The Four Color Media Monitor

Something that hasn't been heard of for a few years now has just resurfaced: Frank Miller, who was initially going to write a Batman story where the Masked Manhunter takes on al Qaeda, has now changed the story so it no longer stars Bruce Wayne, and will not be published by DC either:

For years, Frank Miller spoke of a Gotham City graphic novel that would be like no other -- for the 120 bone-crunching pages of "Holy Terror, Batman!" Miller -- arguably the most important comic book artist of the last 30 years -- envisioned a story in which the Caped Crusader went on a blood quest against Al Qaeda.

Earlier this week, sitting over coffee at the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, Miller said the elusive project is finally close to completion but that the name and central character have changed and that DC Comics won't be the publisher. Miller frames all of this as a decision that was driven by the work itself and not dictated by a DC leadership that, according to insiders, has long been leery of the politically charged concept.

"It's almost done; I should be finished within a month," Miller said. "It's no longer a DC book. I decided partway through it that it was not a Batman story. The hero is much closer to 'Dirty Harry' than Batman. It's a new hero that I've made up that fights Al Qaeda."

Miller, best known as the writer and artist of "The Dark Knight Returns," "300" and "Sin City," said the story will be set in a place called Empire City that, as the name suggests, evokes New York. The landscape and people are fictional but the real-life Al Qaeda will be transferred to this universe with its name, history and mission intact.

The book's title will be shortened to "Holy Terror." And what of the protagonist?

"The character is called The Fixer and he's very much an adventurer who's been essentially searching for a mission," Miller said. "He's been trained as special ops and when his city is attacked all of a sudden all the pieces fall into place and all this training comes into play. He's been out there fighting crime without really having his heart in it -- he does it to keep in shape. He's very different than Batman in that he's not a tortured soul. He's a much more well-adjusted creature even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story."

That the new protagonist isn't a guy who suffers from the same emotional problems as Bruce Wayne does could probably work, since we've got too many heroes who're not just tortured souls, but are even being turned into those too just for the sake of it. Even so, it's a real shame, if not a surprise, that DC wouldn't run the story. I can't help but wonder if Miller is just being diplomatic, and decided not to put a strain on his relations with DC. That's probably the case, but we may never know the clear answer.

I hope the story Miller's now envisioned does turn out to be written well, and that he's also got a publisher who's willing to take it up and give it convincing promotion.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, indie publishers, islam and jihad, politics, terrorism

The Lawrence Journal-World has an article about the emerging influence of digital comics, which, while still only a small portion of the market, are still growing in influence.

Labels: technology

I read this recent article in Variety, which talks about the legal battles being waged by the heirs and estates of Siegel & Shuster, and Jack Kirby, for rights to the famous superheroes and such that they created in their times. The litigation issues aside, something here got me to thinking:

Another suit, filed by the estate of artist Jack Kirby last year, involves a much greater breadth of material: They are seeking ownership or co-ownership in dozens of characters controlled by Marvel Entertainment, including Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four. Marvel and its new corporate parent, Disney, are challenging the claims, and it may end in a long showdown in court.

When I read this part of the article, it made me think of a possible way that Marvel and DC could be saved/rescued from the grip of the uncaring executives and editors who now hold sway over them: what if the estates of these famous figures could gain ownership of Marvel's and DC's book publishing outfits, and own the rights to publishing books featuring the heroes, supporting characters, and universes?

That might be the perfect way one day to return Marvel and DC to real glory, and the heirs and estates could even join forces with book publishing companies like Harper-Collins to own and run the big two, but sadly, it's only a pipe dream for now. Yet maybe it is possible to do it, and thus return control of DC and Marvel as comic book publishers to the hands of those who're more responsible and deserving than people like DiDio and Quesada are.

Let's also remember that Disney, when they bought Marvel last year, likely didn't do it for the sake of the comic book publishing arms, but rather to exploit the moviemaking and licensing potential. I figure the book biz would be the least they'd care about, and so if someone with the money wanted to buy that part of the business, they'd be willing to work something out. Then, there'd be 2 different companies, not unlike how Atari split into 2 companies for several years back in the day, one that designed video games and the other that built computer software, or even how Volvo split into 2 companies for cars and trucks/buses after the Ford company bought the car arm of the Swedish motor company in 1998. Disney and Warner could maintain the rights to making movies and toys based on several thousand characters from Marvel and DC, while the book publishing arms could be an exclusive business of their own for just printed books and such.

Is such a scenario workable? Yes, it is, but as I said, for now it remains a pipe dream. But if the idea is floated around more, it could be considered more seriously.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics

The Seattle Times writes what might be one of the more honest takes on running a comics store these days:

Like any stock-market bet or Vegas gamble, the owners of a couple thousand comic-book stores in the United States try to pick the right mix of Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and lesser-known book titles that might sell.

And if they don't?

"That's money sitting in a box," said Chris Brady, 38, who co-owns 4 Color Fantasies in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

And why? Because a lot of the products have been non-returnable for years, maybe the biggest mistake the store runners have made since they began in the late 1970s. The article is still fairly superficial though.

Labels: sales

Geoff Johns - and Peter Tomasi - continue to tinker and tamper with DC history. In Brightest Day #5-6, Mera lets Aquaman know that she was an assassin sent to our world to kill him. So not only does Mera's origin as a princess whose throne was usurped by the ruthless Leron -whom both Aquaman and Aqualad fought against years before - sound like it's been retconned out, yet more decent storytelling of the Silver Age has been corrupted, and Xebel turned into another variation on the Phantom Zone, for no good reason.

In related news, I'm also quite annoyed by how Johns and Tomasi have turned Arthur Curry into some kind of a greenie-lefty: he's so mad about an oil spill taking place near Atlantis that he decides to shut down the entire operation of the companies in charge, in an apparent nod to the Obama administration's opposition to offshore drilling (this would likely have been written a few months before the BP oil spill, though its debut now is certainly disturbing in how it mirrors what some leftists might think). And by war, greed and corruption, I assume Arthur is alluding to the Bush administration's battle in Iraq. Can we be clear here? Oil is not the problem, it's how you maintain its use and safety that is, and it's quite tiresome how they imply the Bush administration only raided Iraq to exploit the oil systems. If Aquaman made an argument that companies who act negligent with the safety of their oil transportation and development have no business working in the field, that would be acceptable, but turning him into a near anti-capitalist is going pretty low. Now that this story has been told, however, I won't be surprised if Marvel soon follows suit with Prince Namor, and has him sign a pact with Obama opposing offshore drilling in the pages of their comics! The misuse of even the amphibious superheroes is quite galling.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful writers, politics, women of dc

Assuming what's mentioned here actually happens, they may move their book publishing business to Los Angeles. This is part of DC's silly notions of combining their comics publishing with movie adaptations. They say here (via Robot 6 and Comics Beat):

The biggest challenge for Nelson and Johns may be merging the cultures of the Warner lot in Burbank and the offices of DC, which are in Manhattan but may soon move to L.A.

If they do, Marvel will probably follow suit. And that's one more sign how the big two are losing it, by doing this more for the sake of showbiz than entertainment of their own.

Labels: dc comics

When the news was first told about how Steve Rogers would be characterized in the planned movie for next year a few months ago, it sounded like there could be a winner in the wings after all, to match Iron Man's own translation to film.

Unfortunately, as Big Hollywood's editor John Nolte now finds out, this may not be so great after all. The LA Times' Hero Complex blog reports that director Joe Johnston is blowing it, suggesting that all is not well:

“We’re sort of putting a slightly different spin on Steve Rogers,” said Joe Johnston, whose past directing credits include “Jurassic Park III” and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. “He’s a guy that wants to serve his country but he’s not a flag-waver. We’re reinterpretating sort of what the comic book version of Steve Rogers was.” [...]

“He wants to serve his country, but he’s not this sort of jingoistic American flag-waver,” Johnston said. “He’s just a good person. We make a point of that in the script: Don’t change who you are once you go from Steve Rogers to this super-soldier, you have to stay who you are inside, that’s really what’s important more than your strength and everything. It’ll be interesting and fun to put a different spin on the character and one that the fans are really going to appreciate.”

Now let's see if I can figure out what Johnston's weird logic is here: if Steve is a proud American who wishes to serve the better interests of his country, he's not a good person?!? Oh good grief.

For Johnston, the imperative is artistic one, not a commercial one. He wants a character that’s more complicated than a flag and a movie that entertains without borders.

“Yeah and it’s also the idea that this is not about America so much as it is about the spirit of doing the right thing,” the director said. “It’s an international cast and an international story. It’s about what makes America great and what make the rest of the world great too.”

That's pretty ambiguous when he refers to the "rest of the world", and more so by making it "international", and it suggests moral equivalence. I also doubt the planned storyboard isn't being done for "commercial" reasons. More likely that the superstition now frequent - if not the norm - in Hollywood, that a pro-American movie literally won't sell with anyone overseas, may have overtaken the producers, and they've unfortunately turned the script into a mess for the sake of internationalization.

If Steve Rogers is a guy with an impressive upbringing in how to tell the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, that's good to emphasize. But Johnston should have avoided polarizing issues like whether Steve should be a flag-waver, and that was really stupid of him to use the word "jingoism". Just when we thought this could be a workable project, now they're taking the risk of leading fandom to cast doubt on whether this'll be a worthy movie.

Update: more about this subject at Douglas Ernst, Daily Plunge, Hot Air (extra topic here).

Labels: Captain America, marvel comics, politics

The cast members who are exiting include Blue Beetle, Static and Miss Martian. But the cast members who are entering include Damian Wayne, the recently reintroduced son of Bruce whom nobody really cares about (H/T: Titans Tower Monitor). No, if there's any Robin we want around, it's Tim Drake, not a character who could only register ridiculously.

As a result, I don't forsee the Teen Titans' misfortunes changing anytime soon.

Labels: dc comics, Titans

The Kansas City Star/LA Times thinks that the mainstream fame could destroy the San Diego Comicon:

Will mainstream fame destroy Comic-Con? Will the nerds succumb to the narcissism enabled by too much Hollywood love? Will the geek raison d'etre be diluted as the films that fill the hallowed halls of the San Diego Convention Center starting Thursday drift further and further from the comic book, sci-fi fanboy core?

I hope not, but there are signs that erosion is already well under way. So I do have fears. And so should you. If the obsession and passion of the freaks and geeks soften, something precious will be lost to all of us. Seriously.

Unfortunately, it already has been. Yes, the movie business is a contributing factor to the downfall of mainstream comics, but then so too are the people now running Marvel and DC's book scripting.

The problem, as is so often the case, is that success, unless it's handled carefully, can spoil, just as power can corrupt. As the Comic-Con throngs went from 50,000 to 100,000, fanboy fanatics were increasingly being replaced - or at least outnumbered - by the fawning multitudes. The "cool" kids started coming in droves as the studios ramped up red carpet rollouts and the star power became blinding.

When the publishers stop respecting old time fans yet don't do anything to inspire new ones, that's what happens. And power certainly has corrupted Marvel/DC executives.

Hollywood continues to come calling in ever bigger numbers, lugging more the sort of mainstream movie baggage that would have been rousted and rejected by the faithful a few years back. "Salt," starring Angelina Jolie, might turn out to be a terrific spy thriller, and "Tangled," Disney's coming Rapunzel adventure, might be great fun, but worthy of Comic-Con cred? I don't think so.

I'm actually baffled they haven't changed the name of this convention to Holly-Con by now, or merged it with one that already puts movies in focus. The comics that made up the heart of this convention have become almost irrelevant over the past decade.

The perception of the convention as still belonging to the geeks lingers, while the reality is that the cool kids are taking over. Before that happens, I am hoping for a coup d'etat (coup d'geek?). Whatever it takes to get the purity back, return the sword to the stone, the rings to the lord. Otherwise, I fear we're in for years of bad casting, bad sequels and bad things being done to swashbuckling sci-borgs and comic book heroes who deserve a far better fate, as do we.

Alas, I think the fate of the SDCC has been sealed, and the train's already left the station. We certainly do deserve better, but the organizers and directors of the SDCC probably don't think so. Yet they're the ones who have the answers to why they're allowing this conquest by Hollywood. I can guess one of them already: because they see it as a way of making money, at the expense of what originally made up the festival's platform.

And they got that last part correct: bad things have been done to great comic book heroes, for more than a decade now.

Update: even USA Today's been willing to ask whether Comicon has been marginalized by too much commercialization:

And what about the mission? Attendees wondered aloud what some films were doing there.

The convention features an annual event known as "Trailer Park," which shows trailers of upcoming films. Attendees broke out into laughter when Charlie St. Cloud, Zac Efron's latest, came on.

"We're here to see movies for us, not for preteens and the (motion picture) academy," says attendee Michelle Goodman, 22, making her fourth Comic-Con appearance.

"Even a couple decades ago, it was still about the comics," says Ted McKeever, author and illustrator of several comic books, including Metropol and Meta 4. McKeever made his first appearance at the convention in 1986.

"Then Hollywood came in," he says. "And the event got bigger and bigger. We've been pushed to the side."

That's literally in some instances. Comic-book peddlers once had run of the center. Now they are relegated to a few aisles, competing against massive movie and TV billboards and "booth babes" who hand out promotional items.

Alison Hodges, 42, wonders if Comic-Con's energies are being spent properly. The Las Vegas mother of two, who has made the trek to Comic-Con for eight straight years, says this will be her last. "You're shoulder-to-shoulder to people," she says. "And it's not about comics. It's action figures and T-shirts and studio swag. That's not why this was started. Just call it Pop Con."

Maybe it's time for a different comics convention to be established elsewhere in the US, but in these troubled times, it may not happen.

Labels: conventions

It's been revealed that Vertigo is going to publish a previously unseen story by overrated Warren Ellis and Phil Jiminez called "Shoot" that dealt with schoolyard shootings and was nixed following the Columbine bloodbath in 1999. But if there's anything else about this news that really makes my jaw fall off my face in astonishment, it's what Ellis says about Paul Levitz:

I remember that, at the time, someone telling me that the stance was that Paul Levitz would not release the book so long as he was running DC.

*whistles* Yet this same former editor and publisher, along with Dan DiDio, released the abominable Identity Crisis without a whisper of objection for their mainstream line of books. The irony is just stupefying.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful writers, politics, violence

The Wall Street Journal reports on how Japanese publishing companies are trying to put a stop to websites that post pirated "scanlations" of manga books without permits from the publishers.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

Well, I knew JMS would only prove how sloppy and self-indulgent he is once more. For all the research he supposedly put into his Grounded story in Superman, he took a wrong turn on the freeway:

In the pages of DC Comics' latest issue of Superman, which hits stands Wednesday, the Man of Steel embarks on a yearlong journey of more than 1,000 miles with a single step. But for all his strength, insight and intelligence, he still has a thing or two to learn about geography.

The 500 block of South 48th Street is described as the city's "South Side," though no such neighborhood exists in Philadelphia. The area is actually a section of west Philadelphia known as University City, and the flub has generated a little bit of good-natured ribbing from locals.

None of this means anything to Dan DiDio, predictably, who's only interested in sales and media coverage:

"We really love to hear that because it means people are reading it and there's a sense of area pride," DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio said. "If we stand corrected, that's OK."

Uh uh, it most certainly ain't. I hesitate to think of what would happen if Stracynski tried to insert any real life locations from northeast Philly. He'd probably say that Gimbels' department store is still around when it already went out of business in the late 1980s. Or he'd misplace the Franklin Science Institute's location.

There's more incompetence abound in the issue:

Our Krypton-born, Kansas-bred protagonist lacks schooling in the finer points of ordering a cheesesteak , he inelegantly dubs it a "Philly cheese steak sandwich", but the waitress taking his order lets the faux pas slide. She also cheerfully allows the cash-strapped superhero, who was a vegetarian in another DC series several years back, to work off his bill by cleaning a storage room.

This is really supposed to be Philadelphia?

"They didn't do very well, but they tried," Robert Lefevre, manager of Brave New Worlds comic book store downtown, said with a laugh. "Maybe they confused us with Chicago, which has a South Side. And 'Philly cheese steak sandwich,' nobody says that."

That's right, they usually just say "cheese-steak". Inaccuracies aside, there may be something else hidden here: is the Man of Steel going around - literally - with little or no money? Does he even lack a costume? If that's Clark from the rear in the picture I added, this may be another case of a superhero portrayed all but out of costume for the sake of it, without being very convincing in terms of drama either. Plus, as this earlier article tells (via Robot 6):

He also thwarts drug dealers by setting their stashes on fire with his X-ray vision and talks a woman off a ledge. Standard stuff.

I guess he didn't even call the police! Why destroy evidence that could be used against those coke pushers and ensure they'd spend time growing old in the pen before they could manufacture and peddle more? If you don't bust 'em and turn evidence against them, they're likely to keep on manufacturing and pushing those horrendous weeds, destroying many people's minds and health before justice is done. In fact, how do we know the dope dealers don't have more money reserves they can use to finance their black marketeering further? This is how Superman fights crime?

And wouldn't Supes get the suicidal woman safely off the ledge first and lecture her afterwards about why it won't do any good to throw her life away? The description alone tells this isn't going to be very promising. JMS, I figure, is just going to bore everyone away with that increasingly liberal POV of his that's gotten worse since he webbed Spider-Man into a corner.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Superman

So, just as they did with the Punisher, they're turning Logan into a vampire as well, in another story called "Curse of the Mutants." Yep, that's something worthy of attention alright - not! It stopped being novel long ago. The X-Men faced vampirical menaces at least twice before. Even the writer of Wolverine: The Best There Is seems to understand what's gone wrong:

I kept talking to Axel [Alonzo, Marvel Executive Editor] about how tired I thought it was that all Wolverine seems to do anymore since he got his memory back was deal with his past.. It seemed like all the character did was look backward. He would despair or get angry about what happened to him and lots of people from his past would pop up. It was just bleeding the well dry and it was also a case where some things just get stretched.

This problem dates back to the 1990s, when DC - and Marvel too - began to rely more on nostalgia than looking forward to the future. (Or, as in the case of Green Lantern, they trashed the past and invalidated the future in the process.) The writers and editors themselves were looking backwards, and making little or no attempt at establishing any serious human drama, and that's why even Wolverine apparently lost ground.

Marvel's editorial staff could consider that a special supporting cast for Wolverine besides the other X-Men, with all sorts of problems he could try and help solve, might be what could regenerate interest in Len Wein's famous creation. But if they're going to send him into the afterlife and turn him into a vampire/zombie, then it's clear they're not going to.

Labels: bad editors, golden calf of death, marvel comics, X-Men

The sales charts for June have come out, and only 2 titles have sold above 100,000 copies, while the rest is in a very dull situation. I think the most interesting example of a title that's fallen down would have to be the Flash, which has dropped to 68,000 copies sold. Clearly, no matter how it's been angled, people may realize it's no better than Spider-Man's One More Day, and DC hasn't done much to make Barry Allen's return something to look forward to, mainly because it's just more of Geoff Johns' weak self-referential nostalgia.

Labels: dc comics, Flash, marvel comics, sales, Spider-Man

According to this entry on Bleeding Cool. But despite what they say, if Peter remains unmarried (and Harry Osborn still inexplicably alive), then Brand New Day, in sharp contrast, has certainly not ended. And if they don't reverse that monstrosity, then the plunge in sales receipts won't be ending either.

The weekly format was an "experiment" doomed to failure, for more than a few reasons. But by now, unless they relent from their anti-marriage, anti-continuity stance, it'll be too late to expect improved sales.

Labels: marvel comics, Spider-Man

I think DC's animated movie videos are on their way to becoming a farce. The Colorado Springs Gazette writes a sugary article about Judd Winick, turning his pointless return of Jason Todd into an animated movie:

This Robin never had the chance to soar.

Jason Todd was the second Robin to Bruce Wayne’s Batman, taking over the role after the first Robin, Dick Grayson, grew up and left the nest. Jason’s career was cut short, though, when he was killed — the victim of the Joker and of DC Comics readers who voted for Jason’s death in a telephone poll.

Winick once claimed he took part and voted against killing Jason, but it turned out he lied as a publicity stunt, and if he had taken part, he'd be willing to vote for Jason to kick the bucket.

In 2005, as the writer on DC’s “Batman,” Judd Winick brought Jason back from the dead, with the former Robin now operating as a deadly vigilante called the Red Hood. Winick is revisiting that storyline as the screenwriter for “Batman: Under the Red Hood,” the latest in a series of DC Universe animated films from Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. “Under the Red Hood” will be released July 27 on Blu-Ray, DVD and On Demand.

[...]

“Under the Red Hood” resulted from a pitch Winick made to Warner Premiere executives. He thought the Red Hood story line would be a natural for film, capturing the dark, psychological tone of Christopher Nolan’s live-action “Batman Begins.” The executives agreed. But boiling down two years of story into a 75-minute feature definitely wasn’t a snap.

“It was both a challenge as well as kind of a treat,” Winick said, because it involved stripping away anything extraneous and getting back “to the heart of the story.”

Ha ha, very funny. There was no heart and no point to how Jason was brought back, and to date, not much has come from it. Jason has actually been portrayed quite dismayingly personality-wise, with little to distinguish from his last year or so as the second Robin.

USA Today described Jason’s Red Hood guise as Batman’s “nastiest new villain.” And, in the simplest terms, Jason is indeed a bad guy, Winick said. “But, thankfully, he’s a little more complicated than that.”

Jason wants answers from Batman, Winick said. He wants to know what he really meant to the Dark Knight, who never avenged his death.

Excuse me? He tried, even if he never actually killed the Joker, which is admittedly one of the biggest problems that's followed all those years: the Clown Prince of Crime commits murders galore, leaves scores of corpses in his wake, and yet no one ever thinks to send him to face God's Law. I have a bad feeling that this is going to come off as one of the weakest of Warner's animated productions based on DC comics, only making the Masked Manhunter look more like a failure.

In the comics, Jason’s resurrection was tied to DC’s “Infinite Crisis,” a big, reality-shifting event unfolding at the time. The reason for his return in the movie “differs greatly from the comic,” Winick said, without offering any details.

“For me, it was less important how he came back than what happened when he did.”

Winick is also the writer of “Red Hood: The Lost Days,” a six-issue miniseries from DC Comics; the first issue is in comic book shops now.

The series promises to plug some gaps in Jason Todd’s history.

Oh, I'll bet it will. More likely it'll be just as pointless as it was in the comics, which aren't exactly doing big numbers ever since he came back. This'll likely be just as bad as Geoff Johns' own renditions of Green Lantern in animated format.

While we're on the subject, here's the USA Today item on the same subject, and Winick repeated his very confession of how he lied for the sake of publicity a couple years back:

"At the time, I was a snot-nosed 16-year-old art student who had just stopped reading mainstream comics a couple years earlier, and when The Dark Knight came out and whatnot, I started discovering black and white comics," Winick says. "But this caught my attention because they were going to kill off Robin, so that dragged me back. I read it just for that reason, so the marketing worked!"

For the record, Winick says he didn't vote one way or the other. "In previous interviews, when I was promoting the Red Hood run, I would lie," he says, laughing. "I would say I actually voted for him to live, because I knew it made a much better story that I wanted him to live and now I'm bringing him back from the dead. I would have definitely voted for him to die.

"It was an amazing thing, and it's fun in a way to be a little part of history — or [mess] it up depending on who you're asking."

It's not often I've seen USA Today publish something this snide, and I doubt Winick will find much further mileage after letting everyone who still reads them know what a cynic he is.

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

An article in the Chicago Daily Herald about a comics convention being held at the Gail Borden Library in the Elgin neighborhood.

Labels: conventions, libraries

Cultural writer Jeffrey Klaehn has published an interview with Chuck Dixon that'll be part of a new book he's publishing called Comic Books Are Dead, which I expect will talk about what's gone wrong with the industry. Indeed, as this exchange tells:

Jeffery Klaehn: In what ways has the industry changed since you first began working within it?

Chuck Dixon: It’s a less happy place for mainstream periodical comics. Sales are down and the publishers seem determined to turn comics into a kind of sub-culture in-joke for aging comics hobbyists. The main superhero titles are, for the most part, gloomy and dispiriting. On the brighter side, bookstores and library sales are high, driven primarily by manga sales. But some publishers are catching up and comics are again reaching the mainstream audience of casual readers that’s vital if the medium is going to be around ten years from now.

But not the Big Two, right? They've kept hinting that they're going to keep on with pamphlet comics, instead of trying to make the jump to a format like trade paperbacks, which could provide a much longer life span. I wonder if the following gives a hint why the insistence on still more pamphlets:

Jeffery Klaehn: What are your thoughts on the direct market and on Diamond’s monopoly on the distribution of comic books?

Chuck Dixon: The direct market was a good idea when it started. A hobby shop for comics enthusiasts that helped create a vital fan base. It was attractive to comics companies who no longer had to deal solely with the risks and returns from the magazine distributors. The profit margins were higher in direct. The problems started when the tail began to wag the dog. Many vocal comic retailers mistakenly believed that they were in competition with newsstands and spinner racks. They didn’t realize that these were the gateways into comics that would eventually lead dedicated comics fans into their stores. Either that that or they were that short-sighted and wanted all of the comic book dollars for themselves even if it hurt the industry. To appease them and to conserve risk, the Big Two retreated from the newsstand and that hurt sales overall. It also killed titles that traditionally did well on the newsstand but poorly in direct. Worst of all, it lost the casual comics reader and, even more disastrously, severely cut down on new readers who might have discovered comics at the corner drugstore or 7-11.

That makes for an important point on how the industry took such a blow. Greed, to say nothing of a loss of interest the Big Two developed in reaching out to newer readers, and getting them appreciate even the older material. I don't suppose it's ever occurred to them that, since many comic book stores sell trades and graphic novels by now, it wouldn't make much of a difference if they switched to trades, because the specialty stores already sell them, and could even make better business off of them if they refrained from acting greedy this time around!

I hope that when the book this'll be part of is done, it'll talk in depth about some of the cases in this past decade - 2000-2010 - that helped to bring down comics even further, like the crossovers and forced character deaths for publicity's sake. If it does, it could help to learn what went wrong and how to solve the problem.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, good writers, marvel comics, sales

Here's an interview the Japan Times did with Misako Takashima, a manga artist/writer who lives and works in the US.

Labels: manga and anime

The man who is now editor for Spider-Man churns out more apologies for their current take in a CBR interview article, and uses his own "viewpoint" to justify the damage they're doing:

I think I differ from a lot of fans who read Spider-Man for a long time, because I always read it as a pretty dark book. I don't completely 'get' the always jokey, fun Spider-Man that everybody seems to remember. I read those old issues and my reaction was, 'Boy this is a guy who keeps screwing up and he can't get a break.' The sort of ups and downs and the soap opera of his life—and they way he would try to deal with those problems through humor - was always fascinating to me, but that still didn't make it a comedy to my eyes.

No one said it was exclusively a comedy, but neither was it ever a completely dark book. It began with a sad tragedy of Peter Parker losing his uncle because he'd failed to stop the burglar from getting away, but it was never written as something to take place much of the time in the darkness. He may have had moments in his life where he recalled the loss of Uncle Ben Parker with sadness, but in the end, he didn't let it get him down from being a man, and a superhero.

Wacker is just showing that he's got no understanding of the material he's been entrusted with.

His words on what they've got planned for OMIT leave no reason to be optimistic either:

For the couple of months coming out of "One Moment in Time," we're going to be bringing a lot of threads of Peter's life that we've been developing since we started working on the book into one big story, 'Origin of the Species.' It sort of gives Pete a moment to assess all the stuff that's happened to him for the last 100 or so issues. Beyond that, we've already started talking about the fact that it might be time for a new, or at least better, Spider-Man. I feel like we've done as much as we can do in terms of Peter Parker's time as Spider-Man.

In other words, they're introducing a new Ben Reilly? I won't want to be around to find out. I'm sure nothing great is going to come out of this regardless. They're only digging deeper holes for their franchises, and in the long term, nobody is going to care what new tricks they've got up their sleeves.

Labels: bad editors, marvel comics, Spider-Man

J. Michael Stracynski continues to make me yawn - and sigh in sadness - at what he's now doing to some of DC's most famous protagonists. First, there's his idea of changing WW's costume to pants, and he says:

“She’s been locked into pretty much the exact same outfit since her debut in 1941. What woman only wears only one outfit for 60-plus years?..I wanted to toughen her up and give her a modern sensibility.”

Umm, JMS, Diana did change her costume design at least once before, when Denny O'Neil was writing the series in 1969-73. And what man wears pretty much the same outfit since his debut in 1938? Superman! The one time he really changed his costume was in 1997, and nobody cared for that either.

“It’s a look designed to be taken seriously as a warrior, in partial answer to the many female fans over the years who’ve asked, “how does she fight in that thing without all her parts falling out?”)

Well gee, that's the surrealism common in most science-fantasy comics of this sort, and hardly something anyone looking for escapism has ever worried about.

The bracelets are still there, but made more colorful, tied on the inside and over the hand, with a script W on each of them that form WW when she holds them side by side…and if you get hit by one of them, it leaves a W mark. This is a Wonder Woman who signs her work…letting her enemies know that she’s getting closer.

She certainly is getting closer - in gimmicks - to Lee Falk's Phantom, who had something like that in his skull rings too. What else is new?

But even more head-shaking is JMS's plan to imitate Geoff Johns's changes to the Flash - by not only destroying Themyscira, but also by changing Wonder Woman's history timeline:

Because of a change to the character's timeline, Wonder Woman now has a new origin, an altered history and a different supporting cast.

It all starts with an alteration to time, about 20 years ago, when someone destroyed Paradise Island. This new Wonder Woman was a baby then, and after her mother was killed, she was smuggled out of her homeland and raised by guardians in New York.

It sounds almost like Superman and Donna Troy's origin - in reverse! But far less appealing.

Wonder Woman readers pick up her story 20 years later, but it won't take long for this altered Wonder Woman to find out what happened to the timeline, making it her mission to correct it.

It's all part of Straczynski's attempt to give Wonder Woman a more realistic, grounded approach that contrasts with her still mythical background. He compares the effect to what Neil Gaiman did in Sandman. While this fresh, new Wonder Woman exists in a tough, urban world, she also interacts with a few surviving Amazons and their mythical world that still exists in the shadows.

These changes to Wonder Woman come on the heels of another big character change orchestrated by JMS. Just last Wednesday, DC announced the writer's "Grounded" storyline that takes Superman across America by foot.

And while the changes to Wonder Woman may seem a bit overwhelming to DC fans, Marvel fans will remember another recent iconic character change written by JMS. After all, Straczynski was the writer behind "One More Day," the story that saw Spider-Man's history altered to erase his marriage.

After that story was finished, Straczynski publicly decried Marvel's editorial changes to his Spider-Man story — particularly its effect on continuity. And soon after, he left Marvel to write exclusively for DC.

Where he's now turned to doing almost the exact same thing he concluded his work on Spider-Man with. And knowing JMS's track record, I don't expect this to go over well, even if it's only temporary. I do however expect this to mess up continuity in the DCU quite a bit. Speaking of which, if this is what they're going for, why don't they just cancel the Justice League altogether, instead of making it the dumping ground it's become for several years now?

JMS's take on WW's mythological backdrop and supporting cast is also very awkward:

Finally, there's the problem of her being overwhelmed by her mythology and her supporting characters. When writers don't know what to do with a character, they build up the supporting cast and universe to kind of hide that fact. After a while, you can no longer see the character for the underbrush. When that happens, you need to bring out the weed-whacker to clear some of that away so you can focus on the main character.

How laughable. If there wasn't a supporting cast, how would Spider-Man have worked as well as it did for many years, until people like him ruined everything with his work, which was tainted with overly liberal politics lurking around the corner? Indeed, as I recall, the supporting cast was almost entirely absent from Spidey during his run, save for Mary Jane and Aunt May. Regardless, the stories amounted to almost nothing but wobbly ideas like the Totem tale, which did not mesh well with established continuity, nor did they add much of anything to the franchise beyond what was already told.

And if that's how he was going to handle Spidey, we can't expect much difference here.

Nor can we expect much from his coming work on Superman, which sounds like it could be kinda slow:

Rather than traveling the galaxy defending the universe from dark forces, Superman may soon arrive in your hometown in a very pedestrian way.

As part of the Grounded story line that kicks off in July with issue No. 700 of DC Comics' Superman series, the Man of Steel will walk across the USA to reconnect with the everyday people he is committed to protecting.

The word pedestrian may be even more descriptive than it is of what's coming up. Especially if the Man of Steel just walks across the country, rather than fly. It could be even more underwhelming than it sounds.

"You have to remember that when Superman was initially created, his fights weren't against vast interstellar forces. They were against criminals preying on the average guy," Straczynski says. "Superman was created to be the ally of the average American, the guy who didn't have lots of money or friends in high places."

From poverty and drug-plagued neighborhoods to stories of hope and happiness, he will witness the best and the worst of everyday life.

"We will be asking hard questions, and Superman will learn the extent to which even he may not be able to change things," Straczynski says. "But at the same time, we will explore the language of hope and feature the stubborn noble strength of the average man and woman trying to survive in a difficult and changing world. We will see Superman through the country's eyes, and the country through Superman's eyes."

Yeah, I'll bet they will explore things, from a leftist POV, no less! And I suspect they'll be exploring change as well as hope, just like Obama is doing now, to very little positive effect! And I learned not to expect hard questions answered in JMS's work ever since one of his first stories in Spider-Man almost a decade ago, when he set up a story that might've been an allusion to the Columbine massacre, which made the student wielding an assault rifle into a kid picked upon who takes out his anger against almost the entire school. Yeah, that was asking hard questions alright. I hesitate to think what'll happen if he gets his hands on writing Captain Marvel.

Stracynski is just as full of hot air today as he was a decade ago when he became more active in comic books. He needs to stick with television writing and producing, and not waste his time - or ours - by foisting his increasingly leftist slant on the comics medium.

Update: Phyllis Chesler has brought up the subject of WW's costume change.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman