The Four Color Media Monitor

USA Today wrote about the DCnU redo of the Blackhawks, another victim of outrageously trendy updating:

Gone are the individual propeller planes, funny hats and — in Lady Blackhawk's case — miniskirts. Instead, the Blackhawks are a super-secret organization of do-gooders that, like many characters in DC's "New 52" relaunch, are made to be more accessible to readers and "to show them that comics could be like you remember they were when you were a kid in the '80s or '90s," [Mike] Costa says.

With the kind of editorial mandates they have, chances are that it'll be more like in the latter decade than the former, when their comics were far better written than they were in the 90s. Now, here's where the troubles start to arise:

In the first issue, after a mission to rescue hostages, the pink-haired main character Kunoichi gets a technological infection that lays her up for the rest of the first story arc, effectively isolating the team's risk-taking hotshot. And in the second issue, Irish has his entire right arm taken off in battle. (It looks like he'll be OK in the long run, though, with a prosthetic arm on the way.)

"It was important for me to take as many characters as possible and then to put them in situations where the thing they thought they could do, they can't do it anymore, and they have to learn how to do something else," Costa says.

"Plus, I have a lot of characters. It's hard to juggle them all and keep them all doing stuff while telling an exciting story. It just makes it easier to cut a dude's arm off and put him in the infirmary for a couple of issues. I don't have to worry about him for the rest of the time," he adds with a laugh.

That's not funny, and only further dilutes whatever fun angle he says he's aiming for, since there's been far too much of that gore galore recently. This sounds almost like the Doom Patrol with colorless violence thrown in for good measure. Just why do the Blackhawks have to be turned into something this ludicrous? In a way, Costa is channeling Brian Bendis, who took the Avengers and used them as a title in which to tell stories that might've been better suited to the Defenders (or even the late 90s Heroes for Hire), only that with Bendis track record, his stories wouldn't even be suitable for the famous 1972-86 team book.

Now here's one more thing that contradicts something told at the start of the article:

The writer adds that, although the whole team will be back together for issues 7 and 8, there will be "more intimate character stories" and new heroes, such as a woman who comes on board as a consequence of the super-secret Blackhawks now being very public.

Now never mind that the people in charge of DC today cannot be trusted to produce a real or plausible character drama, what has me bewildered here is the news that the team they said was super-secret is going public?!? In that case, how can we be sure this'll have any solid direction, any more than most of Geoff Johns' writing in the Flash, which featured a whole lot of cheap, superficial plot gimmicks yet abandoned them pretty quickly? Making a secretive team public within such short notice is hardly establishing a firm storytelling path.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, violence

The Miami Herald has an article about Allen Bellman, who was an artist on Captain America way back in the Golden Age, and at 87 now lives in Florida. He's been rediscovered by fans in recent years.

Labels: Captain America, good artists, marvel comics

The Nashua Telegraph writes a biased article about Francis Manapul and Brian Bucalleto's relaunch of the Flash for the DCnU, not telling about the cheats involved. First, here's what they say about Geoff Johns' own retconning from 3 years before:

Now, the knock against Barry Allen – and why he was “dead” for 22 years – has always been that he’s so perfectly heroic that he’s perfectly boring. But Johns added some angst with the recent “Flashpoint” miniseries (available in hardback, $22.99), which included a shocking development in the death of Allen’s mother that has added considerably to his personality and motivations.

Boy, they sure do love to imply that darkening a famous hero's background is a "positive" direction, don't they. But that grimefest Johns cooked up is just the kind of thing that makes me look down my nose at him in disgrace and shame.

Now, here's where there's a problem going the opposite direction, the one that echos Marvel's own steps with Spider-Man:

And clearly, Manapul and Buccellato don’t think Allen’s true-blue heroism is boring; in fact, they consider it a plus.

“What makes him special is that he comes from a time when a hero was a hero because that was the right thing to do,” Manapul said. “It’s the kind of hero that I think a lot of us, when were kids, aspired to.

“Now with the way the industry is, there are a lot of antiheroes. It’s cool and it’s popular, but it’s not at the core of what a hero is about. I think (that heroism) is what The Flash represents to me. I think you’ll see throughout the first year that we’re constantly putting that in contrast both in terms of the thematic story, as well as visually. He is the brightest thing that you’ll see on the page, and that’s not by accident.”

“Flash doesn’t have any other agenda than to be heroic and to do the right thing,” Buccellato added. “He’s very simple in that way, and I think it’s refreshing. Because, like Francis said, we’ve had a lot of tortured heroes for a while, and it’s nice to see somebody who’s going to stand up just because it’s the right thing to do.”

Granted, this argument in itself is valid, because yes, the problem they cite has long been a staple for mainstream comics, and even a few Image titles, to be sure.

Unfortunately, what nullifies everything is something not mentioned in the article, which is the almost complete obliteration of Iris West Allen and Wally West from the Flash's main cast - especially the latter protagonist - all for the sake of pairing up Barry Allen with onetime lab assistant Patty Spivot and so that Barry can be the sole hero in the spotlight. Nowhere in the article does it mention the Wests or Spivot, and that's where the aforementioned similarities to Spider-Man's Brand New Day come in. DC's editorial mandaters have - subtly or otherwise - thrown the Wests out over the past 2 years, ditto Linda Park West, lest I forget. And if they're going to by such a shameless editorial mandate, then just like Brand New Day in Spider-Man, which banished Mary Jane Watson Parker as Peter Parker's wife, any optimistic viewpoint is rendered dishonest and invalidated. And the newspaper is being dishonest if they're not willing to bring up those editorial mandates and comment on them.

Not that the book as relaunched ever really boomed in sales, and if they're going to be so disrespectful of anybody who'd already invested in Wally West's own cast over the past 2 decades, that's why the series as it stands now is not worth buying.

Besides, how do we know that they won't try something contradictory to optimism and brightness later down the road?

Labels: dc comics, Flash, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Spider-Man, violence

Here's a recent interview the NY Post did with Stan Lee about his past career and how he got started, and also mentions a new book he wrote on how to write comics.

Labels: good writers, marvel comics

And where? In Fantastic Four #600 as Marvel restores the original numbering, proving that even the restoration of the original series' numbering is only being done as a publicity stunt. Tom Brevoort tells the AP that:

[...] the new issue, which marks the title’s return since No. 588 was published, makes it clear that Storm wasn’t just hibernating or being held in a comatose state.

“Yes, he did die. He died a couple of times,” Brevoort said, adding that writer Jonathan Hickman had outlined the plans for a return months ago so readers won’t “feel cheated or disappointed in the slightest.”

Unfortunately, there is a reason to be disappointed: that they would make such a fuss, sensationalize and try to market issue #588 based on a character's death, which is almost the only thing they've ever tried to lure in mainstream coverage for today. In fact, save for the AP article, not many other MSM sources seem to have announced this so far, suggesting resurrections and righting a wrong are meaningless to them. One other that did, however, that being Entertainment Weekly, had this to say:

The comic book industry has three defining publicity-grabbing gimmicks: the New Costume, the Retcon Reboot, and the Beloved Character Death. In January, Fantastic Four packaged two of those gimmicks together, killing off the Human Torch and rebranding the team with skintight-stormtrooper costumes. My colleague Jeff Jensen was initially skeptical about the death of the Torch, but later noted that writer Jonathan Hickman justified the death in the narrative. And hey, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with publicity-grabbing gimmicks.

Wrong. After all these years of the big two insulting our intellect by killing off characters instead of developing them or featuring them as players in a story of some sort, I'd say there is something fundamentally wrong with publicity stunts. Because it's the easy way out, it's only successful in the short term, and it's very uncreative. At least they're right in part about the cheap gimmicks that have come to define mainstream comics, definitely the 2nd and 3rd examples.

Now, no one ever seriously thought that the Torch was going to stay dead for very long, but the quick turnaround is still a little shocking. The last time Marvel killed off a founding member of the Fantastic Four, it was the Human Torch’s brother-in-law Mr. Fantastic, who stayed dead for almost three years before his teammates figured out that he was actually just trapped in the past. In 2007, Captain America was assassinated, and a full two years passed before it turned out that he was actually just trapped in the past. In 2008, DC killed off Batman, and it wasn’t until 2010 that he turned up again, still alive and perhaps somewhat predictably trapped in the past.

Then again, Superman was dead for nearly a full year in the early ’90s (although in those fat and sassy days there were four monthly Superman titles.)

Doesn't that tell by now the character's death they began was a waste of time reading about to begin with? For anyone who's become acquainted with Marvel and DC's modus operandi of recent times, it's not so shocking at all. What is shocking and downright devastating is that they flatly refuse to quit the obsession with killing characters for publicity's sake. The sad part is that the resurrection, while more welcome in itself, is unlikely to much better written than the prior story about the demise. IMO, any story they come up today with where a character dies should be rejected by the audience, certainly if it's apparent it's only being done for publicity's sake.

Labels: bad editors, Batman, Captain America, dc comics, Fantastic Four, golden calf of death, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Superman

Of all things that are now becoming comics in their own way, even Sun Tzu's own work has been turned into one by a company called Smarter Comics.

Labels: indie publishers

In Avengers 12.1, Brian Bendis continues to be the bad omen the Earth's Mightiest Heroes has been burdened with ever since Joe Quesada gave him nearly free reign 7 years ago, and demonstrates how truly, he doesn't care one single bit about the characters who've been enslaved under his writing. As seen in this panel from the issue, via Too Busy Thinking About My Comics, Bendis and artist Brian Hitch depict Jessica Drew, the first Spider-Woman, imprisoned naked following abduction by the very Wizard who's often led the Frightful Four, with the Mad Thinker joining him in the act. Looks like Dr. Light won't be the only costumed supervillain bound for an embarrassing tarnishing.

Just how much more of this torture and degradation will the whole Avengers franchise and any Marvel cast - especially the women - have to endure before Bendis and the accompanying artists who are just as guilty of contempt as he is, finally be gone? Only when Marvel's comics properties are in the ownership of people who actually care, or when they've been forced to shut down publishing due to depleted readership and moneymaking, I fear.

Labels: Avengers, dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, women of marvel

If there's any allegedly conservative news writer purporting to be a comics fan I've often found a turnoff, it would be Jonathan V. Last of the Weekly Standard. I was simply full of disgust when I once found out he actually embraced Identity Crisis and would not recognize any of the one-sided depiction of the female cast, nor how it was basically a subtle blame-America metaphor, and he still hasn't changed. Thanks to that, any argument he's got that's more legit has been spoiled, for me anyway. IMHO, he's not a conservative, just a big phony.

Now, I discover that the very man who allegedly had a problem with DC's reboot, for example, is suddenly softening his stance, which is just what Dan DiDio, still lurking in the background at DC (he does seem to appear more in the news than Bob Harras, whose EIC position seems very symbolic), would doubtless want. Last begins by telling everybody:

I’ve been reasonably critical of DC’s company-wide relaunch, but three months in I’m softening slightly. For all the stuff DC has done wrong here, they’ve also done a few things right.

And then he goes on to list a few things he thinks are done right, including:

* The single smartest thing about the new DC universe is that it does not appear to be a coherent universe. So far as I can tell, there’s no character continuity. Not just in events, but even in how they’re written. The Batman of Justice League is tonally very different from the Batman of Detective Comics, who is almost a different character than the Batman in the plain-vanilla Batman title. A Darkseid invasion in one book does not seem to have bearing on stories in any of the other books.

What this does is free up the writers to simply tell stories. Detailed continuity has really crippled both Marvel and DC over the last couple decades–especially when it comes to the yearly event books, which then push their tendrils into the publishers’ full line, interrupting normal storytelling and forcing the entire company to deal with the same central topic.

Oh good grief. Even if a Darkseid story in one book doesn't have to have a bearing upon another, that doesn't excuse incoherency. And if the exact personality of Batman is inconsistent from book to book, that's actually a problem: in the mid-1990s, a major complaint was that Bruce Wayne was being depicted as a cold control freak with a poor grasp on what it means to be kindly and human towards his friends and fellow crimefighters, something that's dogged the characterization ever since, and if what he's telling here says something, it's that we can't expect all writers involved to agree on a better persona that will apply to all stories getting published now, and it wouldn't be surprising if they hadn't even tried at all.

In fact, what he's telling here - rather sugarcoatedly too, I think - it's that this might be little different from how Spider-Man and Wolverine were forced into the Avengers without regard for plausibility or continuity, the latter which Last must think is a problem. Ahem: it's not, it's just that when the whole comics universe is bearhugged together as they've been doing for the past decade, not allowing for any self-contained stories, that's what causes continuity to fail.

In fact, what Last fails to comprehend is that it's the very yearly events he cites that were - and still are - the problem, not detailed continuity in itself. Worse, he ignores some of the problems that are still prevalent, as if they don't matter. And at the end of his weakly written post, he says:

* At the end of the day, no matter now much I’ve complained about the New 52, the central fact is this: After three months, I’m following maybe a half-dozen DC books. In the three years prior to the relaunch, that number was a consistent zero.

Oh, so just do the kind of weak publicity stunt they pulled and all of a sudden, he's back on board, as though DiDio's and company's own continued presence is of no concern? I'm not impressed.

Update: I also see no reason to revise my opinion of Last if he's going to do something that even today, I'm still trying to refrain from: in this recent Weekly Standard article, the bulk of which can only be read via subscription, he says:

In January 1992, the [New York] Times pricked up its ears at the news that Marvel comics was unveiling the first openly gay superhero. The hero in question was Northstar, a fourth-rank Canadian crime-fighter to whom no one at the Times had previously paid any attention. Nevertheless, the paper pronounced the development “welcome news.” It wasn’t. Northstar was a lousy character before he was gay; he was lousy after.

Unless he brings up John Byrne's and Scott Lobdell's names later in the article, which I can't access, he's criticized the characters instead of how they're written, an approach I've been trying for several years now to avoid using, and if I do make that mistake, I try to correct it. If Northstar was "lousy" as he puts it, it was because Byrne, as the creator of Alpha Flight, failed to provide a decent personality for Jean-Paul Beaubier, and Lobdell wasn't making things any better with his heavy-handed "outing" of Northstar in a story where Jean-Paul kicked the hell out of Major Maple Leaf while letting him know what mindset he's got. I don't know if Last mentions it, but if there was anything worse than all the misuse of Northstar, it was probably the background shoved upon his twin sister Jeanne-Marie (Aurora), who grew up at a government-funded orphanage with an abusive nun in charge who led to her split-personality, which signaled a problem Byrne had at the time of writing up questionable depictions of women, a problem that came to a head with his rendition of Scarlet Witch in West Coast Avengers.

Main point is: if he's got a problem with how any fictional character like Northstar is depicted, he should cite the writers and editors in charge, and argue that this should be changed. I'm just as galled at how they handled that part of Alpha Flight all those years, but just saying that Northstar is a lousy character alone does not help one iota. Only an argument for better writing skills does.

Update: looks like the whole article is now accessible online, and it even includes this ambiguous bit:

Reporters were on the scene, however, when Batwoman was reinvented as a lesbian socialite. They took note when the mantle of Spider-Man was handed from Peter Parker (who was old, nerdy, and white) to Miles Morales (who was teenaged and—jackpot!—both black and Hispanic).

Curious how he doesn't mention this took place in the Ultimate line, though as of late 2012, Peter Parker was thrown out of the flagship MCU all in favor of putting Dr. Octopus into his body. Something I don't think Last took notice of, by contrast. How odd.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, Justice League of America, marvel comics, msm propaganda

Life Health Pro has a 9-page article about Bill Mantlo, once one of Marvel's leading writers on series like ROM: Spaceknight and the Incredible Hulk, who's now in a hospital suffering from a badly damaged body. It begins by telling:

Bill Mantlo was a legendary writer for Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s. But today, he inhabits a broken body abandoned by both the health insurance industry and the federal healthcare reform meant to help people like him. This is his story.

You can read the rest at the link, but if this tells something, Mantlo may have become a victim of the kind of government mandated healthcare Obama's administration has been advocating. It's definitely very sad to learn that this once notable Marvel contributor is now spending his 60th year in such a terrible condition.

Labels: good writers, marvel comics

The leftist backlash against Frank Miller for slamming the Occupy movement's offensive actions, completely oblivious to how there's evidence to support his misgivings, wasn't too surprising. In the industry itself, people like Erik Larsen, Gail Simone, Joe Hill, Cully Hamner, to name but some, went out of their way to make negative statements against him, and CBR's Robot 6 blog subtly called it a screed.

Yet of all the leftists who could say something vicious or dismissive in their efforts to whitewash the Occupy movement, Mark Millar, of all people, was willing to take a different, more respectable approach by defending his free speech rights:

Politically, I disagree with his analysis, but that’s besides the point. I wasn’t shocked by his comments because they’re no different from a lot of commentators I’ve seen discussing the subject. What shocked me was the vitriol against him, the big bucket of s*** poured over the head by even fellow comic-book creators for saying what was on his mind.

Obviously, it's within their rights to exercise the First Amendment as much as it was within Frank's to make the original point. But there's something so distasteful about that cyber-mob mentality that revolts me. It's not just that I like the guy, that his body of work is among the best the industry has ever seen. It's the GLEE I'm seeing from some people and, worse, the calls I've seen to boycott his work because his perspective on a point differs from yours and mine. [...]

Liberalism doesn't mean throwing guys in jail who DISAGREE with your liberalism. It means accepting that society is richer when everybody has a voice. Starting economic sanctions against a writer until they shut up and agree with you is horrific.

Too bad Millar's not willing to admit that a lot of the crimes Miller alludes to have actually taken place, any more than some of the other nasty nuts in the industry. That includes even economic damage done to businesses adjacent to Zucotti Park (and what if there were a comics store in the area that also suffered losses? What if, say, Jim Hanley's Universe took a financial blow from their reprehensible acts? Would Millar approve of that?) But at least he's willing to recognize that politeness pays off a lot better than the kind of vitriol he speaks of. But will any of his fellow comics contributors listen? Don't count on it.

That told, the leftist backlash against Miller is coming a bit late now that Oakland, Portland and New York City's municipalities are finally clearing away all those crummy tents and other litter the Occupy nuts sullied the park landscapes with, and public support for OWS is very low. By wintertime, it's possible that much of that mess will be gone altogether since few want to camp out in the freezing weather with tons of snow gathering. And we can only hope that the industry "pros" will come to terms with what a time-wasting "event" it was to begin with.

Update: here's a more positive item about Miller's critique on Big Hollywood.

Labels: politics

The Comics Journal wrote a whole article on what DCnU is like, and it turns out they're using the same approach as in the past decade. It's not just the Green Lantern series where bloodshed is taking place:

Still, it’s not like it isn’t present in other titles as well, from the sexually adventurous badass female character in Blackhawks to the scantily clad Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad to the frequent arched back/butt-shot posing of the female red lantern Bleez in Red Lanterns to all that prostitute killing in All Star Western.

Ultimately it’s all part and parcel of DC’s true goals however. For all their talk of new readers, for all the interviews Dan DiDio and Jim Lee did where they swore up and down on the cross that they were being inclusive this time, there’s really only one readership they’re interested in attracting and that’s young males. Preferably young males that happen to be lapsed DC fans.

That can be seen in the level of absurd machismo that dominates the line, especially in the level of over-the-top violence on display. Anyone hoping that in their effort to win back readers DC would tone down the gore they’ve become known for in recent years is going to be sorely disappointed. To wit: two comics (Red Lanterns and Suicide Squad) open with torture scenes. One closes with a guy being slowly lowered into a vat of acid. The Fury of Firestorm opens with a family being slaughtered. Green Lantern Corps opens with one character being bisected and two others being beheaded, and closes with an entire race of people being decimated. The otherwise entertaining Batwing ends with the gory slaughter of a police department, headless bodies lying everywhere. A horse is beheaded with a creature crawling out of the stump of its lifeless body in Wonder Woman. Perhaps the most memorable sequence comes at the end of Detective Comics, where the Joker (who, for reasons unknown first appears in the comic naked) gets his face flayed off and hung on a prison wall, an experience he describes as “fangasmic.” Even the first issue of Static Shock – Static Shock of all things! – ends with the character’s arm getting sliced off by some flying compact discs. Not all of these sequences feel like pandering, but enough do to make you realize how narrow an audience DC is aiming for here.

[...]In that regard, the New 52 doesn’t seem like a genuine attempt to look forward as much as it does a desire to gaze longingly back to the heady days when comics last mattered, at least in terms of sales, i.e. the 1990s. Why else have people like Rob Liefeld, Greg Capullo, and Scott Lobdell at the forefront of this revolution? Look at Brett Booth’s art work on Teen Titans. It’s practically a mash note to the Image era, a time that, despite the big sales, I would suggest was not the superhero genre’s finest moment.

The gore galore they allude to here is bad enough, and no doubt the sexual overtones are dreadfully worked out too, but what really drops the jaw in disbelief is the Joker appearing in the nude! Are they kidding?!?

And then there's the problem with mass slaughter all over the place in these new books. When it's that bad and frequent, making any serious point about a particular subject is near impossible.

And if the following reader response tells something:

I had read somewhere that supposedly there was an editorial decision to make the new books more ‘stand alone’ storywise, so I had hoped to get something I could read where there was a beginning, middle and end. Instead I got the first chapter of a paperback collection to be released in six months. I know that’s been the market for years, but it’s been a major beef of mine.

They haven't moved away from padded storytelling for the sake of trades one bit. This is practically why comics should've made the move to trade paperbacks only years ago, and with them the chance to actually tell a story that isn't padded (it could be a tale just 50 pages long, which would surely be enough), and comics stores would have no problem with that either. Instead, they've proven they have no ability to develop and adapt, and only stick to outmoded ways of publishing.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful artists, dreadful writers, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, misogyny and racism, Titans, violence, Wonder Woman

Newsbusters (via Colossus of Rhodey) reports that Frank Miller's done another good deed by criticizing the horrific Occupy Wall Street movement. Before that, the leftist UK Guardian wrote an exploitive speculation that Batman would make an ideal hero for the Occupy movement, and cites at least one of Miller's Batman works, Year One. I'm sure they'd be quite stunned if they realize that far from condoning such an out-of-control socialist movement, Miller has been seriously critical of the Occupy lubricant:

The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.

[...] This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.

Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.

Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.

[...] In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.

I'm glad to see Miller recognizes reality, far more than Stephen Kelly at the UK Guardian does. For a writer who notes "the danger of using pop culture icons as shortcuts for our own political values" Kelly might want to consider that turning Batman - or any other famous comic book casts for that matter - into heroes for anarchists would only be throwing away all the positive beliefs that the DC/Marvel heroes came to embody over the years.

Meanwhile, some of the most pretentious so-called comics sites like Comics Alliance and even CBR continue to promote the Occupy movement in their own way by blatantly writing about comics-style material appearing at the protests and even so-called comics intended to raise funds. I think all that money wasted on such items would be better spent on something like an education, or even some classic older comics, since much of today's output has long been terrible.

Speaking of which, one does have to wonder: how long will it be before Marvel and DC start fawning over the Occupy movement in their comics and drawing a false portrait, in contrast to the negative portrayal of the Tea Party featured in Captain America, for example? I fear the answer to that may not be hard to guess.

Labels: Batman, good artists, good writers, politics

In Uncanny X-Force #18, they tease/mock the reader with the possibility that Psylocke will be killed again, a decade after they first did this shameless act in X-Treme X-Men. I can't help but wonder if the quote on one of those covers featured, "You are a grave disappointment" is directed at the character whom they might terminate. Why don't they have a good look at themselves for a change?

The issue is going to be polybagged, just one more clue to how time-wasting this really is, because if it's about death, it will definitely not be a classic.

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

Tom Brevoort has said on his Formspring page that Marvel's going to focus far less on miniseries (or limited series, as they initially called them when the idea became serious during the 1980s):

We’ve been saying for months now that we’re going to be putting out fewer limited series, and instead focusing on our core monthly titles in response to where the marketplace seems to be right now. That’s what we’re doing. And that means that some projects that were initiated earlier are going to fall by the wayside. But at least among the best of those in terms of ideas, there’s nothing saying that we can’t revisit them later if conditions change.

Considering the effort they're making to ensure the conditions will not change for the better, it may not happen. When he says they'll focus more on their main monthlies, it's more likely that it'll be on bad writing ideas, crossovers and publicity stunts, which have only depleted their sales drastically.

Of course, their miniseries today have sunk to a very bad level of storytelling, and they've practically made it impossible to tell a decent story in the context of a miniseries either. So is it any wonder that miniseries may be all but vanishing from the major publishers now? I guess not.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, marvel comics

Among the various prizes that legendary Stan Lee is now adding to his list, there's the Producers Guild of America award for 2012.

Labels: good writers

The creator of the Family Circus comic strip has passed away at 89 years old from congestive heart disease. I used to read and enjoy his strip just as often as Peanuts and Garfield in my childhood, and it's sad to see him go.

Here's an extra article from Reuters (via Big Hollywood).

Labels: comic strips

ICV2 ran an interview with Viz Media founder Seiji Horibuchi about how manga began to peak in sales at least a decade ago, and why it's suffering declines and/or setbacks now.

Labels: manga and anime

LA Times' Hero Complex interviewed Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang about the retcon they've written for Wonder Woman, including turning Zeus into her father:

CC: If you went to the average person on the street and showed them a picture of Wonder Woman they would recognize her immediately. Ask those people her origin story and some of them might know the clay story but many, many others would not know that at all. That’s not a problem you have with Superman or Batman; everyone knows their origin. By making her the daughter of Zeus, we’ve gotten a big driving force behind our story. It gives her a motivation and it’s a key to character that we now feel is very important. She’s a child of the gods who defends us from them, in the same way that Superman is from another planet trying to save humanity and Batman is the orphan who is protecting us from the criminals who killed his parents.

Chiang makes it sound as though the deities are the villains whom the human race must be protected from, and as was told earlier, that's just the problem with this rendition: it's all being done at the deities' expense, not the least being Zeus himself.

Aside from that, I find it funny how they can ask what the average folks on the street would know about WW, but not whether they'd actually read any of the Amazon princess's older stories. Isn't that supposed to be their main concern, in encouraging people to read the books, which would help give them some insight into how things were done? Or, maybe they're worried that, if they do encourage people to read the older material, they'll decide they prefer the older premises and origins over the new ones being used now.

And as mentioned before, giving WW a father in Zeus doesn't make it any more imaginative, and only makes it sound more ordinary.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, women of dc, Wonder Woman

The news has come out that a miniseries about the Fantastic Four's archnemesis has been canceled without even seeing the light of day. It could be tied in with the layoffs they've been making recently, and is another sign that as a book publisher, they may not have a much longer life.

As sad as it will be if Marvel goes under, that will be the result of years of their increasing contempt for and shutting out the old audience while doing nothing to gain any new ones. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Doom miniseries added nothing of value to the history of the supervillain, nor does it do any favors for the Fantastic Four either.

Labels: Fantastic Four, golden calf of villainy, marvel comics

IO9 interviewed Francis Manapul and Brian Bucellato about their take on the Scarlet Speedster, where they tell us that now, after all this time, they're suddenly taking a more optimistic approach:

When you guys had the opportunity to write the Flash, what sort of narrative instincts did you want to bring to your run?

Brian Buccellato: We definitely decided we wanted an optimistic, hopeful, and noble story because that's who Barry Allen is to us. It was important for us to go in that direction, and not toward the darker or more tortured hero. He's a guy from the Silver Age who does the right thing because it's the right thing.

Unfortunately, they're doing this much too late, and it all reeks of the same bait-and-switch tactics as Marvel used when they destroyed Spider-Man's marriage with Mary Jane Watson, because here, over these past 2 years, DC's wasted no time in shoving Wally West out of the Flash series, and not only that, Iris West Allen's been thrown out as well. Put another way, they've made quite an effort to get rid of Barry's extended family and successors, all for the sake of focusing on a relationship with Barry's lab assistant Patty Spivot instead. And they expect people to go for it now? Especially when many of the same people who sullied the Flash and other DC products this past decade are still running the store?

A bright and optimistic feel cannot work properly if one-sided editorial mandates are pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

Labels: dc comics, Flash

This is disgusting, and CBR for one has definitely crossed the line in promoting a so-called superhero street theater at Occupy Wall Street, that whole movement that's already been proving itself most truly repellant by allowing creatures who commit rape crimes to dwell in their vicinity and even discourage the attendents from calling the police for help. And Wired's being just as bad. Just why must we care about the so-called superhero exhibits being staged by a bunch of lunatics?

Of course, we can't expect much else from so-called major comics sites like CBR that wouldn't even talk about Rick Perry's possible Superman fandom and which upheld Marvel's attack on the much more sensible Tea Party while attacking those who were insulted by Marvel's dumb move. On this, CBR certainly isn't much different from the regular MSM, which won't tell the real story about what's wrong with the Occupy movement.

Labels: politics

An article in New Scientist about the new manga book Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure, which features the museum as a story setting.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime