The Four Color Media Monitor

I found two interviews published in the Comics Buyer's Guide, one with Dan DiDio and the other with Geoff Johns, posted about a week ago, where the dishonesty and weird logic continue to confound. First, the one with DiDio:

CBG: So why Barry Allen, and why now?

Dan DiDio: When it comes to Flash, this is a highlight for me as part of DC Comics, the return of Barry Allen as The Flash. I know his death was one of the seminal stories told, in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but Barry Allen is truly one of my favorite characters. And Geoff [Johns] and I have been talking about this now for seven years it seems like, and the fact that we’re actually here at this spot, and we’ve got him coming out in his own book is an exciting moment.

One of the things that’s great about the series is that Geoff found a brilliant way to contemporize Barry, to make him extremely relevant to the universe, and more importantly, not at the expense of any other Flash characters. From that standpoint, I think that fans of The Flash, whatever incarnation that would be, should be excited about the Rebirth series.

Since this was put online a short time after the third issue went to press, I think it's apparent now that not many are. And wow, did Johns ever find a great way to contemporize Barry, with a ghastly, derivative backstory involving the death of his mother, and conviction of his father, and it makes little difference whether Henry Allen was guilty in the death of Nora Allen or not, Johns's premise is rock bottom, taking the backstory he wrote for Hunter Zolomon and foisting it on Barry Allen instead. And if he's relevant, why is he acting like he's not happy to be back in the world of the living?

CBG: And since he is one of your favorite characters, and you’re the king, you get to put him in a comic book.

DiDio: One would think it would be that simple, but unfortunately, it never is. It had to be the right moment, for the right reason and the right story, and that all came to this wonderful place and we found a way to make that work.

LOL, they sure did, and judging from sales, it shows.

CBG: What will happen to Wally West?

DiDio: Wally West will be seen primarily in Titans, but we’re going to be exploring Wally’s character a lot more. And we’ll be telling stories with Wally in a way where people who are fans of Wally when he first appeared as The Flash will enjoy. The Mike Baron days.

Judging from their recent output, and from how bad the Titans became, I have good reason to doubt they'll succeed. Especially with an EIC as bad as DiDio in charge. A botch is always likely.

Now, here's the interview with Geoff Johns. It's an expansion of a shorter interview I'd first found published in the Nashua Telegraph about a month ago, with some extra Q&As provided, such as:

CBG: Why do it? Why bring back Barry Allen, after a heroic death and successful replacement?

Geoff Johns: I think that’s what [Flash: Rebirth] is all about. The answers are all in there. But whenever I get on these characters, my goal has always been to kind of rebuild their world, their mythology – like with Green Lantern and JSA.

CBG: Right, right. Hal Jordan, Hawkman ...

Johns: Introduce them to a new audience. I love these characters; I think they have tremendous potential. I think there’s a bigger audience out there. I think JSA and Green Lantern both captured that, and I hope Flash will too.

There's a bigger audience out there alright, that even he's played a part in driving away! I've looked at some of the reviews out there, like this one for example, and it's clear that there aren't many answers to be found on why they'd do this, other than a desperate attempt to draw in older readers for the money.

CBG: With Bart back also, you have four people who have at one time or another called themselves Flash, all with the same powers. How will you distinguish them?

Johns: It’s the same thing as Green Lantern. You know, you’ve got Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, and Hal Jordan, all very different characters. Bart Allen, Jay Garrick, Wally West, and Barry Allen, all very different characters as well. And some of that differentiation’s gonna happen within the pages of Flash: Rebirth and beyond, and that’s something that’s – obviously, a clear focus is why I’m delving into Barry Allen’s past in this series, because he’s new to most readers. I think it’s important to explore him and what his attitude is and what he believes in and what he focuses on and what his priorities are compared to Wally West, Jay Garrick and Bart Allen. But they’re all very different characters but they all have the same moral code, just like the Green Lantern.

But no mention of how he's redone his past to look like his earlier creation, Hunter Zolomon, I see. What's really laughable is how he fails to consider that some readers could always read the older material from the Silver Age in reprints and archives, and then would surely be surprised to see how much things have changed under Johns.

Now, here's a part that really surprises me:

CBG: The rap on Barry Allen in the ‘80s was that he was boring. How’s your Barry going to disarm that charge?

Johns: Hopefully he already has. That’s like saying Kyle Rayner’s whiny. You know what I mean? From a stereotypical kind of worldview … you could do that to any character. You could throw any kind of claim at a character. Well, “Barry was a stiff” or “Hal Jordan was arrogant” or “Kyle Rayner was whiny” or “Guy Gardner was a jerk” – you could do that with any character. For me, that’s just someone that has a bias, or doesn’t want to give a character a chance. None of these characters are boring. Characters are only as boring as the writers make them.

CBG: “There are no boring characters, just boring writers.”

Johns: Yeah. It’s ridiculous.

Now that's amazing that he'd bring up an argument that I've made a few times myself, that you can't criticize the characters, only the writers.

But then who is he to make that argument if he's going to sully the Flash's world with the cruel and unpleasant elements that have tainted quite a bit of his work ever since he arrived on the scene a decade ago? And maybe he doesn't realize it, but he's actually told readers where to lay the blame - at Johns's very feet. And one of the complaints that can be made is how, in the words of the Speed Force blogmaster, Johns has rendered Barry Allen unrecognizable. Another is how, for someone who's said the series will have a lot of heart, he sure hasn't shown much to the memory of Barry's parents.

And speaking of cruelty, here's something I discovered about Rogues' Revenge that makes me feel ill:

As Inertia was being transferred to Iron Heights prison, an errant bolt of lightning rescued him from paralysis. The bolt was administered by Zoom, who sought to recruit Thaddeus Thawne as his own sidekick. Thawne complied, adopting the name Kid Zoom, along with a costume that was a reverse of the original Kid Flash garb worn by Wally West. But whereas Zoom instituted tragedy in a misguided attempt to test a hero's mettle, Kid Zoom saw tragedy as an end unto itself.

Proving himself irredeemable, Kid Zoom killed Weather Wizard's infant son. He also turned on his new mentor and reverted Zoom back to a wheelchair- bound Hunter Zolomon. In retaliation for being duped by Inertia, the Rogues exacted their own revenge in a combined attack - a bizarre echo to the way Bart Allen was killed months earlier. The Rogues left Thawne's corpse at the Keystone Police Station, with a note that read "Tell the Flash we're even."

Stay classy, Johns. That's all we need, for Thaddeus Thawne to be turned into a baby killer, as alleged justification for killing him off afterwards. Where is the outrage? I'd wondered what happened to little Josh Jackam over the years and vanished into limbo. Now, I find myself wishing he'd remained there, which would've been much safer. Josh has become another victim of the trend of bringing back a forgotten character only to see them bite the bullet. Of all the disturbing acts of violence and crudeness Johns has pulled to date, this has got to be the foulest yet.

In fact, while reading the synopses of Rogues' Revenge, I realized that in a way, Johns pulled a One More Day of his own: he undid almost everything he'd established years earlier, save for a few things, such as his unremitting use of cruelty and violence. It just shows how bankrupt he's become, and doesn't deserve to be working on mainstream comics.

More from the CBG interview:

CBG: So you’re saying there’s no editorial edict, you’re just following your story.

Johns: Yeah, there’s no editorial edict saying “you have to do this or that.” I’m just kinda exploring what I want to explore with The Flash.

Well of course there's no true mandate. That's because Johns has already established himself as one of DiDio's yes-men. He's like Brian Bendis, who wins the favor of Joe Quesada, simply because his whole approach - or lack thereof - is just what Quesada was looking for. Why couldn't it be the same with DiDio and Johns then?

Johns may have hit a low with Flash: Rebirth, but even before that, I'd say he really scraped bottom with Rogues' Revenge by killing off an infant, and staining a once-usable villain, making it almost impossible to revive and use Inertia again in the near future without that terrible storyline casting a black cloud over him, just like Dr. Light. Johns and DiDio may claim to love the Flash's world, but they're really just loving the Flashes and their allies to death.

Update: this review of Rogues' Revenge 3 from Speed Force makes a point similar to mine about Inertia:

As for Inertia — excuse me, Kid Zoom — where to start? When All-Flash #1 came out last year, and Wally West couldn’t bring himself to kill Inertia and so “did something even worse” by freezing him as a statue, many readers complained that this was a Bad Idea(tm). This mini-series has taken that and *ahem* run with it, with Inertia proving himself to be totally bat#!%$ homicidally insane from the moment he’s freed.

And then there’s the most messed-up moment of the issue, in which he deliberately kills a toddler just to end a hostage stand-off. That was the moment I knew Inertia was beyond redemption, and really beyond the point of being a usable villain. Much like Dr. Light and Identity Crisis, from that point on he’s useless. It was probably deliberate, so that anyone who had any sympathy left for Inertia (and yes, he has his fans) would still be satisfied when the Rogues finally killed him.

If Johns wanted to kill off Inertia, that's one thing. But turning him infanticidal is another. And to depict Inertia murdering youngsters was definitely uncalled for. How many years now will it take in order to wash things clean of the stench Johns has left?

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

The Northwest Indiana Times interviews Garfield cartoonist Jim Davis about a new DVD cartoon that was made starring his famous feline, in which Garfield and the other animal co-stars form a superhero team.

Labels: comic strips

An article in the Japan Times about the upcoming 18th Anime Expo, the largest manga and anime convention in America, which'll take place during July 2-5.

Labels: conventions, manga and anime

The Dallas Voice weekly fawned over Greg Rucka's overhyped, sensationalized concoction of a lesbian Batwoman, but what really provides the laughs here is the paper's colossal error of when Bruce Wayne "died". Towards the end, this classic howler comes up:

During the development process, it became clear Batwoman would lead the Detective Comics title. (For those who don’t follow the comic universe, the original Batman, Bruce Wayne, died a few years ago and Dick Grayson, the original Robin, has pretended to be him ever since.) That represents a sea change in the comic universe.

Umm, earth to Dallas Voice: Bruce Wayne is NOT dead, but when he did "die" it was only a few months before this PC-nonsense cropped up. What a joke.

As to some of the other things this sensationalized article features:

As of Detective Comics no. 854, which came out Wednesday, the lead in the book will be Kate Kane, aka Batwoman. A co-feature in its debut will be eight-page section with another character, named The Question, the secret identity of Renee Montoya — who is also lesbian.

In the comic book world, this is huge...

2 or 3 decades ago, it might've been, but today, it is nothing new, yet they act as though everything is, if that's what it takes to make a quick buck, which is just what the industry has been reduced to: all-stunts-all-the-time, which has only led to diminishing sales.

“The very first story I wrote for her I knew she would be not only gay but deeply in the closet,” Rucka says. “She had been established as gay and from Gotham and it made sense to join her with this other character.”

When word got out, though, that DC was re-introducing Batwoman (the character had originally been introduced in the 1950s to stave off suggestions that Batman and Robin might be lovers), fans began frothing at the mouth. Then an early piece of concept art was pirated, and all anyone knew was that she was “a buxom, redheaded, lipstick lesbian,” Rucka says. “Boy did that story get picked up — it even was on the BBC.”

It also forced DC and Rucka to ramp up the development of the character.

I'm afraid that's an exaggeration. It caused so much controversy and annoyance at how DC was pushing sensationalism onto the scene, that they became embarrassed and largely dropped their lesbian Batwoman from the 52 books she first debuted in for awhile, at least until they thought the coast was clear.

And now that they're shoehorning her into Detective Comics along with the lesbian take on the Question, while tossing out Bruce Wayne, I won't be surprised if, in the end, it only leads to diminishing sales for one of DC's longest running titles as people realize that the book has been hijacked for stunt's sake.

Rucka sounds to me like one of these kind of people who thinks himself a genius, but is not as smart as he thinks he is.

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

The LeHigh Valley Express-Times fawns over the current Dark Reign tie-in, which is in none other than the X-Men:

Right now there is no better "Dark Reign" tie-in than writer Matt Fraction and artist Marc Silvestri's "Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia."

With an overrated writer like that, I wouldn't be so sure.

The book brings back one of the X-Men's best artists in Silvestri and Fraction writes the crossover as a part of the ongoing X-Men storyline, not as something forced in.

He uses what's been going on in "Uncanny X-Men" as the launching point to bring in Norman Osborn and his Dark Avengers.

Then what does he mean by "not as something forced in"? This whole Osborn-as-team-leader biz has been a joke since the beginning.

As for the X-Men, they are having some problems.

Yep, they most certainly are, including at least one mentioned above.

The biggest is the proposed mandatory sterilization for mutants that the California government is trying to pass.

The movement is headed by Simon Trask, brother of the late Bolivar Trask, inventor of the mutant hunting robots, the Sentinels.

During a march to Sacramento, Trask and his followers pass through San Francisco, the new home of the X-Men.

The march spins out of control, riots break out all over the city and the X-Men are unable to bring the city under control.

By the end of it, several X-Men are in jail, including original team member Beast.

Gee, that sounds almost like the current situation in Gotham City when Batman Bruce Wayne is missing! Nothing to see here then.

At the end of the article, they say:

The Dark Reign storyline has been kind of at a standstill for a few months, but now, as Dr. Doom says in the comic, "Here's to things finally getting interesting."

And considering how silly the story of Norman Osborn suddenly becoming a foe for the entire MCU was to begin with, I doubt it. That this is all part of a company wide, money-consuming crossover certainly doesn't help matters.

Labels: crossoverloading, marvel comics, msm propaganda, X-Men

The website of Bleeding Cool, to where Rich Johnston relocated after working at CBR (edit: the owner of Avatar made him a bigger offer to work there instead), reports that J. Michael Stracynski will be leaving the Mighty Thor in September.

That's just fine. He went along with Quesada's editorial mandate on Spider-Man showing little to no credible opposition, and made a fool of himself in the end with One More Day, when he remained at Marvel for quite awhile even afterwards. His departure is thus quite fine by me, but comes much too late to convince me that he really had any objections to Quesada destroying Spider-Man's world. And I get the feeling that under Straczynski's pen, Thor would not have appealed to me.

The bad news is that Thor will be swerving into crossover territory after this (it may be called "Siege of Asgard"). But then, that's Marvel these days.

Labels: bad editors, dreadful writers, marvel comics, Spider-Man

An article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin about a local library that's begun running a monthly event for manga and anime gathering.

Labels: libraries, manga and anime

IGN's Comics section has an interview with Mike Carey about Rogue of the X-Men gaining control of her siphoning power (and healing her mind) and the role she's going to take next. Would that I could congratulate their taking this step - she was after all a character with potential who was misused horribly during the 90s when the X-Men underwent serious misuse as a franchise - but alas, when I see that it all ties into the current problems with Norman Osborn and Dark Avengers, all I can say is that they're doing this much too late to care.

Labels: marvel comics, X-Men

On Newsarama, they report that the Titans franchise is about to meet up with more of the same:

Will the Teen Titans roster be settling down soon? a fan asked. Cunningham said that the arc that starts in #72 will “change things slightly in an awful way for our characters...they’re not going to like it.”

And neither is the audience, as sales have come to show.

“There’s a definite plan that Brian and his team are driving towards, and we’re going to get there, but there’s a bumpy road between here and there,” Sattler said.

There's no plan, and the road is worse than bumpy, it's horribly rocky. And at the end of that road is a cliff that, if they haven't tumbled off it yet, they'll be doing so soon enough. All they're doing is driving away more readers, and their method of promotion is part of the problem.

Via Titans Tower Monitor, which has a sales analysis here showing how the series have been losing audience month after month, with Teen Titans doing the worst so far, and the Deathtrap crossover certainly hasn't helped.

Labels: dc comics, Titans

An article in the UK Independent about the opening of a new museum in Angouleme in France, primarily for European comics.

Labels: Europe and Asia, museums

ICV2 reports that May once again saw a noticeable drop in sales, and not just for pamphlets, but also for graphic novels:

After rebounding in April, comic sales dropped a staggering 19% in May versus May 2008, while graphic novel sales declined by 13%, leading to an overall drop-off for the month of 18%. A lack of potent #1 issues as well as the absence of Dark Avengers certainly didn’t help comic sales this May, a month in which no single title even came close to breaking the 100K barrier.

Yep, I see what they mean, but even when there was a "rebound" in April, it was just barely: the Battle for the Cowl crossover and the Flash: Rebirth issues then sold as little as 104,000 and 102,000 copies, respectively. It's interesting that Flash: Rebirth only came in second at the time, and now that it's taken a noticeable drop down to 86,000, I think that's a sign of how this will not be the second coming of a Silver Age, especially if they're only going to darken the focus as much as Geoff Johns has. This may even be Johns' first real flop in his writing career, and if he's going to soil Barry Allen's background so badly, he deserves it.

As for the drop in graphic novel sales, if they're referring to trade paperbacks, I can come up with a partial guess why: neither Marvel nor DC have much to offer now, with a lot of their compilations either being of bad stories published in the past year or so, or of worthless crossovers and publicity stunts that could discourage buyers even in trade format. Indeed, what's the use of buying all those worthless trades Marvel's put out compiling all the Brand New Day nonsense they published over the past year, or even the constant parade of Civil Wars, World War Hulks and Secret Invasions? What's the use of buying all the 52s, Countdowns, Final Crises that DC has put out over the past year? I looked in my LCS, and they had very noticeable stacks of these, taking up precious space that would've been better reserved for some of the more classic stories of the yesteryear. No wonder trades might soon be failing; what's the use of buying either weak stories, stories built from weak premises, and company-wide crossovers that cost money even in trade format?

And that's one more reason why mainstream comics are likely to fail soon. Because they're not fixing mistakes that hinder everything, and they're crowding out the shelves with worthless x-overs.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, marvel comics, sales

Well how about that. According to the New York Daily News, Marvel is finally bringing back the one true Captain America, Steve Rogers (via Robot 6):

Captain America is making a miraculous recovery.

Two years after Marvel Comics knocked off its famous star-spangled superhero, he's gonna be back and better than ever.

"The original Captain America is finally coming back," Marvel Comics editor in chief Joe Quesada told the Daily News. "We've been patiently planning for this moment for 21/2 years."

Captain America will return next month in a five-comic book series, "Captain America Reborn."

First, let's hope this is the real-time deal, and not some trickery set in the past. Second, let's hope this has nothing to do with their abominable miniseries, The Truth: Red, White and Black, from 2003. And third, let's hope Cap won't be making a departure just as quickly after resurfacing.

But even if Steve Rogers is back home again, that alone isn't enough. What about meaningful storytelling that isn't plagued with the kind of leftism they forced upon Cap during Civil War, such as that nonsense they made him spout about "corporate shills"?

They had two years in which they could've written a workable story for Steve that could allude to contemporary issues without being direct or overtly political. Instead, we got Bucky with a gun and a mechanical arm. And Bucky was one of those few characters whose demise back in the day did have meaning to it, and didn't have to be revived.

As great as I'd like to think Steve Rogers's return is, the problem is that even now, there's little chance with the editorial board still running Marvel that they'll do anything really satisfying with him.

Labels: Captain America, marvel comics

Marvel is once again trying to fool pro-marriage fans of Spider-Man, by bringing back Mary Jane Watson into ASM with issue 601...but still not married in their current depiction. In this interview Newsarama did with Mark Waid and co-writer Fred Van Lente (via Spider-Man Crawl Space), they talk about how they're bringing back Mary Jane into the mix, but, there's problems, such as:

NRAMA: What are things going to be like between Peter and MJ now?

FVL: Mary Jane returns to Peter's life as the ex. They've had this long-term relationship, they were very close and intimate, but then they broke up for reasons that remain mysterious. But now MJ is back and she's back in New York permanently.

NRAMA: So she's permanently part of Spider-Man's life? Even past this storyline?

FVL: She's permanently part of the Spider-Man cast again, but she's got a very different role than she's ever had before. She's the ex, and while she still cares about Peter a lot, like most exes, she's acutely aware of all his flaws. And so it's a really unique way to use Mary Jane and to have a really different Mary Jane/Peter dynamic. As somebody who has read Spider-Man for years – and obviously I'm biased – but I think it's a really interesting way to use the character.

Oooooohhh, I see. So it's still the same old act. At least it tells why there's no reason to waste time on the 600th issue, which probably furthers that shock tactic affair between Aunt May and JJJ's father. Interesting how Van Lente just says "ex" and not ex-girlfriend/wife; the ambiguity must be deliberate. But if they're still going by what they established with One More Day, which they practically hint at there, that's reason enough to continue a firm boycott.

I wish I could say that I at least like the J. Scott Campbell cover for ASM 601, but when I realized what it implies, it lost all appeal.

Labels: dreadful writers, marvel comics, Spider-Man

The Sci-Fi Wire reports that IDW has adapted Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to comics 27 years after the late Ricardo Montalban played his role there as the warmongering villain.

Labels: indie publishers

So in the past few weeks, more employees of the horrid comics magazine have been laid off. Maybe this could send them a message that if they clean up their act, they might be able to reverse their fate...but I doubt it.

Labels: msm propaganda

Newsarama's readers are surely a most gullible, mindless lot, which could explain why they may have reacted positively to Grant Morrison's new Batman & Robin title, the unappealing Frank Quitely artwork notwithstanding, but I get the feeling that Newsarama must be trying to serve as a propagandist for them and DC's editorial mandate nevertheless. I feel sorry for them, for letting DC take advantage of them with their mandates that are only meant to buy time, and get from point A to point B with little substance in between. Another example of how some comics fans out there are really flawed.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful artists, dreadful writers

The Nashua Telegraph writes a puff piece about Final Crisis. They first say:

Short history: DC's superhero books have a tradition dating to 1963 of an annual crisis of some sort, generally in the summer, bringing together its biggest stars for a huge adventure (or if you're cynical, a huge sales event).

Last year, the Powers That Be determined that 2008 would be the last: a Final Crisis.

I'm afraid it's not the last; there's still another one going on right now, and it involves the quality of their writing, which is in the pits. And there'll be another Crisis or crossover in the future, the big question being whether it'll be good or bad. As long as an editor like Dan DiDio is in charge, the latter result is more likely.

Tapped to write it is one of the amazing writers of our generation. Grant Morrison thinks laterally, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of DC's publishing history.

Yep, and he even has an obsession with writing up overrated hogwash that goes overboard with gross, violent spectacles (as in New X-Men), or even indulges in "drug-inspired" storytelling, which Batman RIP bore allusions to as well.

In between, we have a giddy adventure involving the transition from the Fourth World of gods to the Fifth, the return of the most famous Flash from the dead, the triumph of the anti-life equation, a trip to the "overvoid" involving 4-D Vision, the death of Batman (sorta), Japanese cosplay, the land of canceled characters, an army of transdimensional Supermen and the end of the world.

Actually, the sheer comic-booky breathlessness of this journey has engendered some criticism; some fans say "Final Crisis" is incoherent.

I disagree. I just think it's such a dense story that it's difficult to ingest with one swallow. Morrison doesn't slow down to explain much, which means the reader has to work harder than usual.

And that's just the problem: as they say, his storytelling is dense, and unappealing, and even the claim that you need to read some of his stuff at least twice to make sense of it just doesn't work.

They even have something here about Green Lantern that could use a little scrutiny:

Johns has become famous for a trilogy of miracle revamps, including the Justice Society of America and Hawkman. These concepts had become so mired in contradictory continuity that they had become radioactive. Yet, Johns smoothly flipped all those problems into their own solutions, and the JSA and the Winged Wonder are successful concepts once again.

He did the same with the most famous Green Lantern, Hal Jordan. Previous regimes had turned Jordan into A, a psychotic mass murderer; B, replaced; and C, dead. Most considered the character unsalvageable.

Oh really? The only reason Hal would be "unsalvageable" is because nobody at DC was willing to do what it takes to fix things at the time. It's not impossible if you put your nose to the grindstone.

Still, this does have me wondering what they think of Doctor Light: as a villain, is Arthur Light unsalvageable ever since Identity Crisis depicted him as a rapist? In a manner of speaking, one could argue that it's possible (and maybe that's why he was rubbed out in Final Crisis, because they realized that for now, he could be an embarrassment and exceedingly difficult to use without making readers cringe). But he too could be fixed; it's just that for maybe a decade, they're going to have to put him away on the back burner until the whole Identity Crisis debacle can be gotten past - if they want to get past it.

It's not impossible to fix defamed characters if they allow for it to be done. That's why, if newspaper columnists like these were really serious about their fandom, they'd make a plea for better writing.

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

The Colorado Springs Gazette wrote up a puff piece about an "Obama sensation":

President Barack Obama has emerged as the newest superstar of comics.

He's appeared in Image Comics' "Savage Dragon" and an immensely popular issue of Marvel Comics' "Amazing Spider-Man," and is a gun-toting action hero in Image's "Youngblood." This month from Devil's Due Publishing, there's "Barack The Barbarian: Quest for the Treasure of Stimuli" and an alien-fighting Obama in the sci-fi title "Drafted: One Hundred Days." Later this summer, look for Dynamite Entertainment's "Army of Darkness: Ash Saves Obama."

Even the president's dog is getting in on the comic book action, with an appearance in an upcoming issue of Marvel's "Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers" and as the star of "Puppy Power: Bo Obama," coming in September from Bluewater Productions.

Oh for heaven's sake, that's just what we need, for even the premier pooch of the Inhumans to have his book serve as a platform for the pretentious president's dog! Big deal. Most of what's mentioned above sounds silly, and is unlikely to have much artistic value.

[Jeff] Mariotte said the trend also likely reflects a genuine excitement among comic book creators about the new president, who reportedly used to collect comics.

"He is the first post-boomer president," Mariotte said, "and the people who are making comics these days tend to be post-boomers" - though not Mariotte, a boomer in his 50s.

See, that's the problem. If the people working in comics today are these "post-modernists" who let their political positions take over for talent, no wonder comics are suffering from such a dearth of creativity.

And what this puffy article predictably ignores is whether it's really drawing anyone new into comics buying. Judging from the still declining sales, with prices going up to 4 dollars and most selling barely 100,000 copies, if at all, it doesn't look like it's getting anyone to board the bandwagon. And with the exception of the Amazing Spider-Man issue with the Obama feature, it doesn't look like anything else with Obama topped the charts. Even the sales from back in January for that pretentious issue were nothing to crow over.

This is one of the most tired newspaper puff pieces on comics I've ever stumbled across.

Labels: indie publishers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics

CBR's Robot 6 blog tells that Kyle Baker has put up a character sketch "for an upcoming Marvel gig" of the Isaiah Bradley character from the Truth miniseries, and he's wearing the Captain America outfit too.

Whether or not this is connected with the upcoming Reborn miniseries, I think Baker alone is reason enough to avoid whatever they have in store like the plague.

Labels: dreadful artists, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, politics

The Examiner says that Marvel's next company-wide crossover, to be released in September, is called "The Iron Patriot Acts". And I can only guess - it's probably going to be another attack on the Patriot Act, isn't it.

The story is supposed to include Spider-Man belatedly trying to take down Norman Osborn. But no matter how it turns out, I think it's much too late, and with Quesada at the helm, that's why it won't be worth wasting money to see if this idiocy with Norman in charge of the Avengers finally gets put to bed.

Labels: crossoverloading, marvel comics

Labels: Carnival entries

I looked over some pictures provided by Scans Daily for the finale to the Oracle miniseries, and the story sure does seem to have quite a few holes in it. I'm not sure just what happened: when the crystals the Calculator was using got busted on Oracle's billy clubs, did that have the effect of paralyzing Wendy's legs? And, did the Teen Titans know that Wendy is the daughter of a crook? And, if she upholds the law by comparison, wouldn't she have some resentment of her dad for leading a life of crime (and for killing another girl)? And...if she's paralyzed, is that some cheapjack way of ending the whole affair?

It looks to me like another pointless mini rushed into production that the staff clearly couldn't decide what else to do with.

Labels: dc comics, misogyny and racism

An article in The Huntsville Times about a graphic novelist and game designer named Gareth Hinds who's going to host two comic workshops in the Athens area next week.

Labels: libraries

The Nashua Telegraph writes an interview with Geoff Johns about his bringing back Barry Allen, and I don't think what he might put the Silver Age Flash through sounds very appealing:

CC: One of the familiar aspects of old Barry Allen stories was silly plots and transformations taken with utmost seriousness. Is this lighthearted element toast in today's grim and gritty environment?

GJ: It all depends on the story. For "Flash: Rebirth," there's going to be a lot of heart in that series, but . . . we're not going to go back to 1960s-style stories where we have stand-alone stories where Barry Allen turns into a puppet. . . .

But the stuff I really want to focus on is with Barry Allen as a crime solver. But his crimes are on the crazy '60s-physics level. A murder could span across dimensions or ancient cities or crazy places that are real cities. Or he could find a body where the crime is unsolvable through normal means, and kind of taking that "CSI" approach but putting it on a greater scale of wonder and scope and the DC Universe itself. If that makes sense.

CC: Now that DC has established 52 parallel Earths, it sounds like "CSI: 52."

GJ: Exactly, exactly, that's a great explanation. And that's what I want to do. He solves crimes that are unbelievably bizarre and unexplainable. And they take him to different places and strange foes and bizarre criminals. . . .

Given what Crime Scene Investigation is like, I'm not happy to hear this. As the Parents Television Council reported in 2004, CSI is one of the most disturbingly violent and/or graphically sexual in nature police series in history, and not very realistic at that. And if we were to take a little paragraph from the Wikipedia page:

The show has been heavily criticized—almost since its debut—by police and district attorneys, who feel CSI portrays an inaccurate image of how police solve crimes, and by the Parents Television Council, who note the level and gratuitousness of graphic violence, images and sexual content seen on the show.

Not that many things on TV are realistic to begin with, but if they're as violent in nature as CSI happens to be, I don't think that's very healthy for the Flash, nor the indication that the new path is going to be dealing with murders, something too many comics of recent have been plagued with. And thus, I doubt there's going to be much heart in it either. There may not even be much humor in the finished product.

Johns is clearly too influenced by the movie and TV industry he once worked at, and that's only hurting his work even more.

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