The Four Color Media Monitor

When Dr. Light was killed in Final Crisis at least a year ago, I thought DC might've had that done because they realized he'd been rendered too embarrassing to use, at least for a while, because of how badly he'd been tarnished with the portrayal as a rapist in Identity Crisis, made worse by the appearance he made in Green Arrow a year later.

Well, as the latest tie-in to Blackest Night shows, it was a little premature to think they'd gotten rid of him just because he'd become too embarrassing to use now. In Justice League of America #39, he's shown enjoying the salt the new Firestorm's girlfriend was turned into (via The Weekly Crisis). So now, James Robinson, as the current writer of the League's ongoing series, is taking the tarnishing and making it worse by turning it into a sick joke. He clearly is going downhill. Will Inertia be next to appear as a zombie, even after the murder he was depicted committing, and will that be just as awful?

Update: while we're on the subject, I just found this very naive - well, stupid - article about the Silver Age villains of DC, that apparently sees nothing wrong with turning Dr. Light into a rapist:

Doctor Light, “that luminous wizard”, has experienced his ups and downs as a credible super-villain. By the early 1980’s, under the handling of later writers, Dr. Light had been transformed into a pompous incompetent, only a real threat if he accidentally did something right. To a whole generation of comics fans, he was a running joke. Then, in 2004, mystery novelist Brad Meltzer wrote Identity Crisis, a mini-series which not only provided an in-continuity explanation for Dr. Light’s slide into ineptitude, but restored him as a villain whose enormity of crime was genuinely calculated.

Meltzer’s plot returned the character to his roots because ruthless was certainly the way Dr. Light was depicted the first time he tried to destroy the Justice League, in a tale forebodingly titled “The Last Case of the Justice League”, from JLA # 12 (Jun., 1962).

[...]

It was quite a comedown for Dr. Light, from formidable master villain to impotent underling. Now that I think about it, this is probably when his image started slipping. As the Silver Age passed into the Bronze Age, Dr.Light would take more stabs at killing the Justice Leaguers, both individually and as a group. But he never had the same aura of menace and readers no longer looked upon him as an "A-list" villain, and by the 1980's, he was about as threatening as a "Special Guest Villain" on Batman. It would take twenty years, and Brad Meltzer, before Dr. Light became a true figure of evil, again.

Boy, what kind of leftist wrote this weakling of a "history article"? It didn't so much as return Arthur Light to his roots as it did make him otherwise unbearable and leave readers with a bad aftertaste. After all, it's hard to accept a villain like Light when you're under the impression that he's willing to stoop to rape again, and hard to believe that he wouldn't do so again either. And an "in-continuity explanation"? My foot. The moonbat who wrote that fluff-coated, defeatist monstrosity should be ashamed of himself. What a piece of knee-jerk crap.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Justice League of America, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, violence

The Global Post is telling that South Korean manhwa, the Korean word for comics, just like manga is the Japanese word for the same, may be on its way to surpassing manga in popularity in Asia.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

In the fifth issue of Justice League: Cry for Justice, Arsenal, who for some time now has been renamed Red Arrow, gets his right forearm cut off (via Supergirl Comic Box Commentary). And writer James Robinson, I'd say, has hit a new low.

I suppose we can guess what might happen when the Titans replace the real League: Roy, if he survives, will have a cybernetic arm. I'm sorry, this is getting very degrading already, and even now, this present act of gore was unwelcome to begin with. Roy is another hero who's been misused once too often, and whether he gets his whole flesh-blood arm restored, it won't excuse the tasteless abuse already featured in this miniseries.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Justice League of America, moonbat writers, Titans, violence

Popular Mechanics published an interview with Prof. James Kakalios of the Minnesota University about his book, The Physics of Superheroes, about why he thinks comics are good teaching tools in science.

Interestingly enough, at the end of the article, he tells that his favorite superhero is the Atom, Ray Palmer. It makes me wonder, what does he think of the tarnishing and damage DC Comics did to the World's Smallest Superhero in the past several years?

Labels: Atom, dc comics, science

In an interview in USA Today about Image United, the joke production they're doing that brings back several people from their limp beginnings, the artist Whilce Portacio commends, of all possible contributors to this ridiculous reunion, the terrible Rob Liefeld:

Q. Whose work has surprised you the most during this process?

A. Rob Liefeld's work has surprised me the most. Arguably, Rob has taken a lot of the hits aimed at Image over the years. Let me add that I really didn't know Rob all that well before we got going with this whole thing. But for all those hits that Rob has taken, he just continued to draw. He's always drawing. For a lesser person to take the hits he took, they would have left the industry.

Rob hunkered down. I look at the stuff he's doing on Deadpool now and it's great. His proportions are all there and his linework is magnificent. He persevered through the criticism and came out a much better and much stronger artist.

Oh, I'll bet he did. His work of yore was horrific, and I doubt he's improved much, if at all. If the industry were saner, he would've been banished years ago. And Portacio's probably just lauding Liefeld because the latter had good things to say about him in his own sugarcoated interview for the same paper this week. Predictably, there's otherwise no mention of why they took flak for the limp storytelling they offered during the 1990s, and the newspaper has only scraped bottom by sucking up to these people instead of offering something more meaty, like telling how the comics industry has been going down the drain for years now thanks to this kind of nonsense.

Labels: dreadful artists, indie publishers, msm propaganda

A writer for the Wall Street Journal explains why Japan's anime industry and studios are now facing problems, including less employees, that are leading to its potential decline.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

An article on Japan Today about the manga series about wine production called Kami no Shizuku (Drops of God), which is still quite successful after 5 years.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

An article in the English section of the Asahi Shimbun about the British Museum's premiere of a special manga exhibit, topped by a series called Professor Munakata.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

A writer at Big Hollywood presents another essay written by famous artist Steve Ditko on the comic book world and philosophy.

Labels: good artists

The Boulder Daily Camera of Colorado follows the example set by the Boston Globe, and provides their own local fluff-coated coverage of store sales:

In the comic industry, superheroes are saving stores from the economic downturn. With a leap and a bound, sales have increased an estimated 1 percent at specialty retailers during the recession.

Only one percent? That's asking a lot from the readers then to believe things are really as great as they'd like to think.

The estimate provided by industry tracker comichron.com -- which doesn't include revenue at big-box bookstores -- shows sales reached $324.6 million between January and September.

At Time Warp Comics and Games on 28th Street, where Batman and Spiderman logos glow on the storefront windows, sales mirror the national trend. The owner credits the uptick to the loyal buying habits of collectors and several events hosted to celebrate the shop's 25th anniversary.

Carlson, a regular customer of Time Warp, said he drives up to the Boulder store twice a month. Collectors are a loyal bunch, he said, but some are irked that comic giant Marvel has increased the price on its comics from $2.99 to $3.99.

"Marvel has upset a lot of fans," he said. "They're trying to test the market."

Wayne Winsett, owner of Time Warp, said sales at his shop have increased about 8 percent since last year, and he's hoping for a busy holiday season.

Just because one store might have a boost in sales does not mean all stores across the country are having the same upturn in fortunes, and I assume the sales stats they provide from the industry tracker haven't been all that different from the past several years, if the earlier report is any indication. It could also have more to do with the price increase providing a temporary boost in sales than an actual increase in consumerism.

And Marvel has upset fans for much more than that, as their destruction of Spider-Man should tell.

"Collectors are an odd breed," Winsett said. "Once they start, they have a hard time stopping. It's like an addiction."

And that's just what ultimately sank the industry later on! Because they started pandering more to these collectors who aren't interested so much in storytelling as they are in trying to turn a profit on their collections. But I suspect even that can't be relied upon much longer. Plus, some collectors who are in this for storytelling value, such as myself, are starting to come out of it as the stories plummet in quality.

Like soap opera fans, he said, comic book readers follow their characters.

And when they're subject to character destruction, they stop following them. I know that I did in the past couple years.

John Bonner, owner of Halley's Comics in Fort Collins, said the industry tends to fare well in tough economic times.

"It's a good value for your dollar compared to other forms of entertainment," he said.

If only I could concur there, but the claim of surviving well in hard economic times, alas, is greatly exaggerated.

Labels: marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales

The fifth issue of Flash: Rebirth has finally, after 3 months of delay, gone to press, and they belatedly give us an explanation for why the retcon: as the following review on Speed Force tells:

We now know that Professor Zoom went back in time, killed Nora Allen, and framed her husband for it. Or rather, we now know for sure. Not only that, but he’s been jumping through time, messing with Barry throughout his life: pushing him down the stairs, burning down his house, letting his dog out to get hit by a car, and probably drinking the last of the milk when little Barry could really use something to wash down those cookies. Eobard Thawne is a mean, petty, vindictive bastard. But then, he has a history of obsessing over Barry Allen and stalking Iris.

So any discrepancies in the flashbacks, from the blazingly obvious (weren’t Barry’s parents alive?) to the not so clear (weren’t Barry and Iris already dating by the time he got his powers?) can be explained away by Professor Zoom traveling through time.

That doesn’t make them any less retcons, though, unless Barry finds a way to *ahem* reverse them all next issue. It just makes them retcons with in-story explanations…just like retcons explained by Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, etc.

It also doesn’t make them any less cliche. There are plenty of super-heroes out there who have childhood traumas associated with the death of a parent (or both parents). It still seems pointless to tack on that kind of trauma to the Flash.

This is correct. It's still a retcon, and a cliche. Especially if it remains intact after this is over. But even if Geoff Johns does revert things back to normal at the end, which is possible,* that's not going to wipe away the bad taste this was done in, nor how it's a cheap replacement for real storytelling. I thought to myself earlier that, even if Johns is just pulling our leg, it's still not appropriate, because of how this kind of plotting laced with violence has taken the place of decent storytelling. Besides, the story was padded out for trades, when it could've been told in just 3-4 issues, and been written with brisker pace.

It's also worth noting that Johns suggested earlier that Barry Allen would be going through darker storylines as a forensics scientist, which tells that even if the end of this miniseries isn't a darkness-laden stinker, there's still going to be potentially gruesome storylines waiting in the wings, just like a lot of Johns's other past works at DC, the Flash included.

I've wondered if the reason this took so long to come out is not because Ethan Van Sciver is a slow artist, but rather, because they decided to change the storyline when they realized the audience was unlikely to accept something vicious for Barry's background. Obviously, we'll never know, but considering there were originally supposed to be just 5 issues for this mini, it's probably worth wondering.

* I'd like to think this is what'll happen at the end of Blackest Night, but even if it does happen, that's not going to excuse how DC wasted more than 5 years with limp storylines and other dreadful ideas.

Labels: dc comics, Flash, violence

Further signs that the industry is sadly weakening: ICV2 reports sales have dropped 14 percent since last year, and:

Sales on the top 100 graphic novels dropped 30% vs. October 2008, producing an over-all decline for the top 300 comics and top 100 graphic novels combined of 17%.

The year over-all has been near flat in comic stores, with a 1% decline in comic sales, 10% in graphic novels, and 2% over-all through the end of Q3 despite some months with significant declines.

So what were the Boston Globe and their quoted sources saying again? They'd do well to consider the crossovers and the trades published from them, which I suspect are part of the reason for the decline.

And in the main sales chart for last month, I see that Marvel has dropped considerably in sales. And, as I predicted, sales for both Titans and Teen Titans have begun to drop below 30,000 units. And they're like to drop even further with the direction the former is about to go in, if the following synopsis for issue 22 is any indication:

DC fans won’t want to miss this finale of the two-part "Fractured" story! As the remaining three members of the team are evicted from their New York City headquarters by General Lane, they wonder if there’s anywhere on Earth they can still call home. The answer will surprise you! This issue closes this chapter in the life of the classic Titans team and ushers in an exciting new era in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and March’s TITANS ANNUAL that’ll blow your mind!

What this strongly suggests is that, not only are the Titans being forced out of their own book, they're either being forced underground, or off of Earth as part of the next crossover plot that's likely to affect the entire universe! I most certainly will want to miss this nonsense.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, Justice League of America, marvel comics, sales, Titans

The Boston Globe writes about the opening of a comics store in the city, and turn out the gazillionth whitewash of the industry and how it's doing:

The publishing industry is in a freefall, but comic books are doing fine. You may not recognize them, however.

They're not doing fine, in sales or storytelling, but they did get the latter right: I don't recognize the famous superheroes and their supporting casts anymore; their personalities, if anything, have been rendered absolutely awful.

They couldn’t find a single financial backer willing to risk a penny on a comic book store, but the pair knows something about their kind: namely, that comic book fans, who number more adults than kids these days, are serious about their reading material. Look no further than the man who posted a comment on the store’s Facebook page praising the recommendations of the “in-house sommelier.’’ Reed has faith that the business, which has seen heady peaks (hello, Stan Lee) and crushing lows (television nearly wiped it out half a century ago), is poised for another revival.

Um, isn't that admitting something is wrong? If there's far more adults than children these days, and even that's diminishing, that shows how there's not much of an audience to look for. And thus, there's no telling if there'll be another revival.

“The writing has gotten so much stronger,’’ Reed says, “and I think people really want these stories again.’’

When they make that superficial claim, you know they're blowing it.

It’s hard to generalize to what extent superheroes on the screen inspire moviegoers to seek out the source material. Henry Scagnoli, co-owner of New England Comics, a chain of eight stores, says there’s always a bump when a new film hits theaters - sales of the graphic novel “Watchmen’’ exploded when the film version came out in March - but that it varies wildly in size and duration. Moreover, the vagaries of the comics business are far more complex than fallout from a film.

“Readership changes but that’s more a function of storytelling. Each comic has its own ebb and flow. It’s like a TV show: If you have poor storytelling the popularity goes down,’’ says Scagnoli, who founded New England Comics in 1983. “To stick around this long you have to ride with the flow.’’

And that's just why Spider-Man, among many other mainstream comics, have been losing so much audience for 2 years now, because there's more than a bit of poor writing abound. How did that elude the people involved in writing this article?

...according to John Jackson Miller, a longtime industry analyst who runs the website Comichron.com and is himself a comic book writer, it’s the bound volumes of collected stories, called trade paperbacks, that saved the comics industry after a deep depression in the 1990s. They can be found in mainstream bookstores and malls across the country.

“We invented a new way of selling,’’ Miller says. “It’s like a DVD release for a movie, a second life. Publishers realized that it can help finance production, and it also allows Hollywood to see reader-tested stories. We’re up right now by about 1 percent over a year ago. Almost by accident, comic books are the healthiest magazine in the industry.’’

But not at the big two, which still carry much of the overall output. Over there, storytelling has been tasteless for years now, and their recent sales have reflected this. And if the bad crossovers start to take up the bulk of what you see on shelves at the store, that's why even sales for trade paperbacks may be declining now too.

More people are reading comics than at any time during the past two decades, yet readership is split among hard-core customers, who spend an average of $1,000 a year or more on comics, and a larger pool of casual consumers, who routinely spend only a few hundred dollars annually, says Milton Griepp, the publisher of ICV2.com, a website that covers the industry. The spread is bigger, but profits are not. And there are other challenges, especially for independent store owners. Tony Davis, owner of Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square, counts the ways in which a shifting commercial and cultural landscape is eating away at his business.

“We used to sit between Tower Records and WordsWorth Books - it was media city - and with those gone, foot traffic patterns are different,’’ Davis says. “Like any bookstore we’re facing online competition. There’s illegal downloading. And our customer base is graying. There used to be all these 12-year-old boys running around in here, and that’s a rarity now. The male adolescent fantasy has moved from comics to video games.’’

I'm afraid the part about casual consumers is very ambiguous, as it could just as well suggest people who're already used to buying comics, and are doing it now in hopes they'll find some simple slice of entertainment. But even that's becoming hard to find.

At least they admit what's become sadly clear for years now: that youngsters are becoming fewer and fewer at their stores.

Labels: crossoverloading, msm propaganda, sales

An article in the Chronicle Journal of Ontario, Canada, about another comics reader and physicist who's studying the physics of the superhero world.

Labels: science

In this short news item on WBDJ7 about the Roanoke Valley Comic-Con, they tell that:

The promoter says over time he's noticed the comic book hobby is attracting an older age group.

And that's another sad sign of how less children are into the hobby.

Labels: conventions

James Hudnall at Big Hollywood is talking about the death of the printed medium and how that's affecting even the comics business, not to mention the 4 dollar price they've already reached. He's also suggesting that going digital on the web may help give them some new life.

Now their is some truth to this, that the internet may yet help save the comics industry, and at the same time, trade paperbacks can also help. But there's still a few things here I'll need to take issue with, such as:

To complicate matters, the stresses of running a comics distributor in this economy has hurt the last remaining company. They have had their share of layoffs and warehouse closings. If that wasn’t scary enough for comics pros, Marvel just got bought by Disney, DC just reorganized under Warner Brothers, and long time publisher Paul Levitz was moved out. There is now a Hollywood person running DC. The future of the direct market may be uncertain at this point.

This situation is reminiscent of the industry in the late 70s. Newsstand distribution for comics was dying off and Marvel and DC were on the ropes. DC was looking to go to reprint material. No new stories. But a couple things happened that saved comics at that point, the birth of the “direct market” and the success of “Superman: The Movie,” and a few years later, the movie “Batman.” These re-energized the business in a big way which lead to a new boom in the early 90s.

The problem is, the direct market later proved to be the medium's downfall: comics left the bookstores and other forms of newsstand almost entirely and ended up doing what we call "ghettoization". They took to pandering to a smaller audience and even now, they're not making any serious attempt to bring in new people. Nor did Paul Levitz make any serious effort on his part to turn that around.

And while it's not such a great thing that a Hollywooder is running DC now, I can't feel too sorry to see Levitz leave after he gave Dan DiDio the keys to the kingdom and let him ruin the DCU's common sense and continuity, something Hudnall sadly but unsurprisingly doesn't bother to mention. Because that too is something to consider: the future of the industry depends on good storytelling as much as it does on visibility and availability to the wider public. If DC and Marvel's storytelling is poor, how do they expect the "big two" to survive?

It could take more than just the internet for veteran companies to get an audience today. Also, I've personally thought that it'd be better if comic books were to go for a format more in tune to trade paperbacks, which could help them to avoid the folly of crossovers and publicity stunts, another thing that's been killing them off. For comics to survive, that's why they have to cut out those stunts that are taking the place of real storytelling and making it impossible for writers to have real freedom, and to tell stand-alone stories.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, technology

Here's an article in the Cumberland County Daily Journal about the Newfield Library promoting readership with their growing expansion of graphic novel supplies.

Labels: libraries

So there's a movie in the works based on DC's famous WW2 army hero, as reported on the Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog, but it looks like they're about to commit another grave mistake, by setting it in the future, and, if the following tells anything:

Until now, “Rock” has retained its World War II setting, with Silver and the studio trying to make a big-budget action adventure movie that was a throwback to flicks like “The Dirty Dozen,” which feature acts of American derring-do.

But a big budget always was an obstacle and, “Inglourious Basterds” notwithstanding, period war movies have not been in vogue in Hollywood for years, unless it was a more serious contemplation of the subject like “Saving Private Ryan.” Also, American jingoism went out of style after 9/11; even this summer’s G.I. Joe movie dropped the toy’s “A Real American Hero” tagline and made the action team internationally focused.

The studio hopes moving the time period to the future solves the dilemma.

Maybe the time period will solve it, but if they're insulting patriotism, it most certainly won't. This suggests that the time-shift is merely being used as a forced excuse to avoid pro-American values. And they predictably ignore how the GI Joe movie didn't do well because the removal of anything convincingly American from that production was just one of the most alienating things about it. I don't have high hopes for this take on Sgt. Rock either. It sounds like it'll turn into the kind of disaster Jonah Hex became when the notable cowboy anti-hero from the 19th century was transported into the future in the mid-80s.

It's clear that DC is in bad hands under Time Warner's ownership. Someone with more sense who can afford it should really buy them away.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, politics

Mort Todd, a veteran in comics and animation, writes a two-part entry on Big Hollywood about the changing depiction of superheroes over the period of the 20th century, and how they degenerated into far too much angst-ridden portrayals, among other problems.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics

Dick Giordano, one of DC's most successful inkers, who was senior editor during 1983-93, has told The Toronto Star that he regrets how grimness and grittiness arose during his period (via The Beat):

What are the dangers in doing so? What specific pressures were you and Frank Miller working under with Batman? Did you have any road maps that you were following?

Comic readers (and comic companies) often reject change no matter what the intent or execution of that change. "That ain't Batman! DC really screwed up this time" The main goal in re-doing or updating a major character is to retain the audience you have while adding new readers to your audience base

Marketing and some DC execs thought it was folly. A story line set in the future? In a format never tried before (48 pages, square bound with a cover price more than double the current price point)?: "We'll be killed!"

Road map? Flying upside down was the most fun, so that's what I did.

The Dark Knight Returns additionally helped start the "grim and gritty" trends in comic storytelling that still exist today. That was an unintended result, and I am truly sorry it happened. Comics are much too dark today. Er – in my opinion ...

Maybe it's the time specifically, but why are we suddenly so in love with the idea of good guys gone bad?

Who's "we"? Not me! I miss the heroes of yesteryear. Maybe that's why I don't get much work.

I think readers have become inured to the mindless violence on TV, the movies, and are comfortable with the anti-hero ... and the fact that there are so few heroes on our planet, the concept seems kinda silly to them.

That part about few heroes on the planet isn't quite right; there are heroes if you know where to look, even today. But the problem is - people with little or no respect for heroism have taken over the asylum, and are turning even anti-heroes into unlikable losers, as in the case of Spider-Man, or even making them out to look bad for the sake of it, as in Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled, as well as the many other crossovers that both companies have published in that time. I'm not sure Giordano realizes, but that's just why the audience has become so much smaller. In the short term, DKR may have worked, but in the long term, it has had some negative effect on sales.

I own several books Giordano was an inker for as well as editor, and he's certainly one of the better people in the industry, and while there were some bad things in DC's output during his decade as their EIC, there were still plenty of gems to be found, and a time when characterization and storytelling were at a high point for a lot of their comics. But as mentioned, there were bad products turned out, and it was during that time that crossovers got started, and in the early 90s, that's when the crossovers really got out of control with the wholesale slaughter of major and minor characters for publicity stunts and desperate ploys to make sales. It was during Giordano's tenure that Armageddon, which I consider one of the first of these stunts, got published. These too are part of what he now laments.

As sad as I am that he would allow a lot of the things that later spiralled out of control to begin at the time he was EIC for DC Comics, I am glad that he's now spoken up and admitted that he regrets it had to happen. In that case, surely he might want to do even better by speaking up at a convention or going on TV and voicing his concerns there as well, so more people could get an idea what went wrong?

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, good artists, marvel comics, violence

The Nashua Telegraph gushes over Geoff Johns with the following superficial nonsense:

Forget turning lemons into lemonade; I’m beginning to think writer Geoff Johns can turn lemons into fine wine.

Johns has gained a reputation for fixing characters that have become radioactive because various revamps have made their histories too convoluted. He did it with Hawkman, he did it with the 1960s Green Lantern and Flash, and now he’s doing it with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Uh uh, I cannot agree with this, most certainly not on the Flash, which he helped to bring down several years ago, and is now helping to tarnish in retrospect. Barry Allen deserves much better.

In fact, while we're on the subject, this reminds of a continuity glitch, maybe one of the earliest goofs Johns came up with, where in 1991, he wrote the following about Cyborg in The Flash #180: "when Vic was a kid, he was caught in an explosion. Lost his limbs and almost his life." Except that, if he'd read the Tales of the New Teen Titans miniseries from 1982, he would've seen that Vic Stone had been horribly burned by a corrosive giant alien worm his own father had accidentally teleported into his laboratory at S.T.A.R headquarters, that killed his mother. Nothing compared to Johns's obsession with injecting disturbing violence into the scripts, including in Blackest Night, but still a head-shaker nonetheless.

And Johns seems to have quite a problem with changing things as they suit him, including the retcon for the weakness the power rings of many GL Corps members have to yellow, and even bringing back Sinestro in a way that doesn't jibe with earlier continuity. Another is his knack for "continuity porn". But worst of all is how he's one of Dan DiDio's yes-men. And that's what I find most alienating today about Geoff Johns.

Also: he recently turned Hawkman and Hawkgirl into living-dead zombies in Blackest Night, so I'm less sure now if he was trying to fix them.

I don't think Johns can turn lemons into fine wine at all. On the contrary, I'd say he can weave gold into straw. And I don't think I'm likely to find his take on the Legion any more appealing.

For the uninitiated, the Legion is a group of super-powered teenagers from 1,000 years in the future who, inspired by Superboy, suit up and fight bad guys. It was a throwaway concept in 1958 that refused to die and became a major part of the Superman mythos, since Superboy would routinely travel to the future as the team’s paramount member.

But along came “Crisis on Infinite Earths” in 1986, which removed Superboy from DC Comics history. That excision mortally wounded the Legion, and various reboots tried to resuscitate the corpse by filling in with ersatz Superboys.

Oh really? Well that's nothing compared to the mortal wounds inflicted upon the universe as a whole since Identity Crisis and even before. After several years, I've begun to see Johns for what he is: a most overrated writer indeed.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, Green Lantern, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence

Macworld's UK edition writes a review of Manga Studio Debut 4, a special comic strip learning and creation tool program.

Labels: manga and anime, technology

An article in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal about the West Texas Comic-Con, which is beginning this week.

Labels: conventions

Shel Dorf, who founded the SanDiego ComiCon back in 1970, is now dead at age 76. It's sad to see him go.

Most amazing about Dorf is that he understood the problem of Hollywood's infiltration:

Publicly, he complained that it was an ordeal to oversee an event that had grown so large. He also felt that "Hollywood had hijacked it," a reference to the convention broadening to reflect a wider range of entertainment that included anime and video games.

And it's understandable if he was bothered about Hollywood's takeover, because since then, it's served only to minimize the impact of the comics themselves.

Labels: conventions

Labels: Carnival entries

Publisher's Weekly writes about how a closer look would suggest that comic books have not grown up, contrary to what some might say:

In 2004, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Michael Chabon gave the keynote speech at the Eisner Awards. Speaking about the maturation of the industry, he referred to some of the excesses of the 1990s as comics "adolescence": "An excess of desire to appear grown up is one of the defining characteristics of adolescence. But these follies were the inevitable missteps and overreachings in the course of a campaign that was, in the end, successful."

[...]

The medium has matured, surely. But what about the comic book industry? I worry that the mainstream comic book industry still as adolescent as ever while the book industry is taking over and making strides by acting like professional adults.

[...]

The view from the outside of the comics industry may view the medium as increasingly worthy of serious attention. However, the view from the inside still reveals a lot of adolescent stagnation—in comics' content, professionals' behavior, and fans' attitudes.

There's another way to describe these inner problems: juvenility. That's exactly the problem that comics still have not shaken for many years. And, if they're going to allow mindless violence and sexism to continue to run rampant (like in Identity Crisis, Avengers: Disassembled, and Batman: War Games/Crimes, Final Crisis, Blackest Night, among other examples), something this article alludes to, if they let their political standings get the better of their writing talents, and if diehard fans are going to act as though nobody's got the right to make a critique for a legitimate reason, among other detrimental problems, the outer world will likely catch on sooner or later, and it'll only serve to jeopardize the industry's chance to save itself.

Oh, and maybe Chabon will want to consider what a laughing stock people like him will be viewed as if he contributes to all the sugarcoating!

Labels: misogyny and racism, politics, violence

Comicon's Pulse recently asked why a lot of ongoing monthlies are only lasting 2 or 3 years before being cancelled.

Well, that's pretty easy to answer, and there's several reasons why: too many crossovers and events tying in, which drags down any existing story quality, too many series are pedestrian in their writing, and not built on plausible premises, and are even pandering to minorities at the expense of other good characters, too many political overtones, too many are held hostage to editorial mandates, and too much lack of plausible character development. And another reason is because quite a few readers by now have become disillusioned and distrusting of the big two's editorial staff.

All these and more are just some of the reasons why many ongoing books last so little time. Another is because, when it's clear that the books are dropping to sales too low to justify continuation (and the reason for the failure then is because of some of the above reasons too), they decide to cancel them, and perhaps replace them with others that are just as unlikely to do well.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading

Here's a short article in Kyodo News about the University of Tokyo opening a manga library featuring even books that were around half a century ago.

Labels: libraries, manga and anime

The Titans Tower Monitor posts two pages from Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink #6, where the last page of the book suggests that, now that some of the Titans are going to appear in Justice League of America, their own title is going to become a vehicle for villains.

I guess they plan on cancelling the Titans series with the older team soon, because judging from the response on the Titans Tower Monitor, few are interested. As for JLA, they're still running the ridiculous by forcing the main cast out of their book to make way for entirely different members.

Labels: dc comics, Justice League of America, Titans

Fast Company Magazine writes about a number of Marvel titles now made available on iPhone, which would be a lot more exciting if it weren't for that those displayed almost all appear to be new, current series, including the overhyped death of Captain America story by Ed Brubaker. What is the point of spending time reading those recent "efforts" in small format? The older classics are what iPhone users should be allowed to try.

Labels: marvel comics, technology