I dug the first issue of New Mutants, but #2 hit one of my few nitpicky pet peeves. This bit right here:

Naw, son. In addition to being browner back in the day (what’s up with the coloring in this book? everything is set to “superbright”), Bobby is Brazilian. They don’t speak Spanish down there. It’s Portuguese. In fact, here’s a bit from a letters page I found in an X-Force comic I was reading about a month back. It’s from somewhere between issue 80 and 82, I think. The page it was on had reactions for X-Force #76, so you do the math.

Listen to Giancarlo Lima, fellas! I’d have emailed this directly to whoever’s editing the book, but New Mutants doesn’t have a lettercol email setup, near as I can tell. And leaving Zeb Wells a Youtube comment just seems… weird.

I think what I enjoy the most about Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie’s Aya is that it isn’t really about anything. I don’t mean to say that it’s aimless, or doesn’t have a plot, or anything like that. What it isn’t, is an afterschool special or sociopolitical statement. It isn’t a book about how “Africans are normal people, too!” It’s just a story about young girls living in Côte d’Ivoire.

In a way, it succeeds as a statement for those same reasons. The usual mental image the word “Africa” conjures is one of mud huts, bone noses, and warlords running roughshod over the countryside. Aya presents a scenario that is made of the same kind of drama that small town life anywhere is buried in. There are teens going out to the designated make-out spot, a father sucking up to a local high powered businessman, a girl who wants to sidestep all that drama, and surprise pregnancies. Who hasn’t had a friend hook up with somebody you liked? Aya is, at its heart, about small town relationships.

Aya is the main character of the book, though a few characters end up being the ones who drive the story. Aya observes what’s going on, dancing in and out of the drama, while trying to make her own way in the world. One of the first things she does is ditch a party to finish her homework. Later, she explains to her father that she wants to be a doctor so that she can help people. She isn’t a nerd. It isn’t about how a Nerd With a Heart of Gold walks through the valley of the shadow of death, showing the Jocks and Frat Boys and Mean Girls what’s what. No, she’s just a normal girl. She’s studious, and aware of who she wants to be, but that’s not anything exceptional. She isn’t a flower.

Aya’s surrounded by a decent sized cast. She’s got her family, including a little sister, her friends, who in turn have their own family, and then the various boys that are interested in one girl or another or both. Oubrerie’s art does a good job of differentiating between them. Their faces are distinct, obviously, but there are even little differences in posture and body language.

The scene where one girl explains to her boyfriend that she’s pregnant is a great one. Oubrerie isn’t afraid to do a bit of cartooning, and it’s employed to great effect here. I like that he employs some classic techniques to get his point across. Proportions warp, eyes bug out, shadows cover a face, stars and sweat drops abound… I like it. I could totally see this as a cartoon. Something like Home Movies after it dropped Squigglevision.

I really dug Aya, and I’m probably going to order the next volume, Aya of Yop City, this week. I’m a little irritated at myself for never having tried it before now, but Drawn & Quarterly did good bringing it over.

This is… This… I don’t know. It just is and I made it.

With apologies to Jack Kirby and Dan Walsh.

When you ask a certain type of person what kind of comics they like; well, first they’ll correct you.  They will say ‘graphic novels.’  And then they will tell you that they don’t have one specific interest, they just like high-quality graphic novels.

While I can admire a search for the best quality products of a medium that you like, I’ve always felt a certain contemptuous pity for those people.  Really?  Just ‘high-quality’?  Just ‘good’?  Just ‘insightful’?  These people are either liars, or are the stunted, gnarled, embittered kind of jerks who will tell you that they only listen to classical music and NPR.  Sure, their taste is unquestionable and their likes and dislikes as pure as the driven snow, but – really?  They have no guilty pleasures?  No specific areas of interest?  No morbid curiosity?  No nostalgic favorites or fannish loves or goofy objects of affection?  It just seems so flavorless and bland.

And I can say this because I without a doubt know that those people, when I tell them I like the Batsquad and the Arrows and have an irrational prejudice against Marvel, pity me just as much.

As well they might.  I’m a character-based-fan.  That?  Is like attending a Rolling Stones concert, making it backstage, and spending the whole time talking about your favorite member of the Monkees.

There are many humiliations to being a character-based-fan.  Start out with the fact that, prestige-wise, you are the lowest rung of the ladder (and considering you’re already into comics, that’s a really low ladder to begin with).  Add to that that artist-based-fans can flit to one book or another, ignoring all plot and dialogue and rhapsodizing about a page layout, and writer-based-fans can camp out for a story-arc or two before moving on.  A character-based fan is pretty much stuck in a book forever.  We’re like those frogs who get put in cold water, and then don’t jump out when it’s heated up, boiling ourselves to death.  But at least the frogs go quietly.  Character-based-fans are the ones at Cons, arguing with a panel of uncomfortable comics-professionals about how our character would never do that, while the audience hisses at us.

We’re the idiots who get into ‘who would win in a fight’ arguments and talk about the logistics of what Batman can carry around in his utility belt, and complain about how terrible a comic is while they’re buying it.

Still better than yakking about the artistic merits of Lost Girls, though.

I’m coming at you guys with a few short blurbs this week. I’ve got a few things on my mind that aren’t really topics for longer think-pieces, but we’ll be back to the normal 4thletter! format next week.

In both the comic book community and the video game community, the release of monthly sales figures is a newsworthy event. One look at the comments on Newsarama or an NPD thread on the NeoGAF forums reveals the incredible level of importance that fans give to the raw data, even without any sort of analysis from journalists in their respective industries. What I’m stuck puzzling out, though, is what these numbers mean to people who aren’t invested in cheering on one company or another. Are they worth anything beyond a passing moment of happiness when you see that something you like sells well?

It’s tempting to just write off sales figures as nothing more than fanboy bait, mere fodder for endless arguments about which consoles, characters, and companies are better than others. That’s mostly what they’re for, after all, when you’re just looking at the commentary that follows the postings. Let’s not let the fanboys ruin things for us, though. There’s important information to be found if you’re a huge nerd about industry trends, success stories, and the difference between products that are immediate blockbusters and those with “long tails” (things that become successful, sales-wise, over a long period of time).

Admittedly there’s not a lot there for someone who isn’t invested in either comics or games, but don’t write sales off as something boring. Sales figure data is what leads to really interesting stories and analysis, enabling discussion about why nobody but Nintendo can sell games on the Wii, or why Justice League of America is still a top 15 book, or why Chris Claremont keeps getting his own series (brand recognition, name recognition, and built-in fanbases, respectively and collectively).

David and I have both been replaying Final Fantasy 7 since its release on the PlayStation Network last week. It’s got me thinking a lot about how RPG design, or at least Japanese RPG design, hasn’t really changed significantly since its original release in late ’97. Final Fantasy 7 was a watershed moment for me, the first RPG I ever played through, and since I was 12 at the time I did it, the game left a lasting impression on me. This impression, I think, is what makes me feel like just about every JRPG I’ve played since has just been a refinement of that “modern formula,” with everything post-FF7 and post-move-to-3d playing incredibly similarly.

This is clearer to me in the current generation of games than it has been in a long time. Games like Eternal Sonata, Infinite Undiscovery, Tales of Vesperia, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope, once you get past the novelty of their respective combat systems and graphical styles, all feel like variation on the same tired themes. They’re not bad games, for what they are, but there’s nothing innovative about them at all, to my eyes.

Am I completely wrong about this? In the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 era, RPGs were the games that I cut my teeth on, the genre I delved into more deeply than any other. It might just be that I’m jaded, but outside of, say, Final Fantasy 12 and the recent Persona games, it’s like the quote about there being “nothing new under the sun” is actually completely true for the genre. Please, someone tell me I’m wrong about this. I’d love to be able to play a new game instead of going through Final Fantasy 7 for the 5th time, no matter how fun it is, and how nostalgic I am.

I know I talked about this last week, but how good is inFamous? I’ve played more of it since the last time I wrote, and despite warnings that the missions would get repetitive, it hasn’t lost a single bit of its charm. I know people don’t want to read me harping on this game again and again, so this’ll be the last time I mention it, but it’s the best game I’ve played all year and anyone who has a PlayStation 3 and 60 bucks to spare has no excuse for not playing it. It’s got good combat, great platforming, and a story that’s engaging

Finally, I want to conduct an informal straw poll of the 4thletter! readers… Video games are a new topic for 4thletter! (longtime readers don’t need to worry about it taking over, It’s just me and my weekly post), so I really have no idea what kind of things you actually want to read about. So far I’ve just been winging it and assuming that my audience isn’t one full of enthusiasts, and I’ve been trying to aim my thoughts accordingly. If this is the wrong assumption to make, leave a comment or send me an e-mail. Let me know what kind of articles you guys want to read, enthusiasts or people who could not care less about games, and I’ll get to work filling that niche.

Killer Mike’s I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind II was one of my favorite albums last year. I don’t know that it was 100% good, but I dig it. It was an album with a strong message, and one I can support. The Grind that Mike pledges allegiance to is Getting Rich INDependently. A goofy acronym, but an important one. If you’re working for someone else’s dream, you probably aren’t working toward your own. “If you have a boss, maybe you should fire your boss” is a profound statement. It’s full of arrogance, but it’s also very apt. It’s about getting off your butt and working for you, for something you believe in, rather than someone else’s money machine. The most important statement on the album, for mer personally, is at the end of “If I Can’t Eat Right.” “If you knew how much you were worth, you would ask for more than you get.”

Larry Leong is a friend of mine, and I’d like to think that he subscribes to a similar mentality. He’s been doing stunt work and acting in Hollywood for the past few years, and working on his baby, Yeah Sure Okay. YSO is a martial arts film, but it’s also a response to a lot of trends Larry saw that he wasn’t too fond of. Jump-cut, MTV-style editing, and a general lackluster sense of creativity. He wrote and directed a martial arts movie with no dialogue, no names, and a ton of action, and it ended up pretty entertaining.

The story is simple. There are two friends. One wears a blue shirt, the other a red one. There is a girl, whose face is never seen, that they both fall in love with. There are also several other guys, and all of them want the girl. As these things go, these guys are skilled in various kinds of martial arts, and our heroes end up in the middle of a city-wide battle for love.

YSO isn’t all action. There are moments of personal reflection in the occasional downtime and a couple of flashbacks. Blue has recently broken up with his girlfriend and is in a funk because of it. Neither Blue nor Red have luck with dating. You get the point pretty quickly, and it helps that the story is so familiar. It gives Larry a chance to string along a series of clever and inventive fights while keeping your interest up.

The fights are definitely the highlight. The Zero Gravity team came out and represented well. All of the fights are pretty good, and feature some pretty impressive stunts. They aren’t just the fast-paced, Bourne-style, bone-breaking stuff that most movies have. There’s a real sense of flow, style, and most of all, comedy. Some of the fights have laugh out loud funny moments, which keeps YSO from being an unbearably serious movie.

The fights having their own personality is vital to the film, as well. It makes each fight into an event, rather than a hurdle to be passed before getting to the big end fight. It’s not just “Oh yeah, Blue vs Purple!” when describing it to friends. You recall specific moves, like a guy straightening the creases in his jeans, the scowl on a man’s face, or a classic twin jump kick.

YSO isn’t an unqualified success. There are issues with the lighting, and I’m not too keen on the pacing. It’s a little more stop and go than I’d like, and a tighter editing hand may have helped out with that. I’d also have liked to hear a dual commentary track, though geography apparently prevented that. Larry’s solo commentary is interesting, but I think that the best commentaries happen when a couple of people get a chance to talk over their decisions over the course of making the film.

Overall, though, it’s a fun movie to watch. The complete lack of dialogue has novelty value, but it also helps to show how storytelling can work. If anything, it reminds me of old Tom & Jerry pictures, where the acting was the action. It makes the movie more visually interesting than a lot of films, and well worth a watch. You can pick it up for ten bucks, plus shipping.

Well, it’s finally happened.  I’ve finally bought Booster Gold.

Sure, many of my friends told me that it was well-written, fun, heartfelt, not too burdened with mega-continuity, and featured a lot of creative adventures.  It was, in short, exactly the book I said I wanted to be reading.  Except I wasn’t reading it.  Because this is something that you should know about me.

I hate and fear change.

Yes, you can take that into account any time I make another grumpy-old-lady ‘what are comics these days coming to,’ entry.

I got into Batman because I saw it as a child, and then my reading habits slowly expanded, usually whenever Batman teamed up with another character.  Picture me as one of those neolithic hunter-gatherer groups, the ones that tended to move whenever the sea level dropped and new land was exposed.  I’m slowly traveling through the comics world, moving whenever a book’s profits drop, exposing some previously undiscovered link with Batman that causes a team-up.  I wandered over the isthumus of Batman to the new Blue Beetle series, and when it was cancelled and became a back-up for Booster Gold, (and this issue of Booster has a Batman appearance that I am sure is no coincidence), I followed it to this series.

Which involves time-travel, saving Batman from never existing, showboating, a smart-mouth sidekick, and an idiot savant with a mentor called ‘Rip Hunter.’  Ah, yes.  This is a comic.

And this is the best time to be a comic fan.  The honeymoon period.  When you don’t worry about artists, writers, or continuity.  You have a character you love, a story you’re interested in, and a nice little stock of back-issues to wade around in.  Life is good.

Grant Morrison gave a great interview to PopImage shortly after he left Marvel in 03/04. The whole thing is a good read, but my favorite bit is on page three:

As for all this talk I keep hearing about how ‘ordinary people’ can’t handle the weird layouts in comics – well, time for another micro-rant, but that’s like your granddad saying he can’t handle all the scary, fast-moving information on Top of the Pops and there’s really only one answer. Fuck off, granddad. If you’re too stupid to read a comic page, you shouldn’t be trying to read comic books and probably don’t. As creative people, I feel we need to call time on the relentless watering down of comics design and storytelling possibilities in some misguided attempt to appeal to people who WILL NEVER BE INTERESTED in looking at or buying hand-drawn superhero comic books.

This will surprise absolutely no one, but I agree with Grant here. No caveats, even. Even with the “if you’re too stupid to read a comic page, you shouldn’t be trying to read comics.” I didn’t like his “channel zapping” approach in Final Crisis. I don’t think it came off anywhere near as well as Morrison expected it to, but I could respect the idea behind it. I liked seeing a comic where the reader had to do a bit of the work and interpret what was going on themselves, and giant blocks of exposition were delivered in a way that wasn’t just a bunch of people standing in a room. If you think about why Wonder Woman, Batwoman, Catwoman, and Giganta are called Furies for half a second, you’ll get it. You don’t need that box that says “Wonder Woman is evil now, and leads the reincarnated Female Furies.”

Still, thoughts? Is Morrison being fair?

Remember Marvel’s plan to release Captain America #600 on a Monday due to mainstream press coverage? Here’s a reminder:

“REBORN #1, by Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch, will be receiving nationwide press on 6/15, possibly on par with the media coverage we received during Civil War.

However, this means that the solicit and covers for Reborn #1 cannot be shown before the FOC of 6/11. Marvel will do everything possible to ensure an overprint is on hand to counter huge anticipated demand, but the incentives below and qualifying for free variants will only be available for orders placed before FOC”

In essence, Marvel asked retailers to take a gamble. Open on Mondays, pay extra for shipping, and we will drive customers to your store by way of a big newspaper article. The NY Daily News ended up with the scoop. However, when I say scoop… I’m being sarcastic.

I’m going to put this behind a cut, because I’m sure someone, somewhere, is going to be upset that I’m about to spoil the least surprising reveal since Dick Grayson became Batman. Read the rest of this entry �

Number three is a little shorter than numbers one and two due to unavoidable technical difficulties (Thanks, Garageband!). However, we hit the ground running with couple of interesting conversations.

-We talk about the honor and nobility, or lack thereof, of certain types of supervillains. This leads to a conversation about why certain acts by villains cause fans to get worked up.
-What’s the secret connection between Megan Fox and Chuck Dixon? What does Wonder Woman have to do with torture? I don’t know, but I sure do make an amazingly ill-advised comparison between two of these!
-We get down to the nitty-gritty after (not much of a) smooth segue that and discuss the sex lives of two heroes: Connor Hawke and Wolverine.
-Having sex in front of your mom– cool or uncool?
-Guess which one hooked up with a ghost. Guess which one has a big ol’ pile of dead girlfriends.

As ever, you can listen or download to the podcast here on 4l!, subscribe to the podcast-specific RSS feed, or even subscribe on iTunes. If you dig us, review us!