Solicit for the November issue of Titans under the cut:

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Fine, I know, spelling fail, too.  Still.

In comics there are a lot of situations in which characters of wildly different sizes fight.  Lilliputian characters will go up against regular-sized people, or normal people will fight fee-fie-foe-fum-style giants.  Sometimes, not always, but sometimes these fights will contain knock-out punches delivered by the smaller character.

Imagine a fist smashing into your face, hard enough to knock you out.

Now imagine a something the size of a pen cap smash into your face at the same speed as a punch.  Now imagine a pen-tip.  A needle tip.

Yes, it would depend on the thickness of the relative giant’s skin, and the amount of momentum behind the punch.  But if you see Wonder Woman punch Giganta, Giganta shouldn’t fall down, she should be stabbed through the cheek.

I would think this would appeal to some of the gore-loving creators.  Think of a super-speed-powered character punching a giant foe again and again, ripping holes into the skin, the hero’s arms dripping with capillary fragments and subcutaneous fat, until the giant character was just one walking blood-fountain.  Very Ennis, no?  Or do I mean Ellis?

Well, I imagine they’d both like it.

The DCU blog released a preview of Batgirl #1.  Don’t bother checking.  They don’t say who she is.

Although there are strong hints, and as far as I can tell no comics company has ever played the game slyly enough to counteract people’s expectations with misplaced hints, the identity of the new Batgirl has not been announced.

Back at Wonder-Con I was bubbling with anticipation.  Now I’m just so tired.  Just.  So.  Tired.  I know that anything to do with comics means a long waiting period, but at some point the question is drawn out long after the answer becomes a source of irritation instead of curiosity.

I know all comics readers, all media consumers in general, have had experiences where the storyline, the movie, the build-up, the series, the idea, or the wait is drawn out so long that the pay-off no longer seems worth it no matter what it is.

So spill, oh faithful gripers.  At least it will take my mind off of things.

A friend of mine, who used to enjoy the Batman: The Animated Series back when it aired, recently told me that her regard for Batman was finally snuffed out.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a lead into griping about how Batman is being portrayed these days.  I’ve done that enough. Read the rest of this entry �

I have no memory of what made me buy my first comic book, and I don’t know what made me buy the one after that.  What I do know, is that I never would have gotten into comics at all, let alone bought half the comics I own, if it weren’t for fan culture on the internet.

You want to know who the current Robin is?  There’s a site for that.

You want to know what happened in issue 82 of Legends of the Dark Knight?  There is a site for that.

You want to talk about the psychological problems of Batman, or the physics of Superman, or how cute Nightwing’s butt looks, or the exact continuity of the Crises?  There’s a site for that, and that, and that, and god help you, but that, too.

There are also scans, and stories written by fans, and fan art, and a thousand arguments to get involved with.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about how comics, particularly superhero comics, are dying a slow painful death.  I have no idea whether they are or not, but what I do know is that you’re unlikely to find people down the street from you who are into comics.  The internet serves as both a social place in and of itself, and a way to meet other people who have an interest in the same things you do.

It also serves as a way to gather information.  How many people here would be into comics if they couldn’t get online?  How many became more involved when online societies began forming?  What ‘net stuff do you like?

I first met Nicholas Doan, the writer of Pray for Death, from Zuda, DC’s webcomic division at Wonder-Con.  When I ran into him in San Diego, with the comic’s artist Daniele Serra, they very kindly agreed to tell me about how their journey to publication.

Detective Abigail Jenkins is the inverse of the typical pop-culture cop; the one who is labelled a ‘loose canon’ by the press while the guys at the station indignantly talk about how he ‘gets things done’.  She’s lauded by the press after an early success, but condemned by her peers.  When she starts to investigate a serial killer with a religion fascination who thrills at the thought of getting caught, it seems everyone around her is setting her up to fail.

I ask Doan what inspired him.

“I think serial killers are society’s most complex, interesting and disturbed monsters,” he says.  The idea flowed from there.

How did he come to work with Serra?

At first, Doan was in contact with Septagon Studios about Pray for Death.  They put him in touch with Serra.

“I thank them every day for introducing us,” Doan tells me.  “I came up with the concept and he made it look pretty.”

‘Pretty’ isn’t the word I would use, either for the concept or the art.  The people in this comic aren’t glamourous.  They have weathered faces and preoccupied expressions.  The background is hazy.  The pages themselves look muddy and grim, with dark splatters of pigment splashed over them in places.  This style amplifies the noir tone of the book, as well as our sense of forboding as we look through it.  There is a feeling that the killer could very well jump from the shadowy panels.  And there’s the blood.

“The blood,” Doan says, “is perfectly used.”

He tells me that Serra used coffee to get the right pigment and texture.  When I ask Serra where he go the idea, he shrugs and says, “My breakfast.”

Septagon asked them for five pages and two covers, which they supplied.  Then they waited, for days, weeks, and finally months.  Two months in total, which as any creator can tell you, is grueling.

Finally, they went to Zuda.  I ask how their experience was there.

“They took care of us.  It was a good opportunity to be placed in a big company.”

And so, outside of Pray for Death, at least, there is a happy ending.  Inside?

Check it out.

I am terrified of flying, hate any mention of planes in danger, and yet I found the strip of Streaky The Supercat taking the tail off an airplane because it had the picture of a mouse on it to be the most adorable thing I’ve seen this week.

I’m pretty sure that Amanda Conner needs to be classified as a deadly weapon.

Feel free to comment with your favorite part of Wednesday Comics below.

I’m generally of the opinion that the world would be much better if I ran it.  (What?  Like you’re not?)  This principle applies to panels, and all of the things said by all of the people on them.

It applied especially to the Sunday Conversation With Dan Didio panel at Comic-Con.  I generally like these panels very much because they leave aside the usual slideshow of covers that we will be seeing in eight months to two years and the painfully awkward questions.  Instead, they’re a bunch of people talking about comics.  Dan Didio generally does a great job of moderating the responses from the audience, and a panel of comics professionals cuts in with funny commentary.  It’s a really enjoyable panel.

One of the questions this year was, “What was a big ‘wow’ moment you’ve read in comics?”  That was where the panel spiralled down from something fun into the realms of what I can only describe as extreme unacceptability.  Every single reply was “When ____ got killed.”  Every one.

People!  Stop encouraging them!  We just barely got them to stop playing darts with the members of Young Justice!  Maybe it’s a question of when you started reading comics, but to me, standard character death that comes with every single big event is the most predictable and un-‘wow’ thing in the world.  You can practically set your watch by it.  How were any of those people shocked?

But what’s more, one of the other questions was, “What do you like to read in comics?”  My answer?  Fun.  A lot of it.  I want to have a blast when I’m reading.  I want the characters to have a blast.  I want the comic I’m reading to be so much fun that if you gave the reader the option of falling through the paper and joining the characters, they would do it in a heartbeat.

I don’t know if the panel was Bizarro World or if I’m truly that alone in preferring comics in which a hero’s death isn’t the most memorable event.  Aren’t there so many better things to remember?  And if there aren’t, shouldn’t there be?

Last weekend was my third Comic-Con and the first one in which I couldn’t get into the panels I wanted to.  David, on the last fourcast, disagreed with my belief that the Con has grown too crowded to be effective, but I met a few people who agreed with me and we all had different theories on why the Con seemed to have reached critical mass and exploded into something unwieldy.

I had heard that Comic-Con had reduced the number of tickets sold, and when I went online to buy my own tickets, I found that the four day passes were almost sold out much earlier than last year.  I thought that would make it easy to get into panels.  Sadly, on Thursday I saw that the Con had gotten so crowded that any tv or movie panels had a two to four hour line and that many of the comics panels had a one hour line.  Even if you were willing to wait, it was often a toss-up as to whether you got to see the panels you wanted to.

My theory is that the early sell-out of tickets meant that the Con had started attracting hardcore fans.  People, like me, who had been there several times before.  Not only would they target panels more specifically, they’d know to get in line early, and when that failed, get in line even earlier.  Not to mention the recent recession might have driven people away from the vendors and up to the panels.

A friend of mine, Graeme McMillan from io9, thought that there were the same amount of tickets sold, but that everyone showed up this time around, instead of the regular percentage of no-shows that any event gets.

And then, of course, there were the outright cynics who thought that the Con would sell tickets to the entire population of the world if it could, and it did, and there was no use acting surprised that things were overcrowded.

Although everyone I met at this Con was wonderful, and I did enjoy seeing writers and editors close up, I feel like maybe I should hold off on San Diego next year.  Granted, I won’t get a chance to get an over-sized Dr. Who bag at another Con, and I won’t see the life-sized lego replicas of Boba Fett, but I’d sacrifice that to get into the panels I want to see without waiting for hours in a line that snakes around the entire building first.

I am off to San Diego.

In the last Fourcast, I related past incredibly embarrassing meetings with creators.

I’d like some stories about your own meetings with creator, or con experiences, good and bad.