Who wants a free copy of Sailor Twain?

I ended up with two copies of Mark Siegel's excellent Sailor Twain graphic novel, so I'd like to give one away. It's not even available to buy until October 2, so getting one now is kind of a cool deal.

If you'd like it, reply below or send me a tweet telling me you're entering the giveaway. That's all you have to do. At the end of the day tomorrow, I'll pick a random name from all the entries up to that point.

If you want to know more about the book, you can read my review at Robot 6.

Pull List | Rethinking single-issue comics

Atomic Robo: The Flying She-Devils of the Pacific #1

I recently started buying single issues of comics again. Not because I feel like I'm hurting the industry by trade-waiting (I don't), but because it's more fun that way. A lot of writers and publishers are making obvious efforts to create a more rewarding experience out of buying single-issues.

The trouble is that I've just started adding series to my pull list willy-nilly without giving a lot of thought to what I'm doing. That's where this post comes in. I'm going to start assessing what I'm buying every week and make some choices. I need some limits, not only for budget reasons, but also to protect my time.

I've decided that a pull list of 20 series is pretty reasonable. That works out to about five, individual issues a week: a little over an hour of reading time and between $15 and $20. It doesn't include graphic novels and series that read better in collected form (BPRD, for instance). I'll have to assess those separately.

Saga #4

Last week, the single issues I bought were (in alphabetical order):

All-Star Western
Atomic Robo
Aquaman
Courtney Crumrin
Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE 
Saga
The Spider

Of those seven, I know that I want four on my final list of 20.

I've been a fan of Atomic Robo since it started and though I also want the collections on my shelf where they're easy to get to, it's a comic that's really made to be read as single issues. I resisted buying both versions, but it always hurts me when I pass up the monthly version on the shelves. That tells me something.

Courtney Crumrin is another series I'm going to want to keep buying. I love Ted Naifeh's work in general and it's great to be able to read about his terrifying, but so-cool, little witch girl on a regular schedule. Plus, the individual issues feel like complete units, even though they're parts of a larger story.

Courtney Crumrin #3

I just decided last week to check out Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staple's Saga instead of waiting for the collection. I'm glad I did, because it reminded me how much I enjoyed getting a new installment of a BKV comic every month. This one is a space opera with fantasy and horror elements and there's a huge feeling that absolutely anything can happen from month to month. It's a brand new universe that needs exploring.

Finally, David Liss and Colton Worley's The Spider is a fantastic pulp-superhero series that I don't want to wait for.

The other three series are all on the bubble for various reasons. I really liked Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE when Jeff Lemire was writing it, and loved Matt Kindt's first issue for what it was. The problem is that Kindt changed some things in a way that jolted me a little. It's a speed bump I expect to be able to get over, but it shook my confidence some.

The Spider #2

I'm also generally enjoying Aquaman (I'm behind on it, but catching up), but I'm not fully sold on it yet. I'm tired of the constant reminder that Aquaman's a pop-culture joke and the series' defensiveness about that. There was also a fill-in issue in which Mera is sexually harassed in an unbelievable, ridiculous way just so she can show how tough she is by beating the guy up. In other words, the comic feels desperate; like it has to cheat in order to make its heroes seem cool. On the other hand, Aquaman's teamed up with a jungle girl, so that's pretty great.

I'm almost positive I'm done with All-Star Western. It keeps retelling the same story in different ways and after ten issues, I'm looking for something new. As I keep adding series to my 20 every week, I expect All-Star Western to fall off the list pretty quickly.

Here's how I rank these seven:

1. Atomic Robo
2. Saga
3. Courtney Crumrin
4. The Spider
5. Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE
6. Aquaman
7. All-Star Western

Edgar Rice Burroughs estate sues Dynamite over Tarzan and John Carter comics

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. is suing Dynamite over the company's Lord of the Jungle and Warlord of Mars comics. This is especially timely with the new John Carter movie coming up, but Tarzan's also part of the deal.

Apparently Dynamite has been operating under what Tom Spurgeon calls " the generally accepted notion in a lot of geek circles that someone can work with a trademarked property if they don't exploit the trademark." In other words, since the original stories are in the public domain (at least in the US where Dynamite's comics are published), then - again, it's "generally accepted" - you can make new stories about those characters as long as you don't put Tarzan's name in the title of the book.

That seems like a dangerous assumption to make, especially when a) companies like Dark Horse and Marvel are actually paying for the rights to adapt those stories, and b) - as Heidi MacDonald points out - Dynamite has already tried to obtain rights legally and been turned down. If you're interested, you can read the entire suit at Heidi's link.

A third danger to this assumption has to do with the way the characters are portrayed in the unlicensed comics, especially Warlord of Mars' Dejah Thoris. It was specifically mentioned in ERB, Inc's legal complaint that the Burroughs family "takes specific issue with some of the covers and interior art for Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris, insisting they 'border on (and in some cases are) pornographic.'" They mention the character's appearing topless on certain variant covers, which sounded weird to me at first. After all, both Dejah Thoris and John Carter run around naked through most of A Princess of Mars. But, as Sleestak pointed out to me on Twitter, Dynamite's covers have sometimes gone beyond simple nudity. That kind of takes "exploiting" these characters to another level and it's not surprising that the Burroughs estate took notice. It'll be interesting to watch this develop, especially - as Heidi in particular points out in her post - considering the larger conversation currently going on about creators' rights.

Evil Sea-Spiders Hate Cephalopods

[Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

Caveat to this whole creators-recommending-creator-owned thing

When I wrote that post on the Creator-Owned "Revolution" at Robot 6, there was something I didn't point out because I figured it was already understood. But a couple of other people have mentioned it as important, so it's probably not as obvious as I thought.

The first person I noticed talking about it was Scott Wegener, one of the storytellers I mentioned in the article who has pledged to promote other creators' work to his fans. He wrote, "To the half-dozen (and counting) of you who have asked me to review your comic books: Please stop! I'm not looking for solicitations. When I get this worked out I only plan on touching on the books that I think are amazing. Work done by artists and writers who are at or near the height of their skill, and that inspire me in my own work."

That's admirable. As a reader, that's the kind of recommendation I want. I don't need a storyteller doing a generic review column with a lot of "this was pretty good." I want to know what these guys love.

Tom Spurgeon made a similar point:

One thing I will suggest if people are going to[...]start recommending and promoting their peers' work: consider being really tough in doing so. Alt-comics almost didn't survive the late 1980s and early 1990s, but one thing those comics did well is that if a creator from that period recommended another creator's work, it usually stood a chance of being pretty good. In the pre-Internet days, that was how I heard about Yummy Fur, for instance.

By the mid-1990s, most cross-creator recommendations in that world were deeply untrustworthy, a lot of glad-handing and people recommending work from their roommates and pals (and in a couple of cases I can recall, people with whom they wanted to sleep) regardless of the quality of the actual work. If you have genuine, engaged enthusiasm for a work, people will frequently forgive you sending them to things that aren't all that great. If they sense you're doing it because they're your friends or out of some general sense of advocacy, they usually stop listening.

All true. In my article, I stated my intention to buy more creator-recommended books and I did that because I trust the creators who've so far volunteered to make those recommendations. But as (hopefully) more creators join in, my resolve will die in a hurry if they don't have high standards.

Quote of the Week: Politically Incorrect

If I Lived In Maryland and this Democrat cleared the primaries and was the Senatorial candidate, I swear to God I’d vote Republican.
--Peter David.

[If it weren't for teachers, our kids would be reading COMICS! *clutches heart*]

Quotes of the Month: I want Iron Man and Captain America to finally kiss.

I’ve gotta say, that’s one low f***ing bar. Set expectations for vaguely competent, Mr. Sulu! Today we’re going for multiple genres!
--Dirk Deppey, on a headline title implying that publishing non-superhero comics is somehow new and revolutionary.

...why is there a Storm Trooper in this photo, and why isn't he shooting and shooting and shooting until there's nothing left but his memories of what he'd seen, and then he starts shooting them too.
--Paul Tobin, presenting the only question a sane person can possibly ask after viewing this.

Or at least his epidermis is steel, I dunno what happens to sweetum's internals and guts and all that when he goes for the ball, or a brick, or a fluffy kitty. And I don't want to know, nobody should give a rat's ass about stuff like that, especially because if you make enough of a fanboy stink (insert joke here) some Marvel nitwit will write a story explaining it and that's a large part of what f***ed superhero comics up in the first place.
--Evan Dorkin, using the Absorbing Man to simultaneously pinpoint everything that is both right and wrong with modern superhero comics.

At some point, it's hard to backseat drive folks that set out to make millions of dollars and then succeed in doing so, even when you feel they're playing audience Jenga.
--Tom Spurgeon, on second-guessing what's wrong with modern superhero comics.

In the end, geeks love a thing -- any thing -- enough to immerse themselves in its most minute detail, to discuss it and dissect it and construct charmingly elaborate theories/tiresomely belligerent opinions about it. What that thing happens to be? That matters much less, if at all.
--Glen Weldon, supporting my long-held opinion that sports fans are giant nerds too.

Let me tell you that's there's only one Robin Hood movie that matters, and I'm not talking about the Kevin Costner one (although it does have a place in my heart as the first movie I saw on a date): Ooh-de-lally ooh-de-lally, motherf***ers. All the other Robin Hoods can f*** off.
--Topless Robot's Rob Bricken, who may be over-reacting to the trailers for Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, but still has excellent taste in Robin Hood films.

This is what I am truly hoping for with Girl Comics: I want the comics to be ridiculous enough to match the ridiculous title. I want it to be silly and fun and gratuitous and shamelessly girly. I want the male superheroes exploited. I want a shirtless Daredevil centrefold. I want a soft focus every time Winter Soldier appears. I want a round table "Who would you do?" discussion between all of the women on that cover (especially Sue Storm, because you know it would make her uncomfortable at first). I want Namor to appear in this series for whatever reason. I want a bunch of ladies to pull a prank on Tony Stark because he deserves it. I want to see dating and drinking and shopping punctuated by the occasional ass-kicking. I want Iron Man and Captain America to finally kiss.
--Rachelle Goguen, proving that she should write every single story in Marvel's upcoming Girl Comics anthology. [By way of Robot 6]

And Now the News: DC Entertainment

Thanks to an unusually busy weekend, I'm a bit behind on the news from last week, but like the week before there's one story that really needs a post of its own before I can play catch-up on the rest. DC Comics is now DC Entertainment.

When I first filed that link for future reference, I wrote a note with it: "DC responds to Disney-Marvel." But as Spurgeon pointed out, that's not really the case at all, "because Time Warner doesn't work that way and nobody works that quickly." And besides, "these exact moves or their rough equivalent have been rumored for some time."

Kevin created a fantastic summary of "what we know so far" for Robot 6, so that's where you should go if you're interested. The short version seems to be that Paul Levitz' former job as President and Publisher of DC Comics is being divided into two positions. Diane Nelson (famous for shepherding the Harry Potter movies at Warner Brothers) will fill the Presidential role and assist in getting movies and TV shows made from DC's characters. A new Publisher will be announced later. Levitz will return to editing and writing.

As part of getting movie deals under control, Warner/DC has apparently pulled back on a couple of developing projects like the Wonder Woman movie that's been in the works for so long. It feels like a step backwards, but I'm hopeful that it's a temporary set-back that'll get everything in order so that work can move ahead quickly and soon. That's where most of my interest in this story is focused.

Quotes of the (Past) Week: Seasoned by Love

I took good care of my own comics because I respected their magic pictures and stories and wanted to visit them again and again. Today they are no longer in mint condition but they do have the additional glow that all things acquire from being seasoned by love over a long period of time.
--David Apatoff, summing up my relationship to comics too.

You shouldn't be glutted with vampires: they should be a spice, not a food group.
--Neil Gaiman, on the current resurgence of the fad.

Nobody likes to feel lumped together - Minnesota and Wisconsin are probably about as close as you can get to states that are similar in the popular imagination, and if you talk about them like they're the same, you're going to get two guys beating you up - one will have a Viking helmet on and the other one will be pounding on you with a wheel of cheese.
--Linda Holmes, on the foolishness of the "Mid-America" demographic group. This also further reinforces my idea that I should have a whole separate feature called Linda Holmes Quote of the Week.

Quotes of the Week: Early Edition

I'll be on the road on Saturday, so here's some quotage today.



Seriously guys, she’s like, twelve years old ... This is what she should look like. Seriously. Also, she is very nice, and wants to help people.
--Paul Tobin, in an open letter to "all the artists who draw Mary Marvel, and the writers who write her." I've never liked the "Dark Mary Marvel" concept, but I tolerated it with the (perhaps misguided) understanding that she'd eventually change back. Now, thanks in part to Tobin's reminder, I'm at the point where I can't even stand to look at Dark Mary drawings and costumes any more. I'm no longer interested in her journey on the "return to innocence." Once she gets there, I'll start reading about her again.

It's not that audiences conclude that the criticism is inaccurate, so much as it is that the box-office fate of the movie is immune to even accurate bad reviews. There are good movies where stuff blows up, and bad movies where stuff blows up; some people enjoy stuff blowing up whether the movie is good or bad, and they'd tell you so.
--Linda Holmes, non-judgmentally addressing the alleged mistrust that audiences are supposed to have for all critics and further securing the crush I have on her. When discussing my reservations about Transformers 2 with my friends, the overwhelming response I get from them is that they're in that group of people Holmes mentions. And I agree with her that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, even if it doesn't describe my own tastes.

We have to change the negative things into positive. In today’s Japanese film industry we always say we don’t have enough budget, that people don’t go to see the films. But we can think of it in a positive way, meaning that if audiences don’t go to the cinema we can make any movie we want. After all, no matter what kind of movie you make it’s never a hit, so we can make a really bold, daring movie.
--Filmmaker Takashi Miike, as quoted by Warren Ellis who applies the theory to comics. I've heard Ellis make that quote before, but I can never find it when I want it, so I'm copying it down here. If past experience is any indication, I'll need to refer to it about 800 times before Ellis quotes it again.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs: What Looks Good for July

This week's "Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs" column at Robot 6 is about what adventure comics look good for July. Watch me get taken to task in the comments for wanting to wait for the collection of DC's Wednesday Comics.

Atomic Robo vs. the Death of Indie Periodicals

Last week I commented on Diamond Distribution's deathblow to indie periodicals and said that it wasn't the end of the world. Atomic Robo's Brian Clevinger says the same thing, but has a lot more experience and insight than I do.

Which is also why I sit up take notice when he says that we should've all been heading to webcomics a long time ago anyway.

I’d been wondering when comics would go digital since around 2002 ... I started going to conventions and the difference between webcomic money and small press money was so obscene it made me feel bad. Seriously. I was making more money by giving away my comic online than everyone I ever saw who self-published their comics or who went through smaller independent publishers and Diamond

...Basically: there was no reason to go into print. The only difference is that it’s now official Diamond policy to laugh at you for trying.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs

My first column for the new Robot 6 blog is now up and ready for reading. The name of the weekly feature is "Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs" and it's going to be all about fun adventure comics. The stuff that falls between art comix and the serious, event-heavy superhero stuff. I couldn't be more stoked about it. It's exactly the kind of thing I usually talk about here, so if you're one of the ten people who likes this blog, I think you'll like GRD as well. Like Robot 6 needs the hits I'm sending them.

I'm loving the new blog, by the way. Everything from the robot motif to the color scheme to the general feeling of giddiness that the contributors are feeling right now. It's a fun place to be.

It seems to be pretty well received too. We've been getting a lot of attention this week and I've loved reading all the posts welcoming us back. I think my favorite though has to be this one from ComicMix explaining what happened to Robots 1-5.

Robot 1 sank into the swamp.

Robot 2 sank into the swamp.

Robot 3 burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.

You get the idea.

Anyway, I'll be posting there at least twice a week. Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs will be on Wednesdays; Thursdays are my days to contribute to a group feature called Robot Reviews (hopefully that second link will eventually work; there aren't any tags in that category as I'm writing this, so I'm guessing at the URL). I'll also be contributing nonsense to occasional roundtable pieces like these two: Our Favorite Comics of 2008 and What Are You Reading?.

So, lots of Michael May going on at Robot 6. I hope you'll visit a bunch and comment when you do. It's going to be a blast.

Slow Storm (and other Jeff Smith recommendations)

I love Jeff Smith's work enough that if he likes something, I'm pretty sure I'm going to enjoy it too. So, when he comes out with his list of his favorite comics of 2008, I'm paying a lot more attention than I usually do to such lists.

Slow Storm sounds especially interesting. Jeff says, "Danica (Novgorodoff) weaves a slow burning story of frustration, fear and trust - - all against the backdrop of a threatening storm." And it's from First Second Publishing, which also bodes very well for my digging it.

He also reminds me that I've been meaning to try out Terry Moore's Echo.

Quote of the Day: "There IS a book somewhere..."

"...if you do read some title simply because you've always read it… if you're not enjoying it, please switch to something else. Believe me, in this day and age, there IS a book somewhere that will make you feel like whatever it is you keep going back to your old standby for and missing."

--Jeff Parker

Awesome List: Talking owls, the return of Vin Diesel, why Star Trek sucked, Peter David's Peter Pan, and more

The Monday post date on this one is a lie. I actually started it late last week and didn't wrap it up until Tuesday night. Unfortunately, the extra time I spent on it does not mean a corresponding increase in quality. It just means that I'm getting ready for Chicago and am falling behind.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole



They're making an animated movie from Kathryn Lasky's Guardians of Ga'hoole series of Young Adult books. I haven't read the series, but I'm down with a Watership Down/Secret of Nimh-esque fantasy quest movie about talking owls.

No drunken Tony Stark?

This is pretty old, but just in case you missed it: Jon Favreau on why Iron Man 2 probably won't feature the "Demon in a Bottle" storyline about Tony Stark's struggle with alcoholism. Hint: it's Will Smith's fault.

Babylon A.D.



Welcome back, Vin.

Three Musketeers prequel

A new movie featuring Athos, Aramis, and Porthos? I'm all for one. (Sorry.)

Stan Winston RIP



See how far behind I am? Stan Winston's passing deserves its own post, but by now everyone's already said everything that needs saying about how awesome and influential a designer he was. Robert Hood has my favorite tribute with a huge, excellent gallery of Winston's work. I'm gonna miss him.

Why Star Trek sucked

Ronald D. Moore has done mostly wonderful things with Battlestar Galactica. It's hard to believe he was one of the guys under whose watch the Star Trek franchise started sucking so hard. He explains why in this interview, mainly blaming in on an over-abundance of continuity and in the process predicting why he thinks JJ Abrams' version will rule.

We'll see. Voyager needn't have been continuity-laden, but they chose to go that direction and more or less repeat Next Generation. Yes, continuity was undoubtedly a problem, but it was a problem they seemed to bring on themselves. I'm all for starting over; I'm just skeptical about anyone's being as awesome as this guy.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter



Construction of the Harry Potter theme park is progressing nicely, including a new, park-exclusive mini-movie written by JK Rowling and starring the film series' cast.

The Saint Paul library rules

Sorry for the regional news, but if you live in the Twin Cities there are a couple of reasons to visit the Saint Paul Public Library this summer. One is their outdoor film festival featuring movies based on books (including comics) and movies about politics. The other is a continuing discussion of graphic novels by Jewish creators.

Tigerheart



A friend emailed to tell me about a couple of fantasy books I need to read. I'll tell you about the other one later, but the first one is Tigerheart by Peter David. I like David's comics work pretty well, but I'm not such a huge fan that I pay attention to absolutely everything he does. He's way too prolific for that anyway. But he's got a wicked sense of humor that I enjoy and the thought of him writing a Peter Pan sequel is irresistible. Read more about his take on it in this interview.

Devil May Care not so hot

Speaking of pastiches, Double O Section has the only review of the new Bond book that I need to read. It doesn't make me completely uninterested, but it sure pushes the novel further down my reading list.

Made Me Quit (Adventureblog Edition): Fantastic Four

Siskoid's Blog of Geekery has a cool feature called "Made Me Quit" (the most recent one is here) in which he talks about the final straws that got him to stop reading comics series he was no longer enjoying.

I thought about that feature a lot as I was reading the most recent issue of Fantastic Four.

When I started regularly reading comics in high school, I was a fan of the characters. Who was writing or drawing a comic were secondary considerations to who the comic was about. As long as it had a member of Alpha Flight in it, I bought it. After a while I got into the X-Men and I had to have all the comics about them too. I still have some of that in me. Any comic that features Alpha Flight (or Wonder Woman, Shang Chi, Black Canary, etc.) is going to at least get my attention.

But after a while I started realizing that just because a comic had my favorite characters in it that didn't mean it was good. I should've learned that lesson as soon as John Byrne left Alpha Flight, but I didn't. Eventually I figured it out though, and I started buying comics based on who created them.

I should've known better than that too. I mean, I loved John Byrne's Alpha Flight and Next Men, but I didn't care at all for his work on Wonder Woman. I loved Denny O'Neil's first thirty issues of Azrael, but after that it became apparent that he'd told the story he started out to tell and was keeping the series going anyway. I guess I'm a slow learner.

But I finally learned too that just because I love Brian K. Vaughan's The Hood or Y: The Last Man doesn't mean I'm also going to love his Ex Machina. Or just because Bill Willingham rules the universe on Fables doesn't mean that I'm going to dig the way he writes Batman comics. In fact, I can't think of a single writer or visual artist where I've loved absolutely every single thing he or she has ever created. Nor can I think of a single writer or visual artist where he or she has loved absolutely every single thing they've ever created. Art just doesn't work that way.

So these days, I'm more into "runs." I'm looking for that combination of creators who absolutely get the characters they're working with. That happens all the time in independent, creator-owned comics, but it's rare in the work-for-hire superhero world. Every once in a while though you'll get Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on The Fantastic Four. Or Stan Lee on Spider-Man. Or Jim Shooter and then Paul Levitz on Legion of Super-Heroes. Or Walt Simonson on Thor. Or Chris Claremont on X-Men (at least during the first go-'round). Or Frank Miller on Daredevil. Or Neal Adams on Batman. Or David Michelinie and Bob Layton on Iron Man. Or Mark Waid on The Flash. Or Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting on Captain America. Or Greg Pak on Hulk. Or Jeff Parker on Agents of Atlas and X-Men: First Class. Or Gail Simone on Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman.

That's a long list, but there are so many others I could mention. Those are the great superhero comics and they're the standard I'm trying to use these days. I'm trying imperfectly, because dang it I do like Alpha Flight and Black Canary, but I'm trying. I even passed up a recent issue of Marvel Adventures Iron Man because it made Alpha Flight look stupid and amateurish. I wouldn't have cared a few years ago. I'd have had to have it anyway just because it was them. These days, I try to have standards.

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's Fantastic Four doesn't meet those standards. This most recent issue has a few examples of why that is, which is why it's my last issue of the series until a new team comes on. And that's kind of ironic, because Millar's Civil War was at least part of the reason I started reading Fantastic Four in the first place. I'd always sort of liked the Thing and the Invisible Woman, but it was Millar's horribly out-of-character writing of Reed Richards in Civil War that made me curious about checking out FF to see how the Invisible Woman would respond to him.

When Dwayne McDuffie took over the book after Civil War, I stuck with it and was glad I did because McDuffie's an idea machine and filled the series with lots of cool, crazy adventures. The Michael Turner covers were a drawback, but I could deal with those to get at McDuffie's stories.

Millar and Hitch though are doing some things that I really hate. Their story has a cool idea at its core though. A think tank of scientists has constructed a duplicate of Earth so that when the real version is inevitably destroyed humanity has a place to go to. Of course the scientists can't help but make a few "improvements" as long as they're starting from scratch, so they build in some rules and safeguards to make sure that they'll have ultimate power in the new world. It's an interesting twist on the old take-over-the-world scheme and it would be really snazzy if Millar and Hitch weren't taking so doggone long to unfold it.

Their dragging it out isn't even one of my big problems with it though. Millar's writing always seems to be winking at the audience and saying, "Yes, I know superheroes are dumb kid stuff, but I'll make it all realistic for you and we can pretend it's grown-up. But we all really know it's not."

His use of the term "costume" to describe superheroes is an example of that. Any time I hear that or "cape" or "tights" to describe superheroes, I hear a writer who's really not comfortable in the genre. He's not embracing it, so he's got to poke a little fun at one of the tropes - the superhero costume.

But you know what? Superheroes are dumb kid stuff. That doesn't mean adults can't enjoy it. I think we should. But then, I also like The Wiggles. There's absolutely nothing wrong with grown-ups liking some kid stuff. And I don't even have a problem with superhero comics that cover some heavy themes. But damn it, Millar, if you can't call a superhero a superhero with a straight face, you should find something else to write about.

I'd cut Millar some slack if this was somehow in character for Johnny Storm to speak derogatorily of his profession, but as irreverent a character as he is, he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who's embarrassed by what he does.

He is in Millar's Fantastic Four though. Last issue, he tried to tell a cute supervillain that he's not really a crimefighter. And while technically he's not (the Fantastic Four are really a family of adventurers, not vigilantes), he's certainly done more than his share of fighting crime over the years and I don't understand his quibbling over the semantics in the middle of a fight.

Of course, I also don't get why he'd rather sleep with a cute supervillain and let her go in the morning than put her behind bars, but Millar has him doing that too.

Okay, wait, I do get why he'd rather do that. I just don't buy that he actually would. Especially the letting her go in the morning part.

Enough about Johnny. The rest of my problem has to do with what happens when the Nu-World scientists' secret weapon gets loose on the real Earth. Again, the weapon is a cool idea. It's a giant robot called Conserve and Protect; CAP for short, and it's even painted to look like Captain America. But it's an idea that's presented in as dull and boring a manner as possible.

When the Fantastic Four (minus Reed Richards, who's off planet at the time) are called in to battle the robot, they go in expecting to join forty of the biggest hitting superheroes in the Marvel Universe. When they don't see any of the others, they and their think tank liaison call in to check up. "Where are they?" they ask.

"What are you talking about?" comes the response. "They got there about eight minutes ago."

So, the Fantastic Four look around and see this:



Look who's there lying unconscious. There are some lightweights, but you also have Storm, Ares, Iron Man, the Vision, Wonder Man, Ms. Marvel, and the freaking Sentinel. I don't care how tough CAP is supposed to be, it should've taken a lot longer than eight minutes to put down any one of that group. And even - just to give Millar the benefit of the doubt - if CAP could take them all out so fast and so easily, why the heck didn't we get to see it? I certainly would rather have seen three pages of that fight than three pages of Johnny Storm getting yelled at by his manager for missing band practice. I mean, honestly.

But then again, when the heroes regain consciousness and resume the fight, this incomprehensible mess is what we get:



I can't tell what's going on there, but I'm starting to figure out why we don't get more pages of fighting. There's no choreography; it's just a bunch of superheroes flying around, some of whom are unconvincingly attacking the robot. We get one other panel of the fight beside this one and it's just as bad. Millar and Hitch are faking it and they're not even faking it well.

And then on the next page, they quit even trying to fake it and just have some guys in a room describe the rest of the fight.



That's Mr. Fantastic on the speaker by the way. Fresh back from outer space and rarin' to go. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. The giant robot has kicked the butt of every single Marvel hero there is off panel, but now we're supposed to get excited because Mr. Fantastic is on the way.

I'm so done.

Writing is Hard: Putting the audience last, part 342

I've got some reviews coming (Doomsday and The Bank Job, at least), but I haven't been able to get to them yet. I've got a set of interviews coming for Newsarama that's been taking all the time I usually spend for reviewing.

So instead, I'm gonna talk about writing some more. I've added a Writing is Hard link to the sidebar under Writing Craft and Life. It's basically a collection of my posts on the craft of writing, but I don't mind recommending them because hardly any of them contain original ideas by me. Most of them are other people's ideas and me just sort of learning aloud as I share them. Anyway, good stuff in there.

One of the recurring themes in Writing is Hard has to do with the obligation (or more accurately, the lack thereof) that writers owe to their audiences. This seems like a hard idea for readers and fans to swallow, but the more I listen to writers talk about it, the more I believe that you have to write (or draw or paint or whatever) first for yourself and then hope that people dig what you're doing.

This comes up again because of a recent(ish) post by Cheryl Lynn on the whitewashing of non-white characters. I mention this with some fear and trembing partly because I absolutely love Cheryl Lynn and I think she's right pretty much all of the time. And as far as her main point goes, she's absolutely right this time too.

But I'm mostly nervous about saying what I'm going to say because I'm not going to address her main point other than to agree with it. Instead, I'm going to nitpick her suggested solution to the problem:

[There] are those artists who have wonderful artistic skills but simply think that white women are the most beautiful women on earth. Scratch that. The only beautiful women on earth. And because they believe that all heroines should be beautiful, the result is that they depict non-white heroines with stereotypically white features. They give a character like Storm the features they think a beautiful woman should have instead of the features a beautiful woman from Kenya would likely have.

And that's a problem. How do you resolve it? Well I certainly wouldn't want anyone to change what he or she finds to be beautiful. Hell, that's impossible to do anyway. But those artists will have to work against their brains a bit. Those artists may think that giving a character a wider nose or eyes without lid creases will make that character unattractive. What needs to be realized is that the audience has a much broader definition of what is attractive. Have you ever given someone a gift that you didn't like but you knew the other person would love? You put the other person first. Those artists need to put the audience first.

The bold text is my emphasis, because that's where I disagree with her. I would much rather see Vixen (and Jubilee and any number of other whitewashed characters) drawn accurately, but I don't think my wishes on the matter should affect how any particular artist chooses to draw. There's a lot I don't like about Ed Benes' art, but I don't think he needs to change it to suit me. Not if that's the way he really, truly wants to express himself artistically. He should absolutely be able to draw however the hell he wants. I don't have to like it though and I don't have to buy his stuff.

Now please don't get me wrong and think I'm saying that Cheryl Lynn or anyone else doesn't have the right to complain about this. They so do. But the complaint needs to be married with a strong, economic message that those who are concerned about this aren't going to keep spending money on it. The solution isn't for Benes to suddenly change his art style because someone wants him to. The solution is for DC to hire another artist because no one's buying Ed Benes anymore. Then, if Benes isn't getting work and decides to rethink how he's expressing himself, that's something he's going to have to wrestle with. But it's not going to happen - nor should it happen - just because we're crying out, "Think of the fans!" while continuing to buy whatever he's putting out.

Thinking of the fans, after all, is what got us Venom in Spider-Man 3. It's what got us Nikki and Paulo in Lost. It's why most fantasy novels suck and why there are three billion new vampire-romance novels published every week. Thinking of the fans makes creators less creative. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Benes draws the way he does precisely because he is thinking of the fans. Just not ones like me.

Writing is Hard: Mediocre doesn't cut it anymore

This article by Steven Grant is a couple of weeks old, but it makes a point that I want to reinforce. Grant says:

It's not uncommon to hear some, even among top talents in the industry, talking about how comics are just comics, will always just be comics, should always just be comics, and anyone in comics thinking otherwise is a pompous self-loather trying to rise above their station. And they're wrong.

The American comics industry has lived for a long time on its own relatively isolated little island, where things have developed under fairly unique circumstances. But the medium's no longer an island; only the business is. And now only if we choose to be. Because comics are mainstream now, as mainstream as anything. They're acceptable. They're accepted.

Comics have been in the literary ghetto for a long time. I remember a quote that I think was by Warren Ellis maybe? I can't find it now, but whoever it was who said it was actually quoting a Japanese director and talking about how when no one's paying attention to your stuff, you have a lot of room to be bold and take big risks.

Unfortunately, for a lot of creators, having no one around to read your books just meant that you could be lazy and put out crap. I know because as a comics reviewer, I've read a lot of it. I've even bought some of it because I was wanting something new to read and there just weren't a lot of choices available. But there are choices now and that means that everyone's got to bring their best to the marketplace.

As Grant says:

Just "making comics" isn't good enough anymore. Used to be – and a lot of creators and would-be creators still operate like this – that to "make comics" all you'd need is some rough idea and somebody to draw pictures about it, and because it was in comics format and the market was predisposed to be sympathetic, it was easy to pass that off as a story. The comics industry was considered to be working under special circumstances, and special dispensation was handed out like Halloween candy.

If you haven't noticed, even on our little island sympathy is a scarce commodity these days. There are still plenty of books flooded out there that are incoherently written, or have art that doesn't mesh with the subject matter, or are seemingly plotted via dart board, or lack noticeable structure or hooks, or are predicated on ideas that are utterly unoriginal or uninteresting. There are also a lot of comics that don't sell to save their souls, though the two things never quite hit a one-to-one correlation. It's pretty obvious that at a lot of companies the title "editor" is sort of an honorific handed out and a lot of people claiming the title have no editorial training and an infirm grasp of what exactly an editor is supposed to do.

There was a time when all of that was good enough, when the industry and the market may not have considered any of that good, exactly, but it was considered good enough.

Now it's just not good enough. It's time to reimagine what constitutes a "good" comics story, and how this applies to the growing graphic novel market.

I'm finding that's true in my own comics buying. I'm less and less willing to shell out three bucks for a crap - or even mediocre - comic. I want Awesome. And I finally have enough choices that I think I can get Awesome.

But the real message for me here is that if I'm going to write comics, I've also got to deliver Awesome.

Found this picture; thought I'd share

Speaking of my dad, it was his dad who indirectly got me interested in comics. My grandfather wasn't a big comics fan himself, but he owned a barber shop in Memphis and always had a bunch of Dennis the Menace, Richie Rich, and various Marvel comics lying around.

That's me in the picture above, obviously still waiting on my haircut.