AP's lip service to Quesada on Capt. America case

Now that they put Bucky in the role of the Star-Spangled Avenger, the Associated Press has taken the time to pay lip service to Joe Quesada and Marvel in what they're doing. Predictably, they gloss over a lot of details, including that bionic arm Bucky got:

Barnes never swallowed the "Super Soldier Serum" that transformed the wimpy Rogers into the super-strong Captain America in the months before World War II. So he's at a bit of a disadvantage in his new role. But he's bulked up himself over the years, become a master at special operations and he's also packing some serious heat these days along with that mask and shield.

They don't mention the bionic arm, nor that he'd been turned into an assassination tool by the Soviets.

But forget about defeating enemies in the fantasy world. The people he will really have to win over are those notoriously finicky comic book readers.

Uh oh, I think I just caught the AP in the act of smearing the readership again. Tsk tsk tsk.

Quesada says he isn't worried, however, adding that killing off Captain America last year seemed to give him new life with readers. The editor was taken aback when newspapers even carried obituaries on the character.

"Not since the 1940s have we seen Cap being this popular," he said.

Maybe Quesada is too naive to realize it, but the only reason why the story made headlines is because they killed him off. If Cap were in a story where he battled HYDRA and tried to foil one of their evil terrorist plots, the press would be less likely to take notice. This is the problem with the press, that they're only willing to take notice when it's something symbolic of defeat: the death of a hero instead of a victory.

Lack of serious supporting cast is what hurts the comic

One of the best discussions of why One More Day is such a failure can be found at Spidey Kicks Butt, where JR Fettinger explains almost perfectly one of the problems with how the Parker marriage was depicted over the years, and why there wasn't any drama in it:

The only reason there is no “drama” in Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage is because the writers never really bothered to look for any. The sister with the kids never visited and started breaking into Pete’s “stuff,” the jailbird father only showed up once after the wedding, and then only as a broken and repentant man. The ex-brother in law never made an appearance. Other than Aunt Anna, whose best moments came when she suspected that Peter’s frequent absences meant that he was cheating on Mary Jane, and anorexic cousin Kristy who stayed with the Parkers briefly, MJ’s family was a no-show. Seldom did she drag him anywhere he didn’t want to go, which every wife is required by law to do to her husband. There were plenty of opportunities for conflict in the marriage that didn’t require one spouse to be unfaithful to the other, or them to be nasty and hateful to each other, and for conflict in all kinds of social situations. But the writers didn’t find them. Peter and Mary Jane became insolated due to lazy writing.

There's your answer, about what went wrong, certainly during the 1990s. I notice Brand New Day seems to imply that Peter himself has no living relatives other than Aunt May, and you know what? I think that too is a problem: because Peter himself may not have any other family relatives, even distant ones, other than his elderly aunt, no distant 2nd or 3rd cousins, for example, who could introduce some more recurring and supporting cast members, that's why even Peter may not have worked out well.

Or, because they never made proper use of the supporting cast, and certainly not during the first half of Straczynski's run. Flash Thompson, Liz Allen, Randy and Robbie Robertson, Jill, John and Arthur Stacy, Glory Grant and even the one and only J. Jonah Jameson were largely - and strangely - absent during the first half, and if they did appear, it was only in a symbolic cameo when the throwaway villainess called Shathra turned up (in JJJ's case, he only had a brief appearance during the time that aunt May decided to cut her subscription to the Bugle). Even if MJ was over in Hollywood on an otherwise fruitless movie shoot, there was still plenty to be done by writing up a side story involving some of the established cast, or even to introduce new ones who could take the place of Harry Osborn, when he was still in the grave.

And, there are other ideas that could've been tried out too: Peter and MJ could trace their family tree's roots back to places like Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and take a trip there to see all the amazing ancient castles, and to meet up with distant relatives they might find there. And while they're at it, Peter could discover that HYDRA was hatching a terrorist plot in the area and go into web-slinging action to stop them. Now that would make a good story, I'm telling you.

The ignorance of a real supporting cast, or lack of it altogether, is something that affected various other comics during the 1990s too. Did they have much of a serious cast? When Wally West first took over as Flash, there was a supporting cast built at the time, most notably the scientists Jerry and Tina McGee, the latter of whom had an affair with Wally in a storyline that was fairly controversial, and which also led her hubby to go on the warpath as a chemical-induced speedster in his own way. And there was also Wally's mother, Chunk, the [then?] reformed Pied Piper, Mason Trollbridge, and this was when Linda Park was first introduced. But after Mark Waid took over, a lot of these people either vanished or were strictly relegated to the sidelines. The cast under Waid's pen were the Garricks, Quick father and daughter, Iris Allen when she came back from the future with Bart Allen, and the Pied Piper. In other words, what you had here was a cast that either consisted of established people, or of those who were superheroes as well.

And I think I know where the problem came in: Linda didn't have any say, female college buddies whom she could have a girl-chat with (and her parents rarely made appearances), and come to think of it, Wally never seemed to have any old pals come in from Blue Valley, Nebraska, either, whom he could go to the bowling alley with. This was in contrast to Spider-Man's well-established supporting/recurring cast of characters, and while Waid did do well as a writer then, that he didn't introduce any more down-to-earth supporting cast like what I suggest is surprising. Even Geoff Johns, while he seemed to add a supporting cast, largely dropped or sidelined them after awhile.

Or look at any and all of the team comics during that time where the superheroes and superheroines would date each other, and there weren't really "outsiders" involved. The X-Men is a perfect example of that. Only Moira MacTaggert and Trish Tilby seemed to make up a non-mutant cast (on the good side), and apart from that, there were few others, if at all.

I think a supporting cast made of regular folk from around the neighborhood could do perfectly for a lot of the comics that may otherwise not have one. And that's something that some comics during the 90s did not do a good job of establishing, if at all. In fact, that was surely the time when editors may have largely abandoned good writing, resulting in a lot of pointlessness.

I realize that editorial fiats could be one of the reasons why there were no real supporting casts introduced, or the writers weren't interested (sometimes, even if there is one intro'd, bad writing can still scuttle it), but either way, that's exactly the problem that's hurt a lot of the better potential that could've been had if they were to build a more serious supporting cast.

Besides restoring Spidey's marriage, I think that the writers should start making more serious use of the other relatives MJ has, and even introduce some new ones for Peter. That way, there could be some more interesting drama to be had in their relationship.

Electronic Arts ends relationship with Marvel

Hmm, it looks like Marvel has just been dealt a business blow: game developer Electronic Arts has cut off their business deal with them.

Seeing how Marvel is doing now with the most important part of their business, which is comics, I guess they were asking for this. The first game that came out of this deal to develop games based on their stable of characters, Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, got a bad reception when it was released 3 years ago, and they don't seem to have gotten anywhere since then.

For Marvel, this is probably a well-deserved punishment.

Taking the wrong direction on marriage

The Pottsville Republican & Herald talks about how Marvel has dealt with marriage, and feels that they're taking the wrong approach now. They overlook a telling detail, however:

I know it’s only a comic book, but I hate the trend of breaking up marriages to make a character “cool” again. Apparently Spidey has to be single for people to relate to him.

But what message does that give young readers? Yes, people get divorced in real life. Marriages don’t work out for a variety of reasons.

But that’s all the more reason for a superhero to stay married.

Granted, Spider-Man and MJ didn’t get a divorce. In a deal with Mephisto (not the devil, but close enough), they traded their marriage to save the life of Spidey’s Aunt May. So it was more a heroic sacrifice than a divorce.

But really, that can only be done in fiction, and it nonetheless threw out 20 years of a solid relationship. Spider-Man has been married to MJ since 1987.

The writer seems to overlook the fact that the way Aunt May's life was saved (or was it?) was in a way that she herself would not have approved of: making a deal with even a quasi-devil, but certainly an evil entity. What message does that send to young readers? That's not exactly what I would call heroic at any rate.

And it’s not the first time Marvel has done it.

In X-Men, Cyclops was more or less cheating on his wife, Jean Grey.

The writers killed her off before they could resolve the issue — if they were even going to.

In Mighty Avengers, Giant Man and Wasp (who, sadly, I can’t tell if they are divorced yet or not) are also seeing other people.

Regarding Cyclops' unfaithfulness to Jean, I hated that, because from what I can tell, it was meant to belittle her. And that she was killed off again (for now) only makes it worse. As for Hank Pym and Janet VanDyne, I guess Bendis decided to ruin a good attempt to fix the damage done to their relationship back in the early 80s yet again, didn't he? Sigh.

More on the Red Sonja legal battle in Delaware

The Delaware News-Journal has the latest on the trademark battle being waged over the rights to Red Sonja as a character. It's a court hearing that could go on for several days.

Now Quesada pins the blame on MJ

From this thread on Spider-Man Crawl Space, I'm now making the discovery that Joe Quesada seems to be making his strategy for justifying the end of the Spider-Marriage to claim that Mary Jane was the one who made the decision. Which doesn't make sense, because it was a joint decision of Peter and MJ to deal with Mephisto. However, now that I think of how this was handled, and that the upcoming Jackpot is very likely to be Mary Jane, I've come to realize that in a way, MJ was written as making a decision: it could be that when she whispered something in Mephisto's ear, she was telling him that she'd like for him to make her a superbeing! Which would peg her as an opportunist. Simply awful.

This out-of-character depiction for MJ may have surfaced even earlier during Straczynski's run, when she and Peter got back together: if memory serves, she'd wanted to be more aquainted with the superhero crowd, and there was a rumor at the time that she wanted a piece of the action (translation: to be a superheroine)! It makes no sense to me, as years before, she wasn't interested in having much to do with the rest of the superhero community, no matter how much she admired them, and her main concerns were usually her job as a model.

Obviously, Quesada must think that the audience would be easier with this if it were implied that MJ made the decision rather than Peter. It reminds me of when Identity Crisis framed Jean Loring as the culprit, apparently because they thought that people would be easier with that than if Ray Palmer were the culprit.

So now I see what Quesada's little game is here too: he's trying to turn people against MJ, under the assumption that they can't tell that she's a fictional character, and that it's not her fault for whatever wrongs she supposedly does. Simply disgraceful.

The media's going out of their way again to cooperate with Marvel

In promoting the presentation of the "new" Captain America, as this press release tells. And a Marvel spokesperson said:

We asked Marvel spokesperson Jim McCann for comment on the anticipated coverage. He said: "This is a really big story, yes. The mainstream media is still as hungry for Cap news as they were when he died, as seen in the Death of Captain America Vol. 1 HC. It just goes to show that Ed Brubaker is telling an epic story that has captured National attention, not just comic fandom. Will the world be ready for this new Captain America? We'll find out on Wednesday!"

And I worry that once again, the public will just lap up the story without proper consideration. Though as recent sales figures showed, it's not like they've been able to capture that much attention nationwide. And even if this does get a lot of buyers, they may not stick around for long.

And the part about the MSM being the ones who're interested is also confusing, since press and public are really 2 different things. Not to mention that the only reason why they really gulped it down in the first place was because it was about a character dying, in a story that stemmed from one that was no good to begin with.

Not that cliche again...

It looks like with Batman #676 (via Newsarama blog), the rumor of the Masked Manhunter possibly dying has boomeranged back, and they've resorted yet again to the tired cliche:

Are you ready for "Batman R.I.P."?

Beginning the epic story that will change the legend of the Dark Knight forever! Everything in Grant Morrison's groundbreaking run on Batman has been leading to this story, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Who will live? Who will die? Who will be Batman? The answers are sure to shock you in "Batman R.I.P.," featuring artwork by Tony Daniel and Sandu Florea and covers by Alex Ross.

Who cares?!? It fails to even anger me now. The Times of London caught on to this (in a pretty sugary article too at that), and say that if Batman dies, he'll get better. But I'd rather Bruce Wayne not die, even if it's only temporary. It'd only be such a joke by now.

So Sins Past is still in continuity?

Reading this entry at The Savage Critics, but mainly the comments that came with it, I've gotten some clues that, wouldn't you know it, of all the things JMS did in his 6-year run on ASM, Sins Past still appears to be in continuity! According to this comment:

...this is one of the many reasons why I don't trust Quesada to "fix" Spider-Man (aside from the fact that he helped "break" him in the first place), because of all the things that "One More Day" was already being used to retcon away, Quesada specifically insisted that Gwen and Norman's kids be kept in "Brand New Day" continuity, and he's gone on record as saying that "Sins Past" is one of his favorite Straczynski stories, precisely because of Gwen and Norman f***ing and having Goblin-kids.

Anyone with storytelling sensibilities that bad should be banned from ever telling any stories, ever again.

And according to this earlier comment:

JMS recently went on the record to say that he was on board with the retconning of the marriage from the very beginning. His differences with Joe Q. were over HOW Mephisto did it. Rather than simply have Memphisto undo the marriage act, JMS wanted to make it more of a "Back to the Future" scenario by changing something in the past that would have set Pete on a different life course. JMS actually wanted to retcon the book EVEN FURTHER than Joe Q. and reset everything back to circa Amazing Spidey #97-98. He even wanted to bring Gwen back, which editorial nixed. And he has said that one of his regrets was that he didn't get to retcon Gwen's kids out of existence (whom he intended to be Pete's until that idea was also nixed).

But as this comment tells:

I don't see that JMS necessarily got screwed. I mean, the man willingly participated in One More Day. He didn't have to, but he chose to. He screwed himself.

Which brings me to say the following: maybe JMS really does have some sincere positions, but if he was willing to along with this till the very end, then I find it hard to buy into any of them. He could have jumped ship any time he wanted to, and never come back, at least not until Quesada made a departure. But he didn't. And if I'm not mistaken, he's still current writer of The Mighty Thor, isn't he?

True, JMS actually voiced his complaints about some of the editorial mandates he was facing over the years. But I think that's because Quesada was willing to let him, far more than Dan DiDio is willing to allow any freelancer working for him to do. Why? It's vaguely similar to some politicians, who trade blame against each other, so as to confuse matters, but otherwise don't seem to have any real problems on anything. And Quesada probably felt that he could get away with things much easier this way.

And I guess this explains why I really can't feel sorry for JMS if his work got deleted altogether. I'm only sorry that it had to include the erasure of the Spider-Marriage and that the only thing remaining from JMS' rather pedestrian run appears to be the most reviled story of all: Sins Past. But then, this is Quesada who's behind all this, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. What this does tell is what he must think of Gwen Stacy, and of the innocent image established for her when she perished in 1973, which is - not much.* Is it any wonder then that he'd make sure to tarnish her in retrospect, effectively violating what Mark Gruenwald advised against years ago?

Maybe JMS wasn't in favor of having Mephisto be the source to erase the marriage, but again, if he really didn't like the mud he was trodding through, he shouldn't have even bothered to put on those galoshes.

And if that's how it is, then I guess there's really no reason to spend time and money on JMS' current run on the Mighty Thor. It's already beginning to drop in sales though (last time I looked, it was down to 101,000 copies) so I wouldn't be surprised if people are beginning to realize that he's not all he appears to be. His stories are unlikely to be well remembered in the near future either.

* Which could probably explain why he doesn't want to bring her back as JMS was thinking: not because he respects Gerry Conway's old story as one of Spidey's motivations, but because he'd like for Gwen to lie in reputational ruins.

This makes me feel uncomfortable

The Marvel Directory, which is now listing Bucky as Winter Soldier, tells in its update that Bucky, having become the tool of the Soviets, was responsible for the deaths of various people, including Wolverine's erstwhile wife Itsu, and even his 1950s counterpart, Jack Munroe. It's very unfortunate that, under this new depiction, Bucky has been tarnished.

In New Avengers, violence is okay, but profanity is not

Comics2Film talks about the excruciating violence exhibited in New Avengers #35 against Tigra a couple months ago. Oddly enough though, the word "ass", by contrast, is censored.

I agree, that does seem very odd, and pretty hypocritical of them. Even I'd feel more confortable seeing the word "ass" among other profane words clearly displayed on the panels than to see Tigra or any other lady of the EMH being smashed over the face(!) with a Glock pistol.

And I think that begs the question: why exactly aren't people boycotting this book just as much as Amazing Spider-Man after how they undid the Parkers' marriage? I think this too is a perfect candidate for something to avoid. Fortunately, last time I looked at the sales charts, New Avengers had dropped to 105,000 copies sold, so maybe people are starting to wake up. So, can we perhaps get to see the title losing at least another 10 or 20,000 copies in sales? Buying this book the way it's written will only help Joe Quesada as much as buying ASM, ditto the pretentious Brian Bendis, so I hope people will start to consider.

Enough of the Emperor's New Clothes act

Erik Larsen, who'd once been a Spider-Man contributor, wrote what he thinks about Joe Quesada's forced breakup of the Spider-Marriage. And I'm glad to see that his thoughts coincide with mine - that an Emperor's New Clothes path is not the way to go:

So...what should Marvel do now? Hasn’t the dye been cast?

Honestly?

My first thought was that Marvel should stick with it -- what's done is done. They backed off from the Clone Saga and the cure was worse than the disease and that they should simply tough it out.

But...

I really do think it should become undone -- I think Mephisto's scheme should unravel and bits and pieces get discovered and the word should get out.

And I think they should do this for several reasons. First, I think it’s unfair purely in a storytelling sense to have the Devil just “make things right” and vanish forever. That’s not the way Mephisto has been established -- and it’s not playing fair. Second, it throws far too many stories into a murky semi-limbo. It’s very vague what really happened over the course of the last 200+ issues of the “Amazing Spider-Man.” Too many issues hinged on the marriage or MJ’s knowledge of Peter’s dual identity. It’s simply asking too much to expect readers to reconcile all of that themselves. It would work better and some exciting stories could come out of it.

I'm glad he's saying it as it should be here, that to go along with this would be just more Emperor's New Clothes acts. Maybe now, someone will come along and say the same about Elongated Man, Sue Dibny, the Silver Age Atom, and Jean Loring. Come to think of it, maybe they'll even say it about Capt. Boomerang and the Silver Age Trickster, who seems to have died as well in Countdown recently. And maybe even about how Dr. Light was turned into a rapist, something that DC still seems to be sticking to. That it should all be undone.

After taking some time to read some of this, I've done a little extra thinking myself about Peter Parker and Mary Jane, and I think I know where Quesada and company misread everything about the two:

From all the material I've read of Spidey over the years, I've never gotten the impression that he was ever meant to completely remain a bachelor a la Tony Stark, and certainly not to remain a pauper. And even if he were still to have considerable money problems, that doesn't mean he would keep on living on the verge of losing house and home, or being forced to live with Aunt May much of the time. What I don't get the impression of is that Peter were to ever become a literal millionaire, nor Mary Jane, even if they do get jobs that pay well.

That's one of the reasons why Howard Mackie's story in 2000, where Peter had trouble affording to pay the rent for a house, simply didn't work. And to depict him as they are now, living once again with Aunt May and still having money problems, is no improvement. Come to think of it, even the membership with the Avengers doesn't make much sense either, as even Spidey himself concluded years ago, since he works better alone or just as a guest member of any team.

Also: Peter and Mary Jane Parker have a family-style, down-to-earth quality about them that few other Marvel protagonists have.

In fact, by breaking up Peter and MJ the way they did, they've trashed some golden opportunities to explore how as a couple they can raise money to take a vacation outside New York, or even to buy a good car. Or how they plausibly lose money on the stock market and then have trouble paying certain business debts. Those are the kind of problems that could be explored, if they had editors who really cared, but alas.

However, if they undo all the damage they've inflicted now, there IS a chance to explore these kind of ideas. What they need, of course, is an editor who really cares about characterization and entertainment that's served up honestly, something that Brand New Day isn't doing.

And that's one more reason why it's high time already that Quesada retired from his position as EIC of Marvel.

I thought it was possible: fans of the Multiverse have lost interest

Several weeks ago, I said that I wouldn't be surprised if DC fans who wished for the return of the Multiverse had since lost interest, if sales results are any indication. Now, the blogmaster of Fortress of Fortitude proves that I was right, that someone is let down by how it's all being handled. And not just because there's too much bloodshed in the DCU these days that spoils everything, but also because the Multiverse, as now featured, is little more than an absurd, unimaginative sham that uses little more than stuff that wasn't meant to be seen as actual Multiverse material, like the Elseworlds and Tangent line. And knowing what goes on in Countdown to Final Crisis, I'd say that's one more reason why I won't be sorry if this Multiverse makes a departure soon.

If DC had thought of making a new Multiverse at least a decade ago, it's possible that then, they might've hit paydirt. But now, with Dan DiDio using it as some kind of a vehicle to promote yet more crossovers and other pointless material, the time is too late.

Sometimes, you have to be careful what you wish for.

CS Indy interviews the Simonsons

The Colorado Springs Independent interviews Walter and Louise Simonson, veteran couple of the comic book writers. Problem is that even they may be making the mistake of assuming that popularity for comics is seriously booming again:

During their 30-plus years in the comic book industry, Walter and Louise "Weezie" Simonson have seen ups and downs.

"The popularity of comics goes in waves," Weezie says. "They'll be popular for a little while and then everybody'll say, "Ah ... boring,' and then it drops off."

These days, the demand for comic books is back on an upswing. And Weezie has a theory as to why.

"The people who were reading comics through the last blast of popularity in the '80s and '90s are now old enough to be [making] movies and TV," she says. "I suspect those guys are doing now what they loved then."

I'm sure some of the people who'd read them during 80s and 90s have since had a chance to write and draw them too, but how far has that gotten in terms of sales? And not every writer or artist has truly pleased everybody since they began.

Also, look at how very few comics of recent are selling above 100,000 copies, and the audience today has dwindled down to but a shadow of what it once was. And when that happens, it's much more difficult to say that popularity has risen again.

I keep reading in papers like these that comics are popular again, when sales figures suggest otherwise. Can they not understand that to just talk about presumed rises in popularity instead of whether or not the stories are well written is not the way to do it?

A terrible year for superheroes

Contrary to what the Cleveland Plain Dealer is telling, that villains and heroes had "a super year", it was not that way at all. Certainly not for the heroes. The columnist says:

Once more, let's hear it for 2007. The bad guys have gotten smarter. Heroes turned on one another, and shape-shifting aliens have infiltrated society. Iron Man did what all the villains couldn't do: forced many superheroes into seclusion.

Ugh! They just keep on gushing away with their fluff-coated dreck. Heroes turning against each other seemed to be the only thing they really did last year, with too little concern for what the villains were doing, if at all. If anything, that the heroes were forced to go underground or into hiding was throughly uncalled for.

Captain America is still dead! His assassination last summer led many to speculate that the death either was a trick or something that would be quickly reversed. While I'm not convinced that Steve Rogers is never coming back, I'm starting to think maybe Marvel did the unthinkable. Maybe.

His death was tempered by the return of his former sidekick from the 1940s, Bucky, who will take over as a new Cap, at least temporarily.

Sorry, but that doesn't excuse the mess that is Civil War, which this grew out of. And after I found out the synopsis of the 33rd issue, I can't help but wonder if it implies that Iron Man now takes the side of the left-wing rhetoric that Civil War was trying in one way or another to advocate, and if Bucky, if he's taking up Steve's role as Cap, is parroting the whole exaggerated notion that Captain America was supposedly just a government-controlled machine. Totally dumb.

In a clever juxtaposition of space and time, Marvel brought another captain out of the void of death: Captain Marvel. While not negating his tragic death from cancer decades ago, Marvel Comics decided there is some life in the old boy yet. The Captain Marvel who will be flying around the universe for the next few months came forward in time from the past, from a time shortly before he died. Eventually, he will return to our past (his future) and die of cancer.

Got that?

Nope. Because according to this earlier news, Mar-Vell regrets that he simply died of cancer, and would rather die in battle, when years ago, it doesn't sound to me like he was sad that he was simply dying a death from bad health. Also, Mar-Vell's death in 1982's The Death of Captain Marvel was one that, in sharp contrast to the deaths of recent years, was well done and didn't stem from the kind of biases that are destroying comics today, which is why to bring him back the way they have is actually rather embarrassing.

Over at DC, a Flash was killed and another Flash returned from oblivion. After a tepid reader reaction to Bart Allen as Flash, Bart was brutally murdered. Before the body was cold, Wally West (the former Flash) emerged from a mystery dimension called the Speed Force and resumed his old job.

The writer forgot to mention that while readers didn't find Bart appealing as an adult Flash, they didn't ask for him to be killed either.

Good news is that the new Flash is written by fan favorite Mark Waid. Bad news is Flash brought his two preteen kids to work with him, who have just about taken over the comic. A new coloring style is not helping.

Uh oh, do I detect disdain for the Wests becoming parents? Ugh, after the disdain that Joe Quesada showed for Spider-Man and Mary Jane Parker's being parents, this kind of unfavorable reaction is the last thing we need.

DC seemed intent on upgrading the B- and C-list characters this year.

Mary Marvel couldn't buy face time in the past 10 years, but now that she's turned evil, she's hot.

No, she's not. Just what the world needs, the foolish belief that only by turning evil will the goodies be interesting, is that it? Boo.

Green Arrow paired up with Black Canary in matrimony as well as crime-fighting.

Uh, if that's supposed to say that they married, as far as I know, not so. They were rudely interrupted by the new Injustice Gang, and so far, I don't think they got married at all.

Now, here's where the column really takes a nose dive at the end:

Lastly, in an excellent series overlooked by many, Namor the Sub-Mariner destroyed his underworld land of Atlantis and told a million Atlanteans to go live among humans. He took a group of soldiers and joined Dr. Doom in Latveria. That can't be good.

Then why say that the series is excellent? That's only destroying the Sub-Mariner and much of the characterization that other, better writers went to such pains to work on back in the 70s and 80s. IMO, it's good if this was overlooked.

Biggest problem with this Plain Dealer column is the sugary tone that permeats it, and that's simply not how to promote comics in the MSM.

No "event" involving death should be something big

The Penn. Express-Times' comics columnist wrote earlier about DC and Marvel's next "big events". But when one of them seems to be hyping itself on death, and the other is just as much a case of overkill, then I don't think I'd call them big events at all. First, DC's Final Crisis:

"Batman" writer Grant Morrison and "52" cover artist J.G. Jones take on DC's biggest event with world-changing "Final Crisis."

Even with the event months away, rumors are rampant on the Internet about the death of a major hero.

And while every past Crisis event has had a Flash die, most rumors point to the demise of Batman.

But other heroes in the suspected line of fire include Superman, Wonder Woman and Hawkman, among others.

With all the Internet speculation, my pick for the hero that will be pushing up daisies is Nightwing.

The original Robin (Dick Grayson) was picked by DC Editor-in-Chief Dan Dido to perish in "Infinity Crisis" but was saved by the creators attending the meeting.

I hope I'm wrong because Nightwing is my favorite DC hero.

I think it'd be better if he were to declare that this death parade is tired, worthless and futile already. The rumors now are that Aquaman and Martian Manhunter could be the ones to bite the dust. As far as Aquaman is concerned, while it could be replacement he may have had recently who could die, if it's the Sea King who's slated to get a watery grave, he already has been to the point of death already. And Martian Manhunter, often described as a heart-and-soul for the JLA, a possible victim of death as well?

This is exactly the problem with DC lately, and by now, it's tired, and I'm not going to pick up a book just to see characters die for the sake of it. There's even rumors that Barry Allen might be brought back (again?) by Geoff Johns, after how his death happens to be one of the few that's actually worked, and done at a time when, even if it wasn't perfect, it done reasonably well, and served as a motivation for Wally West to remain in uniform.

In principle, I am not against resurrections, and if there's any time when I advocate them, it's when the deaths were as badly done as what Zero Hour, Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis, to name but some, featured. But when a death is done tastefully, and has a modicum of meaning to it, as Barry Allen's death did, that's when I would think it best that the heroes remain dead. The same goes for at least 4 of the deaths seen in Spider-Man's world years ago, at least 2 of which were undone as ridiculously as they were.

Speaking of which, let's move next to what the columnist says about Marvel's Secret Invasion:

Marvel's big storyline for 2008 is "Secret Invasion."

As many fans know, the shape-shifting alien Skrulls have infiltrated Earth and have taken the place of several heroes.

Two of the heroes reviled as Skrulls were Elecktra and Black Bolt.

This year they make their move.

Fan speculation as to who's a Skrull is nonstop. Everyone in the Marvel universe is a suspect, including Iron Man and Captain America.

My bet for who's a Skrull goes to the former X-Man Storm.

In the past year, she's left the X-Men, married the African king Black Panther and with her husband became members of the Fantastic Four.

That gives her a lot of access to many of the people who could stop the invasion.

I wonder if Harry Osborn will turn out to be a Skrull too? But after all the crossover nonsense Marvel's been hammering us over the head with for almost 4 years now, I'm not waiting around to find out. We don't need this anymore, as it's brought any and all characterization to a virtual standstill, and in the end, all it's proven to be is a waste of time and money. Someday, those who spent all their hard-earned money on this crossover nonsense from Marvel are going to realize just how much they wasted on utter nothingness. We can only hope they'll come to their senses now, but chances are they won't.

All these silly would-be events are something that years ago could've been told in just a few issues of a single series. Now, they have to spread out from coast-to-coast, costing a lot of money in the process. And sooner or later, it's going to slay comics. The twilight moment is coming, if readers don't learn when and why it pays to say, "no more."

Even the art shouldn't be reason to stick around

While I know that this is a newspaper columnist in focus here, it still seems a bit odd that the comics columnist for the Pennsylvania Express-Times would stick around on Spider-Man after the debacle of One More Day just for the art:

The only really good thing about the first part of "Brand New Day" is Steve McNiven's art.

The first book that I ever noticed McNiven's art was in "Civil War." His work on that book was amazing. Every issue he seems to get better and better.

He keeps that same high quality art for "Amazing Spider-Man" and for now is the only reason I'll stay with the book.

Really, really, really. Even the artwork shouldn't be reason enough to stay around, when the premises Brand New Day stems from are as awful as they are. It could be George Perez, Scott Campbell, and plenty of other talented artists, but even that wouldn't justify the bad directions that Brand New Day stems from, nor Civil War. One certainly shouldn't have to pay to get a look at the artwork, that's for sure.

In short, I think I detect a bit of sensationalism here. Not exactly how to report in the papers about a subject like this.

There may be some cases where the artwork can be worth it, but this is definitely not one of them.

Darius LaMonica and Sleet's anti-jihad comic

Darius LaMonica writes to Michelle Malkin to promote his new comic book against Islamic jihad, Matamoros, which he co-wrote with Sleet and is drawn by John Cox of Cox and Forkum cartoons. It's a very bold venture.

Update: here's a short review from Flopping Aces, and here's a review from milblogger who also recommends it.

Quebecor's financial problems

Even a supplier of printing services for comics is having problems these days, that being Canada's Quebecor, which does much of the printing for Marvel and DC. They failed to obtain a bailout plan, and their financial woes are still going. Newsarama says that the impact would be minimal, but given the Newsarama track record of sugarcoating, I wouldn't take what they say at face value. I wonder if this too is a sign of how the comics industry is sadly deteriorating?

Update: Quebecor files for bankruptcy protection.

AP Wire delivers the worst OMD coverage of all

There's been some pretty awful coverage of the One More Day controversy, some of which is definitely tilted in Joe Quesada's favor, but I think the Associated Press may qualify for the worst article of all:

It was bad enough when Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old all-American girl, announced she was pregnant.

But Spider-Man splitting with Mary Jane, his wife of more than 20 years? We didn't see that one coming.

Which is exactly the point, says Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. It was time to shake things up in the life of Peter Parker, the nerdy New Yorker who upon being bitten by a radioactive spider attained the ability to transform himself into a web-spinning world savior. And it was easier to do that, he said, if Parker wasn't married.

Still, as the writer and artist who created the story that transformed Spider-Man into Single-Man earlier this month, Quesada has made himself about as popular with some of his readers as the villainous Green Goblin.

"When we first did it, the reaction was, 'How could you do this? This is a terrible thing to do," he recalled. "But with the first issue of 'Brand New Day' [in which Spider-Man returns to single life], our letters very quickly changed to people saying, 'This is fantastic. This is the Spider-Man we remembered. We didn't know what we'd been missing."

Yeah, what a classic defense. Reading some of the synopses of Brand New Day, it seems more like they've turned Peter Parker into a total jerk! And what does Jamie Lynn Spears have to do with all this? Is that their way of saying that people are making a fuss over nothing even about that?

To briefly recap Spider-Man's trials and tribulations, his beloved Aunt May was recently wounded by an assassin. To save her life he and Mary Jane struck a deal with the devil-like Mephisto in which she would be restored to good health if they allowed Mephisto to erase every memory of their time as a married couple.

Reaction from the critics was swift.

"Considering I have been reading Spider-Man for exactly 20 years now, and that seems to be the amount of time Joe Q. has decided to rip from Spider-Man continuity, can I simply return all of my Spider-Man comics for a full refund?" asked one of the more polite postings on Marvel's Internet message boards. Some message threads were discontinued after they became nothing more than forums to insult Quesada and others.

"It's heresy for some people," laughed Dave Pifer, who runs the Secret Headquarters comic book store in Los Angeles. Others, however, have been more quick to adapt.

"The ones who are new to superheroes like Spider-Man, they're excited about it," Pifer said. "They feel like they're starting at the beginning."

One message poster even joked that the beautiful Mary Jane, who remains in the Spider-Man cast, is free now to pursue Brad Pitt.

And so, there we have it, the AP qualifies as delivering the worst, surely most offensive coverage of all. There's little to nothing here that suggests that the AP has any understanding for devoted fans, nor do they allow any argument about why Spidey making a deal with even a quasi-devil like Mephisto is morally wrong.

They go on to suggest that newcomers have no objections to anything, and, once again, devotees are scapegoated as a "problem". It's just like the AP to do this.

And then, well, I sure hope this isn't what it seems, though I will say that they doubtless were delighted to add this to their disgusting little screed:

But what of the man who created Spider-Man? What does he think?

"I think it's a very creative idea. It should stimulate a lot of interest in the characters and the books, and I'm eager to see what happens next," said Stan Lee, who wasn't involved in the current story.

It was Lee who married Spider-Man and Mary Jane in a mock ceremony at New York's Shea Stadium in 1987.

"Amazing that they're not even middle-aged yet," Lee quipped.

I sure hope that Lee was only being taken out of context here, because the above is surely the worst thing they could use to slap fans in the face. But then...what if he did make that statement to the AP?!? You have to wonder how even the master creators can let themselves be used so cynically by one of the worst news syndicates in the world. And just look at how they imply that the marriage was fake(!), by calling it all a "mock ceremony"! It's clear where the AP stands, and that's not with morality.

But whether or not Stan actually did make those statements the way that the AP puts it, this does suggest something very sad: it's unlikely that any veteran of comics writing who disapproves will voice their disagreements. Will even Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, David Michelinie, Elliot Maggin, and various others who'd written and edited Spider-Man over the years speak out? Chances of that are almost zero, which is a shame, because if they were to back fans up, it's possible that they could have an impact.

If there is a veteran writer/editor/artist out there who does understand what's going on here who's reading this, I'd sure like to hear from you, as many others would, to be sure, about if you think this is unfair to Spider-Fans.

On a side note, upon some extra thought, I've realized that Newsweek may have taken Gail Simone's words out of context when they did that sugar-piece on women in writing last week, and while it doesn't mean that I'm letting her off the hook, I do realize that it IS possible that they warped her words for the sake of their stupid propaganda machine, which would be just like them. One difference between Simone and Lee though, is that Simone is still working in writing, where Lee has been long retired and just a chairman emeritus for Marvel, which is why I'd assume, at least on the surface, that he could speak out if he wanted to. If he hasn't, that's sad, because even at his old age, he could still have some influence.

After reading this horrific treacle, I've concluded that the AP is evil incarnate among press syndicates, and don't deserve to have any business.

Update: on this thread at Spider-Man Crawl Space, one poster has something to say that could explain why Stan is saying something favorable:

[As] much respect as I have for Stan he does come from an era where you don't speak poorly about the company you either work for or have worked for. I mean I don't think Marvel would be seek any kind of retrobution (i.e. trying to block the cameos, etc.) but Stan Lee is first and foremost a booster. It's why everyone loves the man. I'm sure if you got him alone at two in the morning at some convention the stories would be legendary, but if some media outlet calls he's going to be nice about it.

I suppose that could explain everything. Even so, I really wish Stan could stand up and defend his legendary creation more strongly, as it could have an impact. But I guess I understand why he's making the statement he may have.

Warner Bros. puts Justice League movie on backburner

Or, they're possibly scrapping it altogether, as I suspect will happen in the end. It was supposed to start filming this spring, but now they've stopped production.

Of course, if the screenplay was really going to be similar in any ways to the debacle surrounding Identity/Infinite Crisis, as this older news seems to tell, then maybe that's good news, as any resulting movie could be an embarrassment?

What this does tell, however, is that by this point, Warner, as the owner of DC's properties, may have totally botched any chance of really expanding their movie adaptations of DC products to more than just Superman and Batman, for example. They said that a Wonder Woman movie would depend on the success of the Justice League movie, but now it may not be, and probably not a WW movie either. But I know what led to this dilemma: the Catwoman movie. Whatever possessed them to think that would be so great an idea to produce?

IGN discussion on retcons, revamps and continuity

At IGN's Comics section, three contributors have a roundtable discussion of what went wrong with retcons, revamps and continuity issues in past years, at both Marvel and DC.

Chicago Sun-Times tells the fans to go to...you get the idea

Another example of pretentious mainstream coverage comes via the Couch Potato clips in the Chicago Sun-Times, where they do little more than to insult comic readers who decried the editorial annulment of the Spider-Marriage:

PETER PARKER'S A FREE MAN:
Spidey untangled
Tumultuous uproar among comic-book fans -- you know who you are -- because Marvel Comics has erased the 21-year marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.

In the comic book, apparently, the two got married in 1987, and editors have regretted it ever since. "A married Spider-Man was not where we want to be," Marvel editor Joe Quesada told the N.Y. Post.

So in the latest issue a character called Mephisto uses his special powers, or something, to return the characters to the previous status quo: Pete is young and single, Aunt May is alive, etc. Hands up, all you readers who would like a little chat with Mephisto about your own lives.

Obviously, whoever it is who wrote this does not think much of comics, or of the people who read them. And the last line there is practically offensive.

I don't know who writes this crud for the Sun-Times, but he/she owes an apology.

Geoff Johns comes back to write the Rogues

But what's the use if they have Bart Allen's blood on their hands, even as unwitting dupes of Inertia? Johns and artist Scott Kolins are coming back to write a miniseries or something starring the Flash's most famous adversaries, but as long as they're rendered guilty of Bart's death, I can't see what's so great about this. How odd though, that Johns seems to be apologizing for Dan DiDio regarding the brutalizing of Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown. He says:

Since we’re going back years, a sidebar for a lot of you Spoilers fans – early on when I started talking with Dan about Flash, I remember him bemoaning the fact that they were planning on “killing” Spoiler, one of his, yes, favorite characters. Dan had just started and wasn’t the E-I-C yet and had no control over the Bat universe. He still misses Spoiler.

Sure he does. He became a prominent editor at least two years before Identity Crisis and Batman: War Games, and if he had wanted to, he could've prevented Spoiler's death from happening, and even after her death, he could have given her more attention than she actually got: there was a Batman Secret Files special published a few months after that disposable crossover in Gotham City, and Spoiler, curiously enough, did not get any mention in it, even though DiDio had already well established his position as an EIC by that time. Johns is only acting as an apologist when it's DiDio who should be doing the explaining himself. And if DiDio really does miss Spoiler, he'd listen to her fans and bring her back.

As of now, there's still no clear way to tell if Spoiler is going to be brought back, and if not, then nobody should have to pay their money for the Batbooks.

Retailers on Amazing Spider-Man

Here's an item from Newsarama in which they report about how sales of Spider-Man are doing among various retailers now that One More Brand New Day has taken place. And there are some who've lost some business because of it. I hope that tells that there will be some lost, but it could just as easily be that there'll still be some people who'll keep on blindly buying, regardless of Peter's deal with even a de facto devil.

And while we're on the subject, here's a special link from CBR that mentioned what Ed Brubaker's stand is on this, and I can't say I'm happy:

...imagine my shock when I read from a link on the Spider Forums that Brubaker liked the One More Day story. Please tell me Brubaker is just sucking up to the boss. To not hurt his feelings or ya know.... the job prospects

Okay, I've heard enough. As someone who doesn't agree with what Brubaker and company have done with Captain America, mainly because of its stemming from a crossover as awful as Civil War happens to be and how Steve Rogers went down in defeat, I can safely say that this doesn't encourage me to check out Brubaker's current work anytime soon. Maybe he is being polite to the big boss in order to keep his job, but if I were him, I would've been out the door long ago, rather than make myself look like a pawn who's willing to do a job for them on the pretense that my status as a popular writer would make people overlook the damage more easily. I think it's wrong, and no matter how talented Brubaker is, that alone does not counteract the bad taste left behind.

Also, if memory serves, wasn't Brubaker one of the engineers behind the whole Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive crossover storyline in Batman at DC almost 6 years ago? Even Chuck Dixon, who may have written the hub miniseries of the Joker's Last Laugh x-over, once said on his board that he wasn't in favor of it; he probably took a good amount of flak for writing JLL in the first place, so he was rightly embarrassed about taking part in another one. I looked over a bit of that Bat-crossover back then, and the dialect there, to be quite honest, looked forced and certainly grating, like when the suspects were being interrogated by police. Worst: the abuse of Sasha Bordeaux, who was all but left to rot in jail while Batman initially considered not proving his innocence and going exclusive as Batman, which was just an extension of the bad control-freak characterization that plagued his personality during 1990s. Anyone who really thinks that Brubaker is that good would do well to remember just how wretched a crossover he contributed to 6 years ago, and even if he was working under editorial mandate, that still doesn't mean he didn't do anything wrong then.

Update: here's a column by a retailer on ICV2 giving more thoughts on the OMD fallout, as well as this one.

Now I understand: Hulk has been relaunched

So now I understand what Marvel's little game is: they've relaunched the Hulk in a new volume while Hercules takes over what was previously the green goliath's own book in numbering. And the really sickening part? This new Hulk volume may have sold out; people fell for it!

That's the sad thing about the fanbase of Marvel: what Stan Lee worked to build up later transformed into something totally mindless that's willing to buy only so many series regardless of quality. Lee may have had a good idea years ago, but today, that very fanbase may have transformed into something appalling, and if I were Stan, I'd probably be feeling very bad.

It's to be hoped that if this sold big, that it won't last too long. Jeph Loeb has turned out to be one of the most overrated writers of all time, and Ed McGuinness may not be far behind as the artist. At the end of the press release, it says:

Find out just why Wizard named Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness two of the industry’s hottest talents with the book that puts the “red” back in “Incredible!” Marvel urges retailers to check their orders on all issues of Hulk as the buzz and critical acclaim continues to grow around the series!

Now it’s time for Hulk vs Iron Man—‘Nuff Said!

Groan. More Iron Man-bashing, I fear. And the color red, I'd say, only signals danger here.

Controversy is exactly the problem

Newsweek almost gets some things right when they talk about the fallout from One More Day in Spider-Man. But then, even they won't talk tough enough. Good that I can link to the printable version of this, because the picture they show on the stardard format, when looked upon in the light of the fallout, is simply disgusting.

Let's look at the good part available here first:

...they're [the fans] not so much angry about the breakup itself--most fans will admit that characters, at some point, need a fresh start. (Marvel's main rival, DC Comics, gave Superman and Wonder Woman new beginnings in the 1980s, and fans took it fine.) The problem, they say, is that the story's not realistic. Divorce, yes. (Peter and MJ had a trial separation at one point.) Death, sure. (That's how Parker's ex-girlfriend Gwen Stacy died). But would as intelligent and moral a hero as Peter Parker really be dumb enough to strike a deal with the devil? Would he really choose an aged aunt, who's led a full and satisfying life, over his true love? "This is not an idea, but an admission of a lack of ideas," says Bob Sodaro, a Connecticut writer and graphic artist who has been collecting Spider-Man comics since its inception in 1962. On his blog, he calls the move "the ultimate form of copout"--and one that "loudly proclaims that not only has Marvel run out of ideas, but that it's writers and editors really can't write themselves out of a paper bag."

That's even more right than you think, if you take into consideration that they spent more than five years now doing things like politicized stories, defamations of Captain America, to name but one (that Marvel Knights series still makes me shudder when I think about it), and some of the most awful publicity stunts ever imagined, One More/Brand New Day being the latest.

Now, here's where I think they start to slip:

Writers, editors—and even some fans—have long been conflicted over Parker's marriage to Mary Jane. Back when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created the series, Spider-Man immediately connected with young readers because he was a geeky teenager who was awkward around girls and not sure how to use his powers. Getting married aged him, making it harder for younger readers to relate. It took away the tension of his single life, the trials and tribulations of being a bachelor. And it changed his image: from a dork who strives to be a hero despite seemingly endless bad luck to the man who gets the dream girl.

And there aren't "geeks" who get the girl too? And didn't many of these young readers of the time connect almost as easily with Reed Richards and Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four even after they got married and had their first child, Franklin? The bolded part makes it sound as though nobody asked for character growth, and that's what the marriage was all about. If he remined flat-out nerdy for the past 40 years, essentially a bum living in his mom's - or aunt's - basement, he'd be shipwrecked as an icon.

In the end, though, the best argument for breaking up the duo was to add new fans to the old. Spider-Man has a loyal base of longtime devotees, but he needs to attract young adults, who make up the majority of comic book readers. And it's they who are most likely to be lured away by electronic entertainment and the Internet. "This is really about the next generation of Spider-Man fans, not just the older fans," says Quesada. "We want to make sure [Spider-Man] stays healthy and active as an icon."

Hate to say, but many of the young adults (so it's no longer the kiddies now, is it?) they speak of have already been lured away by electronics and the internet. There may be some who'll come along now, but it would come as no surprise to me if many of them lost interest after awhile too. And turning Peter back into an adult bachelor who still lives with his aunt and eating her wheatcakes isn't exactly emphasizing something healthy, or inspiring.

Of course, the breakup won't be easy for everyone to get over. A series is only as good as its characters, and it's only natural for fans to get invested in them. "My sixth- and seventh-grade students asked me, after the first [Spider-Man] movie came out, 'What happened with Peter and Mary Jane?' Like they're real people that send me postcards," says Greg Hatcher, a Seattle art teacher who teaches drawing and cartooning and writes a weekly column for Comic Book Resources, the Web site that puts out the Comics Should Be Good blog. He says his students have even come to favor Spider-Girl over the original series, a Marvel spinoff in which Spidey is married and retired, with a 15-year-old daughter who inherits his powers.

And that's understandable. One really tough question in all this now is if they should try even that, because of Quesada's recent statements that he expects sales to go through the roof for Spider-Girl. Obviously, this is an attempt to justify his steps on the flagship series, but there's just one little thing: in Spider-Girl, Peter is retired and no longer works as the wall-crawler.

Still others, like Sodaro, admittedly cling to the fairy-tale romance; the nerd-guy-gets-hot-girl fantasy that a lot of guys growing up could relate to. "Peter Parker was the 'everyman geek' when I was growing up," says the 52-year-old, who has written about the comic book industry for nearly 30 years. "He was the guy that everybody picked on. And for anyone who did get picked on, you'd fantasize what you'd do if you were a superhero. That's what Peter Parker was for us. And his marrying of MJ--a supermodel--epitomized that fantasy."

And there was also something for female readers to find in Spidey's world as well: a working woman who stood up and thought for herself, as MJ usually did for many years. That's why even the female audience could be alienated by the editorial edictions.

Sadly, at the end of the article, they begin to blow:

Whatever happens, Quesada is confident his fans will stay loyal. After all, it's not a good story without a little controversy.

Ugh, I do declare they have crash-landed with that last "little" line there. That's exactly the problem, that comics are relying almost all the time on controversy, to say nothing of publicity stunts. The only people for whom this could truly be good when it's controversial are the very press reporters who put out fluff like this article. To the comic's audience, there's no good in any of it. It's just a pathetic excuse for moving from point A to point B, as they've done for a couple years now, and there's no convincing drama or growth in any of it.

Update: on Comic Boards, one of the posters is already let down by the first Brand New Day story. Though it doesn't say here, I think Peter doesn't even appear in costume in this first issue at all. But this next item from The Savage Critics probably says it a bit better, that there's really nothing new here, and nothing very fresh either. And on The Comic Stew, the writer hints that sales weren't as rosy as Quesada must be hoping. I hope not, because it's high time that fans stopped letting him get away with this misuse of some of the best comics creations. Please, to all who really do care, don't let yourselves get cheated and used this time.

Update 2: here's one more review of the issue from LOTR King's Comics Reviews. Man, when I first read all about Dan Slott, yep, I would have thought that he was a perfect fit for writing plenty of these longtime superheroes. But now, with this, I wouldn't be surprised if soon, anyone who had a high opinion of him will start to change that after this fiasco. Until now, I'd been thinking of buying the trades collecting his work on She-Hulk and the 8 issues he wrote of The Thing's 2nd volume, but kept feeling reluctant. Now, I know why. If he's going to go along fully with everything that Quesada wants, and worse, has no grass-roots standings (and I think Newsarama said that this had been planned for at least a year now, with Slott being one of the leading architects), then he's no better than countless other writers and artists to come down the road in the past decade or so.

Tribute to Stan Lee in LA

The Collider website presents a photo gallery tribute being held in the Los Angeles area in Gallery 1988. (Via USA Today's Pop Candy blog.) It'll last until the first of February.

I wonder if they'll have some portraits dedicated to the Spider-Marriage at the exhibition? That would be a very good way to show solidarity for one of the best things that Stan did years ago.

USA Today writes a weak article on the dissolving of the Spider-Marriage

USA Today has written about Marvel editorial's destruction of Spider-Man and Mary Jane's marriage, and makes no better an impression than the New York Post did when they sensationalized the case. I don't think the following is very accurate or convincing:

"I remember editors and editors in chief lamenting that a married Spider-Man was not where we want to be," Quesada says. "A married Peter Parker makes for a less interesting soap opera than a single Peter Parker going about his nerdy kind of life."

Writers tried everything: The couple separated for a while. She miscarried. And in a much-criticized story line, Marvel tried to convince readers that Peter Parker had not gotten married, but his clone. That didn't stick, either. Then Quesada took over and insisted the marriage just couldn't continue.

Wow. They completely disregard the time of 1987-1994, when stories were being pretty well written at the time. It was only when the Clone Saga surfaced in late 1994 that Spider-Man went downhill, but NOT because of the marriage. It was because of the tiresome emphasis on Peter's clone, and because even the action-oriented storylines became weaker and weaker.

And I don't think their saying that MJ miscarried is particularly accurate either - that's what Quesada would've liked people to think at the time that they were married.

The following quote is almost impressive...but not quite:

"Nobody wants to read about a married Spider-Man," says Craig Shutt, a columnist for Comics Buyers Guide. "But in the short run, it's a terrible idea. It disrespects the readers by saying everything they read is wrong."

Thanks to what that CBG columnist said for starters, I'm not sure I can credit him for the latter - because he's just parroting the PC-line that nobody wants to read about a married Peter. Gee, did the marriage really prove a burden when, say, the story with Tombstone was being told in Spectacular Spider-Man during 1988-89? I don't think so. And I've never heard anyone complain about Peter and MJ's marriage in the Spider-Man comic strip produced by King Features Syndicate for a little over 3 decades now.

At DC Comics, Superman is married to Lois Lane, disrupting that title's long-standing tensions. DC declined to comment for this story.

None but the most cynical have ever disliked the Super-marriage, and the tension they speak of gets tired after awhile. I see nothing wrong with Clark and Lois' marriage; it's worked just fine for me.

Quesada is steadfast that for Spider-Man, the move is the right one: "Ultimately we have to do this to keep this character fresh for this generation and generations to come."

Really? How? With the way things are going, it looks to be deja vu in the worst ways possible. Not to mention that, with Harry Osborn suddenly back, they have embarrassed and destroyed some of the best storytelling ever done.

This whole article is almost entirely tailored to be just as Quesada would want it to be. Or, put another way, I'd say the paper is on his side. Thumbs down to them for this one.

Unsatisfying article about women in writing

Newsweek wrote an article about women getting into writing. But there's really nothing here I haven't heard before. They say that

now women are finally breaking into the boys' comics club.

Except that women actually did get into the club years ago. Louise Simonson is one woman who'd gotten into writing years before, and Ann Nocenti was an editor and a writer, having once written a couple issues of Spider-Woman and quite a bit of Daredevil. According to this file at Anime Research, there have been women working in manga early as the late 1950s. And Karen Berger was one of the most prominent editors at DC during the 1980s.

For Wonder Woman to have a female scribe (Gail Simone) is certainly new, but women in the industry as a whole is not. Stateside, there have been women involved in comics writing and editing as early as the 1970s, including those that I mentioned.

Traditionally, comics have been by, for and about men. DC Comics won't release reader demographics, but industry insiders agree the readership remains overwhelmingly male.

Funny thing about this line is that it signals their embarrassment in letting anybody know just how low their audience as a whole really is.

But it's the last part here where Newsweek's reporter - or Gail Simone - really blows:

But other writers embrace the constraints of traditional comics—or are working to enact change within the genre. Simone, "Wonder Woman's" new scribe, got her start when she published a blog titled Women in Refrigerators that argued that most female comics superheroes end up "depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator." The blog led to a writing job for the all-female comic "Birds of Prey" for DC—which became a short-lived, live-action TV series—and in turn won her the "Wonder Woman" job. Simone says she sees a change since she wrote her "refrigerator" rant 10 years ago. "At that time, the trend was towards grim stories where female characters were killed," she says. "We only had a handful of female characters to look up to. Today we're not seeing those stories so much."

First, WIR is not a blog, it's a site! But it's Simone who really lets down here by apologizing and obscuring even the most recent acts implemented by the very company she's working for, such as the death of Big Barda in Death of the New Gods, where she went down without even a fight, and which, for an "event" miniseries sure isn't burning up the charts. In fact, it's sold even less than Amazons Attack, which gets no mention here either. In fact, even Spider-Man's One More Day could also count on the list. And what about Identity Crisis, War Games, and Avengers: Disassembled? Those weren't standout examples of grim stories where women were either killed, or subjected to fates worse than death?

That's one of the problems here: rather than to write a longer article in which they quote an expert on the really meaty issues of sexism in scriptwriting, and give readers a clearer insight, they quote someone who's otherwise obscuring any examples still prevailing. Another problem is the sensationalistic title, "Holy Hot Flash, Batman!" Not a very good way to prove that they're going to discuss anything here seriously.

Update: after a bit of thought, and contemplating Tamora Pierce's argument in the comments, I've come to realize that Simone's line may have been taken out of context, if anything. I'm not letting Simone off the hook any more than any other writer whom I feel doesn't have a serious grass-roots standing, but it most certainly would be just like Newsweek to pull a trick like that.

Comic publishing industry may be on the verge of another collapse

On Ye Olde Comick Booke Blogge (via Graphic Fiction), one contributor looks at the recent state of the industry, and reminds everybody about how comic book publishing collapsed in the mid-1990s, and predicts, with good reason, that it may be about to happen again. And I concur, because chances are that One More Day may have, for now anyway, sealed the fate of Marvel for one: it could even trigger a domino effect on many of their other books, some of which are suffering, once again, from problems like variant covers, multiple series spinoffs, crossovers, etc. DC looks like it's getting there even faster, when you look at the mess that spun off not just from Countdown, but from 52 as well (I think Power Boy, who may be deceased now, first turned up in the pages of the 52 weekly mini; that's one clue to where they were going, or ending up). And despite some mainstream press articles that may say that sales are up, they're really not. Certainly not for the big two.

It could very well be that, in several years, comic books will end up being reduced to trade paperbacks/hardcovers/prestige formats entirely, as the publishers, and that includes even indies, will no longer be able to afford making pamphlets.

For now, I will say that, if the industry really wants to save itself, that's why it's going to have to start taking the proper steps to fix as many things as possible that went wrong. This can include, but should not be limited to, appointing editors who respect fans and avoid trash-talking and publicity stunts, and who don't go out of their way to produce multiple spinoff series and specials that could practically cost more money to publish than they end up making in sales. My idea for whom to appoint as EIC of Marvel might be Peter David, or even Tom DeFalco, who did once occupy a senoir editor's seat. At DC, it could be Chuck Dixon. If anything or anyone, it has to be people who aren't prone to do the same contemptuous things that Quesada and DiDio have been doing, and who don't throw away the moral backbone needed to make superhero comics inspiring and effective.

The major publishers have a chance to redeem themselves. If they really want to save their businesses, they'd better get to work, lest it be too late.

Trackposted to: bRight and Early, Celebrity Smack, Mark My Words, MoreWhat.Com, Pirates' Cove.

Almost missed this: Hulk's book taken over by Hercules?!?

I knew the Hulk was going to turn red as a tomato, but I didn't know that Hercules was going to replace him in the book, as this press release seems to indicate here. And this interview with Jeph Loeb, who's going to be taking over as the writer, also tells that Herc is going to be the star. That's another problem with Marvel now, that they're even replacing the main stars with second and third-tier characters who may not be able to carry their own series, at the star's expense.

Of course, Loeb may turn out to be the main problem with this book here, as a lot of his work is pretty overrated. I found out what his recent work on the Ultimates is like, and I think he's another writer I'll just have to pass on.

More like a slap in the face

Aside from the NY Post's predictable sensationalizing of this news, Joe Quesada otherwise admits his disrespect for Spidey fans:

January 7, 2008 -- Spider-Man, you dog!

The first issue of the Amazing Spider-Man to feature a single Spidey in 20 years hits comic book stores this week, and the first page shows the webbed wonder's alter ego Peter Parker locking lips with a woman who isn't wife Mary Jane Watson.

"The first page is a real shocker and it's done on purpose. It's a bit of a slap of reality to longtime readers," said Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada.

Those readers are still reeling from the company's controversial move in the most recent issue, where the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler and his missus had their marriage wiped out.

The supernatural split has enraged many spider-fans who'd invested years in following the relationship and were offended by the split. Some have been venting their anger online, organizing campaigns to send Marvel torn-up Spider-Man comics and threatening boycotts.

I hope the boycotts are implemented. I'm not taken in by this dreck. Only Mary Jane Watson is the one I want to see Peter make love to. I'm actually rather put off that the NY Post is talking about it; they really just love this sensationalized slop, don't they? Good that I don't have to pay any cash to read them.

And reality? My foot.

Marvel still has more badness on the way

As if their recent efforts in wrecking Spider-Man's marriage weren't enough, now Marvel is going to team up with the United Nations to produce a comic book where the idea is to try and rid the world of "conflict and disease". And the Financial Times says here that:

Although the UN did not come up with the initiative, the measure could help revive the body’s troubled image in the US, where relations have been strained, in particular during US President George W. Bush’s administration.

But of course, they don't tell why their image has been so damaged. It's because of, for example, their involvement in the Oil-for-Food scandal, which even former director Kofi Annan profited from. And there's also the notorious case of UN officials in Congo who committed sex crimes. With horrible details like those to their record, I can't say that even this will help pep up their image much.

Be on the lookout for if this propaganda turns up at your child's school. They deserve much better than to read a book where Spider-Man and other Marvel heroes are turned into literal political mouthpieces for an organization as bad as the UN happens to be.

Maybe one day the building can be turned into a center for promoting true democratic values instead.

Update: oh no. According to this article in the Guardian, even Iron Man is going to be forced to propagandize for the UN. Well, it figures that if Web-Head could be victimized, even Shell-Head could be too.

More on this from Hot Air, Soccerdad, Ed Driscoll and Blue Crab Boulevard.

Cleveland's Comics convention is on Sunday

The Morning Journal reports that the Cleveland Comic Book and Sci-Fi Convention will be taking place in Cuyahoga County tomorrow on Sunday.

Article about Florida-based comics collector and store owner

An article from the Panama City News Herald in upper Florida about a comics collector who runs a store there called Arena Comics and Gaming.

Sixteenth Comic Book Carnival

Welcome to the January 4, 2008 edition of the comic book carnival, published one day early. And now, here's the latest we recieve for the month.

Anthony Fernandez presents Happy Socks posted at Why This Comic, saying, "New web comic using photographs of small objects."

Kneon presents Peddling comics: What are my friends up to? posted at kneon transitt shouldn't be allowed to blog.

Kneon presents Do you have a fear of clowns? If not, Korpso the Evil Clown just might do the trick! posted at kneon transitt shouldn't be allowed to blog.

Steve Lafler presents Nina Funnies #5 posted at Cute as a Button but Tiger Tough, saying, "Nina the tough toddler takes a nap and becomes -- NINJA NINA!"

Peter Jones presents New Superhero Comic Series Axiom-Man posted at Great New Books that Are a Must Read.

Steve Lafler presents Nina Funnies #7 posted at Cute as a Button but Tiger Tough, saying, "Toddler Nina continues her adventures as Ninja Nina, in hot pursuit of renegade hero Super Six!"

blue skelton presents Production Blog: Films in Production: Marvel Enterprises posted at Blue Skelton Publications, saying, "Here is a list of films that are currently in production for Marvel Enterprises and some information on some of the films if we could find it. I have been a huge fan of Marvel ever since I was a kid."

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Comic book museum in Holon area

An article from The Forward tells that the city of Holon here in Israel now has a comic book museum dedicated to the history of the art form. Great! When I can, I'm going to try and take a trip there to see what it's like.

It just isn't clear if there's growth

Scripps-Howard News Service's Captain Comics once again waters down mainstream press coverage with the following fluff, that begins with this part:

Depending on how December's sales went (and how you measure it), 2007 may be the seventh consecutive year that the American comic-book industry enjoyed growth. If so, "another record year" is my pick for the biggest comics story of 2007.

According to "Comics Buyer's Guide's" website (cbgxtra.com), sales at Diamond Comics Distributors Inc. -- the nation's largest, and just about only, direct-market comics distributor -- are estimated at $394.02 million through November, closing in on last year's $395.55 million. Overall, Diamond's sales have climbed every year since 2000, when they were in the $255-275 million range.

I caution that these numbers aren't comprehensive. Still, Diamond is the 800-pound gorilla, so what it sells is a pretty good indicator of how things are going.

Gee, I dunno, is it? I've looked at only so many sales charts provided by ICV2 in Minnesota, and pamphlet-wise, hardly anything sells big. In paperback collections, I wouldn't be surprised if they sell more, but then why doesn't Capt. Comics make that clearer?

The column gets pretty dreadful with the following though:

2. Reading Is Fundamental: I haven't mentioned the year's content, have I? Well, that's next, because 2007 was a pretty big year for the Very Big Story.

Marvel's "Civil War" wrapped up in '07, a mammoth storyline where all of the publisher's superheroes clashed in a squabble over security vs. civil rights. This split has created a new, paranoid atmosphere for Spider-Man, X-Men, the Avengers, etc., which will contribute to 2008's big story, in which shape shifting aliens infiltrate and try to take over the earth. Meanwhile, the Jade Giant smashed just about everybody in a huge crossover called "World War Hulk," which will also have repercussions far into '08.

And then there's Captain America, dead at 66. For now.

Let's hope it's only for now, but, how dare the writer make it sound so...sensational. Ugh! Pure treacle.

I think one of the fatal flaws of Civil War was that it confused superheroes, or law enforcers, with crooks; that's where it really lacked logic. Let's say that superheroes are similar in some ways to FBI officials. Isn't it necessary then that they have a secret ID? Why should they have to just give it up if it enabled the real criminals to track and target them? Marvel was really going out of their way to confuse privacy and security with civil rights.

And while the sugary article may not mention, I think that Civil War will certainly be looked upon someday in disgrace for the fact that it was just the starting point of Spidey's needless unmasking that led to the current fiasco of obliterating his marriage to Mary Jane Watson. Yep, if there's anything else that's led to the current problems, it's Civil War, and just like Joe Quesada was responsible for the current mess that is One More Day, he also had his part in CW as well.

At DC, the amazing "52" -- a year-long weekly comic book -- gave way to the far less amazing "Countdown" -- another year-long weekly comic book -- which isn't making any headlines. But Justice Leaguers Green Arrow and Black Canary did, by getting hitched.

Umm, earth to Capt. Comics! Countdown is making headlines - you just provided them! Seriously though, if it isn't, it's just as well. It's just too bad if 52 had to get any, because really, when you look at it closer, one of the few purposes there seemed to be killing off Elongated Man in the end, but not before reducing him to a humorless shadow of himself. That's not how I want to see Ralph Dibny, and I'm at a loss to understand why others would. And let's not forget the offing of Vic Sage, the Question, either. What dreck.

And the article forgets to mention that for now, at least, Black Canary and Green Arrow didn't get married; it was all just part of a bait-and-switch tactic to draw people into reading a Justice League storyline, and a new series co-starring the 2 of them, which may or may not have gotten its start by killing off Connor Hawke. Not exactly my idea of how to make headlines.

And now, more focus on DC's sales again

From Marvel sales we now move to DC sales, with the latest analysis from The Beat now up, and while there may have been 3-4 things that went up in numbers, plenty of other things are going down again. This includes, for example, the Infinity Inc. series that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original team bombing in sales, and even Countdown isn't doing too well either, it's being above 70,000 copies sold notwithstanding. And if Death of the New Gods was supposed to a "spectacular" event, it sure hasn't burned up the charts to that effect. It may have sold even less than Amazons Attack. The writer here says:

Many of DC Comics’ ongoing problems throughout 2007 persisted in November. With Justice League of America, Justice Society of America and Green Lantern, the publisher’s three best-selling titles on the October chart all failed to come out. The year-long, weekly Countdown to Final Crisis, dragging along a deluge of spin-off titles and producing another major commercial dud with the debut of the Salvation Run limited series, continues to underwhelm as the “spine” of the DC Universe line. And, once again, the most favorable thing you can say about the majority of periodicals released under the publisher’s Vertigo and WildStorm imprints is that they exist.

Considering the damage done to the Rogues Gallery from the Flash, after they kicked the hell out of Bart Allen and may have killed him, I can't say I'm surprised at the failure of Salvation Run to salvage itself.

Speaking of which, this brings to mind Teen Titans, which has also been declining in sales. The writer says:

The numbers are bottoming out again, significantly below the 60k mark. The departure of writer Geoff Johns back in May has visibly hurt Teen Titans sales.

Two things to note: first, Dan DiDio, if memory serves, appointed himself as the series' very own main editor, in a stunt-like move that may have alienated readers put off by his disrespect for fans. Second, let's note that the latest series, launched in 2003, fell apart very quickly, most definitely when Identity Crisis came around the corner. Those who find Johns an overrated writer have a point, certainly regarding his questionable use of violence in his scriptwriting.

And another reason why their sales are tanking? Well, "event fatigue" as some call it, is another leading problem that's led to this. When these ludicrous stunts start to take the place of real storytelling, people will eventually tire of it all. Perhaps by turning things around a bit and focusing on good writing instead of crossovers and politically-correct replacements for older heroes like Firestorm, Atom and Blue Beetle, they could improve. They'd better hurry though, because, as evidenced by slowly declining sales, time may be running out.

Update: the entry at The Beat also gives mention to DC's use of variant covers as a way of trying to get more people to buy. But variant covers are no substitute for good writing either, and that's another thing that DC and Marvel both need to stop doing, since it actually costs more money for them than need be.