Hey! Massive installment for you guys, since I’m including last week’s Free Comic Book Day stuff. At least, the stuff that I got around to reading. With me are Was Taters, Space Jawa and Jody.

Have at it.

Adventure Time with Finn and Jake FCBD
Ryan North, Mike Holmes, Lucy Knisley and Michael DeForge

Atomic Robo FCBD
Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener

Avengers FCBD
Brian Michael Bendis and Bryan Hitch

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In Part 1, I lazily glossed over the first century of pro wrestling and stopped at the early-mid-90’s. WWF was focused more-or-less on Bret “The Hitman” Hart, though they shoved him in the background to push a badass, near-7-foot-tall trucker named Diesel as champion. As a heel, Diesel got popular due to his ruthless and cool demeanor, but when they turned him face and made him champion, they wussed him down by making him a smiling good guy with no edge. His year as champion was a financial failure as his presence simply failed to draw money. Bret was eventually made champion again.

WCW wasn’t doing much better. This was a company where Hulk Hogan was being dry-humped by a giant mummy that the commentator kept insisting was, “THE YET-AAAY!”

ECW had brought in Steve Austin, fresh off his firing from WCW. He was injured at the time, so he could only do interviews for a while, but good gravy, were they good interviews. It was a weird fit because on one hand, he spent all of his time ranting and raving about how badly WCW treated him, which we were supposed to like. But he’d also run down ECW for being garbage, which we were supposed to hate. It was a definite prototype for what would change the business in the near future. He was soon scooped up by the WWF.

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I talk about wrestling a lot. I’d like to think that in my 20+ years of following it, I know at least a thing or two. I’ve said it a million times before, but to reiterate, it really is the most intriguing and fascinating business. Maybe that’s why I shrugged off the whole Before Watchmen/Alan Moore controversy going on in the comic world because honestly, that’s nothing compared to the petty and deplorable stuff I’ve seen in the wrestling business and I’m too jaded to care. It has its ups and it has its downs, but ultimately, the history of it all tends to be more entertaining and worth paying attention to than the scripted stories they’re portraying. After all, it’s a business run by power-hungry egomaniacs who act like man-children with many of them either delusional or on drugs.

Just because I thought it would be fun to write about, I thought I would go through the basic history of wrestling in the United States. Something to educate the outsiders looking in, the new viewers who are curious, the people who’ve skipped around, those who stopped watching years ago or the longtime fans who wouldn’t mind sitting back and enjoying a refresher. I want to make this accessible, so I’m going to stray from most insider terms. Since it’ll annoy me, there are some exclusions, so let me get these out of the way:

Face: good guy
Heel: bad guy
Turn: go from good to bad or vice versa
Push: promote and move up the card
Bury: drop down the card or make someone look foolish
Booker: writer

I should reiterate that this is my take on everything. I’m sure it isn’t accurate, but I figure it’s close enough. Again, I only intend to cover the US stuff, since I don’t know the slightest about Mexico, Canada, Japan or Europe.

Professional wrestling started up in the late 19th century, usually in the form of a carnival sideshow. At first, it was a legitimate fight, usually between the wrestler and anyone who thought they could take him, but over time, the brains behind the operations realized that if the challenger was in on it, they could make more money with less risk. The popularity spread across the decades enough that federations were built up, each with their own championship and everything. The territory days made it pretty easy for a wrestler to keep himself fresh, as once things got sour, they were able to simply move on to the next territory and start anew. For instance, a wrestler could gain a reputation as an unbeatable monster villain, eventually make a couple other wrestlers look better by beating him. Eventually, he’ll lose his fictional luster and is no longer considered much of a threat, but then he can travel elsewhere and be seen as an unbeatable monster again, starting the cycle over.

The first wrestler to truly catch the public’s eye was Gorgeous George, a heel who decided to add an excessive amount of flair to his pretty boy character to the point that the fans were in a frenzy whenever he showed up. He was rude, vain, pampered and insulting and the fans paid hand over fist for the possibility of seeing someone shut him up. With the advent of television, he became a media superstar and would be credited for inspiring Muhammad Ali’s charismatic personality.

With the territory system, many federations were able to coexist without too many problems and they even did business with each other regularly. Vince McMahon Sr., who ran the World Wide Wrestling Federation, would rent out his superstar Andre the Giant to other territories and bring them huge business. In the early 80’s, Vince Sr. sold the WWWF to his son Vincent Kennedy McMahon, a genius in his own right who has more issues than Time Magazine. Soon after Vince Sr.’s death, his son went against the big territorial truce and decided to dominate professional wrestling. While wrestling companies were shown on local TV, Vince made his renamed World Wrestling Federation national and overshadowed the rest of the market. He bought off the biggest names from different territories and stacked up the WWF to the point that it was like the Yankees.

The WWF’s poster boy was Hulk Hogan, an entertaining big man who became a breakout star after appearing in Rocky 3 as Thunderlips. McMahon started a partnership with the then-new cable channel MTV as a way to team up and play off each other in the name of promotion. The Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection was created, pushing both sides harder into the media limelight. McMahon incorporated as many celebrities as possible, leading to the first installment of his big event Wrestlemania. While the show is a bit rough to watch due to today’s standards, the main event, which featured Hogan teaming up with Mr. T, helped it do gangbusters.

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The Damon Albarn Appreciation Society is an ongoing series of focused observations, conversations, and thoughts about music. This is the sixteenth. This is something I wrote in a burst just after getting off a plane about Goodie MOb’s “The Experience.” It’s… freestyled, for lack of a better term, in that I started with the idea of writing about the song and my reaction to it and let the essay go where it wanted to go. I dunno if it works, but I’m gonna let it ride because that seems like the right decision to make right now.

Minutes from previous meetings of the Society: The Beatles – “Eleanor Rigby”, Tupac – Makaveli, Blur – 13 (with Graeme McMillan), Blur – Think Tank (with Graeme McMillan), Black Thought x Rakim: “Hip-Hop, you the love of my life”, Wu-Tang Clan – Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), On why I buy vinyl sometimes, on songs about places, Mellowhype’s Blackendwhite, a general post on punk, a snapshot of what I’m listening to, on Black Thought blacking out on “75 Bars”, how I got into The Roots, on Betty Wright and strong songs, on screw music

I don’t know where I’m going with this one. I just got off a plane and this song came up on shuffle, and I felt like I should write about it. Follow along and hopefully we’ll get somewhere interesting. Strictly rough copy.

I wish I could say I remember the first time I heard Goodie MOb’s “The Experience,” off that Still Standing album. It’d make for a nice and neat story, a life-changing event that I could point to like the first time I saw Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. But I don’t remember the first time I heard it. I do have fond memories of going through the liner notes of my uncle’s CD. I’m not from Atlanta. I’m from a hour or so south of Atlanta, the country. I didn’t think it was the country growing up, I thought it was a real-deal city. So seeing those liner notes was interesting, because it was like peeking into another neighborhood. There was a slang dictionary in there, I think, that explained some of the real specific stuff that the Dungeon Family used to shout out, like SWATs or whatever. As a kid, I didn’t even get that the song “Inshallah” was specifically a Muslim thing, even though — on another song — Cee-Lo at one point says “I’m Islam, and we don’t want no bad blood, but it is some, it is some.”

But “The Experience” is a thunderclap to me, even nowadays. It’s just Cee-Lo Goodie’s voice, a light melody, and various versions of the word nigger for a couple minutes. It’s the sort of thing that the Dungeon made their stock in trade, another good example of which would be the Big Rube interludes on other Dungeon records. The Dungeon Family worked because they mixed knowledge with raw raps. And this song is the epitome of that for me.

I don’t know the actual accepted term for it, but there’s this thing I think about a lot that I call useful fictions. They’re things like the idea that black people come from a lineage of kings and queens in Africa. Basically, they’re like… they’re cheat codes. Imagine that living in America is like being in a race. One entrant in the race is forbidden from racing for hundreds of years, but is the guy who has to clean the track and paint the lines. When the officials finally let this guy into the race, they make him start half a mile back. When the guy finally sues and gets the right to start from the same starting line as everyone else, they sabotage his shoes and pretend like nothing is wrong.

This has a debilitating effect on morale. It destroys egos and families. The men and women trade abuse out of frustration, parents pass it on down to their children, and the children grow up with that poison in their system. And on it goes, on down the generations, until we hit today. Or maybe not today. I can’t speak to the current status quo. But I’m an ’80s baby, and I can guarantee you that things were a little sour growing up, both in terms of blatant racism and things like basic access to things that could make your life better, from education to living in a neighborhood that doesn’t suck.

So these useful fictions are cheat codes because they let you get a leg up. They serve as a tonic that acts against the poison that’s force-fed to black babies as soon as they’re old enough to talk. When I was growing up, black history was the guy who invented the peanut, the guy who got shot and had a dream, the angry black devil, the lady who ran the underground railroad, slavery, and Dred Scott. That was about it. Black history was a tale of misery and hate, with our contributions to the country either minimized or ignored completely.

The rest of history class was positively triumphant in comparison. Rome. England. Magna Carta. Greatest Generation. George Washington. Inventing lightning. Betsy Ross. “Look how awesome we are!” all day every day. Never mind the state-sponsored terrorism and hate crimes or slave labor or whatever. That was… not excused, exactly, but nobody looks at slaveholders like people today look at Nazis.

So those useful fictions are important. If your history is stolen from you, you have to invent one of your own. And if you’re going to invent one, it might as well be a good one. Kings and queens. Little Richard inventing every single aspect of rock’n’roll. Whatever whatever. I get it. And, more importantly, I greatly appreciated it.

In “The Experience,” Cee-Lo says a lot of silly stuff, but it’s not about the truth, really. It’s about grabbing somebody by the neck and making sure they pay attention. It’s about getting somebody to do better because they need to do better. I love the part when Cee-Lo says “She looked deeply into my eyes and said, ‘Brother, don’t you know? You complain about being black, when they mad ’cause they can’t be black no more.'” It’s laughable, because as near as I can tell, being white is awesome. No racist is sitting in her shack like “Ugh I wish I looked like Iman.” Please. I guess maybe if she’s more of a David Bowie stan than a racist, but that’s a big if.

But it’s a useful fiction, because it speaks to the idea that black people are more than they are. More than poverty, more than hate, more than fear, more than niggers. It speaks to the idea that the black man is the original man, a valuable part of history, and something to be not just respected, but jealous of. It puts that idea in your head, and the truth of it is entirely beside the point. It’s something that you have to embrace just to keep your head above water. It’s a life raft. “This isn’t all there is. We are more than this.”

If you put a gun to my head and told me to pick a favorite bit from this song, it’d probably be: “Since then a nigga done got grown, had a little bitty of nigga of my own/ should’ve known I couldn’t show ‘im no better than I was shown.” It’s such a sad statement, and the “should’ve known” puts it clearly in the past tense, like mistakes have been made. And it’s absolutely true. If you don’t know better, whether your knowing is composed of useful fictions or the actual incredible history of black people, you can’t do better. You need that knowledge or optimism or whatever to make things work, to crawl your way out of the muck. And it’s generational. If I can’t do better, then what is my son supposed to do? What am I supposed to teach him? Each generation improves on the next one, but no generation is perfect. I inherited some poison, despite my family’s best efforts, and because of them in some cases. It takes a long time to work that out of your body.

I’m appreciative of every single useful fiction people told me as a kid that convinced me I had worth before I knew the real story of that worth. I would much rather have a lie that helps me that I have to exorcise later than one that weighs down my shoulders. One of those is training wheels. The other is a thin wire stretched across a hallway. I love every rap song about how dope it is to be young, rich, and black. I love every t-shirt that says “DANGER: EDUCATED BLACK MAN.” I love every single thing that showed me that I had something to aspire to, and that I could (thus far at least) do something like make my own way in the world.

“The Experience” was really valuable to me growing up. It’s still valuable, even, but I’ve moved past some specific aspects of it. Like how “When in actuality, the fact is you ain’t a nigger because you black. You a nigger ’cause of how you act” is just old poison in a new, self-hating form, for example. But as a song, as something someone wrote and performed and pressed to disc, I’m deeply appreciative of it. It runs through my head every couple of weeks. It’s extremely resonant, on par with Blur’s “No Distance Left To Run” or “She Said She Said” by The Beatles or Tupac’s “Dear Mama” and “So Many Tears.”

There’s just something about it that crawls up inside your guts and makes room for itself. It’s kind of a mirror, in that it forces you to stop and look at what you think and why. I think a lot, not all but definitely a lot, of great songs, books, movies, poems, and whatever else make you do that. You make some type of connection with the content that goes beyond shaking your butt or nodding your head. That’s where favorite songs and anthems come from.

That’s probably why I keep coming back to “The Experience.” My racial identity, how I think about race, whatever whatever, evolves constantly. Listening to this song puts me in mind of a time when I thought differently, even if it was just a couple years ago, and makes me recognize whatever strides, or lack thereof, that I’ve made. I can’t passively listen to it.

If I had to rank the human body in terms of comedic potential, butts would come in first place, followed by penises, and then noses would be back in third. I dunno why it is, but dirty, coarse humor sometimes hits the spot about as hard as the spot can be hit. Even the word poop, when it comes out of the mouth of an adult, is inherently funny, save for certain specific contexts. Movies like Bridesmaids and TV shows like Veep have had some pretty amazing poop jokes, but the danger with dirty humor on film is that it’s way too easy to go too far. The goal is to, at most, walk right up to the edge of making your audience retch, and movies often fly past that mark and right into disgusting territory. Death at a Funeral, for example, went way too far.

Something about comics, though, makes it a great delivery system for coarse humor. It’s probably the basest form of comedy, really, but whenever it pops up in a comic, I tend to get a childish chuckle out of it. I think the childishness is what makes it work, honestly. I love smart people jokes or whatever, Louis CK and Chris Rock and them. Sarcasm, droll humor, whatever whatever. I laugh at that. But there’s something to be said for dick jokes and fart jokes.

Anyway, here’s some butt-related jokes from the past three or four months of comics that I have been looking for an excuse to post (gotcha), and then a classic one about dirty butts from Dragon Ball that I tripped over recently.

(i think the Orc Stain one might even be a reference to a similar, but fart-less, scene from Moebius & Jodorowsky’s The Incal, which would be amazing)

Howdy. Strong week with many thanks to Jody, Gaijin Dan and Was Taters for helping out. While Space Jawa has nothing for me in terms of this week, he did stock me up on some Free Comic Book Day panels for next week’s update. I’ve been busy the past couple days, so I haven’t been able to read too much, but I did have to chuckle at the free Avengers comic Marvel gave out.

It’s a rerelease of the .1 issue they did a year ago, which has yet to have any bearing on Marvel. Some jumping-on point. Anyway, the book featured a subplot of Spider-Woman being kidnapped by some mad scientist types and finding herself in a cell with her wrists cuffed together and her clothes missing. I mean, I guess Bendis has done that before with the full team, but having just a woman tossed into this role is asking for trouble. I don’t go around looking for fan outrage, but considering so many considered it way over-the-line when Bendis had Dr. Doom — the evil mass murderer and dictator — refer to Ms. Marvel as a cow during a rant, I can only imagine the Spider-Woman thing didn’t go over so well. In the Free Comic Book Day release, they alter all the panels from these scenes. Not only is she recolored so that she’s wearing her outfit, but they changed her dialogue so that she’s no longer yelling at the Wizard to give her back her clothes.

I imagine this is either because A) the misogyny outcry backlash, B) more kids are going to be getting these comics, so they should calm down on the cheesecake and/or C) if you want to see Jessica Drew’s skin, you’re going to pay for it, mister!

Like I said, I find the whole thing rather funny. Especially when you look closer at the panels. The Mad Thinker must have decided that Spider-Woman’s costume wings were a major danger and had them removed before putting her in her prison. And also, while her costume was always tight enough to be painted on, that doesn’t stop her feet from looking very non-bootlike. Seeing her curled, yellow toes just looks weird.

Enough about Spider-Woman’s obscured lady bits. Here are some panels.

Action Comics #9
Grant Morrison, Gene Ha, Sholly Fisch and Cully Hamner

Age of Apocalypse #3
David Lapham and Roberto de la Torre

Amazing Spider-Man #685
Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos

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A couple years ago, when Marvel was releasing their miniseries/event Siege, my excitement was off the charts. Ever since Avengers Disassembled, Secret War and the Sentry, Marvel – with Brian Michael Bendis at the helm – had been putting together one big arc of events tagged together. Siege was going to be the big finale to it all and it was doing a great job. Not only were they coming off an entertaining status quo with the whole Dark Reign thing, but the miniseries was hitting all the right notes. It was four issues, had less tie-ins than normal and set up a great big bad in the Void. After the third issue, I couldn’t wait for the conclusion.

Then Siege #4 was a huge wet fart of a comic that took away my enthusiasm like nobody’s business. My excitement for this years-long epic went up in smoke and I’ve lost any interest in Marvel’s event stories.

Last night, I went to the midnight showing of Avengers. I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I had a complete blast and while there are some definite flaws (why did the bad guys die all at once, exactly?), I’m more than ready to see it again. More than anything else, there reached a point where I had to step back from everything and realize that it was more than just a fun movie. I had to step back and remark, “I can’t believe they actually pulled it off.”

Seriously. Can we take a second to look at how absolutely miraculous it is that things turned out as they did?

The Avengers always had this weird spot in Marvel lore in that they were considered a major deal, but lacked the mainstream star power. Of the main three Marvel superhero teams, they were the least memorable to the average man on the street. There’s a reason why Spider-Man and Wolverine were inserted into the lineup. If anything, that made them perfect fodder for Marvel Studios. They had fanboy recognition and lots of history to mine, showing that there were existing stories that proved that they are viable characters. Yet at the same time, there would be a public unaware of who these guys were and they’d get drawn in by the hype, seeing the non-Hulk guys as something fresh and new.

I recall how cautiously optimistic I was about Iron Man ever since seeing the very first picture of the armor as designed by Adi Granov, the man known for illustrating the hell out of Iron Man’s armor in Iron Man: Extremis. The early photo of Robert Downey Jr. with the glowing chest looked perfect and from all accounts, he was genuinely excited to be playing the role. I even recall an interview where director Jon Favreau claimed that he had read every single issue of Iron Man to get his head in the game.

With the then-upcoming Incredible Hulk coming out, there was a rumor on the internet that both movies would share the same scene. Like some event would occur and we’d see the incident from Tony Stark and Bruce Banner’s point of view, respectively. I even made a joke about this in the first page of Ultimate Edit way back when. There were definite rumblings that they were building towards something big. It didn’t happen, but it wasn’t too far off.

Part of me was afraid. Comic movies are incredibly easy to screw up. I’ve seen Dr. Doom look tame. I’ve seen Galactus as a cloud. I’ve seen a movie studio that refused Sentinels in an X-Men movie. I’ve seen Juggernaut with cheesy rubber abs. I’ve seen Daredevil and Superman Returns and Spider-Man 3. I wanted so much for Iron Man to be what it should be.

Other than removing a subplot because of the US Air Force throwing a hissy fit, that’s what we got. Iron Man was the movie comic fans have been wanting to see. Thing is, it wasn’t JUST a good movie. After the credits, Nick Fury appeared and told Stark that he wasn’t alone in the superhero game (though as far as SHIELD knows, he is, which is weird in retrospect) and introduces the Avengers Initiative. And some people go, “HOLY SHIT.”

It continues weeks later when Incredible Hulk comes out and we have a scene at the very end where Tony Stark tells Thunderbolt Ross that they’re putting a team together. Not to mention that there are definite callbacks to Captain America existing in that movie’s continuity. Marvel Studios was planning on not only doing a bunch of movies in a shared universe, but funneling it into a gigantic team-up.

Each movie featured more and more references to other movies. Iron Man 2 showed a half-finished version of Captain America’s shield, introduced Black Widow and ended with a shot of Agent Coulson finding Thor’s hammer in the middle of a desert. Though if anything, Iron Man 2 gave me pause. Not just because it was the weakest of the Avenger movies, but also because they went out of their way to point out that Stark was only going to be an Avenger in a minor capacity. Like they were sitting us down to explain that Robert Downey Jr. was going to only get a couple scenes in Avengers because he’s a busy dude, so don’t get your hopes up.

Thor and Captain America were both extremely solid in my opinion and brought everything to a head. The end of Cap’s movie showed a teaser trailer for Avengers and the hype continued.

The trailers honestly didn’t do much for me. Plus I still felt a little apprehensive. A movie with so many characters? I don’t want another Spider-Man 3. Plus the Avengers haven’t been known to be used especially well in other medias. Back in the 90’s, they gave us that bewildering Avengers cartoon that decided that Captain America, Thor and Iron Man weren’t worth talking about, so they went with Tigra, Wonder Man and the like instead. Then a few years ago, Marvel started releasing animated movies such as Invincible Iron Man and Ultimate Avengers and those sucked on ice. ESPECIALLY Invincible Iron Man. Try that animated turd and be amazed by how unwatchable it is.

And so I saw Avengers. And it ruled. My fears — including the idea of Tony Stark being a glorified cameo — were unfounded. It gave me the opposite reaction of Siege #4. I want to see it again after watching all the others over again on DVD. I want to read about the next installments of Iron Man, Captain America and Thor’s movies and where they lead to next. I want to hear about new characters being brought out of the ether. I want more.

I can’t believe they pulled it off. DC Comics and Warner Brothers briefly tried and immediately tripped over their own feet before they could make a single step. Marvel simply got their shit together and while there were so many reasons for things to fall apart, they pulled off one hell of an impressive project.

It’s movie history is what it is. Bravo.

Also, whoever came up with the idea of the final post-credits scene deserves a statue in his or her honor.

-I’m thinking about quitting floppies for a month and then picking it up when they’re cheaper and keeping up that way. I think paying three and four dollars for digital comics is stupid, and if I skip a month, when I come back, all the comics will be two bucks, which is still stupid, but more tolerable. I mean, these people want three dollars for twenty-six pages of 20+ year old Tank Girls by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. Really? In what world is that a deal, instead of a ripoff? And I say that as a huge Hewlett fan, from the Gorillaz to Tank Girl and back again. Bleah. I want to support, but I’m not going to be able to support if the prices are this absurd.

-My beloved friend and yours David Wolkin run an organization called Limmud NY. You can read about it here. Long story short, though, it’s about educating people with regard to their own Jewishness, and the broad spectrum of Jewish experience. It’s sorta fascinating, from the outside looking in, because it’s such a great idea. We all grow up in whatever culture or cultures we belong to and are expected to sorta keep up and mostly figure things out for ourselves. A concerted effort to educate people about their culture and how it applies to the modern day is… it’s beautiful, I think is the best word for it. I did those Black History x Comics posts for years for similar reasoning, and as a way to say that we’re here, we’ve always been here, and you don’t have to enjoy it, but please respect it. I did it because no one did it for me, so I’m glad to see Wolkin and Limmud NY doing their part. You can donate to Limmud NY here.

–Jason Latour’s giving away an art book. He’s got an ill style, and the sketchbook has life drawings and other things. I like how he draws buildings (page 7, 17) and the image on the bottom-right of page 5 is fantastic. He worked on BPRD Hell on Earth: The Pickens County Horror with Dave Stewart, and it was pretty good. Check it here and here. Mushrooms never looked so scary.

And yo, on his website, you see that header Pimp Trick Gangster Clicks? That’s how you know Latour is a real dude. Pimp Trick Gangster Click > Gnarls Barkley.

–I debuted the news that Tyler Crook is illustrating BPRD Hell on Earth: Return of the Master at ComicsAlliance. Crook is a pretty good artist, and it’s nice seeing his style evolve. I’ve got a copy of Petrograd somewhere around here. I need to sit down and read it. It’s high on my to-do list, but I keep getting distracted by old manga (this week it’s Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories, thanks to Jog.)

–Sean Witzke reviews 25 slashers, and kneecaps Cabin in the Woods in the process.

–Tucker’s Comics of the Weak @ TCJ are always worth reading. In fact, I think CotW and Jog’s column at TCJ are the only comics reviews I read at all these days.

–Giannis Milonogiannis, a dude whose vision of the future is right in line with mine (and Otomo’s and Shirow’s) is giving away comics. Go download OLD CITY BLUES: PROSTHETIC CORPUS PHASE ONE. I liked the original OCB (isn’t that title totally futuristic? Like OCP or something), which you can buy in digital or hardcover format. You can even read it online for free if you want.

-I liked Matthew Brady’s look at Hirohiko Araki’s Rohan at the Louvre. I’ve been meaning to pick it up, but (wait for it) I keep getting distracted. The preview is pretty tight.

-Eric Stephenson’s post about Bergen St Comics deciding not to carry Before Watchmen is a good one. “They’re leaving money on the table!” is a stupid thing to say. Every business makes decisions regarding what to carry and when. That’s their right. No one carries everything, and I think not carrying a book over ethical reasons is way better than not carrying a book because you don’t like Rob Liefeld’s art or something stupid like that.

–This quote from Joss Whedon is stupid. I can barely make sense of it.

–I like Chris Arrant talking about how we (fans, press, whoever) regularly and consistently devalue the artist in comics. I kinda sorta talked about this from another angle when I was talking about Marvel’s habit of ruining good books with rapid-fire art changes. It is an actual problem for these books and a problem for how we talk about comics. The best runs in comics have steady teams — look at the comics we got out of Claremont/Byrne/Austin, Claremont/Smith, Miller/Janson, Miller/Mazzucchelli, Brubaker/Phillips, Brubaker/Rucka/Lark, Bendis/Maleev, Ennis/Dillon, Ennis/Parlov, Nocenti/Romita, and more besides. If you give a team time to stick together and gel, you get better comics than you do when you reduce the artist to the level of an art robot. Having a steady team also changes how we talk about comics. We prioritize whoever is steadily present on a comic. These days, that means a writer. So it’s “Mark Waid’s Daredevil,” even though Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin had tremendous input on what we all like about that comic. To call it Mark Waid’s Daredevil is disrespectful and inaccurate. It’s stupid. And yes, wah wah wah using multiple names is clunky, but suck it up. If you’re writing about comics, you should be able to do your job well enough to sidestep that issue. Otherwise you’re just a scrub.

-And actually, while I’m complaining about my peers — if you write a review that’s got one paragraph of art discussion toward the end… mannnnnnn. I looked at the eight most recent reviews on CBR and seven out of the eight have a few paragraphs about the writing, one paragraph about the art, and then an outro. Like they’re writing from a template. Boring.

Listen, here’s a challenge to everyone who writes reviews, especially if you do this lazy words-first thing. Find a comic you like. Write a review that’s predominately about the art, and leave one short paragraph toward the end for the writing. Talking about art isn’t hard. You look at it, you examine how it makes you feel and how it portrays the action on the page. Take a close look and find something you like, and then talk about why you like it.

This is simple, and if you’re writing about comics, you should be able to do this. You don’t have to be fluent at art. You just have to be conversational. Comics is a visual medium. There are words, yes, but when you open a page, the first thing you see is the pictures. So how about you pay attention and talk about the pictures in something more than a perfunctory manner?

-Anyway.

–Brandon Graham blog updates include sketches, snatches of new issues, and dope old manga and comics. Pay attention.

–I’m a fairly recent convert to Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie. Maybe the middle of last year? I forget when my webcomics readin’ buddy Lauren Davis put me onto it. I haven’t made it through all the archives yet, but it’s good, good stuff.

-Comics comics comics! I’m working out how I feel about comics and comics discusso, if you can’t tell. It’s been a serious year so far. I’ve still got a lot to figure out, including what I write about and where. Pardon the dust and posts about things you don’t care about. I think the schedule I’m working with now, where Mondays have a Reading Comics bit, Wednesdays are variable, and Fridays have these posts, works well. We’ll see.

-Hawks over Celtics tonight! Josh Smith being out is no fun, but we’ll see how it goes.

I was very careful when I wrote that thing for ComicsAlliance. I don’t really have any interest in calling for a boycott or guilt-tripping somebody into thinking like I do. I just wanted to fill a hole I felt needed filling, and explain why I made a decision I did. It’s food for thought, and you can do the dishes on your own, right? It’s your decision, just like it was mine, and we’re all adults here.

I do like this idea I saw on tumblr, courtesy of a guy named calamityjon. I have friends who are gonna see Avengers and The Dark Knight and friends who aren’t. I have friends who agree with me on creators’ rights who are gonna see both flicks. No big deal. That’s their decision. But I do like the idea of people giving to the Hero Initiative as… not penance, because it’s not a sin to like movies, but as a… a good deed, let’s say. “I want to do this thing, but I don’t like how it got here, so I’m going to do a little something to hopefully prevent that from happening again.” That’s fair, I think.

Anyway, read this, and if you feel led to do so, kick some cash toward protecting the people who made these dumb old comics.

The Avengers opens in theaters in the US on May 4th, and it’s going to do blockbuster business. The individual films featuring these characters have already  grossed more than $2.2 billion dollars – that’s greater than the Gross National Product of almost half the countries on Earth – and it’s not unlikely that The Avengers will earn a hundred million dollars on its opening day alone.

This represents a pretty big payday to a lot of people – the actors, obviously, will take home pretty big paychecks. The director and the writers are well-compensated, and certainly the executives who greenlighted this project get to sit back and rake in large bonuses and healthy salaries.

Well, you know where this is going; shamefully, the people who aren’t making a big profit from these movies are the people (and the families of the people) who did the essential work of creating them in the first place. It’s not just Jack Kirby, either, or (Black Widow and Hawkeye co-creator) Don Heck, but also Steve Engelhart, Peter David, Herb Trimpe, Jim Steranko, Roy Thomas and dozens more – the artists and writers who refined and defined the characters appearing in this movie, who fleshed out the original creations and molded them into the figures we cheer for when we see them on the screen.

Some very sensible people are calling for a boycott of this film on those grounds, but I think it’s fairly obvious that a boycott of idealistic comic fans isn’t going to accomplish much – it’s not only comic book fans who’ll be dropping a collective billion dollars over the next eight weeks to see this movie, it’s going to be a lot of movie-goers who haven’t read a comic since they were kids, much less know anything of the controversy.

Plus, of course, you – the collective “you”, representing comic book fans all over the world – want to see this movie. And you’re going to, most likely, right? Even though you know of the morally shady practices of Marvel towards its creators, they’ve got you hooked. Don’t be ashamed, they’ve had you hooked for years. It’s what they do.

So how about this: You’re probably going to go see The Avengers and, judging by the early reviews, you’ll probably enjoy it. How about – as a thank you to the creators who brought you these characters in the first place, who gave you something to enjoy so much – you match your ticket price as a donation to The Hero Initiative? 

THI is a charity which provides essential financial assistance to comic book professionals who have fallen on hard times; for decades, the comic industry provided no financial safety net to its employees, most of whom it regarded only as freelancers and journeymen, meaning they were offered no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no retirement plans – none of the financial support most of us enjoy from our jobs and careers. A small donation will help this agency provide a valuable safety net in times of need to these beloved entertainers.

I don’t plan on seeing The Avengers, but I’ve donated $15 – the price of a 3-D ticket – to Hero. If every concerned comic fan – every superhero aficionado who learned to live by the lessons of altruism and sacrifice taught by these comics – donated the price of their ticket, well, it may not hit a billion dollars but it’ll bring in a lot of money for a good and relevant cause.

One last note: Remember what Spider-Man always says? “With great power comes great responsibility”. The lesson in that is that everyone has great power. Spider-Man’s great power is being able to lift a bus. Your great power is the ability to help good causes do good work for good reasons – so why not go be a superhero instead of just watching them on the screen…

(PS: “Liking” this post is nice, thank you, but reblogging/retweeting it helps get the message out and would be even more appreciated)

The Viral Factor (directed/screenplay/story by Dante Lam, story by Candy Leung, story by Wai Lun Ng): I caught Dante Lam’s Viral Factor back in January. I liked it a whole lot. It features Andy On from Mad Detective, the guy who played Detective Ho. Viral Factor is one of those movies that manages to hit every cliche in the book for its genre (~dreams as metaphors~, convenient callbacks, drowning, and there’s probably a scene where two dudes point empty guns at each other but I don’t remember), but everything is so well executed that it doesn’t even matter. It’s like watching someone play a video game that you know very well, but the player is so skillful that you can’t look away. The cast is pretty strong, too. Jay Chou is probably best known for being the biggest of the three or four good things about Green Hornet, and Nicholas Tse is an HK vet. I remember seeing and enjoying Time & Tide in high school, and I’m looking forward to watching that one again. (edit: I wrote this review like two months ago. I’ve since gone back and watched Time And Tide, and it is this weird, unfocused, awkward, entertaining little action movie. It’s also very post-Matrix, so the bullet time looks awful, but the chase/shootout in the apartment building rules.)

The most surprising thing about Viral Factor is how videogame-inflected it was. There were several action scenes that weren’t direct rips, but at least felt inspired by games. The opening is straight out of Call of Duty, there’s an Uncharted-style climbing sequence that comes complete with air conditioners in the way (which I thought was introduced in Uncharted 3 back in November, so it’s probably coincidence), several different platforming sequences, and finally, a platforming/fighting sequence in a transport ship. Obviously all of this stuff has been in movies before, but something about the way this one was shot and staged thrust the idea of a video game inspiration into my head, and I still can’t let go of it. I wish I had more concrete examples to give. I need to see this again so I can maybe take some notes. But the video game idea kicked around and actually made me like the movie a bit more, as they chopped up and remixed classic video game tropes into new or perfected forms.

Heightening the video game feel was the sequence when Man Yeung, played by Nicholas Tse, escapes from police custody. It put me in mind of that sequence late in Metal Gear Solid 2 where Raiden is running around nude, but filtered through Heath Ledger’s approach to the Joker in The Dark Knight. Tse has a reckless disregard for his own life, but he basically stumbles and fights his way through a bunch of guards (and pepper spray!) before making his way almost to safety… at which point he leaps off a walkway, falls a couple stories before crashing into a parking lot, steals a car, and escapes. It’s almost comical, but it’s basically exactly how the regenerative health in modern games would look in real life. An idiot, rushing headlong into death, but somehow surviving for no good reason.

I really liked how relentless this movie was. It opens with a stylish bang, spends maybe 15 or 20 minutes setting up the rest of the plot, and then it’s on. There’s a pretty crazy shotgun bit (you can see it in the trailer), wild car wrecks, well-done slow motion shots, guys swinging over gaps firing guns… I can’t even remember what else. It’s an action movie that goes all the way in. I cackled at this movie like the wicked witch of the west, and the people I saw it with did, too. It’s real nice to see all these tropes and gimmicks I’ve grown up totally in love with, down to the dynamic duo of good and evil teaming up to fight eviler, refined and perfected.

What’s cool is that the characters sort of fit that mold, too. Chou plays a doomed cop, Tse a villain who Isn’t That Bad, Really, and Andy On plays a dirty cop who’s out for himself. I’m not sure who plays her, but the little girl who plays Champ, Tse’s daughter and Chou’s niece, is great. She’s spunky and direct and yes, she gets kidnapped. (And tossed into the ocean!) She is also exactly like basically every single girl who shows up in these movies. A little sad, a super-snarky dick, and adorable. Their father is a broken, but dedicated, old man who regrets his sins. Chou’s mother is kind, but kept a horrible secret for years. There’s a dream that echoes throughout the movie with special meaning.

Viral Factor basically doubles down on every cliche in the action movie book and makes it out unscathed. It’s a tense and fun example of an HK action flick, without being overbearing about its central gimmick or wasting a bunch of time trying to make the movie seem like it has something important to say about morality or whatever. Viral Factor: it’s a movie where people get shot and die in interesting and exciting ways.