Informal poll time. What books are you regularly reading? I buy a lot of stuff off the wall or via Amazon, so my pull list is kept fairly short. Right now, the books I buy regularly are
Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers, Hellblazer, Joe the Barbarian, King City, and Unknown Soldier. I got One Piece
So, what do you read weekly? What do you buy later?
The nice thing about the internet is that even if you erase all of the stupid, hateful, idiotic things you say on your forums, someone out there has hung onto it. I wanted to post a couple of his greatest hits from a few years back, maybe 06, 07, that are now lost to time. A little not safe for work googling (“rape of wonder woman mark millar” and “black down syndrome mark millar,” for instance) and bam, just as I remembered them:
“While down at the shops, I saw a black guy with [Down syndrome]. Amazing, as this is something my friends and I had queried for years. Is DS genetically localized to Caucasians. Yes, I’m now about to waste 20 mins phoning a couple of my pals to say so, but now me appetite has been whet and I’m curious if there are any Chinese or Indian Downs Syndrome people out there. Given that Scotland is almost entirely white my chances of seeing one here are slim, but I’m certainly on the look out now.”
“I pitched this to DC for a laugh years back. The idea was that, like Death of Superman, we had Rape of Wonder Woman; a twenty-two page rape scene that opened up into a gatefold at the end just like Superman did.”
Johanna Draper Carlson recently posted another amazing idea:
(This dislike of his work runs in the family. Back in the day, Millar pitched KC a terrible Legion proposal that included all kinds of awful ideas, like Fertile Lass, whose power was to get pregnant whenever a boy looked at her. See? Another bad taste concept that doesn’t go anywhere.)
Aw, he’s just joshin’, ain’t he?
The ending of Kick-Ass? The one where all his heroism was for naught and he ends on a down note? That note is his father banging a black lady on the couch, his girlfriend dating a black guy and texting him pictures of her going down on him, and a little girl beating up a couple of prepubescent black thugs.
Marc-Oliver Frisch got it right.
Y’all like him, though.
A lot of quality books got nods this year. Naoki Urasawa got five nominations, and Darwyn Cooke, Ed Brubaker, and Mark Waid got three a-piece. I’m very pleased to see more and more manga represented in non-manga categories, because ghettoizing it is dumb. It’s just comics, baby. If you don’t know Urasawa, click here and get to scrolling. I’ve got something cooking on Pluto 8, but that’s a few days away at the earliest. For Darwyn Cooke’s Parker: The Hunter, click here.
There’s a lot of cool stuff in here, including several books I have not read, but will be reading asap. I also want to point out the Eisner nomination for Laura Hudson’s Comics Alliance, a site I freelance for, making me 1/15th Eisner nominated! Congrats, Laura. You deserved the nom, and you definitely deserve the Eisner.
It’s so nice that nothing like Justice League of America #11, the Brad Meltzer/Rags Morales story that got an Eisner a few years back got nominated. You know the story, it had Arsenal and Vixen trapped in a building that was underwater, but they were too dumb to realize they were upside down? Yeah, that was kind of a lame win for DC. This year, though, there’s nothing like tha
Best Single Issue (or One-Shot)
:negativeman:
Click here to check out the official list of Eisners, or just hit the jump, where I got my copy/paste on.
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LeSean Thomas’s blog had the link of the day for me.
Remember Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks? Heir apparent to Dave Chappelle’s The Chappelle Show and one of the most brutally funny shows on TV?
It’s back!
There’s just glimpses of things in here– Huey vs White Jesus, Stinkmeaner possessing Granddad (!), tons of anime/kung-fu/rap references, VladTV… this season is gonna be something serious.
Who linked me to this on Twitter? I love you madly.
We’re taking a break from the Fourcast! this week, due to Wondercon hitting on our recording weekend and being unable to record the podcast panel (I’ve never seen so many wires in my life). We’ll be back next week with something interesting for y’all, though, please believe.
In the meantime, some minor self-promotion! You can find me posting a few times a month at Comics Alliance, and I’m part of the new team at iFanboy, too. I’m going to be posting once a week for now, doing a series of linkblogging posts called Pay Attention! I’ll run down news you might have missed, interesting sites, blah blah blah.
Now I can finally stop pitching rocks in Hamsterdam! Hurrah!
Podcast will be back next week!
Just so you know, Comics Alliance is the place to go for hot off the presses Wondercon news. Two bits of note for Friday:
–Greg Rucka is done at DC Comics and his Batwoman? Well, y’all are gonna be waiting a while. I have more details in the link.
-Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder is back on track. It hits again in February 2011 under the name Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, a six-issue miniseries. I can’t even front, that news is super exciting. I can’t wait to see more of Miller/Lee’s take of the Dark Knight universe. Grant Morrison has faltered for me, due in part to the on and off art, and Dini is writing the kind of comic book you use to break up weed on. Miller/Lee’s ASBAR was like a chilled shot of vodka– something bracing and surprising, and something that’ll rock your world when you least expect it.
More on that later, though. Stay tuned, true believer 🙂
If you’re coming to San Francisco for Wondercon, or if you live in or near the city, try to stop by and check out Cartoon Art Museum. It’s a pretty neat place. It has some fairly ancient animation cels, an actual Yellow Kid page, some classic Gene Colan art, a lot of Ed Hannigan works (and he is the beneficiary of a party on Friday evening), and a whole heaping lot of Batman stuff right now.
They have regular lectures/events. I’ve attended a few alone or with friends and enjoyed all of them, even when I had no idea what Scott Kurtz was talking about that one time. I’m really glad this kind of place exists, where comics are treated as art and a focus is placed on creators and characters equally. The Gene Colan exhibit was amazing, and I’m happy I got to see it.
If you stop by and dig the place, give some thought to supporting CAM. Membership starts at 35 bucks, though they also take normal donations. It’s a good place, and I’d like to see it stick around. Give it a look if you get a chance.
NRAMA: Fair enough. Back on the subject of your work on Blackest Night, is there a character you’re writing that you’re liking more than you expected?
GJ: A bunch. The biggest surprise is how easy it is to write when Hal and Barry are together. These two know each other so well, and there’s such a strong tie to them…it’s like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And something happens to Hal when he’s with Barry. It happens to me when I hang out with my friend, Matt. He’s so organized and punctual that a little part of my brain shuts off. I don’t need to worry about the time or where we’re going. I feel like that happens to Hal when he’s around Barry. Hal goes with the flow a little more, while Barry’s taking up the slack of figuring out where to go. I have more Barry and Hal scenes written down because they just keep writing themselves. Introvert and extrovert. Saint and sinner. Time and space.
And then there’s a character that’s really surprised me. I don’t want to give it away but she’s one of the strongest and most recognizable characters in the DC Universe, and yet she hasn’t been in the spotlight for a very long time. But she will be now. For quite some time to come.
NRAMA: OK, then which character will people get to know better in Blackest Night than they’ve ever known before?
GJ: Same character. She’s been around since the ’60s.
-Geoff Johns, from an interview with Vaneta Rogers. Newsarama is currently throwing up malware warnings in my browser, and there’s really no reason to click through anyway, but if you do, browser beware.
Let’s take a brief look at a few high-profile moves in Geoff Johns’s post-Flash career:
1. Brought back Hal Jordan
2. Brought back Barry Allen
3. Brought back Professor Zoom
4. Brought back Ronnie Raymond
5. Introduced a bunch of lame-os in JSA
6. Wrote Blackest Night
7. Explained various minutiae, including Power Girl’s boob window, Barry Allen’s bowtie, and why love is actually a bunch of creepo stalker chicks who don’t wear clothes and love to brainwash people
8. Called Aquaman’s wife “one of the strongest and most recognizable characters in the DC Universe”
Honest question: why’s Geoff Johns seem to like the boringest parts of comics?
Last week, I wondered aloud about the skin tone of a character in Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s upcoming time-spanning SHIELD. In short, Imhotep, Egyptian doctor and Agent of SHIELD (Officer of SHIELD?), was modern-day white, rather than ancient Egypt brown.
I emailed Dustin Weaver with a link to the post, and he wrote back pretty quickly. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially, it was a mistake in the production process. He’s done a lot of research on the book to try and make sure things make sense, and that’s something that slipped through the cracks when doing color tests. He’s gonna try to get them fixed in the trade, if Marvel’s amenable to it. He’s a pretty cool guy.
Just an update!
edit: I asked Dustin to quote a bit of his email and he agreed. In his own words:
Oh, man, you’re right! I’m embarrassed and shocked that I didn’t catch this mistake before it was finished. I’m surprised nobody caught this mistake.
The 2 page spread of the Egyptians fighting the Brood was the very first thing that got colored for this book and it was the testing page for the style of this whole series. I think it went through 4 different versions before we got something we liked. I think with all this back and forth with the style of the thing we missed the fact that they were white. I feel pretty stupid. I seriously did a lot of research to get a lot of the details right. To miss something so blatant is embarrassing.
