Showing posts with label Marvel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marvel. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

TL; DR: On Giving Up Superhero Comics

Over the past few months I've started and stopped writing the same post a dozen times, but as March arrives and marks the 7th month of DC's New 52 effort, I had always planned to talk a bit about where I landed vis-a-vis DC Comics after half a year, so I've just held on to the mega-post on the topic.

And then, today, I read this blogpost from Bags and Boards.  He's been a writer on superhero comics and other comics for years, including working for Variety.  But in the post, he states that he's given up on the habits of superhero comics reading, and tied to that, the weekly trip to the comic shop.

I don't know that I'm giving up superheroes altogether, but the tone of the article and the white flag raising certainly resonates.  Frankly, if you're reading the site regularly, or you don't find all of my comics posts "too long; didn't read", none of this should come as a huge shock.  But I'm also starting to drift away from habits so ingrained that I am sure that for many of you who know me primarily through this blog or social media, you'd begin to think something was wrong.  And in some ways, I have to do some self-evaluation to wonder:  superhero comics, is it you or is it me?  And like all great romances that fail, we're likely both to blame.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Signal Watch Reads: Fantastic Four - Season One

Before I'd read the names associated with the books, I generally liked the concept behind Marvel's Season One initiative.  The books would retell the origins of Marvel's top characters and get something in bookstores and online that a new reader could pick up and enjoy.  Unlike DC's now baffling Earth One effort, Marvel basically chose to retell the same stories in a fashion that seems ready-for modern audiences.  In a way, this is the same continuity - just a wee bit cleaned up and with modern backdrops.

I believe this Fantastic Four Season One is the first Season One release, and its a promising start if the goal is to create a comfortable entry point to the Marvel Universe for someone vaguely aware of the brand and characters.

As a veteran comics read, I've tried to become more aware of the Fantastic Four in recent years, but I find my FF fandom extends only as far as the person working on the book.  Kirby?  Yes!  Mark Waid?  Absolutely.  But when Mark Millar took on the book a few years ago, I dropped it and never came back.  And that was after some bumpy readership between Waid and Millar during which my reading was never steady.


Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Hey, let's talk about that whole Ghost Rider thing and how comics rely of the Gray Market


I've never understood exactly how the comics convention industry works.  But more than that, I haven't understood how, the past few years, its become increasingly popular for folks to take to Etsy or to some other place on the web and sell non-licensed images of licensed characters.  Heck, I'm not clear that some of the published material in a few artists' sketch books I've bought were reproduced and sold to me legally in the strictest sense.

What seems to have brought all of this to a head is that former comics artist Gary Friedrich, the man who (sort of, maybe not) invented the motorcycle-riding, flame-skulled character Ghost Rider for Marvel has sued Marvel (now owned by Disney) for one reason or another, and Disney counter-sued with a $17,000 lawsuit at Friedrich for the proceeds he's earned by attending cons and selling sketches of Ghost Rider.  (See the very clever Ty Templeton cartoon for a rebuttal).

I point you to this article, because it echoes a lot of what I'd always wondered about how the industry has been  more or less ignoring the very real problem at the center of the Con and Commission Sketch sub-industry in comics.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Some good reads: Memorial #1 and Daredevil #7

If you haven't been past your comic shop yet, or you might be heading back soon, I wanted to pitch two comics to you.  One is a brand new series, the other one of Marvel's oldest mainstay characters, and so it gives me two very different things to discuss and recommend for different reasons.

Memorial #1 
written by Chris Roberson, art by Rick Ellis and colors by Grace Allison

I have a feeling that if issue #2 continues on from where issue #1 started, and this thing expands the way I think it could, we're going to be looking at one of the "next big things" for comics fans.

In TV and comics, there are ways to lay groundwork while laying out tantalizing bits of "what's really happening" or setting up a mythology, and its difficult to pinpoint how a series on TV like Lost can do this so well, and then the reboot of V comes along, and it has all the fun of solving a big book of word problems.

It has to do, of course, with clearly defined (and new but readily understood) characters, buy-able circumstances for characters that set an internal logic from the beginning, what was presented as hints about what's happening without being unnecessarily oblique.

If this were a TV series, I think we just saw the first half-hour of the 90 minute pilot, and it was very promising. We get a lovely tabula rasa set up for our start, that we know we'll populate with backstory, despotic fairytale queens, and plenty of hints about who our villains are, and the circumstances that led them to villainy.  Its a compelling soup of familiar and unfamiliar, and I am very curious to see where it heads.

Mostly, unlike so many #1's I've read in the DCU relaunch, this didn't have me wanting to know more to guess how they would do this, or fix it, or how this compared to my expectations.  This was starting fresh, and it felt fresh and absolutely necessary against the backdrop of the state of the industry.

Give it a shot.  You can find Memorial #1 from IDW out as of Wednesday, Dec. 21 at your local shop, and online at comixology.

Recommended for fans of Sandman, Fables, Unwritten and Books of Magic.

Daredevil #7
by Mark Waid, Paulo Rivera and Joe Rivera with colorist Javier Rodriguez


The constant push to write for the trade and the industry's devotion to the 6 issue storyline has meant that we've all but lost a vestige of the 80's on most of superherodom in comics.  When writers like Claremont were on books like X-Men, as powerful as a multi-issue story-arc could be (and how that was handled differently them plotting out over years sometimes), often it was the stand-alone story between stories that worked as a short story, and revealed character in the way day-in-the-life or short-form stories can.

Waid has always been talented, but of late, the man has been firing on all cylinders on all of his projects.  On Daredevil, he's rescued the character from a whirlpool of negativity that started in the 1980's with Miller's work, was used to excellent effect in some of Bendis's run on the character, built upon by Brubaker, but essentially left Matt Murdock with nowhere to go.

Waid continues to play off this problem in this issue, as the mission of this run has been to make Matt Murdock a character whose stories people might want to read for enjoyment, not endure out of duty.  Matt Murdock, the character, has reclaimed life, and as readers, we get to enjoy that, too.

This issue follows Murdock in a set of unfortunate circumstances leading kids to safety through a snowstorm.  the subject material shouldn't feel like an 80's throwback, but I simply can't point to enough periods in the past 20 years when a writer was offered the opportunity to tell this kind of revealing story in a mainstream book, or saw the potential in such "ordinary" circumstances.

Its a straight up amazing read, and shows not just why Daredevil works as a character, but why Waid's understanding of character and what real drama can look like in a comic about men in tights, keeps the whole thing engaging and reminds readers how this medium and this genre can work on a very good day.

 


Friday, December 16, 2011

Marvel finally starts working on Disney comics

It seems Marvel is going to release a Toy Story limited series later this year. Toy Story, while more Pixar than traditional Disney (although the Disney Store would beg to differ), was also one of the first titles launched by Boom! when they began rolling out Disney properties under their license.

I thought Boom! did a phenomenal job handling the Disney properties. Maybe TOO phenomenal as I spent a lot of money on Disney comics for a spot there as Boom! flooded the kids' section with Pixar and Disney properties, both new and licensed from the European and classic American Disney comics.

They also wisely repacked their comics in inexpensive, kid friendly collections.

Really, it was a lot of fun. And so when Disney purchased Marvel, I knew that a wrench would get thrown in the works.

Now, this is one comic of a four-issue limited series of one property. I am still not able to buy new issues of Mickey, Scrooge or Donald. But I will be watching Marvel in 2012 to see what they try. And, hopefully, it won't mess with the great work Fantagraphics is doing collecting the really old school Disney strips and comics.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

JimD's Daredevil Deposition of Mark Waid!

JimD, the original Signal Corpsman, and one of the contributors at the always fine Abnormal Use law blog, has landed an interview with comics scribe Mark Waid (one of my personal heroes).

As you may know, Mark Waid is currently writing (Here Comes) Daredevil, and like everything else the man has touched the past decade, its just another darn fine comic.  Our protagonist, Daredevil, is, by day, attorney Matt Murdock.  And thus: our connection.

Don't take our word for it - read JimD's post and then go to your local comic shop this week and find Daredevil #4.  And then buy the previous issues if they're on the shelf.

You have to like it.  Cap AND Daredevil.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Today would be Jack Kirby's 94th Birthday

Did you enjoy the movie of Thor? Captain America? The Fantastic Four movies? The X-Men?

aw yeaaaah, Kirby!

What about Thundarr the Barbarian, the 1980's kid's cartoon?

All originated by Jack "King" Kirby. Today would be Kirby's 94th Birthday.

You can visit the online museum dedicated to Jack Kirby right now.

In the future, Kirby will suffer from the same rumors that plague Shakespeare today. How could one man come up with so many ideas? Produce such a volume of work? How could one man have contributed so much to the story-telling mythology of America and the World? He makes Hans Christian Andersen seem like a slacker.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Signal Watch Reads: (Here Comes) Daredevil 2

(Here Comes) Daredevil #2
writer - Mark Waid
penciler - Paolo Rivera
inker - Joe Rivera
color artist - Javier Rodriguez
letterer - VC's Joe Caramagna
asst. editor - Ellie Pyle
editor - Stephen Wacker


What? I'm looking at a MARVEL comic???? Everybody just breathe easy, and we'll get through this.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Signal Watch Watches: Captain America - The First Avenger

I really liked this movie.  How's that for a review for you? 

I kid you not, I realized at about the 1.5 hour mark, I'd been smiling since the first two minutes.  That's not hyperbole.

I may not be the world's biggest Captain America fan or Marvel aficionado (I know two readers to this site that way trump my Cap fandom - Jake and CanadianSimon*), and while I've always liked Cap, somehow I never really became the kind of guy who picked up Cap every month.  I've been a "get the trade" sort of reader for the past few years, and I've picked up a few backlog items, certainly don't grab all the "let's flood the market" stuff Marvel tends to do with characters whenever their sales show signs of a pulse.  Prior to Brubaker coming on Cap, the longest run I think read was the entirety of Waid's Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty when that was in print.


Like Superman in the DCU, I think you can point to Cap as the moral center and heroic inspiration for both other characters in the Marvel U and for what the Marvel readership immediately clicks to when they think about "which character exemplifies unfettered heroism the most?"  Deep down, both Steve Rogers and Clark Kent have a lot in common, and its the "we do the right thing because its the right thing to do" aspect of both which really appeals to me.  Whether Steve Rogers got his ability from Vita-Rays or whether Superman got his from his alien physiology, these characters were going to make a difference in the world somehow just based upon who they were.**

Saturday, July 30, 2011

So guess who just met comics scribe Mark Waid while seeing Captain America?

Wow! Fun night.

Me and Pal Kevin headed up north, had a lovely dinner and then ran over to the Gateway theater where Austin Books hosted a screening of Captain America with the Austin Chronicle. In attendance: Mark Waid.

Firstly, I am a big fan of Mark Waid's work on Flash, Captain America, Kingdom Come, Irredeemable and a whole lot of other books and characters. Secondly, of Marvel's roster of characters, Captain America is one of my three favorites (with Spidey and maybe Rocket Raccoon).

Waid (left) puts up with the unruly Austinites

So, this was kind of a big deal for me. Oh, and I also won a hat by answering a trivia question.

I actually had all the books that ABC had brought with them to purchase and get signed (like I said, I'm a Mark Waid fan), so I thought - ah, heck.  Why not?

yeah, I made him sign the hat, too

Mark Waid will be at Austin Books on Saturday from 4-7pm, if you have a chance to stop by.

My review of Cap is coming, but (spoilers) - I loved that thing.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

No, I haven't really thought much about the fact that Ultimate Spider-Man died/ is going to die/ whatever

I used to read Ultimate Spider-Man with great fervor, but before issue 100, I quit reading.  I have many, many volumes of Ultimate Spidey.  At one point, I looked forward to each new volume, and then one day I just sort of realized I wasn't into it anymore.  This was all before the big world-shattering event a couple years back, the name of which I don't remember.

The "Ultimate" comics were the intentional second-universe of Marvel books intended to, initially, kick-start the Marvel U for a new generation.  That didn't really happen (although one could argue the creative directions in the books significantly helped guide the mainstream Marvel U), and it mostly meant Marvel now has an "Earth 2" that they can muck with and use to kill characters when it seems "neat".  These books sell decently, but their star has certainly fallen in sales and "who gives a @#$% anymore?" in the comics geek-o-sphere.

A while back Marvel brass said they planned to start routinely killing characters because of what it did for sales.  They were maybe joking, but it sure didn't sound like it.  Plus, they do, in fact, keep killing characters because of what it does for sales.  It was when they made the announcement that I felt the last vestiges of my Marvel fandom slip away.  I'm now a fan of creators who go to work at Marvel, and I'm a fan of certain characters (see:  Rocket Raccoon), but I just don't care anymore about the company.

Anyhow, RHPT asked if I knew about the death of Ultimate Spider-Man/ Peter Parker occurring in the pages of Ultimate Spidey this week.

I knew it was coming thanks to the fact that Marvel called their months' long storyline "The Death of Ultimate Spider-Man", but I didn't know when it was going down as I don't buy Ultimate Spidey anymore and haven't since about 2007 or so. 

From the article:
Fans of Spider-Man need not worry much, though, because the Ultimates imprint is separate from Marvel's bigger universe. Whatever fate may befall Ultimate Spider-Man won't count in the pages of the other series, including Amazing Spider-Man.
So, there's another reason I don't take much notice.

I am sure the death is story driven, etc...  but I'm just not involved as a reader or fan.  So, aside from basically knowing Ultimate Spidey is dead as a point of trivia, its not anything that I'm worked up about.

A few items about DC Comics - newsstand, credits on Green Lantern film, etc...

Comics coming back to the newsstand

Marvel got some ink Monday for mentioning that they are going to be working with retail chains to get their comics back on newsstands.  That's a great move, and its something I've been hoping for for a long, long time.  No doubt as info comes out about the DC Relaunch and marketing efforts associated with the relaunch (which really means very little until sales roll in), Marvel is scrambling to make sure they're part of the newsfeed, too, and don't appear to be lagging.  And, you know what?  They're not.

Yes, they were ahead on the iPad thing, for whatever that's been worth.  But surely the "day and date" digital stuff from DC put a bee in their bonnet, especially after the $2.99 fiasco.

But you may remember this Bleeding Cool post from June 3rd of DC and Marvel books sharing the shelf at Barnes and Noble. Those are floppies, not trades.

DC is about to go on a media blitz advertising the fact that their comics are on sale online and in comic shops, but...  you don't do a wide canvas national TV ad campaign unless you're putting out a product people can buy damn near everywhere, not at $2.99 a pop.

Green Lantern Creators not named

In all the hubbub about the box office for Green Lantern and "mixed"* reviews, the media hasn't noticed that the creators of Green Lantern aren't exactly enjoying the celebratory spotlight of Stan Lee or the up-front credits of Bob Kane and Siegel and Shuster on their character's movies.

Noah Kuttler's discussion of why this is important.  

also, Noah's review and then one from Gerry.



*read: poor

Monday, June 13, 2011

Signal Watch Watches: X-Men First Class

I think its worth mentioning that at one point in the comics, the X-Men battled a villain named Count Nefaria.  And maybe that's who the villain should have been in X-Men: First Class, because, goodness, that Kevin Bacon was most certainly a bad guy.

You're pretty much doomed to a life of villainy with a  name like "Nefaria".
I was a huge (HUGE) X-fan for a good stretch of my adolescence, and you can probably blame quite a bit of my comics fandom on Uncanny X-Men #210, which was the first time I read and re-read and re-read a comic like that.  And it taught me to buy back-issues, which is why I have a run of Uncanny that extends from issue 168 straight to 330 or so before I miss an issue.*  Looking at release dates, that's about a decade of straight X-Men reading between 210 and 330, and quite a bit of back-issue buying I did, and it represents a pretty good chunk of a young person's life, from age 11 to 21.

But when I parted ways with X-Men, we'd significantly grown apart.  X-Men had become more a book about oddly drawn characters with lots of pockets and enormous weaponry than a book about mutants protecting the very humans who hated and feared them.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Signal Watch Watches: THOR

There are going to be plenty of straight-up reviews out there of the first really big offering of the Summer Movie Season, so I'll spare you an attempt at all that.

1) Like many Marvel movies, I've only a cursory knowledge of Thor as he exists in comics. As a kid, the character just didn't work for me at all (I thought the same thing about Superman, so, natch), and never really grew interested in Thor. I'm not much of a swords'n'sorcery guy, and I just wasn't interested in the mix of faux-Shakespearean dialect and modern interpretation of myth. I would look at Thor in Avengers, and he always seemed oddly out of place, like seeing Chewbacca show up in an X-Files episode because it's all sci-fi.

2) I think my Kirby-adoration has given me a better understanding of Thor these days, and I've spoken some with CanadianSimon about Thor, and, frankly, I am trying to free up my budget to get my hands on some of the Walt Simonson Thor. It just sounds too good.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Captain America Trailer Hits

don't tell me this doesn't look like Cap, because this is more or less Cap as I understand him and for the past decade, this has been pretty much exactly Cap.

Still, its a little weird to see the Hydra stuff in the middle of a WWII movie.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

If this is true, I am done with Marvel Comics

Comics rumor-meister Rich Johnston is reporting that Marvel stated at Comics Pro (a comics retailer summit currently happening in Dallas), that they plan to kill off a major character every quarter.

Its not that I want Marvel to go away because I read more DC... 

Look, I have my opinions about creative bankruptcy, the sort of stories and the tone at Marvel as the Ed Hardy of comics publishers of late.  I know these are fictional characters, etc...  that the deaths are fictional,  and before anyone says "gee, you're really in the bag for DC":  I grew up on X-Men and Spidey, smidges of Punisher and small doses of Cap (I was never a Hulk, FF or Avengers reader), and I'm happy to talk Marvel credentials any time.

But I don't think I like what a planned "death-per-quarter as selling point" says about what Marvel thinks about me as a consumer.  If true, its so breath-takingly cynical. 

I get that when you're of a certain age, your definition of hero and bad-ass come down to certain ideas about the world being a hard, cold place, and you can idolize characters or people who seem to represent a perspective that seems able to embrace that perspective, and thus you get folks who skew really far one way and get guys who shop at Hot Topic and think My Chemical Romance is really on to something, and other folks who think MMA cage-fighting represents some keen problem-solving abilities.   And so, yeah, if the world is cold and dark and whatnot, and if your superheroes are for adults, then some of them have to die (not like stupid little-kid superheroes).  So why not kill your fictional characters on a schedule fit to meet quarterly demands by your corporate overlords who want to know why the quarter where Cap died seemed to go so well? 

Does death create a new space in which to tell stories?  Absolutely.  Right up until its a corporate mandate insisting "this is good comics".

While there is a certainly poetry to scheduled hero-cide to fit corporate revenue cycles and to serve stock value, its all a little...  sad, isn't it?  I'm not saying product placement meetings with Popsicle and DC Comics going on right now to create GL ice cream treats don't seem a little goofy...  but its also sort of weird to hear Marvel just come clean and give a peek behind the curtain (if true).  The meaninglessness of frequent character deaths in comics has become a corporate mandate far beyond the editorial bullpen.

I'm not kidding.  I only read Cap and a smattering of other Marvel stuff these days.  I'm looking for an excuse to just quit looking at Marvel's offerings, and if they really want to believe the only way I can get my kicks anymore is by watching characters get snuffed and watching wide-eyed at the fall-out?  Maybe its time we part ways.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

SOTU, Eraser, Fantastic Four

I write to you, a man who has just finished watching the 2011 State of the Union Address in a Courtyard Marriot in Waco, Texas... a man who has eaten some really awful Chinese food at a building that once housed a proud fried chicken joint I liked in middle school... a man who was delighted to realize his mid-range hotel had a full bar with a bartender...

Anyway, I did watch the State of the Union. Whatever. I don't get much fired up about the political game these days, so much as I get fired up about participating in government, and I consider those two separate things. ie: I will always vote, and I work for the state partially because I like the idea of serving something bigger than myself or the needs of shareholders. I am too old and cynical to take the bait when it comes to platitudes regarding education and social infrastructure that, once push comes to shove, won't be funded (even at a fraction of the cost of robot dog missles or whatever we're cooking up this week...) nor do I get excited about what some young congressman from Yahooville reads from a teleprompter, as if these thoughts occurred to him as he sipped a martini and listened to the address on the radio.

I voted this year. I'll vote again next year and the year after that. But enjoying the right to vote is not, for me, the same as engaging in politics as hometown team spectator sport.

You know, I definitely over-romanticize old school corrupt politics, political machines like Tammany Hall and political conventions having more meaning than the Golden Globes. I never lived any of that. And its probably wrong to long for the days when the corruption was mustache-ier and people got stabbed more often during ballot counting. But its not like its hard to guess who is buttering whose bread based on watching who claps for what during these clown shows.

I didn't watch the response because... I can think the words "everything he just said was a damn, dirty lie" to myself. Now, I missed Bachmann's response but the Twittersphere seemed positively incandescent pondering what they were seeing. Sadly, by the time I got over to CNN from the Telenovella I'd tuned to (the hair on those ladies is so SHINY), Bachmann was done using her words and Headline News was literally already back to talking about Jersey Shore.

That's okay. AMC is now showing Eraser, which I made Jason and Jamie go see in the theater during its original release because (a) Arnie, and (B) Vanessa Williams. Mostly B. Man, this movie is everything that went wrong with 90's action movies by the end of the decade. But, you know, it features lots of Point B.

And... right. Today Marvel Comics released their latest issue of Fantastic Four, a comic I like in theory much more than execution unless Mark Waid is writing the book (Sorry, rest of industry). In this story, one of the FF was scheduled to die, a move so routine in comics as an attention grabber, its quite literally true that we now expect the "death" of at least two major character per universe per year, followed by a much less celebrated resurrection.

I only read FF for about two years back in the mid 00's, and during that time, one of the FF died, too. So, you know, it happens.

Ah, wait. Bully has a terrific post on the topic.

I actually did hit a comic shop today after my meeting. Bankston's here in Waco is a sister store to Austin Books and Comics as its owned by the brother of the owner of ABC. Anyhow, they have a terrific selection, its a really fun shop, and I always have to make sure I have a gameplan when I walk in the door, because its a place I could easily go crazy.

Yes, they had the issue of FF by the cash register, all wrapped up in a black bag, a la "Death of Superman". And I looked at it and looked at it... but the thought of actually buying it never crossed my mind. Death of major characters has officially become so commonplace, even a well-marketed and well-placed copy of the comic can't pique my curiosity.

I did, however, grab Superman/ Batman #80, which has been getting some great notices and penned by Chris Roberson (and issue 79 rocked my socks).

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Reason #347 for why I'm not buying that many new comics these days: Stop With the "Death of" Stories Already

The most refreshing thing about the recent Death of Batman storyline was, of course, the crazy good story Grant Morrison wove across months and months of Batman comics.  But the second most refreshing thing was that within a few dozen pages of Batman "dying" in Final Crisis, we saw Batmas was actually and okay and doing landscape paintings or some such in a cave at the dawn of humanity.

It wasn't even particularly shocking in 1992 when DC "killed" Superman for a few months, as part of the meta-narrative all along was that the story was more of an exploration of what would happen if Superman died (your mileage will vary on the success of that mission), but we all knew DC wasn't actually killing off Big Blue.

The only deaths that were taken as "permanent" in comics, until a few years ago, were Uncle Ben in Spider-Man, Bucky in Captain America and Jason Todd in Batman comics.  Of those, only 1/3rd remain stone-cold chilling beneath the earth.  And I guarantee its a matter of time before some "edgy" writer and editor cook up a plan to bring back Uncle Ben, revealing that he didn't really die, but went to Europe where he plotted his revenge against Spider-Man.*  Or, if they're really edgy, he'll be resurrected as an undead cyborg thing that terrorizes Peter Parker and becomes a hot, hot property for intellectually challenged comic fans.

But...  hey, comic sales are slumping.  That "The Punisher is now a Frankenstein monster!" bit didn't pull you out of the hole.  Why not kill off both Spider-Man and 1/4 of the Fantastic Four in the same news cycle?

Le sigh.

Spider-Man is getting dead, at least in the parallel Ultimate universe.  (I so gave up on the Ultimate titles about four years ago.)

And I guess Marvel is going to kill Sue Storm, because, you know, emotional impact, yadda yadda.  At least that's what Vegas odds-makers are guessing.

I know I'm DC centric, but one small part of that is that I think DC is often a little quicker to stop running a particular idea into the ground, whereas the Quesada-era Marvel seems to think that you must beat a concept into the ground until someone begs for mercy.**

Word is that Didio and Co. kind of decided the Death of Batman thing was kind of it for them, and Blackest Night certainly indicated that they don't want to go any further with deaths and resurrections. And I hope that's true for a good, long while.

And while its possible the death of Spidey in the Ultimate Line could, in fact, be permanent, scientific polls suggest that absolutely nobody cares.  And absolutely nobody believes that any of the FF is actually off the board.  (And I'd argue that Marvel handles this stuff a lot more clumsily than DC.  I liked the Captain America stuff okay, but....  that return of Cap story was some pretty awkward stuff from Brubaker.  It felt far more deus ex machina than Morrison's extended albeit similar plot for Bats).

But:  Its done.  Its played out.  I can't even pretend this could be good anymore.

*because this is exactly what Marvel did with the Green Goblin after he'd been dead a good, long while
**Your shame-centers have to have been surgically removed to approve as many Deadpool titles as I see on the shelves these days, and...  really?  There's that kind of demand for Thor?  I'm not buying it.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Weekend Wrap-Up: Double Indemnity, Marvels Project, Superman and Legion comics

Before we get started:

Here's a great article you might want to check out on Newsweek's site
. Thank my brother for sending me the link.

For those of us interested in the working world of the Golden Age of comics, this is a must read about an Austrian immigrant to the US who found work as one of the few female artists in comics. Sounds like a terrific companion piece to Kavalier and Clay, only, you know, non-fiction. But she seems like a real life melding of Kavalier and Rosa Saks. Just... wild stuff. I had never actually heard of this person, I believe, so... you learn new stuff every day.

Oddly, the article doesn't include any actual art work... and I'm having trouble finding examples online. Here you go:



The article also misidentifies some details tied to subject Valerie D'Orazio. D'Orazio left DC, not Marvel. I believe the comic in question was Identity Crisis.


Movie I watched: Double Indemnity



I've been meaning to watch this one since college.

It's an interesting picture. I am no Billy Wilder aficionado, but the man's work is impressive when I see it. Double Indemnity is definitive noir, and has been endlessly copied, to the point where a modern audience might find it a bit trite. But in 1944, there weren't any movies like this one. Not yet.

The cast is small, in the way of these things. But Stanwyck puts down the template for femme fatale in this one.


boozy scheming is the best scheming

But as so often happens in the oft-imitated movie, even if imitators have made the beats of the original a bit easy to read, the performances and script of the original still feels fresh and well worth seeing.

I watched a short doc about the film that was on the DVD. Eddie Muller and others discuss the film, and they had a cut scene which would have deeply changed the finale of the movie (I think the finale in the film works a bit better). I was glad to see I wasn't crazy as while I was watching the movie, at a few key moments I felt that Wilder was borrowing from Hitchcock's playbook. Well, so Wilder was. Apparently, he was a fan.


Comics I read:

Marvels Project: Birth of the Super Heroes by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting

Ed Brubaker is a solid, solid writer. While this book is always going to suffer by comparison to Busiek's Marvels, simply because Kurt Busiek got there first, its great to see Brubaker lay out part of an origin not just for Captain America or Namor, but for the foundations of the Marvel Universe leading up and facing the early days of Waorld War II. Solidly in current Marvel continuity, it manages to retell familiar origins and stories while winding together a new story told from the perspective of a footnote in Marvel's lengthy publishing history, The Angel.


when discussing Golden Age Marvel, you HAVE to include the Torch/ Namor fight. There's a law somewhere that says so.

Unfortunately, I do think Brubaker left a few too many questions unanswered. With as little information as we got about John Steele, and as I knew nothing about him prior to reading this comic, the character has no beginning or end, just a middle, and its a distracting bit of the comic.

In comparison to Marvels, and even to volumes such as Robinson's The Golden Age at DC, the story feels terribly incomplete unless Brubaker intends for additional volumes to follow (which I would welcome), or if he plans to just point to other materials as his ending.

Steve Epting's art is always impressive, and here it fits the tone very well. These aren't intergalactic space gods, but men in garish costumes on the streets of New York. Epting's hints at realism, and ability to draw believable, distinguishable faces, is put to great use and fits The Angel's near pragmatic narrative tone.

All in all, for fans of the Marvel U who weren't picking up comics when Marvels hit the shelves, or for fans of superheroes in general, this is a great volume. Brubaker really captures the spirit of the brave new era of superhero comics in the guise of the superheroes themselves.

Supergirl, Adventure Comics, Legion of Super-Heroes, Action Comics:

Okay, I read my superhero comics in a particular order, and I start with the Superman titles out of my stack.

Freed from the drain-circling narrative death spiral that was the New Krypton storyline, Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle are making serious hay on Supergirl. It took more than fifty issues, but I finally turned to Jamie and said "you should read this Supergirl comic. This is a fun superhero read."

This issue gave us Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang, Supergirl herself, and Bizarro Supergirl. Which is: awesome. Plus, one of those great cliff-hanger endings that's more "how are they going to resolve this?" more than "oh no, how could she survive?". Just very clever stuff.

On Adventure Comics, classic Legion writer Paul Levitz (now back to writing after leaving his position as Publisher at DC) is showing no signs of rust and doing a great job telling "tales of a young Legion (with Superboy!)". I've been very happy with his work both here, and on the recently launched Legion of Super-Heroes title. The truth is that I wasn't reading Legion when Levitz was the writer, and my only knowledge of his work comes from a few collections I picked up, but I can definitely see the appeal. And its interesting to ponder what a different company DC would be today had Levitz kept on Legion and been able to maintain the popularity of the series.

Better late than never to return, I think.

Anyway, Levitz may be tying back to his earlier work (you know what I'm talking about, Signal Corps. Wink.). So if you're feeling nostalgic for yesteryear, there you go.

This also marked the start of Sweet Tooth and Essex County writer Jeff Lemire's work on Adventure Comics back-up series, The Atom. And this first installment was surprisingly satisfying. I've always liked Ray Palmer in concept, and this sort of stuff works for me. I started off liking Simone's take of Ryan Choi and Ivy Town, but at some point, she just lost me. While I'll miss Choi, I'm happy to see The Atom back in Justice League-style adventures.

Paul Cornell's Action Comics continues to be a fun read. Featuring a psychic dual between Luthor and Captain Marvel villain, Mr. Mind (a small, talking, telepathic caterpillar), one can only hope to have a fraction of the fun reading the series that I think Cornell must be having writing it.


our villain. srsly.

As I mostly liked what JMS was at least trying to do in Superman, I'm going to chalk up a good month to the DC teams behind the Super titles.