the issues before and after this one that I'm not going to read. That's entirely possible.
The Girl & The Gorilla by Madeleine Flores: This is a graphic novel published by Blank Slate Books-- they seem to be a pretty interesting outfit in the UK: handsome editions of good-looking comics by some names that are new to me, at least...? This particular book-- well, I am not the intended audience for this book. It's about a young girl who chases a gorilla into the land of Creativity, where she learns a valuable lesson about the importance of writing stories, and the imagination, and ignoring criticism, and Oh god. I am miserable old man, with nothing to warm my cold black heart but half-memories of concerts I went to 12 years ago. So, this was a little on the precious side for me, even setting aside that I don't think I agree with whatever it is this book was trying to say about rejection letters. To be perfectly honest, there was more than one part where I found myself rooting for the villain to stamp out the "creativity of young people." Is that normal? Maybe that's not normal. On the other hand, I really did quite like how Flores laid out her pages. She eschews panel borders, which gives the whole thing a more improvisational feeling that I think suits the subject matter. Some of the purely visual sequences were enjoyable. There's probably an audience for this book, but a MUCH, much younger one-- or hell, maybe just a nicer one. After I read this, I found myself thinking alot about GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE, remembering how much I'd liked it at 20-something, wondering what it'd be like if I read that for the first time now.
I also found myself eating cookies. They were pretty delicious.
Huh, this is a pretty hefty-ass week, with lots of comical goodness! I'm especially happy that my new favorite comic, XOMBI, is shipping this week!
(Though I really question the wisdom of shipping two different "point one" issues of Avengers-franchise titles, especially since there is ALSO a "regular" issue of SECRET AVENGERS this week)
ACTION COMICS #900
AGE OF X UNIVERSE #2 (OF 2)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #659 BIG
AMERICAN VAMPIRE #14
ANGEL #44
ANITA BLAKE CIRCUS OF DAMNED INGENUE #3 (OF 5)
ARCHIE #620
AVENGERS #12 POINT ONE
BART SIMPSON COMICS #59
BATMAN INCORPORATED #5
BETTY & VERONICA #253 (RES)
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #190
BRIGHTEST DAY #24
CAPTAIN AMERICA #617
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #59
CAVEWOMAN SNOW #1
CONAN ROAD OF KINGS #4 (OF 6)
DANGER GIRL ARMY OF DARKNESS #1
DC COMICS PRESENTS NIGHT FORCE #1
DEADPOOL #36
DETECTIVE COMICS #876
DOCTOR SOLAR MAN OF ATOM #6
DOCTOR WHO ONGOING VOL 2 #4
DRACULA COMPANY OF MONSTERS #9
FF #2
FLASH #11 (FLASHPOINT) (RES)
GODZILLA KINGDOM OF MONSTERS #2
GORE #2 (OF 12)
GREEN ARROW #11 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
GREEN LANTERN EMERALD WARRIORS #9 (WAR OF GL)
HATE ANNUAL #9
HAUNT #15 (RES)
INCORRUPTIBLE #17
INCREDIBLE HULKS #627
INFESTATION CVO 100 PG SPECTACULAR
INSURRECTION V3.6 #2
JUSTICE LEAGUE GENERATION LOST #24 (BD)
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #50
KING CONAN SCARLET CITADEL #3
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #173
LIFE WITH ARCHIE MARRIED LIFE #9 MAY JUNE 2011
LOCKE & KEY KEYS TO THE KINGDOM #6 (OF 6)
MARINEMAN #5
MEDITERRANEA #3 (OF 14)
MIGHTY THOR #1
MISSION #3
MORNING GLORIES #9
NAMOR FIRST MUTANT #9
NEW MUTANTS #24 AGEX
NEW YORK FIVE #4 (OF 4)
ORSON SCOTT CARDS SPEAKER FOR DEAD #4 (OF 5)
OSBORN #5 (OF 5) BIG
PLANET OF THE APES #1
POWER MAN AND IRON FIST #4 (OF 5)
RASL #10
RUSE #2 (OF 4)
SCALPED #48
SECRET AVENGERS #12
SECRET AVENGERS #12 POINT ONE
SHREK #4 (OF 4)
SPIDER-GIRL #6 BIG
SPIDER-MAN #13
STAN LEE TRAVELER #6
STAR WARS DARTH VADER & LOST COMMAND #4 (OF 5)
STAR WARS LEGACY WAR #5 (OF 6)
STRANGE CASE OF MR HYDE #1 (OF 4)
THUNDERSTRIKE #5 (OF 5)
TOMB OF DRACULA PRESENTS THRONE OF BLOOD #1
TRUE BLOOD TAINTED LOVE #3
TUROK SON OF STONE #2
UNCANNY X-MEN #536
VELOCITY #4 (OF 4)
VENOM #2
WALKING DEAD #84
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #718
WARLORD OF MARS #6
WONDER WOMAN #610
X-23 #9
X-MEN #10
XOMBI #2
Books / Mags / Stuff
BULLETPROOF COFFIN TP
CAPTAIN AMERICA TRIAL OF CAPTAIN AMERICA PREM HC
DOCTOR SOLAR MAN OF THE ATOM TP VOL 01
DOOMWAR TP
DRACULA COMPANY OF MONSTERS TP VOL 02
EMPIRE STATE A LOVE STORY OR NOT GN
ESSENTIAL X-MEN TP VOL 06 NEW ED
FAMOUS MONSTERS UNDERGROUND #1
FLASH REBIRTH TP
GENIUS ISOLATED LIFE & ART OF ALEX TOTH HC
INVINCIBLE TP VOL 14 VILTRUMITE WAR
JONAH HEX TALL TALES TP
JUDGE DREDD COMP CASE FILES TP (S&S ED) VOL 03
JUDGE DREDD MEGACITY MASTERS SC VOL 03
JUXTAPOZ #124 MAY 2011
LAST PHANTOM TP VOL 01
LAST ZOMBIE TP
LOVE FROM THE SHADOWS HC
MAD MAGAZINE #509
NO GIRLS ALLOWED TALES OF DARING WOMEN GN
PREVIEWS #272 MAY 2011 (NET)
PUNISHER TP FRANKEN-CASTLE
REMAKE SPECIAL GN VOL 02
RUNAWAYS TP VOL 02 TEENAGE WASTELAND DIGEST NEW PTG
SANDMAN TP VOL 05 A GAME OF YOU NEW ED
SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK BY JOHN BYRNE TP VOL 01
SHOWCASE PRESENTS GREEN LANTERN TP VOL 05
SLEEPYHEADS GN
SPIKE HC VOL 01
STEAMPUNK BIBLE HC
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #197
X-MEN GOD LOVES MAN KILLS TP NEW PTG
X-MEN VS AVENGERS AND FANTASTIC FOUR TP
Y THE LAST MAN DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 05
Hello, friends. I almost managed to screw the pooch on this deadline too, but things came together, I was able to find a little patch of editing and uploading time, and...here we are. Sexy Sinestro Time!
So, as I mention in my intro, WW? 36 is our almost-didn't-happen shortcast which goes to prove that even when Graeme and I are both exhausted and overworked and have sworn that we're not going to talk comics, we can and will still have something to say about comics. Consequently, however, we media res the hell out of this one, cutting in very late on our discussion and cutting out kinda early. (It's like good screenwriting advice as applied to podcasts! Next up, Graeme and I will start discussing comics but by the third act, comics will be discussing us! Admittedly, my screenwriting knowledge is shaky, but apparently the perfect screenplay is structured like a Yakov Smirnoff joke.)
Still--we manage to talk DC's Doomsday event, Dan DiDio's Outsiders, Fear Itself, Ultimate Fallout, and Green Lantern: Secret Origin wherein we do indeed discuss--all too terribly briefly--Sexy Sinestro.
Those inclined should be able to find it on iTunes (hopefully by the time this post goes live) or you can listen to it here:
Comix Experience is very pleased to have local San Francisco cartoonist MariNaomi appearing on Saturday, May 14th, from noon to 2 PM.
MariNaomi is the author of Kiss & Tell: a Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22, where she documents each and every romantic/sexual encounter she had until young adulthood. It is a gripping piece of work, set against the backdrop of San Francisco in the 80s and 90s.
Which means, if you're a Bay Area resident, it's even possible you're in this book -- at least one Comix Experience customer is!
Please join us on Saturday, May 14, from noon to 2 PM to celebrate this special book!
Yeah, ran a little late for reasons about which I had very little control over...but hope you all are doing okay?
It's Ep. 35, and Graeme and I talk Fear Itself #1, re-examine Fraction and Ferry's Thor, talk Bakuman Vol. 4 and Onion Head Monster: Catastrophic, and answer questions posed to us on Twitter. It may sound a little skimpy on content, but that's just because I'm not doing it justice at all: it's 90+ minutes of red-hot (mostly) comics talk. Should be available on iTunes by the time this goes live, and you can also listen to it right here:
As always, thanks for listening--and special thanks to Dasbender and everyone else who took a second to give us a review on ITunes. It's always appreciated.
What a strange week of a shipment -- 69 comics, and FORTY items in the books/mags/other side...
2000 AD PACK MAR 2011
28 DAYS LATER #22
68 (SIXTY EIGHT) #1 (OF 4)
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #154
AVENGERS #12
AVENGERS ACADEMY #12
BATMAN #709
BOONDOCK SAINTS MOB WAR #1 (OF 2)
DARK HORSE PRESENTS #1
DARKWING DUCK #11
DC COMICS PRESENTS LEGION SUPER HEROES DAMNED #1
DC UNIVERSE ONLINE LEGENDS #6
DEADPOOLMAX #7
DMZ #64
DOCTOR WHO FAIRYTALE LIFE #1 (OF 4)
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS DARK SUN #4 (OF 5)
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS #6
ELF #2 (OF 6)
FABLES #104
FEAR ITSELF SINS PAST #1 FEAR
GENERATION HOPE #6
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #22
GREEN HORNET #15
GREEN LANTERN #65 (WAR OF GL)
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #59 (WAR OF GL)
HACK SLASH #3
HALO FALL OF REACH COVENANT #1 (OF 4) (RES)
HELLBLAZER #278
HULK #32
INVINCIBLE #79
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #503 FEAR
IRON MAN 2.0 #4
JERICHO SEASON 3 #5 (OF 6)
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #56
KATE MIDDLETON VERY PRIVATE PRINCESS ONE SHOT
KILL SHAKESPEARE #10 (OF 12)
LAST PHANTOM #6
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #12
MALIGNANT MAN #1 (OF 4)
MASS EFFECT EVOLUTION #4 (OF 4)
MICKEY MOUSE #307
POOD #3
POWER GIRL #23
RED SONJA BREAK THE SKIN ONE SHOT
SIGIL #2 (OF 4)
SILVER SURFER #3 (OF 5)
SIMPSONS COMICS #177
SIXTH GUN #11
SONIC UNIVERSE #27
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #1000
SPIRIT #13
STAN LEE SOLDIER ZERO #7
SUICIDE GIRLS #1 (OF 4)
SUPER DINOSAUR #1
SUPERGIRL #63
SUPERMAN BATMAN #83
TEEN TITANS #94
THUNDERBOLTS #156
TINY TITANS #39
TWILIGHT GUARDIAN #4 (OF 4)
UNCANNY X-FORCE #8
WILLIAM WINDSOR VERY PUBLIC PRINCE ONE SHOT
WOLVERINE #8
WOLVERINE & JUBILEE #4 (OF 4)
WORLD OF ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #6
X-FACTOR #218
YOUNG JUSTICE #3
ZATANNA #12
ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS UNDERCITY #1 (OF 4)
Books / Mags / Stuff
AKIRA KODANSHA ED GN VOL 06
AMITY BLAMITY GN BOOK 01
ASTRO CITY SHINING STARS HC
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THE SIXTH GUN-- BOOK I: COLD, DEAD FINGERSBy Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt, Bill Crabtree, James Lucas Jones, Charlie Chiu, and Keith Wood.
"Why must pronouncements and judgements ... be so sweeping and extreme, not to mention callous and cruel? Why can't our voiced opinions be more measured, tempered, considered?"
-- Doug Moench, May 1984, COMICS INTERVIEW #11
THE SIXTH GUN is a supernatural Western, concerning six magical revolvers, and some cowboys & cowgirls who fight over them. If you're in the market for a very clever Saturday Morning cartoon, oh, it's a pleasant enough comic. Maybe not quite as good as some of Dark Horse's BPRD books, but I think they share some the same "comfort food" qualities and weaknesses, if that helps you.
(1) Straight-forward characters fighting over-the-top cartoon monsters. The heroic characters in THE SIXTH GUN are just stock characters for the duration of the first trade-- (1) anti-hero motivated by treasure, (2) pretty farm girl, (3) old coot. Boilerplate. If the next volume has a fucking retired gunfighter in it somewhere, I just might spit. There's not a lot of meat on the bone to the hero characters in the first trade-- maybe that gets better in the issues that have come out since; you can let me know. The "stars" of the comic are the bad guys, the monsters, the ghouls. They're a reasonably gnarly bunch-- the villains definitely received the lion's share of the book's creativity (which is maybe as it should be, though).
(2) Deliberate, "cinematic" pacing. The story moves along quickly enough, but the creators know how to slow things down at the right moments-- there's a nice build to a dragon/gryphon/whatever attack in the middle, in particular. On the other hand, THE SIXTH GUN has a lousy narrator-- it's not one of the elements to the book's credit, I don't think. One of the major character turns near the end-- the anti-hero's decision that gosh darn it all, it's time to behave heroically..? That gets handled by the narrator telling you it's happening-- the story itself hadn't really pulled that part off on its own. "Nevermind about the only and defining character trait of the hero." It's not a lot better than that. I like 3rd-person narrators, generally, but I just think they leaned a little too hard on it near the end...
(3) Traditional comic art, without a noticable influence from manga, art-comics or photo-tracing. Hurtt seems more influenced by Jeff Smith than anything "modern." Keep an eye out for Hurtt's sound effects, especially. (A lot of horses in this comic, though-- I'm nothing resembling an expert, but I'd have to figure drawing a comic with a lot of horses in it would be a headache some mornings. I mean, have you ever actually taken a good, long look at a horse? They're like giant muscular dogs from Mars-- they're just some weird-looking son bitches. Aliens in comic books usually don't even look so weird. Hurtt draws 'em swell enough, though.)
And (4) a larger fantasy universe setting with mysterious nooks & crannies that the reader is invited to explore. THE SIXTH GUN is throwing imagery around from the start, within its first two pages-- references to Old West magical relics, throw-away ideas, Weird Legends, the sort of thing delivered in front of a candle and a skull in a Mignola comic. Smart move; probably bought no small amount of credit with readers. THE SIXTH GUN manages enough eyeball kicks in its first half, that I didn't put the book away when the last half of the book avoided any cool ideas and instead descended into some dreary, generic zombie battle. Boy, if you could have seen my face when the fucking zombies show up-- it was like watching air go out of a balloon.
I figure a considerable number of comics have aimed at those four particular virtues over the years. There's nothing intrinsic to the book that's especially noteworthy, no hard corners or inexplciable quirks that I could pick up on anyways. But there's nothing intrinsically noteworthy about a peanut butter & jelly sandwich or a glass of lemonade, either. THE SIXTH GUN is just... pleasant. Nice. Unchallenging. Comfy. With room for growth, improvement, definitely, but that's not such a bad thing-- that can be fun to watch, too. I don't know that I'm enthusiastic about it, exactly-- look, I'm probably just not fan enough of Weird Westerns to get especially enthusiastic about one, however well done. But I'm at least curious to see if they can improve in later volumes, how they build out their world, if they can get a little weirder, darker, scarier without losing any of its underlying appeal.
* * *
"At Oni, we really feel like we’re pushing the real mainstream on the comics populace. Oni’s output would include the romantic comedy that would gross $30 million on an opening weekend. It would be the cult teen flick like Napoleon Dynamite that just plays forever and has repeat viewing after repeat viewing."
But let's take a step back, and let's try to put this comic into context.
THE SIXTH GUN is a comic book published by Oni Press. Oni Press is a comic publisher founded in 1997, and since 2003, it's been the sister company to Closed on Mondays, a production company that Oni describes as "created specifically to help Oni Press creators and titles find life in mediums outside of comics" which "works closely with Oni creators and staff members to find [appropriate] creative partners." Like other similarly situated comic companies, Oni refers to their comics as "creator-owned" -- though when comic publishers have sister companies that work closely with creators, some people might find it a little fuzzier what creator-owned means exactly-- or at least, it's my limited understanding that reasonable minds might differ on that point. All the crowing and chest-puffing of this past year aside, the label "creator owned" on a comic seems sort of like the label "organic" on a box of cookiess-- it's not exactly clear to me what that means, and I don't know if it's a good idea for me to always assume what's being sold is healthy just based on that label.
But so: various announcements over the years. Wheeling. Dealing. For example, in June 2008, Oni Press announced a webcomic in collaboration with OZ creator Tom Fontana called "Men With Guns: Assassin," a "cat-and-mouse struggle between a hired killer and the cop who is out to get him—a conflict that is complicated by a Romeo and Juliet affair between their children." According to articles, that started out as a TV script (surprise!) before being "reimagined," though unfortunately it appears that no one could re-imagine a halfway decent fucking premise. Yaddah yaddah. Deals with CBS. Deals with Dreamworks. So on; so forth.
Skip ahead to May 2010, and Oni launches THE SIXTH GUN on Free Comic Book Day. On the precipice of the release of the film version of the beloved SCOTT PILGRIM series (and let me quickly add, beloved by, among others, me). Months after the release of THE SIXTH GUN, a billboard image of SCOTT PILGRIM VERSUS THE WORD would be splashed against the sides of a hotel at San Diego Comic Con-- "nerd culture" arguably at its zenith. Access Hollywood reports "SCOTT PILGRIM CREATES COMIC-CON PANDEMONIUM." Billy Bush might have even said those exact words to himself or one of his loved ones-- and he's probably going to be President someday.
Months after that, SCOTT PILGRIM VERSUS THE WORLD would be one of the most spectacular box office bombs of 2010.
It is the second bomb based upon an Oni Press comic, after 2009's WHITEOUT,
Would a film version of THE SIXTH GUN turn the tide on this deplorable trend? Well. One imagines there might be those in Tinsel Town reluctant to invest in what might be perceived, by lay persons, to be a "re-imagination" of 2010's multiple-Razzie nominee JONAH HEX, the most recent and most notable Weird Western movie, which also made its way onto various Biggest Bombs of 2010 lists...
And as we sit here today in 2011, Hollywood is enjoying the fruits of its latest attempt to cater to San Diego Comic Con crowds, Zach Snyder's SUCKERPUNCH. Here's a sample Comic Con panel report on advance footage of SUCKER PUNCH from 2010: "Unbelievably fast-aced [sic] and sleek and gritty. ... If you like women kicking ass, this film has plenty of it. Amazingly imaginative and creative. Reminds me of a video game on steroids."
Here's the New York Times: "There is nothing here to enjoy." Based on Cinemascore grades and box office numbers, audiences seem to agree.
When asked, there's a certain type of comic creator who likes to answer that comics are the "cheapest form of R&D there is," or some other small-minded variation thereof. And above, we have the results of the cheapest form of R&D in action. The fanboy audience can now help to isolate the DNA of failure with almost unerring accuracy. The boys in the lab can make movies no one wants to see lickety-split thanks to nerd R&D. Next up for Science: making cats ugly, decreasing the power of orgasms, and frowning at ice cream. Thanks to San Diego Comic Con, Hollywood can now research what a limited number of people who don't matter in any great scheme of things, what they happen to like better than ever. Congratulations, Einsteins!
* * *
"It's so hard because-- here's the thing, I hope I'm completely wrong. I keep hearing-- I check Box Office Mojo, and I read IMDB and I read the trades and stuff like that. Just to get an idea of, like-- can you at least tell me what the market is looking for? And most of the time, it's 'We don't know-- We don't know-- We don't know.' But they keep throwing around this word niche ... and I'm hearing it more and more. And ever since Scott Pilgrim vs the World, i hear this more and more: 'That's niche.' Which [they suggest] is a bad thing, that Niche movies don't work. Aimed at a specific group of people that love this stuff to death. They want something that's going to be across the board-- get that small group, get your mom and dad, and it just made me go, you and I, our taste, the stuff that we love, we are completely in the minority."
But let's take another step back and try to put the context of this comic into context.
Let's make a map.
Let's make a map of the "mainstream"-- not the mainstream of the present day yet; let's start instead pre-internet. How about 1986? Picked out of a hat-- 1986.
1) Let's start with the burning white-hot center-- culture which everyone in the culture you would expect to know.
That white dot was well-populated in 1986. Michael Jackson lived there; Bruce Springsteen lived there; Harrison Ford, Madonna, Bill Cosby. For about two weeks, the band Timbuk 3. Fact.
2) Let's add movies in blue-- a nice large circle for Hollywood and its blockbusters. Let's add some a smaller circle for foreign films, and an exceedingly tiny dot for independent films-- SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE was still three years away at that point. Let's also add television in yellow-- with a tiny dot for cable. This is 1986, and for people not alive in that year, in 1986, not everyone had cable. If you think that's mind-blowing, it's only because you don't know/remember what remote controls for cable television looked like back then.
3) And add in music and books, in green and purple respectively and that should do it. Music will need a small cluster-- a big circle for popular music, but then country, jazz, R&B, and classical. Books-- we just need one for books and one for magazines, I figure. Oh, let's add a tiny dot in grey for videogames-- I think Atari was around by then-- something needs to reflect the nascent gaming culture. And let's add in comics-- let's put that out past books and magazines.
Okay. So there's a rough map of "mainstream culture" in 1986.
Fast-forward to 2011, present day. How do we redraw the map?
1) For movies, we should increase the circle for independent film; probably decrease the circle for foreign films. Let's add a dot for documentary films-- those seem to have hit more often lately. And we have to add a dot for the home market-- 1986, the home video VHS market was around by then, but it was not like it is now. You'd have to go to some musty Mom & Pop shop, and if they didn't carry the movie you wanted to see-- you weren't seeing it. Now, we have DVDs, Netflix on demand, Hulu on demand, On Demand on demand. Also: we should probably shrink the size of current blockbusters-- you know, TRANSFORMERS 2 was a blockbuster, financially, but it's actual place in people's lives is ... what, exactly?
2) For television, we should drastically increase the size of the cable circle, maybe add a smaller circle out for pay cable which has original programming now in a way that it didn't in 1986. Again, we have to shrink the size of the television dot to reflect decreased ratings in network programming.
3) Music-- we would have to completely disintegrate music into a mist. Pop music isn't as popular anymore. According to Wikipedia numbers, Lady Gaga's album only sold about 4-5 million copies; THRILLER, by comparison, sold 65-110 million copies; even MC Hammer's 1990 album PLEASE HAMMER DON'T HURT EM sold 18 million copies. On the other hand, when ARCADE FIRE won the Grammy for Best Album this year, the internet got filled with shrieks of "Who are ARCADE FIRE?" Add in the rise of a million different sub-genres-- do you like country music? Or do you like Alternative Country, Honkie Tonk Country, Americana, Country-Rock, Pop-Country, Western swing, Texas Country, Red Dirt music, Southern-Rock, Nashville Sound, or Rockabilly?
4) Books and magazines are easy-- those, we just have to shrink.
5) Games we increase in size, but even there, you have to reflect the different platforms, indie games, casual games, MMORPGS.
6) We'd need to add a dot for internet video. If someone told me they'd never seen an episode of TWO AND A HALF MEN, I'd think nothing of it-- I'd congratulate them-- but if someone my age told me they'd never seen the Star Wars Kid-- that would be a little odd to me. One instantiation of the Youtube version of the Star Wars Kid has been seen about 21 million times, alone.
7) And comics-- let's decrease in size to reflect decreases in sales, but let's add in a dot for literary comics. And let's add a tiny, tiny dot for webcomics. The Penny Arcade dot, basically (which is being generous).
8) Is that everything? Nope-- almost forgot the very activity you and I are engaged in right this second. We've forgotten that each of those dots has in its orbit a cluster of podcasts, blogospheres, web-videos, tumblr accounts, facebook fan-groups, and twits. We'd need to add a fog around each and every dot to represent that.
So taking all that into consideration, here's what our culture looks like in 2011:
And here's what my ridiculous and pointless new map looks like:
2011 looks like someone vomited pepto bismol on top of a bag of skittles. Feels that way too some days, am I right or am I right? Or am I right? What lives in that white dot anymore...? For about a week, Charlie Sheen. For thirty glorious minutes in 2004, Keenan Ivory Wayan's WHITE CHICKS.
* * *
"You never know what's in the cards. I'm really doing my best not to think about it too much. I became obsessed with the possibilities for a while, and it doesn't do anyone any good as a creator. My best bet, I decided, was to concentrate on making the best comic book I can and be pleasantly surprised if any of the Hollywood stuff comes together."
We don't know what impact Oni's efforts to "find creative partners" may (or may not) have had on THE SIXTH GUN's contents, publication or reception by its comic audience, and can only speculate as to what its reception would be outside of the comic audience. Oni pursued a strategy of focusing on genre-but-not-superhero-genre books in the hopes of growing the comics audience beyond superhero fans. In the case of the SCOTT PILGRIM book series, that strategy may have proven extremely successful, notwithstanding any disappointment to the box office returns of the movie version. That strategy seems laudable, what's more.
So, what in pluperfect hell does any of this b.s. have to do with THE SIXTH GUN???
Well but okay-- my little map of 2011. Where am I on that map? What is my relationship to all those blurs? I still watch television and movies, sure. Though-- for television, mostly cable television. But besides that, maybe in equal amount, maybe in an increasingly greater amount, comedy podcasts-- the WTF podcast is two hours of out every week for me, say, and that's not the only one I listen to. More movies from Netflix Instant Watch than from a theater, certainly. Web video-- huge chunk of my time. Even comics-- my comic time is split up now between traditional paper comics, webcomics, reading essays about comics, that Oh Wait podcast. Music, I learn about from blogs, and listen to almost exclusively from youtube-- and as is the case elsewhere, I chase fleeting whim. About four months ago, I spent a week listening exclusively to calypso music-- I was just in one of those places in my life where I really needed to hear songs about rum and imperialism, you guys. And a huge chunk of time following the lives of arbitrarily-selected strangers on tumblr, which has really become my entertainment of choice more than anything else.
If you were to be given my media consumption, you would likely rebel because it is becoming, with every day, increasingly tailored to my ever more narrow interests.
You may like movies but you probably prefer snuff movies to whatever the hell it is I watch on Netflix. You may not have my interest in comedy podcasts, or may have that interest but for entirely different podcasts than the ones I listen to. You probably listen exclusively to snuff podcasts. The Sound of Young America Being Snuffed. You may not want to know what happens in the lives of random 20-something girls with tumblr accounts as eagerly as I do... or you may follow the lives of random 20-something girls but an entirely different group of them! Let that blow your mind. Either way, I think those ladies should be afraid because you will probably someday snuff them.
So, now more than ever it's easier to go not only into niches, but, like, hyper-niches. Except: well, there's Pixar right? But I know with Pixar even, one of the most common compliments I hear for their work is "anyone can like it." Which-- isn't that a weird thing to compliment? It seems like it should be, at least if you grew up with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ROMANCING THE STONE, BACK TO THE FUTURE, movies that I don't think were age-specific...?
How does all of the above affect how any of us consume something like THE SIXTH GUN? Does it?
When it's a specific comic, but not specific to my peculiar set of tastes-- (e.g. when it's operating within the four-corners of the Weird Western genre, and I'm not a Weird Western fan), does that make me less excited about it than I would have been before this fragmentation? Or when it's trying to be a big crowdpleaser, with massive zombie battles and dull, pretty-boy heroes-- is that somehow more offensive to me now than before, now that I'm ever more effectively a crowd of one? And to what extent am I limited in my ability to communicate anything meaningful about THE SIXTH GUN's virtues and/or demerits in light of that? Or does what I was saying about Pixar above apply equally to THE SIXTH GUN? Am I actually more enthusiastic about THE SIXTH GUN than I would otherwise be because I do sort of admire how THE SIXTH GUN seems like it could appeal to kids of "All Ages?" Or am I unaffected by any of this at all, and when I sit down with THE SIXTH GUN, it's just me and the comic, fuck the world...?
I'm not sure what the answer to any of these are because I'm not sure how much I'm lying to myself fundamentally about what it is that I want. There are things I might say that I want from future volumes of THE SIXTH GUN-- for it to be weirder, MUCH scarier, a little sexier, maybe a little bit more ... about something? I might say those things, I might think that I want this comic to be more specific to my tastes, to make me feel less interchangeable by virtue of the fact I'm consuming something less interchangeable. But if it did those things, if it did every single one of those things, I have to acknowledge that it would probably be at the expense of being a "crowdpleaser," at being universal, and maybe what I actually want is that instead, to feel connected to some great mass audience, more connected to my fellow man and/or lady. Which one of my neurotic and sad needs will win? Oh, the suspense of it all.
Probably, however, there's a third answer. And probably it's that I want things to be tailored to my narrow tastes-- but that I want the rest of you to share my narrow tastes identically.
...But-- but SHIT, why wouldn't you want that anyways? I ask you!
Comedy podcasts and videos!
Strangers on Tumblr!
Calypso Music!
Building forts!
Snuff movies!
Erotic games of cat & mouse!
How great does sharing my narrow tastes identically sound? Sounds great to me! Try to disagree if you want, with your Oni comics and your misery, but logic, reason and deduction tells me one of us is walking away with a trophy, and that's probably going to be me.
It is April, and we're starting this year's cycle of event storytelling. I'm fairly unconvinced this is what the audience actually and truly wants -- at best I tend to think that the market supports them because its been sooooo long since we sold comics purely on the strength of the comics that we've forgotten anything BUT events, but I guess we'll see what shakes out.
Clearly the market is reeling right now -- January and February were abysmal, and March not really that much better -- and there's a sense to me, at least, that this year's are "make or break" for the Marvel and DC universes in some fashion or another.
Not like comics will go away, of course, my big happy thought from WonderCon was that Larry Marder is still doing Beanworld, and getting paid to do so, and as long as THAT still happens, comics are just fine, thanks very much!
But that's something more to develop in a TILTING (which, huh, I should get to writing, shouldn't I?) -- this is to talk about the comics themselves.
FEAR ITSELF #1: In many many many ways, I think that the success of failure of an event can often be determined by looking at its "log line" or "elevator pitch" -- the one sentence summation of what the book is about. I'm not all that terrific at perfectly encapsulating them, for example I'm sure someone can come up with something more precise or sexy for CIVIL WAR than "Superheroes fight among themselves over liberty versus security", but that was pretty much what I used in '06, and it worked a charm, selling a bucketload of comics for me.
In the same way, DC's biggest recent hit, BLACKEST NIGHT, can be reduced to "Dead superheroes come back from the grave as murderous zombies" -- that the kind of thing people often say "Wow, cool!" to. The CLEARER the pitch, the more direct and large the sales.
FEAR ITSELF is a weird "event" comic -- I'll say straight up that I liked it pretty well. I have problems with bits of it (when don't I?): I thought the Avengers pro-Stark shilling was a bit.... strange, given the libertarian nature of some of the characters; I thought that the interactions between Thor and Odin were kind of heavy-handed; and I thought the lettering was oddly large, but all in all I liked the issue as I was reading it, and I'll even skip to the chase and say I thought it was pretty GOOD.
But I still can't log line it! Even after reading it! That's not a great situation.
I mean, I could say "An older pantheon of gods returns to kick the Asgardian's asses", I guess? But I don't think that's all there is to it, and, anyway, that sounds way too insider baseball for fan-off-the-street. Very very few people ACTUALLY care about "the Asgardians" as an abstract group, we have decades of sales information to clearly show that. And, clearly, Marvel is struggling with it as well, because THEY'VE yet to log line it themselves -- their marketing is all over the map, and not defining things in terms of story really. Even the title doesn't suggest what the story might be about.
Our first week sales were "fine" -- just a smidge above AVENGERS... but I have a hard time considering an event book a hit unless it does, say, twice, three times that. That's kind of the problem with Direct Market 2011 in a nutshell, in fact -- the bottom- and middle- sellers are no worse than flat, and even substantially up in a lot of cases, but the top-selling books have cratered to less than half of what they were 2-3 years ago. That's an ugly prospect.
I'm cool with the stock I have on hand -- worst case we'll sell out sometime right around the last issue shipping, but I *want* to have to go back for more, say, before issue #3 arrives in store.
Anyway, log-lines, yeah. That's the problem here. The comic is pretty GOOD, but I can't find the words to SELL it.
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #622: Kieron Gillen's first issue, and also the first crossover tie-in to FEAR ITSELF, and I really REALLY liked it. If you had said "Neil Gaiman wrote this" I might have believed you. Gillen's always been strong on plotting, but this brings his prose up to a new level, and I'm anxious to see how long he can sustain this questing story with Loki as a lead. I hope it's a real long time. VERY GOOD.
FLASH #10: This is the second "prelude" issue to the upcoming Big DC event FLASHPOINT, and every problem I have with FEAR ITSELF is magnified widely for FLASHPOINT -- what the hell is it about? Well, I've figured out that the best thing to say is maybe "It's 'Age of Apocalypse' for the DC Universe", but if you don't already read comics (and lots of them), then I have to explain what AoA is, right? I guess you could also say "It's an 'Elseworlds' as an event", but same problem, right?
Comics ABOUT comics are kind of a hard sell.
The problem is compounded by the fact that FLASH has really been a dull book, to date. I *still* don't know what compelling narrative reason there was to bringing Saint Barry back in the first place, and I *like* DC's Silver Age.
What I *did* like about this issue was the *idea* of "Hot Pursuit" as being from Earth-47 (or whatever), and I'm intrigued about the rest of the heroes on what could potentially be a "no non-tech superpowers" world, but since I'm sort of expecting HP to *be* the bad-guy here, I suspect that is going to go nowhere? I also hope very very much I'm wrong, because isn't that more or less the plot of the first FLASH arc anyway?
Bottom line: There's nothing here that interests me, or, more importantly, creates more interest for FLASHPOINT, and a lot of what DC is doing this year would seem to depend on one or the other of those conditions being met? FLASH #10 was essentially EH.
BRIGHTEST DAY #23: I know that there's one more to go, and I should probably hold off until then just to see if they tie the loose ends well.... but I can't see how they can?
I guess I'm just flabbergasted that the POINT of an entire year of a series, not to mention the end of BLACKEST NIGHT seems to have been to return Swamp Thing to the DCU universe? Really? Realllllllly?
Then there's the "And what the FUCK did that have to do with a WHITE LANTERN?!?!" I mean the whole "lantern" concept seems sort of inherently more than about parochial Terran concerns, no? Or how about how this ties in with some of the other returnees most specifically Max Lord? Or how about, how do you return the Terran Earth elemental with a cat from Mars, and another one from frickin' thanagar?
Plus, Alec Holland's body? Meatless.
Plus plus, how are you returning SWAMP Thing to what's clearly meant to be a Northwestern city (like Portland or Seattle)? Meh.
I also think the cosmology, as already established in the DCU is kind of off -- Firestorm ALREADY was the Fire Elemental, and there was mm, whatsname, Niaid is it? as the Water one. I mean, those are DC comics, not Vertigo ones!
I don't know.
But, at the end of the day, I can't believe all that was leading to the return of Swamp Thing, because I'm a retailer and I know that no Swamp Thing comic NOT written by Alan Moore is going to be commercially successful within a year. So why waste all of the effort to reintroducing what, at very very very best will be a supporting character?
I thought this was pretty AWFUL.
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #157 and ULTIMATE AVENGERS VS NEW ULTIMATES #3: OK, now I *think* I see what they're going to do here, and it seems like they are going to kill "Spider-Man", presumably by completely crippling Peter Parker. Maybe they'll then turn Peter into the new Reed Richards of the Ultimate U, or, like "Professor P." running a team from his wheelchair or something. I guess there's some slight story potential there.
The thing is.... the thing is, as a marketing concept, they sold this entirely the wrong way. We had the postcards proclaiming "THE DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN!" on our counter for several weeks, and MANY people asked about it. "Yeah," says I, "It's in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN". "Oh," says them, "so not the 'real' one". I'd then try to convince them that USM is actually spiffy, indeed, but you can see the eyes glaze over.
So, yeah, by marketing it like this, especially with the 3 "prequel" issues, boldly bannered and all that, they're setting up some false expectations, at best. I guess that I feel that if they had just DID it, without trying to make it a marketing "event", that it would have caught everyone by surprise, and sales could have built up from the sheer buzz and audacity of it. But, by doing it "top down" like this, I think you're not going to get the kind of audience response that the Ultimate line desperately desperately needs right now.
I quite liked the Spidey portion of these two issues (GOOD), but thought the Avengers portion was overblown, and undercooked (EH)
Yeah, that's enough out of me. What did YOU think?
ADVENTURE COMICS #525
ALL NEW BATMAN THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #6
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #658 BIG
B & V FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #213
BATGIRL #20
BATMAN AND ROBIN #22
BIRDS OF PREY #11
BLACK PANTHER MAN WITHOUT FEAR #517
BOOSTER GOLD #43
BUTCHER BAKER RIGHTEOUS MAKER #2
CAPTAIN AMERICA FIGHTING AVENGER #1
CARBON GREY #2
CARNAGE #4 (OF 5)
CASANOVA GULA #4 (OF 4)
CINDERELLA FABLES ARE FOREVER #3 (OF 6)
CLINT #6
DAKEN DARK WOLVERINE #8
DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER LITTLE SISTERS ELURIA #5 (OF 5)
DC COMICS PRESENTS BATMAN ARKHAM #1
DEADPOOL #35
DEAN KOONTZ NEVERMORE #1 (OF 6)
DEATH OF ZORRO #2
DOC SAVAGE #13
DONALD DUCK #365
FLASH #10 (FLASHPOINT)
FLASH #10 VAR ED (FLASHPOINT)
FORMIC WARS BURNING EARTH #4 (OF 7)
FRAGGLE ROCK VOL 2 #3 (OF 3)
GI JOE VOL 2 #0
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #58
HAWKEYE: BLIND SPOT #3 (OF 4)
HELLBOY BUSTER OAKLEY GETS HIS WISH
INCREDIBLE HULKS #626
INFINITE VACATION #2
IRON MAN 2.0 #3
JIM BUTCHER DRESDEN FILES FOOL MOON #1
JOHN BYRNE NEXT MEN #5
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #622 FEAR
JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #169
JUSTICE LEAGUE GENERATION LOST #23 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
LADIES O/T NIGHT ONE SHOT
LADY DEATH (ONGOING) #4
LIL DEPRESSED BOY #3
NEW AVENGERS #11
NIGHT O/T LIVING DEAD #4 (OF 5)
NIGHT O/T LIVING DEAD 2011 ANNUAL
NORTHLANDERS #39
ONSLAUGHT UNLEASHED #3 (OF 4)
OUTSIDERS #38
OZ WONDERLAND CHRONICLES #4 (OF 4)
PUNISHERMAX #12
REBELS #27
RED ROBIN #22
RED SONJA REVENGE O/T GODS #2 (OF 5)
ROBERT JORDAN WHEEL OF TIME EYE O/T WORLD #9
SECRET WARRIORS #26
SHIELD INFINITY
SPAWN #206 (RES)
SPIKE #7 (OF 8)
SPONGEBOB COMICS #2
STAN LEE STARBORN #5
STEVE ROGERS SUPER SOLDIER ANNUAL #1
SUPER HEROES #13
SUPERBOY #6 (DOOMSDAY)
SUPERMAN #710
SWEETS #5 (OF 5)
THOR WHOSOEVER WIELDS THIS HAMMER #1
THUNDER AGENTS #6
TITANS #34
ULTIMATE AVENGERS VS NEW ULTIMATES #3 (OF 6) DOSM
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #157 DOSM
UNCANNY X-FORCE #7
UNCANNY X-MEN #535
UNWRITTEN #24
WALKING DEAD SURVIVORS GUIDE #1 (OF 4)
WARLORD OF MARS DEJAH THORIS #2
X-MEN LEGACY #247 AGEX
Books / Mags / Stuff
AREA 10 TP
AYN RAND ANTHEM GRAPHIC NOVEL
COMPLETE WENDEL SC
DARK AGE DOMINION GN VOL 01 (OF 3)
EX MACHINA DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 05
FRANCIS SHARP IN GRIP OF UNCANNY GN CHAPTER 01 (OF 4)
GIRLS & GODDESSES PIN UP ART OF JOSEPH MICHAEL LINSNER TP (M
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS TP VOL 01 UNION
HALO FALL OF REACH PREM HC BOOT CAMP
INCREDIBLE CHANGE BOTS TWO GN
JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #56
JUGHEAD CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT TP
JUSTICE LEAGUE GENERATION LOST HC VOL 01
KUNG FU PANDA 2 MOVIE PREQUEL TP
ONWARD TOWARDS OUR NOBLE DEATHS GN
OZ WONDERLAND CHRONICLES TP VOL 01 DIRECT MKT ED (RES)
RUNAWAYS TP VOL 01 PRIDE AND JOY DIGEST NEW PTG
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY GN TP
SPIRIT ANGEL SMERTI TP
STEPHEN KINGS N TP
THOR BY WALTER SIMONSON OMNIBUS HC
ULTIMATE COMICS AVENGERS PREM HC BLADE VS AVENGERS
UNCANNY X-FORCE PREM HC APOCALYPSE SOLUTION
Just barely made it in under the wire--kinda ironic, considering I had the week off. And yet as sometimes happens when you take a vacation during a big comics convention, you can spend almost as much time recovering as you do shuffling through longboxes and whatnot. (More, obviously, in my case.)
In any event, here's Wait, What? Ep. 34 for you: almost ninety minutes of comic book flava recorded by Graeme and myself on the day before Wondercon. We talk Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture, Finder: Voice, Thor, Butcher Baker #1, Wonder Woman, Jimmy Olsen #1, and Marc Guggenheim's recent Justice Society of America. Really, it was worth the wait (for those of you waiting, anyway.)
By the time you read this, it should (maybe?) be on iTunes. You can also listen to it right now and right here:
Oh, and speaking of iTunes--for those of you who listen to us and enjoy us and haven't given us a review on iTunes? If you wouldn't mind taking a second to do so, I'd appreciate it. I'd like as many people to be able to find and try the podcast as possible, and I think a recent review always makes for a good impression, you know? Just a totally optional thing, if you feel like doing it...
Anyway, we hope you enjoy and, as always, thanks for listening!
Oooh, my sinuses are filled with ConCrud from WonderCon! (I *knew* Paul and Anina were going to infect me! But who can stop hugging them?) Great show this year, though....
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #38
ANNIHILATORS #2 (OF 4)
ARCHIE & FRIENDS DOUBLE DIGEST #4
AVENGERS CHILDRENS CRUSADE #5 (OF 9)
AXE COP BAD GUY EARTH #2 (OF 3)
BATMAN BEYOND #4
BETTY #191
BLUE ESTATE #1
BOYS #53
BPRD DEAD REMEMBERED #1 (OF 3) JO CHEN CVR
BRIGHTEST DAY #23
CAPTAIN AMERICA HAIL HYDRA #4 (OF 5)
CHARISMAGIC #1 CVR A RANDOLPH
CHEW #18
CHIP N DALE RESCUE RANGERS #5
CONAN LEGACY FRAZETTA COVER #7 (OF 8)
DAOMU #3
DC UNIVERSE ONLINE LEGENDS #5
DEADPOOL FAMILY #1
DOOM PATROL #21
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS #5
EMMA #2 (OF 5)
FALLEN ANGEL RETURN OF THE SON #3 (OF 4)
FEAR ITSELF #1 (OF 7) FEAR
FEAR ITSELF HOME FRONT #1 (OF 7) FEAR
FIREBREATHER HOLMGANG #2 (OF 4)
FIRST WAVE SPECIAL #1
FREEDOM FIGHTERS #8
GLAMOURPUSS #18
GREEN HORNET AFTERMATH #1
HERC #1
HEROES FOR HIRE #5
HOUSE OF MYSTERY #36
INFESTATION #2 (OF 2)
INTREPIDS #2
IRREDEEMABLE #24
IZOMBIE #12
JIM BUTCHER DRESDEN FILES FOOL MOON #1
JLA 80 PAGE GIANT 2011 #1
JONAH HEX #66
JSA ALL STARS #17
JURASSIC PARK DEVILS IN THE DESERT #4 (OF 4)
LOONEY TUNES #197
LOVE AND CAPES EVER AFTER #3
MADMAN NEW GIANT SIZE SUPER GINCHY SPEC ONE SHOT #0
MARVEL ZOMBIES SUPREME #3 (OF 5)
MEMOIR #3 (OF 6)
NONPLAYER #1 (OF 6)
ORC STAIN #6
OZMA OF OZ #5 (OF 8)
ROYAL HISTORIAN OF OZ #4 (OF 5)
SCOOBY DOO WHERE ARE YOU #8
SECRET SIX #32
SOLOMON KANE RED SHADOWS #1 (OF 4)
SUPERMAN BATMAN ANNUAL #5 (DOOMSDAY)
SWEET TOOTH #20
ULTIMATE COMICS CAPTAIN AMERICA #4 (OF 4)
UNCANNY X-MEN #534 POINT ONE
UNCLE SCROOGE #402
USAGI YOJIMBO #136
VERTIGO RESURRECTED HELLBLAZER BAD BLOOD #1
WEIRD WORLD OF JACK STAFF #6
WEIRD WORLDS #4 (OF 6)
WHO IS JAKE ELLIS #3
WITCHFINDER LOST & GONE FOREVER #3 (OF 5)
WOLVERINE BEST THERE IS #5
WOLVERINE HERCULES MYTHS MONSTERS AND MUTANTS #2 (OF 4)
Books / Mags /Stuff
AARON AND AHMED HC
ARCHIE BEST OF DAN DECARLO HC VOL 02
AVENGERS PRIME PREM HC
BOYS TP VOL 08 HIGHLAND LADDIE
BUT I CANT DO ANYTHING ELSE ART OF ROB SCHRAB HC
CAPACITY GN NEW PTG
CHAOS WAR TP
CONAN HC VOL 10 IRON SHADOWS IN THE MOON
DC SUPERHERO FIG COLL MAG #76 BIG BARDA
DR HORRIBLE SING ALONG BLOG BOOK SC (RES)
ESSENTIAL X-MEN TP VOL 05 NEW ED
FABLES TP VOL 15 ROSE RED
FARSCAPE UNCHARTED TALES TP VOL 03 DARGOS QUEST
GREEN LANTERN SECRET ORIGIN TP NEW ED
LEES TOY REVIEW #217 SPRING 2011
LEGEND O/T SCARLET BLADES HC
MADMAN ATOMICA HC
MARVEL ZOMBIES 5 TP
MOME GN VOL 21
OUTLAW PRINCE TP
RAINY DAY RECESS COMPLETE STEVEN COMICS TP
REUNION SC
STAR TREK KHAN RULING IN HELL TP
SUPERSTAR HC VOL 01 AS SEEN ON TV
TECHNOPRIESTS TP VOL 03 PERFECT GAME
TIME MASTERS VANISHING POINT TP
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #196
WARCRAFT SHADOW WING GN VOL 02 (OF 2) NEXUS POINT
YESTERDAYS TOMORROWS TP VOL 01
ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS AVENTURE TP
My utmost gratitude to all of our wonderful customers and excellent staff for helping Comix Experience get to this, our 22nd anniversary of operation!
-B
There are two kinds of special thrills that periodical comics can bring.
The first is tied to world-building, in which you get a piece of a story here, and another piece there, and eventually it adds up, building into something much larger than it's parts -- this is much of the thrill of the Marvel or DC universes, and one of the reasons that every other attempt to make a "universe" usually comes crashing down: it is nearly impossible to coordinate in that particular way, and it takes a multi-year dedication to build, with titles come out in a specific way. When you try to "erect" that kind of thing, the scaffolding is usually pretty apparent, and like a magic trick, you don't want to see how it is done.
(Because, of course, DC and Marvel both stumbled into their "universes" nearly by accident -- and they grew organically from there)
Even Marvel and DC have become pretty bad a really mining this special thrill. Look at the way sales figures have flattened as they've tried to geometrically expand the search for that thrill!
But this is something that really only main-veins as a periodical experience -- because that kind of manic soap opera thrill depends AT LEAST as much on sequence and spatial-relationship-in-time as it does about content. That is to say, to create a really lousy example that doesn't actually exist, anyone can team up Spider-Man and Daredevil to fight, but only comics can have Spidey start a swing-punch in SPIDER-MAN #123, and have him finish that arc in DAREDEVIL #213. When the inter-relationships-of-titles get reprinted in book form, you're generally only getting one strand of it, so you miss out on this whole kind of meta-thingy.
I could totally explain this better, I think, but THAT thrill isn't the one I actually want to really talk about today, it's the OTHER one: the cliffhanger.
I remember vividly the first cliffhanger that REALLY stuck with me -- at the end of the first issue of the O'Neill/Cowan QUESTION #1, Vic Sage gets shot in the head at point blank range, and falls into the river, apparently dead.
Whoa!
That was a very long month, I tell you.
In #2 it turned out that because of the caliber of bullet, the angle of the shot and the shockingly cold temperature of the river, the bullet just bounced off Vic's skull, and he was able to survive. O'Neill even told a story in the letter's page of a similar real-life incident that he took as inspiration.
But when you read this in the paperback collection, where one page he plunges down, and the next he is rescued most of the cliffhanger's power is completely abrogated. It's actually a pretty flat sequence.
It's a bit like, say, watching LOST on DVD box set, and just CHEWING through the episodes -- that can be satisfying in it's own way, but losing out on the week-between-airings and the time-to-think that stems from that is missing most of the cultural weight that LOST had on the Broadcast audience.
In fact, in really terrific network-style TV, you can get some awesome impacts of this kind of thing just from commercial breaks, which, again, get often minimized on DVD. The thing TV-on-DVD has going for it (as it were) are the musical cues which can help build suspense or otherwise manipulate your emotional reaction.
Comics don't have THAT particular trick (though they have a few native ones), so it is my firm belief that the cadence of periodical versus book-format is very very different.
Once one has been doing comics enough, it's very possible to make the periodical seams vanish when something gets collceted -- what we usually refer to as "decompressed storytelling", but unless you're very careful or very very good, it's pretty easy to short change the periodical.
I'd say that, consistently, really the only cartoonist who master the comic/book split right has been Dave Sim. Especially from, say, CHURCH & STATE through to MELMOTH or so, there are little jolty cliffhangers every 20 pages in CEREBUS, so that reading the monthly was generally satisfying (and often thrilling), but when you join those together in a book, almost every one of those cliffhangers is nearly invisible within the book as a whole. Things rise and fall differently in a book.
The other guys who have started to really figure out the trick are Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard in WALKING DEAD.
Which brings us to this week's issue of WALKING DEAD #86.
There's a potenitally massive massive game changer here, just one of those moments where your jaw drops and you're all "please god say you didn't!" and "I wantwantwantwant the next issue NOW!!!!", and now you've got to live what what you saw for the next entire month.
I'm not going to spoil it, but I KNOW it is going to read differently in the paperback than it does here. Why? Because similar things in previous issues have as well -- it read one way in serialization, and in a more subdued way in the collection.
And if you're one of the (many!) "I read it in trade" people, well you're missing out on one of the best thrills of WALKING DEAD -- the wait between events, and the suspense that engenders.
(Plus, the Big Thing isn't the ONLY thing that happens this issue -- there's at least one more Pretty Big Thing [and maybe 2] that gets undersold because of the Big Thing)
Anyway, this is really WHY I read comics -- for the suspense BETWEEN issues, and this was a truly EXCELLENT example of that.
What did YOU think? (though, if you comment, any spoilery ones will be deleted by me)
Green Lantern 64 (Part One of War of The Green Lanterns)
Hal Jordan? Funny you asked. As a result of of the death of his father, he’s refused to acknowledge fear, forever living a life of risk and insubordination. He lacks professionalism and restraint and has never been able to keep his emotions in check. The Green Lantern Corps--a paramilitary police organization whose shield he operates under--was willing to look the other way, until he started hanging out with aliens who have and use colored rings from other spokes of what’s been called “The Emotional Spectrum”. Forming what's been called the Rainbow Squadron, this unofficial team of Jordan's is unacceptable to the Corps, so he must be, and he will be...arrested.
That’s the blurb I wished they’d use for this series. It would look good in a bold white font on an all black background, being read aloud by a Kevin Conroy-type. I didn’t really have to change any of the comic's actual text either, that’s all from the first few pages of this issue.
The rest of this issue's pages follow.
The rainbow squadron--or the Kaledeioscopic Klan O' Kosmic Kops, they don’t seem to have a real name--have just discovered a large black hardcover book, and this book contains the Guardian’s darkest secrets. (The Guardians are the small floating blue people who give out the Green Lantern rings.) This big black book is about the size of a mid-range automobile, and when Hal Jordan decides to close it, he uses his ring to create an old lady wearing the female version of the Col. Sanders tie to close it for him. There is a bit of a hubbub when it is revealed that Atrocitus (he’s the Red Lantern, they’re the ones who vomit blood) already knew the secret that the team came to find, which is about a rogue Guardian named Krona who is responsible for killing everyone in Atrocitus “sector”. (Sectors are like states, but intergalactic. I don’t believe it has ever been explained who came up the borders of the individual sectors, which sounds like an untapped well of historical map-constructing possibility if you ask me, which I am.) Responding to Atrocitus’ betrayal with some of the lack of restraint that’s got him in hot water, Hal Jordan lashes out and smashes our Red Lantern against a wall, which makes cracks in the wall and also squirts the Red Lantern signal out of Atrocitus’s back. Embarrassing? On purpose? It just reminds me of the old Spider-Man light signal that he’d spray out of his belt. I bet they don’t let him use that anymore now that he wears that white suit. It would just be a big flashlight! That’s what cops do, not Spider-Man.
Then, there’s a big surprise that interrupts the fight that was getting ready to go down between Hal (who is a regular human man) and Atrocitus (who is a big tough alien who vomits blood), which is disappointing. The book pops open, and Larfleeze (the Orange Lantern who represents people with large comic book collections) gets tricked into grabbing an actual orange lantern (which is attached to a easy-to-see chain). The chain sucks Larfleeze into the book like a flushed toilet, making way for the reveal of...Lyssa Drak, the Story Vampire! She’s the Keeper of the Book of the Black! See?
They call that the real deal.
CUTAWAY TO....OA.
Oa is where the floating smurf people live. They are in their hovering room, talking about themselves and how disappointed they are in Hal Jordan, which I’m pretty sure is the only thing I’ve ever seen them do with their time, except for in Blackest Night, when a bunch of them got their hearts ripped out. They seem really put out that their lantern wielders always go bad, but not so much that they’re actually upset about it, because having emotional reactions would be unacceptable.
Although these sorts of comic book cutaways usually resolve itself by throwing out some kind of cliffhanger line before returning to the previous Hal Jordan-centric action, this one doesn’t. Instead, a big light show goes off, turning the hover dome--that's a dome for hovering--into a massive reverse planeterium, which makes yellow shit squirt out of the noses and ears of the Guardians.
PERSONAL ANECDOTAL ASIDE TANGENTIALLY RELATED TO GREEN LANTERN COMIC:
There’s this actor guy I know, who has a pretty good career now playing terrorists in Stephen Speiberg movies as well as scientists in Keanu Reeves movies, but when I knew him, all he wanted to do was a scene from Narc where he played the Jason Patric part and me and my old roommate played the Busta Rhymes and other rapper part. In the scene, Busta and the other guy are beat-to-shit and tied to chairs, which seemed pretty boring. To have a bit of fun with it, we both bought massive amounts of the really expensive fake blood, the kind that has a mint flavor and nutritional information, and then we just went to fucking town, making our own capsules and packs and pouring the shit in any manner of things. When we did the scene--which just consisted of us crying and screaming expletives while our very own Jason Patric forgot his lines and fake punched us--we had so much blood pouring out of our mouths and scalp that you could hear people retching while they watched. Later on, I found out the secret: people will tolerate hardcore violence, and they’ll tolerate fake blood coming out of just about anything, including your groin (that was all me son), but the sight of it coming out of the ear? It was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that the average audience member is always going to turn their nose--and quite possibly, their lunch--up when that starts to happen.
BACK TO THE COMIC
The lightshow and yellow bodily fluid are all attributable to the return of Krona, the Guardian that the Crayola Unit are looking for...on the other side of the galaxy! (Actually, the comic just says that Hal's Color Guard is in the Lost Sector, i’m just assuming that means other side of the galaxy because that would be dramatic.) Krona has brought the “entities” with him, they are gigantic alien dragon-looking characters chained to the inside of his ripped up black cape-y outfit, which makes him look like a cross between a Smurf AND Gargamel, with a touch of Doctor Octopus for good measure. The entites each represent one of the different colored rings, and are named as follows:
The Butcher: Entity of Rage
Parallax: Entity of Fear
Ophidian: Entity of Avarice
Proselyte: Entity of Compassion
Adara: Entity of Hope
Ion: Entity of Will
and last, but not least
Predator: Entity of Love
Predator is the entity of love? Is that some kind of meta joke designed to make fun of people that hate relationships? Why can’t “Love” have an entity with a goofy, meaningless name like....well, like all of them, except for Rage, who gets a pass because Rage has “The” in its name, which is pretty awesome. When I get a bulldog--and trust me, I'm getting a bulldog someday--it will be named Dumptruck and The Dance Contest, because I really like the idea of having "and" and "The" in the names of animals.
Anyway, after this big reveal--it’s a two-page splash, this twenty-two page comic’s second--the story makes a quick return to Hal Jordan's Planeteers. Sinestro is yelling at the librarian vampire (they used to work together) but she is still mad at him for abandoning her to live inside a book. (Which is fair.) According to her, the book she was living in has more “tales of the unknown” than a different book has about the Green Lanterns. This seems like an obvious thing to say, but it's ultimately irrelevant, isn't it? Hal and Company pretty much came here for Krona and Krona related information; the book itself and the blue lady who live inside it aren't really important to the story in any concise way, she's just important to these particular pages and the particular beats this issue has to hit. Considering how obvious this is, it's curious why additional attention is being placed on it. Alternatively, maybe this is where they start setting up the next Green Lantern "Event" that will follow this one, as that seems to be the pattern of these Green Lantern comics--constantly postponing actual conclusions.
Anyway: in keeping with the necessities of the plot which dictate that Hal Jordan start hanging out with people again, the Sexy Bondage Librarian freezes some of our least favorite team members inside the giant book, and the comic returns to Oa.
Back on Oa, Krona is being a bad guy, meaning he is ripping off somebodies lower jaw, which is an old school technique from the Old Testament. It works like a charm, if your ultimate goal is to really hurt somebodies face, and that seems to be Krona's ultimate goal. Awaken the Giant Within and all that. After this one page break for jaw-ripping, we're back to the Lost Sector, where Hal, Sinestro and Hal’s ex-girlfriend are all struggling to escape the giant book, which is eating them. Hal's ex-girlfriend is wearing that kind of bathing suit that has to be glued or taped onto the female body, which is why you’ll only think they are sexy until the first time you see one of them get taken off, and then you'll be a bodysuit man for life. For some reason, these three are being quicksanded into the book instead of frozen like the Hope and Compassion people were , which would have been quicker and not allowed Hal and Sinestro the time to kiss their rings together, which is the Green Lantern version of “crossing the streams”, which is a reference to the movie Ghostbusters. Like in Ghostbusters, this instance of doing something you shouldn’t as a last resort--I'm assuming ring kissing is also totally dangerous--totally works, and Hal is set free, although all of his team disappears and their rings clatter to the floor. To show us how big of a deal this is, Doug Mahnke draws the panel of Hal Jordan reaching towards his team’s rings from a viewpoint INSIDE Sinestro’s ring, which, for a comic supposedly about emotionless justice drones, is pretty clearly geared towards making one feel some kind of emotion. And bang, right then, the other Green Lanterns--the ones from the first part of this comic, who were all worked up about Hal’s Team of Useless Multi-Colored Fucking Assholes--have arrived, and they're ready to do some arresting!
They arrive in a one-page splash, which is great for people who don’t have a lot of time, because it makes this comic take a lot less time to read. After we get this inspired use of the serialized comic book medium out of the way, one of the Green Lanterns who has arrived to arrest Hal Jordan does something totally dickish that endears him to me forever. Here, take a look:
That part where the long skinny one says “What book?” and then says “It doesn’t matter” before Hal can finish answering--that’s such a prick move. In your smug plastic asshole face, Hal Jordan. You just got fucking served, buddy. Oh sure, Hal argues a little bit more, but it’s obviously just time-killing bullshit, because the comic keeps jumping back to Oa and the Krona guy, who is putting the yellow entity of fear (Parallax) inside the gigantic green Coleman lantern all of the smurfs on Vowel Planet pray to. For some reason, this gives all of the non-Hal Jordan Green Lanterns yellow eyes, and then the long-skinny dick one wakes up, freaks out, and starts shooting his own alien version of the Swastika out of his ring. (I thought it might be a specific swastika, but I used google to find this picture of the world’s swastikas, and it seems to be one of his own long n’ skinny alien construction.) Back on Oa, Krona looks to have turned the Guardians into his own version of Hal’s rainbow squadron, which ha ha, I already saw how useless that kind of 90's Benetton ad works out when you plop them into a face off against a gigantic book of secret stories. Like any good hero at the start of a tale, Hal Jordan runs away, thus starting the War of the Green Lantern Corps off on the classic foot of "For a Guy With No Fear, You Sure Are A Big Fucking Coward".
I guess I'd rate this Eh or Okay? The part where the guy got his jaw ripped off was pretty surprising.
So here we are with Episode 33 of Wait, What?, ready for your listening pleasure. We took George's comment to heart and did our best to give you a podcast of only the stuff we're positive about. Admittedly, we don't entirely succeed 100%--sorry, Fear Itself: Book of The Skull--but we tried very hard. Consequently, you get to hear Graeme and I wax rhapsodic about Classic G.I. Joe, the Captain America Jack Kirby Omnibus, Bakuman, Bucko, and more. Or, well, hmm. Actually maybe that is it, though there is some other stuff in there that's not really book reviewing though not much--we kept things to a very manageable just-over-an-hour.
It should be on iTunes by now if I've done everything right. Or, should you feel compelled, you can listen to it here:
Is it just me, or is this a pretty exceptional shipping list?
Plus, hooray! WonderCon this weekend! If you're in town for it, please do stop in!
5 RONIN #5 (OF 5)
ACTION COMICS #899
AFTER DARK #3 (OF 3)
AGE OF X UNIVERSE #1 (OF 2)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #657 BIG
AMERICAN VAMPIRE #13
ARCHIE #619
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #217
AVENGERS #11
BLACK PANTHER MAN WITHOUT FEAR #516
BUTCHER BAKER RIGHTEOUS MAKER #1
CALIGULA #1 (OF 6)
CAPTAIN AMERICA #616
CAPTAIN AMERICA AND SECRET AVENGERS #1
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #58
CYCLOPS #1
DEADPOOL CORPS #12
DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #883
DEAN KOONTZ FRANKENSTEIN PRODIGAL SON VOL 2 #5
DETECTIVE COMICS #875
DOCTOR WHO ONGOING VOL 2 #3
DOLLHOUSE EPITAPHS ONE SHOT PHIL NOTO CVR
ELEPHANTMEN MAN AND ELEPHANTMAN #1
FAIL O/T LIVING DEAD ONE-SHOT
GFT MYTHS & LEGENDS #3 A CVR MEDINA
GODZILLA KINGDOM OF MONSTERS #1
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #21
GREEN ARROW #10 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
GREEN HORNET YEAR ONE #9
GREEN LANTERN EMERALD WARRIORS #8 (WAR OF GL)
HALCYON #4
INCOGNITO BAD INFLUENCES #5
INCORRUPTIBLE #16
INCREDIBLE HULKS #625
JACK OF FABLES #50 (NOTE PRICE)
JIMMY OLSEN #1
JLA THE 99 #6 (OF 6)
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #49
KICK-ASS 2 #2
KING CONAN SCARLET CITADEL #2
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #172
LOGANS RUN #6
POCKET GOD #4
PUNISHER IN BLOOD #5 (OF 5)
SAVAGE DRAGON #170
SCALPED #47
SCARLET #5
SECRET AVENGERS #11
SHERLOCK HOLMES YEAR ONE #3
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #223
SPIDER-GIRL #5 BIG
SPIDER-MAN YOURE HIRED
STAN LEE TRAVELER #5
STAND NO MANS LAND #3 (OF 5)
STAR WARS DARTH VADER & LOST COMMAND #3 (OF 5)
STAR WARS LEGACY WAR #4 (OF 6)
TANK GIRL BAD WIND RISING #3 (OF 4)
TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #67
TEEN TITANS #93
TERRY MOORES ECHO #29
THOR #621
TRUE BLOOD TAINTED LOVE #2
ULTIMATE COMICS X #4
UNDYING LOVE #1
WALKING DEAD #83
WOLVERINE #7
WONDER WOMAN #609
WORLD OF WARCRAFT CURSE OF THE WORGEN #5 (OF 5)
X-23 #8
ZATANNA #11
Books / Mags / Stuff
21 STORY OF ROBERTO CLEMENTE HC
ALTER EGO #100 CENTENNIAL SC
ARCHIE AMERICANA SER TP VOL 12 BEST OF 90S BOOK 2
BATMAN AND ROBIN BATMAN REBORN TP
BLOOM COUNTY COMPLETE LIBRARY HC VOL 04
BRONX KILL TP
CHIMO GN
COMPLETE PEANUTS HC VOL 15 1979-1980
CYNICS GUIDE RICH FULL LIFE HC
DC SUPERHERO FIG COLL MAG #77 AZRAEL
DEAD AT 17 TP VOL 06 WITCH QUEEN
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #255
FANTASTIC FOUR BY JONATHAN HICKMAN TP VOL 03
FISH POLICE TP VOL 01
HEAVY METAL MAY 2011
INCREDIBLE HULK TP VOL 03 WORLD WAR HULKS
INDEPENDENTLY ANIMATED BILL PLYMPTON HC
MAGENTA GN VOL 01 COLOR OF SEX (O/A) (A)
MAGENTA GN VOL 02 POWER OF PINK (O/A) (A)
MAGENTA GN VOL 03 LOOK OF LUST (O/A) (A)
MEAN MACHINE REAL MEAN TP
PREVIEWS #271 APRIL 2011
PUNISHER WELCOME BACK FRANK TP NEW ED
RIP HC BEST OF 1985 2004
SECRET WARRIORS TP VOL 04 LAST RIDE HOWLING COMMANDOS
STRANGE TALES II HC
SUPERMAN THE BLACK RING HC
TITMOUSE HC
TORPEDO HC VOL 03
VANGUARD FRAZETTA CLASSICS HC VOL 01 JOHNNY COMET (RES)
X-9 SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN HC VOL 02
YEHUDA MOON & KICKSTAND CYCLERY TP VOL 01
Where have I been this week?
Well, most importantly, I'm waiting for my new computer to arrive -- my home machine mostly-died nearly 3 weeks ago, after about a 10-year run, and I can run anything past basic surfing on it, which means that all writing has to be done at work, sheesh -- it was scheduled to arrive today, but FedEx ground has, seemingly, lost it.... at least until Monday. *grumble*
Then we have the latest podcast with Comic Book Geek Speak -- I very much enjoy talking with those guys, and this is my third go 'round, I think? -- which you can find here.
Plus, there's a new TILTING AT WINDMILLS where I reflect a little on some deaths, and what we living should do about it. Read that here.
Plus, just so I can feel like I'm keeping my goal of one-review-a-week-minimum....
BATMAN INC. #4: What a terrific issue! Much of that is on artist Chris Burnham, who has a really awesome line quality, swinging around in points like the love child of Frank Quitely and JH Williams, while bringing some awesome retro-chops to the flashback sequences. Fast enough artist to do a monthly? I WANTS! I thought this was really VERY GOOD, even if it really is kind of stupid to ship an issue just 2 weeks after the last, especially if #5-12 aren't going to ship clockwork-monthly.
UNCANNY X-MEN #534: The end of the "Contagion" storyline worked just fine -- it is perfectly OK -- but, me, I want to comment on the "Bonus Book" bit at the end. I think that IF Marvel thinks they have to price books at $3.99, then putting in an entire other comic book makes that, actually, a fairly good value, and a nice way to cross-promote stuff. But I have to STRONGLY question the sense in doing a bonus reprinting of an issue #1 for a title that's currently on issue #11, with no paperback available, or on the immediate horizon.
Even more importantly, I question the wisdom of not telling the retailers about it whatsoever, and not giving us a CHANCE to build something around the marketing. No retailer likes to be taken by surprise!
As much as I wanted a cover of the Captain America Jack Kirby Omnibus here, I couldn't find one that really grabbed me (or didn't seem kinda small, which is exactly the opposite of the effect when you see the friggin' thing) and so here is the cover of the third cover of Sean Chiki's Wunderkammer, which we discuss herein:
It's available on Itunes and here, and perhaps floating about on some semi-cosmic curl of subconsciousness. In it, we also discuss the upcoming teams on Punisher and Daredevil, Stokoe's Won Ton Soup, X-Force #5, and others.
As always, we hope you enjoy, and thanks for listening!
First: I agree with nearly every word in these twoposts about etiquette in your Local Comics Store (man, especially that bit about Amazon Visa -- GR!) from Secret Headquarters in FLA
Second: Kendall Swafford has some good points in this article about sell-through (versus sell-in), but I'd like to observe that the chart placements tend to be self-correcting. That is to say that the orders you see on (say) the June-shipping charts *tend to* reflect what sold through in March or April. Or to put it another way: the Diamond charts are LAGGING INDICATORS of what the market is doing, not current indicators
