The Four Color Media Monitor

The Windsor Star interviewed artist David Finch, who's illustrating Batman: The Dark Knight, which - at least according to them - is not going to be as violent as some of the other stories with the Masked Manhunter. One of the things he says here, curiously enough, is that:

"We tend not to have any nudity in comics, but violence can get pretty out of hand at times and violence is an essential part of what comic books are," Finch said from his LaSalle home.

In fairness, he's cited a very puzzling problem that's been prevalent for many years - no nudity allowed (and maybe not even sex), but violence is sanctioned almost all the time. This double-standard has even affected the use of profanity: if memory serves, some of Marvel's most violent stories from the late 80s censored profanity, including some stories in the Punisher, yet the violence remained pretty raw. Why indeed do they have so much of a problem with 2 out of 3 in the mainstream titles, while the 1 continues to get steady protection no matter how far it goes?

And surprising as it is to learn that the artist who was behind some of the most violent stuff in the Ultimate line is now drawing a story where it's toned down, Batman really isn't the place that needs it the most. Rather, I'd say it's any comic written by Brian Bendis and Geoff Johns where the viewpoint was meant to be at least halfway to bright and optimistic, like Avengers and Green Lantern. Toning down the mayhem in the Caped Crusader's books is too easy.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, violence

Just when we thought the exploitation of this medium by the left couldn't get worse, along comes another awful exploiter in Canada and abuses it by turning Karl Marx's propaganda into drawn pages:

George Rigakos is taking the "anything but textbook" approach, creating a four-part comic book series on the Communist Manifesto, featuring original works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

"There is nothing like a comic book and graphic novel to grip a reader," said Rigakos, who plans to use the comic to teach political economy at Carleton University.

The first volume was released just over a week ago and the response has been overwhelming.

"We've barely started advertising and there have already been requests from England and Germany," said Rigakos, who is also head of the editorial collective for Red Quill Books, a new peer-reviewed publishing house. [...]

"The original work of Marx and Engels focused on the bourgeoisie, the proletariat and their heroes - the Communists - which will each constitute separate comic books in the series," he said

Oh god. Just what the world needs, communist propaganda in comics form, and wouldn't you know it, there's still Marxists and communists in Europe who're eating this up. Universities today can be some of the worst factories for this kind of terrible propaganda.

Labels: Europe and Asia, politics

Cartoonist Bosch Fawstin has drawn a special cartoon on News Real Blog in response to DC's latest act of dhimmitude. Amazingly, if there's one other thing here that drew my attention, it was one of the replies in the comments section:

...I think the DC people fails to keep the context sometimes. I once saw Superman with the Justice League, in the animated series, give "Doomsday" something as good as the Death Penalty. Doomsday had become too strong and was capable of killing not only innocent civilians but the heroes in the league itself. So they lobotomized Doomsday. And it was perfectly moral to do so. Batman was angry as hell and walked out on the league. I think it was very irrational for him to do so.

Well this is surprising: Warner's animation department actually did a variation on Identity Crisis? It's not clear from this if the League was depicted positively or negatively, but if it was the former, it would certainly be odd that they'd take a better direction than DC's 2004 monstrosity. If it was the latter, however, I can only figure their animation writers have been corrupted along with the comics division.

It's really a good thing that this turned up in the same discussion, because it can tell how Identity Crisis stems from the same mindsets that concocted this newest propaganda. And I'd figured for quite a while that Identity Crisis was a metaphor for blame-America propaganda, and the magical lobotomy of Dr. Light was meant as a metaphor to attack psychologists who try to turn around dangerous criminals, and even an attack on interrogation of terrorists.

Update: in related news, Warner Todd Huston, who'd addressed this subject in the past week, has also noted it in his 2010 showbiz PC year in review topic at Big Hollywood, along with the Capt. America vs. Tea Party controversy and Archie Comics' own PC contribution.

Update 2: Breitbart put up an article from the AFP, which unsurprisingly, isn't particularly respectable of the conservative movement. But what really raises eyebrows here is where the writer of the propaganda tool, David Hine, comes from:

DC comics did not respond to an AFP request for an interview with David Hine, the writer of the album featuring Nightrunner, and declined to comment on the controversy.

But the British-born author told a US website that he had tried to "come up with the kind of hero I would want to see in a comic book if I were French."

Now, it's becoming clearer: Hine hails from that isle of madness the French nicknamed Londonistan, because of how they allowed their country to serve as a hub for terrorist cells. A country overrun with bias, prejudice, and other horrific anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism, and, as Melanie Phillips, one of the few sane voices in the UK says, also suffers from obsession with multiculturalism. Robert Spencer once asked early in his official career if Britain will convert to Islam. One can only wonder if that will end up happening.

I think what's really galling about Mr. Hine's statements is that basically, this is his idea of what a "good" Frenchman should be, just like there are liberals out there with a pretty ludicrous idea of what a conservative should really be. Yet it doesn't surprise me that someone like him could pull a stunt like this, and pander to PC-ness and multiculturalism.

Labels: Batman, Captain America, dc comics, islam and jihad, marvel comics, politics

Here's a short news item on the Japan Times about a company that's beginning to distribute manga stories on iPhones in the USA.

Labels: manga and anime, technology

One of Dixon's own readers informed everyone on his own board that 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, by Paul Levitz, contains no mention whatsoever of one of the most successful Batman writers of modern times:

The thing that really really irks me is that in this entire tome, there is not a single mention of Chuck Dixon or any of the work he did for DC Comics.

Chuck's name is not even mentioned. While he worked on NIGHTWING, BIRDS OF PREY, GREEN ARROW, there should have been something acknowledged with his long long run on DETECTIVE COMICS and the legacy he left with writing Tim Drake on the ROBIN series.

But there was nothing. Nada. Not even mentioned in the index with a footnote or a bio with all the other creators in the back with the cute little cartoony sketches. His name is not mentioned while all sorts of others are. It is as if in the overview of history of DC Comics, according to Levitz's book, Chuck and his work didn't even garner a need for mention. He's been erased.

[...]

It is a beautiful book, but I believe it has it's political agenda and a skewed view of it's own history.

In that case, I'd say it's simply not worth buying, and while I'm sure Levitz isn't the only one at fault here, he's still proven he's one of the biggest things wrong with DC today.

In fact, if the following is correct, Tim Drake's inclusion as a character isn't clear either:

Red Tornado gets more lovin' and page count than even Tim Drake Robin.

Seriously, looking at the index, Tim Drake version of Robin isn't even listed in the index either, but the other versions of Robin are there.

I guess they couldn't write much about Tim Drake Robin without evoking Dixon's name is what I believe.

Good grief. Dixon's work on Robin was by far the best of the spinoff series he wrote, along with Birds of Prey, and they don't give him any mention either? Indeed, they've been trying this past decade to get rid of a considerable amount of the contributions he'd gone to such pains to create. This could explain why so little of his Robin run has ever been published in trades, if at all. Even Jerry Siegel/Joe Shuster, Gardner Fox, John Broome and Robert Kanigher never got as much disrespect as this.

I'm not a legal expert, but if there's any legitimate grounds for a lawsuit, I do think Dixon should sue, and would be making a big mistake not to. What he should do is try and go on talk radio, for example to discuss how they've slighted him. And again, this is sufficient reason why nobody needs to pay hard earned money for a book published by people with no gratitude for writers who helped to improve their sales record back in the day. No wonder they're plummeting as we speak.

Labels: dc comics

CBC News tells that they're desperate to raise sales for one of the books they themselves discouraged everyone from reading with their horrible crossovers:

Marvel Comics executive editor Tom Brevoort said Wednesday that one of the members will die in an issue to be released in January.

[...]

"I think we've given plenty of hints as to who may die — perhaps too many, in that every one of our lead characters is left in a dire, life-threatening situation the month before," Brevoort said.

Members of the Fantastic Four, including Sue Storm or the Invisible Woman and Reed Richards or Mister Fantastic, have died in previous storylines. But Storm's death turned out to be a ruse and Richards was rediscovered in another dimension.

Marvel said this time it really is the end for someone.

And I say that's a laugh, and I wouldn't buy it anyway. It doesn't even matter if it's just Willie Lumpkin who passes away; they've driven this whole charade into the ground, and nobody should be falling for this insult anymore. (By the way, why do they say "or"? Don't these clowns know that Sue Storm/Invisible Woman and Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic are one and the same person? The correct word should be "alias", or "aka".)

"Anyone that's ever lost a family member can tell you that surviving [and] moving on is a process," Hickman said in a release from Marvel.

"So the Fantastic Four will do that in the same manner we all do: some will get angry, some will grieve, some will want to get even. And all of this grows out of events in one of the four cities."

Yes, I get the picture - this is just part of their newest abomination, "Fear Itself". Regardless, it's clear they're doing this all for the sake of sales, and killing characters is not helping anyone who's ever been through these kind of experiences in real life. The issue, 587, should be avoided in protest, and with sales fading as they are today, it probably will sell less than previous stunts, but it still remains to be seen.

Update: it's even worse than what the above article tells - this one from the Worcestor Telegram, which draws mainly from the AP, says:

This time, however, Marvel is adamant, noting that once the current story ends in No. 588, the Fantastic Four will cease to exist.

And so will Marvel as a comic book publisher, if they keep this up; it's only a matter of time before it really has a shuttering effect on their publishing system. They've replaced Matt Murdock in his own book with T'Challa, and that's likely what they'll do here too, switching the main cast with a bunch of third-tier protagonists, all because they allegedly can't carry a title on their own, so instead Marvel baits-and-switches for the sake of short-term sales jumps.

Update 2: to matters even sadder, the site of BetUs and by extension Robot 6 are making things worse by aiding and abetting this kind of disrespectful abuse of famous franchises. It's bad enough that DC did it with Jason Todd. Why are they making it worse by acting as though this is something to celebrate?

Labels: bad editors, Fantastic Four, golden calf of death, marvel comics, msm propaganda

Comic Book Resources runs one of their predictably unchallenging interviews with Geoff Johns, and among the stuff they bring up in this otherwise dreary, laughable item:

Barry Allen’s life is as a member of the CSI. That’s really important to him as a character and I wanted that to be front and center in the book because most of the time the life outside of the costume is never seen anymore. That was that whole point of that first arc. When I wrote [it], I wanted to make sure that Barry’s life outside of the Flash was affecting the story and was as important to his life as his life is inside the costume. I think some of that secret identity and the supporting cast and the lives of heroes outside of their costumes and how that affects the story has been lost. Most of the characters never come out of the costume anymore. They don’t have a regular life that they return to each night. I wanted to get back to, like you said, presenting “The Flash” as a bit of an old school book because I don’t know if there is another superhero out there that takes his secret identity so seriously.

Wow, that's pretty funny coming from Johns, who had a big chance to do a simpler story focusing on Wally West's relations with Linda Park's parents during his run on the previous volume, yet never went so far beyond a mere cameo for them, and even implied that Wally doesn't get along with the dad-in-law, if anyone! Is there anything about this current take on Barry that couldn't have been done with Wally? I don't think so. And I wouldn't be surprised if his claim is at least half exaggerated.

In any case, his attempts to do anything like this really fall flat, not unlike J. Michael Stracynski's own efforts, mostly because of how they seem awfully half-hearted at best, to say nothing of merely symbolic. And it's clear that the only reason why this kind of story might happen is because Johns is DC's equivalent to Brian Bendis at Marvel. They can be quite "clever" and "cunning" when they want to.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash

DC is publishing a Teen Titans story written by Mark Sable called "Cold Case" that he actually wrote a few years before, and gathered dust until now, as he reedited the script. It should've kept gathering cobwebs, because, as he tells on his blog (also via Speed Force):

It’s actually the first meeting between the Titans and The Flash’s Rogues gallery, so Cold is just one of the MANY villains the Titans face. I don’t want to give too much away, but the story also ties into Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis, providing an answer to an unresolved mystery there.

If you’re worried that you won’t understand the book because it takes place in the Titans’ past (or because you didn’t read Identity Crisis, or follow the Titans or Flash etc.) – don’t. DC didn’t just dust this story off and publish it. I went back and did a major rewrite, with the primary aim being to make this book as accessible as any other I’ve written.

Oh, I'm not worried, and he doesn't need to give away much more either. If it's connected with Identity Crisis, it's worthless. And we really don't need another story involving a murder (where are all the stories just featuring bank robberies, jewel heists, and kidnapees who need saving? In fact, where are the stories that don't involve these costumed villains? There've been too many with deaths and costumed crooks lately as it is).

If memory serves, Sable co-wrote a story in Supergirl #16 where Kara looked as though she was having bizarre "memories" of killing her mother with crystals. Thankfully, that story did not hold, and has since been done away with (well, we can only hope). I think Sable's only made a handful of contributions to DC to date, but if he was willing to write something so pretentious and downright embarrassing, I sure wouldn't consider him suitable for writing the Titans, or the Flash, or even the Rogues.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, misogyny and racism, Titans, women of dc

Pajamas Media contributor Bryan Preston, while writing about global warming propaganda in the UK, stumbled over an absurd site called Global Warming Superheroes. Disturbingly, they even seem to be putting down real comics superheroes: on their about page, they say:

Spider-Man made a big deal of protecting New York from the GreenGoblin. But let’s be honest: scrapping a lycra-clad gimp on a hover-board is about as gutsy as wiping a pube from the bath.

Umm, Norman Osborn wasn't the only concern Spidey ever had. And are they saying they don't like stories about good fighting evil? I'm not sure, but I do know that using words like "pube" is really vulgar. Whoever came up with that site in the UK needs to see a psychologist.

Labels: Europe and Asia, politics

Looks like Marvel is really intent on burying themselves this time, with a company line-wide event called Fear Itself, and even the X-Men won't emerge unscathed this time:

"In 'Civil War,' the X-Men sort of opted out. In this, they don't have the luxury of opting out," Alonso told CBR. "As the X-Men group editor, I'm champing at the bit to get them more integrated in the Marvel Universe, and they will be in a major way here. They brokered a deal in 'Civil War,' so [their absence] was as simple as that. But they're going to be involved in a big way in 'Fear Itself.'"

They may not have the luxury of opting out, but we the audience do. Mainly because even if the books involved aren't 4 dollars, the cost of only so many books together will make it very UN-luxurious. This is clearly their slap in the face to anyone who thought Marvel was really going to avoid raising their prices any further than they already were.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, marvel comics, X-Men

Adrienne Roy, who was a successful colorist for DC comics in the 70s and 80s, has passed away at just 57 years old, sadly enough. She'll be missed.

Labels: dc comics, good artists

The manager of ComixExperience in SanFrancisco has written his latest Tilting at Windmills column for CBR, and does not see a rosy future ahead for the market. "Event" marketing is just one of the causes for the industry's downfall, and towards the end, he says:

“Event Marketing” is now counter-productive; over-proliferation is counter-productive, focusing on the short-term gain, but ultimately eroding consumer confidence in a work by the constant barrage of new #1s is counter-productive, Price increases are counter-productive. We have to pack comics full of action and wonder and crazy ideas again. We have to not publish comics that “don’t matter,” we have to stop tying them all together so closely and making the enjoyment of one dependent upon the purchase of another. We have to strip lines down, hard, to just the brilliant shiny heart of it all...

But don't count on it to happen with such awful people as Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio in charge. They're only going to keep milking the periodicals dry with events and stunts, and do nothing to reverse the damage they've done to continuity, nor will they try to change the publishing format.

Update: Josh Blaylock is wondering if next Feburary will be a wipeout. I'm afraid it's quite possible.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, marvel comics, sales

Comixology has an article about how this year was yet another that really stunk horrifically for comics. For example, the Cry for Justice miniseries, and an X-Men comic with Nightcrawler where he had his chest cut open. I predict that if this year was horrible, we can fully expect 2011 to be a nightmare.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, violence

In response to a claim he was only doing his work on Spider-Man for a paycheck, he responded with the F-bomb to a user. (via Spider-Man Crawl Space). And with that, we discover someone who doesn't think that, "with great power, must come great responsibility", as Stan Lee so eloquently put it back in 1962, and clearly wasn't inspired by Lee's excellent point. So why is he associating himself with Marvel anyway, if he doesn't have faith in anything Lee tried to promote?

Following the reaction to his slip of the tongue, all Slott's been able to do since then is take out his anger against the SM Crawl Space. If that's all he can do, and not offer a genuine apology, then I don't see a far-reaching future for him in a comics career.

Update: as you'll notice, Slott has gone on the defensive by replying to my post as well. But, I'm afraid he's pretty weak here: he seems to be trying to divert attention away from his own mistake by claiming that the poster on CBR later apologized. Just how does that absolve Slott of the insultingly nasty attitude he's put on display? I may have allowed him to post a reply for now on this site (it first turned up in the spam folder when he wrote it), but frankly, I think that's the last time this very pretentious apologist for Marvel is going to be speaking here. He really knows how to insult people's intellects.

Labels: dreadful writers, marvel comics

The Los Angeles Times reports about the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly's vote to restrict sales or rentals of sexually explicit and violent comics to minors.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

In a sign that the rising prices of comics are having a negative impact on sales, Cosmic Comics, which was in business for nearly 2 decades in New York, is closing down at the end of the year. As they tell:

The comic book industry has changed dramatically and its really hard to run a store under such conditions. A $3.99 comic in an economy like this hurts everyone across the board. Do you know how many ghetto OOero cookies spelled with two O’s I can buy in the local bodega with $3.99??? The industry is milk[ing] the cow ie the customers before the paper comic industry crashes and goes completely online.

And even then, who knows if that'll work either? If they keep up the current format even online - specifially, with padded storytelling - that could keep them smarting even longer.

Labels: sales

DC's former publisher, one of their most pretentious staffers as I came to realize, gave an interview to the Comics Journal about 75 years for the company, and only succeeded in turning off plenty of readers again. He said in reply to the following:

WILSON: The ability to cross genders because if you talk with female readers, there appears to be a greater attention paid to Vertigo titles than those published in the mainstream DC realm.

LEVITZ: I’m not sure that young women are as interested in reading about superheroes. The fundamental dynamic of the superhero story has historically been more appealing to boys than to girls.

You mean there's no wish fulfillment for girls in superhero stories, or any other kind of inspiration or escapism? Sigh. There's a whole list of blogs here, particularly from the Tumblr server, who were put off by what they feel is Levitz signaling contempt for the female audience. And all I can say is that, after he greenlighted Identity Crisis, their worst way of saying they don't want a big female audience, he deserves whatever drubbing he gets.

Update: here's a response to Levitz's botch on Robot 6.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, misogyny and racism

I knew it was only going to get worse at DC: in his continuing efforts to form Batman Inc, Bruce Wayne recruits an Algerian Muslim living in France, in Clichy-Sous-Bois, where the Muslim riots grew out of in 2005, over the death of 2 delinquents who electrocuted themselves by stupidly entering a power station, and the blame was laid upon at least 2 policemen who weren't even at fault and didn't even know they were there. How about that, Bruce Wayne goes to France where he hires not a genuine French boy or girl with a real sense of justice, but rather, an "oppressed" minority who adheres to the Religion of Peace. And this is a guy whose very parents were murdered at the hands of a common street thug!

And reading this review, it may be just the beginning of the problems:

Bruce reveals that he's aware of some bizarre assassinations taking place in Paris, and he wants to help. Still dubious, the cop shows Bruce a letter giving clues to the next murder, and Bruce deducts that a Muslim diplomat was the target of the assassin.

Really? Not a cartoonist like Kurt Westergaard or Lars Vilks?

Also, it's funny how someone who recruited an indigenous Japanese combatant for his operation can't do the same in France. Surely Saint-Flour in Brittany might have a couple of brave folks who could step up to plate? Now that this has happened, one can only wonder if Bruce Wayne will go next to the Gaza Strip and recruit a Muslim who thinks him/herself oppressed not by the Hamas, but by the Israelis, and even to Sweden, where he'll recruit a Muslim living in Malmö, which has long had troubles of its own with suburban jihadists.

When this was brought up on the Dixonverse forum, someone asked:

Does he bring justice to the Parisian streets by lighting dozens of evil automobiles on fire every night?

Here's an even more intriguing question: Does he condone or blandly tolerate some of the most horrifying verses in the Koran/Hadith like Sura 8:12? Or, more precisely, does the writer?

Thank goodness the JLA/99 special was a fiasco. We can only hope the same will be for this pretentious story. It certainly puts the lie to the whole notion that DC is "conservative". And it tells that they are really going downhill. I'm guessing that the writer, David Hine, is taking out his leftist anger on France for finally taking steps to fight back against creeping shariah and Islamic supremacism, by banning the niqab for starters.

Update: Bosch Fawstin had a special response to this kowtowing on News Real Blog a few months earlier.

Update 2: Warner Todd Huston has researched the subject, and provided a lot more details than I could ever have. Most disturbing is the story's moral equivalence (shades of how some PC-advocates would like to depict Israel vs. "palestinians"). This approach to storytelling only adds insult to injury, and I've got a feeling not many French with common sense will want to pay their hard-earned money to read DC's current output anymore.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, islam and jihad, politics

Digital Spy reports that the company called Kodansha is going to start publishing manga books in English under its own name in the US.

Labels: manga and anime

The Brenda Starr comic strip is coming to a close on January 2, 2011. Not only has a comic strip famous for being one of the first scripted by and starring a woman sadly come to an end after at least 70 years, but so has another newspaper strip, signaling the loss of influence newspapers are having.

Update: here's an old item from the Comics Reporter from 2005 about the late Dale Messick, creator of the strip.

Labels: comic strips

The above scene is from Fantastic Four #335, December 1989, during the time of the Acts of Vengeance crossover, which came long before Civil War and its superhero registration act (also, the registration act that Congress proposed here was primarily aimed at mutants). And in this older story, most amazingly, a member of the National Rifle Association came to the Congressional hearing on whether to regulate mutants, superheroes and superhumans and their superpowers, and defended the individual's rights to possess the powers they have, explaining the concern that just like they worry about gun control, they're also concerned that, if the proposed law led to a ban on superpowers, it could lead to a similar situation if common citizens were banned from owning guns for self-defense: only criminals would possess guns, and only supervillains would possess superpowers. And while not without its flaws or suggestion of bias towards conservative politicians, this story was a lot more respectable of some of the viewpoints conservatives can have about the right to self-defense, and was far from being as heavy-handed as Civil War was with its hero-forcibly-vs-hero quagmire. (Instead, more appropriately, it was the villains all tripping over each other, as seen amusingly enough later in the courtroom!)

Also, unlike a lot of today's crossovers, Acts of Vengeance was not about killing and demonizing superheroes and their supporting casts, or other dumb actions to get 15 minutes of mainstream press attention.

Can anyone see today's editorial at Marvel - or DC - writing a story as decent as this one that doesn't villify conservatives en masse or even attack self-defense rights, to say nothing of jamming politics down the readers' throats as badly as Civil War did? Come to think of it, can anyone see them paying tribute to Charlton Heston, who was a leading member and president of the NRA for many years? Nope, it's just simply unlikely.

But what this story can tell here is that Civil War's Superhero Registration Act isn't new - it already appeared in 1989-90 and was nowhere near as heavy-handed as politics in mainstream comics have become since the turn of the century. So all Quesada and company did was rehash ideas already used to much better, politer effect in years gone by.

Labels: Fantastic Four, marvel comics, politics

ICV2's website says that periodical sales have, for the third time monthly, failed to sell anything over 100,000 units. The close range from what's on top to what reaches the lower than 50,000 levels is really startling.

And that's what they can only expect to happen when virtually everything they publish reeks of publicity stunt and events, with no plausible character-driven stories in sight.

Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, sales

The All Pulp blog interviews conservative leaning writer Chuck Dixon about his past and present work, including some of the pulp-style stories he's contributed.

Labels: good writers

Here's a history article on Viceland about the works of Jack "King" Kirby and his many accomplishments during the Golden/Silver Age.

Labels: good artists, good writers

As galling as Mark Waid's become, I suppose I'll have to give him some credit for pointing out DC's been ruining the Captain Marvel family, as he explains in this interview with Popgun Chaos:

PC: Why is it so hard for Captain Marvel to sustain his own series?

MW: Some of that, I’ve just answered above–he’s not a terribly complex character. And, sadly, we tend to gravitate more and more towards dark, complex heroes as a society. The reason Cap can’t sustain his own series is that the creators and publishers keep trying to shoehorn him into the comics-shop-dweller demographics and can’t just let him be a character for kids, because we can’t figure out how to bridge the gulf between comics in their current format and young readers who would love Captain Marvel but don’t know what comics are or how to find them or how to read them. I will go to my grave believing that preschoolers would love Captain Marvel if they could just find him. Older kids would think he’s too simplistic or too light, but that’s fine. Don’t try to change the character to fit that mold; just find the audience for Cap as he is. That audience is out there.

I'm sure there's also an audience out there who've got no problem with bright, optimistic storytelling. In fact, I'm sure that wider society doesn't gravitate towards darkness and complexity as easily as what Waid suggests. Another good argument you could make here is how DC seems incapable of bringing themselves to market Billy Batson in the DCU proper as a book for kids or at least family audiences. Of course, so long as they remain fixated on the angle they've taken since Identity Crisis, that won't be possible.

PC: Mary Marvel has gone through a lot in the past few years. Do you think this is a natural progression for her character or simply a case of having her do something?

MW: Don’t get me started. A lot of what Mary’s gone through over the past decade or so has nothing to do with what’s broken or not broken about the concept, and everything to do with a bunch of creepy-ass older men working out their issues. Just thinking about it makes me want to take a Silkwood shower. It takes more imagination than most comics creators have to find something interesting about a good girl, but it’s not impossible.

Of course not, unless editorial mandate happens to get in the way, and did. That's one of the reasons why Mary Marvel has been so badly abused along with her brother, and the two of them, if memory serves, have been depowered recently.

That said, Waid himself unfortunately was involved - even if only indirectly - in a lot of this misuse of the Marvel Family, and certainly in what DC did circa the time Identity Crisis was published. As a result, I'm not sure if coming from him, the arguments have much weight. Especially if he still condones Ed Brubaker's misuse of Captain America.

Some people may have argued that merging Captain Marvel into the DCU proper (which had actually been done already in the mid-70s in one of the Earth 1/2 crossover stories) diminished his significance. But that's still nothing compared to how badly misused the Big Red Cheese has become under today's DC editorial.

Labels: dc comics, misogyny and racism

This article in the Macon Telegraph talks about 2 fans who're hoping the comics convention they're starting in the city could become an economic success.

Unfortunately, with the way things are going now in the market and in writing, I've got a feeling any success wouldn't be long term.

Labels: conventions