AP Wire blabbers on and on about Capt. America's "death"

I am so NOT impressed with this sugarcoated article the AP is running about the death and burial of Capt. America, though it does tell, curiously enough, that the sniper who was captured wasn't the one who shot at Cap. It does, however, seem to give some focus on the othewise overrated Jeph Loeb, who's been writing some of the pointless stories connected with this. But it doesn't ask why it's so easy to kill of Cap but not to deal with any raw issues of the current day and age.

Mike Wieringo talks about Bart Allen's death, and how comics came to be ruined by stunts and edicts

I'm glad to see that Wieringo, co-creator of Impulse along with Mark Waid, is speaking out and lamenting the death of Bart Allen, and also talking about how comics were ruined by Image Comics for starters (Via Newsarama blog):

I’ve had many conversations with creator friends of mine about the pendulum swing that happened in the wake of the IMAGE explosion back in the early 1990’s. The sort of ‘we don’t need no stinking writers’ attitude of the IMAGE founders resulted in what were nicely drawn comics with little story, for the most part. They became commodities and not comic books with good stories to go with the flashy drawings. The other major companies, in response, tried to emulate the initial massive success IMAGE had by doing similar types of books with crazy cover gimmicks thrown in for good measure… and the quality of the entire industry, for the most part, suffered. It drove many long-time fans away. In the aftermath of that sales bloodbath, the creative pendulum swung in the writers direction and away from the emphasis only on artwork as the selling point. It’s been that way for some 15 years or so now…. and I think that pendulum swing may have reached its apex. My feeling is that in recent years, the quality of writing in comics has diminished. Maybe it’s not the writers’ fault… maybe it’s editorial edict that has replaced good story, plot and character development with the stunt… the event… to sell comics. Maybe I’m just a middle-aged fuddy-duddy who has lost touch with what makes for interesting comics.

I think that Rob Liefeld, who was one of the co-founders of the early Image Comics, can be remembered in history as what helped to bring down much of comicdom today, as he too has a role in leading to a lot of what destroyed today's comics. But let's not forget that editorial mandates are also what are ruining a lot of them: now, it seems as though they think that only "stunts" and "events" are what can get things to sell.

It's to be hoped that eventually, they'll discover that even that isn't getting them anywhere, and that both Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio will be removed from their posts and replaced with people who do have an interest in slowly building things back up again. If the sales numbers on Amazons Attack are any indication, things may just be starting to backfire on them.

Update: CBR spoke with Mark Guggenheim, who said that he knew that his run was to be for just five issues only, culminating in Bart's death. Well gee, in that case, why bother, if all he's going to be hired for was a hack job?

Amazons assassinated

From tarnished Flash Rogues we move on to the even more disturbing case of Amazons being tarnished in the DCU. From what this thread on CBR tells, Amazons Attack sounds even more sick. Now, Wonder Woman's sisters, including her revived mother, are being villified by executing innocent civilians in Washington D.C.

Even if this isn't a camoflaged attack on the US government's policies in real life, or an anti-war metaphor, or even an attack on policies regarding illegal immigrants, it's still in very bad taste, and is going to require tons in order to fix. Years ago, most other writers respectfully depicted them as noble and honorable, but this is very one-dimensional. It doesn't matter if they do push the reset button, this is clearly wallowing in sensationalism.

Here's one description from the responses on the thread about what this is like here:

What I'm surprised [at] are the prison camps for women who might know an Amazon.

I mean come the heck on.

DC just hit Marvel Civil War levels of stupid with that.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were trying to duplicate the very iffy success of that wretched Marvel miniseries here. I say iffy because selling 200,000 to 300,000 copies is a far cry from the millions they all used to sell years ago. If they think they're making a statement against McCarthyism, they've done a very laughable and tiresome job here.

If they want to redeem themselves, they're going to have to revive all those killed by the Amazons in this horrid miniseries, or to push the reset button, and by that I mean a very big reset button. Looking at the sales chart for the prior month, I see that it fortunately hasn't been a big seller, but in its own way, 47,000 copies is still too much. No one should have to buy it, and I'd advise against completing it.

The worst part is how it does what quite a few other comics of recent have done: it features the return of some celebrated characters such as the Amazons and Diana's mother in a joyless storyline that gives the reader nothing to be happy about. It would seem as though joyless storytelling is what's becoming the norm just now.

New volume of Outsiders ends

Discovered on this thread on CBR's boards that the new series that's been running for about four years now is ending with the 50th issue. This reminds me of how The Titans ended at that very number too. And what's this supposed to lead to? It seems that they may be making Batman into a leader of this team once again, as he was in the mid-80s.

A flashback to Capt. America #174, another time when Steve Rogers may have been "dead"

On Comicon's Pulse, they take a retrospective look at Capt. America and the Falcon #174 from June 1974, an older story in which Capt. America may have pretended to be dead, if anything, and a time when he had a meeting with Banshee in one of his earliest appearances, as well as the X-Men.

Secret Wars: the secret (or not so secret) war against good storytelling

According to this writer on Comicon's Pulse (via Molten Thought), Secret Wars is what killed many major comic books of today with the overkill of company wide crossover "events":

For a very long time I read comic books religiously, perhaps literally so since Batman and Superman had a greater impact on my moral outlook than any church did. Even when I drifted away I would still occasionally visit the comic book shop or see a cover that caught my eye at the rare newsstand that still carried comics and pick it up to visit with my old friends.

I can’t do that anymore. If I pick up a mainstream Marvel or DC comic I don’t have a clue what is going on and I’m not going to get anything approaching a complete story. I’ll get one part of a six part story arc if I’m lucky; if I’m not I’ll get one part of a story spread over six different titles instead.

I understand the motivation. It is to get the reader hooked. If the story ends on page 22 they don’t have to buy the next one but there is no greater impetus to return next month than a blurb that says “to be continued.”

And if you can tie a whole bunch of books together you can make fans buy them all, or so you hope. “Hey, Superman has been selling pretty well lately but Aquaman could use some help. How about we continue the story over there?” I suppose if you’re super-power is swimming you need all the help you can get.

But unless the reader is already well versed in your fictional universe it’s heavy seas without a lifejacket and he’s drowning by page two.

That is the monster from under the bed slowly sucking the lifeblood out of the comic book industry; tightly woven interrelated continuity. I’m not calling for a return to the days when every story was neatly wrapped up in eight pages or twelve pages or even twenty-two but in order to be accessible to new readers there has to be a balance. Dare I dream of a complete entertainment story in one or two issues without crossing over into another title or are those days gone forever?

A story that takes just several pages and not several issues to finish is something I'd like to see making a serious return too. And if the publishers wanted to, I think they could get comics back into the bookstores more visibly without having to resort to just trade paperbacks to do so, and could make them more family friendly too. They could even come up with more interesting covers like what were seen up until the early 90s without just making it seem like some computerized pinup art. The ball is in their court but they're not tossing it correctly.

An excerpt from Douglas Wolk's upcoming book

Salon published an article that's partly taken from a book Douglas Wolk is going to publish about comic books next month ("Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean" by De Capo Press). The beginning subline, though, is something I've got to at least partly disagree with:

With the rise of the graphic novel, comics have hit the big time. It's time for fans to quit whining and celebrate their favorite art.

It depends on what we're talking about. If it's the indies, of course there can be what to celebrate there. But if it's majors, how can we when they've been turned into a politicized, prejudiced wasteland?

Jun. 23, 2007 It's frustrating to love comics, because there's so much cultural baggage that goes along with loving them. The blessing and curse of comics as a medium is that there is such a thing as "comics culture." The core audience of comics is really into them: we know that Wednesdays are the day when new issues appear in the stores, we populate endless Web sites and message boards, we preserve our comics with some degree of care even if we think of ourselves as "readers" rather than "collectors." A few times a year, we congregate at conventions of one kind or another. (The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival -- which is happening this weekend in New York City -- is one of our Sundances, where small-press and independent publishers display their wares; Wizard World Chicago is where the superhero buffs go; Comic-Con International, held in San Diego at the end of July, is where everybody goes.) We gravitate to our kind.

That's part of the problem. Over the last half century, comics culture has developed as an insular, self-feeding, self-loathing, self-defeating fly-trap. A lot of the people who hit their local comics store every Wednesday think of comics readers as some kind of secret, embattled fellowship. (That's why most comics stores are deeply unfriendly places: everything about them says, "You mean you don't know?" In some of them, even new pamphlets and books are sealed in plastic before they go out on the shelves; if you don't walk into the store knowing what you want, you're not going to find out.) It's a poisonous mind-set for any number of reasons, the biggest one being that to enjoy a comic book, you either have to be a Comics Person or be able to explain why you're not really a Comics Person.

That incestuous relationship between audience and medium has been encouraged by the big comics publishers. Mainstream comics pamphlets that are incomprehensible to anyone not already immersed in their culture aren't just the standard now; they're the point. If you pick up a story crammed full of inside references, and you're enough of an insider to catch them all, you're going to feel like it was made just for you, and it will intensify the sense of difference between you and "normal people." (I know from experience; some of the comics I enjoy most are stories I can't explain to a lot of my friends without using phrases like "pre-Crisis continuity" and "the 616 universe," sounding severely schizophrenic, or both.)

Now we're getting somewhere. I'll expand upon this point by saying that - DC and certainly Marvel have succeeded in forming a zombie-like following, no matter how small it is compared to some larger movie followings, that buys what they tell them to no matter how horrid they are. And while it's not like I want to slam the customer, I guess the time has come when that'll have to be done, and be critical of readers like "Marvel Zombies" for just buying because they were told to by the publishers:

To anyone out there who's just buying books like House of M, Civil War, the 25th issue of Capt. America's current volume and even World War Hulk because the publishers are promoting those particular items above all else on their publishing schedules, I'd like to say that I'm ashamed of them. How can you empty out your wallets over something so awful, without any consideration of the overall story quality? Important message: don't buy a crossover simply because that's what's being promoted, and certainly don't do it out of knee-jerk loyalty to the publishers heading the editorially mandated story. Otherwise, I'll have you know that I, and others, consider you to be the biggest problem behind why major comics are becoming so bad.

I've come to realize now that knee-jerk followings are part of the problem, and that obviously, if anything's to be done in order to turn off the tap of crossovers flowing out, that knee-jerk followings are going to have to come under criticism. Wolk certainly seems to understand that too. The term "Marvel zombie" may have once had a positive meaning (in slang style, I think), but now when I think about it, it's starting to become a very negative meaning when you think about it in depth: it could mean someone with no ability to tell the difference between good and bad, and just buys the items being hyped by the company because they said so! Clearly, that's not the way to go anymore. Only by thinking for oneself will it be possible to get comics back on track again.

And Wolk is certainly right about this: comics fans need to grow up and move past all these stories that deprive the characters of any real development, and that are really just being done to milk the audience for all they're worth. Nor is buying comics for collectibility the right way to go anymore.

"Lightning Saga" I'm sure it's godawful alright

Comics Should be Good thinks its a horrific mess, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were. (Interestingly enough, on Dick Hates Your Blog, blogmaster Hyacinth ran a poll about this, and I discovered on said poll that all those who cast their votes think Meltzer is even worse than Bendis). Let's hope that Brad Meltzer doesn't ever get hired to work on any major comic books ever again, because it's high time already to be hiring writers according to how well they understand the concepts, and not out of publicity stunts.

Stan Lee talks about the Fantastic Four

On Comicon's Pulse, they interview Stan Lee about a miniseries he's going to write called the Last Fantastic Four Story, one of his rare writing efforts today, and about his experiences when he'd first entered the comics field.

Cross-overload

On the Independent Review blog in Minnesota*, one contributor makes an important point about the increasing number of company wide crossovers (via The Beat blog):

Like I've said in my last blog, I am an avid comic book reader, and I am beginning to notice a disturbing trend in the "big two"(DC Comics and Marvel Comics), and that is an overload of crossover events. Simply put, a crossover event is something that brings characters from many different titles together, which usually involves the universe collapsing on itself.

[...]

I don’t have a problem with "Crisis on Infinite Earths" or its recent sequel "Infinite Crisis", but I do have a problem with continued crisis' like DC's new weekly comic book "Countdown" (another name that has been showing up a lot lately). These books make it sound like readers are only interested when the entire universe is about to collapse.

He's right, there's been far too many crossovers lately, and it's hurt a lot of chances for anyone to write a story with genuine developments, as the writers otherwise don't have the freedom for it. And should we the audience really only be interested in when the universe is about to crash, and not in smaller, simpler stories that involve bank robberies, something that's been considerably lacking in comic books of recent?

* Strangely enough, this entry vanished from the main blog soon after it was posted, and I had to look for it on the Google cache.

This article must've been written too soon, too early, and way too sloppy

The Knoxville News-Sentinel goes sugary over recent DC developments, but as far as I can tell, it was probably written way too early to really make sense, and there's some really sloppy parts to it in the latter half too:

DC Comics -- the world's largest publisher of monthly comics -- is considering the notion of going weekly.

The company had a successful launch in 2006 with "52," a weekly comic book featuring B-list characters such as Animal Man and Adam Strange. "52's" stories, told in "real time," set stories in the same week the book was released.

Late in the spring of this year, DC released "Countdown," a story also told in real time but starring more popular characters such as Superman and the Justice League.

"I believe in the weekly format. That's why we are doing ('Countdown')," says Dan Didio, executive editor of DC. "It's a strong way of (publishing). It takes full advantage of our distribution system ... We are tempted by that."

Sounds pretty fluff-coated to me. Already there are signs that Countdown is not doing as well as DiDio must want to think, and the prospects of DC going full-time weekly are a long way off. I'd think twice before temptation.

Didio says DC is in the planning stages of doing a third weekly series, set for 2008.

That series, however, would come after "Countdown," which is setting up for a large, and possibly continuity changing, climax issue, out next year.

Fans seem to like the format, too. " '52' sold beyond our expectations," Didio says. "'Countdown' is selling a little less than '52,' maybe 10 percent less. But it's doing better than our expectations."

Didio says the audience reading the weekly books is "loyal" because "they go into the stores every week, and there is a destination book for them every week."

The news of a possible third weekly is simply horrendous, because it also signals that there could be still more company-wide crossovers to go with it, just like WW3. And as for fans liking the format, I think the success in sales may have had more to do with the writers involved. Not that they'd really ask that though.

And continuity climaxes? I've heard it all before, and this fails to impress me any further.

Now, there's a few more thumbnail news bits here, the following one which makes horrific implications that run the risk of framing Oliver Queen in the minds of anyone naive enough to not understand things:

-- Longtime comic book duo Green Arrow and Black Canary are engaged and will marry in September. "Weddings are a staple in comics," Didio says.

Their relationship has gone on for 30 years and has endured rape, infidelity and numerous breakups.

What really gets on my nerves here is the confusing and nigh-sleazy mention of rape: why does it seem to me as though this isn't making things clear about who either did or didn't commit the rape they speak? Are they insinuating that Ollie beat up on Dinah?

Well that's what that line runs the risk of suggesting, when experts on the history of Green Arrow and Black Canary could tell you that their relationship was far from that. Yes, Ollie wasn't always fair to Dinah, having treated her like a doormat in Justice League of America during the early 1970s; he did act like a man-child there at times, and they did break up at least once too, in late 1992, but while there were times when Ollie was certainly a jerk, he never smacked Dinah around as the above line may suggest. In the Longbow Hunters, it was a gang leader who beat up Dinah, driving Ollie to shoot him dead. But this article doesn't make that clear, and chillingly enough, it comes close to implying, or insinuating, that Ollie committed the rape! If that's what's this article is doing, I am offended as hell. To make it sound as though Ollie and Dinah led an abusive relationship together! That is just sick.

If there was any case of rape involved, it was Ollie who was the victim, of another woman named Shado, the Japanese archer who'd sought vengeance against three scumbags who'd exploited her family in a Japanese internment camp during WW2, because they wanted to steal the valubles the yakuza had entrusted them with. But the way the line was written doesn't make that clear, and instead, it comes a close one to embarrassing Oliver Queen in the eyes of anyone not familiar with his history as a character. Perfectly dreadful. If Ollie really had gone overboard in his relationship with Dinah, it's possible that he'd have ended up as marginalized a character as Hank Pym did when he smacked Janet van Dyne in 1981.

Whether Shado did actually rape Ollie is still debatable (update: in her Wikipedia entry, it does mention this story development, though GA's entry doesn't), though in 1989, when this storyline took place, she admitted her actions with him to Dinah, and defended Ollie by telling Dinah that Ollie had called out her name during his delirium. But the News-Sentinel's ambiguity is really reprehensible, and just shows how poor newspapers can be if they can't hire a true expert, and write and edit the articles expertly either.

-- The Flash comic, re-launched last year, will be canceled with issue No. 13 later this summer. A new Flash series will replace it, starting with issue No. 1 and featuring a new Flash.

If it hadn't been for horrible developments that took place this past week, this might've been funny, as the series is supposed to be continued from where volume 2 left off with issue #231 to #232, and there's really no new Flash coming up. Instead, it just has me shaking my head in sadness, because of how unfunny the details behind all this are.

Update: I just fixed a typo and then I found that another guy at the Newsarama blog noticed the unclear reference to rape featured in the newspaper article too. He's right, it's very weird.

Stan Lee gets his own action figure from Hasbro

Now isn't this amazing: Stan the Man Lee is getting his very own Marvel Legends figure!

Comic book fans already know Stan Lee is a Marvel legend. Now Hasbro is making it official.

The company will pay plastic tribute to the 84-year-old creator of Spider-Man, the Hulk, X-Men, Fantastic Four and other comic-book heroes by interpreting him as a 6-inch tall Marvel Legends action figure. The toy shows Lee's likeness wearing khaki pants, a blue windbreaker and eyeglasses.

"We feel it's long overdue that Stan Lee be immortalized as an action figure, much like the dozens of marvelous characters that he has created for years and years," said Eric Nyman, Hasbro's vice president of marketing.

The limited-edition, $14.99 toy will be introduced next month in San Diego at Comic-Con International, the annual comic-book convention.

Boy, is Stan lucky!

Singapore develops its local talents in comics

ChannelNewsAsia reports that Singapore's Media Development Authority is nurturing local talents in creating comic books with classes on the subject.

I did not ask for Bart Allen to be killed off!

I wrote earlier that Bart Allen should go back to being Impulse. It appears now that I spoke too soon. Flash #13 vol. 3, which came out now, ends with Bart being slain by the Rogues.

I'm quite offended here. If it were that Murmur monster or even the Girder guy, I could believe that, since they're um, lethal cretins, but if it's Captain Cold and the Trickster, no way, since they're too honorable to do things like that. It's only because of the character destruction that Geoff Johns himself pretty much worked on them that they could possibly stoop to such depths. Even if the Top was just blabbering, that still doesn't excuse Johns' whole idea of "undoing" any mind alterations Roscoe Dillon supposedly worked on them years before.

Yes, Wally and Linda and their children are back (in the tenth JLofA issue) but this is the price paid. I guess this is supposed to be Wally's new motivation for being the Scarlet Speedster? His teen cousin's assassination?

Once more, we're dealt the tired cliche of death in comics, done out of a lack of interest of developing the protagonists and giving them a decent purpose in the books they star in.

Update: here's more on the subject from the Newsarama blog.

Chuck Dixon was asked for his thoughts on the abuse/obscuration of Spoiler, and gave some

At Dixon's own board, he was asked what his thoughts are on DC's destruction of Stephanie Brown, who appears to have been slain during "War Games", but worse, DiDio and company almost act as though she'd never even existed. In his response, he says that Marv Wolfman is bothered by these kind of things too. That's good to know. Most astounding thing is how DC pretty much wrecked a lot of good character development Dixon provided for Spoiler for almost a decade.

Stephanie most definitely shouldn't be forgotten, and there's still a lot of work needed if she's to be revived. The best option would be not to buy Robin as they're doing it now, if that's how they're going to behave.

The new JLA writer will be Dwayne McDuffie

A writer/animator who's worked on the cartoon series of JLA, of all things (via Occasional Superheroine). Now, maybe they'll start putting out a book for a change that doesn't rely on absurd media hype and a writer based on presumed reputation alone, and if McDuffie knows his job here, maybe he'll remain on the book for about 4-5 years too! After all, the book has been incredibly neglected for over the past four years. Maybe now, they'll start proving that they can keep a regular writer on the book for more time than most other writers have been on it, and not just hire them as literal hacks.

Suddenly, everyone's a Skrull

Well maybe not everyone, but certainly some. Now, the 31st issue of the current Avengers volume has come out, and lo and behold: Elektra turns out to be a Skrull.

This appears to be the explanation they've giving for why so many Marvel heroes have been acting out of character, because they've been replaced by Skrulls, or, because they've been brainwashed. No surprise if Captain America, Scarlet Witch and Iron Man turn out to be Skrulls as well.

Unfortunately, that's still no excuse for hijacking only so many books into a crossover crisis and depriving them of any real story development better achieved in a stand-alone story of their own. This whole crossover-itis of recent was uncalled for, and did nothing to improve any books that were already going wobbly under writers like J. Michael Straczynski and Brian Bendis, the latter who's interviewed in what I linked to.

And if the other Marvel heroes were abducted by the Skrulls and hidden elsewhere while the alien armada took their place, how do we know that Elektra won't turn out to be among them too?

Jumpin' jets! Third Flash volume is kaput and going back to prior volume's numbering

I don't know if this is saying that DC now realizes the error they made with throwing out Wally West (who used that above expression until the end of the Silver Age, just like Robin did some of his until that time), but what's this? DC apparently told at the Phila. Comic-Con that with issue #13 of the third volume they put out, they'd be cancelling the third volume and going back to the numbering of the previous volume, resuming at number #231. And it turns out that Mark Waid will be returning to write it after all.

To prove that they apologize for that mistake, they will bring back Wally and Linda West. Better still, they'll knock off this replacement of one superhero for another trend for a change, and most importantly of all, they'll stop doing it based on defeatist story elements (namely, that Barry Allen took part in a mind-wiping while being made to look bad).

Now, all we can do is wait.

Update: I almost forgot: Bart Allen should have his role as Impulse restored too. When Geoff Johns turned him into a new Kid Flash four years ago, that was sort of like what some today call "continuity porn", although IMO, it's more like slavish devotion to nostalgic story elements and roles. When Bart first debuted, Impulse was his teen hero's name, and while it's not like he couldn't take on the role of his cousin, the guise he first debuted under is what he really fits best in, and I think that now would be as good a time as any to return to it.

Update 2: Uh oh. I spoke too soon.

Economists should remain economists, and not try to determine so easily how comic sales dropped

An economist for the Ludwig van Mises Institute wrote an article for them last week that seems to miss more than a few points about why Spider-Man's popularity and sales dropped in the mid-1990s. First, I'll point out in fairness that their not turning the profit bookstores wanted, leading to their banishing from the bookstore scene for many years, was what caused losses in sales, but there's still a lot more to this that the writer predictably doesn't consider. Let's look at the following:

Whose Fault Is It?

Basic economics tells us that if the demand for Amazing Spider-Man increases at an existing supply, more will be offered for it and the price will rise. Profits at Marvel, Spider-Man's publisher, would grow, and managers at Marvel would therefore increase the supply of comics, or competitors would enter the market with similar products. This increase in supply would reduce prices and profits. Conversely, a drop in demand should result in a decline in price, profits, and supply.

Below is a chart showing circulation statistics for Amazing Spider-Man over the years.

Not exactly stellar. Except for the boom years in the early 1990s, the title's popularity has actually waned. That this hasn't caused a drop in prices seems to defy economic logic. Even the dramatic plummet in demand for Spider-Man from 1994 to present day has been accompanied by more than a doubling in monthly prices from $1.25 to $2.99. What gives?

In fairness, there is the above example I gave, and even the cost of paper. But I wouldn't rule out that bad writing that befell Spidey ever since the notorious "clone saga" was what led to this as well.

Ever since late 1994, the abortive reappearance of the Spider-Clone conceived by the Jackal in 1975's Amazing Spider-Man #149, which saw the stupefying claim made that all these years, Spider-Fans everywhere had been reading about Ben Reilly instead of Peter Parker, an offensive storyline that featured Mary Jane being wounded by the clone, and even an attempt to replace Peter with the clone as New York City's friendly neighborhood web-slinger, that may have spelled the beginning of the end for our much mistreated hero. Even after the considerable backlash that got Marvel at the time to straighten things out by confirming that Peter was truly the guy in the Spidey suit we'd always been reading about and not the clone, and returning Peter to his rightful position, the series may never have recovered. It suffered through tons of bad writing, from Terry Kavanaugh and Howard Mackie to pretentious writing by scripters like J. Michael Stracynski, and now, look at what's happened: there is a divided audience, and many more who lost interest in poor Spidey altogether.

Though some comic fans will be quick to put the blame at the foot of Marvel for price increases, they would be more correct to blame the Federal Reserve, the "publisher" responsible for the creation of our supply of dollars.

I'm sure some would, but there are also those who'd say that Marvel's inability or unwillingness to respect what made Spidey work in the first place, to say nothing of their turning him out-of-character in the wake of Civil War by unmasking and then dragging him into yet more dreadful crossovers, is to blame for their not reading him now. Are these arguments about Marvel's bad misuse of their own characters relevant? More or less.

Spider-Man comics may be rising faster than other goods because they have been nearer to the source of this new credit. One reason for this may be the collectible nature of comics. In the 1980s, the idea of buying comics for price appreciation and investment rather than enjoyment began to take hold. This led to the great speculative mania of the early '90s, followed by the inevitable bust. Even Marvel couldn't survive — it went bankrupt in 1997. But the idea that comics can be bought both for enjoyment and investment means they attract more speculative capital than Time and other simple consumer goods.

I hate to say this, but the enjoyment has been all but absent lately, what with the political mess major comics have become, as well as undergoing editorial mandates that grind all natural developments to a screeching halt, and...the crossovers. Couldn't the Mises Institute at least take that into consideration? Alas, as the last paragraph here shows, no:

For all those disgruntled comic buyers: Keep buying comics. As long as the supply of dollars is controlled by governments, the amount of money in the economy will continue to explode and the value of a dollar in your bank account will erode. Comic books, on the other hand, will keep their value, and may even provide some reading enjoyment.

I'm very sorry, but very few now really do, and if not, then how can they keep their value?

I also think that the idea of buying comics for profit alone, which may still be going on, may have been what spelled doom for good writing in comics. Marvel and DC pandered to investors and went shooing out the real readers, and this is one of the things that ultimately led to the collapse of the market in the late 1990s. If you're going to market only to people who don't even intend to read the books, all you're doing is turning the whole industry into a joke!

And this is why, if you ask me, an economist may not be the best person to analyze what's gone wrong with comic book sales of today.

But Quesada IS guilty

The 4th Letter talks about Joe Quesada, points to how he'd done wrong by attacking DC Comics by saying they should be called "AOL Comics". And yet, there's a lot here that I simply cannot agree with. Bendis, for example, may have shown promise on Daredevil, but since then has done little more than mess up the Avengers, and insult fans in the process, proving himself to be just overrated.

What's more, Quesada has been drowning their comics in infinite crossovers lately, and that's one more reason why defending him is really not worth it.

Reed Tucker on the Marvel/DC rivalry

New York Post columnist Reed Tucker writes an item on all the Marvel/DC movie possibilities in development, and points to how they've maintained an almost juvenile rivalry for more time than one might think:

"When either one of them talks about the other, no matter who it is in the company, there's tension and rivalry," says Gerry Gladstone, co-owner of Midtown Comics. "There is a rivalry almost to a childish point. It's been there since Day 1."

Indeed. And since the 1990s, it's gotten to the point where they sought to put a copyright on words like "mutant" and "metahuman". And you know how much this may have undermined storytelling quality in both companies? That's why I find their rivalry really dismaying, because they took it to such extremes as to go sue each other in court over a few trivial words that wouldn't affect the sales and success of either company, which may have diluted scriptwriting quality not just for the two of them, but even for other smaller companies that may have been affected by any legal procedures.

Comic Book Creator software

CBS News has an article about a new program called Comic Book Creator that helps teach users how to draw comic illustrations, and possibly to even include already existing ones:

Comic Book Creator (CBC) is an interactive entertainment software application that puts PC users in the artist's chair. It allows them to easily import original authentic digital images from just about any source and create a personalized comic book and comic strips.

I wonder if any coming generations of comic artists will learn a lot of their trade and style through computers for starters? That's a good question, and remains to be seen.

Will Wolverine's origin really be told? Somehow, I doubt it

This item on The Pulse tells about yet another miniseries that's supposed to tell the origin of Logan of the X-Men. But in all due honesty, why do I get the feeling that it may still come up short, and only be a lead-in to yet more miniseries of the same? The big cop-out when Marvel first put out a miniseries that purportedly was going to tell Wolverine's origin was that it otherwise ended without giving anything clear, and it turned out to be intended as a launching pad for at least a few more miniseries!

If they're really serious this time about telling Wolverine's origins, then they'll do it all in one stroke, and end it right there and then. Writing miniseries like these as an excuse to get people to spend more and more money without any way to tell if they'll be getting their money's worth is the wrong way to be doing these things, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people have since lost interest in if they'll ever get to know how Logan began his life.

I just don't understand it...

It seems pretty odd to me that Greg Rucka, who began as a novelist plenty of time before he became a comics writer, is asking for examples and ideas for names of fictional detectives and their business agencies for a writing project he's doing (which, for all I know, could possibly be comics related). I don't get it, surely a successful novelist could think of a lot of these possibilities himself? It's very puzzling.

Hat tip: Bobb.

A Countdown to a serious loss of sales!

At the Savage Critic blog, it's discovered that ComixExperience in California has lost a lot in sales of DC's Countdown weekly, which certainly tells that people may be starting to smarten up to DC and Dan DiDio's tricks.

Though it may not really be a company-wide crossover in the way that Marvel's World War Hulk and DC's WW3 are turning out to be (the x-over even extends into the "All-New Atom", with even Jason Todd making an appearance), it is a case of the superfluous, and no one should be forced to spend their money on something that could likely turn out to be another underwhelming ripoff. If Countdown does turn out to be a flop, DiDio will certainly be receiving a well-deserved lesson for repeatedly short-changing the audience.

Whatever news Bendis has now fails to excite me

The Pennsylvania Express-Times runs an article about the upcoming WizardWorld tour on June 15 in Philadelphia, but the problem is that it sugarcoats all surrounding Brian Michael Bendis, and when he tells them in here that

"We're going to pop some big news."

I can only feel like yawning. At the same time, his popularity is startling as it's inexplicable. Will he eventually peter out in popularity? I just don't know.

"Tovarisch Smurf": how Peyo pulled the wool over many an eye

There are times when some of us sadly have to question the things we spent our time on in our childhood, but if we're to ensure that our descendants don't make the same mistakes, that's why it pays to.

How long has it been since I had the Smurfs seriously on mind? A little over fifteen years, perhaps? But with the discoveries I've made about it of recent, that's probably why it's a good thing I haven't thought about it in so long, and why I'm glad I don't remember much of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon either.

Two years ago, when the Belgian UNICEF outfit exploited the Smurfs for anti-war propaganda, that's when the subject returned to mind. And that's also when I discovered, more than I had before, that the Smurfs, alarmingly enough, bore traces of Marxism when they were first created.

The Smurfs (or, as per the original Flemish pronunciation, Les Schtroumpfs) first debuted in 1958 in a Belgian comic strip called Johan et Pirlouit drawn by one Pierre Culliford, a Belgian comics artist who did a lot of his work under the pen name of Peyo, which he took from an English relative's mispronunciation of the name Pierrot. They became quickly popular and the next year got their own comic strip with merchandise beginning to turn up soon afterwards. The Smurfs reached US shores two decades later,* with Marvel Comics reprinting some of the original strips translated into English, and in 1981, Hanna-Barbera produced a TV cartoon that ran almost a decade.

At that time, mindless toddler that I was, I could not possibly have seen it as anything other than some simple comic and cartoon set in medival Europe, starring some otherwise asexual characters who lived in a village, where, with the exception of meddlings by adversaries like the goofy sorceror Gargamel, they were happy and content and led a great life. Or so it seemed.

It was two years ago that I learned that when the Smurfs began, there were allegories to Marxism in it. Disappointed as I was, I wasn't too surprised. I realized that the structure did seem to follow Karl Marx's whole odd notion of "equality". But it was only more recently that I took to researching just how far not just the Marxist, but also the Communist analogies and allegories went. So I turned to the Google search engine to see what I could find, and wow, there sure were quite a few very eyebrow raising results. Wikipedia had an entry on the subject, and there were various other startling items such as this one and this one and also this one, which says:

...the Smurfs shared everything. The food in the Smurf village was stored away in those mushrooms the minute it was harvested and then equally distributed to all the Smurfs throughout the year. No one "farmer Smurf" sold his crop to a "consumer Smurf," or saw his labor exploited by another. It was understood that the crop was for the entire Smurf population, not for the sale or profit of one Smurf alone.

I learned that Papa Smurf's character design with the round-shaped beard was apparently modeled after Marx himself, and that Brainy Smurf was meant to be a take on Leon Trotsky. And I even learned that Gargamel was written as a stereotype of capitalists (and worse yet, may have been based on a Jewish stereotype)! And Papa's use of a red colored outfit was apparently intentional in its allusion to commie colors. The white outfit worn by the other Smurfs was apparently meant to allude to Maoist China, and the replacing of various, possibly intelligent words with "smurfing, smurfed", for example, was almost similar to how China's commies muddled up everything into incomprehensibility. (See, years ago, I'd thought that it was just meant to be humorous, now, I realize that there may have been more to it than meets the eye.)

Some other evidence I've gathered may strain the limits of credibility. Decide for yourself: Papa Smurf wore a red cap. All the Smurfs were the same color and sang the same song everywhere they went - stressing their Smurfy unity. Didn't you catch yourself singing that song as a kid? I know you did. Everyone did. Everyone.

Yes, unfortunately, I too am guilty as charged. I may not have sung or hummed it as often as others, but I too sang that tune of, "la la, la la la la", that I'm starting to grow really tired of.

Just how many children, not only in Europe but also in North America and other parts of the globe, were brainwashed by a comic strip like this? But it figures how it could all go past them: "cute" characters seem to be the perfect weapon for misleading tons of innocent youngsters, and adults too.

And if there was anything else that creeps me out today besides Vanity Smurf, it's how the Smurfette seems to have been a very subtle analogy to a prostitute. More on that in the comments section in this entry at Johnny Triangles. Wow, is it possible that, when Papa Smurf used his talents for sorcery to turn the Smurfette into a "real" female version of themselves, that besides turning her into what they themselves considered the "ideal" woman, they even turned her into a sex-toy? Good grief.

And the whole notion that capitalists are money-grubbers is really insulting. The creed held by those who support capitalism is that everyone should work to earn their living, and have the right to do so too, and not lazy around living on welfare like socialists seem to want to do. On the other hand, if there is any time when capitalism becomes objectionable, it's when someone wants to capitalize on the misfortunes of those less fortunate than themselves. That's when it becomes wrong.

As for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who're guilty of producing the cartoon series: they may have shown promise when they first created Tom and Jerry in the 1940s for MGM, but all that began to dissolve when they opened their TV animation studio. I really did not think much of the Flintstones when I came of age, nor the Jetsons, and that they adapted the Smurfs to TV has made me lose even more respect for them than before. To think, that this, of all things that could've been imported to the US from Europe, was what anyone thought to bring over! And it's alarming how popular it became in its time. The much superior Asterix did have its moments stateside, including a few animated films, yet it could never hold a candle to the following that the Smurfs was garnering, and finding it sold in US bookstores is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Asterix is not without its flaws, but it has much more brains, and unlike the Smurfs, the residents of the little Gaulish village that stood strong against the Roman invaders made livings for themselves with the trades they learned and were experts in, and had their own economy. No wonder the left-liberal media would rather get something that depicts everything in upside-down, inside-out fashion instead of Goscinny's and Uderzo's gem, which was much more fun.

I feel really ashamed of Peyo, due to the fact that not only was he foisting proto-Marxist propaganda on an unsuspecting generation of children, but that he was doing it at the expense of mine and other families' money as well. This doesn't mean that UNICEF was right to exploit the Smurfs for anti-war propaganda back then, but it doesn't make them any better either. They were probably the most cleverly subtle form of moonbat propaganda to litter up any comics medium in the past five decades.

It's a shame that all this only came to light a few years after Culliford passed away, but at least it's been in discussion since then. No child should have to have bad idealistics foisted upon him/her, and that's why it's important that these kind of matters be studied.

Update: read also this page, which focuses mainly on the anti-feminist leanings the Smurfs had.

* When the Smurfs were sold over here in Israel during the 1980s, the given name in Hebrew was "Dardasim", or "Dardas" if referring to just one Smurf. Yep, here too, more than enough people were fooled by Peyo's Marxist nonsense.

Trackposted to: 123Beta, bRight and Early, Jo's Cafe, Third World County.

Jerry Ordway talks about the potential damage done to Mary Marvel

On Comics Should Be Good, Jerry Ordway sent in his thoughts about the potential darkening of Mary Marvel, sister of Capt. Marvel. He tells at least one thing that really raises my eyebrows: what Peter David once wanted to do with her: have her violated. What?!?

I see that a few of the commentors on this one say that we should wait-and-see before passing judgement on this. Unfortunately, that's exactly the problem: DC isn't willing to tell anything clearly, which by now is dishonest. If they're not taking Mary down the dark highway, there's no reason why they shouldn't just say so. It will cost them no sales in that case, and no one will be discouraged then from reading it. They could actually help restore credibility to themselves then. What should be the use then of reading Countdown?

Refusal to say clearly what direction they'll take might not be a confirmation that they'll really go down the dark path, but it does show a lack of communication and respect for the audience.

It's always worth asking...

There are some very good questions surrounding what if Identity Crisis had contained more than just simply misogyny, and what would be the defenders' and apologists' reactions then, that are always worth asking, and I guess I may as well take the opportunity now to do so.

What if Sue Dibny and Jean Loring, rather than being white, were black, Latina, Jewish, Asian, or caucasian, and Dr. Light had raped Sue out of a hate crime, and that too were trivialized in favor of concern for Dr. Light's getting mindwiped? Would there have been a different reaction to the miniseries then? Come to think of it, what if any character in the miniseries had called Sue and Jean a "dirty white girl", or even the C-slur? Or, what if Deathstroke, when he slugged Zatanna, had hurled a racial slur against Italians at her? Would the response then have been different, and the MSM less inclined to whitewash and sugarcoat the whole shambles?

I thought about this while reading La Shawn Barber's commentary on the cannibalistic murder of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian by a black gang in Knoxville, Tennessee, a horrifying case that the mainstream press has been largely silent upon till now*, apparently because the culprits were black, and in the minds of the liberal media, condeming blacks who commit violent crimes against whites is "racist", or, it's fully legal to attack whites. La Shawn says:

In order for “hate crime” charges to be added to the Christian-Newsom case, somebody had to have used a racial slur, and a witness would have to come forward. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter who said what in the Christian-Newsom case or any other. Hate crime laws are redundant, not to mention nonsensical.

Some of her observations could apply and translate to a subject like this as well. I assume that racial and misogynist slurs are what would have to have taken place in Identity Crisis for anyone to wake up and smell the coffee, and to realize that it was all a vile piece of prejudiced scum. And if it were written that way, would people then have also have spotted the misogyny? But then, would they have spotted both the racism and misogyny, or, would they have just noticed the racism, and not the misogyny?

(And by the way, yes, I know that Dr. Light is as white as the two ladies are, but even so, that doesn't mean that racial slurs - and certainly misogynist ones - couldn't have taken place in a horror story like IC, or that the questions here aren't relevant.)

As even the most hardcore defenders of IC would probably admit, if the miniseries were flat out offensive to minority groups, and the misogyny more out in the open, chances are that the book would NEVER have been published, certainly not without a stern reaction from all concerned community representatives. Apparently, by using white protagonists and refraining from even the C-bomb, DC is all but able to get a free pass, because whites apparently make perfectly legitimate punching bags. IMHO, it makes no difference what was said or not, the way IC was written, trivializing a serious subject like rape and invoking the stereotype of a woman who attacks another one, was totally reprehensible. And if hate crime laws have anything to do with a case like this, perhaps that's a mistake, because what matters is the one-sided writing, not whether or not it went as far as what it could have.

The lesson of this should be that verbal offenses do not need to be uttered in order to prove that there was any kind of discrimination involved in all this. Identity Crisis, as far as I'm concerned, was an anti-white hate crime, using white woman as the scapegoats, and just shows what happens when the inmates are allowed to run the asylum.

* And then, when CNN, which was silent before, did finally report on it, they did so only because there was some neo-nazi scum attempting to hijack the whole case as an excuse for prejudice against minorities. It's truly sick that people like these have to exist, and that those are what the MSM chooses to report about. As far as I'm concerned, they're in league with some of the MSM, and their goal must no doubt be to embarrass anyone with common sense from discussing the case. These neo-nazi gangs should BURN IN HELL alongside the culprits in the Newsom-Christian case for exploiting the blood of the innocents I seriously doubt they ever really cared for.

Another rabbi who's inspired by comics

Besides the rabbi Simcha Weinstein, it looks like there's another rabbi who's also drawn inspiration for his work, that being Cary Friedman of New Jersey, who wrote Wisdom from the Batcave: How to Live a Super-Heroic Life, and is a special consultant for the FBI. The New Jersey Jewish News wrote an article about him this week.

Boy, now this too is amazing stuff.

A pull-down menu to help save space on the sidebar

There, I just succeeded at fitting in a drop-down menu, as it's actually called, on the side for all the sections. That helps to save space and fit all external links into a nice compact space, and will probably also help make it easier to load the pages too. One thing I can't seem to figure out though is how to control the exact length so that it doesn't look like it's going halfway off the screen, even though it does look like I added the correct codings when I preview it. Oh well, what matters for now is that I succeeded in working out something I'd wanted to experiment with for some time now, and to make everything easier to handle and to load onto the screen! Perfect.

Ink Pen parody of Civil War

Here's a comic strip of Ink Pen that does a satire of the Civil War mess.
Hat tip: Bobb.

This article's writing level is rank D

The Cleveland Plain Dealer runs a fluff-coated article about recent Marvel/DC "accomplishments":

This year, the comic universes inhabited by Superman, Spider-Man and friends have altered so dramatically that it will take months, perhaps years, to sort things out.

Well at least there's one part we can agree on.

Marvel Comics underwent not one, but two, such world-changing events in two years. The first occurred when the Scarlet Witch, a character long believed to be a B-level heroine with the unpredictable power to "hex" things, proved to be one of the most powerful people on Earth.

Boy, is that really fogging things up more than a bit. Since when was she ever really considered a B-level heroine? Wanda was one of the most popular cast memebers of the Avengers for many years, pleasing everybody except people like Bendis and Quesada, who, rather than prove their strengths in writing her, chose to toss her into limbo, but not before embarassing her. This is pure sensationalism. And I can't say she's one of the most powerful people on earth either, but can say that the way this article puts it implies that she's little more than a danger to humanity; a form of villification.

No one ever thought much about how her hex power worked, but it turns out that it affects the world on a fundamental level. She had been using her power subconsciously for years, but recently she went a little bit nuts. The world rebuilt itself to fit her particular mind-set.

Uh, what's that? Her hex power alters probabilities, NOT realities. As for the madness part, isn't that just brilliant, how they barely even touch upon it, yet do succeed in sounding sensationalistic, or sleazy.

At the end of the day, most things went back to normal except for one thing: There were almost "no more mutants." Those final three words she uttered depowered 99 percent of the world's mutant population (which had risen to millions).

To be sure, the concept of mutants had gotten out of hand. A couple mutants with weird abilities to fly or turn into ice were fine, but Marvel went overboard. There was an entire nation of mutants; whole areas of cities were occupied.

Something needed to happen to wipe the slate clean and make mutants special again. That's what the Scarlet Witch did.

The couple hundred that remain soldier on.

Marvel said there will be a big event coming this winter that will put the remaining mutants through their paces. No one is talking about what exactly it will be, but a series of stories called "Endangered Species" will be released this summer to lead up to it.

That title does not bode well for the mutants.

That's why I may not dare to take a look!

The second part, about DC's 52 and Countdown, isn't much better either:

In 1986, DC decided the idea of multiple Earths was confusing and smooshed all the Earths and their histories together. This created a unified history that DC writers have been trying to sort out ever since.

At the end of "52," it's back to the drawing board.

And for the next year, readers will be studying weekly chapters of the new universe-altering series, "Countdown," and wondering just what the heck we are counting down to.

Yes, what are we counting down to? There's no end in sight, and the DC staff aren't willing to tell us anything either, which by now is very dishonest. That's why this is one reader who'd rather not study the book in question.

Meanwhile, DC is releasing trade paperbacks of the "52" series for anyone needing to catch up. Reading the story from the beginning a second time is even better. Armed with the knowledge of how it all turns out, you'll see things you missed the first time around.

Including a few things I'd rather not see, I'll bet. That's why I simply won't bother. I think I'd feel much better off reading some copies of Mark Schultz's Xenozoic Tales instead.

No sooner does Marvel conclude one crossover...

Then another one takes its place: World War Hulk. I wasn't sure at first, but I discovered that this too is a crossover in one way or another, and this X-Men special is one of them.

It's clear that unless Marvellites are willing to wake up and smell the coffee, this bombardment of crossovers is going to continue, with possibly each year bearing at least one crossover. This is really terrible, that crossovers are taking over and pushing out not just creative freedom for many writers, but also bringing natural story flow to a standstill.

A Teen Titans live action movie being planned

Following news that there might be a Justice League movie in the works, the AFP says that there's a Teen Titans movie in the works:

LOS ANGELES - A live-action, big-screen version of the comic book classic “Teen Titans” is in the works, the movie industry publication Hollywood Reporter says.

The hit comic book series, first published in 1964 by “DC Comics,” recounts the adventures of teenage super hero Robin — Batman’s adolescent sidekick — along with fellow super crime fighters “Kid Flash,” “Aqualad,” and “Wonder Girl".

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, the movie is the latest in the highly-lucrative live-action adaptations of comic books.

So far this month, Sony’s blockbuster film Spider-Man 3 has smashed box office records, earning some 800 million dollars to date in its global release, while the

“Superman” and “Batman” series of movies also have been big money-makers.

Well, if they do get off the ground with this, they could think to put in heavy-hitters like Deathstroke, I guess, and also Mammoth, AND, also colossal villains like Trigon! But how will Starfire look if she's cast in this? Computer-generated?

Samuel Jackson to play "Octopus" in Spirit adaptation

Ireland's Evening Echo says that Samuel L. Jackson is going to play a villain called the Octopus in Frank Miller's upcoming adaptation of the Spirit, which'll be Miller's first venture as a director.

Update: and while we're on the subject, here's a small article from the college paper The Daily Eastern News about Miller's Ronin from 1983-84. I remember reading it over a decade ago at a museum library, and it was pretty good.