More info on the next Superman movie still suggest it'll veer to the dark side

The New York Post's written about the upcoming Man of Steel movie for next year's summer, and says:

The one thing that can be gleaned from the single teaser trailer that’s been released is that this could be a darker, more humanistic take on the character than movies past.

“We tried to approach this as though there’s never been a Superman movie before, but at the same time respecting the canon and mythology,” director Zack Snyder tells The Post in an exclusive interview. “There are the pillars that you have to respect, and I’m not about to break them. But it is fun for me to bend them and mess with them.”

And if he's made this more about bleakness and overly emotional or hand-wringing forms of drama, then has he ever messed with the Man of Steel indeed. If he really respects Superman, he'll also respect the optimistic side that served the big blue boy scout well in decades past and not stoop to potentially the opposite of that, nor will he depict Clark Kent as too uncertain of his talents, both in and out of costume.

Henry Cavill, who becomes the first Brit to play the character, says he’s also a fan of the more down-to-earth approach.

“I liked the idea of the realism immediately,” Cavill tells The Post in an exclusive on-set interview. “Traditional Superman fans know what it’s all about, and they will hopefully love and associate with the character anyway. But the people who aren’t die-hard Superman fans still need to associate with the character, and that needs to have some realism in today’s world, certainly, in sense of a science as opposed to mythology attached to it as well.”

I've heard that whole argument before, and it's become tiresome by now, mainly because it's virtually always being used as an excuse for producing darkness without any real light at the end of the tunnel. Pessimistic writing doesn't provide for big inspiration.

For now, if there's any problem that did play into this movie's production, it's the new mandate on the costume design:

One of the obvious changes is with Superman’s costume. Gone is the flimsy spandex in favor of a slightly metallic, more armored look.

“The costume was a big deal for me, and we played around for a long time,” Snyder says. “I tried like crazy to keep the red briefs on him. Everyone else said, ‘You can’t have the briefs on him.’ I looked at probably 1,500 versions of the costumes with the briefs on.”

The final version is a brief-free, all-blue unitard with red boots and a red cape.

“If you look at the costume, it’s very modern, but the relationship to the original costume is strong,” Snyder says.

Really? It sounds like an editorial mandate found its way into this movie just like in the comics! Just what good is an armor-like suit? It actually cheapens the impact even more, not because it makes it look like Superman isn't tough enough to face off with the really challenging villains who could come his way, but because it makes it look like he doesn't have enough courage to face them in just regular spandex. Or something like that. I'm afraid this is a telling example of how political correctness and overly trendy ideas have trumped the more impressive, classic costume designs, presumably because they don't think the audience will care otherwise.

“You come onto a project like this, and you hear about modernization and you hear about bringing things forward to today, and all you can do is hope that it’s going to look cool and different from anything you’ve seen before,”

But if it's all flash in costume design and little substance in character drama, then they've hardly accomplished anything. And "modernization" doesn't necessarily equal say, a patriotic approach, nor does the mention of it here guarantee that this'll offer an optimistic viewpoint while avoiding an overshadowing with darkness.

What’s perhaps most interesting about “Man of Steel” is that it might serve as the launching point for a DC Comics universe of films in the same way 2008’s “Iron Man” inaugurated Marvel’s interconnected movie world.

Warner Bros. is reportedly plowing ahead with “Justice League,” a superteam movie featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and others, rumored to hit in 2015. Nolan’s Batman trilogy has concluded and bomb “Green Lantern” is likely to be disregarded, making “Man of Steel” the first film set in this new universe.

“I don’t know how ‘Justice League’ is going to be handled. Honestly, I don’t,” Snyder says. “But ‘The Man of Steel’ exists, and Superman is in it. I don’t know how you’d move forward without acknowledging that.”

As much as I'd like to anticipate a Justice League of America movie with excitement, I'm not confident in WB's ability to copy the strategy that led to the Avengers movie as successfully as Marvel's adaptations did. Mainly because they may not even use America in the film's title, and it isn't mentioned in this article. However Marvel's been handling their adaptations, DC isn't doing much to show that they've learned from their own past mistakes.

This book about GL's transition to film can't possibly be accurate

The Washington City Paper published a list of books they thought are great gifts for comics fans. And some of them are great choices, like one about Superman history and Jack Kirby/Joe Simon's Fighting American, but there's one item on the list that's superficial at worst:

Constructing Green Lantern: From Page to Screen by Ozzy Inguanzo (Universe, $35) has been sitting around for a while, but fills the same niche for superhero movies. Since his secret identity is a fighter-plane test pilot, there's a section on creating believable airplanes before the book shifts to the design of the crazy aliens of the Green Lantern Corps. The movie was based fairly reliably on the comic-book Green Lantern book, so fans of the monthly pamphlets may still enjoy this one.

First, they don't mention how the movie was a disaster, and if they think anybody's going to be excited about a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, I think very few will care. Second, their claim the movie was based "fairly reliably" on the comics is superficial at best: more like it was based on the most recent iterations of GL that Geoff Johns foisted on everyone, and in the long term did not serve the Emerald Gladiator well at all. Biggest problem, surely, was the use of Parallax as the prime adversary in the movie, instead of Sinestro or even Lord Malvolio, a telling clue of just how cheapjack the filmmakers were being. Instead of relying on the really classic figures, they resorted to something very recent and all too obvious.

And this book was sitting around gathering dust on the shelves? Well, that figures. If it's about how it got made into a movie that nobody cared for, then no wonder the book did no better.

San Diego University video interview with Marv Wolfman

The University of California in San Diego filmed a video interview with Marv Wolfman about storytelling in comics, and even in animation and computer games, which he's also contributed to over the past several years.

Todd McFarlane has Spawn-ed politics into his comic

I'd like to think that he's going to be fair, or that he'd have what it takes not to take a sugarcoated approach to the Obama administration now that it's been reelected, but there's at least a few things in this interview about his turn to politics in the pages of Spawn that make that wishful thinking:

Politics and entertainment don't always mix, but Todd McFarlane thinks he's found a way to incorporate them in the pages of "Spawn." Months ago when "Spawn" #225 by McFarlane and longtime artist Szymon Kudranksi was solicited, readers noted that there were two versions of the "Watchmen" #1 homage cover, one with "Romney Wins" on the top and another with "Obama Wins." The original plan was to have two versions of the Image comic drop the day after the election, but some production issues got in the way.

Spoilers follow for "Spawn" #225. The issue, which came out this week, finds longtime Spawn adversary Jason Wynn explaining to Jim Downing, the man currently inside the ectoplasmic suit from hell that, years ago, the two of them put a plan in motion that would decide the 2012 presidential election, which took place on Tuesday, November 6. With President Obama's re-election, the final piece of their puzzle is in place and their plans will start to come to fruition, plans that will play out in the coming issues.

With the issue on stands and the idea of the President -- or more accurately his people -- involved in some supervillian-level dealings, CBR News spoke with McFarlane for details about the book's two week delay, if things would have been different if Mitt Romney had won and why it was the perfect time to tie "Spawn" into real world political events.

Granted, he may be willing to write a story that doesn't shy from depicting some of the lower ranking staff of the Obama administration as corrupt, but, it still sounds like the kind of story that otherwise won't depict a leftist president in a negative light. And if Romney had won, I get the feeling that in sharp contrast, there's every chance McFarlane would have been much more willing to depict a rightist president negatively.

How will President Obama's re-election change how "Spawn" rolls out this year into next and how would it have been different if Romney won?

I didn't want to get too into the politics in the book, per se. I'm Canadian and I don't vote, but I'm a political junkie. I feel like I'm in the middle and just watch both warriors battle each other, so I know way more about this than I should as the Canadian kid. The way it would have mattered if Romney had gone on is that both sides have agendas that are important to them in terms of moving America forward and we would have played on some of those riffs differently if the other party had done it. If I got to a line about policy, I would have made it specific to that party whether it was the GOP or the Democrats.

Moving forward it would be a lot easier for them to say, "We did this and this and gave them this on Obamacare." Now I've got something big that's more important to the Democrats and Obama. I would have substituted in something else if it had been Romney. I had to be a little flexible.

You work on these plot details months and months in advance, was it difficult planning the next few issues after #225 without knowing who the winner of the election would be?

Not really. Like I said, I don't expect people to be as involved in politics as I am in terms of caring about it. It's going to be more peripheral stuff. Just to be clear, it's not going to be Obama and/or Romney were going to be corrupt, it's more going to be the people who are climbers who work for them who are willing to corrupt themselves to keep their guy in power. It's like that movie "The Ides of March" with Ryan Gosling and George Clooney. What will you do to keep your power when keeping your power means keeping the guy you're advocating for to stay in power? In other words, if Romney is in power and he employs me, I want to keep him in power so I stay employed. This isn't about caring about the boss's agenda per se, but about personally wanting to keep my power. At the end of the day, I think a lot of people are concerned about wants and needs and you can exploit that, just ask General Petraeus. There is a moment of human weakness that someone can exploit and say, "Ha, we've got the goods on you, now what? You have to come clean or you have to quit because we've got photos." At some point you say you're doing this for the betterment of your country, but then you want it to end the best way for you personally.

He may be trying to sound fair, but after all the dopey assaults on Bush for all the wrong reasons in the past decade, I have hard time buying that he wouldn't be willing to depict Romney even remotely in a bad light. In fact, what he says about keeping somebody like Romney in power because the man or woman in the government only cares about his/her job sounds like he may have hinted where he stands, and he's implying that he thinks conservatives only care about jobs and not the electorate. Some comics writers do try to pretend they're being balanced, but in the end, they can let the mask slip and give away how they're really just cynical leftists.

Even if McFarlane's story does depict some lower ranking government workers as crooks, something tells me it won't try to argue that the Democrat leadership is in any ways bad, in contrast to a story about Republicans where it's more likely he would be willing to do that, and that's why this isn't likely to be any more interesting than much of the rest of this series ever was.

Comparisons between Iron Man and Israel's Iron Dome defense system

A writer for the Jerusalem Post talks about some comparisons and similarities between Iron Man and the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system.

"Age of Ultron" proves Bendis is not letting go of Avengers

The latest crossover Marvel's got in store shows that Brian Bendis is not going to leave the Earth's Mightiest Heroes alone, and what's planned in its pages is just more nihilism:

“Age of Ultron is about Ultron finally fulfilling his destiny, accelerating his intelligence and taking the Earth,” Bendis says. “The Marvel Universe has been taken by Ultron. There has been a shocking amount of devastation and casualty.”

Bendis clarifies that though the story started in Avengers, the story involved the entire Marvel Universe. “It stars the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Moon Knight, Black Widow, it goes all over the place,” the writer says.

It sounds like he's taking Kurt Busiek's older story from 1998, Ultron Unlimited, which saw the demonic android annihilating an entire section of what must've been a fictionalized district of the former USSR and setting up a robo-monarchy there, and inflating it into something even more full of destruction than Busiek's last story that saw Kang the Conqueror doing much of the same to Earth. And this time, the difference is that they're grinding just about every single ongoing series they're publishing to a screeching halt for the sake of the crossover. Exactly why so few people care to read their books today - because there's no freedom for telling stand-alone stories and the writers working for them now go along in lockstep with all they do anyway.

And Bendis, unsurprisingly, is still set on maintaining his terrible grip on the Avengers.

Bob Greenberger's review of Sean Howe's Marvel bio reveals shortcoming in its latter part

Bob Greenberger, who was an editor at both Marvel and DC and also for magazines like Comics Scene, wrote about Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. I'm not sure whether this is Howe's book or Greenberger's own take on what happened at the turn of the century, but what's told about Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada is disappointingly superficial:

Under [Ike] Perlmutter, Marvel and Toy Biz combined operations and brought Bill Jemas in as president and in turn, he elevated Joe Quesada to editor in chief. As Perlmutter and Avi Arad finally got Marvel on the right track in media, Jemas and Quesada fixed the House that Stan, Jack, and Steve built. Systematically, they tackled one franchise, starting with Spidey, then another, X-Men.

I expected it wouldn't be especially critical of the more modern executives in charge, but that doesn't make it any less galling, if no objective positions are taken or even referenced regarding Jemas and Quesada's hack jobs on Spider-Man and X-Men. The latter underwent 2 problems: one was a forcible mandate that the costumes must look just like the ones in the movies, and two that they brought in Grant Morrison as the writer and he only made it more unappealing and towards the end of his run did a horrible job on both Magneto and Jean Grey. And in Spidey's case, they brought in J. Michael Stracynski, whose left-liberal standings consumed his ego by that time and could be felt in the book at nearly every turn (one of the first stories he wrote was a metaphor for the Columbine massacre that reeked of apologia). Nor did JMS have much feel for Peter, or even Mary Jane, and that he would remain on the series even after Quesada supposedly retooled Sins Past casts doubt on his sincerity. Some fix-it job that was.

Editors rose and fell in favor with Jemas and once they lost his interest, they were quickly gone with a new target in his sight. Jemas was brash and cut through the malaise that a decade of uncertainty allowed to become the status quo. He was right that the continuity was cumbersome and the Ultimate line was a commercial stroke of genius.

Oh, do tell us about it. A line where the X-Men and Ultimates were more adult than entry level, a landmark case of dishonest marketing laced with alienating violence and a needless redo of the Hank Pym as wife-abuser storyline, is really a stroke of genius? I don't think so. Nor do I agree one bit that the continuity was a problem, and it was doing well enough until Jemas and Quesada came along. The few things I would consider unworthy of continuity include the Clone Saga, something that could've just been done away with and disavowed, and that way continuity would've been a lot more stable. If Howe or Greenberger are apologizing/glossing over these cases all in favor of Jemas, who's not remembered very fondly by anybody today, that's a shame.

His successes let him have fun and he never tired of poking DC’s Paul Levtiz, Bob Wayne, and others. When he decided Marvel was withdrawing from the Comics Magazine Association of America in favor of an in-house ratings system, he packed the conference room with every former DC employee even though none had any business being in the room. It had to have been the most uncomfortable meeting Axel Alonso, Stuart Moore, Jenny Lee, or I ever attended.

What successes? He precipitated much of the sales-through-controversy and reduction to tabloid style publicity the medium was harmed by while he was in charge, and I don't recall many of their titles selling through the roof in sales charts. And while Levitz and Wayne were a bad lot too, Jemas' attacks on people like them were still in bad form for a professional businessman and weren't altruistic either. A very poor example indeed, and they just act like it's nothing?

Like Shooter before him, success led to a period of bizarre behavior that ultimately cost them their jobs. But under new President Dan Buckley, Quesada and Alonso, the company has set its sights on a future, organically working to achieve that goal. Howe once again misses a chance to analyze what this has meant across the board, skipping the rise of the Marvel Studios films, beginning with Iron Man and the cadre of Marvel talent consulting on them to keep them as close to the comics as is practical.

There's a difference: even Shooter never acted as sleazy as Jemas and Quesada did, and while Buckley's an improvement in personality, there's no organic direction anymore. Again, I'm not sure whether this is Howe or just Greenberger trying to be diplomatic, but reading this, I think it's very sad that what we have here is someone who won't do a more in depth take on why Marvel's lost so much of its audience, right down to the case of throwing Mary Jane Watson under the bus in Spider-Man's One More Day storyline. How are we supposed to believe then that the people who researched and wrote this book really love all that is Marvel if they don't take an objective approach to some of the worst steps made since the turn of the century?

That doesn't mean the book isn't without merits; I'm sure it's got plenty, but I figure they're more related to the older affairs of Marvel's business. A pity then if whatever it has to say about their steps since 2000 doesn't match up.

Geoff Johns is turning the Ocean Master into less a villain just like Sinestro

The chief un-creative officer of DC told Newsarama that he's turning Aquaman's adversary the Ocean Master into more of a hero as well as villain, just like he's absurdly done with Sinestro in Green Lantern:

...he wanted to explore the "gray areas" behind the battles and political maneuvering of war.

Plus, this time around, the kingdom is the mysterious underwater world of Atlantis, the deities are complex costumed superheroes of the Justice League, and the half-brothers — Ocean Master and Aquaman — are not clearly representing good and evil.

In fact, that latter point is an important one for fans of Johns' writing. With Ocean Master, the writer promises to explore the sides of the character that are not necessarily villainous, comparing Ocean Master to other character considered both heroes and villains — like Sinestro and Black Adam. But he also said the character is not like "any other villain I've tackled."

This whole turning of villains into more anti-hero is getting very old and gray-haired itself, and coming from him, it's not impressive at all. With Sinestro, it was especially preposterous, and made even worse with the way he's been making the Guardians out to look like turncoats.

Johns: I absolutely love villains, as you know. And so looking at Ocean Master and taking a step back, and saying, OK, what kind of person is this? He's someone who actually cares very much for his brother. He doesn't understand his brother at all. And he cares for him, because he's his brother.

He has violent tendencies, just like all Atlanteans do, which we've seen with Arthur. And he has a perspective on the surface world that's very different from Arthur's, but shared with the Atlanteans.

Johns sure does seem to love blurring the differences between good and evil too, and isn't doing Aquaman any favors with that. "Cares"? About as much as the Joker "cares" about Batman and Gotham's citizens, I'd say. Baloney. I also find it irritating today when writers babble about how they enjoy villains far more than heroes, if at all.

This latest nonsense is also part of their next creativity-destroying crossover called Throne of Atlantis, and whatever he's planning would be best forgotten.

Update: Johns' off-putting approach to writing both heroes and villains is also mentioned in this USA Today article about Green Lantern: New Guardians:

Since Green Lantern writer Geoff Johns added many of these colored Lanterns to the universe of the will-powered Green Lanterns and created a rich galactic mythology, the stories explored have shown men, women and aliens who are not black and white in terms of deeds and personalities. Instead, it's all a nice shade of gray.

Not a nice shade. Just a terrible one, that's all. The rainbow lantern parade is also very silly.

Mark Waid doesn't think humor can work with the Hulk's action

USA Today wrote about Mark Waid's plans for the Hulk, such as changing the "Incredible" part of his title to "Indestructible" for the sake of the Marvel NOW relaunching, and he said that:

"There's not a whole lot of room for humor with Hulk smashing things. It's not as cerebral a book as Daredevil can be," the award-winning writer says.

He clearly never read Peter David's take on the green goliath at the time he was still a talented writer himself, which did find plenty of room for humor and if it involves the Hulk smashing up the headquarters of villains while wisecracking, I don't see what's not entertaining about that. David's run only fell apart towards the end when he killed off Betty Banner, apparently taking out his anger over personal problems he was going through at the time using Betty as the means of doing it. She may have been revived later on, but since it was within the time Joe Quesada had become EIC, it was still a botch.

What Waid says makes me wonder if he's never even watched an action-comedy movie, where humor can be found in knocking up the bad guys and their HQs if done right. All the same, he's gone downhill fast in past years, and I wouldn't expect him to deliver any talent on the Hulk's book either.

ASM #698: Spidey and Doc Ock switch bodies?

According to The Fanboy SEO, this page from Amazing Spider-Man #698 is legitimate, and we're seeing the cliched old story of two people switching minds/bodies being dredged up, all for the sake of it, and all so that Dr. Octopus can become Spider-Octopus for a while. Oh, I'm sure it won't last forever, but it does bring to mind that wretched story Grant Morrison wrote for New X-Men in 2001 with "Cassandra Nova" switching minds with Prof. Xavier, so that she could dwell in his body while his own brain remained sitting inside her seemingly dead body. I don't see this being any better.

Update: and here's more info from an article on Newsarama that tells why the 700th issue is better avoided:

Well, it turns out that Amazing Spider-Man #698 actually starts the ball rolling, as Doctor Octopus, Otto Octavius, swaps minds with Peter Parker, taking over Spider-Man's body, and promising to take over his entire life.

This isn't your average body-swap, as Otto tells Peter he knows everything, all of his memories, everyone and everything that Peter has ever known, and Peter, trapped in Otto's dying body, is doomed. The entire issue takes place leading up to the big reveal, with Otto already in Peter's body and just living out a full day in the life of Spider-Man. He goes to work at Horizon and gives proper respect to Peter's inventions over the years, he visits Aunt May "that dear sweet woman" in the hospital, and he even renews Peter's romantic relationship with Mary Jane Watson, something we knew was happening in Superior Spider-Man in 2013.

Ooooohhhhh, I see. So Mary Jane comes back, but she's not actually reunited with Peter at all! It figures they'd be willing to insult everybody's intellect that badly. This brings to mind the controversy surrounding issue 603 where the Chameleon disguised himself as Peter and proceeded to seduce a roomate named Michelle Gonzales. Even if the Chameleon's actions can't be classified as rape, that story, by Fred Van Lente, was still an example of making a criminal's actions look like it was totally fun, which it's not. This new story in ASM sounds like a repeat.

If this is how they're going to try and entice Spider-Fans to return - by running a story where one of Spidey's villains switched bodies and it's not really him rejoining with Mary Jane at all - they're already failing, and the issue should be avoided. I'll be stupefied if comics stores are willing to order busloads of this, considering many only end up gathering dust in the bargain bins later on.

Brian Azzarello won't be honest about the dissent on his rendition of WW

Time Out Chicago interviewed Brian Azzarello, and he predictably takes a path that won't be honest about why his detractors don't like what he's done to Wonder Woman. First, he says in reply to the following query:

How did this gig come about?

I was out to dinner with Dan DiDio. This was actually prior to the New 52 becoming the New 52. We were actually in talks about me doing a different character. We’ve gone out to dinner and I told him what my feelings were about taking this character in a certain direction. He was happy with it, so we were finalizing that. I asked, “Are you doing this [heading in new directions] with some of the other ones?” He said Batman is staying Batman, and he told me what editorial wanted to do for Wonder Woman. I was appalled. I came up with something different right there at dinner. I thought the direction was going to be a mistake for that character, right at her core. And I knew nothing about her!

Which doesn't matter one bit to someone like DiDio. He's actually being rather slippery on the issues surrounding what editorial wanted to do, since if his visions suited their disrespectful positions on the material they're in charge of, why should they have any problem with his ideas? Clearly, they didn't.

Now, his reply to the query about why the disapproving crowd doesn't like his take on WW, he gives a peculiar response that could even end up turning off liberals:

You know there are comic-book purists who hate the idea of Wonder Woman having a father.

Some people thought it was an insult to the ideal of feminism. Giving her a father was an assault to that. Though I have never met a feminist who didn’t have a father. ... With Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, any really famous character, you can break their origins down into a sentence or two, and Wonder Woman didn’t have that. And the sentence or two is not for people who read comics; it’s for people outside of comics, in general popular culture. But now she is Zeus's daughter, and now it works. In a general pop-culture sense, it works. That’s something that everybody can get their head around.

Even if there were detractors who said that, I doubt they were that many, and I don't think even the most hardcore feminists have ever denied having a father. In any case, he's obscuring the real problem WW fans have with this, that it makes the whole origin less imaginative - instead of being an entity created by magic, she's now just like anyone else, and worse, the Greek pagan deities are being depicted like a mafia, and the Amazons as a bunch of vile, murderous monsters. Unfortunately, this has become pretty predictable how many of today's press and comics contributors won't lead an in depth discussion of what they're doing or show the courage to answer and defend their visions.

The irony is that Azzarello, undoubtably a liberal, is willing to say something that his own fellow leftists could find irksome, as he does whatever he can to avoid the deeper issues and avoid addressing the real problems the audience has with his reprehensible rendering of WW and the Amazons.

Tokyo University's new manga graduates

The Asahi Shimbun writes about three new manga students who graduated from the Tokyo Polytechnic University's manga studies division.

Jason Todd: resurrected just to be attacked by the Joker again

Scott Snyder spoke with the Washington Post about his aggravating crossover called Death of the Family, and what he has in store for the pointlessly resurrected Jason Todd:

DB: Fans will no doubt remember the Death in the Family storyline [when the Joker murdered the second Robin, Jason Todd]. Now that Jason is back among the living, what can fans expect when the Joker comes face to face with the Red Hood? I’m not saying they haven’t met before since Jason’s been back, but there’s still a dark history between these two.

SS: Oh yeah, and Joker is going to put him through the ringer like you’ve never seen before. He wants to say “you are why Batman is weak. You are why Batman is soft and old and no fun to play with anymore and deep down Batman wants you all dead. That’s why he allowed me to do that to you Jason ... and so I’m going to do him a favor.

Wow, bringing Jason back only to put him through even more hell than the Joker caused him after clubbing him senseless and leaving him to die in a room with a bomb he failed to disarm in time. The "tribute" to the older story by Jim Starlin is clear. Snyder only wants to show how he really doesn't like Jason at all, and his only interest is putting him through more than bit of sensationalized mayhem all for the sake of it.

At the end of the interview, Snyder says the following about the Clown Prince of Crime:

...one of the brilliant things about the Joker: He takes things that his adversaries think are strengths and convinces them that they are actually weaknesses.

No, he doesn't. Otherwise, Batman and company would have realized long ago that the only suitable place to put the Joker is in the afterlife, and Batman wouldn't have persuaded Jim Gordon not to kill the Clown Prince of Crime after he slew Sarah Essen in the late 90s. I don't forsee any difference here, and even if they do put the Joker to death, it's not bound to last. As history has shown, the big two put a bigger value on the supervillains than they do on the heroes and their supporting casts, most of whom have been phased out of the stories in recent years.

Micronauts and ROM: Spaceknight should be reprinted in trades

This news from Toyark (via The Outhousers) tells that following a new trademark filing by Hasbro, there might come new toys or even comics based on ROM: Spaceknight.

That could certainly be a cool idea, but not only that, as somebody who maintains the strong belief that modern audiences deserve the chance to read and appreciate older stories as much as new ones, I think that even the older comics series based on both that and the Micronauts should be reprinted. Micronauts and ROM were two of the first comics based on licensed merchandise like toys when Bill Mantlo first launched them for Marvel in 1979, having been inspired by some toy products his son got (similarly, DC's Swordquest miniseries in 1982 was one of the first comics based on computer games). And a funny thing is that they lasted much longer than the toys they were based on, both running till 1986 (Mego Corp stopped selling Micronauts in 1980 and Parker Brothers, which made ROM, cancelled it about a year after they started since sales were a failure).

Unlike a lot of later efforts based on toy merchandise, Mantlo tried - at least initially - to integrate the cast of characters into the Marvel universe which explains why, after the licenses expired, they couldn't reuse the characters nor reprint their adventures in paperbacks. In fact, I believe there was one issue of Power Man & Iron Fist where ROM turned up as a guest star that's not officially reprinted in any compilations to date because of the copyright difficulties. But honestly, I do think all this could be straightened out simply by Marvel arranging a meeting with Hasbro to secure the rights to reprinting the older archives of both Micronauts and ROM, and assuring them they'll get their share of the royalties made on sales.

Maybe there will come some new comics just like toys based on ROM and Micronauts, but even so, there should also come trade collections based on the original series from the Bronze Age. I think it could make a lot of people very happy.

Cannibalism in DC's new take on Suicide Squad

USA Today spoke about the New 52 version of the Suicide Squad, which is going to cross over with Batman's Death of the Family storyline to swindle more money from anyone unfortunate enough to buy it, and look what one of the supercrooks already featured has done:

Upcoming issues will return to the ongoing story line involving Basilisk, deal with the apparent sacrifice of Deadshot, delve more into other character's stories, and introduce new adversaries for the Squad.

And the appearance of the Joker will also increase the already high level of action and violence in Suicide Squad, which has seen King Shark eat a Squad member, among other incidents.

That nobody with a weak stomach would want to know about, I'm certain. So there's another third-tier series they're publishing that's been exploited as a cheap excuse for sensationalistic gore. I don't know if Deadshot really kills himself here - they probably wouldn't want to do away with a supervillain as easily as they would some of the good guys - but the violent tone being served up by the writer, Adam Glass, ensures that this will remain a title with a very low recognition level.

Hank McCoy is still more feline than Beast

Back in 2001, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely made Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, look more like a blue-furred mountain cat than the creature he'd come to look like in the 1970s when they took over the sans-adjective X-Men series. This picture is from Brian Bendis' first issue of "All New" X-Men, and wouldn't you know it, they're still going pretty much by the same character design Quitely foisted upon Hank, this time drawn by Stuart Immonen.

I hadn't thought about this much for several years, but it's very sad how they made Hank more unrecognizable than he made himself with that experiment he ran in the early 70s that turned him blue furred. Back then, what made the character design work was that it still gave room for a fully expressive mouth, and while he may not have thought it great to be transformed, he still kept an upbeat personality and a sense of humor (including some of those neat exclamations like "Oh my stars and garters!"), going on to become a member of the Avengers for several years and then a member of the Defenders at the latter end of its 1972-86 run. Nowadays, much of that's been thrown away, along with Prof. Xavier. The current design is ill-suited for smiling expressions, and Hank's humor has been mostly trashed by the terrible writing staff Marvel now employs.

And I don't forsee the defamation of Cyclops being reversed for a long time.

Dan Jurgens seems to understand what's wrong with Obama's policies

In a recent conversation artist/writer Dan Jurgens - whose work includes Superman, Thor, Spider-Man and Booster Gold - was having with Ron Marz on Twitter, Jurgens said:

@ronmarz Hardly. Obamacare does raise the cost of doing business. That isn't "blame"-- it's a reality we'll see happen across the country.
— Dan Jurgens (@djjurgens) November 10, 2012

Wow, he gets what's wrong with the economic side of Obama's healthcare plans! And he also told Marz:

@ronmarz Last CBO estimate said 4-6 million employees will lose their employer sponsored health care due to AHCA. Everything has a cost.
— Dan Jurgens (@djjurgens) November 10, 2012

There's something for comics contributors to think about here too: until now, I'm sure various comics companies have included health benefits and insurance in a writer and artist's wages. Now, if Obamacare becomes reality, it could affect the comics management's ability to pay proper health care payments too. Marz and others of his ilk may want to ponder that and ask if they really want a situation where the economy is so bad, it could even make it hard to pay for health costs.

It sounds like Jurgens is of a mostly conservative background himself, and one of the not too many whom the big two are still willing to give jobs to. If he understands the bad impact Obama's economic policies have on the USA, that's something for which to give Jurgens credit and admiration.

Kieron Gillen doesn't seem to understand Tony Stark/Pepper Potts' relationship

USA Today spoke with the writer Kieron Gillen, who's been assigned to write Iron Man, and he says something ambiguous relating to Pepper Potts:

Stark also uses a low-tech way of disguising himself: shaving off his iconic mustache. The facial hair is back in issue 2, though, and his beard is an important theme in No. 7. (He implies that he knows a guy — Hank McCoy, aka the Beast — who has a hair-growth formula in case he needs it. "I guess the idea might just go wrong and he becomes blue and furry," Gillen jokes.)

Those fans of the Marvel movies may have to get used to a clean-shaven Tony Stark, but the fact that he's not together with Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) in the comics may be more of a surprise. She still plays a significant role in Gillen's Iron Man, where one of the major themes of the book is how Tony relates to women.

"The Tony we have here is a guy who could never quite get together enough to be with somebody as amazing as Pepper is in a long-term way. That speaks to his character. That's a guy I'm interesting in following more."

I thought he almost did once, but I think it was established in the late 90s that after he and Pepper tried to rekindle an affair for a while, they concluded they just weren't made for each other and let it go. It wasn't just him who thought this, it was Pepper too.

But even more bewildering is why they're suggesting readers would be surprised that Pepper doesn't have a big role in today's stories - long before, Happy Hogan won her over and they married for a time (but later divorced), and even adopted children after difficulty conceiving while living in Colorado, during which time had little presence in Iron Man's life in the 1970s, when he led affairs with ladies like Bethany Cabe. If Pepper didn't have a big role in Tony's life for many years, why should it be surprising now? And with the way Marvel's staff has been handling IM since Avengers: Disassembled, it's actually good if she hasn't been there much, since when she has, they've been mishandling her and Happy Hogan: he was apparently killed in the 4th volume of Iron Man, at the time of Civil War, and a character death related to a story as bad as that is not something I would consider classic.

And since this is the era of "Marvel NOW", there's no chance Gillen's IM will compare in any way to the much better runs of decades past.

The continued deterioration of Rob Liefeld

Ethan Van Sciver is one of the not too many conservatives working in comics today (as an artist; it doesn't look likely that many conservative writers are able to land jobs, that's for sure), and according to this, he'd written on his Facebook page that he's willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt that he'll be willing to make improvements in his second term (though I honestly don't think we can count on that). But Rob Liefeld apparen't wasn't impressed, and took to attacking him on Twitter. His tweets included stuff like these:

This guy online is such an idiot. Acted the fool online for MONTHS, now he is a political healer urging tolerance. Can bear no more.
— robertliefeld (@robertliefeld) November 7, 2012

Sorry, my earlier statement is about a loud mouth conservative who was as divisive as possible over last 3 months.
— robertliefeld (@robertliefeld) November 7, 2012

If it wasn't clear before that Liefeld's a leftist, it is now. He's a pretty disrespectful one too, and this is probably the first time he's ever turned seriously hostile against another worker in the field over his political/conservative viewpoints. This post on The Outhousers (they may be trying some satirical approach to the subject, but I can't say I find it that amusing), tells that Van Sciver ran a poll about Liefeld's approval ratings, which he scored pretty low at, and his attacks on Van Sciver suggest he's merely being vindictive rather than trying to at least improve his manners.

It's clear that Liefeld's career has made it to nowheresville by this point, and his cavalier attitude sure isn't helping. Van Sciver suggested people confront him about it, and he said:

What's with all the Van Sciver tweets? What are I people talking about? I've been watching Deadpool on an infinite loop w @robertkirkman
— robertliefeld (@robertliefeld) November 7, 2012

Oh, so then he tried to pretend he'd never acted up. Sigh. What a pity that Liefeld not only can't draw feet, he can't even react politely to criticism. Maybe it's time for him to try out a different career, though not in movies, as this post suggests he might be doing.

Rags Morales sounds like he's anti-capitalist

A few days before the election, artist Rags Morales said the following on Twitter:

If you love money, vote for Romney; but prepare yourself for a divorce.
— Ralph RAGS Morales (@RagsMorales) October 29, 2012

Romney lost, unfortunately, but for now, it sounds as though Morales has a problem with capitalism, and his comment is certainly dumb. Doesn't he want to get paid for the comics he's drawn? (Not that I've noticed many he's been credited to lately. Maybe he's taking out his anger on politicians instead of the editors in the medium that's not giving him enough assignments.) He later answered a reply from another Tweeter by saying:

can you with good conscience talk about lies and incompetence and support Rmoney? I couldn't with a straight face.

He can't even spell Romney's name correctly now either. I've come to the conclusion he was a rather overrated artist, and his character designs for Hawkman and Atom looked too much the same as the other, and now he's only made me lose even more respect for him with some absurd politicized comments (similarly, his willingness to illustrate Identity Crisis and imply to the press that DC didn't care if they made anyone angry with how they did it was another reason I lost respect for him, because of how alarmingly shameless he'd become).

Hellblazer is ending at issue 300, only to be relaunched

The longest running series ever published under the Vertigo imprint is coming to an end with the 300th issue, but also being restarted per the custom of trying for short-term sales based on premiere issues:

...Constantine, a somewhat sorcerer more at home fighting demons than socializing with people, won't be fading away with the title's end that is being written by longtime writer Peter Milligan and illustrated by artists Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini. Instead, the ending is a beginning of sorts for the character.

That's because writer Robert Venditti, a best-selling author whose works include "The Homeland Directive," will launch "Constantine" with artist Renato Guedes, a new series from DC Comics focusing on the detective's adventures in the relaunched DC universe.

Fans of Constantine will still see elements of the man they've come to know since "Hellblazer" began in 1988, Venditti said, but there will be changes along with the familiar aspects, too.

"He's going to be the same age that he is in Justice League Dark and the same character that people know and recognize - the drinking and smoking, the con man aspect of him - that's going to be very much part of the series," he said.

Unfortunately, it may be all in accordance with how the New 52 is being handled, and for all we know, despite the anti-hero elements Alan Moore's creation was known for, there's every chance even that will be ruined by the same political correctness that's even affected the new take on Swamp Thing. For now, this looks to be the last DC series that went under the Vertigo imprint to come to an end, and shift back into the regular universe because they've decided to stop using the imprint for almost everything that was originally published under the standard DC label.

Thank goodness there wasn't any DC/Marvel attempt to cash in on elections this year

This posting on Newsarama says one thing right:

I guess it’s a good thing that we didn’t see a New 52 Decisions this year...

After the sad loss of the GOP in yesterday's election, I can only agree all the more that it's good DC didn't come up with another something that was bound to leave even more of a bad aftertaste, nor did Marvel. It would only have made the subject all the more frustrating. That doesn't mean there won't be/aren't more politicized storylines planned in the future by the major comics companies, though. And those that do turn up are bound to be more biased to the left and quite wretched.

How can continuity be a problem when it's long been ruined?

USA Today interviewed Jon Hodgman of the Daily Show, mostly about the Legion of Super-Heroes which he's been a fan of for a long time, and he said something I just don't agree with:

Why do you feel the Legion's been rebooted so many times, and what do you feel has held up best about it throughout these reboots? For that matter, what do you feel has been lost?

Comics have a problem, and that is continuity — the obsession with placing the characters in an existing world, where every event is marked in canon. You're supposed to believe that these weepy star boys of now are the same gung-ho super teens fighting space monsters in the '60s, and they've only aged perhaps five years.

It eventually strains credulity, and can shackle a writer who wants to try a something new. Very few narrative forms have to deal with this principle, and a fan base that gets mad when it's violated, except for maybe soap operas (which is what comics are).

So there are these periodic memory wipes and start-overs. But to me, it never felt right with the Legion. There are just too many of these kids, none of them is iconic, the whole pleasure is the continuity — the evolution of comic styles and sensibility encoded in their being.

I fully disagree. Continuity is character development, and can also serve to set special character traits in place that serve the heroes' likability and plausibility too, that writers with sense and respect for the casts of characters do well to follow. It also helps keep things consistent and provides ideas for later writers to build on. As for age factor, it sounds like he never read newspaper strips like Peanuts, Dick Tracy, Beetle Bailey and Brenda Starr, all of which kept their leads at virtually the same ages and nobody ever complained about that. For Peanuts, it was practically the whole point that the stars like Charlie Brown remain little kids. And while Jim Davis celebrates Garfield's anniversary every year in June, he's still remained pretty much the same "age" himself. So too has his owner Jon Arbuckle, now that I think of it. The challenge is in keeping most of the stories stand-alone, which helps continuity far better.

But what's really laughable here is that he must've been living in a bubble for quite a while - continuity's been virtually destroyed in the past decade at both DC and Marvel, with Identity Crisis ignoring/retconning past storylines and developments solely for the sake of it, and Spider-Man's Sins Past going out of its way to make both Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson look bad. And that's just the beginning.

I also think it's ridiculous if he's suggesting the Legion's popularity be based on iconism instead of how well written the story is. And at one time, it was...but no longer. Even the Legion and its continuity's been one of the biggest victims of the modern obsession with publicity stunts, when it got changed post-Zero Hour in 1994.

Alexandra deWitt's fridge scene boomerangs again in GL: New Guardians #13

Some people find it maddening whenever Marvel's staff brings up the Hank Pym as wife-abuser storyline from 1981 in the Avengers, since it all but ruined Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Yellowjacket's image, and Brian Bendis' tasteless reference in Avengers: Disassembled didn't help. At this point, I'm already finding it very irritating whenever DC regurgitates the refridgerator scene from GL #54 vol. 3 inside the DCU proper too, since it's done nothing to clean up the mess it did to their image. Several months ago, in the new Blue Beetle's last series, it was first made clear that Kyle Rayner's girlfriend remained dead in the refridgerator. Now, in the 13th issue of Green Lantern: New Guardians, it's been officially confirmed again that this atrocity is still canon, though with a few alterations:

Tony Bedard uses this issue to give readers a sense of some of things that have changed for Kyle since Flashpoint. Here we learn that his father wasn't in the picture at all, and while Alex DeWitt was still killed and stuffed in a refrigerator the person responsible remains unknown.

So the differences are that his dad no longer has any significant ties to his backstory, and Major Force as the culprit appears to be phased out. Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same: the alterations notwithstanding, Alex deWitt is still a corpse for the sake of giving Kyle "motivation". Even if Hal Jordan hadn't been turned into a lethal psychopath in Emerald Twilight, that would still have been enough to scare me away from the Kyle Rayner run. I don't see how it helps to keep this origin for Kyle in place. It was an early example of shock tactics for the sake of sales and even if jarring acts of violence like that didn't occur again for much of the Kyle run, it still sticks out like a sore thumb, and today it's far less likely to impress upon new readers. They may be trying to make it all seem less grisly here than it was in 1994, but it's no use; it only recalls a time that won't be considered a classic era by any stretch.

And it's not just the repellant shock value depiction of Alex's curtain call that I consider damaging to that run, it's the missed opportunities and what it led to later that does: traces of insular storytelling, a problem that's only gotten worse today. Alex was the only "civilian girlfriend" Kyle ever really had; the 2 regular ladyfriends he got later were also 2 superheroines - Donna Troy and then Jade - and an editorial mandate may have had what to do with that too. By getting rid of Alex and not conceiving a new, original character to serve as Kyle's girl Friday, Ron Marz (and editor Kevin Dooley) trashed a lot of potential for organic storytelling, and robbed Donna and Jade of their own direction. Which IMHO was artificial, to say the least. I think it was implied at least once that Kyle was afraid to start a relationship with an ordinary woman afterwards, which compounds the insular feel of the book, as he "withdrew" into a world with more of a superhero cast than a civilian one. I'd only read a small amount of GL at that time, but if memory serves, in what I did read, there was little or no other supporting cast that could also be called organic (unless we include that gay teenager named Terry Berg, whom Judd Winick put in just for PC agenda mishmash).

But, even if they had come up with an organic cast of characters, it still wouldn't make the Kyle run of GL any more valid than Spider-Man's been after One More Day if they were going to throw Hal Jordan under the bus. The really sad part is how the fridge story's been referenced more than a few times since directly within the DCU, such as in Blackest Night. I've been wondering if it'll be revealed in this new rendition that the Guardians did Alex in just to get Kyle to serve them more seriously, an idea that reminds me of the plotline Gerard Jones wrote that was originally set to run in GL instead of Emerald Twilight, which would reveal that the Guardians killed Hal's father. It may not turn out to be the case with the new take on Kyle's origin, but if I end up predicting correctly, that'll suggest that DC's staff are exploiting some of Jones' ideas that he'd only written to try and avoid the damage that would become Twilight (what he thought of still sounds ill-advised, even if he had a backdoor plan for undoing it) for their own degrading modern intentions.

Artist Justiniano convicted for possession of child porn

Now this is downright horrific: Josue Rivera, the comics artist known as Justiniano, was arrested and now convicted for possession of child pornography. However, the article does something really stupid:

BRIDGEPORT -- The artist who created DC Comics' "The Creeper" was the biggest creep of all when it came to child porn, a state prosecutor said Friday.

Police said Josue Rivera -- who illustrates comic books under the name "Justiniano" -- photo-manipulated images of a 10-year-old female relative, combining them with pornographic images, and possessed nearly 100 other photos in his child porn collection.

Now his offenses are abominable indeed, and he deserves more than just the 10 years he's officially sentenced to receive for prison. He should serve one hundred-plus years and get hard labor to boot.

But let's get something straight here: Rivera did NOT create the Creeper. The character - whose real name is Jack Ryder - was created long before Rivera was born, in 1968 by Steve Ditko. Justiniano did nothing more than to draw some of the more recent iterations of the oddball hero like this one from 2006. What possessed the jerks who put that report together to say he "created" the character rather than illustrated at least one of his stories? Are they trying to embarrass everybody away from the Creeper by making it sound as though he was literally conceived by such an awful man as Justiniano instead of a much more decent man like Ditko? For shame. Message to the Connecticut Post: do your homework.

I've done some research and discovered that Justiniano was the artist on another miniseries for DC, this a most notorious one: Day of Vengeance, which was a followup to Identity Crisis, and which opened with a scene that made it sound like Jean Loring was being sexually harrassed by the Eclipso crystal. And the CT Post article says his portfolio also boasts the following:

Rivera is a nationally known artist whose demented, corpse-like Creeper has faced off against Batman on DC Comics' covers. Rivera excels at twisted and bizzare characters, and has worked on issues of Superman, The Incredible Hulk, Beast Boy and Doctor Fate.

He's also basically collaborated in producing twisted stories, as his art contribution to Day of Vengeance can attest. And any particular story he drew, he's now cast a dark cloud over with his offensive antics behind the scenes. It's definitely eerie that an artist who drew comics with horrific story elements involved would also turn out to be quite a diablo himself, which could possibly explain his willingness to take part in drawing bottom of the barrel publications like Day of Vengeance. I hope Justiniano remains in a cell block for a long time, and his career as an artist will be over indefinitely.

How can I pity Paul Levitz for what Bill Jemas did to him if his approach to marketing was no better?

At the most recent NYCC, former Marvel CEO Bill Jemas, who became notorious for making defamatory remarks about DC and Paul Levitz when he was in charge and was eventually booted from the company after he tried to force his tabloid visions on the Fantastic Four, met with Levitz again at the convention, and it didn't go over well:

...at a meet-and-greet for New York Comic Con I attended (but arrived too late for this moment), Bill Jemas and Paul Levitz met once more, a decade on. Bill decided to be magnanamous and go for it, very loudly and very publicly, telling Paul that after everything, after so long, it was good to see him again. Paul, in a very measured fashion replied "I wish... I could say the same." And that was that for the evening, they stayed at separate ends of the room...

And I wish I could sympathise with him for any and all trouble Jemas caused him and his staff at the time...but as I've been well aware for several years now, Levitz is no less guilty of doing everything to harm his own outfit, like letting DiDio get the keys to the kingdom, or failing to do anything on his part to prevent the publicity stunts DC coughed out from being greenlighted. Identity Crisis and the crossovers that followed, among other ghastly embarrassments, those are just some of the mishandlings that took place under his watch as a senior executive, and he did nothing on his part to stop them, which I honestly think he could have at least tried, if he'd wanted to. How can I feel sorry for him when much of what took place at the time was little different - and possibly worse - than what Marvel under Jemas/Quesada's leadership was cranking out, including metaphors for anti-Americanism and other negative views of heroism?

Sure, there was once a time when Levitz began as a pretty good writer in the Bronze Age, and his most famous work was on the Legion of Super-Heroes. But by the 90s he was fast adding himself to the list of stumbling fools, and he may have had some blame to shoulder for Emerald Twilight. It was after he became more of a publisher that he faltered. I'm not sure why I should feel sorry for a man who otherwise betrayed much of the good he once contributed for the sake of PC madness in an era when the major publishers were cowering at the perceived ability of Image to burgle away their audience, not to mention the incredibly dumb impression they gave that they were anti-competition, something Jemas certainly did in his time.

As for Jemas, from what this suggests, he never actually apologized to Levitz for making disparaging statements, and as much as I've come to be disillusioned with Levitz, if Jemas failed to say he's sorry for setting such a horrific example, that was still getting off on the wrong foot for a remeet. I'm not sorry that Jemas was pushed out of Marvel, I just think it's a shame that a man who supposedly helped them out of bankruptcy would abuse his welcome so badly and that Quesada, who's no less guilty, is still connected to the company, even if he's no longer EIC. And that's why today, not only is their influence still tangible, it's why they're still losing sales.

Chuck Dixon would rather Stephanie Brown not be in the DCnU

Dixon ran a special Q&A session on Reddit (via The Outhousers), and in reply to a question about Spoiler, he said:

I'd keep Steph out of the New 52. It's like letting your kid play in traffic! Then, when it's all over, bring her back.

In a way, this makes sense: they've already treated her horrifically enough, and if she did turn up in the New 52, there's every chance they'd put her in some very awful situations. This is why it's actually a good thing if fellow third-tier protagonists like Elongated Man and Sue Dibny, the Silver Age Atom and Jean Loring, Julia and Vanessa Kapatelis, even Ted Kord don't turn up either, because there's a very likely chance they too will go through pure horror.

Even so, I had a sad feeling that fans of Stephanie Brown would find themselves in a losing battle, thanks to a domineer like Dan DiDio who's largely shut them out, just like Spider-fans so far have wound up in a losing battle with Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso over the status of Mary Jane Watson. Even before all this, what DiDio and company did to Steph - something for which even Bill Willingham has to shoulder some blame - was jaw-droppingly contemptuous, putting her into Robin's boots momentarily only to be thrown out of the role soon after by a badly written Batman, and writing Black Mask drilling her during War Games.

Making her into another Batgirl later on didn't help much either, not just because it was done at Cassie Cain's expense, but also because it just showed their inability to market her as her own role. Then again, now that I think of it, they didn't even try that much either, whatever marketing they did give was very weak.

Dixon's comment hints that he hopes the New 52 will end and they'll return to the older continuity established in 1986, a sentiment I'm behind 100 percent, but alas, it's something that'll doubtlessly take a very long time, and might only be possible with different owners in charge.