Richard Corben, Brian Azzarello, Jose Villarubia. CAGE, 2002.

I re-read this one the other week. It’s one of the comics I got way back when I was getting back into comics, and was probably one of my first Corben comics, too. I hadn’t read it in years, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I re-read it. It looks like the last edition debuted in 2002, and the series hasn’t been re-packaged since, which is a shame. The intro to the hardcover, written by Darius Jones, is called “Straight-up Real Nigga,” something I can’t imagine Marvel ever associating with Cage in the here-and-now, but also an idea I’d love to see the character actually be able to deal with in the comics themselves.

Corben and colorist Villarubia put in work on this page, and it’s probably my favorite image of the character. There’s no tiara, no yellow shirt, nothing that screams “This is Luke Cage!”, but it’s still signifying nonetheless. You get the sense that he’s dangerous, he’s mad, and he’s invincible. You can hurt him, you can knock him down, but you don’t get to win. That background Villarubia threw behind him in panel 4 is great, a bloody sunset that follows in Cage’s wake.

I try to do a couple of big blogging projects a year, whether it’s blacking out on the whole of Frank Miller’s work on Batman or scratching the surface of why I like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira. It’s a chance to focus and do just one thing for a while, to empty thoughts out of my head I couldn’t find another place for, and to satisfy my own curiosity. Robin McConnell asked me to think about doing some stuff for his Inkstuds comics podcast over a year ago, and last month, I saw a space in my schedule between a relatively complicated winter and the beginning of con season, had a brainstorm, and took the opportunity.

So here’s what it is: Inkstuds Spotlight is a chance for me to satisfy my own curiosity about what it’s like to “be in comics.” I made the move from fan to employee last year, and it brought with it a whole new set of things to worry about. But I don’t really care about me, because I’m way more interested in what cartoonists, academics, bloggers, critics, and other people in or adjacent to comics do. Hawking books, working tables, coming up with lesson plans, making minis, covering comics, all of that.

Over the course of the next month, I’m going to put up a bunch of interviews in the 30-40 minute range—I’m aiming for two a week, but I may end up with a few more—with people in and around comics, talking about what they do and why. I don’t have a script, preferring to let the conversation go where it wants to go, but I did ask each person how they came to comics and what their comics community is like. Beyond that, it’s anything goes. This won’t be exhaustive or comprehensive, because there are literally not enough hours in the day for that. But hopefully it will be a lot at the very least.

I’m really happy about this and hopefully you’ll dig it, too. To make sure you can’t escape my voice, my friend Joe Hughes at ComicsAlliance is going to syndicate the posts in addition to them going up on Inkstuds, since I really believe that site has something to offer and I probably miss contributing there a little.

The plan is for podcasts to go up on Tuesday and Thursday morning each week, hopefully at 0900 Eastern. We’re looking at slight technical difficulties this morning, but we’ll get it sorted and then you can maximize your crush on me by making my laugh into your text message alert. (I laugh a lot. Sorry.) I’ll link posts here as they go up if you don’t visit either of those sites.

I promise this isn’t a way to trick you into listening to rap music by accident.

Edit: the Inkstuds post is live, and so is the one from ComicsAlliance!

Steve McQueen & John Ridley’s 12 Years A Slave got nominated for an Oscar this year. That got me thinking, so I dug up a list of winners and nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

You should click through, so that you can accurately answer this brief survey:

-How many black movies, with “black movies” defined as “primarily concerned with or created by black people” for the purposes of the question, have been nominated for Best Picture by the Academy?

-How many of those movies are about how sad it is to be black, or racial strife, or just the black condition in general?

-What does it mean when the organization of record for the movie industry only pays attention to black people, and undoubtedly people of several other stripes and types, when they’re in pain, but eats up movies about white people doing fantastic things?

Eddie Murphy, presenting an award at the 60th Academy Awards:

(and, just to stay on brand, here’s Jadakiss in 2004: “Why Halle have to let a white man pop her to get a Oscar?/Why Denzel have to be crooked before he took it?”

This year’s the 86th Academy Awards, but it’s biz as usual, isn’t it? According to a Feb. 2012 study, “the Academy is 94% white, 77% male, 14% under the age of 50, and has a median age of 62.”

You can tell.

I try to keep 4l! pretty clean on my part. Outside of quotes—which admittedly is a huge thing to be like “let’s set aside this thing” thanks to how much rap music I talk about but bear with me—I try to avoid cussing in posts. It’s too easy, I think, but also not effective enough in my hands to be worthwhile as anything but an ultra-rare zap.

In real life, though, I could turn the air blue if I had to, and have probably done that even when I didn’t need to. Yeah, I like to say “fuck,” I got a fuckin problem. I know it doesn’t matter or whatever, profanity is just another facet of language with its own strengths and weaknesses, but I’ve gotten into the habit of avoiding it when writing, and I sort of like giving myself the extra challenge. “Can I get my strong feelings across without going profane?”

However, while I worked New York Comic Con this past weekend, my good friends Gavin Jasper and Chris Sims walked up to my booth and stood there for a moment where I could see them. I was distracted, so I just looked at Gavin, a fast up and down glance to see what he was wearing before saying hey, and then I did the same to Chris, and then time slowed down and I looked from Chris to Gavin and back again and realized I was seeing this:

And let me tell you what, I was struck completely speechless, and when I got my words back, the only words I could string together were “You’ve got to be FUCKING kidding me” 100% on instinct.

There’s a whole story behind this, about the return of Paul Heyman to the WWE, but honestly, I didn’t know that when it happened to me. It was just the funniest thing I’d seen in forever. These two guys totally made my con, as you can see in this picture taken by Kevin Church:

Thanks, fellas. Gavin’s gonna write about this too, he wants to explain the wrasslin stuff, but I wanted to get my side of the story out there FIRST.

I’m at New York Comic Con! Literally, I mean—I’m at Image’s booth, #1444, doing work, so this is going to be short.

I’m going to be super busy at the con, but I’m running a few panels I’m pretty stoked for:

Eat, Read, Love: CHEW’s Ascendance
Friday, October 11th / 4:15pm – 5:15 pm / Location: 1A10

ROCKET GIRL! Here From The Future To Save Us All!
Saturday, October 12th / 11:15 am – 12:15 pm / Location: 1A08

LAZARUS: Family, Wealth, and Violence in the Near-Future
Sunday, October 13th / 1:15 PM – 2:15 PM / Location: 1A14

I like all of these people a lot, so it’ll be fun to get to pick their brain live on stage. If you’re around, stop by and ask some good questions.

ALSO, a book I worked on that I’m really proud of came out yesterday: Greg Rucka & Michael Lark’s first Lazarus collected edition. It’s on pre-order at Amazon for eight bucks and a 10/22 release, but your local comic shops should have copies. I edited this one, and I enjoyed working with the creative team a great deal.

That’s it! Back to work.

I’ve never run a 5k before, but I’m going to do one in about two weeks for the sake of Prevention International: No Cervical Cancer, who are sponsoring a 5k walk/run to combat cervical cancer in African women. Here’s the details:

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancer causes of death for women in Africa, even though it is the most preventable! Worldwide, over 500,000 women are diagnosed, and more than 280,000 women die of cervical cancer, every year. Prevention International: No Cervical Cancer (PINCC) creates sustainable programs that prevent cervical cancer by educating women, training medical personnel, and equipping facilities in developing countries, utilizing proven, low cost, accessible technology methods.

Each walker or runner has a goal, sort of an optional minimum buy-in. If you don’t make it, that’s fine and you can still run, but if you do make it, or exceed, then you’re helping out a little more. The goal for runners is $250, and I hit that over the weekend, but surpassing the goal is great, too. The more money we raise, the more resources PINCC earns, and the closer we get to meeting the $25000 goal for the entire 5k. Competitors have raised around $9000 so far, so we’re a little under halfway there.

So, if you have the money and inclination, I’d appreciate it very much if you’d pledge for my run. I don’t have anything to offer you in exchange, though if you have ideas let me know, but the donations are tax deductible. I’d like to blow past the goal, personally; double or even triple it, but whatever we do is whatever we do, and every bit helps.

The run is on 9/21. You can check the site out and pledge on my page here. Thanks for whatever you can do.

I always liked this page from Frank Miller & Lynn Varley’s Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the book, alongside all of the stuff with Supergirl. I like it more for the dialogue than anything else, though Miller’s formless, chunky Batman is an obviously great take on the character’s design. But this bit is killer, from Hawkboy’s mouth to Batman’s heart: “Thanagarians do not believe in fate. We do not believe that anything is beyond the power of mind and bone and muscle and will. I do not accept these deaths. I do not accept this crime.”

I really dig that bit, despite the Ayn Randiness of it. I like how it perfectly sketches that character out, giving him a moral immovability that’s also present in characters like Rorshach. There is Justice and there is Crime, and one must be eliminated at all costs.

Hawkboy discusses his life as if it were a conflict, a constant series of battles between Us and Them, the Just and the Fallen. There is always something To Be Triumphed Over, which ain’t necessarily the best way to look at the world. The directness of the statement appeals to me a great deal. It posits a world where change is not only possible, but possible due to the direct intervention of human hands. If something’s gone wrong, you reach out a hand, you take hold, and you fix it, and that thing has no choice but to bow to your will.

“I do not accept these deaths. I do not accept this crime.” That mentality sits at the root of a lot, if not most, superheroes. With precious few exceptions, your average superhero is doing something that is wildly illegal, but they’re doing it for “good reasons.” When people talk about how cape comics have fascist or authoritarian elements, they’re talking about Superman bending a dictator to his will, Batman creating a surveillance state for the protection of the people inside it, the Punisher playing at executioner. They are the Good Guys, so what they do is by definition Right and Just, even when it is illegal and horrible, because we know their hearts are in the right place.

This sort of doctrine really only works in comics, where you can “avenge” someone’s death and have that be an actual ending or provide closure. Real life doesn’t work like that. There are a lot of things that will bow to the power of mind and bone and muscle and will, but then there are greater things that will never bow. You will have to accept death. You will have to accept crime. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you’re too poor to afford boots, right? But it’s nice to think about a world where we have total control, instead of none.

Quick hit, because I have a question but no answer and I haven’t had one of these conversations in a while:

Superman is, as depicted in the comics, essentially perfect. He’s an upright, straightforward, and moral man. Like Captain America, the choices Superman makes are generally the ones that we would consider correct or moral. There are exceptions, obviously, but in general and in canon, Superman is the moral center of the DC universe.

The one thing about Superman, the franchise and character, I’ve never been able to figure out is his relationship with Lois Lane. There are a couple minor things that bug me—Superman is literally the Best Man Alive, so every story where Lois gets jealous because he’s hanging out with some other lady is silly at best—but the biggest one is the Superman/Lois Lane/Clark Kent triangle.

How does that love triangle not make Superman look really dishonest? Superman is Clark, Clark is Superman. They’re both reflections of the same core person, who is generally unfailingly honest and moral. But he lies to the woman we’re supposed to believe he loves. He actively lies, in fact, concocting schemes and routines that’ll maintain his identity at the expense of Lane’s career and personal life.

I know that this is partly the result of the friction that comes when stories for children are haphazardly turned into stories for adults, and the horrifying juxtapositions that situation tends to bring with it, but it’s also something that’s stuck around as the character has been continually rebooted into someone meant for adults, rather than children. That means that it’s a significant part of the character, something with deep roots and importance to basically every single portrayal of Superman.

But, knowing what I know and feeling what I feel about Superman, it seems like one trait that’s in extreme opposition to his usual portrayal. I can’t bridge the gap between Superman being The End-All Be-All Of Goodness and lying to Lois Lane.

So what’s the deal? How did you make this work situation for you?

Joe Lynch directed this sweet-ass short film called Truth in Journalism. In a fake documentary in the style of Man Bites Dog, a trio of filmmakers follow around disgraced newspaper reporter Eddie Brock. Obsessed with showing his side of the story and what he’s all about, Eddie appears to be a little unhinged, low on scruples, lower on compassion and he’s definitely hiding some kind of secret. Eddie’s played by True Blood star Ryan Kwanten.

Definitely watch it past the credits.

He’s just a smidge too scummy in parts for my taste as an Eddie Brock fanboy, but it’s still a damn fine little movie.

Okay, so if you go to this site even semi-regularly, you notice that thing I do every Sunday night called This Week in Panels. A weekly segment where me and my commando force of contributors take all the comics we’ve read that week and reduce them to one panel each, each one representing that specific issue best we can. It’s been a staple for so long that pretty soon we’re going to hit ThWiP Week 200. When I hit 100, we did a bunch of ThWiPs based on our all-time favorite comic issues. So we can’t do that again.

What I want to do for Week 200 is This Character in Panels and I’d like your help. Take your favorite characters. Try to find that one panel that best represents them. It could be Superman convincing that girl not to commit suicide. It could be Spider-Man blaming himself for Gwen Stacy’s death. It could be anything from this…

…to this…

…possibly this…

…or perhaps this…

…or even something as recent as this…

Whatever. If you have anything in mind, just send it to jaguartooth (at) gmail.com along with the issue #, writer, artist and character name if it isn’t someone easily recognizable. Come on, gamble a stamp!