Just which redhead is returning in X-Men?

The question according to this press release featured on Broken Frontier is if Madelyne Pryor is or has returned.

Why not make it Jean Grey? I think it would be quite welcome and do a lot of good, most certainly if they stop implying that she's the Phoenix. After all the times the Phoenix saga was regurgitated, at her expense, I'd think that to exonerate her from being the Phoenix once and for all would be quite welcome.

Bat-manga

The Columbus Dispatch writes about rare Batman-based manga books published in Japan in the 1960s that are now arriving in the US.

Here's another article from NY Metro.

Torture in Ms. Marvel #32

Previously, we had a strange case of torture in Nightwing. Now, there's an even more disturbing case of it in Ms. Marvel's new series. This blog's got a picture from this disgustingly graphic tale, an attempt to update Carol Danvers's origins for the modern age.

Honestly, I think they blew it. If the villain featured really smashed her arm with a sledgehammer, and bashed her up as badly as it sounds, she'd surely be in a wheelchair today. This really stretches credibility, because there's no signs in any of the past appearances she made that I've read that suggest or imply that she ever got gored, nor that she ever had prosthetic replacements for her damaged limbs.

In the origins established for Carol years before, she led a career as a spy for US intel, penetrating Soviet territory alongside Wolverine and the Thing. But while at one point, she did get captured by the KGB and was tortured, I have a hard time believing whatever she went through was as bad as the gore in this issue of Carol's new series.

I've got a suspicion, however, that this issue might feature anti-war sentiments, and if Carol, in this update, is really depicted as a fighter pilot assigned to Afghanistan, then that does stretch some credibility: does the US military actually assign its female members to frontline combat, no matter how well trained they are in physical battle? Making her a spy behind enemy lines was believable, but making her a frontline fighter before she became a superheroine sounds contrived.

And the violence here was uncalled for.

Bowling Green University's exhibition

An article in the Bowling Green Sentinel Tribune about the city university's exhibition on how to put together comics and graphic novels, opening today.

Final Crisis artist won't be drawing its final issue

JG Jones, the artist for Final Crisis, won't be drawing its closing issue (via The Beat). Instead, it'll be Doug Mahnke. They say here:

Via an email reply, Jones told CBR News that it was his preference not to comment “on any of this.”

Jones did however offer, “Any problems completing the series are my own. I love Doug Mahnke’s art, and he would have probably been a better choice to draw this series in the first place.”

I wonder if this is a signal that problems with Final Crisis are worse than they'd like us to think? Considering that this could be just as pointless as many other recent crossovers, DC may have asked for this.

Marvel is going the PC-diversity route, with Black Panther

Uh oh, it looks like Marvel may now be getting around to doing what DC's been doing in the past few years: pandering to the absurdity of diversity. According to the Comic Riffs blog I discovered the Wash. Post has (via The Beat), T'Challa is going to be replaced by a woman under the costume:

Marvel Comics tells us that come 2009, the Black Panther will have a new look. As an "exclusive" to Comic Riffs, they say, Marvel honcho Joe Quesada and Black Panther writer Reginald Hudlin trumpet that there's a bigger surprise yet:

Black Panther will now be a woman warrior.

Wow. Tell me what else is new. No doubt, they got the idea in part from how Vic Sage, the Question, was replaced by a lesbian protagonist.

Marvel will relaunch the "BP" title in February, but we've got the first look at the new Black Panther right here.

So who's the woman who will wear the costume? Neither Hudlin nor Quesada would divulge the identity, but judging by their comments, the future of T'Challa -- the current Black Panther -- is quite bleak.

I was afraid of that.

Hudlin told 'Riffs contributor David Betancourt:

"Over the course of 40 issues [over three years], we ... really defined the character in a way that hadn't been done before. ... Having done that, you go: "How do we up the stakes?" Marvel is great about doing really shocking changes to their character -- they don't believe in just keeping everything as status quo."

And what was Quesada's reaction to the concept? "It was a very cool idea. Especially thinking about the legacy of the character," he says. "The fact that this is sort of a part of the Wakandan religion, and their royal family. It was a neat approach to the Black Panther, and I think it will add a wonderful twist to everything."

The only "twist" it'll likely add is having a woman assume a man's role, and not the way Shiera Saunders did when, as Hawkgirl, she became possibly the first female crimefighter to create a role originated by a male protagonist, Hawkman. After all, Shiera didn't replace Carter Hall, rather, she assumed her own role based on his in a plausible way, without trying to replace the male hero in his own role for the sake of it. If they want to introduce a Panther-woman next to T'Challa's Panther-man, starring a lady in her own seperate role, that would be the way to go. But replacing T'Challa wholesale is just wrong.

Hudlin may say that they "defined" T'Challa in ways that hadn't been done before (which I doubt), but if so, how and why does that suddenly justify tossing the prince of Wakanda out of the picture?

So what will happen to the current Black Panther? Hudlin will only hint:

"There will be another after him," he says. "In the same way that he became the Black Panther because his father was assassinated and died before his time, the same could happen to T'Challa."

Despite what they suggest, they may not kill off T'Challa, and just put in a back-door element for his return, because they realize that there's no telling if this will be accepted, but even so, that doesn't explain why, if they really did define Wakanda's superhero in a great way, they now suddenly think he should be knocked off.

Also, recalling that T'Challa and Ororo Munroe (Storm) married each other a few years ago, this begs the question: what was the whole point of marrying them if they didn't intend for that to stick either? Why pry Storm out of the X-Men for something that won't even last, and will be undone within a relatively short amount of time?

And on the subject of pandering to diversity/multiculturalism, I think the following comment posted on the Dixonverse forum in response to the subject of turning the Question into a lesbian protagonist could sum things up well enough:

See, this kind of thing is what really bothers me. DC is perfectly willing to jeopardise good storytelling and good characters merely to pander to minorities. Firstly they made Montoya a lesbian, which bothers me and should bother them, as they are making sexual sterotypes, just because a person is Latin, they make that person automatically homosexual. Next they make Montoya the new Question just to pander to women when there are plenty of other superheroines being published that such a move was really not necessary.

They really need to bring at least the Question and Blue Beetle back to life, this whole Infinite Crisis thing is causing more trouble than it was worth.

The same could be said about any of Marvel's own crossovers in the past 3-4 years. As for pandering, that seems to be what even Marvel's up to now, at the expense of their best heroes and good storytelling.

MSMer writes sob-story

Scripps-Howard News Service runs a column where the writer seems to have a problem with how Supergirl #34 depicts the press negatively. First:

DC Comics has been touting its new direction and creative team for the Maid of Steel, beginning with "Supergirl" No. 34 ($2.99), out this month. And I have to say my first reaction was anger.

Not because of the creative team (Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle). It's too early to judge newcomer Gates, and Igle's familiar pencils (he's been around since about 2000) is more than welcome.

Nor is my anger because of the touted new direction. Lord knows "Supergirl" could use some kind of direction! Ever since DC last re-booted the character a few years back, the Last Daughter of Krypton has meandered all over the map, from rebellious teen to dutiful Super-helper to a stint in the 31st Century. This issue finally gives her a secret identity (I won't spoil it for you, but it's a clever idea), and anchors the character more closely to the other Super-books.

No, what cheesed me off was the opening sequence, where the venerable and prestigious "Daily Planet" runs a full-page, front-page opinion piece by the paper's gossip writer, complete with a six-column file photo. Leaving aside the file photo (no newspaper worth its salt settles for anything but fresh art on A-1), respectable newspapers DO NOT run opinion pieces on the front. They run news in the news section, and opinions in the opinion section. But, no, the gossip writer gets the entire front-page for a hatchet job on Supergirl, with veteran newshawks Clark Kent and Perry White meekly going along for the ride.

Actually, some newspapers can put opinion columns on the front page these days. Some French papers like Le Figaro and Le Monde often did that years ago, and may still do it today. The Jerusalem Post sometimes puts op-eds on the front page too, that begin there, and continue on later pages of the newspaper inside. Really nothing new there, and it's not exactly something I'd be bothered about.

If that sounds like nit-picking, call it the last scratch at a festering scab. I've been in newspapers for a quarter of a century, and most of the time the industry has been branded "biased" and "elitist" and worse. The press gets terrible press, and is one of the least trusted institutions in America (probably found between used-car salesmen and Congress).

And mostly it's unfair. Look, folks, our entire foundation is objectivity. We do not write slanted stories, or we get fired. We do not write hit pieces, and put them on A-1. We're just ordinary men and women who struggle hard to do a good job, for which we generally get a rap in the mouth.

No kidding. The same reporter who wrote this fawned over Identity Crisis 4 years ago in a sensationalistic tone, spluttering away and capping it off with a real dud line like, "love it or loathe it, "Identity Crisis" was truly an event," wouldn't even say a word about how the story's viewpoint was exclusively male, how Deathstroke punched Zatanna in the tummy, causing her to belch, or how Jean Loring invited her ex-hubby to hit her, which invokes a noxious stereotype, and now he's telling us what to think, and begging for mercy? Sorry, me no buy. And objectivity? My foot.

And what's this about an "entire foundation"? Sorry, but only a small percentage of it has any objectivity to offer. The rest, like CNN, New York Times, LA Times, and even the now defunct Knight-Ridder syndicate, are maddeningly dishonest.

And it's impressions in other media, like this opening scene in "Supergirl," that cements the negative impressions people have. I wish once, just once, an entertainment writer would write about us ink-stained wretches with a clue about how our industry really works.

In that case, why do people like that even want to read Spider-Man, where J. Jonah Jameson smears Spidey at almost every opportunity, even if it doesn't work in the end, or the New Teen Titans stories featuring Bethany Snow, who did whatever she could to undermine the team's battle against Brother Blood? Such media-based adversaries were and still are meant to reflect the mindset of the mainstream press, which is more dedicated to the cause of bad than that of good. It's often mystified me how news reporters sensitive to accusations of media bias could possibly remain reliable customers for Spidey or any other comic book that puts the press in a bad light.

I guess Scripps-Howard, like various other news syndicates, must be suffering badly, and they're jealous of the internet's success to boot. Well gee, if they were to really, and I mean REALLY be objective and informative, and not just offer face-value support for abhorrent books like Identity Crisis that don't even have any in depth descriptions of the going-ons that could help people determine whether it sounds good or not, then maybe their whining would be justified. Instead, it's just more silly, superficial jokes.

And it sounds more to me as though they don't wish to appreciate the Girl of Steel any more than the Daily Planet's Cat Grant does.

Update: Stars and Stripes, which published the column, also receieved a letter in response that counters it perfectly:

In "Can DC Comics do right by Supergirl?" (Captain Comics, Oct. 24) Andrew A. Smith complains that the latest issue of "Supergirl" [denigrated] journalism by depicting an unflattering "gossip" column that vilifies Supergirl on the front page of the Daily Planet newspaper.

Smith moans how this view is unfair and [although] the press is one of the "least trusted institutions in America," they, in fact, "do not write slanted stories" and "our entire foundation is objectivity."

Only fools or children trust the media. Mainstream American media have proven to be partisan, hypocritical, elitist, leftist and anti-American. The mainstream press defined yellow journalism by throwing integrity and objectivity to the wind and pursuing its pro-Obama agenda. They may still have a fig leaf of independence and objectivity, but most of them are openly campaigning for Barack Obama.

Gov. Sarah Palin was ignored in the vetting process during the run-up to McCain’s picking his running mate. [When] her nomination was announced, and the media realized she had confounded their predictions and was wildly popular among middle-class voters, they mobilized to eviscerate her reputation through character assassination and outrageous innuendo, all thinly disguised as "objective reporting." These attacks culminated in a New York Times front-page story trumpeting that she may have received $150,000 worth of clothes from the Republican National Committee for campaign purposes, which, even if true, wouldn’t be illegal. So, to the waif who says "We do not write hit pieces and put them on A-1," what was an unfounded allegation about Palin’s clothes doing on the front page?

All a free press has to recommend it is credibility, objectivity and integrity. Once the industry has forfeited that, it has lost the trust of its readership and the citizens it is supposed to speak for. Perhaps this explains why the Times’ credit rating was downgraded to "junk" status.

Sgt. Peter Cook
Forward Operating Base Falcon, Iraq

Sergeant, I salute you. You have explained perfectly, even better than I could, what's wrong with the MSM today.

What's gone wrong with Green Lantern

I found a discussion on Comic Boards that may explain why the return of Hal Jordan has been spoiled in more ways than one:

What's worse was that a series of retcons followed that I found unnecessary. For example the GL Corps was no longer said to have been founded as an agency for policing wrongdoing in the universe. The Central Power Battery was now said to be merely a prison to hold Parallax and the GLs' purpose is to send willpower into it to keep him there, instead of drawing power from it to police the universe, which now seemed like an afterthought.

Hmm. If that's so, I don't see what the whole point is. That almost sounds like an insult to the GL Corp's whole purpose. Or, an insult to the superhero genre!

The 24 hour recharge rule was replaced with a percentage countdown as GLs draw power from their batteries, and the yellow weakness is no longer absolute but now something that can be overcome just by trying hard. I don't like these changes because what I liked about GLs in the old days were that they didn't have to be tough so much as smart. The rings had inherent weaknesses which the GL had to overcome with intelligence. Now the rings' weaknesses can be overcome just by toughing your way through it. It goes towards my disappointment in the big Sodam Yat/Superboy-Prime battle toward the end of the Sinestro Corps War. Here's two guys with all the GL/Sinestro power set, who also have full Daxamite/Kryptonian powers, and also have Ion/Anti-Monitor armor. Imagine all the possibilities! What happens is pretty much just two guys punching each other for an issue. That seems to be mostly what the GLs do these days. They don't make many constructs or apply much intelligence to their ring function, they just punch things and shoot things.

Reducing the weakness to yellow in the rings, or discarding it altogether, is something I don't like either. But if they don't make many energy constructs (which could include boxing gloves, swashbuckling swords and mallets), that too is a way to take the fun out of the whole concept. Those energy constructs are what made GL such a wonderful comic book years before, and now they're downplaying one of the leading elements that made it work so well?

Also retconned out was Sinestro's death back in the '80s. Now I'm glad Sinestro has returned to the living, I just don't know why they couldn't have resurrected him like they did Hal. Instead they told us he was never dead, just imprisoned in the Central Power Battery which invalidates the whole story where the GL Corps executed him, and the whole reason the CPB imploded as a result, and also invalidates all the stories that followed with Sinestro's ghost and his corpse in the GL Crypt where Guy Gardner acquired the yellow ring in the '90s. It seems like one little thread got pulled but it unravels the whole tapestry. Johns could have maintained that Sinestro had been dead all this time, and just said that since Sinestro had corrupted Hal through the CPB he used Hal's Spectre powers to bring himself back to life. Just because Johns references old stories doesn't mean he's respecting continuity if everything he references originally happened differently than the way he says it did.

I think I'm going to have to agree. Johns' respect for continuity is questionable at best, and it's gotten worse over the years he's worked for DC.

Clearly then, I haven't missed much in all the time Hal's come back, as Johns did not do a good job.

JMS may not be able to salvage new Brave and Bold

In one of the recent sales chart analyses on The Beat, the writer seemed to say that he's not sure J. Michael Straczynski will have what it takes to gain traction writing the Brave and the Bold at DC:

Let’s be blunt, now: I’m increasingly skeptical whether Straczynski will ever get here. Considering the rate at which book’s numbers have been declining, I’d at least expect DC to relaunch it with a new #1, and, ideally, to throw in a new title as well while they’re at it.

This might make some sense. By all means, this overrated Hollywood writer should be a has-been in the comics biz by now, and his failure to seriously protest the wrecking of Spider-Man in the past few years, namely, by quitting his job with Marvel, knocks down his credibility. Plus, there was at least one other writer, Bruce Jones, who, when he went to work for DC after working for Marvel, did not succeed in duplicating whatever success he had at Marvel for DC.

It could possibly be that JMS will not be able to deliver for DC what they're hoping for. Also, I get the feeling that few are excited about seeing a handful of superheroes once published by Archie turn up in the DCU now.

It depends on what it is and how it's done

An author tells the Daily Gleaner of eastern Canada that she thinks reading comics/graphic novels can help young children.

Yes, they can, but it depends on which titles they might be, or the suitability of the content, and if there's even anything being currently published that's suitable for children to begin with. And this article, oddly enough, doesn't seem to give any real examples.

Fortune exaggerates Marvel's publishing sales

Fortune magazine writes a sugar-article about Marvel's successes in films, but exaggerates when it comes to their "old-fashioned publishing."

Marvel offers the only real glimpse at the economics of big-time comics publishing, because it and its main rival DC Comics together roughly split close to 80% of the market in new comic book sales. However, DC is a division of Warner Brothers (which, like Fortune and CNN, is owned by Time Warner), and you can find little mention of its financial performance within the media giant's releases, although its brands are going strong thanks in part to films like "The Dark Knight" and its upcoming "Watchmen." (A quick primer: Marvel publishes Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk and Iron Man, while DC is the home of Superman and Batman).

Maisel acknowledged that much of the buzz on his company has been on its emergence as a film studio and the growth of its largest business: licensing its characters for toys, video games and theme parks. But he himself marveled (pun intended) at the enduring health of the publishing business, given that the distribution of comic books has been "artificially constrained" by the need for fans to largely find their way to comics stores. The upside of that scarcity, he added, is that "it sort of created a cult around comics: People felt like they were a part of a social group. When I was a kid, being a geek was being a geek. Now being a geek is cool."

Not really. Not when you realize that your favorite hobby could die out one day with very few new people coming in to read comics as well. And health of the publishing endures? When it's barely - and now even rarely - more than 100,000 copies sold of any comic, in contrast to the millions sold years before for the same books, it's not what can be called healthy.

In the quarter ended June 30, publishing accounted for $32 million of Marvel's $157 million in revenues, and $11.7 million of its $85.2 million in operating profit. (The bulk of the rest came from licensing - which generates even higher margins of more than 80% - since the spoils from "Iron Man" won't show up until the next couple of quarterly results.) Although its publishing revenue and profits declined in the first half of the year, the company has given guidance that it expects revenue growth in publishing between 3% and 7% for the year, and margins between 37% and 40%.

Maisel declined to specify to what extent his hit movies drive comic book sales, but it seems a stretch to suggest that cinematic success alone can take the credit. Neither is there much of a digital play at this point. Still, like DC, Marvel has been talking up the digital potential of its characters -- particularly, in Marvel's case, as far as putting its catalog - 70 years of stories featuring some 5,000 characters - online for fans to read.

No clear sales figures? Then the talk of big publishing business is unconvincing, and $32 million in publishing does not seem like much compared to other businesses. They expect more growth in revenue? I think they're just trying to keep a straight face, when in reality, it's just not working well.

Trinity is using a cover gimmick

I looked at the covers for issues 16, 17, and 18 of Trinity (here, here and here), and then, I realized something I'd been wondering about for a while now: this weekly series is using a kind of cover gimmick where the 3 can all be joined together to form one big poster. This gimmick may have first turned up as early as 1985, and was also around during the early 90s when the second X-Men series was launched.

I can guess why DC is using it now: to try and boost sales with collectors, to be sure, which shows how they're still relying on none other than short-term strategies for sales. Judging from recent sales, which are below 50,000, it's not helping much, and covers alone aren't the reason these things should be bought.

Asian filmmakers try to come up with their own answer to US superheroes

Japan Today writes about how, following America's success with superhero-based movies, Japanese, Filipino and Korean filmmakers are trying to compete with their own takes on the genre.

Nightwing continues on a train wreck path

Comics Should be Good looks at issue 149 of the former Teen Wonder's title, and from the description of the "torture porn" taking place in this chapter of Dick Grayson's solo book, it's clear that this book is headed for disaster. Even if this is the result of Scarecrow's fear serums, I think it's getting more than a bit out of hand. The following paragraph may sum it up best:

Sweet fancy Moses, this is yucky. I realize that pretty much all of it doesn’t actually take place, but that doesn’t make it any less yucky. And Carol does die “in reality,” so there’s that (and I think we can safely put this in the Women in Refrigerators section as our Dread Lord and Master defines it, as her death does serve a purpose in the context of the larger story, but immediately, it’s simply to get an emotional reaction out of Dick, which is that he’s a lousy hero). Beyond the utter awfulness of the vile violence, however, is the underlying message of DC these days: Heroes can’t do anything to help anyone. Until recently, this was a relatively minor subset of superhero comics. Now, it’s basically the way things are, mostly at DC, but it’s also creeping into Marvel as well. Dick fails in pretty much every way in this comic. He doesn’t overcome Scarecrow’s fear serum, he tries and almost succeeds in “killing” “Scarecrow” (and would have if Ivy hadn’t stopped him), he leaves unconscious thugs to drown, and he can’t stop Harvey from killing Carol. It’s not the end of the story, so I’m sure in Nightwing #150 he’ll do something to prove he’s a hero, but the fact is that in this issue, he’s an utter failure. Not only is he an utter failure, there’s nothing to even hint at any redemption. There’s absolutely no reason for this issue to exist except as “torture porn,” meaning that it allows the creators to indulge in horrific violence for violence’s sake, and they can’t even use the excuse that it’s all in Dick’s head, because the character he’s supposed to saved gets gut-shot and bleeds to death.

Regarding Marvel, the negative stand on heroism has already turned up in their pages nearly 5 years ago, if Avengers: Disassembled is any indication. But back to this very troubling matter at DC: violence, even as a hallucination, seems to be getting way out of hand, and while NW's book was no stranger to bloodletting in past years, this somehow seems awfully inappropriate.

Nightwing has lost ground for almost 6 years now, ever since Devin Grayson took over the book and got rid of a handful of recurring villains Chuck Dixon introduced specially for the series (he may have complained a few years ago that DC was killing off quite a few characters he'd intro'd for the Batbooks), with the possible exception of Blockbuster, the only adversary they thought was worth keeping. And then, there was that notorious incident where Grayson may have put in a "fanfic rape" in issue #93, another embarrassing moment. Eventually, she was taken off the book, but did they try to fix it? Nope. For as seen in Infinite Crisis, Bludhaven was destroyed completely, and that may have been one more thing that's doomed NW's series, because they trashed the very city created for him to work in years ago. If they want to move him to a different locale (New York City, where he used to work with the Titans), that's fine, but that doesn't justify destroying a whole city in order to do so, and certainly not killing thousands of civilians in Chemo's assault.

It clearly hasn't recovered much in the past 2 years, and if this is how they're going to script it, then I assume DC wants it to be cancelled. Could it have something to do with the possibility that, in the wake of "Batman RIP," they want Dick to take up Bruce Wayne's cowl and cape? Honestly, I think DC is blowing it then, because Dick Grayson IMO works a lot better as Nightwing. But even if not, there's no need to bring the series to an end so tastelessly.

Charleston paper interviews Bob MacLeod

The Charleston Daily Mail has an interview with Bob MacLeod, the artist who's famous for drawing the New Mutants in the mid-1980s.

Ted Rall's latest propaganda

A new leftist "graphic novel" called Steal Back Your Vote has just turned up (via Newsarama blog), and is published by Greg Palast, Robert Kennedy, Lukas Ketner, Lloyd Dangle and Ted Rall. I certainly know who Rall is: a left-wing anti-war cartoonist. On the SBYV website's side menu, they say that this is:

a project of the Palast Investigative Fund (a 501c3 non-partisan non-profit educational foundation), Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. With the generous support of voting rights and other organizations and concerned individuals, we are aggressively investigating the hanky-panky Republicans have already road-tested in the primaries, and are prepared to use this November to steal YOUR vote. The good news is, you CAN steal back your vote. Kennedy and Palast are publishing a major expose in a mass-circulation national magazine. The Palast Investigative Team is heading to the Democratic convention to finish a documentary film. And three major cartoonists have teamed up to illustrate the “Steal Back Your Vote” graphic guide that you can download, print and distribute now.

I guess they don't care about ACORN and how they've been trying to steal votes for the left, do they?

Comic Book Carnival Twenty-Five

Welcome to the October 9, 2008 edition of the comic book carnival. Here are this month's entries.

ivanisko presents A Report from Brussels posted at Bookstore Guide, saying, "Here's our report from our recent trip to Brussels, the European capital of comic book culture, where we have searched for local bookstores selling books in English. Among these we also visited a great comic bookstore called Brusel, which is a delight for any fan of this genre."

Hube presents Hube's comicbook quirk of the week posted at The Colossus of Rhodey.

JLA Sattelite presents JLA Mail Room: 1960 - 1987 posted at justice league of america.

About Manga presents NY Anime Festival '08: Saturday's Manga Happenings posted at About.com Manga.

Rebecca Kofron presents Coloring Book : Rebecca Kofron posted at Rebecca Kofron.

Steve Lafler presents El Vocho #15 posted at El Vocho, saying, "Rosa surprised Eddie by installing an amazing new engine in his Vocho--one that runs on water!"

VideoJug presents Comic Books - advice videos on Buying And Selling Comic Books, Collecting Comic Books, Comic Book References posted at VideoJug: LIfe Explained. On Film.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
the comic book carnival
using our
carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our
blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

the comic book carnival, blog carnival.

Superhero science

An article in the Mankato Free Press about a University of Minnesota professor who uses his knowledge of comics to teach about superhuman physics.

Cleveland Plain Dealer belittles the Scarlet Witch

I vaguely remember that they did it almost 3 years ago. Now, they've done it again in the following:

A B-level character called the Scarlet Witch turned out to have incredible power and reshifted all of reality. When things returned to "normal," millions of mutants were left powerless, and only 198 powered mutants remain.

"B-level"? The way that's written, it's like they're implying that she was some obscure nobody on the sidelines, completely ignoring that she was one of the most prominent members of the Avengers for many years. Some way to show appreciation for some of the best adventures Wanda Maximoff was part of in years gone by.

There are some cast members of the Avengers, X-Men and New Warriors who probably haven't stood out well in solo appearances, but in the team books, they have definitely shone, and Scarlet Witch had some very good moments in past Avengers history, including her past marriage to the Vision. And the Plain Dealer has the gall to obscure all that by making it sound like she were as minor as the Power Pack are today? Not to mention that Bendis' storyline depicting Wanda as a nutcase was one of the stupidest, most vicious insults since the time John Byrne turned her into a cartoon villainess in West Coast Avengers in 1990.

The column does tell what more bad news is in store to prevent any plausible character drama from developing in the MCU next year though:

The next massive story line begins the end of the year, and it's called "Dark Reign."

Pretty ominous.

Marvel is not talking about what it means, saying it will be revealed in "Secret Invasion" No. 8 that comes out Wednesday, Nov. 19.

Here's my guess: The Skrulls win the war, and Earth is plunged into an era of alien domination.

It's the perfect way to tie up the loose ends. The superheroes now all go underground to become a liberating force. All next year, they will fight the aliens one skirmish at a time until the real Captain America somehow returns from the dead and leads Earth to victory.

After that, everyone is friends again, and the registration act is overturned.

Sorry, but...I doubt it. And I doubt that Steve Rogers, or even the Spider-Marriage will return, for as long as Joe Quesada and his band of not-so-polite yes-men are running the show.

Meanwhile, if you're not reading "Secret Invasion," you're missing something amazing.

On the contrary, I'm saving a lot of money by avoiding something meaningless and endless.

Signs at Baltimore Comic-Con that Harry Osborn's resurrection not accepted

The John Hopkins Newsletter went to the Baltimore Comic-Con, and said that:

The announcement that Harry Osborne - the guy who died in the original Spider-Man movie - was still alive drew a chorus of groans from the audience. The fans, it seems, have a very strong desire to see their stories retain some in-universe credibility.

Yup. The forced way that Harry reappeared several months ago in the comics just simply isn't acceptable.

Locarno and Turin plan manga tribute

An article in Variety about the Locarno and Turin Film Festivals planning a special segment for the history of manga and anime.

Wizard's COO was let go

The COO of Wizard magazine, that horrid tabloid of the comics world, has been let off. I wonder if this signals the coming end of what was a really a terrible, favoratist monthly?

The Beat is saying:

[Fred] Pierce was not well liked by many ex-Wizard staffers, as Sean T. Collins shows by breaking into an Ewok-style celebratory “yub nub” at the news.

Everyone knows that magazine publishing isn’t exactly a huge growth industry these days, but an observer can’t help but think that things must be very dire at Wizard World for a fixture like Pierce to be let go.

All this just obscures the more important point, that Wizard was tasteless and did a grave disservice to the industry it supposedly represented. In the words of a commentor on the Newsarama blog:

Reading Wizard in the last couple of years made me feel like an utter moron: horrible articles, tasteless bathroom humor, and those stupid word balloon captions filled the rag.

The only good thing was the price guide, but then Wizard ruined that too by touting “Graded Books” and slabbing everything for higher values. Geez, whatever happened to collecting comics as a fun hobby?

They've been that way for many years now, possibly ever since the mid-90s, and some of their coverage had traces of sexism at times too. More recently, they even apologized for Marvel's assault on the Spider-Marriage. If they're facing the possiblity of going out of business, they'll be no loss. Comic books deserve much better than Wizard.

Taking only one side: Comics Industry for Obama

And that seems to include Newsarama too, I'm sure. The article is about a group called "Comics Industry for Obama", and they certainly do suggest what's gone wrong with the industry today. Their opinions are simply disgusting.

And on a related note, it seems that they've predictably turned against Sarah Palin by putting her in a "parody" of Tales of the Crypt. I am so not liking what they've done here either.

The issue includes a “special editorial” by Cathy Gaines Mifsud, daughter of original Tales of the Crypt publisher William Gaines, who insists the comic “is not endorsing any political candidates, nor are we attacking any candidates.”

However, it’s difficult to view the cover illustration as anything less than that.

They got that right. It's just another pointless, low-grade attack on conservatives, and the book they're putting out is likely to be as shameless as it sounds.

Capt. America may not be partisan, but the writer can

One of the writers on the American Prospect, terrible leftist rag that they are, recently linked to an interview with Ed Brubaker on Wired (where most depressingly, Brubaker signaled that he supports Barack Obama) and said that in his view, Captain America's death is a metaphor for what's wrong with the Bush administration:

If you see Captain America's death as a metaphor for the death of civil liberties in the wake of the Bush administration's support of torture and warrantless wiretapping, then his demise is infused with partisan meaning. At least from the point of view of people who support those kinds of things. It's hard to see Captain America wanting anything to do with the wholesale violations of individual rights we've seen recently, which is why someone like me enjoys reading his comics.

I know that some leftists can "hijack" some things that they think are reflective of their standings (a few years ago, this is what happened with a movie called The Day After), but could this make sense, that Steve Rogers was turned into a sacrifice for subtle attacks on the Bush administration?

Found via the Newsarama blog, where they link to an entry by Tom Brevoort on his blog, where he says:

Worse still is what the passing of time does to characters who are rooted into a specific event in history. Captain America, at least, has a built-in get-out-of-jail-free card, in that he was in suspended animation since World War II. But because of the sliding timescale (Cap himself is only in his thirties, and has only been Captain America for twelve years or so) this means that Cap was unfrozen when Bill Clinton was President — which can really mess with your mind if you think about it too much.

What's he saying, that Cap was motivated in real time by the downside of the Clinton administration, which Brevoort probably doesn't consider to be bad?