The history of Japan's manga and Doraemon museums

Here's an article in the Daily Yomiuri about the history of Japan's manga museums and libraries that have grown since the 1990s.

And, here's another one about the Doraemon museum dedicated to Hiroshi Fujimoto's famous manga robo-cat.

Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick lower the bar on Starfire and Catwoman

The latest controversy DC's caused and are hoping to get away with, no doubt about that, is turning Starfire into a one-dimensional sex object (who can't or won't recall her fellow Titans) and Catwoman having sensationalized sex with Batman.

Now, if this had been done under a more talented and respectable staff, with a contributor of Marv Wolfman's caliber, I'm sure all this could've worked out. But this is Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick helming the titles, the latter who's been a hack for DC for at least a decade now, and the former who's got very little to recommend from his time at Marvel, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they're willing to stoop to shock tactics and transparent gimmicks for the sake of sales.

This may be one more thing that'll lead to a serious exodus from DC in the long term.

4 dollars for just 20 pages

Marvel's still charging 4 dollars for a lot of their output, even after they've cut the page count down to just 20 pages, like DC. And that's another reason why their sales aren't likely to get any better.

New Mr. Terrific premiere features Republicans as anti-science

This picture I found is from the first issue of the new Mr. Terrific series (where Michael Holt apparently now sports tattoos of his Fair Play motto), and seems to have an attack on Republicans featured, depicting them as anti-science.

If that's their little game now at DC, then here's something for them to ponder: leftists can be anti-science too. Which is why they should stop trying to perpetuate dopey anti-conservative stereotypes.

Back in the 1990s, DC actually avoided using a lot of real life figures and movements. Now, they're moving back to that again, and in some of the worst ways possible.

The abuse of Scarlet Witch continues in the "Children's Crusade"

USA Today talks about how Marvel has NOT abandoned the desecration of Scarlet Witch any more than DC has Sue Dibny and Jean Loring. More specifically, they also let know just who Wanda's been forced to hook up with now:

Superpowered teens Wiccan and Speed found their mother, the Scarlet Witch (aka Wanda Maximoff), without powers or memory but with a new fiancé: Doctor Doom. Thanks to the reappearance of Iron Lad and a rescue by the Young Avengers, Wanda remembers what fans have known since the "Avengers: Disassembled" and "House of M" story lines: that she killed Avengers during a murderous rampage and later depowered scores of mutants.

In comic shops Wednesday, Issue 7 of the nine-issue miniseries features Wanda and her mission to restore powers to the mutants she affected, as well as revealing the truth behind her reality-altering powers and her role in both "Avengers: Disassembled" and "House of M."

Cyclops and the X-Men know what kind of role the ex-Avenger played — not a good one, as they recall — so the action heats up when they appear on the scene, and Issue 8 is the bloody climax of a war between Doctor Doom, Wanda's dad Magneto and a whole host of heroes "that results in a tragic death and terrible losses for everyone involved," Heinberg says.

The final chapter spins the Young Avengers in an entirely new direction, sets the table for the next big Marvel Universe event, and resolves the final fate of the Scarlet Witch and her relationship to her family.

And we certainly don't need to waste time finding out; no matter the outcome, with these kind of people in charge, it could only be perfectly awful, and already is. The idea that she'd hook up with Doom is already sensationalistic enough.

Heinberg says he was trained early on that even so-called "bad guys" are the heroes of their own stories, which seemed particularly resonant to him in the case of the Scarlet Witch and her children. So there are no villains in Children's Crusade, where even the usually megalomaniacal Doctor Doom is a sympathetic character.

And that only compounds a frequent problem with today's mainstream storytelling: the villains in both Marvel and DC's books have increasingly been depicted in otherwise positive, sympathetic positions even if they haven't reformed, and even if their characterization makes it implausible. Why are we being asked to care about them more than the heroes? If I just hear that nonsense again about it being easier to write villains than heroes...ugh.

The events of Children's Crusade will be felt after it ends, Heinberg promises. By the time the final issue is out in January, it will have caught up with Marvel continuity and dovetail into big things involving the Avengers and the X-Men. [...]

Several more characters will meet their untimely demise, Heinberg says. "And, if the Scarlet Witch survives Crusade, I hope she'll continue to play an active and essential role in the Marvel Universe."

And tragically, if she does, it may be as a villainess, with even worse depiction than she had when John Byrne was writing West Coast Avengers in 1990. For now, this looks like another case of a character not seen in a few years who, when reappearing, does so only for what could be a most embarrassing story where she'll suffer from very bad writing.

DC should release clear numbers for sales, but is apparently too embarrassed

This entry on Comics Reporter makes a worthy point about how DC isn't making a good case by not releasing any actual numbers on their digital sales:

As seen in this interview, it looks like DC won't be releasing its New 52 digital numbers but will feel confident in making claims on their behalf. It also looks like comics sites will then repeat this claim as news, perhaps qualified by source or as a claim but still putting that information out there.

This should stop. I think DC has a really dubious history with using the hidden portions of their numbers to PR advantage -- call it the "I have a girlfriend in Canada" of sales analysis. My take is that this practice has intensified slightly ever since the numbers have become smaller and therefore more crucial. [...]

One weird result is that DC's lack of reporting numbers has also likely hurt specific DC efforts. When someone provides analysis on numbers that don't reflect all of the sales, even when it's just a few thousand copies that aren't seen in the pre-order estimates released to the Direct Market, certain comics can acquire the reputation of a losing, perhaps-soon-to-be-canceled endeavor. This must be maddening to the creators involved, who know because of their royalty statements that sales were better than the best numbers analysts have.

Even Marvel keeps their own sales numbers a secret today, and this is their modus operandi for digital publications too. But without any actual sales numbers, no, the announcements mean nada.

As DC becomes more "diverse", they become less kid-friendly

The cliches substituting for true storytelling continue as Scott Lobdell and artist Brett Booth introduce an openly gay character in Teen Titans, whose sexuality is going to be a leading part of his character. No surprise, really. Lobdell was the writer who penned the embarrassingly heavy-handed "outing" of Northstar in Alpha Flight in 1992, in what was apparently a desperate attempt to salvage sales nearly 2 decades ago.

And with this, I think they've ensured that any sales for this relaunch will be short-lived, and given just one example of how unfriendly this new series will be for children. No, they're not serious about seeking an important part of the market at all. Nor do they ever ponder the idea of making the protagonist Romanian, for example, and putting an emphasis on that.

What makes these leftists think this Fear Itself storyline is meant to appeal to the Tea Party?

The leftist website Death and Taxes (via Tea Party Patriots) has written a peculiar post where they seem to think that the part towards the end of Fear Itself where Capt. America forms a militia is meant to appeal to the Tea Party. They begin by asking:

Is Captain America forming a militia to appease the Tea Party?

What does the Tea Party truly have to do with militias and firearms? Of course there are activists concerned about the right to self-defense and the 2nd Amendment's own protections of the same, but that hasn't been their main concern. The main issue of the Tea Party is the healthcare system and economy that Obama has all but ruined.

As DC Comics relaunches almost its entire line, rival publisher Marvel Comics’ characters are dealing with an epic story called Fear Itself, in which Thor’s Asgardian foes team up with Sin, granddaughter of Captain America’s arch-rival, the Red Skull, to wreak havoc and terror around the world.

This presents Captain America with an opportunity to win back the real world’s Tea Party.

[...] the good Captain ends the latest issue of Fear Itself by preparing for war against his enemies, and declares, “This is the end of the world, fellas.”

“And I’m raising a militia to make a strike right here,” says Marvel’s most patriotic hero. This obviously fits into the right wing’s constitutionalist ideology, leaving readers and critics to wonder whether Marvel comics wants to win back the right wing.

Even if this isn’t a media ploy, Fear Itself has certainly revealed a new side to Captain America[...]

I think it is a ploy, unfortunately. And his forming a militia sounds rather absurd, since it could just as easily suggest a negative meaning to it; a better name for his roundup would be commando unit. It sounds more like the leftist site is trying to run a subtle smear of conservatives as bizarrely gun-happy (and how strange to see the Fear Itself writers depicting Cap with a gun, even if he is fighting an actual war against evil this time), and if the story was going to begin with something as insulting as this, then they're hardly making the story as a whole conservative-friendly, nor are they making it something a conservative can feel comfortable to begin reading.

And really, what proof is there that this story was ever meant to appeal to conservatives/Tea Party activists to begin with?

On top of all that, trying to win back conservatives via a company wide crossover that costs 3-4 dollars to buy in standard pamphlets is not the way to go in this day's pricings.

GLC #1's story title is unsuitable

In the previews on CBR for the first Green Lantern Corps issue per the relaunching, I found that the story title is "Triumph of the Will", just like a certain nazi propaganda horror from the past century.

And besides that very inappropriate and downright unfortunate name for the story, there's also the matter of continued bloodletting in the GL series, as the severed finger on the alien can tell.

The DC editorial certainly do know how to desecrate their properties.

Archie comics becoming politicized

First, they introduce a gay protagonist named Kevin Keller, most likely without any dissenting viewpoints allowed on whether it's a negative practice/mindset/lifestyle. Now, they're going to have said protagonist go into a gay marriage:

Archie is going from comic to culture warrior again, as the Archie Comics universe fields praise and scorn over a gay wedding.

After a pair of straight weddings -- both strangely involving Archie, though in his dreams -- drew national attention, the publisher behind the popular stories has confirmed that it’s making room for someone else to walk down the aisle: Kevin Keller, the series’ first openly-gay character.

“Kevin followed in his father's footsteps and is returning to Riverdale as a war hero, but that's not all – It’s Kevin’s wedding day!” reads a news release from Archie Comic Publications, promoting an upcoming issue of "Life With Archie."

In this offshoot series, which runs glimpse-into-the-future storylines based on the lives of Archie, Betty and Veronica, readers soon will be able to discover how Kevin met “Mr. Right.” [...]

“It's unfortunate that a comic book series usually seen as depicting innocent, all-American life is now being used to advance the sexual revolution,” said Peter Spriggs, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying organization promoting Christian views.

“I think whatever boost in sales might come from the novelty or curiosity factors will be more than offset by the number of both kids and parents who will be turned off by this storyline and its obvious social and political agenda,” he said.

The parents will certainly object if they see it as promoting a bad influence for their children, and it's sad that a comic franchise once seen as a great humor book for the younger crowd is now being used as a platform and tool for advancing what are pretty much political beliefs. And we thought Ernie and Bert on Sesame Street were a problem? Saddest of all is how the inmates now running this medium continue to ignore the idea of featuring protagonists of Armenian, Danish and Macedonian descent, which could have a lot more potential, and instead keep going for easy ideas that have long been worn way out.

Broken Frontier makes themselves sound ridiculous by fawning over Liefeld

Broken Frontier wrote a review of DC's relaunch of Hawk & Dove, and make a pretty contradictory statement about the awful Rob Liefeld's artwork:

Gates’ character work is brought to life by the talented artist Rob Liefeld. In several instances throughout the issue, panels are split to simultaneously show the reactions of both Hawk and Dove, with Hawk’s gruff grunts being compared to Dove’s calm whispers. When characters are out of costume, on the other hand, facial features tend to change depending on their orientation on the page, with cheek bones changing size and noses becoming more or less pointed. Considering the majority of the issue takes place with both heroes dressed as Hawk and Dove, however, this is merely a minor issue.

Oh, considering how they gloss over his notorious history as an artist from nearly 2 decades ago, I seriously doubt that's possible. Ignoring his worst artwork at Image, Marvel, and DC, even in recent times, and fawning over his work the way they are by calling him "talented" is foolish and misleading. They actually confirm that something is wrong with the artwork - certainly when the 2 protagonists are out of costume - yet they go ahead and act as though everything's okay? How do we know there aren't other dreadful potholes in the art lane in this book? The cover certainly made Hawk look lousy around the mouth and his body a tad bulky, and even Dove doesn't look so great - her hair looks like a ponytailed wig!

If anything, the superficial gloss-over of Liefeld's infamous period during the 1990s is certainly dishonest of them, and it's funny how they admit that he does screw up even as they call him "talented", which he definitely hasn't been for a long, long time. Hawk & Dove deserve much better.

DC won't provide clear numbers for digital sales

John Rood and Bob Wayne are trying to assure that everything's working out fine for their relaunch of DC titles, but again, as is typical these days for them and Marvel, they won't provide any specific sales numbers for how many books actually sold to customers, and it's the same case now with digital sales, where they tell a little something else of interest:

Let's talk a bit about digital. I know Jim Lee was out there talking about "Justice League's" digital sales being good, and we've heard about the DC App being high ranked on iTunes, but those are really non-specific metrics. Can you guys tell us how many copies "Justice League" or any of the books have sold so far through the iPad app?

Rood: We can't. We can't provide specific numbers. I'll tell you were delighted by the digital sales, but I can't say that they've exceeded expectations in a way that the physical sales have exceeded our forecast and expectations. In the "nice problem to have" department, we've got both media clicking in a way that can only tell us that this is by our design [digital] is working as an additive media and not a replacement one.

And what's that supposed to mean? That digital results aren't going through the roof as they were hoping? It's been awhile since Marvel tried this same idea, and the novelty's worn off, so that could explain in part why, despite what they're telling, it's not working out for them. They've gotten in on the game too late. Besides, the main problem is: their storytelling is simply bad.

This posting on Comics Worth Reading also tells why this is bound to be yet another short-lived "celebration" for them.

Always remember 9-11

It's the 10th year since the tragedy that befell the USA when the al Qaeda attacked, and I think today's post should be in memory of the fallen innocents. Here's a video from Breitbart:

And here's another one about Capt. Charles Burlingame, who was murdered by 4 of the hijackers in the cockpit of one of the planes:

Plus a special post from Atlas Shrugs.

Again, always remember 9-11 and honor the fallen innocents.

Wired mag disappointed with Rick Veitch

Wired's website section called Danger Room has written about Rick Veitch's 9-11 truther comic, The Big Lie, and are quite dismayed that he's gone downhill:

It’s enough to make you void your Comixology pullbox. Rick Veitch, a legend in the comic book industry, published The Big Lie on Wednesday, a sleazy 9/11 Truther screed in sequential-art form. Spoiler alert: pseudo-scientific hysteria married to paranoia about How Bush Knew isn’t any cuter when told by cartoon figures.

[...] Veitch doesn’t stop at one conspiracy. They build in their scope and scale. First it’s about Norad unexpectedly preoccupying U.S. air defenses with frivolous training exercises. Then it’s about how the neocons in the Bush administration are looking for an excuse to invade Iraq. (“I’ve heard more than one of these nut-jobs say what the U.S. needs is a ‘New Pearl Harbor,’” says a character who informs us he voted for Reagan.) Finally, the skeptical husband, an engineer who did his thesis on the World Trade Center, dismisses his future-wife by assuring her that “the only way to bring down these structures down is with explosives.” You see where this is going.

Sigh. Yes, planes loaded with jet fuel and used as missiles can — and did — destroy the World Trade Center. Read the authoritative Popular Mechanics story about the physics of 9/11 if your mind is open to persuasion. Bush and company indeed wanted to take down Saddam Hussein from the start of his administration and they cynically tied Saddam to 9/11 absent evidence. But sorry: there is no evidence they planned an invasion before 9/11; no evidence that they knew about 9/11 and let it happen; and no evidence at all they brought the Towers down.

While I'm glad to see they recognize that it's NOT the Bush administration that did it, it's a shame they think that signs of WMDs in Iraq are "absent". As this FOX News report tells, there were samples of chemical weaponry found since 2003, as Rep. Rick Santorum reported in 2006.

Yet all that is wiped away in the scene’s final panel, where three thermite grenades are visible on a supporting beam inside the Towers — to the horror of a former skeptic — and Uncle Sam himself vouches for the truth of the story. “Folks fall so hard for the shuck-and-jive they never hear the wake up call when it finally arrives,” Sam says. This makes Frank Miller’s forthcoming Holy Terror seem calm and reasonable.

Veitch implicitly gives up the game — as Truthers tend to — when he has his Cassandra say, “Look at what was left out of the [9/11] Commission’s report,” the last recourse of those who believe the government covered up its role in the “conspiracy.” The horrible truth is that al-Qaida attacked the U.S. on 9/11.

For comic fans tethered to a sense of reality, Veitch’s descent into Trutherism is a huge disappointment. A star of alternative comics in the 80s, Veitch wrote some classic Swamp Thing stories for D.C. and illustrated a hugely important scene in Alan Moore’s seminal Miracleman. His comic Brat Pack is the best — and most disturbing — treatise on the exploitation of children implicit in the superhero-sidekick genre. It also sucks that the venerable publishing house Image Comics — which gave us Spawn, The Walking Dead, Youngblood and more — saw fit to release Veitch’s hysteria, selling it as a “riveting tale of 9/11.”

Well let's just note that, as anyone who was familiar with Image's early output knows, Spawn and Youngblood both stunk, the former was Todd McFarlane's trip downhill (a shame too, because when he began his career in the early 80s, his artwork, while not perfect, wasn't that bad either), and Youngblood was just the beginning of the real Liefeld abominations in artwork (and why do I get the feeling Brat Pack, which I never really knew about until now, is actually a rather awful book?). It's a pity that they're taking such a weak approach to some of the other stuff from Image, and even slip up by saying evidence of WMD traces was "absent". But the rest is pretty good and I'm glad to see they understand why the kind of conspiracy theories Veitch sunk into are distasteful.

They also say in response to the interview he'd given I focused on earlier, where he attacked the Patriot Act as a pre-planned Neo-Con conception:

That’s not true, either, by the way. It would appear the true controlled demolition concerns what Rick Veitch has done to his brain.

Yup. And if any Democrats also supported the Patriot Act, then Veitch is only beclowning himself further by singling out and demonizing the Republicans for drafting a law for the purpose of ensuring the public's safety.

Why is J. Scott Campbell wasting his time doing a cover for a Rob Liefeld drawn book?

J. Scott Campbell, who's got quite a talent for drawing hot babes (with Danger Girl being one of his most famous examples) is going to draw a variant cover for a comic called The Infinite written by Robert Kirkman and drawn by none other than horrid Rob Liefeld, and any book whose interiors are drawn by someone like him after he turned into such an awful artist in the early 90s is only asking for trouble.

Now Campbell's style can be an acquired taste for some, but in sharp contrast to Liefeld, his drawing of the anatomy is competent without looking as though he screwed up and smudged the panels, and that's why he makes for a worthy artist, unlike Liefeld, who's long gained notoriety for that.

And I can't understand why a talented artist like Campbell was willing to waste his talents by drawing a coverscan for a book whose interiors would surely be a nightmare thanks to Liefeld (the scripting by Kirkman might be okay, but Liefeld's art alone can ruin everything). Why lend himself as a draw to something that could be embarrassing? It's a real shame, and just shows how desperate Image must be to sell something that Liefeld's name alone will no doubt discourage people from reading.

Rick Veitch continues with his galling 9-11 trutherism

I found another interview with comics writer turned moonbat Rick Veitch on the leftist Death and Taxes site about his graphic novel called The Big Lie, and it reveals a few more disturbing details about his mindset.

Countless people still question the government’s retelling of 9/11, even ten years later. Rick Veitch is one of them.

And so too, offensively enough, is that putrid leftist website.

In this interview, Veitch discusses the motivation behind ‘The Big Lie,’ discusses terrorism as a communicator and explains how the 1980s changed the comic industry.

Andrew Belonsky: What was the impetus behind ‘The Big Lie?’

Rick Veitch: It started with phone conversations between myself and Thomas Yates. He and I go way back — we went to Kubert School together and then we shared a couple of art-crash pads in our mad youth. Now we live on opposite coasts, but we still get on the phone every once in a while and commiserate about the state of politics. One of the subjects that kept coming up was what the government had told us about 9/11 and how it seemed kind of shaky.

As does Veitch's and the interviewing site's own insulting attempts to play expert, I'm afraid. The government? Since when was it just the government telling us this? It was practically the terrorists themselves who told us, in a most sadistic way, who they were and why they were attacking the US: because they hated America and despised our freedom, and also hated that Americans didn't adhere to their Islamofascist ideologies (and their religion calls for waging war upon infidels). And 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Has he not paid attention to that? Clearly, he doesn't care.

RV: We were angry at how the Bush administration had pushed the invasion of Iraq. Tom and I went around and around like leftists tend to do. But Tom is one of these guys who, when he gets a little bee in his bonnet, he decides to do something, so he began to conceive a comic book or a graphic novel that explores some of these issues. We talked about doing a 9/11 book for a couple of years; he wanted me to write and draw it based on the work I was doing on ‘Army@Love’ for Vertigo.

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approached, we both kind of realized, “Wow, this would be a terrific time to get it out there, because people are going to be discussing this very thing, and we want to be part of that conversation.” So Tom went into high gear and pulled it all together. He found a publisher in Image Comics. And he found Brian Romanoff, who organized the funding and provided editorial and research muscle. That’s how ‘The Big Lie’ happened.

I suppose he sees nothing wrong with the oppression and even torture of dissidents Saddam's regime committed? But here too we can learn how the bankrolling for Veitch's insult to American victims of terror came around.

AB: Yeah, I was going to ask you about the research process…

RV: For me, I surfed around on the internet, where there’s all kinds of stuff. It’s hard to separate from disinformation and crazy theories and people screaming at each other. I read the Congressional Commission report, which you don’t need to be a Truther to see is full of holes. And David Ray Griffin’s stuff was very inspirational, as was a BBC documentary on the parallel rise of the American Neo-Con movement and Al-Qaeda, called “The Power of Nightmares.”

But I knew that we needed someone like Brian, who was really grounded in the nuts and bolts of what had happened and what the current state of the debate was, and which of the questions were really the ones that warranted pursuing.

AB: There are so many out there.

RV: Right. Obviously we wanted to avoid some of the loonier theories that you see, like space aliens did it. So, Brian provided an invaluable service on that end, as well as providing a pipeline into the extensive network of Truther organizations, who were all very interested in this. Tom and I come from comics, so this helped us a lot.

Boy, he most certainly is making quite an effort to be offensive, by apparently drawing a kind of subtle comparison between conservatives and al Qaeda, and supporting some of the BBC's worst acts of leftism.

Aside from that, one of the worst things about his vision is how he refers to "truthers" as though that were a good thing, when in their case, it's just totally bad.

AB: I went back and read some of your other work, including ‘The One.’ I saw some similarities between that book, published in 1985, and ‘The Big Lie.’ ‘The One’ of course deals with the Cold War and nuke fears. In the beginning you open the series with a — was it an actual article from the ‘New York Times’ from [communication theorist] Marshall McLuhan about the bomb as a communicator?

RV: Yes.

AB: Would you say the same is true about terrorism in general as a concept? That it’s a communicator? Certainly it has a message, but does it carry –

RV: I don’t think terrorism is as revolutionary as what the atomic bomb represented. Terror campaigns against civilian populations have been part of military conflict going back to the Stone Age. The atomic bomb acted as a symbol of something deeper than any single enemy. There was something so pure about it and the way it worked. It speaks to the deepest part of ourselves. It haunts us in a way that terrorism doesn’t. Terrorism scares us, but the bomb challenged our survival as a species in a way that terrorism doesn’t.

AB: True.

RV: Another similarity about ‘The One,’ that pertains to 9/11: there’s a shot in there of a skyscraper exploding in a fireball. I made that drawing in 1984 and it looks almost exactly like pictures I’ve seen of the Trade Center being hit.

It doesn't take much to guess that he's referring to Albert Einstein's own research and its launch upon Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of WW2, completely without noting the fact that it was meant to send a clear message to a country that at the time was an antogonist, and also responsible for the Rape of Nanking. Sadly, it seems little likely that he considers Iran's own nuclear development to be a problem by contrast. His statements not only signal quite a bit of ignorance, but also make clear he's gone deep downhill over the years, and sees terrorism as less a problem than that of the defenders of democracy and human rights who're forced to use military action to put a stop to these barbarians throughout history.

AB: What I found amusing about ‘The Big Lie’ was that the characters weren’t as interested in Sandra’s warnings as they were in her iPad, and buying stock in Apple. That was a disturbing detail, but also probably true to life.

RV: [Laughs] Well, I think that quality of black humor is why Tom wanted me on the book.

I don't think even black humor is appropriate in a case like this, and the interviewer has gone beyond the pale too with that claim of amusement he makes. The book insults by depicting the people the woman speaks with as one-dimensionally ignorant, potentially even implies they're more interested in moneymaking and capitalism than in human life, painting a most offensive picture of America, and they think it's funny?!? Truly disgraceful.

AB: Am I right that you guys are going to be addressing other topics in ‘The Big Lie?’

RV: Right now we are discussing a couple more 9/11 themed issues that focus on elements that were too complex to cover in our first issue. We’d like to do one that illustrates the money trail preceding and following the attacks. And we’d like to shine a much needed light on the Patriot Act, which had been on the Neo-Con drawing board for a decade until it was passed in response to 9/11.

So that's another stupid thing Veitch's atrocity is going to do, attack conservatives, who, unless they happen to be Saudis - whom the MSM sometimes refers to as "conservative" (eg- the AP/Globe & Mail article featured here) in a most hyopcritical way compared to how they talk about western conservatives - are apparently the sole problem in existence. Not jihadism, not socialism, just conservatives and capitalism. I wouldn't expect him to focus on Michael Bloomberg's own shady dealings either, because that kind of profiteering is apparently acceptable for what Veitch has become.

Rick Perry likes Superman, but the left doesn't appreciate it

GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry said something that, if he'd been a Democrat, would've made headlines, but because he's a Republican, did not:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — You can just call him Superman.

At least, that’s what Governor Rick Perry of Texas told a nine-year-old boy at a Manchester house party Saturday, when the boy, Ari, asked him which superhero he would be, if he could posses superhuman powers.

“I’m going to show you my age a little bit, Ari, because I don’t know any of the real current superheroes,” Mr. Perry said, gamely fielding the question. “But there was one back in my day named Superman, and Superman came to save the United States.”

So he was a Super-fan back in the day, eh? That's pretty remarkable. However, as of now, when I looked at most comic book sites, they had zero to say about this, in contrast to when any fandom Obama has for comics was cited. On the other hand, a handful of leftist sites, rather than be flattered by this, chose instead to exploit the occasion to attack him. For example, on Death and Taxes, a kind of ultra-cheap variant on The Nation, they said (and also revealed a few more details about just how depressing the DCnU will be):

While Perry’s remark makes him look a bit more grandfatherly than gaucho, DC Comics‘ recent rebook skews the candidate’s historical understanding of Superman — but speaks volumes about where we are in America today.

DC Comics, publisher of Superman, Batman and other well-known titles, relaunched its entire superhero line. Superheroes are new, including Superman, who is living in a darker, more “cynical” world, one we’ll see in Grant Morrison’s version of the iconic title ‘Action Comics.’ He’s more violent, more angry and less likely to work with the police.

“I think right now, we’re all feeling that way,” said Morrison. “Nobody has much faith in their elected leaders in the same way that they did. We all have a lot more cynicism and a lot more doubt about the people who are running our lives than we did when Superman was a ‘Boy Scout.’” It’s worth noting that Perry’s a diehard fan of the Boy Scouts.

But it’s not just Superman who’s getting darker: the ‘Justice League’ shows the teams early, acrimonious days — the first issue has Batman and the Green Lantern duking it out, and, next month, Superman will throw down against the Dark Knight.

Meanwhile, the decidedly somber ‘Animal Man,’ previously penned by Morrison, is back, being written by Jeff Lemire, and bleeding out of his eyes. And ‘Justice League Dark’ will surely show the DC Universe’s bleaker side.

This new DC Universe more accurately reflects the state of our nation, rather than the long lost Golden Age in which Perry and Superman grew up.

But even before the DC rebooted Superman, the Man of Steel famously gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid war with Iran. The right wing, Rick Perry’s base, were predictably upset. Fox News contributor Cal Thomas wondered, “Who has hijacked Superman and turned him into a U.N. loving Anti-American?” Something tells me that Perry, like all UN-loathing Republicans, would agree.

And if not with that, he’s sure to scoff at the new version of Superman, whom Morrison describes as “a bit more of a liberal activist”.

That’s definitely not the type of hero Perry would like to be, is it?

What a shame. The poor buffoon who wrote that balderdash clearly seems to think that Perry's fandom for the Man of Steel must be based upon the direction taken by current writers instead of the character and core concept in itself. Worst, he's pulled an act not unlike various comics writers of recent have done - he's exploited the Man of Steel subject and Perry's own comments for the sake of attacking a politician all because he doesn't like conservatives.

If Perry still takes note of comic books, surely we shouldn't wish he would talk about how sad it is that, instead of offering some optimistic entertainment, all the writers and editors can do is knock our heads with unremitting gloom and unpleasant violence, to say nothing of the aggravating leftist politics that have become more commonplace this past decade? Alas, in all their dismal moonbat bias, that's not what leftists like those are doing.

To make matters worse, another leftist has even hijacked the whole subject for the sake of calling Superman an illegal immigrant. I think that's going a bit far to literally compare sci-fi/fantasy characters to illegal immigrants, and even insulting to Siegel and Shuster, who certainly didn't create Superman in their time for the sake of that. Infant Kal-El was rocketed to Earth from a devastated planet (Krypton) and didn't exactly have a choice of where to go. He is not an illegal but a refugee from a wrecked world. The same could be said about princess Koriand'r of the New Teen Titans, who's an escaped alien slave from the planet Tamaran - handed over to an enemy alien race by her pathetic father as an act of appeasement - who fled to Earth in 1980, where she was taken in by the NTT. I hesitate to think of just what kind of exploitation Thor would undergo by the left if Perry signaled he was a fan of Marvel's take on the Norse pagan deity. They'd probably say he was an illegal immigrant whose own father sent him as a secret interloper in New York. Yes, even Marvel's got a few protagonists who could become victims of politicized exploitation.

I find it hard to swallow that those leftists are really comics fans; otherwise, they wouldn't have exploited Perry's words so blatantly. All they're doing is taking the fun out of classic concepts. Let us be clear: sci-fi creations as we know them shouldn't have to be compared to real life issues, and doing so only spoils everything.

If this had been Obama who'd voiced any fandom for Superman, it'd be all over the headlines in a positive way. But this is a GOP member who's spoken, so they won't show any appreciation at all. A shame, because fandom for comics, in itself, is something to appreciate and political standings shouldn't have to dictate how we look at these things.

Update: this blogger is right: the whole idiotic argument comparing Supes to an illegal should be put to bed.

Wider public does not seem impressed with DC relaunch, or doesn't care

One of Newsarama's contributors looked at what members of the public had to say about DC's increasingly aggravating reboot, and found that not all is as inspiring as the people in charge would like to think. In fact, when Deadline Hollywood spoke about the sales, they said:

Over 200,000 physical copies of JL1, along with tens of thousands of digital copies, are expected to be sold worldwide.

But that doesn't confirm they are, or that it'll work long term, now does it? Even on the Newsarama topic itself, not all the commentors are impressed with the Justice League relaunch either. For example:

I’ve heard negative things around the comic shop I work at from regulars and honestly….I wasn’t that impressed with Justice League #1 and I absolutely hated the rushed ending to Flashpoint #5. SO MUCH potential and it felt wasted. I’m still going to read the first issue of each series but I’m not that gung-ho anymore.

And then:

This cracks me up. From what I’ve seen and heard and talked about with most of my friends who are non comics folks they had no idea that DC did a soft reboot or whatever they want to call it. This leads me to speculate that the general public at large could care less. I don’t think rebooting will be some magic bullet that entices the general public to go out and buy comics. It’s just not most peoples thing.

Personally I was invested in about 14 different DC titles before the reboot. Now I’m looking at 4-9 titles total from the New 52. I wonder how many other longtime readers did the same. I’m by no means anti DC or even anti reboot, just that I was invested in a bunch of titles that are no longer available and starting over means I have to pick what I want to read again. There just wasn’t enough compelling titles for me to get back to my pre-reboot purchasing levels.

So just looking at this from my own personal view DC made a HUGE gamble. Personally I don’t think it’s going to pay off in the end. Obviously they are taking the long view on this since they are currently losing money based on year to date numbers (less titles means less money), but if they can build momentum and garner new readers as they roll out more titles in the coming weeks they may come out ahead. I just don’t see this getting them many new readers, some yes, but not enough to offset the all the titles current folks were invested in. I could be way off though and most people aren’t like me and are actually buying more titles with the relaunch then before.

Nope, chances of that are increasingly minimal. It's practically becoming apparent that no matter what they'll say, they're not even going to focus on convincing human drama, or they'll focus on too much angst, as in rebooted Superman's case. As for Green Lantern, I don't think that many people are interested in reading about Sinestro as the lead.

DC terminates the Flash marriage for sake of more PC

It's not just Clark Kent and Lois Lane's marriage that's being wiped away - now, it turns out that Barry Allen and Iris West's marriage is being erased as well, so that he can now be dating one of his lab assistants, Patty Spivot.

Not only is this just as insulting as the end of the Spider-Marriage and the Super-marriage, I wouldn't be surprised if this'll explain just what's happened to Wally West and Linda Park's marriage, both of whom have been completely obscured over the past 2 years. It was ill-advised to come up with children for them, but now, they're going beyond the pale by throwing out the superhero couple who were embraced by plenty since the original death of Barry in 1985. The best way to react to this would be to avoid this relaunch just like many have avoided the Spidey titles - and potentially the Super titles - since the damage inflicted upon them.

Marv Wolfman on the spread of crossovers

The Village Voice interviewed Marv Wolfman on the eve of the blatant new DC reboot, and he had plenty to tell about his own role in the overflow of crossovers too, not to mention what he thinks of continuity:

Wolfman spoke with the Voice about why he hasn't read the Crisis sequels, "event fatigue" in the comic book world, and the trouble with continuity: it "holds the best writer hostage of the worst."

Given how the D.C. universe is often divided info pre- and post-Crisis. where do see Crisis on Infinite Earths as fitting into the comic book canon? How does it relate to the other dark D.C. reboots of the era and particularly Watchmen, given the prominent role of Charlton characters in both storylines?
When I first pitched Crisis my belief was, at the end, that a new DC universe would be formed, all the books would begin with number 1 starting with a new origin in each, and Crisis would never be mentioned again because, as I set it up, the Earth would be reformed at its origin and so what had been had never happened as a new Earth was created. The Crisis itself therefore "never happened" though its effects would last. But ultimately the Powers That Be decided they didn't have enough people to pull that off and so the Crisis was constantly referred to which I always felt was a mistake.

But as for how it fits into DC Continuity, it's always been my belief that every generation needs the comics recreated for them. This happened by accident in the past: Comics were created in 1938 with Superman. About 25 years later, between 1956-1961, the Silver age was created with no direct regard for what happened before. About 25 years after that, I did Crisis with George Perez and that once again updated the DCU. And now, 25 years after Crisis the New 52 has been launched.

Comics need to be changed, they need to evolve, and they need to keep fresh in order to stay relevant. As for things like Watchmen, those are not part of the DCU. They exist in their own world. Those kind of stories are one-shot "novels" that are allowed to tell a great story and then it's over. I hope there will always be room for those so that not everything has to be part of one ever-sprawling continuity. Comics, which are simply a combination of story and art, should be able to tell any kind of story and not be hampered by constraints.

And that tells just why DC is making yet one more severe mistake by shoving a whole stable of Wildstorm protagonists (and to some extent, the Milestone creations) into the DCU proper, far more than previous editorials did when they injected the Marvel family and a handful of Charlton cast members into the DCU in the mid-80s.

However, the part about DC Comics not having enough people to pull off his initial proposal is confusing, because they did have plenty of writers working for them at the time. But he may be correct in his argument that continuing to reference the Crisis on Infinite Earths for many years afterwards may have been a mistake, depending on the circumstances.

Who was involved in the decisions over which characters to kill off and how contentious did those talks become? What are your feelings when some of those characters, like Wonder Woman, were subsequently revived?
My attitude was that characters had to die in order to prove to readers that DC was not only changing, but it would never again be predictable. But I always felt some of those characters would come back, reformed, like the original DC characters of the 40s were brought back and changed into the Silver Age characters of the 60s. So we killed Supergirl, but I thought a new one would eventually be created who would not have the same problems the original one had. As for Wonder Woman, George Perez, who did Crisis with me, was going to be taking over that book as both artist and writer, so we set it up for him to recreate her from scratch. We knew up front she was coming back.

It may not be mentioned here, but, did he ever forsee DC's following up on the the deaths in Crisis with a lot of editorially mandated deaths that were in far worse taste, and victims could be major (Green Lantern), but also an alarming number of minor rankers because they were considered easy prey on the assumption nobody would care? It's utterly cheapjack, and trashes the chance for aspiring writers to come up with a potentially worthy story. It also symbolizes their inability to market according to title and definitely story value.

Did you foresee the rise of crossovers megaevents when you wrote Crisis? And now that the Summer mega-crossover has become an industry staple, do you see ideas that in retrospect you would have liked to have used in Crisis, and do you see others using your motifs from Crisis in newer megaevents?
No. Crisis was created to solve a specific problem: to make the confusing DC universe accessible to new readers. I had thought it would do its job and the focus of attention would then be on the new books and not the title that changed them. But what happened was not only did the book sell incredibly well, but because I was able to develop its story and concepts over time, and not rush it into print, the book was actually quite good beyond serving its purpose. But its sales is what made everyone suddenly decide to copy the concept. Unfortunately, from what I know, most of the mega-crossovers that followed didn't have a core reason for their existence as Crisis did. The creators did not have the time to work out their stories and they sort of rambled without purpose. In a way, Crisis spawned an entire industry of mega-events when it should have only given birth to those kinds of events where something vitally important had to be achieved. Sadly, it didn't turn out that way so these days you often here the term "event fatigue" being bandied about.

Though not mentioned, Marvel's Secret Wars, produced a year before Crisis on Infinite Earths, also contributed to much of the problem. Granted, one could say that it was decently written just like Crisis, but that too eventually led to a whole flood of crossovers that were increasingly pointless (in fact, Secret Wars II may not be held in as high a regard as the first one).

However, if were were to compare crossovers, one of the noticable differences between Marvel and DC crossovers is that the initial crossovers from Marvel weren't built on the same kind of "intentions" as DC's were: they weren't promoted on the grounds that a character was going to die - most stories where one did were usually just found in more stand-alone stories - and they usually offered a more fun/interesting storyline than the ones DC did. For DC, I'd say it was with Armageddon in 1991 that they really went downhill, killing off Hank Hall at the time, and subsequently turning him into Extant (sometimes, I wonder if they made the former half of Hawk & Dove into a villain because he was a proto-conservative, suggesting they saw such a protagonist as an easy prey too). Eclipso: The Darkness Within and Zero Hour were another problem of the same sort, and Bloodlines had similar problems too: killing off a whole slew of bystanders at the hands of an alien race just in order to introduce a handful of new protagonists who vanished very quickly afterwards. I'd say the method of introduction alone was the biggest mistake.

How important is maintaining continuity in comic book universes? Putting on your editor's hat for a minute, how do you balance characters' history with authors' need to make a fresh mark and re-imagine old standards? With Crisis and more generally, how does one balance the expectations of longtime and older fans with the need to cultivate newer and younger ones?
I am actually not a fan of overarching continuity, and Crisis was partially conceived to wipe that all out and start fresh. The line I've been using since before Crisis is, "Continuity holds the best writer hostage of the worst." I believe continuity held to the extreme stifles creativity. Comics should expand your thoughts not restrict them and the more continuity that exists the smaller field you have to explore. I think you need to clear the field every so often and let the writers breathe. Let them come up with the wackiest, craziest ideas and not worry that ten years before someone did a story that prevents that new great idea from being done. Finally, to me, continuity of character is much more important that continuity of story ideas. You need to know and understand the characters and they need to be consistent so we can believe they are real. But there is a vast difference between consistency and continuity.

In reply to that, I'd argue that the best way to maintain continuity that doesn't overarch is to avoid the very crossovers he helped lead to, and keep at least 90 percent of the majors' output self-contained. But there's no chance they'll take that advice, and even after the so-called reboot, there's still every chance they'll resort to more crossovers out of desperation. I fully expect something along those lines next year, all in the name of "celebration".