The Four Color Media Monitor

USA Today wrote about the new Ravagers series, which features rebooted takes on a few of the former Teen Titans with Caitlin Fairchild of the former Wildstorm universe's Gen 13 series added. It's written by Howard Mackie, who stumbled over a decade ago with the botched Spider-Man relaunch from 1998. And they say:

The fact that they're even alive in Mackie and artist Ian Churchill's brand-new DC Comics title arriving Wednesday is a miracle, after having survived the events of the recent "The Culling" crossover in Teen Titans, Legion Lost and Superboy.

"The Culling" centered on DC's teen superheroes having to fight their way out of the Colony and the Crucible, where Harvest, the head of the organization N.O.W.H.E.R.E., had been keeping captured metahuman kids, training them and forcing each to battle their peers, Hunger Games style, to see who would be in Harvest's group of Ravagers.

With a story title and premise like what the Culling had, clearly, nobody who avoided the new Titans series missed much of anything.

The group — which Mackie prefers to call them, as he's loath to use the T-word — comprises new DC heroes as well as those that are being reintroduced into the revamped universe, such as old Teen Titans members Terra and Beast Boy.

The de facto leader is Caitlin Fairchild, who first appeared in Gen 13 comics back in the 1990s and appeared in recent issues of Superboy as a former N.O.W.H.E.R.E. scientist. She's super-smart but also has the power to increase her mass and strength to become a muscular powerhouse able to put a beatdown on the likes of Superboy.

So now Gar Logan is a refugee from a demonic lab experiment instead of a youngster who received his powers from an experiment his father ran that was meant to save his life from an illness in the Doom Patrol back in 1965. I don't see much humor coming from a role like this, and I'm not sure why Terra is in this story either. As for Fairchild, how strange that she's now depicted as more of an adult (it's unclear if any of the other Gen 13 cast will turn up).

After having worked for years with rival Marvel Comics as an editor on Avengers titles in the '80s and then moving to more of a writer on books featuring everyone from Ghost Rider to Spider-Man to X-Factor, Mackie marks his major DC debut with The Ravagers and is already making his mark, creating a instant-classic character in Ridge with Churchill.

Now isn't that one of the most giggle-generating statements of the modern times. If sales are nothing to write home about now, why should we have to expect this brand new character named Ridge to have much impact? Today it takes time for a lot of new creations to make a dent, if they manage to make one at all. The chances Mackie's new cast member will have an impact are minimal.

The group will have to deal with Harvest's cohorts Rose Wilson — who once was known as Ravager back in the day — and Warblade in the first issue, but will have to deal with different threats, too, facing off in Issue 3 with one of the Teen Titans' greatest foes over the years, Brother Blood.

Oh, there's another sad retcon: Rose Wilson is now apparently more of a villainess, and working for Harvest, the head honcho of the laboratory they're escaping from.

"They don't have a directive right now — they're not going out there to save humankind or gather up metahumans to help them," Mackie says. "What they're trying to do is figure out how to be normal again, quite frankly. And of course, every time they start feeling like they have a chance at normalcy, something else happens to bring back those survival instincts."

Not saving lives? What's the point of this story if they don't do what even the New Mutants did do back in the day? Mackie's premise sounds very wobbly, just one more reason why this isn't bound to make many waves. The worst part is what they've done to Beast Boy, who's now drawn with skin that looks dark gold, and is probably more of a "beast" for real and not so much a character who can turn into various other animal shapes.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, Titans

In this sugarcoated Scripps-Howard News Service article, they fawn over the hack works of Brian Azzarello and Geoff Johns on Wonder Woman and Green Lantern that were released in trades:

Wonder Woman and Green Lantern are two of DC Entertainment's oldest characters. But collections of their newly relaunched titles bring some surprising changes.

For example, we learned in 1942 that the child who would grow up to become Wonder Woman was a clay statue sculpted by Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons, brought to life by the gods and granted their powers. In 2012, we learned that's a lie.

The True, Honest-to-Gosh, Cross-My-Heart Origin of the Amazing Amazon comes to us in "Wonder Woman Volume 1: Blood" ($22.99), arriving this month. "Blood" collects the first six issues of "Wonder Woman," a title relaunched with DC's other superhero titles in September as "The New 52."

It's clear that "Blood" has more than one meaning. First, the story involves the bloodline of the Greco-Roman gods, and secondly, it involves a lot of the red stuff. The plot is this: Father Zeus has disappeared, which sets various gods into violent motion against each other to claim his throne. Also, venomous Hera is trying to kill one of Zeus' many lovers, a girl pregnant with a demigod that Wonder Woman has taken it upon herself to protect. As battles are won and lost, deals are brokered between power bases, and alliances shift. In the middle is the Amazing Amazon, who also must deal with the revelation of her true nature -- and the fact that her mother has been lying to her all along.

If this sounds more like a gang war than a superhero story, maybe it's because "Blood" is written by Brian Azzarello, famed for the intricate crime noir "100 Bullets." He called the Greco-Roman gods "the original crime family" in a phone interview last year, motivated by "selfish" and "twisted" desires.

And as far as I'm concerned, Azzarello has no true respect for the material. Hera seems to come off the worst here with WW's mother second.

[...] Hera is naked most of the time (except for her cloak of peacock feathers), but so bloody-minded and lethal you forget that pretty quickly.

Just like most of the audience has already forgotten and abandoned much of DC Comics because of such excess.

[...] while Wonder Woman is going through big changes, writer (and DC Chief Creative Officer) Geoff Johns made subtle, almost minor changes to the Emerald Warrior in "Green Lantern Volume 1: Sinestro" ($22.99). That's probably because Johns has already spent several years virtually re-creating Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, erasing decades of bad stories, clumsy mischaracterization and general mistreatment of one of DC's signature characters.

And just what bad stories would those be? Or characterization and maltreatment? If Johns injected "daddy issues" into the characterization for Hal, that's hardly a postive addition. The violence that's tainted much of his writing is also evident here, and contrary to what they tell, even now, it doesn't sound like they've rid themselves of Parallax, and certainly didn't within 6-7 years of Hal's return to the land of the living.

The New 52 "Green Lantern" picks up right where the old title left off, with Jordan booted out of the Corps, his place as Green Lantern of Sector 2814 taken by his oldest archenemy, the red-skinned ex-Green Lantern Sinestro. Nobody is happy about this -- not Jordan, not Sinestro, not the rest of the Corps. But the enigmatic Guardians of Oa are, as usual, executing some plan they won't explain, and treating everyone like disposable tools. [...] So what's new is that Sinestro is no longer the cartoon bad guy he was in the 1960s, but a complex and tragic (but still really unpleasant) protagonist. And the Guardians may have crossed a line that can't be ignored.

Oh, they're right that nobody's happy, not even the wider audience, judging from sales. If this is how they're going to treat the council of Guardians on Oa, as abusive of their employees, I honestly can't see what they're trying to accomplish here other than to make them look very unadmirable. The claim that Sinestro was cartoonish seems like more of a putdown of the past writing efforts by better writers, completely ignoring that they were trying to entertain the audience first and foremost.

Meanwhile, Jordan must learn who he is without the ring. And Wonder Woman must learn who she is with her past ripped away. Given the status of these characters, those count as pretty big developments.

Absolutely not. They only count as character assassination and embarrassment, and it's not like Hal Jordan hasn't spent time in civilian life before, as seen in the mid-80s when he briefly gave up his ring. All that's happened is DC editorial has allowed these characters to be misused by some of the most overrated writers of all time.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Green Lantern, msm propaganda, violence, Wonder Woman

In the 9th issue of the new Blue Beetle series (via Scans Daily), 90s Green Lantern Kyle Rayner turns up, and wouldn't you know it, the horrific execution of his girlfriend Alexandra deWitt at the hands of Major Force is still canon. So too, in fact, is the crab-mask he was saddled with when he first began. Why, he even looks like what the cat dragged in, if the traces of stubble on his cheeks tell anything.

It's just like them to keep something that abominable intact after Flashpoint, and makes clear they have no intention of righting any wrongs.

Back in the 90s, Kyle Rayner was the poster child for everything that went wrong during that decade, including a girlfriend who's wiped out within a short amount of time, a whiny do-gooder "personality" that leads him to chicken out and not kill Major Force to avenge Alexandra's death at the villain's hands (instead, it was Guy Gardner who had to do it), a ridiculous costume design, a solo series with an editorial mandate that far exceeded any other, no serious character development (if he began as a whiner, there was little to no change in that setup), and at the end of his starring role in the GL series, he even gave his ring - however briefly - to the resurrected Major Force, just because he hadn't actually slain Kyle's mother, before the badly written hero wrenched it back. Today, 18 years after his debut, Kyle's still a poster child for the same problems, and it's clear that the committee that created him has it in for him, making Kyle one of various poster children for characters hated by the companies that own them. The execution of Alexandra was something that should have been retconned away, but with people like DiDio in charge, it's no wonder it wasn't.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of death, Green Lantern, misogyny and racism, violence

The Wall Street Journal gives some insight into how, even as the movies based on superhero comics make big money as the Avengers have, the medium that birthed these heroes has plummeted, while reviewing a new book called Leaping Tall Buildings:

You might thus assume that superhero comics, the original properties on which these franchises are built, are in flush times. They aren't. The upper limit on sales of a superhero comic book these days is about 230,000; just two or three series routinely break into six digits. Twenty years ago, during the comic industry's brief Dutch-tulip phase, hot issues of "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" sold millions. [...]

If no cultural barrier prevents a public that clearly loves its superheroes from picking up a new "Avengers" comic, why don't more people do so? The main reasons are obvious: It is for sale not in a real bookstore but in a specialty shop, and it is clumsily drawn, poorly written and incomprehensible to anyone not steeped in years of arcane mythology.

There's one little shortcoming there: trade paperback collections by contrast can be found in various bookstores; it's the pamphlets, fast becoming outmoded, that can't. But they certainly got the rest right: bad writing, artwork, and destroyed continuity are just some of the biggest problems today's industry is steeped deep in.

In a much hyped series from Marvel Comics this summer, for example, the Avengers fight the X-Men for inscrutable reasons having to do with a mysterious planet-devouring cosmic force, a plot that makes no sense to anyone not familiar with ancient Marvel epics like "The Dark Phoenix Saga." The story is told in two titles, one called "Avengers vs. X-Men," with a big "AvX" logo on the front, and the other called "AvX," with a big "Avengers vs. X-Men" logo on the front, presumably so you can keep them straight.

The people who produce superhero comics have given up on the mass audience, and it in turn has given up on them. Meanwhile, the ablest creators have abandoned mainline superhero comics to mediocrity. "Leaping Tall Buildings," a collection of brief and beautifully illustrated profiles of comic-book artists, intends to celebrate the form—and does—but along the way reveals the forces that have caused its most iconic titles to rot. [...]

A lack of options kept artists and writers at the wheel, and the crude, pulp-derived fantasies born from the Depression were distilled into a pop mythology that bore something like the relation to the fine arts that rock music did to classical forms. Jack Kirby, the Marvel artist who in the 1960s did more than anyone else to establish the visual grammar and vocabulary of superhero comics and to create the Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, spent much of his later life caught up in a series of shockingly petty lawsuits with Marvel, a company built almost entirely on his work.

The dynamic, if anything, got worse with time. Alan Moore, the influential British writer who more or less revitalized DC Comics in the 1980s, claims that the company deprived him of his rights to the genre-defining classic, "Watchmen," that he created with illustrator Dave Gibbons.

What, Marv Wolfman didn't revitalize DC when he penned the New Teen Titans with George Perez during that time? That's one part I'll have to take issue with, since there were a couple of other writers at the time who did do their part in recharging DC's output at the time, with Wolfman being but one of the most notable due to his famous work on the Titans franchise. It wasn't just one person alone who did it.

The first issues of "Before Watchmen" will be published next month. Among the writers working on it is former He-Man scripter J. Michael Straczynski, who once penned a comic in which Spider-Man sold his marriage to the devil. (This is the rough equivalent of having Z-movie director Uwe Boll film a studio-funded prequel to Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver.")

It's nice to see they're willing to allude to the hack job JMS is more or less guilty of on Spider-Man, which he did on his way out of the book. If he'd wanted to, he could've kept out of it, but he didn't, and thus, he'll just have to shoulder some of the blame for that horrendous dud.

I think the following sums up today's mess the best:

For an industry that feeds on its own past to go 20 years without fresh characters or concepts is death. The most telling sections in "Leaping Tall Buildings" are thus those written about industry powers like Brian Michael Bendis, Joe Quesada, Grant Morrison and Dan DiDio. These are the men most responsible for the failure of the big publishers to take advantage of the public's obvious fascination with men in capes.

I don't know if Leaping Tall Buildings mentions Geoff Johns, but if it doesn't, it should, since he too has held a high position (and still does) not unlike Bendis, and deserves all the pannings he's getting for his own part in harming superhero comics. But this is surely the boldest and most important thing that's been told in the WSJ article itself, since the 4 names mentioned are definitely responsible for much of the disaster that's come down the pike over the past decade plus. Especially the senior editors.

Leaping Tall Buildings sounds like a very good book that could tell more than past history books I've read have ever done, if the authors are willing to bravely acknowledge how an uncaring, irresponsible generation took over the majors, destroyed characterization, continuity and morale, discouraged a lot of fans inside and out, relied heavily on cheap publicity stunts, and chased away many potential contributors who've now had to take their ideas and work them into independent graphic novel stories. It's no way to run a business, and as I've said before, if ever DC and Marvel's book publishing could go separately from the rest of the companies into the hands of more responsible people who're willing to work to restore what's been lost, only then could there be a ray of hope that they'll be worth reading again.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, Batman, dc comics, marvel comics, sales, Spider-Man, Titans, X-Men

A reader on Tom Brevoort's Formspring page asked him:

Do you not think there's hypocrisy in undoing the editorially mandated marriage of Peter and Mj and then doing something like the marriage of Storm and BP and Northstar and Kyle? The marriage of Peter and Mj felt far less forced or sudden.

Brevoort replied:

No, because different characters require different things. This is similar to arguing that it's unfair that Reed Richards is so smart--that works for his character, but wouldn't work as well for, say, Ben Grimm. Different character. Also, and take this from somebody who was there as a reader and watched it happen, the marriage of Peter and MJ was absolutely as forced and sudden, probably more so. It's just had the advantage of having been a status quo for so long that a lot of readers grew up with it and accepted it. We've never said that no characters should be married, the point is that Spider-Man, the most popular youth-based character in the entertainment world, probably shouldn't be married.

The Peter-MJ marriage, it should be noted, was mainly Stan Lee's idea, and he created both characters, so it wasn't as editorially mandated as Brevoort seems particularly hell-bent on claiming. And why does he say "probably"? As he, Quesada and Alonso have made clear from their terrible actions these past 4 years, they think it was definitely. I wouldn't be surprised if there'll come a day when they'll decide that Reed Richards and Sue Storm shouldn't be married either, and that either one should be written out in favor of an entirely different cast member.

A real shame that Brevoort, after all these years, still holds onto the same dismal beliefs, and thinks that being a "youth idol" means it's wrong to be married.

Labels: bad editors, Fantastic Four, marvel comics, Spider-Man, X-Men

The New Zealand Listener writes about Action Comics #425 from 1973, where the Man of Steel does battle with a large fantasy bird called a Moa.

Labels: dc comics, Superman

USA Today writes about the Justice League spinoff series called Dark, with Jeff Lemire taking over for Peter Milligan, and says:

"It all goes back to the fact that 'Justice League' was in the title. That was the first question I had to answer as a writer: Why is this book a Justice League book? You'll see really early in my first issue what connects it to Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's Justice League and to the other 'Dark' books and why it's a bridge between the two."

Constantine, Deadman and Zatanna are just some of the "weird" men and women that Lemire says he will be contrasting with the "big, fun, exciting" DC Universe.

Given how gruesome the main series has already turned out to be when Darkseid turned up and broke Green Lantern's arm, I can't see how much contrast there could be at all, and a spinoff so blatantly steeped in dark and occult isn't making any improvement.

Seeing that John Constantine is a cast member here, that reminds me: as of now, the Hellblazer series is still being published under everybody's radar, nearing a 300th issue already. How strange. It suggests that Constantine's solo book - one of the last of its kind still published under the Vertigo label - survived the Flashpoint rebootings, possibly even getting ties to the Swamp Thing severed, but at the same time, a different version's been introduced for the DCnU. If they really have kept the original Constantine intact, why does his book get a pass that most other DC related characters and books didn't?

Labels: dc comics, Justice League of America, msm propaganda, violence

Comic Book Resources interviewed Mat Johnson, a novelist and comics writer who's come up with a new graphic novel published under the Vertigo imprint called "Right State" whose lead is a conservative:

In "Right State," Johnson's newest graphic novel featuring art by Andrea Mutti, the writer turns his eye towards a new topic: the influence of the media on politics.

Centering on conservative media pundit Ted Akers, the graphic novel follows Akers as he goes undercover in an extremist militia group to ferret out an assassination plot against the second black President of the United States. With "Right State" slated for release in August, right in the middle of the 2012 presidential elections involving America's first black President, CBR News spoke with Johnson about the book, touching on everything from the criticism "Right State" is already receiving to race and identity in the White House.

On the surface, it might sound like something honest and respectable for a change. But then, further into the interview, there's comes something that can give pause to anyone who understands where Johnson's coming from in research:

CBR News: "Right State" deals with the investigation into a possible assassination attempt against America's second black President, and it's coming out just in time for the election. What's the genesis of this story? Did you begin writing it with the intention for it to be released during the 2012 election?

Mat Johnson: No, that's more the publisher, which understandably wanted it to come out in a topical way! I came up with the story three years ago as I was working with my editor at the time, Jon Vankin. We basically followed each other on Facebook and we were looking at a lot of the militia stuff that was happening and finding it interesting, and we started coming up with the idea there. The book was written over two years ago, but they delayed it coming out until around the elections so it would be more topical.

You rely extensively on research. While you were looking at American militia groups did you spend a lot of time researching the explosion of hate groups that appeared after Obama's 2008 election?

Usually my research is based around stuff that I'm already doing. Instead of coming up with an idea and then going and doing the research, usually I'm reading tons of things and that's when I come up with an idea. I was reading stuff on this and checking the press reports coming out of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which follows different hate groups, and I was interested. But I didn't want the book to be some sort of left-wing polemic. The thing that interested me the most about the militia groups is they represent a political ideology but in physical form. The ideas they represent -- some of them are extreme, some of them are less extreme and their representation of them are extreme -- but they give kind of a physical form to those ideologies. So if you're writing an action story, and the stuff I've done with Vertigo has been stuff that mixes history or contemporary politics with genre writing, it seemed the perfect story to do something like that. And I always loved '70s conspiracy movies like "The Day Of The Jackal" and half the movies Gene Hackman was in, so to be able to write that type of story seemed like it would be fun.

One possible problem is that they seem intent on tying it's release in with the elections, which is decidedly absurd and potentially politicized. Another is the interviewer's claim that "hate groups" popped up after Obama's election, and if by that they mean right-wingers, that's subtle incitement on their part. What about the Occupy movement? And still another problem is that Johnson relied on data from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which once did have a good reputation but today is otherwise a leftist bastion:

In recent years the SPLC reports have been utterly tainted — weaponized and used against the leftist group's ideological and political adversaries. This is a despicable, bad faith abuse of others' good will, and of the SPLC's past reputation.

Case in point: Recently, the SPLC came under fire for comparing the "Tea Party" movement and other grassroots conservatives to "terrorists." Potok slandered "Tea Party" goers, suggesting that "they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," and are widely linked to "hate" and "vigilante groups." Of course there are always a few nuts in any movement, but clearly Potok's intent was to defame tens of millions of patriotic "Tea Partiers," simply because he disagrees with them.

National Review has more about the disaster the SPLC has sunk into. If Johnson is setting out to do a straightforward focus on making a conservative the good guy in this new graphic novel, and doesn't want to do a leftist polemic, why does he rely on the reports of a business that's been overtaken by leftism?

To be fair, he is at least better here than the interviewer, who even went so far as to ask:

Talking about the line between punditry and action I can't help but think about things like the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords last year. Did that influence your writing at all?

I already finished the script when that happened, but when I saw that -- the person responsible is mentally ill -- but when I saw that, that's the thing I worry about. I'm a general optimist; I think most people are fairly sane and even when they say horrible things they aren't going to do them. Mostly through history people do keep their heads. It's the exception when people act crazy. But there are a lot of crazy people out there, and that's what I get scared about it -- when I saw that, watching the event and then watching the reaction to the event and the jump to blame one side or the other which muddles it further, it made me know that I was on the right track at least to talking about those ideas.

Unless CBR edited out any reminder that Giffords' attacker was a leftist, Johnson failed to make it clear what the true leanings of the crackpot were. For now, this does tell quite a bit about the interviewer's (Josie Campbell) political leanings, and that she can't keep from going under the false claim that right-wing commentary was connected.

On the Dixonverse forum, the posters aren't sure if this graphic novel's story will work out. If Johnson had been clearer about what kind of elements will turn up in the story and not keep it hidden beneath a bushel, he could at least ease up any conservative's concerns about whether this will be straightforward or a botch job.

Labels: politics

Just a month or so before it was initially scheduled for release, the sequel has now been delayed until March 2013, which is hardly a time of year for a big blockbuster action movie, and according to the studio, it's:

...in order to adapt the movie for 3-D screens

Really? All that suggests is that it's worse than the promos are telling, because if they really wanted to format the film for 3-D, something I don't find particularly appealing, they could've done it already. Now, all they've done is signal that even if it's not as bad as the first movie, it could still be a botch job. Clearly, they've never had much respect for the franchise to begin with.

Labels: licensed products, msm propaganda

And predictably, this has gotten the mainstream press' attention (via Hot Air):

So which one is it? The folks at DC Comics aren’t saying, but they do say it’s the latest effort to make sure their comics keep up with the times.

Last September, DC Comics relaunched its entire line of comic books to feature an updated look and a new lineup of LGBT superheroes: including Voodoo, an African American bisexual woman and Batwoman, an open lesbian…

“DC and (archrival) Marvel are recognizing that there is an LGBT audience that has been reading their comics for years,” said Matt Kane, associate director of entertainment and media for GLAAD. “When creating these fictional worlds it’s important to show the full diversity.”

Aside from making good business sense, Kane said younger readers are perfectly comfortable with gay characters and expect to see their peers represented.

Are they? Sales today hardly reflect that. And it's not realistic if they won't even allow any questions of whether it's a healthy practice and role model, and are only willing to say it's positive.

For now, it's assumed that the Superman of the new Earth 2 is going to be "outed" because according to Bleeding Cool:

As Senior VP Sales Bob Wayne explained, just like the President of the United States, the co-publisher's policy on this "has evolved."

And despite his best efforts to stem Dan's wandering mouth, we also got the very strong impression that the death of Superman of Earth Two many not have been as final as portrayed...

Frankly, it makes no difference whether it's Superman or Batman, a major or a minor character, or even a protagonist in the regular or the alternate dimensions that they're going to out, their publicity stunt tactics in themselves are offensive already, just like the scene James Robinson wrote where the Earth 2 Wonder Woman was stabbed in the back. And it's not likely to find long-term sucess.

And according to this FOX News report (via Big Hollywood):

Didio said DC's position had shifted on the subject since he said in an interview last year that any homosexual characters would be new introductions, and that none of their existing characters' sexual orientations would shift.

DC vice president Bob Wayne likened DC's change in tune to President Obama's shift on gay marriage, explaining that DC's policy “has evolved,” the report says.

Well how about that, they're politicizing it already. And that's also pretty laughable how they're telling they've "evolved", since Renee Montoya was one basically straight character whom they turned into a lesbian a decade ago, instead of conceiving a new one who could take that role. They already "evolved", and it was pretty bankrupt, as the publisher is soon bound to be themselves.

Update: while we're on the subject, the AP Wire's written about Marvel's plan for Northstar to get married to another husband in the pages of Astonishing X-Men #51, and they say:

Northstar revealed he was gay in the pages of "Alpha Flight" No. 106 in 1992, one of Marvel Entertainment's first characters to do so.

Naturally, they won't mention how embarrassing that was from an artistic perspective - Scott Lobdell's story was heavy handed (it involved Northstar absurdly beating up on Major Maple Leaf while telling him he was gay), and Lobdell was taken off the book almost immediately around that time, and it was canceled a year and half later. This same alarming hammer job repeated itself in 2001 when Lobdell was writing the Eve of Destruction story in X-Men. "Outing" a character is one thing, but doing so forcibly and banging the readers over the head with it is another. That's hardly any way to get anyone to accept their ideas if they present them so cavalierly.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, X-Men

The Nashua Telegraph's done some gushing over the DCnU:

DC has begun its “Second Wave” of six new series, following “The New 52” titles launched last September.

The first four are already out, and they successfully upgrade concepts that will make older fans nod their heads in approval.

Wrong. Not this one. And judging from sales levels, not many others care either. Those so-called upgrades aren't so successful at all, since an overemphasis on violence and shock tactics is still accompanying them.

Now, here's where the inaccuracy comes in:

[...] now, once again, Obi-Wan Kenobi is getting a headache from fanboy cheers. A couple of years ago, DC decided to bring its multiple-Earth concept back. There had been no sign of Earth-Two until now, with the release of “Earth 2” and “Worlds’ Finest.”

Excuse me? I seem to recall that Infinite Crisis reintroduced the Earth 2 plane, at least theoretically, and the problem there was that it was otherwise just for boringly handled nostalgia cameos with little point to them. And the multiple worlds that came along with it in the 52 miniseries were mostly done away with soon after to boot.

In any case, someone sure doesn't have a very good memory of the 21st century's publishing output, horrid as much of it is. And as a fanboy myself, I'm certainly not cheering.

Best of all, the writer of “Earth 2” is James Robinson, who wrote some of the most beloved and best-remembered Earth-Two stories, such as the entire “Starman” series and “The Golden Age” graphic novel.

At one time, maybe, but today, as I've stated before, he's simply lost it, so having him as a writer is not something anyone alienated by the DiDio gang will consider the best thing to happen.

And oddly enough, there's another slight inaccuracy there: Starman may have been centered around the son of a protagonist who'd once been living on Earth 2 (Ted Knight), but at the time the Starman series was published, both Earths had already been merged together in one following Crisis on Infinite Earths, so it's not like Jack Knight's adventures were ever really set on Earth 2. As for the Golden Age, it may have been set in a different dimension, but it was an Elseworlds story.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, msm propaganda, violence

James Robinson's next step of making the DCU additionally gruesome is a miniseries called "DC Universe Presents: Savage" where Vandal Savage co-stars with a daughter, and in this fawning USA Today coverage, they say:

DC Universe Presents issue 9 begins his next tale, a three-issue arc by writer James Robinson and artist Bernard Chang that reintroduces Savage into the DC Universe and debuts his daughter, Kassidy Sage, the FBI's top profiler. [...]

In past DC Comics stories, the immortal Savage has been a violent sort ever since the beginning of time, but Robinson has him locked up in Belle Reve Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison housing the worst of the worst. He has been there for 12 years for murders that have branded him a serial killer by society, although the actions were completely justified in his eyes.

Meanwhile, his daughter has grown up and risen through FBI ranks following the shock and resentment that goes with finding out your dad is a major-league bad guy. And when Savage has a copycat killer on the loose who has kidnapped a high-ranking government official's daughter and time is running out to save her, Kassidy is forced to visit Belle Reve for some fatherly advice on catching the killer.

It's a Silence of the Lambs-type scenario full of complications and mysteries, Robinson says, but because he didn't want the story too much like the movie, he decided to take Savage out of jail instead of keeping him there à la Hannibal Lecter.

Which is only guaranteeing he'll soon escape and commit more crimes. This certainly is quite a retcon, turning Vandal into more of a serial killer, which is a lot less impressive or appealing than the warmonger and world conquestor he was years before. In fact, I'm not sure he was ever depicted as a one-dimensional mass murderer in the past, so this definitely sounds like a much more grisly rendition than any I've ever known of in past storytelling. Robinson's depiction also sounds like he's reduced Vandal's intelligence level.

"If you have Vandal Savage, at some point you want to see him kicking ass, this hulking guy," Robinson says. "As the series progresses, you'll see him enter into the actual crime scenes, and things take twists and turns from there."

The arc will definitely have Savage talking about his immortality and his adventures in the past, the writer promises, although what he most wanted to explore was the dichotomy between how he views his actions as fairly reasonable and everybody else who finds him a complete lunatic.

"I wanted to get into the whole duality of crazy killers where often they can appear very civilized on the surface, and yet there's this raging fire within them that often can never be quenched," Robinson explains.

It sounds more like he's flipped, and developed a facination with far too much evil. Which, now that I think of it, has been the problem surrounding superhero comics for a long time: writers seem far too interested in the villains and not enough on the heroes. It's something I'd call villain-worship, and it's not healthy.

Crime fiction is Robinson's favorite genre and in this DC Universe Presents arc he's enjoyed returning to the same type of detective-style comics he has done with Batman in the past, but there will also be "superheroic elements to it and the fantastic side of things," he says.

"It isn't just a crime book but there is definitely that feel and I've enjoyed putting that on and writing that sort of comic, which is not something you get to do that often."

Considering how bad a writer he's become, I don't think it'll be either superheroic or fantastic. That it's a "crime book" is actually the problem here - too much of that genre has leaked in everywhere, and that's why superhero comics are no longer enjoyable, because the very genre is way too dark. And Robinson's story doesn't sound very imaginative.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, msm propaganda, violence

On Graphic Novel Reporter, they wrote a short review of Powers: Anarchy, which offers a clue to why Brian Bendis could write such an unappealing take on the Avengers:

For decades now, comics have been taking on the meta question of what would really happen if there were actually superheroes in the world. Would we trust them? Vilify them? Elevate them to godlike status? In Powers, the world is turning on them and questioning their need to exist.

Even worse, someone is murdering them viciously. Previously, Detectives Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim were heading up the homicide investigations, but with Walker now retired for a year, Pilgrim is forced to take on a new partner.

Even if a supervillain is wiping out the heroes seen in this graphic novel, it honestly sounds hard to swallow that any of these superheroes, if they have superhuman powers, could fall down so easily at the hands of their killers. And the book's tone sounds so negative, I can't see why anyone would care about this tripe.

But I guess that explains why Bendis would have such a terrible take on the Avengers and a few other Marvel books he's written to boot. It's clear he's another of various modern writers who don't have much admiration for superheroes.

Labels: Avengers, dreadful writers, indie publishers, marvel comics

This week, DC stopped providing mail order subscriptions for at least 4 titles that didn't get enough orders. Considering how many people they alienated with their obsession for going the PC route and being self-absorbed, it shouldn't be a surprise if their mail orders are going to become another casualty.

Labels: dc comics, sales

This review on Crave Online of Justice League #8 and the Shazam backup story let us know that Geoff Johns is intent on proving himself one of the most awful modern writers. First, what does this tell about the League itself:

...it's thus established that the Justice League has been the original seven and only the original seven for the past five years since that first story we waded through with the Fart of Darkness and all. Gone are the days of a massive, sprawling team of heroes, when you could call the League and never know who you're going to get. [...]

In the epilogue, we get a much more interesting reveal - that the reason the League is so insular and closed off is because they actually DID try to add a new member once, and it ended very badly. Cue a huge Jim Lee splash page of the entire team fighting the Martian Manhunter. That's right, the guy who once boasted the credentials of having been on absolutely every incarnation of the Justice League is now the poster boy for not letting anyone else on the team at all.

And even if Green Arrow, who's been clamoring to get a membership on their team, is allowed to join, something tells me this'll still be one of the biggest jokes of modern comics. If the Avengers, X-Men and Teen Titans can have plenty of different members and team field leaders, why can't the Justice League? It's not like Superman has to be present and leading the team in every single mission.

But now, onto the desecration of the former Capt. Marvel, Billy Batson:

The back-up story is Part 2 of the new origin of Shazam, wherein 15-year-old Billy Batson goes to meet his new foster family. It was revealed last issue that he acts sweet to get what he wants, but in actuality, he's an insufferable snot, and that was a huge kick in the junk to longtime Captain Marvel fans. Here, he bickers hatefully with the orphanage caretaker before meeting the new foster siblings - including Mary and her pet bunny Hoppy, Freddy Freeman, a kid named Pedro, a kid named Eugene and a loving little girl named Darla. All of whom he instantly either pisses off or makes cry by being nasty. Then the scene happens that you see heading up this page.

[...] what was always so compelling about Billy Batson, when done right, is that he found a way to be exempt from the need to be edgy and dark and in-your-face. So many other characters, that works well for, and there's certainly a place for it. But not Billy.

Not this kid.

The kid who's inherently altruistic and manages to hold to that in the face of the unrelenting nightmare of this world - THAT story is a hell of a lot more unique and interesting than one more jerk-makes-good story on the pile. We've seen Johns' jerks, and they never stop being as annoying as Hal Jordan even when they've ostensibly grown up and seen the light. So there's little hope for poor Billy.

Making Billy Batson a dick is a stunningly instantaneous way to kill hope and interest in the story. The New 52 is not without its success stories, but it's also alarmingly full of apathy towards characters we once found compelling. Sure, there was likely a lot of that before the reboot, too, but now we've got disappointment on top of the apathy. It's just makes things more depressing than they need to be.

So this is what Johns thinks makes for a perfect Billy Batson? In that case, why should we have to believe what Johns said in this tedious tripe that the League "will be more human than ever before"? That's probably why the Crave Online reviewer said that Hal Jordan's become annoying - Johns must've really turned him that way more than any other writer of recent times, and the rest of the League may not be far behind. As I've learned from reading a few message boards, the "daddy issues" seen in the catastrophous Green Lantern movie have turned up in the GL series as well. If it was before the movie, then the scriptwriters took some of the most dreadful add-ons Johns made and injected them into what would become an embarrassing screenplay. If they turned up after the movie, than that's only bound to guarantee moviegoers will be all the more discouraged from taking a look at the comics.

So there we've learned that the DCnU take on Billy Batson, thanks to Johns' pretentious approach to giving heroes problems to deal with, only serves to make it less plausible that the wizard who's giving Billy his gift would even bother in the first place. I hesitate to think of what's going to happen with Mary Marvel and Capt. Marvel Junior. If there was ever a reason to avoid this new series like the plague, I'd say the desecration of Capt. Marvel in the backup feature is it.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Justice League of America

As though it weren't awful enough that Marvel once produced a horrid story called Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, now they're producing another miniseries called Deadpool Kills the MCU:

The title will see Deadpool kill the Avengers, followed by the X-Men and the Punisher.

"As soon as [editor Jordan D White] mentioned this project to me, I knew this would be my chance to present a version of Deadpool unlike anything fans have seen before," [Cullen] Bunn told Comic Book Resources.

"He's still Deadpool. He's still funny. But he's being seen through a dark, unsettling filter.

It's not funny, and all they're doing is enforcing a numbingly wrongheaded perception of Deadpool as an assassin. And Bunn's only sounding like Garth Ennis: as a writer who hates superheroes so much he's willing to draw up a hatefest of a story about them. I don't see Marvel gaining new audience with this.

Labels: dreadful writers, marvel comics, violence

The Washington Times writes some details about the history of the green goliath of Marvel for the character's 50th anniversary.

Labels: Hulk, marvel comics

Pajamas Media has written about the origins of the Eternal supervillain Thanos, wielder of the Infinity Gauntlet, who might be featured in the Avengers movie sequel.

Labels: Avengers, marvel comics

Tony de Zuñiga, the artist who co-created Jonah Hex during the Bronze Age has passed away at age 79. He was a native of the Phillipines, and also did work on Superman, Batman and Spider-Man.

Labels: good artists

USA Today's written with predictable sugarcoating about the new DC-based story the horrid Rob Liefeld's doing on Grifter, a character who'd once appeared in the Wildstorm line (in the WildC.A.T.S series) years before its current merging with the DCU proper. At the beginning of the article, Liefeld boasts:

"Honestly, that's the stuff going through my brain. I can turn this action up to 11," Liefeld says.

No, he can turn it down to zero, courtesy of his poor art (and the samples they provide on the paper look pretty dull too), not to mention his similarly banal writing efforts.

Liefeld and Lee would often send character sketches that each were working on through their fax machines, and he remembers how great a visual Grifter was when Lee created him for the Wildstorm book WildC.A.T.S.

"He brought out the best in all of us because we were always trying to keep up with Jim," says Liefeld, adding he jumped at the chance to "turn up the juice" on Grifter when he was offered the character by Bob Harras, the former Marvel editor in chief who now holds the same position at DC.

And Liefeld certainly didn't keep up with Lee, whose own art puts his to utter shame.

As much as he loves a man of action, he also adores injecting new dynamics into series. Liefeld did so in his Marvel years, when he was given control of New Mutants in the late '80s instead of, say, Amazing Spider-Man or Uncanny X-Men.

"People forget what the New Mutants looked like for about three years," he recalls. "It was a chick dressed like Madonna, a guy with baggy pants, a giant talking bird that looked like Big Bird, and Warlock, who was always short-circuiting. Nothing about it screamed, 'You definitely want to put me in your collection along with the other X-books.'

"I thrive on remodeling. Nothing gets me more excited than a good remodel."

And DC is letting him run as wide as he wants with Grifter, who Liefeld feels has the potential to be as popular a one-man-army antihero as Deadpool or Wolverine.

Wow, is that the most superficial description of the situation faced here. Though his art at the time may not have been as bad as the monstrosities he turned out when he joined Image, his take on feet and ankles, for example, was amazingly poor, reduced mostly to pointy, triangular shapes, and even his take on facial features wasn't very good. Their note of his receiving control of New Mutants in its last years instead of the real majors is simply because he just might have succeeded in torpedoing those series undeservedly, and since the New Mutants wasn't doing so well at the time, or was considered expendable by editorial, that's why they forced him upon a series that once began very well in 1982 before falling into neglect.

His description of New Mutants is ambiguous - he may be talking about the time before he took over, when the art was actually very competent, and so too were the stories, and then he came along and spoiled everything with his art alone. Oh, did he ever remodel alright.

And the only reason why DC is allowing him to take over Grifter is because they clearly don't see a high value in it like in Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and the Justice League. But they won't say that, of course. The true problem here is selective favoratism, and a company's disinterest in selling a particular book according to story (and art) quality, rather than "importance rank", and hiring writers and artists who can actually tell a good story with plausible bases on which to launch.

"He calls himself Grifter — the guy's a slacker," he says. "His natural tendency is to run from the responsibility that he has, and you'll see that both sides have invested heavily in him serving their grand design.

Did it ever occur to Liefeld that his description of Grifter could very easily apply to him as well? As an artist, Liefeld's pretty slack himself, and won't take responsibility for his otherwise poor artwork talents, or how his very name is only discouraging the wider audience from bothering about the books he's assigned to.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful artists, msm propaganda

Free Comic Book Day is coming again, and this time the big two have signaled further retreat into insularity. The first example is Marvel's offering - a reprint of Brian Bendis' notorious humiliation of Spider-Woman, only here they've edited the artwork so it looks like Jessica Drew's still got her costume on. Presumably, they're embarrassed by the potential that children will pick up this monstrosity of a story all for free. But that only beggars the question: why did they ever allow this whole scene with Jessica to be drawn up in the first place and why is this, of all the things they could ever reprint, the one they selected to be turned into a FCBD special? If they really are worried about public reputation, they wouldn't keep allowing this kind of stuff to make it past the editorial board.

The second example is DC's "The New 52", and this one's not even seeking a new audience:

Typically, Free Comic Book Day releases are designed to be straight-forward reads appealing to as wide of an audience as possible. DC took a different tactic with their The New 52 FCBD issue from writer Geoff Johns and artists Jim Lee, Gene Ha, Ivan Reis and Kenneth Rocafort; promoting their relaunched line with a comic aimed squarely at hardcore fans.

I fail to see how that helps their fortunes long term if not many new people come aboard to buy their books. Of course, with Johns as the writer, that's just why new readers would be strongly advised to stay far away from it.

At one time, they might've actually tried drawing in new people with comics that were geared for youngsters (like the TV cartoon-based comics they've both published), but now, if these 2 examples are any proof, they're not even trying anymore, and either they're relying on reprinted material, or, they're resorting to something stuck fast on a shrinking fanbase, it'll only register a blip on the radar.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism

James Robinson, once a well regarded writer but now basically slumming, as his hack job on Cry for Justice and Earth 2 can attest, is going to be writing a new miniseries based on Mattel's Masters of the Universe toy franchise, and some of what he tells in the Newsarama interview is really laughable when viewed in light of his increasingly awful work on the DCU in contrast:

Newsarama: James, since this is a licensed property, is your approach a little different? And are you working with Mattel at all?

James Robinson: Yes, and I've been trying to come up with a story that suits my writing style and has a kind of new, creative approach to the story, but at the same time, is something Mattel can get behind, something that's not so crazy and off-the-wall that it changes the franchise in any way. So I do work with DC in Burbank, and also with people at Mattel. [...]

Nrama: Were you familiar with He-Man before, or was this something where you heard about the project and started researching?

Robinson: I was not familiar with He-Man, but that was part of why I was attracted to it as a challenge, to familiarize myself with these characters. The one thing I'm very keen on doing is to not insult or offend people who have enjoyed that series in the past. You know, there are children's shows that I remember that, to me, are a vivid and cherished part of my upbringing. And I hate it when people make fun of them and say how corny they are or how dumb they are. And I know for certain people of a certain age, He-Man is a huge part of their past. People who have communicated with me via Twitter or in other ways have basically been very supportive and are very excited that I'm doing this for them. And I don't want to let them down and disrespect the core of these characters.

But at the same time, I feel like this project is also a challenge to write a story that will entertain them as adults, and I think we've done that.

For someone who's telling everybody he doesn't want to turn off fans of the toy line, cartoons and comics that first began in the early 1980s (and there was even one guest appearance made in DC Comics Presents #47 with Superman), how odd he sees the MOTU franchise this way, but not the DCU that he took to destroying along with Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns and other overrated writers and editors. He slays Lian Harper in Cry for Justice, shows no remorse to fans of her young hero father Roy Harper over this, and then says he's going to respect He-Man and company in his new story?

No, the reason why he says he wants to avoid offending fans of these famous childhood pastimes is because Mattel must have more of a head on their shoulders than Time Warner does if they're going to let the staff in charge of DC Comics get away with only so much alienating material that can even harm the success of their own toy and cartoon productions if sensible parents catch on to their dirty tricks. That's one of the reasons why the Saturday morning matinees don't build themselves on gorefests; it wouldn't be profitable when your main audience is children. That's why Skeletor may not be depicted as a true savage in Robinson's take, unlike some of the villains Robinson, Johns and other writers there have sullied in the DCU proper by turning them into vile, alienating horrors (Dr. Light, Prometheus, Inertia, to name but some).

In the end, all Robinson's done is suggest he's got more respect for one company's line of toys than he does for another company's whole universe of comic book heroes.

Labels: animation, dc comics, dreadful writers, licensed products

Following this week's success of the Avengers movie, the AV Club is writing about where new readers interested in the comics might want to start. But their recommendations are not very good:

Possible gateway: The Ultimates and The Ultimates 2

Why: In 2000, Marvel created the Ultimate line of comics, reimagining its top characters in a new universe stripped of previous continuity. After the success of Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, Marvel launched The Ultimates, which reworked the classic Avengers team as a group of S.H.I.E.L.D.-sanctioned heroes protecting Earth from threats too great for just one hero. Sound familiar? The Marvel movie universe has taken many cues from Ultimates, from Captain America’s World War II uniform to Black Ops Hawkeye and Black Widow—and, most notably, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Mark Millar has gotten flak for his shock-and-awe storytelling and generic characterizations, and while his later Ultimate Avengers work goes off the rails, his first two Ultimates series are strong action stories perfect for fans of the Marvel movies. (Just to get a feeling of how confusing superhero comics are, there’s The Ultimates, Ultimate Comics: Avengers, Ultimate Comics: New Ultimates, and Ultimate Comics: Ultimates, and this is within an imprint designed to make the universe more accessible.) With an assist from Bryan Hitch’s photorealistic artwork, Millar created a superhero team that felt like a group of real people, flaws and all.

Oh yes, and he also dredged up the Hank Pym-as-wife-abuser storyline from 1981, and in his rendition, made it even more monstrous, since this time, sci-fi tech found its way into the abuse tactics as well (Pym commands ants to attack Wasp). All just a couple issues into the series. Why must such a questionable storyline now 3 decades old be revisited so quickly and mutated into something even more shock value? That's exactly why it makes little difference if Capt. America took Ultimate Hank to task for this later; the shock tactics and turning Pym into more of a vile cretin than his 616 counterpart just for the sake of it is what ruins everything.

The AV Club then goes on to say that:

Next steps: After The Ultimates, Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers Vol. 1 is an appropriate entry point into the regular Marvel universe, picking up after the events of Bendis’ “Avengers Disassembled” storyline, which disbanded the existing team in 2005. The cast includes usual suspects Captain America and Iron Man (Thor was dead at the time, but he got better), along with Marvel A-listers Spider-Man and Wolverine and lesser-known characters like Luke Cage and Spider-Woman. The early issues are extremely new-reader-friendly, and while the book eventually became a launchpad for annual events, that also makes it a good place to get knowledge about the larger Marvel Universe. Bendis also likes to use those crossover tie-in issues to delve into Marvel history, giving readers a primer to major events in Avengers history. The trade paperback Breakout, which collects the early issues of Bendis’ run, is a good place to start.

Oh no. Just what the world needs. It makes no difference even if Bendis' hack job on Scarlet Witch from Avengers: Disassembled has been revealed as manipulations of Dr. Doom. It was still one of the crudest hack jobs in Marvel history, and Bendis' boasting about it didn't help matters. That aside, the biggest drawback for Bendis' so-called team was that it relied mostly on cast members from other books like Spider-Man and Wolverine, to name but some (and we're apparently not supposed to wonder how they can appear in so many books at the same time), and watered down a lot of the greater sci-fi trappings of the Avengers' world for the sake of noir-ish, street-level storytelling, including a story where a crook called the Hood kicked the crap out of Tigra, and Spider-Woman ends up naked at the Wizard's mercy, more shock tactic stories done all for the sake of it. Most of which isn't mentioned in the article. Even if they didn't suggest Disassembled per se, why are new readers who've seen the movie being told to try out writings as pretentious as what Bendis has concocted? That's taking an awful risk of tricking people into wasting their money over something they might even find padded out and dreary, given how Bendis frequently resorts to decompressed storytelling and overly talky scripting. How is that new reader friendly I have no idea.

Now, they do also recommend some of the work of Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Kurt Busiek and George Perez, including famous and much better stories like the Kree-Skrull War from 1971 and Under Siege from 1986, but it still doesn't clear away the damage they're doing by recommending the work of writers like Bendis and Millar, whose output is more interested in sullying the cast of characters and shock tactics. And the AV Club also isn't helping when they tell readers:

Where not to start: Silver Age comic books have their charms, but the best way to get into a superhero title is by reading contemporary stories first and moving backward. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s early Avengers issues are appropriately bombastic for the time, but probably too exaggerated for any fans being introduced to the characters through the more realistic film.

Oh for crying out loud. Not only do they act as though newer storytelling is far better in every way than the older, they seem to think realism is what appeals to the crowd in every way too. Is a movie featuring heroes and villains who can fly, have superhuman strength, magic and even weapons like the Tesseract something realistic? Hardly. All they're doing is dampening the impact of Lee and Kirby's gathering of several heroes who made their debut earlier in a number of other series and anthologies by making it sound as though it's too "silly" for anyone in present times to appreciate. They're even taking the risk of weakening the impact of a comic which did have an optimistic side to it, another something that helped make the Silver Age beginnings so enjoyable. I'd say their whole take on realism isn't very clear either, since realism to me means plausible human relations, not violence and bloodshed. I suspect that's all lost on the AV Club, unfortunately.

They do at least say one good thing regarding Bendis:

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Avengers Assemble #1, the new Avengers ongoing by Bendis that is specifically designed for fans of the summer blockbuster and features the same cast as the movie. Unfortunately, it’s a really lousy comic.

No doubt. Bendis is one of the most overrated writers of modern times, and even when he departs from the Earth's Mightiest Heroes, there's little chance things will improve so long as a terrible EIC like Axel Alonso remains. But if they think that's bad, they should consider just how worthless even his work from 8 years ago happens to be, ditto Millar's. It's the work of earlier champions like Lee, Kirby, Thomas, Buscema, and Perez that should be recommended for new readers, not stuff that's really just aimed at a small modern fanbase of people who follow Bendis and Millar onto nearly every title they helm out of near idolatry.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, violence

Pajamas Media writes about which of the Marvel-based movies preceding the now blockbuster Avengers movie is the best one, and considers the Iron Man movie the best. I think that's the best choice indeed.

Labels: Avengers, marvel comics

The Salt Lake Tribune wrote about the divide between DC and Marvel fans, and while there may be a valid argument to be found in this, they aren't working things out well with their rather superficial portrait:

"If you’re a DC guy, Marvel sucks. And if you’re a Marvel guy, DC sucks," says Greg Gage, owner of Black Cat Comics in Salt Lake City.

"It’s like the Hatfields and McCoys," says Kerry Jackson, co-host of X96’s "Radio From Hell" and troop leader of the clubhouse that is "Geek Show Podcast." "It is like a rivalry. Why it’s a rivalry, we don’t know."

First off, I'm both a DC and Marvel guy, so I don't see how they can say someone like me thinks the other company sucks when it's really the managements and people in charge of the franchises today who stink. And there are other people out there like me who do like both universes if you know where to look and want to, so I think that's an awfully cavalier thing to say.

That doesn't mean there aren't people like that out there - I've been well aware of there are for years, and it is harmful - but what they say brings it down to a superficial level and doesn't make clear that there is a crowd out there that's not hell-bent on juvenile rivalries.

"DC has all these invincible heroes, and it was kind of hard to relate to them," Jackson says. Marvel’s flawed heroes, on the other hand, are "just more relateable. I can’t relate to an invulnerable guy."

Peter Parker, the kid who becomes Spider-Man, has to deal with paying the rent, graduating from college, taking care of his frail Aunt May, and a host of other problems encountered by human beings, Jackson notes. What weaknesses does Superman have? Just one: Kryptonite.

Oh for heaven's sake. 70 years have passed and Superman acquired more vulnerabilities like exposure to magical energies, certain forms of solar radiation, and even attacks by titanic aliens, and they're saying he's got only one? What their interviewee's suggesting is that he's read almost nothing even in history articles to know just what developments have taken place in writing ever since the Golden Age. Besides, there's plenty of DC heroes who aren't invincible from a physical perspective, Batman being the most definite example - he's endured bone fractures, bullet and knife injuries, and during the 1990s, Bane's back-breaker attack. And there's a good number of other heroes with superpowers who aren't invulnerable to bullets and other physical injuries either. In 1979, Barry Allen, the Flash of the times, almost got seriously harmed by exposure to angel dust (PCP) in issue #276. That's hardly what I'd call "invincible".

In fact, even what's told about Spider-Man and other Marvel heroes sounds superficial at best: Peter Parker graduated from college long ago, and it's not like he always had to take care of Aunt May after a while, mostly because Anna Watson, Mary Jane's own aunt, filled this role as well when May took to living together with her at the same home for a time. But few of these problems in the MCU can compare to the biggest problem of all today in real life: the mess left behind by Joe Quesada when he was EIC when he destroyed Peter and Mary Jane's marriage.

Furthermore, even if a reader doesn't care much for DC's creations as much as for Marvel's, it's in bad form to just say DC's suck because don't some ideas start out simple and then lead to more complicated ones? To say they suck would also be an insult to every DC contributor back to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They went to such pains to create Superman, among other heroes and protagonists big and small, and that's how some would-be fans today thank them?

Fortunately, there was another interviewee who did give a positive word about DC:

It’s that difference that has Jeremiah Lupo, who works at Dr. Volts Comic Connection in Salt Lake City, leaning toward DC.

"Marvel is grounded more in the real world, while a lot of the DC characters, like Superman and Wonder Woman, tend to be more godlike," Lupo said. "I kind of like the escapism of powerful people."

If there's anything I definitely agree with, it's that escapism is why I would read various DC superhero books, and also Marvel's.

Regarding personalities and other forms of human relations, there's another something this tepid article doesn't mention: DC actually tried to work on that ever since the end of the 1960s, and there were times when they succeeded, like in the Teen Titans, yet they make it sound as though nobody knows that!

There is a problem out there - and still is - with juvenile minded fans who don't seem to care whether either company's tried to make their heroes and supporting casts more appealing to their POV, and it is galling. But the way this article goes about it waters everything down, and otherwise doesn't make anything clear about how there is a segment of fandom that does respect and admire both DC and Marvel.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, msm propaganda

CBR interviewed Axel Alonso earlier this week about his uncertain outreach to fans, and he said the following about people who've decided to boycott/abandon their books:

Kiel Phegley: Axel, every week we talk a bit with the readers via our message board Q&A, and often we talk about the relationship Marvel works on building with its fans. But at C2E2, there was a moment at a Marvel panel that referenced the back-and-forth of the comics internet when a fan stood up and said that he hadn't bought a Marvel comic since Nightcrawler was killed. And you seemed really surprised by that. Was that the first time you'd had someone come up to you and say, "This isn't just complaining on the internet. I've actually put my money where my mouth is"?

Alonso: I'm always a bit skeptical when people say they’ve dropped a series, yet they seem to know everything that's occurred in it over the last few months. [Laughs] I mean, a lot of people announced they were dropping “Amazing Spider-Man” after "One More Day,” but the book is going through a renaissance under Dan Slott that wouldn’t have been possible without it. Case in point: I remember one guy at a con begging me to retcon “One More Day.” I asked him if he was currently enjoying the series, and he said, emphatically, “Yes!” and then he went on to explain how much he liked so many of the subplots and characters that, again, wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t done “One More Day.” And I said, “Mission accomplished.”

So yes, I’m still a bit skeptical when someone says they’re boycotting all Marvel Comics because of a story in one book. I guess it’s possible, but I don’t understand the mindset. I can’t imagine denying myself one of my passions because of one story development – and let’s face it, one that will probably be rectified in the future.

At the same time, assuming what he describes is true, what can I say? I'm disappointed in some readers too who give the definition "Marvel zombie" a bad name by making it sound like they're willing to go through forced retcons like the erasure of the Spider-Marriage no matter what. Because that's exactly what keeps bad writing prevalent in today's landscape; the would-be fans of Spidey and many other characters in both the MCU and DCU are willing to just accept a bad storyline even if it leads in the long-term to more badness. Alonso obviously won't acknowledge how there's a problem out there with fans who don't know when to quit and transfer their money to other overlooked items instead, because he's only interested in their money, to which he feels entitled no matter what.

Spidey's sales are doing pretty poorly at the moment, but it's clear that there's still a sizable number of people who can't bring themselves to cut ties with the book and spend time more with older, better stories. Only when they understand that the time has come to stop paying money for the pretentious mess Alonso and company have made after the Spider-Marriage was trashed will they ever have even a remote chance of fixing anything.

Labels: bad editors, marvel comics, Spider-Man

A picture to confirm any worries we'd have about James Robinson's idea of how the new Earth 2 should be depicted (via CWR), which begins with the Trinity of that world being killed off during an invasion by Darkseid, and in Wonder Woman's case, a direct view of her taking a spear in the back in the premiere issue.

Coupled with Brian Azzarello's take on the Amazons, it seems as though DC's really going out of their way to make it look as though they hate WW, and Robinson really has lost any erstwhile talent he had altogether.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, violence, Wonder Woman

The overrated UK writer blathers on his site about how all of a sudden, he thinks the industry is doing marvelously:

You know what? I was reading almost nothing last year.

It felt a lot like 1999 where I'd barely read a comic in 2 years. Last year none of the big companies were really putting out much I was excited about and Walking Dead was about the only thing I was reading consistently. But how much things have changed in just 12 months. DC's reboot worked out really well for them and there's a few really interesting books (not least of which being Snyder's Batman), Marvel's spiked in the charts again with a fun crossover done by all their biggest writers and the sleeping giant of creator-owned has just begun to stir... Saga, Fatale, Mudman, America's Got Powers and a half a dozen other new books in the last few months (not to mention Kick-Ass 2, Jupiter's Children, Supercrooks and many OTHER Millarworld books) really makes the shelves look completely different from last year. It's like all my favourite creators are back and working full blast again, a bunch of brilliant new ones coming of age too.

All this sounds a lot like how some mainstream reviewers will gush and sugarcoat immediately after a publicity stunt's taken place, and I guess it's not much different for writers and artists to do the same. Millar's gushy comment only induces a yawn, and I'm sure even he knows how quickly DC's sales sunk back to stagnant levels, and Marvel's bound to end up in the same position soon too. All he's alluding to is no different from what they've been doing for at least 2 decades now, and I find it hard to believe he doesn't know that.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, indie publishers, marvel comics

Here's some great news ahead of the official premiere for the new Avengers movie: Robert Downey Jr. dedicated the Tribeca Film Festival's screening to the heroes of 9-11 (H/T: Big Hollywood). It also looks like the movie will turn out to be a big success critically and financially too.

Labels: Avengers, marvel comics