It’s tough to make a superhero movie.  Once upon a time you only needed was spandex or tinfoil, a few wires, and actors willing to wear spandex and get lifted by wires.

Lately, though, the superhero movie and the big-budget action movie have merged, to the point where you shouldn’t even bother looking at a cape until you have the kind of money that can buy you and exploding helicopter.  TV shows, after Smallville, aren’t much different.  Some people say those shows look cheap.  I’ll go ahead and quote Dolly Parton on that:  It takes a lot of money to look that cheap.

At the same time, there are other media that, because of these new-fangled visual telegraphs that the kids call ‘computers,’ could make a come back.  Everyone has already discussed the coming of the new age of webcomics being produced on a daily basis.  Yeah, the money isn’t huge now.  Wait.  There will be ways to wring dollars out of this, especially when conventional media is dying down.

Mostly, though, I’m waiting for the new version of the radio plays that they used to have way back when.  It didn’t work once stories moved to TV.  Radio became the exclusive domain of songs.

Now it’s not the domain of anything much anymore.  You can download songs from your computer and listen to them anytime.  If you want to discover new music, there are hundreds of websites devoted to just that.  I asked David the other day how long it’s been since he’s purposely listened to the radio.  It had been years.  Same for me.  The times I do listen to the radio – in stores or in a friend’s car – the only ads on right now are mattress discount warehouses, non-mainstream concert promotions, and debt consolidation services.  It is grim.

At the same time, though, podcasts are getting more and more play.  And they’re getting it for stuff that no one would put on the radio.  Is there a station on earth that would play me and David talking about comics and whatever sitcoms pop into our heads at the moment?  Really not.  And yet we have thousands of people listening to us jabber for a half an hour a day.

It can’t be that much harder to jabber out a story.  Think about it, the editing programs and sound effects could be pretty much gotten for free, and all that it takes to record is a script, a laptop, a couple of microphones, and a few people willing to sit around a living room for an hour every week.

It seems like the way to go for doing dramatic stories on the cheap.  All of you out there on the visual telegraph.  Have you heard of any podplays like this?  Would you listen if you did?

For the last few years, DC has had a ‘Sunday Conversation’ panel at the end of Wonder-Con.  Although by that time I’m usually fishing around in my back for snacks I might have forgotten about last week and stealing extra paper towels from the bathrooms to use as tissues due to the first ugly stirrings of that year’s Con Crud, I always go. 

Basically, it’s a random assortment of DC people to come by and talk about comics.  No announcements.  No selling anything.  They just sit around and talk about the old comic book stores they used to haunt, what parts of comics they love, and some banter with the audience.  It’s just yakking about comics, which is why most of us go to cons in the first place.

This year, however, I heard JT Krul talk about fan involvement, and how they try to work out the best stories.  He mentioned that at a previous con, Dan Didio had come to him and told him that the Cry for Justice story reaction really wasn’t what they had wanted, and that they had worked for five hours on how to respond, story-wise.

As someone who has grown out of her juvenile, “They all just sit around, stroking white cats and laughing and figuring out how to piss off the fans,” phase, but is still plenty juvenile enough to throw tantrums about storylines, especially that one, the remark caught my attention.

I know that comics creators want to write a good story, and also a popular story.  Although I’ve seen gallows humor from people who had made some unpopular calls, everyone wants their work, and their vision, to be enjoyed by everyone.  I also no that they never get that.  There is no story so safe, so brilliant, and so popular that it doesn’t have a few people frothing at the mouth.

While Cry for Justice continuity had more than its share of detractors, I’ve seen at least some support for it almost everywhere.  I wonder, what is it that makes creators decide to ‘work’ on a story they’ve already planned?  It can’t be just fan reaction.  Spend the entire day measuring that, and you won’t get anything else done.  Trust me. 

Is it the overall scale of the reaction, or the vehemence?  Is it how long it’s sustained?  Or whether stop the usual tongue baths that they give out at conventions and start complaining when they meet creators face-to-face?  Is it the way people point the finger of blame at different people, or is it whether or not they use that old, “I’m not buying DC/Marvel/Boom/comics anymore!” 

. . . Oh, let’s face it.  If I knew, there’s no way that I’d use that knowledge wisely.

Sorry about the lateness. The last few days have been absolute madness for me. I was going to toss in the Free Comic Book Day stuff in this update, but since I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, and since next week is such a small comic week, I’ll save it for then.

Amazing Spider-Man #629
Roger Stern, Lee Weeks, Zeb Wells and Chris Bachalo

The Authority: The Lost Year #8
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and David Williams

Read the rest of this entry �

-Continuity off!
-Esther has Superboy.
-David has Marvel Boy.
–Reign of Supermen, Young Justice, Superboy, Teen Titans, Adventure Comics.
–Marvel Boy, several series David doesn’t bother to name, Dark Avengers
-Wow, this one went bitter in a hurry, didn’t it?
-Reading material: Marvel Boy by Grant Morrison and JG Jones and Superboy: The Boy of Steel by Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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