Funnybook Babylon » Blog Archive » Fandom, Readership and Snark

What’s starting to disturb me more is the reaction to this that I see on a lot of the more moderated/respectable blogs – this conscious attempt to cut ties with the tastes of the hoi polloi and instead turn the topic to how cleverly you can savage a certain creator or book. Mike Choi is right – the switch is defaulted to “snark” all across the blogging community and everyone’s tripping over themselves to be the funniest guy to say something’s going to suck.

I’m increasingly beginning to feel that the topic of conversation is turning from comics themselves to the comics community, because everyone’s trying to take sides and generate controversy. Everyone wants to start some shit or get some gossip, everyone wants to know if marvel b0y’s going to set the photocopier on fire and dress up like Dan Buckley to try to fire Joe Quesada. Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to know that, I’m enjoying this little drama as much as everyone (except for when people turn their blogs into dedicated spoiler dumps), but doesn’t everyone remember comics? Does it really take All Star Superman #10 to get comics discussion going these days, even if it’s just “OMG best issue ever”? And no, I’m not counting the latest 40-thread viral controversy about whether (X) or (Y) is racist or misogynist.

Go scope it.

By the way, the best podcast in history went live last week. Go give it a listen, too. You might hear a familiar voice talking about comics.

A few highlights:

Like if you went to his wikipedia page Joe, and you were to read it, your head would explode. It abuses time travel in the worst way.
– Pedro on “Per Degaton”

“The only man trying to be a cross between Doctor Doom and Marlo Stanfield.”
– Joe on “What Pedro wishes to be when he grows up.”

“4th Letter is a subsidiary of David Brother’s ego.”
– Pedro on “our special guest’s website.”

“She’s like an ineffective Amanda Waller.”
– David B. on Val Cooper

“Interestingly enough, genocide was not enough for Metron. He was totally fine about that.”
– Jamaal on “The betrayal of Mister Miracle”

“Honestly, he was like a Scooby Doo villian back then.”
– David B. on Jack Kirby’s Darksied

” I do like that original Norse Myth where Thor’s hammer got taken by a space alien.”
– Joe on “Viking poet Walt Simonson”

“He just got a kid, so he needs his cash.”
– Pedro on Matt Fraction

“I hear Chris is turning into a spicy latina.”
– David on the FBBPodcast relaunch at New York Comic-con and the ensuing continuity changes.

There! Now you don’t have to listen to the podcast!

Yes, this was supposed to be up on Thursday. You’ll be surprised to find that this time it wasn’t the fault of my laziness. Instead, PopCultureShock was having some technical difficulties and couldn’t update the front page for a couple days.

So here’s my review of Acclaim’s short-lived series based on Killer Instinct.

You know those Marvel cartoons from the 60’s with the really awful animation and stills taken from the comics themselves? A guy by the name cyphrx took this style and made his own Avengers parody, based on what he considers the aftermath of the very first issue.

Enjoy the Newer Mightier Ultimater Avengers, but be warned, it does feature bad language and blurred out Hulk dong.

A year ago, I bought, read and reviewed Peter David’s novelization of Spider-Man 3. I thought it was pretty good and went on record to say that Sam Raimi would have to go out of his way to fuck up that movie. Wouldn’t you know it, he did exactly that. He deleted a handful of scenes that would have turned the movie’s three villains into more than ridiculous, one-dimensional jokes. While he removed all the valuable Eddie Brock and Sandman scenes, he made it even worse by hardly shaving off any whiny Mary Jane moments.

I made the decision to go for round two. This time Peter David writes a novelization based on the upcoming Iron Man film. More than anything, I was curious. The build-up has been nice. Not just with the trailers, but the feeling that there’s love in the movie. I recall Jon Favreau saying that in preparation, he had been reading every single issue of Iron Man from the 60’s on. So would love be enough to make this story work?

Yes. Yes it really would.

I’m not going to give out explicit spoilers, but if you really want an absolute blank slate to the point that you didn’t even watch the trailers, by all means don’t read this and instead just give me $5.

Read the rest of this entry �

Part I:

Part II:

More please.

Guess what I’ve been reading?

Content to come. Pardon the placeholder.

With hermanos becoming the senior editor at PopCultureShock, it was only natural that I’d tag along. Now, as it turns out, the last three days have featured me in some fashion.

For Wednesday, it’s me doing an article for Alternate Current, the weekly thing where a guest blogger writes about whatever. Here, I discuss the five What If comics that came out over the past months, which will be available next month in trade form. Really strong year for those. If you’re by any chance interested in doing an Alternate Current article, contact hermanos.

For Thursday, it’s the very first installment of Comics From the 5th Dimension! That’s right, I now have my own weekly column, where I discuss the stranger corners of the comic universe. Read on as this week I discuss The Adventures of JELL-O Man and Wobbly, a really wacky comic written in part by Peter David and Kurt Busiek. Plus it has a Sonic the Hedgehog preview insert as a bonus mini-review.

Keep in mind that hermanos wrote that front-page headline for it. I saw that and was like, “JELL-O Man was before Bill Cosby? What? No!”

And for Friday, I sit in for another installment of Picks and Pans. Along with four other reviewers, I take a look at a handful of stuff that came out this week. For me, I went with Immortal Iron Fist, Invincible, Wolverine: Origins and Incredible Hercules.

So go and read if you’re up for it and join me every Thursday for another go at Comics From the 5th Dimension. Believe me, I have like a year’s worth of material already.

Earlier tonight I was in the middle of a conversation about how many Cable archetypes there are in comics and this little idea clicked in my head. It’s silly, but I can’t shake the need to at least give it a mention.

DC has been playing around with Kingdom Come a lot lately. I haven’t been reading Justice Society of America, but I know Starman is from that reality and they’ve been using a good amount of heroes and villains from that story since the new volume started up. Most notably KC Superman and Gog from Kingdom. Geoff Johns writes JSA and is also a co-writer of Booster Gold.

Recently, Booster Gold introduced the title character’s father. He never showed up in Booster’s old series, including his issue of Secret Origins, but I suppose something was suspect about his lack of appearance mixed with Booster choosing never to bring him up. Now he’s in league with Per Degaton, an old school Despero, Ultra-Humanite and the mysterious Black Beetle. What they’re planning isn’t exactly known.

When he was teaming up with corrupt time-traveler Rex Hunter, Booster Sr. (I don’t recall ever seeing his name) was out to undo the destinies of the Justice League so that he could use time travel to his advantage and become the ultimate superhero. Think about that. He wanted Superman, Batman and all the rest out of the way so that he could be the top hero. He’s totally missing the point about what being a superhero is about and it’s set to someday blow up in his face. Sound familiar?

Not just that, but notice the short, white hair and scar going down his right eye. Seemingly based on Cable, just like another DC character.

What I’m wondering is if Geoff Johns has any intentions on somehow taking this guy…

…and having him change costumes so he can someday be this guy…

I’m not saying that this is going to happen. I’m not even certain if I want it to happen. All I’m saying is that if it does happen, I totally called it. Just throwing that out there.

Just a quick post to point out that after six months or so of forgetfulness, I’ve finally updated the site’s Table of Contents. This is good news if you want easier navigation through the Ultimate Edits and the Black History Month posts. Remember, any post accompanied by the Juggernaut is good reading. So they say.

Also, Solenna keeps updating that damn Greg Land tracer gif. Let’s give her a hand!

Seeing as how Hoatzin and hermanos have been getting so much attention for the criticism pile-on for Greg Land in light of him being the sour milk in the bowl of X-Men cereal… whoa! I’m not sure how I feel about that metaphor.

Anyway, I too have made a discovery about Mr. Land. I found an old sketch of Land’s from Ultimate Fantastic Four and noticed it looked a bit off. There’s something strangely familiar about this scene.

Maybe I’m just looking at it too hard. I don’t know.

By the way, Solenna updated her Peabody Award winning Greg Land/X-Men #500 gif. Good for her.