The Comic Glutton

ADWATCH: THE RETURN

2007-01-27T11:25:00.000-08:00

LIAR

Deep into January, the ad glut continues. Marvel not only sticks an utterly worthless piece of cardstock advertising $#!& in their magazines all month, destroying comics and pissing off everyone who realized that no matter how many comics they bought, they still only got 25 free E-music songs (with submittal of your credit card information, of course), not 25 for each card … Marvel also ups the page count to allow eight more ads with no extra content.

I’ve been traveling much of January, so I’ve barely had time flip through my comics, let alone read them and realize I was getting shafted by yet another of Joe Quesada’s broken promises. Marvel’s product for the month has been loaded with 40-page adfests. Not as egregious as the holiday glut, where about half the comics were 48-page phone books with more ads than comic. But still annoying enough.

Here’s a tip: Marvel comics in January, just look on the left side of the page. The right side will be some stupid ad for Marvel-licensed crap you’ll probably only find at Everything’s A Dollar. Eau de Hulk, anyone?

Quick run-down for the offenders I brought home on Jan. 24:

Doctor Strange: The Oath – 40 pages, 17 ads.
Punisher War Journal – 40 pages, 18 ads.
X-Factor – 40 pages, 17 ads.
Silent War – 40 pages, 17 ads.
Civil War: The Return – 40 pages, 16 ads.

I hate to stick a "Liar" label next to Joe Q, but after some back-and-forth between the two sides of my brain, I'm leaving it there. From everything I know, he's the kind of guy I would probably really enjoy hanging out with. He loves the medium, he's a skilled artist and editor, and he deserves a lot of credit for making Marvel great.

But either he isn't playing straight with the readership regarding legitimate complaints, or he's being lied to by some corporate schmuck a few steps up the food chain. Either way, his credibility is in the toilet with me.

Next Christmas: the debut of the 64-page advertising blockbuster. I wouldn't bet against it, anyway.

DC Comics MIA’s for December – A World Without Superman??

2007-01-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

Update:
Ethan Van Sciver dropped by and left a comment below, explaining that Superman/Batman #30 was intended to be his last, since he's now working on a Sinestro Corps prestige format 2-parter. Thanks for stopping by, Ethan!

I counted seven late and absent books from DC this past month, and four of them belonged to the Superman line. Product synergy opportunities lost, as well as Ethan Van Sciver’s monthly penciling gig, apparently. More on that below.

Weirdly, with all the late books this past year, the last week of December saw a couple of earliness anomalies. Detective Comics #827 was supposed to be a January release, yet there it was in my pullbox on Dec. 28. And Justice League of America #5 showed up just two weeks after the late-arriving previous issue to get back on track … with Sandra Hope still credited as the issue’s only inker. Someone was working overtime!

***

MIA: Action Comics #846 – Bring in even a beloved Hollywood type to co-write the story and, predictably, the title falls seriously behind. The first two issues of the current Richard Donner/Geoff Johns arc were right on time, but the third failed to ship as scheduled on Dec. 27.

Further delays on the arc have already been worked into the schedule, with only an annual scheduled for January and the contents of issue #847, 3-D glasses and all, shifted a month to March’s issue #848 in favor of some fill-in material, which not even the official DC Comics website has any information for. Their website does, however, list both issue #846 and Annual #10 as arriving in stores on Jan. 31. (No sense spreading them out or anything.) In other words, the Johns/Donner/Kubert story is a bimonthly.

MIA: Superman #658 and #659 – The title I must admit I am more eagerly awaiting than the Johns/Donner story is slower than a stationary bullet, I’m afraid. October’s scheduled issue #657 was late and slipped into the second Wednesday of November, and November’s issue #658 is scheduled to ship this week on Jan. 3. For those tracking the intervals, that’s seven weeks between #656 and #657, and eight weeks between #657 and #658. In other words, bimonthly.

The next two issues were solicited as apparently stand-alone fill-in stories with fill-in creators. Carlos Pacheco gets a breather on art duties in #659 with Rick Leonardi drawing a Krypto story, and Kurt Busiek gets another script assist from Fabian Nicieza on #660, which is also scheduled to feature art by newcomer Peter Vale.

MIA: Superman/Batman #32 – Ethan Van Sciver managed to produce three issues of the title (for which I’m thankful) before being replaced mid-arc by Matthew Clark, an artist who seems not to be an obvious choice, but has the virtue of being able to produce more than one issue per quarter. Yes, fully three months passed between the street dates of Van Sciver’s second and third issues on the book. The following issue, #31, arrived quite late on Dec. 27 with Clark onboard as penciller, taking over one issue earlier than the solicits had announced.

Clark’s own regular title, Outsiders, has been getting ever more sketchy looking over the last few months. He’s been regularly assisted by fill-in pencillers and some of the backgrounds have been little more than a horizon line. He also unfortunately had a heart attack a year or two ago. Yet he’s on board to get the last three issues of the current late-running storyline onto the shelves before the delightfully lifelike and photo-realistic art of Pat Lee takes over in March (at which time comic readers are expected to leave the book in droves). I for one am looking forward to seeing every face of Superman and Batman look like Rocky Balboa on a bad day.

MIA: Alleged Superman #7 – Yes, I’m being cute about the All-Star line. A meaningless solicitation date for this issue, of course, as issue #6 hasn’t come out yet. Issue #5 arrived back on Aug. 30, and, believe it or not, All-Star Superman #6 is actually listed on this week’s shipment from Diamond.

MIA: Green Lantern #16 – Please, guys, just admit this is a bimonthly already, and solicit it as such. All of the One Year Later issues by Ivan Reis have been about eight weeks apart, at least until November rolled around when issues #14 and #15 both shipped, just three weeks apart. I suppose from a marketing perspective, the positive is that the new arc, “Wanted: Hal Jordan,” had that much more opportunity to hook some forgetful readers’ attention. But issue #16 is back to the bimonthly thing again, with a current ship date announced as Jan. 17.

MIA: Wonder Woman #4 – No surprise, and I only mention it among the December MIA’s again because that’s when it would have shipped had the book met even a modest bimonthly goal. In fact, it’s really a quarterly. The Allan Heinberg relaunch should become the new definition of “buzzkill,” since any suspense about the status or identity of Wonder Woman post-Infinite Crisis has surely been made irrelevant by her routine and healthy appearances in other titles. To recap, 11 weeks passed between the release of issues #1 and #2, another 13 weeks passed before the release of issue #3, and if the book keeps that pace up, it will be late February or early March before we see the arc’s penultimate issue. (DC’s website claims a Jan. 10 street date.) Ironically, both issue #5 and the start of the new writer’s tenure on issue #6 have been solicited for the same month. I shall not be placated.

It’s worth noting that new writer Jodi Picoult will almost certainly not have had the opportunity to read Heinberg’s final scripts by the time her own script deadlines arrive. Come March, let’s all look for continuity errors.

MIA: Authority #2 – And this was even announced as a bimonthly book. DC’s website now lists a ship date of Feb. 14, a mere four months after the first issue arrived. That's not even quarterly.

Marvel’s MIAs for December – Artists Pulled, Rewrites in Progress?

2006-12-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

Just four of Marvel’s titles, by my count, missed their solicited arrival dates in December, at least by a margin worth mentioning. Counting Civil War #6, about which curious excuses have been made, and the presumably spoilerish Punisher War Journal #2 tie-in, we technically have six late books, although these last two are scheduled to ship Jan. 3 (or Jan. 4, allowing for postal holiday delays). Implications are ever so slightly scandalous in the following.

***

MIA: Civil War #6 – Listed by Diamond as shipping Jan. 3.
MIA: Punisher War Journal #2 – Listed by Diamond as shipping Jan. 3.

MIA: Runaways #23 – Wow. No sooner does Brian K. Vaughan announce he’s got a TV writing gig than a Brian K. Vaughan comic misses a ship date. It’s the first time at least that I can remember. I’m sure the timing is pure coincidence, but it sure does cap off the year with irony, doesn’t it? Scheduled to ship Jan. 10.

MIA: Eternals #6 – Methinks we’ve got some rewrites going on here, delaying the book, though that’s speculation on my part. Since a seventh issue of this six-issue miniseries has been solicited, at least it fits as an informed guess. Here’s some more info: The first four issues all came out perfectly on schedule, but then Eternals #5 didn’t show up in October. It arrived in stores a couple of weeks late on Nov. 8, and coincidentally enough, six days later Marvel solicited the previously unplanned seventh issue for a February ship date. We should see issue #6 some time in January, then, two months late.

MIA: Wisdom (MAX) #2 – Stumbling out of the gate, this issue was announced as delayed until January, with Trevor Hairsine pulled off the book after the second issue. Joe Quesada cited “a few extreme personal issues” for Hairsine, as well as the schedule being difficult for him, and reported that Hairsine is working on another Marvel project. The final four issues of the series will be drawn by Manuel Garcia.

Par for the course as far as Hairsine’s recent work at Marvel goes. He’s been favorably compared to Bryan Hitch in style, but suddenly, readers have little reason to expect he can finish what he starts. X-Men: Deadly Genesis, his most recent prior work, saw him credited as penciller on just the first issue. After that, he was simply on layouts, with Scott Hanna and Nelson DeCastro (also credited just as Nelson … a name familiar to those aware of the redrawing controversy on a few issues of John Byrne’s Action Comics last year) finishing pages that would charitably be described as looking “rushed.”

Before that, Hairsine was tapped for the five-part Ultimate Nightmare, but after the first two issues, Steve Epting stepped in to draw issue #3. Hairsine returned for issue #4, which hit the shelves two and a half months later, an emergency crew of five inkers in tow. To their credit, the issue actually looked remarkably consistent. Hairsine drew the final issue, which arrived two months later, delayed.

MIA: Moon Knight #7 – Though #7 was originally announced for a November ship date, issue #6 didn’t arrive until Nov. 15, and no issue arrived in December. Issues #8 and #9 have now been solicited for February and March. Reportedly, Moon Knight #7 is now scheduled for Jan. 17 after slipping from a previously announced Jan. 3 street date.

Clearly, David Finch is a highly skilled artist, deserving of his steadily increasing star status. But he can’t produce 22 pages a month. All six issues of this title’s opening arc arrived at intervals of six weeks or more, yet not with any predictability. The pattern was similar during Finch’s run on New Avengers #1-6.

Marvel has moved Finch to some unnamed project after Moon Knight #8, and judging by the Mico Suayan preview pencils released, the new artist will fill the shoes well … although I have little hope Suayan is going to be a reliable monthly producer either. We shall see. It is disappointing that the art switch must occur mid-arc, but “Midnight Sun” in issues #7 and following is clearly intended to get Moon Knight caught up with what’s happening elsewhere in the Marvel U, and Finch’s continued inability to deliver on a monthly basis will only hamper that effort. That first issue at least has been promoted as a Civil War tie-in, although the bulk of the arc is now going to hit stores after Civil War has wrapped.

***

Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk -- One last item of note is that Diamond announced the following on Nov. 20:

“Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk #3 (FEB06 1987, $2.99) has been cancelled and will be resolicited when issues #4-#6 have been completed.”

ADWATCH Finale (?) and Fiscal Fancies

2006-12-28T22:47:00.000-08:00

Let’s provisionally accept the notion, plausible enough on its face, that Marvel’s engorged advertising scheme is done with, at least until next year, as of this week’s end-of-year comic releases. If next week does indeed see a return, across the board, to page count normalcy, I will breathe a sigh of relief not unlike the one I would exhale after a particularly portly airplane passenger vacated the seat next to me on a layover. I still got to my destination and received the product I paid for … it just wasn’t very comfortable.

There are many negative consequences to me the reader when I’m trying to wade through a comic book whose advertising pages outnumber story pages, as did most of Marvel’s magazines over much of the past two months. But this week, at least regarding the purchases of this weekly comic addict, one of the negative consequences visited Marvel. Specifically, I dropped Onslaught Reborn.

The Loeb/Liefeld revival of the “Volume 2” universe, as I prefer to think of it, was always an unstable proposition for me. The lightest whiff of wind could topple this title off my buy pile, and with this week’s issue #2 release, that tiny puff of air was the ad count. The series already faced a series of high hurdles with me in attempting to earn my continued purchase beyond my usual polite first-issue tryout. I have never read any of the original “Heroes Reborn” stories, so unfamiliarity was its first hurdle. I tend to avoid miniseries that don’t explicitly promise any real impact on the rest of the in-continuity universe, so that was the second. And my current artistic tastes have moved away from Rob Liefeld’s style, making for a third, nearly insurmountable hurdle right from the start.

So when I flipped through my pull stack Thursday, hefted the deceptively thick Onslaught Reborn #2 in my hands and noted that it was a regular priced issue, I envisioned the frustration I would feel reading a book I just barely cared about while plowing through just as many pages of worthless advertising dreck. Then I decided I’d spend my three dollars on something else. That impulse of advertising disgust was just enough to cost the miniseries, already under probationary review by my wallet, any further patience.

With that, here are a few final statistics based on Marvel’s output over the last two weeks. In all, I brought home 29 Marvel comics this week and last, as well as two comics published by Marvel under imprint labels.

29: Total comics
13: Regular 32-page comics
11: Ad-stuffed 48-page comics (of which at least two had above-average story page counts)
4: Extra-sized 48-page comics ($3.99 each)
1: Slightly-ad-stuffed 40-page comic

As revealed by these representative numbers (with the caveat that I did not buy every title Marvel published in these two weeks, nor did I count pages in the few I left on the shelf), the ad glut definitely tapered off at the end of this Christmas shopping season – a good thing, certainly.

In fact, I was just about ready to declare the ad-fest over last week, when just two titles showed up buried under piles of advertising. But this week swung right back into negative territory with just 3 of 11 regular-priced comics coming in at the standard 32-page format. Not a very encouraging final week trend, if “final” it truly be.

***

It’s worth making note of the two imprint titles I brought home from Marvel’s publishing output during this timeframe. Criminal #3, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ creator-owned title under the ICON banner, contained fully 25 pages of story, several pages of unique essay-formatted bonus content, and exactly one page of advertising – which was really closer to a sort of public service announcement on behalf of indy publishing. All for the standard price of $2.99.

Similarly, Red Prophet, my first foray into the Dabel Brothers imprint, contained 22 pages of uninterrupted storytelling, an extra-heavy paper stock and a swath of in-house promotional ads placed after the story, all for just $2.95.

Being a self-confessed ignoramus regarding the economics of profit-earning periodicals, I can only be confused that advertising-free titles such as these find their way into the marketplace at exactly the same price as their ad-bearing cousins, and still survive to publish further issues while selling the merest fraction of what sponsored books sell each month.

I can only surmise that Marvel, as publisher, shifts an enormous portion of the financial risks to the creators under the creator-owned ICON line, and thus has a greater profit margin with which to absorb the loss of revenue seen in printing Criminal without advertising. And I surmise further that the Dabel Brothers operation, as a more or less independent imprint, supplies publishing capital from other sources not tied to Marvel’s sales-plus-advertising revenue stream, thus allowing Marvel to forgo the securing of further commercial sponsors.

However it works, the production quality of these ad-free titles, which seem to be at least profitable enough to earn a green light from the publisher, suggest it’s possible to run a comic company successfully under a minimal advertising model. These examples, if nothing else, most certainly argue that a publishing scheme featuring literally more pages of advertising than actual editorial content is fiscally unnecessary.

And this week, at least for this buyer, Marvel's choice to increase that superfluous ad revenue literally cost them the revenue of a potential sale.

Newuniversal ... Starring Bruce Willis, James Gandolfini, and Josh Holloway (“Sawyer” from Lost)

2006-12-23T15:43:00.000-08:00

Update:
Larroca admits to his Hollywood casting habits at The Pulse.

THE PULSE: How did you decide the look of Len Carson and some of your other leads in these pages?

LARROCA: When I read the pages, I had in mind how they should look -- maybe I had the cinema and the TV shows as references, the fact is that they’re famous people, only that sligthly altered so to not get me in trouble.

Sometimes I used to go to see any picture, and pretty often I used to think …”this guy would be a perfect Captain America or Spider-Man or whomever…” sometimes they’re famous artists and sometimes unknown, it’s funny.

The fact is that I spend a lot of fun time doing the cast for my series … It’s probably the most expensive film of the history!

I finally got around to reading Warren Ellis and Salvador Larroca’s Newuniversal #1 today. What a star-studded cast!

It seems that Bruce Willis is playing Justice; Josh Holloway, better known as Sawyer from Lost, is playing Star Brand; James Gandolfini and Tony Sirico from the Sopranos are cast as (can you believe it?) small-town Sheriffs from Oklahoma of all places; and either Gene Hackman or Armin Mueller-Stahl (who had a memorable role in the X-Files motion picture) get a cameo role as some archaeologist.

Don’t believe me? Take a look:

Star Brand, just before the White Event...

Josh Holloway...

Star-Brand and his girlfriend getting cozy...

Sawyer and Kate kissing (and no, I'm not responsible for this montage)...

Here's Justice, after being transformed by the White Event...or is that Corbin Dallas?

And Bruce Willis...

A couple of Oklahoma sheriffs...

And the Sopranos...

The archaeologist...
And a couple of casting options...

Now, I knew as soon as I started reading that this art was a clear departure from the usual Larroca style, with his familiar stubby noses and swollen upper lips. It was a clear improvement. Seems it's also clearly something else.

I had an online conversation once with a high profile artist (who shall remain nameless) who drew a certain DC character with a distinct likeness to Robert Mitchum. As soon as I mentioned it with my great appreciation, he clammed up. Seems there are certain legal issues in patterning comic art too clearly after real people without their (or their estates') explicit permission.

I'm betting we'll see a lot more of the usual Larroca style on this book before long. Although, in his defense, I didn't see any obvious photographic matches to the panels in question upon doing a quick Google search. But screen caps from DVDs are so easy...

X-Men: Phoenix - Warsong ... Finally a Worthy Idea?

2006-12-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

After four plodding issues, the penultimate Phoenix Warsong #4 finally reveals the slightest nugget of a cool idea, but it's just way too late to interest me much. Here's a sample of my latest Silver Bullet Comic Books review:

...there does finally seem to be a nugget of a worthy Big Concept here: that the Cuckoos are really part of a giant, collective, genetically engineered Phoenix capture device. But, as I said, it seems to be just a nugget, since I have zero faith that all the fascinating implications of such a revelation (if I’ve gotten it right) will be adequately explored by this creative team with just one issue to go...

...More central to the deflation I feel in reading this series has been the tepid art by Top Cow’s Tyler Kirkham. Look, the series is already on difficult artistic footing when it’s conceived as a story revolving around three identical looking characters whose only distinguishing visual features are the colors of their pajamas. Throw in their two resurrected identical sisters and a heavy helping of Emma Frost – who, it seems, bears a striking resemblance to the Stepford girls not by accident – and you have the potential for unbearable visual monotony panel after panel, page after page, issue after issue, as the art relies on six near-indistinguishable faces. Not even eye color can serve to differentiate the ladies, as they all have featureless glassy orbs instead of normal eyes...

...Storywise, the X-Men are mostly wasted here. Wolverine and Colossus stand around. Cyclops stands around shooting eye blasts up at things. Colossus had, I believe, exactly one line of dialogue, and it was delivered in a balloon floating in from off-panel, situated between the backs of two other people’s heads as they faced, well, nothing. Such use of art, space and character are not why the unique medium of comics was created.

For the full review, go here. For all of this week's SBCB reviews, go here.

Cool Ads of Yesteryear #2

2006-12-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

Now THIS would have been a great toy for Santa to bring! Imagine, six feet long, big enough for you and a buddy to crawl inside and close the hatch. You probably had to “drive” it Fred Flintstone style, but who cares, right? It reportedly had a real periscope and “rockets that fire,” and of course, back in 1968, that probably meant an actual spring-loaded launcher with some real punch. My grandparents have some of my uncles’ old toys that could kick projectiles out hard enough to put your eye out … and I once had a Sunday School teacher who told us all how he had done just that.

Not exactly an iron-clad beast, of course, this baby was pure “200# test fibreboard,” and who knows how well that Space Age wonder material held up on the backyard battlefield.

And what a price! Only $6.98!!

Here’s the quaint kicker: “Because of its gigantic size we are forced to ask for an additional 75c shipping charges.” Heh. That’s practically a kid’s whole weekly allowance right there.

Those were the days, folks. Those were the days.

Scan from Daredevil #41, June 1968.

ADWATCH WEEK 7 – X-tra X-Mas X-Books X-plosion!

2006-12-13T20:07:00.000-08:00

Only 11 shopping days until Christmas, and Marvel’s advertising avalanche continues apace. Of 14 original comics on this week’s shipping list from the House of Ideas, I brought home 9. All of them contained 48 pages between the covers, including the two “extra-sized” issues, Wolverine #49 (34 story pages) and Exiles Annual #1 (38 story pages), both of which cost a dollar extra. (Curiously, fully 7 of the available Marvel titles were X-Men related. I believe this is called “lumpy” publishing.)

Target X #1 was the lone bonus-value book among the regular priced issues, debuting with 25 pages of story.

As before, 51 percent of the total pages in the regular priced books I brought home were advertising, and only 46 percent of the pages I brought home told the stories I paid for.

Hey, Joe Q, I hear you’ve got a lot of TVs in your house. Next time you pay money for a DVD and pop it in, try this out:

1) Set up two TVs next to each other.
2) Watch your purchased movie on the left.
3) Watch an endless loop of infomercials on the right.
4) Drop me a line and tell me how you enjoyed the experience.

I’m sure it won’t detract from your movie enjoyment in the slightest.

Hopefully for the last time, I present some page count statistics for the week.

9: Books
9: Books with 48 pages
7: Regular priced books
2: “Extra-Sized” books ($3.99 cover price)

432: Total pages
228: Total pages of comic content
194: Total pages of advertising
10: Total pages of peripheral content

53: Percentage of pages of comic content
45: Percentage of pages of advertising
2: Percentage of pages of peripheral content

Removing higher-priced books and recalculating over standard-price books:

7: Books
6: Books in which advertising pages outnumber comic pages

336: Total pages
156: Total pages of comic content
171: Total pages of advertising
9: Total pages of peripheral content

46: Percentage of pages of comic content
51: Percentage of pages of advertising
3: Percentage of pages of peripheral content

22: Total facing spreads of comic content
33: Total facing spreads of advertising

For comparison, of the 13 regular-priced DC titles I bought this week, all but one were standard 32-page magazines. Only Trials of Shazam #4 had four additional pages of advertising.

White Tiger Places Anti-Abortion Ad

2006-12-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

My faith in the decency and fair-mindedness of the comic industry received a boost from the Tamora Pierce-written White Tiger #2. Just when I was sure there was no place for any political, philosophical or religious viewpoint that didn’t hew to the Liberally Correct Manifesto, my eyes happened across a gratuitously placed anti-abortion billboard prominently displayed in the background of one panel.

Here’s the visible portion of the text:

… OF 10 ABORTED BABIES ARE NORMAL BABIES

DOES SHE HAVE LESS RIGHT TO LIVE THAN A SUPERBABY?

Okay, so it’s a bit cloudy in message, being contextualized to a superhero world, but it seems pretty clearly an admonition to think twice about abortion. Nothing says this is necessarily a Conservative message; it could be equally counter-radically Feminist. But for once, it’s an overt message whose content doesn’t spit on the political Right. Can’t remember the last time I saw that.

***

Lest we think, however, that Marvel has given up its MoveOn.org bona fides, I found this little bit of anti-Republican slander hidden in the background of Punisher War Journal #1. Filling in the cut off words, it appears to read:

[REP]UBLICAN HOUSE
[LEA]DERSHIP: CIVIL
[LIBER]TIES A PRIVILEGE,
NOT A RIGHT

Oh, but Civil War is an even-handed, non-partisan exploration of deeply controversial contemporary issues. Elucidating for all! Uh-huh.

MIAs for November – FF and JLA

2006-12-09T17:10:00.000-08:00

The Glutton is back on-blog, after spending the last couple of weeks on a comics binge. My read pile(s) consisted of a good 200 comics or more, with some titles going back three or four months since the last issue I had read. Working that mountain of comics down has been a bigger priority than keeping my blog features going, but it’s at a manageable size now, so I’m ready to get back to the blog.

When you read scores of comics from dozens of current series all in a short space of time, a few aggregate effects emerge: 1) reading comics where pages of ads outnumber pages of comic content is a maddening, infuriating, artistically frustrating chore; 2) DC’s One Year Later project has been a misguided venture in more titles, probably, than those in which it has provided a successful shakeup; 3) you realize how many series you’re reading just out of habit, without really enjoying at all; and 4) Darwyn Cooke is probably the single most talented creator in comics today.

After this recent binge, I expect to purge a number of titles from my pull list.

With that out of the way, let’s look at which books were solicited for November, but proved to be Missing In Action. On a happy note, there were far fewer of them than in September, with less than 10 percent of the Big Two’s mainstream output failing to show this past month.

Justice League of America #4 – I’m not aware of any prior deadline difficulties on titles drawn by Ed Benes, but the delay must have to do with the art, since Brad Meltzer has said a year’s worth of scripts are all in. With issue #6 being solicited for February, the missed month has now been officially absorbed into the schedule. While I always enjoyed Benes’ work on Birds of Prey – the only extended run of his work I can recall reading – I’ve never quite thought of him as a top-tier creator … you know, the kind whose rarefied-air, stratospheric popularity allows them to get away with five-month delays between issues (*cough Jim Lee cough*). Regardless, DC certainly seems to be banking on him for this high-profile title. If issue #4 finds Sandra Hope backed up by an army of C-list inkers, we’ll know the schedule is likely to be an ongoing problem on this one.

All-Star Batman #5 – Did I mention Jim Lee? According to the last resolicitation, issue #5 was, in fact, supposed to be out in November. For those counting, we’ve seen exactly four issues of this title in 17 months. For that matter, we’ve only seen nine total All-Star issues of any kind in the year-and-a-half or more since the line hit the shelves. I plan on keeping all enthusiasm appropriately restrained in my anticipation of Adam Hughes’ All-Star Wonder Woman. In fact, I may quit calling these comics “All-Star” and just go with “Alleged.” That would have meaning on so many levels.

Secret Six #6 – For a six-part miniseries, this sure is having a hard time getting out. Issue #4 was a month late, too.

Trials of Shazam #4 – Issue #5 was solicited for January, so the missed month has already been absorbed into the schedule. With Howard Porter playing as a one-man-band on the art, including colors, one can only suspect that his new, breakthrough art style makes an on-time 12-part maxiseries a bite more than he can chew.

Batman & The Mad Monk #4 – And I’m not going to miss it. Readers of this blog will recall the discomfort I felt at reading Mad Monk #2, with its excessive treatment of the opening human sacrifice scene. Well, I quit the miniseries, period, with a glance through the opening pages of Mad Monk #3, where excessive detail was given to the grotesque death of some poor sap in an iron maiden. I’ll think twice before picking up another Matt Wagner comic again, which is a shame, because I really enjoy his visual style.

And playing catch-up…

Superman #658 – In fact, the title did appear in November with a late issue #657, so it’s not properly MIA, just playing catch-up. And I’m perfectly willing to say the story has been worth the wait so far.

Supergirl #12 – Another catch-up title that wasn’t truly MIA, since issue #11 hit the stands in November, and issue #12 hit the first week of December. But, get this: the two issues are actually in swapped sequence, with the Gray/Palmiotti/Conner fill-in story of issue #12 (introducing the new Terra) coming immediately after #10 – a fact which was even helpfully pointed out in a Page 1 editor’s note. So why not publish them in that order in the first place, especially if it would have helped get this limping, bewilderingly inconsistent book out on time?

Teen Titans #40 & 41 – Yes, both these two issues did actually hit the racks in November, but I don’t have another blogging category in which to bring this up. Anyway, if you ask me, issue #41 should have been an MIA this month, if it would have given Tony Daniel enough time to actually draw it (as of last check, DC’s website still incorrectly listed him as the issue’s penciller). Instead, the finale to this “Titans Around the World” arc – which should have packed a powerful punch for long-time Teen Titans fans, since it saw the return of Jericho – was cranked out by two pencilers and five inkers, resulting in a weird-looking jam book without the virtue of actually being a jam book. I barely recognized any of the seven artists’ names. Here in one issue we have the worst of both worlds, as far as the lateness vs. quality conundrum goes. The four-issue arc has suffered under the same chronic lateness that has beset the title over the last year or so, and yet the artistic consistency of the storyline is abandoned in the most flagrant, last-minute way at the very climax of the whole thing. Since issue #41 was scheduled to be the big wrap-up, I can’t understand why the replacement art crew wasn’t hired for issue #40, so that at least the story would have the virtue of ending with the same visual style as it began with. Up next: a fill-in story on Kid Devil. With guest art.

Marvel

Fantastic Four #541 – I’m starting to worry that J. Michael Straczynski has fallen off the face of the earth … or Asgard, perhaps. No FF, no Squadron Supreme, no Ultimate Power … Of course, his most recent issue of Amazing Spider-Man actually takes place not only after Civil War #5, but also after issue #6, so its as-solicited publication was almost pointless. Disheartening, too, since it gave away that Spider-Man does, indeed come out of his Civil War #5 beating healthy and whole … as if the “dramatic” events of that issue didn’t even happen. Sigh.

Stan Lee Meets Silver Surfer – Go figure. Half of these Stan Lee tributes have come out a few weeks late. They are nice little reads, though, with interesting reprints from the olden days. Hit the racks December 6.

And playing catch-up…

Iron Man #14 – Again, not really MIA, since we got issue #13 in November. I’m not sure whether it was intentionally delayed to accommodate Civil War #5. In any case, the storyline frankly doesn’t seem to accommodate Civil War at all. For that matter, neither did the Knaufs’ first Iron Man arc, what with all the Iron Spidey appearances and Nick Fury and all. Somebody look up “continuity” in the dictionary, please, and read it to the creative/editorial team on this book.

Moon Knight #7 – And another not-really-MIA, since issue #6 arrived in November. But that’s all you get for a while. The trains are not running on time here, nor should you expect them to, not as long as David Finch is drawing. Issue #8 was solicited for February. Figure this is an every-six-weeks joint.

Eternals #6 – And I’ll mention one last not-really-MIA, since issue #5 was a November catch-up publication.

Dave Cockrum passes away

2006-11-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

Dave Cockrum created the characters that hooked me on comics. Nightcrawler. Colossus. All the rest. He will be missed.

Please read this warm, touching tribute to him by his friend, Clifford Meth.

And remember, comic creators are people, too. Gripe about their product all you want, but show them the respect they deserve as human beings who all too often live on a modest salary to put out the comics they, and we, love.

Praiseworthy Comics – Jenkins and Rivera’s Hulk: Mythos

2006-11-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

Marvel’s Mythos series has garnered little attention in the comic press, which is a shame, because Paul Jenkins and Paulo Rivera’s continuity-lite fresh takes – first on X-Men, most recently on Hulk – are breathtaking and beautiful.

Hulk has never been a character that resonated all that much with me. I have read precious few of his classic stories, and none of Peter David’s seminal run on the title a decade ago. But his origin story is endlessly fascinating, and Hulk: Mythos recreates the enthralling mystique of those Cold War era themes perfectly, while updating them for the modern eye.

***

Hulk is inescapably a reflection on both the searing beauty and horrific consequences of the Nuclear Age’s dark art. His power is a wonder to behold and a terror to contemplate all at once … the seductive draw of an apocalyptic nuclear detonation given flesh.

Jenkins and Rivera’s compact, 22-page story conveys fresh insight to the character of Bruce Banner and the entire mythology of the Hulk. After reading Hulk: Mythos, I have truly appreciated the character for the first time.

Allow me to share my most inspiring moments.

Rivera conveys the desolate beauty of the setting with breathtaking color. The desert is a mythical place naturally. It is a historical irony that such magnificent land is the place where men strode the earth wielding a technological power that made them think themselves gods.

Bruce Banner is one of those men, a socially inept acolyte of science who somehow knows he barely deserves the affections of a beautiful woman. It is a reward of which he is not worthy.

From the first page, the reader knows there is a darkness lurking within him.

The gamma bomb incident …

… and the aftermath, in which Bruce Banner finds himself a prisoner of forces impossibly greater than himself. Rivera places Bruce in an exaggerated tank of a medical facility, a cavern of physical isolation that speaks at once both to his own lonely destiny and the extravagance of the military machine in which his life has now been ground to dust forever.

It was never enough that a mere science mishap should unleash the Hulk brute from this scrawny genius. There was always more. The sense of being wronged, of others’ authority intruding upon his simple desires beyond their rightful mandate. The General who demands Bruce stop seeing his daughter, then employs his rank to force his will.

It is not only the encroachment upon his personal life that gnaws at the beast within Banner. It is also the seizure of his technology, the dream for which he has sacrificed blood and sweat to make a reality. And herein is revealed Bruce Banner’s madness, for truly, there may be no other result from a life spent sacrificing human pleasure for the sake of science.

The beast that would become the Hulk is present in the man.

Hulk’s first rampage is prodded by General Ross’ attempt to control everything that Bruce Banner calls his own. But it is not unguided. The green fury is precise in this retelling of Hulk’s origin. It is a petulance that says, if you take this away from me, I will make sure you take away nothing of any remaining value. The Hulk targets the entirety of the gamma research facility itself with a latent knowledge of what he does.

The majesty of his fury! Rivera’s vision, presented in a precious few panels of violent grandeur, is awesome and awful to behold.

And it only ends when Bruce Banner, clothed in his rage, beholds the beast he has become.

The story closes with the dust settling. We see Bruce Banner, scientist and slave, one final time. The line between humanity and darkness is no longer clear.

Read this comic. And see Hulk again, for the first time.

G.I.Joe: America’s Elite – A Look at the Series Thus Far

2006-11-23T16:18:00.000-08:00

The following is adapted from my review of G.I.Joe: America’s Elite #17 at Silver Bullet Comic Books, to be published later this week.

WARNING: Series spoilers follow.

I spent Thanksgiving morning getting caught up with all the back issues of this latest G.I.Joe series, which have been languishing at the bottom of my read pile for months. In all, I read through issues #11-17, plus the 25-cent special “The Hunt for Cobra Commander,” which leads into the series’ third arc.

A plus of the series up to now is that it has told a fairly continuous narrative. While the first 18 issues will clearly break up into three convenient trade collections, it hasn’t necessarily felt like it’s been “written for the trades.” Devil’s Due has lauded the series as a “slow burn,” building through character-driven stories to a return of G.I.Joe’s classic battle with the forces of Cobra. But a negative of the series is that the burn has probably been too slow. My interest waned in the revival months ago, explaining why the last seven issues have just piled up unread.

For those who haven’t been following this series, here’s a rundown of what’s happened so far, along with some commentary that explains just why the book has plummeted in my estimation … although with this latest issue, my interest may finally be returning.

First Loose Arc: A new approach to G.I.Joe, focusing on a core group of about 6 to 10 Joes. Leaner, sleeker operations, with a tighter focus on the individual characters. An old nemesis starts pulling satellites out of orbit, effectively bombing major cities with man-made asteroids. The story never quite lived up to the drama of its opening, but Stefano Caselli’s art was lightning in a bottle, and not to be missed.

Second Loose Arc: Snake-Eyes is killed on a rescue mission to Destro’s submarine, but his body is snatched by old Ninja foes/allies who do some hocus-pocus to bring him back to life. Not very compelling for readers whose fondest memories of G.I.Joe involve tanks, guns and cool costumes, as opposed to bad guys running around in identical pajamas wielding swords. My personal disconnect with the foundation of this story, combined with the departure of Caselli and his replacement by rotating, inconsistent pencilers, made me drop the title from my read list, though I kept guiltily buying the issues.

Third Loose Arc (though the present): Cobra Commander is revealed to readers as masquerading as the President of the United States’ own chief of staff. He makes the Joe team appear to be past their usefulness, sabotages their reputation in the president’s eyes, and proposes that their place be taken by a new covert-ops team of his own selection. From the “Phoenix Guard’s” first appearance, they seem familiar enough that at least a few of them are obviously old Cobra hands in new battle dress and with new code names. The President authorizes the disguised snake in the White House to let his new team take on another mission to prove their worth, but insists on not knowing the details so he can retain “plausible deniability.” (Never mind the fact that a president saying “I want plausible deniability” out loud in the Oval Office basically eliminates his option to retain plausible deniability.) Naturally, Cobra Commander orders his team to attack the Joes’ fortress, during which they kill many unnamed supernumeraries.

First Long-Term Subplot: Duke went on a secret infiltration mission to South America, where he found an old Crimson Guardsman nursing a sleeper batch of Battle Android Troopers. Much potential in this concept, but it basically peters out just in time for Duke to make a heroic return to the besieged Joe HQ.

Second Long-Term Subplot: Baroness has been captive in the Joe HQ since the beginning, and appears to be pregnant with Destro’s child. She escapes her cell in the Phoenix Guard’s attack, and recognizes at least some of the team for the Cobra operatives they are.

Third Long-Term Subplot: Flint gets darker and angrier with each passing issue, fading away from his heroic ideals after the death of Lady Jaye in the end of the first Devil’s Due series. He disappeared shortly before the Phoenix Guard debuted. (Hmmm.)

Issue #17 closes in on the finale of this latest arc by revealing that the Phoenix Guard are, in fact, Copperhead, Wild Weasel, Zarana, Scrap Iron (the most obvious one from the beginning) and Firefly. Maybe. I figure the “Snake-Eater” character identified as Firefly will actually turn out to be … well, from my preceding paragraphs, you’ll probably be able to guess what I’m thinking. I could be wrong.

With this most recent arc, G.I.Joe: America’s Elite has gotten back on a much more interesting track after the drudgery of the ninja detour. The intrigue among characters and the history of the old foes has been employed to keep a pretty good guessing game going.

One downside to the current arc is that the action is too narrowly contained. It’s all happening in tight corridors or saferooms within the HQ, and the last few issues hold no promise from one to the next that the scenery is going to change at all. If a single building is to be your setting for an extended action run, that building needs to have some personality of its own. Xavier’s mansion or Batman’s cave can pull this off, but G.I.Joe’s current mountain fortress just doesn’t work. I wish they still had the Pit. That place was cool right from the start.

The series has never knocked my socks off, and I feel that, given its mandate, it could be doing a lot more. The Joes’ hardware was always as much a part of good G.I.Joe stories as the colorful army men, but in the eight issues I just read, all they use is one helicopter, and even it only got one real beauty shot. Where’s the vibe I got from Rock’n’Roll’s motorcycle with the implausible yet totally cool chain-gun sidecar? (It was my first Joe toy as a kid. Fond memories there.) There’s a whole element of the G.I.Joe mystique that has been completely missing in Joe Casey’s approach.

On the upswing, the limited roster concept was starting to feel stagnant after a year’s worth of issues, but thankfully, Spirit is in the mix now as a fresh addition to the book, and I expect we’ll get to see some more action for him soon. But the book is going to need some more key faces from the old crew to keep my attention much longer. The present cast are all good choices, but their interactions are just running around in circles.

On the whole, I’m enjoying the latest arc, and I’m back on for at least a few more issues after nearly giving up all hope trying to wade through stories about the zen-pajama brigade. But Casey’s going to have to amp up the action and play with many more of the toys at his disposal if I’m to keep reading much beyond the resolution of this latest issue’s cliffhanger.

Cool Ads of Yesteryear #1

2006-11-21T17:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a cool ad I saw in Batman #128, cover dated December 1959. Imagine getting one of these under your Christmas tree next to your Radio Flyer wagon and Red Rider BB gun! The Boeing 707 had made its maiden flight just two years earlier, on Dec. 20, 1957. Pan American Airlines was the first carrier to usher in the Jet Age with this beauty, just about a year before this comic's street date on Oct. 26, 1958.

This was one cutting edge toy.

The tag line at left is a hoot, and of course, I doubt most kids putting this on their wish list knew quite how to interpret that "scale" miles per hour claim. More goodies from the ad:

So life-like that it even SOUNDS like a real jet! ... Simply attach the U-Control Line as we show you to the left wing. Then suspend the model from this control line, and begin slowly to swing it through the air. Before your astonished eyes, you will see one of the most thrilling aerodynamic sights of your entire life! ... CHECK THESE INCREDIBLE FEATURES! All plastic!

The coupon says to send $1 plus 25 cents for postage and handling to "FLYING JET, Dept. 4A, Box 300, Forest Hills 75, N.Y." I wonder what's there now? (Oops: I just realized the fine print names this as a DC-8 ... not its competitor Boeing. I feel sheepish.)

Remember Why We’re Here

2006-11-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

Update 11/26: Welcome, readers of "When Fangirls Attack"! I appreciate all the hits that blog has generated. Here are two older posts you may be interested in, exploring the tendency toward exploitation of women in the comic medium: Boobstorm, in which I riff off the bra-exposed cover to Worldstorm #1 from Wildstorm, and Mad Monk Muck and Morbidity, in which I express my disgust over the sexually suggestive human sacrifice scene in Batman and the Mad Monk #2. I hope they make you think.

I was incredibly saddened to read Valerie D’Orazio’s strange, tragic blog, “Saying Goodbye To Comics” today. A highlight of my Mondays is sitting down after getting home from work and clicking over to Rich Johnston’s Lying in the Gutters. When he suggests I read something before reading his column, I generally take his advice.

Well, “Saying Goodbye” is certainly a sobering reality (unreality?) check for me as a comic fan. As I have delved deeper and deeper into the comic culture over the last six years (and I’m particularly referring to the sometimes vicious melee that is online fandom), I have grown ever more disillusioned by the litany of bad stories, bad faith and bad blood coming out of the comic industry.

Are there so many bad stories simply because we – as fans of such a uniquely dramatic narrative form – are that much more obsessive about the ugly details of creators’ real world intrigues, thus inflating them to proportions as outrageous as our preferred medium? Or is it really that the comic industry chews up and spits out the real human beings that work in it at an outrageous rate? Christopher Priest’s musings come to mind here, especially his humbling tale of the Jim Shooter years at Marvel.

In all the griping about lateness and ads, and the teeth gnashing over rape scenes and politics (all of which I have fully participated in, though I hope always with a level of even-handedness, good faith and good humor), are we forgetting just what we come to comics for?

I’m not going to imply that comics should be all about child-appropriate fun. The medium is (and has every right to be) as mature and diverse as every other “entertainment” medium. For every wholesome Marvel Adventures comic there is an insightful or instructive underground comic; for every joyous gee-whiz moment in a Superman comic there is a cathartic Vertigo tragedy. Good for us.

***

What do we come to comics for? Entertainment, certainly, and escapism, and even vicarious triumph over adversity when our own real lives scream nothing but defeat. And philosophy, not to be forgotten. To expand our minds into new ways of thinking, guided by a few of the many mortal prophets of this fallen, broken world we inherited from our forefathers.

But for all the seriousness that is often found within the comic pages, I feel it is best to look at the medium as a thing most appropriately identified with a lightness, for even in the darkest, least morally redeeming tales of the genre, we derive a sense of transport, a brief, longed-for departure from the ordinariness of life.

Why then do so many insiders of the comic industry have such sad stories of bitter ruin? Is there some unnamed jealousy of the biggest entertainment industry of them all – Hollywood – beset, since its emergence as a cultural force, with scandal and betrayal? In a consuming, unconscious way, do the members of the comic industry take themselves so seriously, see themselves so relegated to the status of ugly step-child, so angrily devoted to their own insistence that they be taken seriously, that they express this raging fire by destroying each other in an attempt to prove how serious their industry really is?

Or is it simply that a medium devoted just as deeply to expressions of rage as it is to expressions of lightness, can’t help but carry those vengeful angels and helpless victimologies into the realities of its creators’ lives as well? Hollywood succeeds financially with simple love stories and delightful comedies. Comics rarely do. Rage, angst and cataclysm are its fuels, almost to exclusion.

Well, I want to remember why I’m here. Why I read comics. They are a joy to me, and a curiously addictive one at that. Even in my most enthralled fanboy state, I often sense a nagging worry that I’m leaving many better things of life behind, but that’s simply a personal matter of achieving a better balance. At bottom, I come to comics for simple pleasure. And that’s a good thing.

***

I pray we all, fans, creators, whoever, lighten up a bit. I realized this when I made my first pilgrimage to San Diego this summer. One of these days, I plan on writing a piece called, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Liefeld.” (Or maybe I’ll just write it here.) I have spewed ugly things about Rob on various message boards in the past. I vowed to boycott his two-issue stint on Teen Titans a year or two ago. I haven’t been a true Liefeld-hater, but I have certainly had negative feelings for the man.

Then I met him. Or, more correctly, I met his wife, since he was madly trying to crank out commission pieces. I discovered that one of my best friends is good friends with Rob’s sister. I reminisced with Joy (Creel) Liefeld about how cool I thought the Parent Trap 3 TV movies were when I was a kid just about her age, and laughingly confessed how smitten I was with her and her triplet sisters (that's Monica at right ... and you know, when I was 15 I could tell them apart), and how I figured I had a better-than-average chance of getting to hook up with one of them, since, you know, there were three of them. (Well, I’m not sure I told her that.) It was pretty cool. She pulled out her camera phone and showed me a picture of all three of them they had taken that week.

But anyway, I discovered that Rob Liefeld, no matter what I may think of his art today on a subjective level, in reality is just a guy doing what he loves and doing his best to support his family. And somebody even told me he and I would probably find a lot of common ground in our political and theological views. Who knew?

The point is, comic creators are people. Human beings. We all know that as fans, but we sometimes forget. We let internet rage destroy careers and generate impossible expectations and create enemies, and we just generally act stupid as often, probably, as not.

And we contribute to a cycle that seems inbred to the comic industry, festering at the heart of our happy little entertainment world since times long prior to the invention of this global portal that allows us to stoke its latent fires.

***

I was going to come home tonight and geek out on comics. Instead, I got stuck reading (well, skimming much) a sad blog of one woman’s real-life trials and destructions within the comic business.

And I figured I needed to think this through. Comics aren’t worth the pleasure they bring me if behind the scenes real comic creators are getting their lives torn apart by the business. I don’t know who I can pin blame on for that. I’m not one to blame corporate structures or the inherent impersonality of big business. And I can’t blame the internet, since the problem is far older than just the past decade.

But I can vow not to contribute to it. Perhaps that’s all I can say.

Banned Spider-Man 3 Trailer with Venom - DOWNLOAD IT!

2006-11-17T19:48:00.000-08:00

Found this on the toonzone.net forums. Someone has put a 38 MB Windows Media file of the yanked Spider-Man 3 trailer up for download on Megaupload. Click on the link, enter the random three-character code in the upper right corner, wait 45 seconds, and there you go!

DOWNLOAD THE TRAILER
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=78ZX0YP1

Isn't the internet amazing?

ADWATCH STATISTICS: Week 3 Sees Sanity Prevail at Marvel

2006-11-16T18:42:00.000-08:00

The 48-page, super-sized, ad-stuffed comic line-up for the Christmas season at Marvel took a breather this week, with a majority of the 12 titles I brought home actually being standard, 32-page magazines.

Unfortunately, the 48-page Civil War #5 disappointingly turned out to have just 22 pages of story squeezed between 24 pages of ads, and sported just 3 double-page facing spreads of comic art. And one of those was, somewhat uselessly, just a mood piece filled with geometric lines and merely seven words of dialogue squeaking out of a box in the distance. For this the ship of industry was delayed a month?

On the plus side, White Tiger debuted with a more-bang-for-your-$2.99 extra-long issue with 32 pages of story and just 8 pages of ads. Moon Knight #6 clocked in at 25 pages of story with a page of bonus art thrown in for good measure. And even though it still had 20 pages of ads, the first 8 pages of Moon Knight were uninterrupted storytelling, with a concentration of ads and supplemental pages pushed to the ends of the book. The result was a perfectly satisfying 25-page story interspersed with only 16 pages of advertising.

Excluding Daredevil: Father #6, here are the numbers for the 12 comics I brought home on Wednesday, November 15:

12: Total Marvel comics bought this week
456: Total pages

280: Total pages of story
159: Total pages of advertising
17: Total pages of letters, recap, etc.

61: Percentage of pages devoted to story
35: Percentage of pages devoted to advertising
4: Percentage of pages devoted to letters, recap, etc.

Good news all around.

LATEWATCH: 30% of Big Two Titles Late

2006-11-15T20:42:00.000-08:00

Well, since Joe Quesada posed the rhetorical question, “Is there a lateness epidemic?” in his discussion of the delays on Daredevil: Father, this blog has endeavored to provide some hard numbers in support of answering that question with fact, not passion. Incidentally, Daredevil: Father #6, which hit the stands this week, ended up arriving eleven months late.

For this week’s calculation, I have included Marvel’s Civil War and its two intimately related titles, New Avengers and Iron Man, as “late” books, even though Marvel announced months ago that the schedules for these titles would slip to November. I recognize that this diminishes the seriousness of my “30%” claim in the headline, but I feel the deviation from a monthly schedule on these titles cannot be ignored, no matter how special the circumstances.

This week, November 15, 2006, the Big Two put out 30 mainstream comic titles, not counting young readers titles or imprints. Following is a rundown of all the books that were released today late – that is, they were originally solicited for previous months. The numbers in parenthesis below indicate how many months late each title is.

DC released 12 titles this week, of which 2 were late:

(2 mo.) Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #45
(1 mo.) Supergirl #11

Marvel released 18 titles this week, of which 7 were late:

(11 mo.) Daredevil: Father #6
(2 mo.) Squadron Supreme #7
(2 mo.) Moon Knight #6
(1 mo.) Astonishing X-Men #18
--
(2 mo.) Civil War #5
(1 mo.) Iron Man #13
(1 mo.) New Avengers #25

In total, 9 of 30 titles, or 30% were late.

Personally, I have been reading all of the titles which happened to be released behind schedule this week, and brought home 22 titles from the Big Two this week. The “lateness epidemic” impacted me personally by resulting in 9 of 22 purchased titles, or 41%, being overdue.

It’s probably safe to assume that the high number of late books arriving this week is an outlier. But it makes for a revealing anecdote.

EDILW's Must-Read Companion Lists to 52

2006-11-12T20:19:00.000-08:00

J. Caleb Mozzocco has a nice comics blog, Every Day Is Like Wednesday. He recently devoted a post to something I had written here (thanks, man!), but I would be promoting this particular regular feature of his even if it didn't also serve the purpose of giving him a little reciprocal linkage in gratitude.

His "Actually Essential Storylines" series is a (more or less) weekly addendum to DC's 2-page character backups in each issue of 52, where DC woefully attempts to list a few "essential" reads for the characters, usually leaving out crucial storylines that are of true historical interest in favor of playing up more recent fare.

Here are links to his thoroughly well-researched posts thus far. DC historians will miss his commentary at their peril.

Black Canary
Nightwing
Booster Gold
Wildcat
Green Lantern Hal Jordan
Steel
Elongated Man

Venom animated gif

2006-11-12T18:58:00.000-08:00

Credit to Newsarama poster GuyCaballero for this nifty gif!

Leaked Variant Spider-Man 3 Trailer Shows Eddie Brock as Venom!

2006-11-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

EDIT Nov. 15 - As you all know by now, the trailer has disappeared from both YouTube and Google video. Ah, well. See MSNBC.com's video story on it.

---

A variant trailer for Spider-Man 3 has leaked to YouTube! Filled with unfinished CG effects, some greenscreen shots with the actors on wires, even a couple of glimpses of hand drawn storyboards, there’s a lot of new material here, and I must say it’s a much more exciting trailer than what debuted officially this week. We get to see a lot more of Topher Grace’s Eddie Brock character, a couple of glimpses of the beautiful Gwen Stacey, and at the very end, Venom itself, all teeth and tongue. These lines really stood out:

Aunt May:

You can’t live with revenge in your heart. It’s like a poison. It can take us over.

Eddie Brock:

Looking good, Spidey! From now on I’m gonna be taking pictures of you for the Bugle.

Eddie Brock, in church praying:

I’m here to ask you for one thing. I want you to kill Peter Parker.

ADWATCH STATISTICS: Marvel’s 48-Pager Campaign Enters Week Two

2006-11-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

Marvel’s comics for November continue being mostly 48-page extravaganzas of advertising, where pages of ads and peripheral content mostly outnumber pages of comic story. Hopefully this will, as last year, turn out to be a short-term phenomenon associated with the coming consumer-Christmas season. In the meantime, I can only construe this as disrespecting the reader in favor of short-term financial gain for the company.

I justify this claim by asserting that one of the fundamental pleasures of the comic medium is the construction of an immersive narrative experience, where the visual continuity of the art is not diminished by having the discontinuity of advertising appearing in the same field of view. Under the current printing scheme, Marvel’s output for the month finds an overwhelming majority of comic pages’ effect marred by being opposite advertising, and two-page spreads of advertising significantly outnumber the rare two-page spreads of comic art.

I purchased nine Marvel comics this week, of which five had page counts where advertising equaled or outnumbered comic pages. I assembled the following statistics:

9: Total Marvel comics bought new this week
400: Total pages between the covers
204: Total pages of story
12: Total letters pages, recap pages and preview art pages

7: Total comics published as non-standard 48-page magazines
2: Total comics published as standard 32-page magazines (both with additional 4-page center insert)

51: Percentage of pages devoted to story
46: Percentage of pages devoted to advertising
3: Percentage of pages devoted to letters, etc.

The above statistics do not take into account easily-removable center-spread, four-page inserts of heavy paper quality that appeared twice in this 9-issue sample. To Marvel’s credit, four of these comics actually had more story pages than the traditional 22-page count, but two actually had fewer.

25 pages of story: Annihilation #4, Eternals #5
23 pages of story: New X-Men #32, Wolverine Origins #7
22 pages of story: Bullet Points #1, Doctor Strange: The Oath #2, Punisher #40
21 pages of story: Ultimate X-Men #76 (not counting title page), Beyond! #5

***

Removing the two 32-page standard format books from the sample, and recalculating over the 7-issue sample of 48-page non-standard books which are dominating this month’s Marvel output so far, we find the following statistics:

7: Total Marvel comics of non-standard format bought new this week
336: Total pages between the covers
161: Total pages of story
10: Total letters pages, recap pages and preview art pages

48: Percentage of pages devoted to story
49: Percentage of pages devoted to advertising
3: Percentage of pages devoted to letters, etc.

3 of 7: Magazines in which ads outnumber comic pages
2 of 7: Magazines in which ads equal comic pages
2 of 7: Magazines in which ads number fewer than comic pages

***

An additional point is worth adding: of 9 new DC comics I bought this week, I found that two of them (Green Arrow #68 and Firestorm #31) were non-traditional 40-page magazines, each with an above-standard 17 pages of advertising – an increase of 8 ad pages over the standard format. (I did not exhaustively survey the other 7 DC comics I bought.)

Also, JLA: Classified #29 appeared to be DC’s designated book of the week for pushing heavyweight ad campaigns, reprising the ad format seen in last week’s Superman Confidential #1. This included a cardboard HeroClix 3-D glasses promotion in the outer pages, an 8-page center insert of heavy paper promoting the cartoon version of the Teen Titans, and a further cardstock mail-in form stapled into the middle of the insert.

Paul O'Brien takes Marvel to the woodshed!

2006-11-05T17:12:00.000-08:00

HA HA HAAAA!! I do love a scathing tongue when employed in the service of condemning objectively ridiculous publishing practices.

You simply must read Paul O'Brien's excellent diatribe on Marvel's insane ad count this month in which advertising pages outnumbered comic pages ... a thing Joe Quesada promised wouldn't happen again.

Well, if Marvel truly care that much about quality, why are they shipping comics with 23 pages of adverts in 22 story pages, something that they've previously acknowledged is unacceptably damaging to the product? Why didn't they keep to their word and put the adverts at the back of the book? Why didn't they just turn some of the adverts down? Come on, you're always telling us how you're willing to sacrifice short term profit when it comes to indulging your big name primadonnas! Where's the same effort when it comes to the adverts? You people do realise that at the end of the day, paying customers are supposed to read these bloody things?

I'm not a happy customer. I'm a seriously angry customer.

Of course, it could be worse. You could be reading Ant-Man #2. That book contains a 22 page story interpolated with 25 pages of adverts - and since that apparently isn't bad enough, they've chucked in the letter column to make it 26. So the adverts outnumber the story pages by 18%.

Look me in the eye, Joe, and tell me this is acceptable.

Go get 'em, Paulo!

Brubaker’s Uncanny, Star-Trekkin’ X-Men

2006-11-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

That’s the opening scene of Uncanny X-Men #479. And with that, Ed Brubaker again plumbs the depths of Chris Claremont’s earliest and best X-Men work to bring forward new, powerful story elements. Here, a secret history of the Shi’ar and the Phoenix is revealed:

Rook’shir, the empire’s dirty secret … the Shi’ar who became the Phoenix...

The Shi’ar formed the first Imperial Guard to stop him from destroying the Empire. But an infinitesimal piece of the Phoenix force somehow remained within his sword. A sword only able to be carried by his blood heirs … and I am the last of those.

I love it. Brubaker is fashioning a classic tale of the X-Men in space, where every issue is its own reward, even as the issues build to the crescendo that will round out this 12-part saga. This isn’t mere “writing for the trade.” This is storytelling in the best tradition of the monthly comic format.

By the way, I think Brubaker could write a magnificent Star Trek tale.

Superman Confidential – Golly, This is Swell!

2006-11-04T17:55:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, a single comic book captures the spirit of everything wondrous in our beautiful artform. Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale are true masters, and Superman Confidential captures the legacy of the world’s original comic book hero perfectly. It is pure transport. I could try writing a review of this issue, but Cooke’s words and Sale’s art are their own best recommendation. Let me share my favorite moments.

Perry White is the leader of this story’s particular band of heroes. In that sense, the plot is a bit of a surprise, since it’s fundamentally a human story about Clark Kent and his allies, fighting to defend their great Metropolis from corruption and vice.

Perry’s words: The casino. And the arrogant son of a bitch that owns it. … If Gallo can rig the city council and state regulatory boards, he can rig anything in this city. I need people I know are clean. Who can’t be bought. I figure that’s you three.

Olsen. Lane. Kent. On the job.

Gallo commands attention from his first moment on the page. He’s evil. Petty. Selfish. Seductive. A perfect visual blend of classic noir and anachronistic modern foibles.

And it is this seamless blend of the modern and the classic that demonstrates Cooke and Sale’s versatility, timelessness and relevance. Cell phones and fedoras. The dame and the career woman.

Superman is a new hero in this tale. Unsure of his own limitations.

Superman’s words: I’ve withstood bursting shells, thousands of volts of electricity, raging fires and countless other vicious acts of man and nature. I appear to be invulnerable. But am I? Or is it just a matter of time before I find the thing that can kill me? … They think I’m fearless. But each new cataclysm gives me one sharp instant of mortal fear. … Will this kill me? Am I dying right now?

But he is a hero with a tender heart, in pursuit of all the simple joys of ordinary human life, even as he takes responsibility for more and more of the world.

Superman’s words: An hour here. Ten minutes there. I know it’s not enough for a woman like her. But it’s all I have to spare. The perfect woman at the worst possible time. I sometimes wish I’d not met her until later. Already there have been so many broken moments.

And even as Clark Kent prepares to back Lois Lane’s investigative play, he keeps nervously glancing at the threatening volcano rumbling on the nearby television screen. And Superman keeps one eye on the world.

One of the most savored moments of any Superman story is when Clark Kent has done all he can do, and it is time for Superman to save the day. Cooke and Sale’s story will see that moment soon enough.

The twist in this story? When Superman arrives, so will, it seems, the Kryptonite.

Sentient. Kryptonite. This is going to be a great run.

Nightwing’s New Powers – Defying Physics!

2006-11-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

Without question, Nightwing’s new creative team of Marv Wolfman with Dan Jurgens on layouts and Norm Rapmund on finishes is a big improvement over the first seven issues of the One Year Later restart. (I could only take the punishment of two issues before quitting Bruce Jones’ run.) But Jurgens’ art lost me in the first six pages of issue #125. I literally quit reading. I should say I’m sticking with the title, and did pick up the following issue this past Wednesday. But the tiresome, sloppy presentation of the physical action in Nightwing #125’s opening sequence was more than I was willing to put up with. Dan Jurgens used to do powerful work, particularly with Superman, but these six pages prove he really needs to brush up on his game … desperately.

These aren’t nitpicks made just for the sake of trying to find fault with the new creative team. These are the things I saw on first read that took me out of the story. Let’s see how many physical inconsistencies we can find from one panel to the next. Let’s go! (Click on pics for larger page scans.)

Page 1: Not a bad intro. Nightwing leaps off a building on the hunt. Kind of old-school pose, but cool.

Page 2: Panel 1 – Nightwing is dropping toward the bad guy. Panel 2 – I guess Raptor has been knocked out of flight position, but the background seems to be at the wrong angle. In any case, the airborne fighters are a good 20 stories up. Panel 3 – Now Raptor is flying straight up from approximately ground level, racking Nightwing against a flagpole … but Dick’s arm seems to have passed right through it.

Page 3: Panel 1 – Dick is still hanging on. Okay. Panel 2 – Now he’s flinging himself away to avoid a napalm blast. Clearly falling. As in, downward. With gravity. Panel 3 – But wait, Dick has somehow managed snag Raptor’s leg to hold on to, even though he was falling well below Raptor’s elevation on the previous panel. Groan.

Page 4: Panel 1 – Nightwing shoots his grapple over to a nearby construction site. Notice he hooks it on a vertical corner pillar. Panel 2 – Now the grapple is attached to a pillar in the middle of a wall. Huh? He also wraps the other end of his line around Raptor’s wing somehow. Panel 3 – Now Dick “retracts” the line … with what? The art doesn’t show any kind of reeling mechanism.

Page 5: Panel 1 – Dick’s falling, and grabs his nightsticks as a last resort. Panel 2 – somehow, he catches them across a jutting I-beam, but it looks for all the world like his entire body has just passed right through it. Panel 2 – Your average steel I-beam used in building construction can weigh more than 100 lb per foot of length. Nightwing’s momentum sends it falling. Panel 3 – And so on. Panel 4 – This multi-ton chunk of solid iron alloy lands on Nightwing’s shoulder…

Page 6: … and it looks like the crushing impact of thousands of pounds of steel has done nothing but dislocated his shoulder. Yeah, right. And in Panel 2, despite how far Dick has fallen since hanging Raptor from his wing, the now-severed line appears to be just one level above him.

Sigh. An action sequence, especially one relying so heavily on positional activity, is just no good if the artist can’t keep the spacing right, even from one panel to the next on the same page.

I’ll be looking forward to Jamal Igle taking over the art on this title in issue #129. C’mon, Jurgens. You’ve got much better work in you than this.

Gluttony for November 1 – Revenge of the Attack of the Ads!!!

2006-11-04T12:27:00.000-08:00

This week's Gluttony brought to you by...

Yes, the advertising glut has returned at Marvel this week, with DC titles such as Superman Confidential also being marred by multiple, cardstock inserts. Used to be, when you found unexpectedly that your favorite title was suddenly a 48-page whopper, you’d get excited. No longer. In the two titles I did a quick count on, Uncanny X-Men and Phoenix: Warsong each had more pages of advertising content than comic content.

Uncanny’s page count:

* Advertising: 23 pages + 3 back and interior covers
* Comic: 22 pages
* Recap/Letters: 3 pages (2 letters pages had an unnecessarily large font)

* Facing 2-page spreads of advertising: 4
* Facing 2-page spreads of comic art: 3
* Comic pages facing advertising: 16
* Marvel in-house advertising: 4 + 2/3 pages (including a 2-page facing spread)

You tell me … in what other entertainment media would a publisher get away with this disruptive, intrusive ratio? (Leaving aside fashion mags in which the advertising is integral to the experience.) If I’m bringing home more pages of paid advertising than editorial content, then, shouldn’t these comics be free?

Anyway, I brought home 25 books, including pickups from previous weeks, and I still have a substantial stack of previous issues sitting on hold in my box, waiting in vain for a “light” comic buying week! What a Glutton! Marvel drew 7 purchases, DC 12, and I picked up 6 others. Midnighter #1, The Other Side (Vertigo) #2, and Criminal (ICON) #2 were all sold out by the time I arrived. I’ll be getting them all on reorder. On to the highlights …

***

Battler Britton #5 – (Cover to issue #4 by Garry Leach at left.) The wrap-up to this Garth Ennis war hero revival. Sales stunk, I’m very sad to say, but the simple fact is we war comic fans are a niche within a niche industry. My thanks to DC for allowing their imprints Wildstorm and Vertigo to keep putting out this kind of product, even at such marginal profitability. Now, look again at this Colin Wilson art … why would any fan of the medium leave this on the shelf??

Click on the links below for a couple of complete page scans, then kick yourself for not buying this book when you had the chance!

***

Transformers Spotlight #2: Nightbeat – I had left this in my box for a couple of weeks, and was frankly about to put it back on the shelf Wednesday. The art was a little lackluster for my tastes. But then, I read a couple of pages (click to enlarge below). Wow. Simon Furman is delving once again into the intriguing, hard-SF mysteries behind the transforming mechanoid concept. Even when we see the Transformers in their native Cybertronian forms, why do their vehicle modes still have obvious cockpits? I’ve often thought it would make sense for the cockpits and cabs to have their origins as shields for these lifeforms’ heads, but no Transformer artist, to my knowledge, has ever chosen to show a big face floating behind the windshield. So the miniature occupant capsules on most of the Cybertronian designs must have some vestigial purpose, lost to the mists of time. Furman offers an intriguing possibility …

***

What If? Avengers Disassembled – Haven’t read the book yet, but I’m becoming a big fan of Aaron Lopresti’s work. For my money, he made the abortive Chris Claremont Excalibur run a couple of years ago worth the read.

On a side note, I had a very interesting conversation with Lopresti at SDCC this year at the Terry Dodson booth on that Excalibur series, and where it was all going before House of M forced it to detour and, ultimately, expire. He told me the story was building to a return of Mr. Sinister and a final exploration of a number of themes left over from the Age of Apocalypse characters – Dark Beast, Sugar Man, etc. – as well as Genosha’s mutant origins. He even said he was encouraging Claremont to get on with that part of the story, as he felt (and probably most readers agreed) things were just unfolding too slowly. I would have enjoyed seeing those plans come to fruition. So many dangling plot threads worth exploring. Alas.

***

Nightly News (Image) #1 – What a strange, intriguing trip this book was. Clearly a political book, a manifesto of sorts, with a completely non-aligned worldview. Don’t like Republicans? Don’t like globalism? Don’t like Democrats? Don’t like the media? Don’t like pitiful dope-smoking, long-haired, semi-literate street protesters? You’ll find something that resonates with you in this book, and scares you at the same time. Stand by for a deeper commentary later this week.

***

My thanks to the sponsors of Uncanny X-Men #480 for providing the delightful advertising art seen in this blog entry.

From the January Solicits – Where’s JMS?

2006-10-30T17:34:00.000-08:00

One of the data sets I track each month is all of the books NOT solicited in Previews (and to be clear, I rely upon CBR’s online posting of the solicits for my analysis), as well as those books that get resolicited after delays and books that exhibit other scheduling oddities.

DC sees some notable absences, and on Marvel’s side, J. Michael Straczynski’s books all fall out of the line up.

UNSOLICITED: Justice League of America #6 – Well, at least we know Meltzer’s written the whole series already.

UNSOLICITED: Wonder Woman – Were it making a bimonthly schedule, this would be its skip month.

UNSOLICITED: All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder – Issue #4 went on sale in May 2006. Issue #5 solicited for a November 2006 street date. Certainly unrealistic to expect issue #6 to arrive a mere eight months after #4.

UNSOLICITED: Supergirl #14 – What, more creative shuffling?

UNSOLICITED: Green Lantern #17 – Not showing up on a monthly schedule since the One Year Later jump, Previews finally quits soliciting issues that will just have to have their orders cancelled anyway.

UNSOLICITED: Firestorm #33 – Is this title about to be cancelled? Reportedly the lowest-selling DC Universe title not already axed. In any event, Stuart Moore is apparently wrapping up his tenure on the book with issue #32, with Dwayne McDuffie variously reported as his replacement. I certainly hope the character finds a home elsewhere if his book is dropped.

UNSOLICITED: Warlord – Cancelled after 10 issues.

UNSOLICITED: Wildcats – Let’s all take a light-hearted approach to this one. Five months between issues #1 and #2 isn’t too much to ask for in a book from Grant Morrison and Jim Lee, is it?

UNSOLICITED: Authority – An intended skip month for this bimonthly title.

UNSOLICITED: Ex Machina #27 – Keeps its own pace, with about 8 to 10 issues per year.

NOTABLE: Legends of the Dark Knight – January’s issue #214 marks the last issue of the title. I’m sorry to see it go. Presumably Batman: Confidential covers the same territory, but it’s going to mess up my spreadsheets to have the outgoing and successor titles overlap for two months. DC’s obviously just clearing the LotDK inventory with these last few issues.

NOTABLE: JLA: Classified #31, 32, 33 – Yes, the book will appear thrice in January, a benefit of five Wednesdays in the month. Wraps up one arc and kicks off the next with two more issues. The “Kid Amazo” arc by Peter Milligan and Carlos D’Anda, originally solicited to begin this past August with issue #26, is obviously still on hold.

BACK IN THE SOLICITS: Deathblow #3 – Given a skip month after just the first two issues, it’s back in the schedule. Art by Carlos D’Anda.

BACK IN THE SOLICITS: Trials of Shazam #5 – Given a skip month, after 4 of 12 issues.

RESOLICITED: Aquaman #48 – Previous order cancelled, but don’t expect this one to show up on time either, since issue #45 already failed to make its October date. Let me just say again, I love this comic.

UNSOLICITED: Action Comics – Yes, an annual was solicited for the title, and I note this just for curiosity. When was the last time a regular-number issue of Action Comics wasn’t on the stands? Skip months happened a couple of times in the 90’s to cover delays, there was the DC 1,000,000 project that took over one month in 1998, and, of course, the Action Comics Weekly experiment in 1988. Thankfully, this annual retains the numbering scheme of all the annuals that have come out since the Byrne relaunch almost 20 years ago. Action Comics Annual #9 was from late 1997; January 2007 will see Annual #10. I wish Marvel’s annuals were doing the same, since the recent Uncanny X-Men Annual was billed as a #1, effectively making it a Volume 2 annual of a Volume 1 series, if that makes any sense.

Marvel

UNSOLICITED: Civil War and tie-ins – Since Marvel has hitched the entire wagon of the Civil War project to Steve McNiven’s pace at the drawing board, they have (probably wisely) decided to leave related titles out of the main solicits. Now, even Iron Man and Captain America fall out of Previews for January, and these two were not among the titles initially announced as having to slide to accommodate the main series’ delays. Granted, Iron Man: Hypervelocity is starting in January, but this seems to be another fill-in series. And we all know how well the last fill-in Iron Man mini did. What? Didn’t you hear of Iron Man: The Inevitable?

UNSOLICITED: Astonishing X-Men #21 – Well, so much for the monthly model on this one.

UNSOLICITED: Ultimate Power #4 – The beginning of the middle-third of this nine-part series, slated to be written by J. Michael Straczynski. We do get a “director’s cut” edition of issue #1 to tide us over, but this brings to mind … what’s up with Straczynski? Squadron Supreme is several months delayed, with a fill-in team providing the fill-in story Hyperion vs. Nighthawk beginning in January. The last two of Fantastic Four’s delayed issues, both the final Civil War tie-in #542 and the follow-up #543, have now been announced by Diamond as being scripted by Dwayne McDuffie. Two highly-promoted titles delayed and another one handed off at the end of its Civil War run … is this all simply due to his work preparing for Thor’s relaunch?

UNSOLICITED: Wisdom (MAX) #3 – Hmm.

UNSOLICITED: Marvel Milestones – There have been about 16 of these various reprint editions going back to last March, mostly conceived as boosters for concurrent storylines in the main titles, and few have sold well. Perhaps Marvel has given up on the model? I’m all for the re-introduction of rare issues from Marvel’s history and the resurrection of historical oddities … but really, Millie the Model and Patsy Walker?

BACK IN THE SOLICITS: Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters (ICON) #5 – After a skip month, it’s back. Very, very sad to see a product from the legacy archives of the King limping out of the gate with such abysmal sales. I suppose once the series is finished, it will have some lasting curiosity value in TPB form for Kirby fans.

BACK IN THE SOLICITS: Powers (ICON) #24 – Missed last month.

NOTABLE: Ultimate Spider-Man #104 – Announced as the end of the now 8-part Clone Saga, if you believe it. The arc was once advertised as a 5-part story and then a 7-part story, with the last two issues (parts 6 and 7) solicited as parts 5 and 6. Or something like that.

NOTABLE: Sensational and F’N Spider-Man – Both titles have shown Spidey’s classic red and blue threads for the last three solicited covers. Under the original schedule, these arcs would have kicked off after the end of Civil War. Now, they’re hitting the streets as that story is still lumbering to its conclusion. Any bets on how big the spoilers will be?

MIAs for October, 2006 – Big Two Miss Ship Date on Nearly 20% of Titles

2006-10-28T19:21:00.000-07:00

Another month in comics has wrapped, so it’s time to look back and see which solicited titles were no-shows. Since the last day of October is a Tuesday, a handful of books solicited for the month are scheduled to ship on November 1, which technically makes them “late,” but not a big deal in my analysis. As always, my tracking is primarily focused on Marvel and DC, with an incomplete tracking of DC’s Vertigo and Wildstorm imprints.

I count about 19 true MIAs, up from 12 last month. With about 50 ongoing or limited major monthly (and de facto bimonthly) titles from DC and its imprints, about 20 percent of DC’s product didn’t show up in October. Marvel has about the same number of monthly titles, and saw about 14 percent of the Marvel product miss the advertised publication date.

MIA (but scheduled for Nov. 1):
- She-Hulk #13
- Justice League of America #3
- Blue Beetle #8

Marvel MIAs

MIA: Astonishing X-Men #18 – Delayed, I’m sure, because of John Cassaday’s duties “directing” the art on Lone Ranger at Dynamite. (*cough*) What’s really weird is that Marvel still has press releases going around (see for example Diamond this week) announcing issue #19 and the “Unstoppable” arc beginning Nov. 15. Paul O’Brien reports #18 will be in stores Nov. 8. I do indeed think if Astonishing ships two issues in two consecutive weeks, something will spontaneously combust.

MIA: Moon Knight #6 – Due Nov. 15, it seems. Now two months delayed from its original solicit date, although the first five issues all came out at intervals of roughly six weeks, with the most recent two issues sliding a month past their targets. It’s the last issue of the arc, and of course David Finch is one of the artists whose level of detail makes him prone to miss a deadline. The solicitations for issues #7-9, a Civil War tie-in, already included the buffer of a skip month between #6 and #7, now useless, and Finch is slated to draw these issues, too. Expect New Avengers-like delays, which will probably just be shrugged off as no big deal, since Civil War as a whole is being given the leeway to slide as necessary at the artists’ convenience. We’ll probably see some cancelled orders and resoliciting, too.

MIA: Squadron Supreme #7, #8 – Diamond reports orders for #8 cancelled, and #7 was due back in September. What’s happened to Straczynski? More on this later…

MIA: Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways #4 – This has been a thoroughly enjoyable, and thoroughly self-contained, tie-in project. I can’t imagine the delay is due to Marvel’s overall shifting of the Civil War output.

MIA: Eternals #5 – Go figure. I can’t.

MIA: Iron Man #13 – Whatever the reasons for its lateness, the issue will see the resumption of regular continuity with a Civil War tie-in, so all bets are off.

MIA: Stan Lee Meets Doctor Doom – Not the first time this series of one-shots has shown up late.

MIA: Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk #3 – Hey, whenever I mention this title, I get some Google hits. Why not? Paul O’Brien reports it is now scheduled for Dec. 27, which even he doesn’t seem to believe. (And really, why should any of us?) Plus, there is what I will call a “late-breaking rumor” that Daimon Lindelof sat down and cranked out all the remaining scripts for the series in one fell swoop, so we may actually see the thing get on track. Make of that what you will.

MIA (sort of): Marvel Milestones: Legion of Monsters, Spider-Man and Brother Voodoo, and Marvel Spotlight: Heroes Reborn/Onslaught Reborn. Actually, both were listed on Diamond’s shipping lists, but I never saw them in my very well-stocked comic shop. I suppose I’m interested in finding out … who did? They only sell in the 2,000 to 7,000 range, depending on content.

DC’s MIAs

With DC’s sales slipping on so many of their newest books, and with the abject failure of new title initiatives such as Brave New World, it is simply astonishing that the company does not focus maximum effort on insuring that their top-ranked books come out on time, or even on a predictable bimonthly basis. The litany of the company’s MIAs for October brings this problem into clear relief.

MIA: Wonder Woman #3 – Even given an every-other-month publication model, it’s still late. Issue #2 came out Aug. 23, eleven weeks after issue #1, so by these standards, even an October ship date was optimistic. As of now, the enthusiasm for this relaunch has surely drained from the marketplace. There is no longer any mystery about Diana’s post-Infinite Crisis status, since Meltzer’s Justice League is already underway. Allan Heinberg brought something truly special to comics in creating Young Avengers for Marvel; but I can’t imagine he brings anything to Wonder Woman that justifies this utterly unconscionable false-start.

MIA: All-Star Superman #6 – Again, even assuming a bimonthly schedule, it’s late. Delays on this series could be justifiably attributed to the meticulous artwork of Frank Quitely, but it’s being written by Grant Morrison, whose books (see Wildstorm) are all following a certain pattern…

MIA: Batman #658 – …including Batman, written by Morrison.

MIA: Superman/Batman #30 – Another book once comfortably atop the sales charts, despite its chronic delays, now falling two months late all over again. No doubt in the present situation, this is due to the intense detail put in by artist Ethan Van Sciver. Still, the absent issue is only his third of the run, so expect the delays to mount up almost as badly as they did under Jeph Loeb’s tenure.

MIA: Teen Titans #40 – And Geoff Johns’ titles are gaining their own reputation for lateness. Granted, Teen Titans has been running a month behind, when comparing street date to cover date (by convention, a difference of two months) ever since Rob Liefeld’s two-parter in summer 2005 knocked the book completely off schedule.

MIA: Green Lantern #14 – Hopelessly adrift from a monthly target, Ivan Reis’s high-detail artwork has forced the book to a bimonthly schedule. Not that the solicits have admitted it … until now. It did, finally, fall absent from the January Previews.

MIA: Superman #657 – Disappointing, since Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco have put together one of the most purely entertaining and intelligent non-crossover Superman adventures of the last few years. Fill-in artists are standing by.

MIA: Supergirl #11 – Not sure what this book is doing. Nor, I think, is DC.

MIA: Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #45 – Delayed as usual. It’s a fascinating book, in my opinion, that has me interested in the undersea king for the first time ever. But if the new direction for the title since issue #40 is the pitch that saved it from cancellation, as Dan DiDio has said, then DC is simply cutting its sea-legs out from under it by allowing it to fall so routinely out of the weekly comic buyer’s consciousness. Timeliness matters, especially if you’re trying to help a book elevate itself from merely limping along.

MIA: Ex Machina #25 – No worries.

MIA: American Virgin #8 – Again, boutique books can get away with following their own pace.

Hawkgirl’s Hawkbra

2006-10-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Welcome Newsarama readers! That thread I started has now generated literally hundreds of hits ... please stick around and look over the rest my blog. Lots of reviews and commentary to be found, updating several times a week! The Comic Glutton welcomes you!

Well, last month marked the end of Walter Simonson and Howard Chaykin’s 7-issue inaugural run on Hawkgirl. About all I can figure is that their weird tale was intended to make sure everybody knew this title was about HawkGIRL now … as in, FEMALE. I mean, how else do you make sense of a story that was really all about a possessed naked woman controlled by an evil celestial vagina whose mode of attack is to rip off Hawkgirl’s top and make her fight in nothing but her bra? This tactic does, admittedly, make a certain logical sense, for without the Nth metal in her uniform-mounted wings, Hawkgirl can’t fly. And her bra alone certainly isn’t gravity defying. Err, well, then again …

So anyway, let’s review. (Click on the pics to enlarge.)

Hawkgirl #50 debuts on March 22, 2006. I make mention of it in my LCS, and the stockboys start snickering about how “cold it is in here.”

Heh. That rascally Chaykin. The fun doesn’t stop with the cover. Seems Hawkgirl’s spandex is now extra-bio-fidelic.

Yes, stunning bio-fidelity.

I mean, STUNNING. Look at the detail!

And it seems there’s this evil, naked, totemic she-beast running around St. Roch killing people.

At least, I think it’s a she…

Um…

Yeesh! Hawkgirl, a little help?

Ah, thanks. Clears things up. I thought it was maybe just a tattooed Neanderthal at first, but having it be a naked woman kind of adds something special to the comic. Like nudity.

So, how did this nasty get all tattooed and evil? What’s her backstory?

Dude, is that what I think it is? With tentacles and claws? Talk about your STD’s. So, this evil gargantua is under the spell of some beastly vagina of doom, and gets in a tussle with Hawkgirl.

And, because we’d hate for a comic with a female lead character to suddenly seem all girly and shed too many male readers, we go for the outré fantasy. You know, where the heroine is just fighting in her bra.

Yummy!

Topless girl kicks the crap out of naked chick! Video at eleven!

Imagine them jiggling!! OVER AND OVER!!!

And you know, if you’re a practically nameless character who’s been straggling along in subplots started by the previous creative team, and your new writer decides to kill you off … what a way to go, right? With a beautiful superheroine leaning over you in nothing but a bra?

Every guy’s fantasy, yep, right there.

Have to be honest, I don’t really think I’ve got anything insightful to say about these issues. The story didn’t stick in my head at all. The art did, of course, and the images sort of serve as their own commentary – a loud one at that.

To get all theoretical, I suppose you could make the argument that shifting a title from a male lead to a female lead serves as a great opportunity to try to branch out and grab some female readers. In which case topless fighting may not be the best idea. Or you could say that shifting a low-selling title to a female lead serves as a great opportunity to increase the wattage in the titillation department and try to grab some readers, period. In which case topless fighting may not be such a bad idea at all.

Like Dino always said in the Rat Pack days, “Just tryin’ to have a little fun here, folks, that’s all.”

Gluttony for Oct. 25, 2006 – The Puzzle is Complete

2006-10-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

This week’s shipping list was determined to break my bank! There were 28 titles I wanted, so some had to wait. I ended up with 21 new books, Marvel Previews and the Testament Vol. 1 trade, very economically priced at just $9.99 for five reprinted issues … cheaper than buying them individually!

The count was 12 for Marvel, plus the Previews mag (and I definitely like the separatist format, since I have no idea where I’d store the bulky Previews catalogs if I were buying them); 6 for DC, 2 Wildstorm books and the 1 Star Wars title from Dark Horse.

In fact, there wasn’t much mainstream product on the stands this week I didn’t pick up or put in my box for later.

Planetary’s finale hit the shelves, and while I’m a total latecomer to the party (I only discovered the book around issue #17) I’m eager to see all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. I expect I’ll still be perplexed with the answers by story’s end, since I was never quite sure what the questions were. But Planetary’s irregular appearances have been a delightful spice among the standard recipes of the superhero genre. If ever there was a book that wasn’t hurt by six-month delays between issues, this is the one. In fact, the great gaps of time between outings, I think, make its perpetual sense of enigma that much more alluring. Perhaps its refusal to play by the rules of periodicity was method, not madness.

I left behind bottom-dweller Warlord, as did most comic fans in America. While I haven’t seen anything official, it now seems issue #10 will be its last, since it’s been absent from the solicits for the last two months. What a strange choice for a revival from DC. It only made nominal sense when, in the midst of Infinite Crisis, it seemed all sorts of forgotten characters were going to make permanent returns as the universe was re-divided into various parallel alternates … but of course, that didn’t pan out, Warlord never showed within the pages of the event, and DC never gave the title any substantial promotion. I wonder if its sales might have been any better if it been conceived as a Vertigo revamp? Regardless of the fact that its creative team of Bruce Jones and Bart Sears haven’t exactly made any great waves of late, the concept just seems like a complete orphan in today’s DC Universe.

The only other title of note I ignored for the week was Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. Its cynical politics turned my stomach as early as the Brave New World short, and even Daniel Acuna’s art – which I have found quite exciting in his cover work – didn’t command my attention beyond issue #1. My general boredom with the Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven miniseries, along with its glaring plot absurdities, sapped my interest even before the follow-on Uncle Sam series had begun.

Writers Gray and Palmiotti tend to oscillate between sleep-inducing mediocrity and highly recommendable, rough-and-tumble fun in my mind. Jonah Hex is a highlight of my Saturday mornings once a month, and I became a solid Hawkman fan thanks to their brawny, action-filled run on the title a year ago. But I refuse to travel with them down a road where every ideal of patriotism, no matter how unattainable, is twisted into some ugly, cynical metaphor of villainy.

In any case, if Hawkman finally returns to the DCU, and Joe Bennett is back on art, I'm there.

Gluttony for Oct. 18, 2006 – Who Was That Masked Man?

2006-10-23T18:56:00.000-07:00

I’m almost a week late with the regular Gluttony update, so as a bonus, you get not just my first reactions, but some capsule reviewing too.

Brought home 23 titles this week, though one of them was just a 50-cent ashcan, so I wasn’t too far off my 20-per-week budget. The tally was 7 books from the DCU, 7 books from Marvel (of which fully 5 were X-Men related … the franchise really needs a more consistent approach to distributing the product across any given month), and 9 miscellaneous titles for the broadening of my excessively super-hero-addled mind. I can’t remember the last time I had such an “experimental” comic week, but it was worth it.

Lone Ranger #2 was a must-buy, and it was frankly the one title I was most eager to read when I got home. It seems like a project completely out of left field, as is the whole recent resurgence of Western characters in the medium. But Sergio Cariello’s art is breathtaking, guided enough by the master hand of John Cassaday to warrant a sales-boosting cover credit, and the story is so … elemental. The Lone Ranger is one of the original American masked heroes, the beginning of whose nearly 3,000 radio episodes predated Superman’s appearance by five years. The character deserves a top-notch title, and Dynamite is delivering.

WorldStorm finally caught my attention with the promises of Grant Morrison’s ever-unpredictable weirdness, and of course another semi-regular opportunity to enjoy the master work of Jim Lee. I brought home both Authority and WildCats.

Grant Morrison appears to be on a mission to literally perfect the artform of the comic – or at least become its patron saint of philosophy. WildCats #1 was everything you could hope for in introducing a universe to new readers and commanding our interest without resorting to unconscious clichés. This issue was a magnificent example of world-building … establishing a sense of backstory, of interconnectedness with characters and themes that will surely be seen elsewhere, of menacing threats that actually capture my attention despite my unfamiliarity with the rules of this world. It’s a shame this issue didn’t make it out on time, as it would certainly have served as a better introduction to the Worldstorm revamp than what actually hit the stands first.

Authority #1, on the other hand, didn’t play by any first-issue rules of the genre, and seems, frankly, to be a failure until you get to the payoff. We are not introduced to the series characters, and the foreboding of the last pages makes sense only to those who have read the title beforehand (which I have). Plus, Morrison’s delivery seems “decompressed” by his most recent standards, and if I didn’t know who was writing, I would have assumed it was another of the modern masters, Warren Ellis, scripting the dialogue. Not that this is anything to complain about.

Speaking of Ellis, my diet of his work has been too lean of late, so I grabbed the relaunch issue of Desolation Jones, too, mostly on impulse. I had picked up the original #1 of the title in a dollar bin a year or so ago. Turns out it was the story of a British ex-superspy living in L.A. on a diet of weed and meth who got hired to track down a rare film reel of Hitler’s homemade porn. Yeah. How can you not be intrigued by that premise? As it turned out, I didn’t follow the rest of the first six issues, and I have to say DJ #7 doesn’t quite live up to the reputation of the premiere issue. Still not a bad read.

DC’s corporate coffers were further swelled by my purchase of Testament and the Absolute Sandman ashcan. I am very intrigued by comics with obvious spiritual themes that play respectfully with the mythic fodder of Bible stories. This was my first issue of Testament, and I honestly have no idea what the story’s about. But with the name of the issue being “Shit Happens: The Book of Job,” I had to see what it was all about. Fascinating stuff, with a time travel element messing with the Bible’s own continuity, and I’ll be back.

As for Sandman, well, I’ll admit to being a cultural illiterate. I have never read most of the truly seminal works of modern comics, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman included. I appreciate the chance to sample the acclaimed material for just half a buck.

Bomb Queen seemed an obligatory buy for academic purposes, given my recent blog entry on the virtues of self-parodying boob-centric comics. Well, it was everything I might have expected, and little more. I am surprised the art was so self-censored, however. Some pages would show nipples, others would play tricks to hide them or minimize exposure. For being a title shamelessly constructed to exploit the sexual nature of comic art, there was a sense of half-heartedness about it. Can’t say I’ll be back, although the theme of the actual story – turning the city-defended-by-hero concept on its head – seems to have something thoughtful to offer.

Marvel’s output for the week, apart from the glut of X-Men and just one other Civil War tie-in, veered to the macabre. I am naturally disinclined to read tales of vampires and demons, of which there were four. Hellstorm: Son of Satan. Ahem. No thanks … you see, I believe the guy (Satan) really exists, and I don’t much want him in my house.

Amazing Spider-Girl, too, stayed out of my buy pile. While I’m pleased Marvel is respecting the title’s small fanbase and giving it the extra effort of a relaunch to boost sales, I’m not all that interested in keeping track of another alternate Marvel universe. I suppose it could be viewed as a strength, however, that Marvel is unflinching in their diversification of the product line, with Ultimate, young-reader Adventures and the now-resurgent M2 universes to choose from. All that remains is a “Muppet Babies” take on the Marvel heroes … of which there already seem to be toys. Grab ‘em while they’re young!

Stuart Moore responds to the Glutton!

2006-10-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

Let me first of all give a public thanks to Stuart Moore for being so kind as to jump into the fray and offer his thoughts on the latest issue of Firestorm in the thread I started on CBR (under my handle, PaulTiberius). His posts are here and here, but I'll go ahead and quote the relevant portion of our discussion for your convenience.

The Glutton said:

Stuart, thanks so much for dropping by! I hope you'll stay around and wrangle this with us. What can you say about this main complaint of mine, that what the first few pages did was present a specific line of political opinions that didn't resemble much the DCU, and was clearly a point-for-point real-world political speech?

Aside from my personal disagreement with the specifics of those politics, it was just totally inconsistent with the fictional world. It seemed you deliberately stepped out of the environment and put the story on hold so you could put forward your politics.

Honestly, I found this approach to be as illegitimate as having Batman stop in the middle of a fight, turn to the reader, and say, "By the way, kids, don't do drugs and stay in school."

It just has no place if you are at all concerned with maintaining an internal integrity and consistency of the story. There were far more interesting ways you could have established the backstory of her campaign and the passion of her ideological perspective.

And again, while I'm personally of a diametrically opposite political perspective to what was said in Lorraine's speech, I'm really more interested in talking about the best way to creatively present politics in a way that's doesn't seem ridiculously out of place.

To which Mr. Moore, copying the first two 'graphs above, responded:

I actually think I covered this in my "podcast" (which isn't really a podcast at all)...there are two distinct reasons why this speech ties directly into the story. Both will become clearer next issue; one of them in particular, regarding Jason, I don't want to discuss yet at all.

Regarding the real world vs. the DCU: This is just my take on things, but to me the DCU is the real world except where specific events differ. In one of your other messages, you say that Iraq and Halliburton didn't happen in the DCU; I don't think that's been established, and I don't subscribe to that interpretation. To me, the farther superhero comics stray into their own little pocket universes, the less interesting and relevant they are. And the stakes in this universe, right now, are too high, the situation in this country too dire, not to use that universe for some good if I can.

If it fits the story...which, as discussed in the link, I think it does. Dramatizing political concerns is very tricky, yes -- there are a thousand right ways to do it and probably ten thousand wrong ones. Each reader will have to decide for him/herself, especially in times as touchy as these.

I appreciate the debate and the general level of civility, but I probably won't reply further...I really kind of said my piece in the podcast. Thanks.

Best,
Stuart

And for completeness, here's the relevant portion of Mr. Moore's original explanation, which he alluded to, from the DC boards:

Here, as usual, are my notes on FIRESTORM #30:

Pp. 1-3: I knew a lot of people wouldn’t like this scene -- and I totally understand why. I hate it when I’m thrown out of a story by the sudden realization “Hey -- this writer’s politics are really screwed up.” And doubtless some of my readers will feel that way about this.

But I don’t apologize for it, and I don’t think it’s out of place. I’m very careful to keep my politics out of my work when it doesn’t belong; in seventeen issues, this is only the second or third time the book has touched on these matters. This scene serves several distinct purposes. One, the most obvious, is a thematic link to the main story, as seen later in Lorraine’s reaction to the “old man” who turned her into Firehawk against her will. The second, involving Jason, will become more obvious next issue. And third was a tie-in to 52, which never hurts.

If the scene also suggests a particular way of looking at what’s happened to this country -- a constantly-renewing cabal of old men who always want to tell you what to do, at the cost of any and all morality and civil liberties -- then so much the better. Especially this close to election day.

It's quite nice to have access to an author's original thoughts when it comes to these touchy and controversial moments. Again, my thanks to Mr. Moore for being willing to comment.

I still don’t care for the scene, as much for its obtrusiveness to the story as for the particulars of its left-of-the-aisle politics. But my own politics aren’t so much the issue here (except for the fact they provided me the motivation to start up the discussion), whereas story relevance is.

My main objections have largely been answered by Mr. Moore. How well did he do?

First, I complained that the scene was tacked on in a shameless use of the bully pulpit. Well, I appreciate that the author clearly understood this was a danger. He explained as much on the DC boards, and he’s quite gracious in admitting ahead of time the validity of a complaint such as mine. I am “thrown out of a story by the sudden realization” that the author’s politics are personally distasteful to me the reader, as he said. This level of humility goes a long way toward helping me keep my respect for the author, which was earned in the first place through the entertainment value of the comic, not his use of it to advertise his politics.

And he’s right; he hasn’t used his comic book as a soapbox until now, despite the latent opportunities for stirring up “firestorms” of controversy over subjects such as the dangers of nuclear power.

Second, I complained that the content of the political message wasn’t relevant to the plot. Well, I will take Mr. Moore’s word that the Reilly campaign and its relevance in Jason Rusch’s life are going have an impact on stories to come. But I still don’t care for his choice to spend the time condemning the present real-world administration, when these pages could have been much more effectively used to present a DCU-centric campaign speech. One that, for example, could have condemned the excesses of President Luthor, the incompetence of President Ross and the sickening treatment of the DCU’s citizens of Bludhaven and Star City after Infinite Crisis by the DCU’s fictionalized American government. Moore could have taken this more fictionally relevant approach and still gotten in his metaphorical digs against the real president, and he wouldn’t have opened himself to the same structural complaints.

Third, I complained that the speech didn’t resemble the DCU with its obvious allusions to Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq, Michael Brown’s FEMA response to Katrina, and Bush and Cheney’s former employment by money-flush oil companies and Halliburton.

And rather shockingly, Moore takes this complaint head-on (apply directly to the forehead … uh …) by saying that in his mind, he considers these real-world matters a part of the DC Universe, at least provisionally, since no story has (or indeed could have) excluded them from the DC continuity. A very, very interesting and illuminating take. I can’t say I agree with it, but I can accept it as a decent defense of his creative choice with this issue, one that is infused with some real thoughtfulness on Moore’s part.

Bottom line, I still ain’t happy with the way the first three pages of Firestorm #30 went down. But Mr. Moore has effectively defended himself against most of these criticisms. He wants to “do some good” by taking the opportunities the story presents to encourage us all to kick out the Republicans on election day. Well, it’s his right to feel that way, and his right to put such matter in his scripts. I can’t say I’d do any differently with my own conservative politics, if I had the platform he has.

I just wish he’d done it in a way that respected more the integrity of the fictional world we all love.

Comic creators, a naturally left-leaning lot, should remember they have Republicans and sundry other types of political conservatives reading and enjoying their material. There’s only so much bashing of our side we can take before we jump ship and spend our money elsewhere.

But Mr. Moore need not worry too much about that from me. I’m sticking with the title for now. His reasoned replies to the obvious complaints I raised have earned my respect and appreciation.

Mr. Moore, I suspect you might be reading … I would appreciate any further thoughts you have on all this! And by the way, The Glutton encourages you to vote Republican.

I’m Firestorm, and I Approved this Message

2006-10-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Look, believe it or not, I’m all for creators expressing their politics in their work. I don’t care to see it shoved down my throat, however. But if they can craft a good story to illuminate something they believe in, or provide commentary on a pressing issue of our times, regardless of how I feel about it, I shouldn’t really complain. At least in theory. Unfortunately, the politically-oriented dialogue in most comics today (and there’s a lot of it) is usually not very organic to the story. It’s slapped on like a greasy band-aid. And since most of the comic industry population is of a left-of-center political bent, usually what we get is annoying moralizing on how evil George Bush is, whether that’s spelled out explicitly or not.

Now, here comes Firestorm #30, hitting the stands four weeks before the mid-term elections, with the most blatant sort of annoying political posturing on the comic page as I can ever remember. Pages 2 and 3 might as well be a paid political message for the Democratic National Party. Here are the money quotes (emphasis mine):

When my father was young, they had a saying: “Never trust anyone over thirty.” It sounds silly – but it was a very serious response to the times. Back then, a group of older men had a stranglehold on the federal government. …

Today, a new group of men controls all the branches of the federal government. Men of power. … They lie to us about weapons of mass destruction. They ruin crucial government agencies with shameless cronyism, then watch as our cities flood and die. They preach morality while they steal our jobs and bankrupt our future, little by little – all the while grabbing more and more money for themselves.”

Let me run down the not-so-subtle points of this diatribe:

Worse than Watergate
Bush lied, people died
Heckuva job, Brownie
Religious Right hypocrites
Send our jobs overseas
Tax cuts for the rich
Halliburton, the mother of all evil

Obviously, I find this political perspective to be one part putrid cynicism, one part dishonesty and one part spin. But I’m a Republican. Stuart Moore obviously isn’t.

But let me just talk about how poorly this kind of “Vote for Democrats, kids!” approach fits in this comic.

First of all, it’s tacked on. Sure, Lorraine Reilly ran for senate and won some time during the One Year Later gap. Flashback scenes to her campaign would be welcome. But this one doesn’t tell us anything about the dramatic story of her campaign, it’s just an anti-Bush speech crammed into comic book panels. And it has no relevance to the rest of the issue. Talk about your bully pulpit.

Second, the content of her message isn’t relevant to the plot in the slightest. Other political campaign stories I’ve read at least use the message of the candidate to advance a larger story, as did the Kelly and Creed campaigns in the X-Men titles of years past. There were not-so-subtle analogies to contemporary real-world events, of course, but they fit within the story.

Third, this diatribe doesn’t resemble anything seen in the DCU. It is nothing but a jab at our real-world politics. It distorts the continuity of the DCU for the sole purpose of selling me one political party’s real-world line of crap in the eleventh hour of an election year.

Make no mistake, the solemnity of the art and the page count for this speechifying all make clear that the opinions expressed by the character here are unquestionably the opinions of the writer.

And it’s just lazy writing. Anybody can promulgate their opinions with a bludgeon. That’s what blogging is. It requires no skill. But I expect more from art. I want the author’s perspectives, no matter how different they may be from my own, to illuminate me through the power of effective storytelling. Give me a parable that will make me think. Titles such as Brian K. Vaughan’s simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking Ex Machina, or Garth Ennis’ poignant .303 from Avatar Press.

Firestorm #30’s opening pages might as well have just been replaced with a blank page that said:

“We interrupt regularly scheduled programming for the following announcement: Stuart Moore wishes to express his fondest hope that you will elect Democrats four weeks from now. We now return to Firestorm The Nuclear Man, already in progress.”

Boobstorm #1

2006-10-12T22:37:00.000-07:00

So, about that cover. Look, I enjoy looking at the ladies just as much as any other comic guy, and Arthur Adams certainly knows how to command a double-take. But really. Isn’t this the most ridiculous cover you’ve seen in a while? “Oh, no, my pants got all shredded in battle! Might as well just unbutton and show off my bra, too!” Please. Her top’s barely even scratched. (And yes, in the actual printed cover, her bra is white.)

Cheesecake is inseparable from the comic format, I can admit it. And if I’m honest with you all, I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way. But there’s a difference between sexiness and stupidity. This cover doesn’t even rise to the level of self-parody.

The delightfully unrealistic comic boob is certainly a subject worthy of serious discussion. Is it misogynistic? Is it exploitative? Is it destructive to women’s self esteem and men’s expectations of reality? Is it all harmless fun? And isn’t it simply the natural extension of the comic format’s devotion to the fantastically impossible?

All worthy thoughts, had I any desire to really explore the shoulds and should-nots of quality comic art right now. But I don’t, and I’ve accepted the fact that the mammoth mammaries are here to stay. I’m at least thankful there is now a fully diverse array of comic styles – boobzilla and otherwise – that command equal respect in the market.

Look at the enthralling, and utterly dissimilar, styles of Alex Maleev or Darwyn Cooke. Yes, the once-fundamental precept that a shot of double-barrel chest cannons is necessary to move comics from the racks to the grubby hands has faded into relative obscurity. It represents the maturation of the medium.

None of this is to say that there is no place for radical distortions of anatomy in comics, whether of the female breast or the male musculature. But there are more sly, smart and purposeful ways to show outré proportions of womanliness than this silly sales grabber on the cover of Worldstorm #1.

J. Scott Campbell’s Danger Girl is a perfect example of a self-parodying style of art, one that pokes fun at the wonderful artistic absurdity of so much that has come before. Frank Cho’s Shanna, the She-Devil, similarly, is plainly a deliberate hyper-indulgence of the breast-centric heroine story. Both works are self-aware of the fact that they are glorifying and magnifying the female breast for its own sake.

Amanda Conner’s work has at times offered another perspective on the jiggling joys of men’s desire, no doubt drawn from life experience. (I believe I can say without error Ms. Conner has enjoyed her fair share of ogling, given her obvious qualities.) In her Power Girl arc of JSA: Classified #1-4, Conner slipped in wry visual commentaries on how uncomfortable it can be for a buxom woman to be the subject of a man’s flesh fascination. Eyes roaming, men being distracted from their work, it all served to add an element of conscience and humanity to the dehumanizing potential of comic art to objectify women. (Pardon the low quality of this original scan from JSA:C #4. I have a positively archaic scanner.)

A character’s deliberate, brazen exposure of her breasts is also traditionally employed as a signal of villainy, such as the deliberately seductive Vampirella or Lady Death. And recent authors have given creative explanations of the tactical advantage a hero such as Power Girl or Phantom Lady can achieve through their revealing costumes.

There is also, of course, the “peril” motif of horror-inspired comics, where a bit of revealed bra lace stimulates the blood flow for the reader, a perfectly logical way to enhance the physiological reaction so vital to suspense fiction.

But heroes don’t typically disrobe on the field of battle just for the heck of it. And Miss Fairchild on this week’s cover has plainly done just that, all for a ridiculous sales grab. To be sure, Fairchild’s chronic difficulty keeping her assets contained is a familiar part of the character’s shtick, judging by the more popular images of her available on the web. (I’m not personally familiar with the Gen13 comic, beyond having seen the numerous pinups floating in the ether.)

And judging by the change in her bra color from the initial press images to the final product on the stands, DC/Wildstorm editorial knew this image was a bit over the top.

Here’s the deal. I can’t stop looking at this inspiring cover art, of course. I’m a hot-blooded single male. But I’m scoffing more than I’m drooling at this gratuitous portrayal of a buxom heroine who has opened her top for no obvious reason, and somehow I don’t think that was the intended effect.

***

Now, given the number of times I’ve used high-volume breast-related search terms, do you think my Google hits will increase? Heh. Shameless.

Gluttony for Oct. 11, 2006 – Books Starting with “G” Bore Me

2006-10-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

An on-budget week for me, with 20 books coming home. But I bought the Batman Chronicles Vol. 2, which had been sitting in my box for a couple of weeks, so the bank, again, got no respect. The breakdown was 10 for Marvel, 8 for DC, 1 Wildstorm and 1 Dark Horse.

***

Gen13 earned a definite flip-through. Gail Simone is one of those writers who demands at least the respect of a test read on any title she writes. I was probably wrong to leave this one on the shelf. But the art didn’t quite rise to my expectations, and I find team books to be more daunting to learn to love if I haven’t been previously exposed to them (as is the case with most of these relaunched Wildstorm properties). So, I left it behind. If something from the Worldstorm event captures my attention, I may come back and pick it up. Authority, Midnighter and Tranquility, it’s up to you to sell me on your unfamiliar universe.

I did buy the Worldstorm #1 primer … because of the art, or course! No, you heathen scoundrels, not because of the titillating Arthur Adams cover. Because the first few pages are by Doug Mahnke! I’ll buy anything he draws, period. (Hmm... For some reason, Miss Gigantanormous DDD's bra isn't white in this cover image from DCComics.com. More on the boobs later.)

***

G.I.Joe: America’s Elite #16 joined issues #13, 14 and 15 in my box. I’ll come back and pick up some or all of them once I read issues #10-12, which have been sinking to the bottom of my read pile here at home for a few months now. The opening arc wasn’t anything spectacular, but Stefano Caselli’s art was. Without him, I’m realizing that either the story was never all that compelling to begin with, or I’ve simply outgrown these characters. But here’s a hint for Joe Casey: the book is a spin-off from a series of really cool toys with big guns, detachable missiles and whirling rotor blades that spun when you pulled the trigger on Christmas morn. The characters are great in concept, but in execution, you’ve got to show the toys.

If Caselli were still on G.I.Joe, it would be a no-brainer buy. Luckily for him, his profile is getting quite a boost with his work on Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways. I expect the exposure gained from that excellent little crossover to earn him a choice penciling job with one of the Big Two very soon. Consider me a fan. I expect to follow Caselli onto whatever book he does next. By the way, as this sample from CW:YA/R #1 shows, Caselli has a lot more in his skill set than just jutting jaws. I can't remember the last time I saw such a range of sweetness, petulance and childlike emotion in the faces of young heroes on a comic page.

***

Stan Lee Meets Dr. Strange – as presented by Alan Davis!! What a nice surprise. Man, I’ve missed his art.

Ultimate X-Men #75 – Cable … who is this future mutant?? I spoiled it for myself by flipping to the middle of the book before checkout. (At least I think I did.) Rats. Come on, Kirkman! Who gives away the Big Reveal in the middle of the first issue of an arc? Could be a wild story, though, if what I think I saw proves to be true.

***

By the way, this week marks one year since Infinite Crisis #1 hit the stands. So much promise at the outset … I figure a little more than half of it ended up being fulfilled. Not bad, I suppose, given the gargantuan ambitions DC had for the project. Still, the week of Oct. 12, 2005 (my 31st birthday, by the way) was a high point of excitement and anticipation in my life as a comic fan. I hope something that engrossing comes again one day.

Civil War's False Equation

2006-10-08T14:04:00.000-07:00

The following is taken from my review of J. Michael Straczynski's Fantastic Four #540 (a crossover with Amazing Spider-Man #535), to be posted soon on SBC.

***

Unfortunately, this issue of Fantastic Four magnifies the central difficulties in Marvel’s entire Civil War effort. Although I am generally enjoying the dramatic approach to this tragic deconstruction of the Marvel heroes mythos on a pure entertainment level, I never bought the plausibility of the key events that kicked off this whole mess. The initial conditions were believable enough: a headline-grabbing super-fight kills hundreds of kids, and the American government finally takes a comprehensive approach to the problem of unpoliced comic book action. That, I can buy.

But the immediately following events that Millar and company engineered to get the story moving have been, from Civil War #1 on, utterly ridiculous – starting with the inexplicable decision to have unregistered superheroes treated no differently from unregistered supervillains. Sure, if you break a speeding law, you’re going to get a ticket and face a judge, no matter who you are or how great have been your contributions to society. But not everybody goes to jail – only those with outstanding warrants or egregious breaches of traffic law get that treatment. This is pretty basic logic, and the mandate for creating a somewhat artificial series of Big Fight Scenes to give the publishing event plenty of oomph have overridden such clear thinking.

Still, because of the epic quality of the drama (always preferable to boredom), I have been willing to grant this setup and go along for the ride with minimal complaint.

Until now. Now I’m complaining. Oh, I’m still along for the ride, because I really do want to see how all of this unfolds. But the errors in the story’s conception are now snowballing; the proverbial butterfly has flapped his wings in China the wrong way, and now there’s a storm of lunacy raining down on New York.

Shunting heroes and villains alike into a sick gulag in the Negative Zone. Creating zombie clones to do the government’s bidding. Hiring Bullseye – BULLSEYE!! – to hunt down genuine heroes simply because this most sadistic of villains has performed the triviality of taking an official license from Uncle Sam. It’s all starting to completely exceed my capacity for suspension of disbelief.

Look, I admire Marvel for at least overreaching in the pursuit of a story that attempts to have thoughtful relevance to the great debates over war, law and civil liberties in our present day real world. I can’t fault their ambition. But with Straczynski’s offerings this month in his two key titles, I’m now faulting Marvel’s understanding of the theory underlying it all.

Both ASM and FF are this month delving into the genuine moral philosophy of law, that great principle upon which societies choose to order themselves for the common good. Unfortunately, and primarily seen in FF this month, the legitimate arguments are being oversimplified in nonsensical ways, simply to advance the character dramas. Reed and Sue are breaking up, not primarily because they have equally valid yet irreconcilable differences of belief, but because one or both of them are completely blind to the obvious alternatives to this giant mess. Rather, I find the authors to be blind, preferring to keep building up the artifices that will, against logic, lead to a Big Fight Scene climax.

In this issue of Fantastic Four, the argument between the pro- and anti-registration characters (Reed and Sue) unfolds like this:

Anti-Reg: How can you be doing this? This law is wrong!

Pro-Reg: Yes, but if we don’t obey the law, we become savages.

Anti-Reg: But this law is savage!

Pro-Reg: Then work within the system to change it. My morals prevent me from disobeying.

I call obfuscation! The pro-registration side is not being portrayed as simply obedient to the principles of a well-governed society. They are not simply obeying! They are enforcing! Reed and Tony are not meekly complying with a law they may or may not privately feel to be a bad law. Their actions to support the enforcement of that law – inventing Negative Zone prisons, making clones, hiring villains to do the hard work – clearly indicate that they AGREE that the law is a good idea. Yet we’re not hearing them articulate that point in the debate. Has anyone, anywhere, in any of these Civil War tie-in issues clearly explained why a hero such as Captain America should receive the same punishment for failing to register as a villain? No one has, not in any conversation that sticks in my head, at least.

Oh, sure, Cap is now a fugitive, actively working against the government’s agents of this law, so that will inevitably lead to a lawful confrontation. (That was one thing that actually made some internal sense in Civil War #4: lawfully deputized agents of the law killed Black Goliath in the execution of a warrant to arrest militant insurrectionists. I buy that, given the setup.) But this fugitive status of the heroes – and, now, deputized status of villains – only points out the lunacy of the initial conditions for this story. Principled heroes will predictably be reluctant to comply with a law they believe takes away their rights. Villains will have no such principles, and at least some of them will predictably comply with the law for their own benefit. It’s kind of a reverse of what inevitably happens with extreme gun control, you know, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” Well, when superpowers have to be licensed, outlaws become licensed and heroes become outlaws. The logic is pretty obvious.

But the flawed initial conditions to this story present consequences that just keep barreling on toward disaster, and the result is an epic publishing event that does not really do what Marvel editorial had hoped it would: it’s not elucidating the difficult questions of our times; it’s obscuring the legitimate arguments through hacked presentation.

Back to the law argument: Sue tells Reed that his arguments on obedience to law are no different than what might have been said in Nazi Germany as millions of souls were hauled off to the ovens. Reed is in the position of telling his wife to work within the system to change the law she disagrees with, all the while being the allegorical inventor of the death showers’ poison gas. There’s no balanced presentation of the two sides; the story makes out the pro-registration characters to be the villains, period. And this is an utter failure of Marvel to live up to their promises.

Obedience to the law – all the while working within the system to change it – is truly the path of the hero, and, if we were seeing it in action as would be logically expected, is consistent with the personalities of these iconic characters. Instead, Reed acts out of character, not simply obeying the law, but giving hearty approval to it … all the while unable to articulate to his wife just exactly why it deserves such approval.

Straczynski has posed a false equation here, by setting up obedience to the law as no different than joining forces with the government to help enforce it. Thus, mere acquiescence to the minimal requirements of the law is not enough in this dark tale to escape designation as a law-breaker. Thank God Peter is finally acting in character, although again, his apparent refusal to continue serving as an enforcer appears to be enough to make him a law-breaker. Lunacy.

Of course, this matter is not necessarily Straczynski’s fault; blame Millar for thinking it made sense to portray American law this way.

Colin Wilson At War

2006-10-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

So, can you give me even one reason why you're not buying Garth Ennis and Colin Wilson's Battler Britton from Wildstorm? I mean, just look at that.

Gluttony for Oct. 4, 2006 – Nightwing Yes, Jumbo Wolvie No

2006-10-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

Brought home 26 titles again this week, and so far my self-imposed budget of only 20 per week is definitely getting no respect. What a glutton. I picked up 12 Marvel books (including 4 from previous weeks) and 10 DC books (include 2 old ones).

The other four were my “dabble” books:

American Virgin #7 (Vertigo), a title whose opening arc was quite a poignant read for me, the raised-in-church conservative.

The Other Side #1 (Vertigo), one that just grabbed my attention on the stands. I’m a sucker for war comics, and given the natural liberalism of contemporary comic creators, I’m intrigued to see how this “horror story on the horrors of war” approaches the ever-relevant question of Vietnam.

Battler Britton #4 (Wildstorm), because it’s a Garth Ennis war comic with perfect art by Colin Wilson who never messes up the details on the warbirds.

Rocketo #12 (Image), a title that always looked fascinating, but I never gave it a shot … seems I stumbled in on its last issue, though.

***

Notably back in my lineup is Nightwing. Now, I have been buying basically everything set in the mainstream DCU since Infinite Crisis started revving up, but after One Year Later began, Nightwing was the first to go. Bruce Jones’ story was criminally boring, and ticked me off from almost the opening page by showing Dick being a dick, waking up in bed with a woman whose name he couldn’t remember. Gee, didn’t he propose to Barbara during the Crisis? Yet another plot thread maddeningly left unaddressed in the One Year Later project, and yet another reason to think the concept is revealing itself to be – if not an outright bad idea – at least a poorly executed one in too many titles.

Well, Wolfman is back, and despite the fact that Dan Jurgens' art is, for me personally, just not what it used to be, I have high hopes the title will start living up to its potential. (The art sample at right is from Nightwing #125, pg. 7. A big thanks to the folks who maintain the treasure trove at the Comic Art Community for keeping this blog - and no doubt, many others - full of goodies to look at.)

Giant-Size Wolverine #1 was a close call, but the price-to-value ratio finally put it back on the rack. Five dollars for a 96-page volume isn’t bad, except for the fact I have the X-Men reprints already. Five dollars for a unique 34-page original story is iffy under any circumstances, and the short shrift on the scripted dialogue suggested it would be a story I’d breeze through far too quickly. Halloween stories don’t typically do much for me anyway, and David Lapham’s draw is quite a bit diminished for me after his long-winded, strange run on Detective Comics last year. So all that remained was my completeist’s tendency to buy-buy-buy … and in the end, my wallet won out.

I was disappointed to find I had missed Criminal #1, since Brubaker is in a groove these days that convinces me he can do no wrong. Seems quite a few other comic fans agree, and my LCS was sold out when I arrived at 6:30.

Silent Voices - An Independent Film ... Trailer Debut

2006-10-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

That's me, in the role of Decipius, a demon from hell. A buddy and I worked on a story for the last couple of years, and thanks to his determination, we got it filmed! Silent Voices will debut in Northwest Arkansas next month (I'm not sure where yet). In the meantime, please check out the stunning trailer Co-Writer/Director/Producer Rob Bethke put together. I'd love to know what you think.

The trailer may be found here: http://www.treemovies.com/svtrailer.html

Cable Cops Cap’s Colors!

2006-10-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

And now for lighter fare! Has anyone noticed Cable’s new look in Adjectiveless X-Men? See his shoulder? Is that an homage to Captain America’s shield there?

Veeerrrry interesting. Fabian Nicieza, of course, recently established in Cable/Deadpool #25 that in the far flung future, Nate took up Captain America’s legendary shield in battle. It’s kind of neat to see a rapport between these two time-tossed heroes.

Thus far, I’m assuming that the new creative teams on Uncanny and Adjectiveless are setting their stories in a post-Civil War environment. And obviously Cable has been fighting alongside Cap in the battle.

What could all of this mean?

Mad Monk Muck and Morbidity – Crossing the Line

2006-10-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

Well.

After making such a big to-do over the paper used for the cover of Matt Wagner’s Batman and the Mad Monk #2 this weekend, I finally slipped it out of its Comic Defense Collector Shield and started reading what was on the paper inside the previously lauded cover.

It rather turned my stomach. A devilish cult is holding a ceremony of blood, preparing to sacrifice a virginal offering to their evil lord. So far, not unfamiliar stuff to comic readers over the years. I turned the page. The teenaged girl unfortunate enough to be the object of this grotesque ritual lay chained and spread-eagle, screaming, of course, as she awoke to realize her blood was about to be drained to unleash some infernal power. My stomach turned a bit more. She was partially disrobed, her bra removed and her breasts half exposed beneath clingy prep school attire, her skirt clearly shifted a bit downward to reveal the contours of her pubic area.

Occult monstrosity, mingled with murder, sprinkled with sexual titillation, focused on a girl who was clearly portrayed as a probable minor. I’m sorry, this is crossing a line somewhere.

I turn to pages 4 and 5. The evil chief of this cult emerges to extract the sacrifice of blood. He mercifully quiets the girl with a spell and leans over to open her throat, or perhaps to chew away her face, with his teeth. Even more gruesome.

Clearly, this is a Batman comic. Just as he leans over to commit his hideous sin upon this innocent victim, a Batarang crunches against his face, the hero swoops into the vile crowd, and spirits away the innocent victim.

Right?

No. Batman is nowhere to be found. The first six pages of this tale are devoted to that which is unthinkable in our real world. The schoolgirl is slaughtered.

Or perhaps, not so unthinkable. After all, in the past week, the news of the real world brought us two ugly episodes of sexually repressed men entering schools and binding and murdering young girls, with reported intent to molest and rape their victims.

Fiction, in all its forms, has always portrayed hideous crimes. Murder, mayhem, rape and destruction are all central plot points, and have been since man first began telling stories around cooking fires. So often, it is only in contrast to evil that we are truly able to appreciate the virtue of the hero.

I can’t complain about the portrayal of evil on the comic page or the movie screen. And I can’t argue “the children,” as so many offended moral crusaders do. Fictional art should not be enslaved to unrealistic expectations that it be safe for children, or sealed in black bags or marketed only in places that children do not have unsupervised access. Children, of their own curiosity, will in most cases find their way to “adult” material, no matter how scrupulously the law and the marketplace tries to shield them from things they are too young to comprehend.

My revulsion at the opening pages of this particular comic book have nothing to do with me worrying about what someone else, someone younger, may be exposed to.

I am simply sickened at what I was exposed to. It crossed a line. I don’t say this with purple-faced moral outrage. I don’t say this demanding that the material be censored. I don’t say this with the intent to boycott the forthcoming issues of the work or the publishing company.

I simply offer this assessment: those six pages crossed a line.

And I can’t define the line very clearly or entirely rationally. I know that. Overly legalistic standards for rating media are generally pointless, since the subject matter that is most likely to shock or offend is usually not quantifiable by the number of times a certain word is used or the precise areas of flesh that are exposed. The shocking material is often much more mood related. The offense, if one is offended, is often more defined by subtle, unmeasurable things such as the way a camera lingers on a thing or the level of horror seen in a character’s face.

The “line” as I see it has at least two loose characteristics. It is not murder that crosses the line. It is, however, crossing the line to have a person be murdered during the course of something perversely sexual.

Second, it is not simply the publication of something dark or violent that crosses the line. It is, however, crossing the line to include such material in a particular subset of the medium that has not, traditionally, shown such things.

That’s where I draw the line.

Every editor and author draws it in their own way, I’m sure, sometimes in accordance with written company policies. More often than not, I suspect, the line is drawn on a case by case basis, with one or a few individuals’ guts as the most significant arbiter of the question.

I first came to my definition of this “line” when I turned a page of Action Comics #821 (or thereabouts), and saw something that was beyond my ability to simply read past. This was an issue midway through Chuck Austen’s controversial run (most of which I freely admit I quite liked). In one ugly panel I am reluctant ever to gaze upon again, the Kryptonian villain demanded his human acolytes bring him another woman for his sexual entertainment. The one he had, he had raped to death. Literally ripped apart, it would seem, with his organ, judging by the bloody mess of her lifeless hand (thankfully the only visual offered of this grotesque, throwaway moment of story).

Then and there, I defined the “line” for myself. Here we had murder tied into sexual perversity. Here we had such shocking subject matter portrayed in literally the oldest comic series in publication, one not known for mature themes. And amplifying my revulsion at the scene, we had this atrocity delivered in a throwaway manner, a casual aside to the story that certainly convinced the reader of the villain’s putrid character, but that never returned to present the horrible gravity of what such cheap disposal of human life would mean to this poor woman’s family, friends and familiars.

I will admit that the opening scene of Batman and the Mad Monk #2 did not quite rise to the same level of revulsion in me as did the Action Comics scene. However, where the virgin sacrifice did not settle for cheap, brief disposal of human life, it did offend in the opposite direction by extending the scene to a quarter of the comic’s 22-page length.

May I offer constructive criticism on how these six pages could have been made less repulsive?

First, try eliminating the obvious sexual nature of the portrayal. If evil is to be shown, I would rather not have to deal with the fact that my physical body takes an illicit thrill from it.

Second, move as far away as you can from suggesting the murder victim, whose final screams of life we witness in the story, is a child.

Third, dwell on it less. Whether that’s fewer pages or less focus on the horror of the victim, simply reduce the quantity of ugliness.

Fourth, constrain stories with such content to formats that carry a certain expectation of dark themes. I am less shocked by the depravity seen in a Punisher book with the MAX label than I am in a mainstream title, because I have advance warning before I even open the cover, and I don’t read it until I’m in a mood to visit such dark places.

I hesitate to use language that suggests I’m “offended” by what I saw. Surprised, yes. Taken aback. Repulsed. And of course, surprise and revulsion are hallmarks of effective drama. I’d certainly prefer them to boredom as I consume my entertainment.

But there is such a thing as crossing the line. In my opinion, this issue took it a step too far.

Update: The first five pages of this issue can be found here.

The Mad Monk’s Smooth Feeling

2006-09-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

Maybe I’m the only one who cares out there, but I really like my comics to feel like quality in my hands. Cardstock covers make me all warm and tingly inside. I really enjoyed Matt Wagner’s first “Dark Moon Rising” Batman miniseries, Batman and the Monster Men, and one of those nice little extras was the cardstock cover. It really made Wagner’s classic art style stand out. Plus, it physically felt like I was getting my money’s worth.

So I was quite irritated when issue #1 of the second volume, Batman and the Mad Monk, hit the stands last month with an ordinary floppy cover, marred by that ugly “1st Issue” trade dressing DC had been applying to all their mediocre Brave New World spinoffs. A Matt Wagner tale of the Dark Knight’s formative years is going to be anything but mediocre, and I didn’t care to see a marketing-oriented numbering style mar my first glance at the new miniseries.

A trifle, yes. Indulge me.

But the smooth, matte cardstock cover I loved in the first volume made its welcome return this week on Mad Monk #2. After all, DC inexplicably upped the price on this miniseries to $3.50, as opposed to the now-standard $2.99 price tag on the first volume. And if $3.50 isn’t going to buy me any more pages (Mad Monk is the standard 22-page story, not counting the crass advertising), then a quality cover sure helps soften the blow.

Generalizing the subject, I’m not entirely sure I understand DC’s approach to which books get the heavier paper for their covers and which don’t. Since all standard-length comics are now a uniform $2.99, the use of cardstock or heavy gloss covers is completely independent of what you cough up at checkout.

Superman/Batman gets the heavy gloss treatment, as do the All-Star books. This I can understand, since these are more or less the company’s marquee, top-selling titles. But 13 issues in, Green Lantern still gets the gloss, too, and I don’t really see this as a book DC is using to aggressively grab new readers.

I presume such an aim is one of the reasons certain books are granted a higher quality tactile presentation on the stands. A new reader is likely to balk at the realization these monthly pamphlets, with their 15 minutes of entertainment, cost as much as the newsstand magazines that have enough content to occupy several morning commutes. An obviously higher quality physical format surely helps convince the newbie that a comic is something a bit more special than a disposable news mag.

But why Green Lantern and not, say, Wonder Woman? Surely this book could serve as an effective gateway to female readers or guys who like to flip through Maxim. Why not Superman and Batman’s solo titles? Why not Justice League of America, with its proudly displayed, glowing reviews from the mainstream entertainment media emblazoned above the title logo? The logic escapes me.

(May I crow for a moment? Remember those four beautiful prints of the Wonder Woman #1 cover that were adorning Terry Dodson's booth at SDCC '06? You know, big 18x12 things printed on high quality paper with 1000-year ink? I got one of them. Autographed. Forty bucks, well spent.)

Quality or Timeliness? Shouldn’t We Expect Both?

2006-09-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

So what were you doing seven months ago? Chances are, sometime during the last week of February, 2006, you were reading Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk #2. I suspect by the time issue #3 comes out, I’ll be wearing items from my cold weather wardrobe again.

The shipment this week of Ultimates #12 (a kick-ass comic book if ever there was one, though I remain deeply troubled by its themes for reasons I may explore at another time) brings to mind once again the question – do comic book readers want their favorite titles to come out, reliably, every month? Or do we prefer the highest quality art and storytelling, regardless of how long we have to wait between issues?

I am of the mind that a periodical entertainment medium should, quite simply, be two things: entertaining and periodical. That is, it should be both of high quality and of predictable distribution to the marketplace.

With the highly commendable rise of the trade paperback sector in the comic industry, it is reasonable to suppose that such a trajectory may eventually lead to a future in which comics are simply published as non-periodical, complete-storyline works, and the monthly pamphlet format will see its end. I have no opinion as to the likelihood or value of such a hypothetical shift, only to say that it is a reasonably possible outcome … and to say that it hasn’t come yet.

Comics remain – and comic readers still expect – a periodical product that arrives on the stands in a predictable fashion.

Geoff Johns commented on the increasing incompatibility of quality and timeliness recently in discussing his Green Lantern and Teen Titans books at DC, both of which have fallen well behind schedule. And in referring to the obvious scheduling problems on the acclaimed relaunch of (and immediately delayed) Wonder Woman, he suggested that the answer to the quality vs. timeliness debate was pretty obvious: we’d all rather have an awesome comic that retains artistic consistency, than a solidly on-time monthly that tosses in an occasional piece of crap just to stay on schedule and keep the revenue flowing in. It certainly makes intuitive sense.

Tom Brevoort also came to a similar conclusion in addressing the matter recently, but recognized the fact that a loss of momentum in the marketplace can certainly hurt the final product. His key example was Ultimate Extinction, a series heralded as the epic coming of Galactus to the Ultimate Universe. Alas, issues #2-5 of the series sit unread upon my shelf, in part because issue #1 simply underwhelmed, but more relevantly, because the five-month delay midway through the saga’s preceding volume, Ultimate Secret, sapped me of all interest in where the story was going. Sure, I still spent my bucks on the Ultimate Extinction series (after all, I’m The Comic Glutton; buying just about everything on the racks is what I do), but it certainly failed to impact as it should have.

When the big hitters of the creative community answer the question “Quality or timeliness?” by erring on the side of quality, what they are really doing is siding with artistic consistency: keeping the same writer and artist from one issue to the next. And of course, it’s hard to argue with that. Ultimate Secret #3 was not only delayed five months; it also finally got back on the racks with a different artist who was simply not able to retain the look and feel of the first two, quite good, issues of the series. Momentum was lost because both consistency and timeliness were sacrificed. DC’s epic Infinite Crisis, of course, has become a byword for what happens when fill-in artists are brought on board to minimize lateness: expectations are simply not met. Quite explicitly, Marvel’s decision to stretch out the publishing schedule on its own epic Civil War to ensure artistic consistency is a reaction to Infinite Crisis’ failures.

But it seems to me that erring on the side of “quality” in this ever more difficult task of putting out the best books on a reliable schedule is still, well, erring.

As I said to begin with, I expect both high entertainment value and a predictable regularity to that entertainment from the monthly comic format. When the comic reader is forced to sacrifice one in favor of the other, it’s still a sacrifice. Something is lost.

When a fill-in artist is commissioned to keep a book on track, no matter how good that artist may be, the reader’s immersion in the fictional world is jarred, the enjoyment of the artform disrupted. Something is lost.

When a book simply takes its lumps and comes out a month late, interest wanes, momentum sputters, and so the consumer loses, to some degree, the value of his entertainment dollar. I can reasonably hold plotlines in my head over a month’s interval. I start to forget things after two months. I can either press on and read the late issue, possibly failing through forgetfulness to keep the elements of suspense together in my head, or I can go back and re-read the preceding issue, losing time I might have intended to spend in other ways or with other titles. Or, I might just leave the book on the shelf and move on to something that interests me more. Any way I go, something is lost.

It’s the No Free Lunch rule at work. Sacrificing schedule to maintain quality is certainly the least bad option, but it does cost.

X-Men Titles on the Upswing; M-Day Contributes to Actual Plot!

2006-09-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I’m glad to see Mike Marts go. I wish him well, of course, but since the “X-Men Reload” shakeup in May of 2004, there hasn’t really been anything coming out of the X-office that stirred any passion within me. And I say that as one who first came to contemporary comics through the X-Men universe. Leaving aside my fascination with toy tie-in comics Transformers and G.I.Joe and my dad’s soggy old copies of Sgt. Fury,

discovered during my 80’s childhood, the X-Men were, you could say, my first (adult) love.

Since the end of Morrison’s run on (New) X-Men that signaled the “Reload,” Marts oversaw:

the aimless wandering of Chris Claremont on Uncanny;
the promising but, ultimately, bewilderingly pointless stillbirth of Excalibur (which couldn’t even get around to justifying the choice of it’s own name after 14 issues);
the soap opera antics of Chuck Austen on (once-again-adjectiveless) X-Men, all undone as fast as Austen could be railroaded out of the industry, and followed by an ill-suited Peter Milligan;
the decline of Exiles from breathtaking poignancy to formulaic drivel that would eventually kill Mimic, one of the heart-and-soul characters of the book, in one of several discard-worthy moments of a storyline that was hardly more than a promotional stunt;
the unforgivably hasty decommissioning of Weapon X, a book more worthy of the title Wolverine: Origins than is the current slog of that name;
the innocent sweetness of New X-Men: Academy X, followed by its bitter, ugly, unconscionable transformation to a slaughterhouse;
and a host of predictably unsustainable false starts called Gambit, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Alpha Flight and, um, Jubilee.

To be fair, the period was not an unmitigated disaster. Astonishing X-Men, despite scheduling problems and some lackluster execution of plot, has the all-forgiving virtue of being truly fresh. Wolverine provided a fun, year-long romp of Mark Millar’s trademark ass-kicking. And Cable & Deadpool was a lot more fun for a much longer run than most probably expected. (And it even made some sense of that X-Force mini, a feat worthy of heroes’ accolades.)

Then came House of M, the gross mismanagement of whose aftermath must surely be the worst mark on Marts’ record. (I recommend the interested reader troll through Paul O’Brien’s delightful X-Axis reviews for several analyses of everything that has failed in the post-HoM X-Men universe, with an eloquence that could surpass anything I may say on the subject here.)

To be fair (and to get around to the headline of this entry), as Marts leaves for Marvel’s Distinguished Competition, the X-Men titles are on the upswing. As surely as Marts must be to blame for the bland boredom of the group since the “Reload,” he also deserves all the credit an editor is due for bringing aboard Ed Brubaker and Mike Carey to give some real direction to the two core X-titles. Uncanny and Adjectiveless are once again in the top quarter of my read list, instead of slipping down to the bottom of the fresh-comics stack for months at a time.

And believe it or not, this week’s X-Men #191 actually reveals that a plotline has emerged from M-Day (which, it turns out, occurred on November 2 in the Marvel Universe, interestingly enough).

September’s MIAs

2006-09-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

With the last Wednesday of a month come and gone, I always like to look back and see which solicited items didn’t hit the racks, at least at my LCS. The Glutton may have missed a few, of course.

MIA: Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk #3 … um, at least, I had a spreadsheet entry that suggested it might have finally seen print this month. My error, I’m sure.

MIA: New Avengers #24. Really? Why is that? After an initial run of lateness at the series’ beginning, this title has been reliably regular for quite some time. Let’s see, issue #24 was supposed to be the Civil War tie-in focusing on the Sentry, drawn by … ah. Adi Granov. The man with the glorious style, whose collaboration with Warren Ellis on the Iron Man relaunch took 17 months to publish six issues, appears to be late in delivering a one-issue commission. It’s all about the quality, people, right?

MIA: Wildcats #1. I’m sure Jim Lee was hard at work on the next issue of All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. I’m sure it’s just slipped a week or two.

MIA: Marvel Spotlight: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Or maybe my extremely well-stocked LCS just decided it wasn’t worth carrying a book no one was buying? Or maybe both copies sold before I got to the store. If anyone can verify that this book did, in fact, hit the racks this month, please correct my error.

MIA: Stan Lee Meets Doctor Strange. I think I’m actually looking forward to this one.

MIA: Squadron Supreme #7. Curious. Wasn’t there a fill-in artist scheduled for this issue? And did anyone else notice that SS #9 was solicited as a Marvel Knights title?

MIA: Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters. Actually, it was resolicited for next month. I’d love to see a project like this do well, but I passed on the first two issues.

MIA: Moon Knight #6. Probably just David Finch needing a little extra time on the art. He did the same on New Avengers #1-6. Quality, people, quality!

MIA: Superman/Batman #30. I thought the schedule problems were fixed on this one?

MIA: Batman: Journey into Knight #12 of 12. At least, I don’t recall flipping through it at my LCS. It’s already two months late, given when it should have appeared in a 12-month cycle. DC’s probably just trying to find Pat Lee to finish the cover for the darn thing. No big loss, in my opinion. I was one-and-done with this 12-parter. Was anyone reading it?

MIA: Manhunter #25. Or perhaps I missed it? That would be a shame. It hasn’t been on my pull list, but I have been buying it. I’d like to know how this formerly-canceled book wraps up before its resurrection in December.

MIA: All-Star Superman #6. At least, September was its original solicit month.

Gluttony for September 27, 2006 – Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes gets the Boot

2006-09-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

The tally at my LCS this week saw 26 titles come home with me, 11 from DC, and 15 from Marvel. A few items from non-big-two publishers were in my pull box, but it was just too heavy a week for me to buy them all.

One title got the ax: Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. It’s been in my pull list since its most recent fresh start 21 issues ago, but I’m done now. Issue #22 went back on the shelf and I doubt I’ll return. Having never been all that familiar with the LoSH, I was drawn to checking out the title by the Teen Titans crossover two years ago. Once sampled, I decided to stick with this unfamiliar future world on the strength of Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s storytelling abilities. Compared with my usual reading, it made for a nice monthly change of pace.

But with the increasingly sporadic contributions of Kitson, the price hike and the dropping of the extra-pages-for-no-extra-charge model, my interest has waned. Supergirl’s addition to the roster? It’s actually contributed to my loss of interest. No inherent dislike for Supergirl (though there’s much to inherently dislike about her own title), I just find her addition to the book to be probably the best example of what’s gone wrong with DC’s One Year Later project. More on that subject to come…

I am the Comic Glutton!!

2006-09-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hello, friends, fanboys and freaks! I am the Comic Glutton! My name is Paul T. Semones and I own about 14,000 comics, give-or-take a hundred here and there. I am currently trying to reduce my weekly new-comic purchases to 20 each Wednesday, since it's time to start actually paying down my credit cards. During the height of last year's Infinite Crisis stuff, I was buying 100 titles a month or thereabouts ... and I've always considered myself a Marvel-first fan!

Some of you may have seen the handful of reviews I've written for SilverBulletComicBooks.com, and I intend to keep writing full reviews for Keith and the gang there. But I've decided I have lots of miniature thoughts on the state of the modern comic industry I'd like to put out somewhere, hence the creation of this blog.

Let's get started.