I hate a lot of things about comics journalism, man. Maybe I just hate how Marvel & DC market their books. Is that weird? Ironic? Maybe I just hate how complicit the press is in enabling these companies to push worthless information out there, and I absolutely include myself in that condemnation. It’s generally Marvel and DC jockeying for position and Google rank. It sucks.

I’m not sure what I hate most. Unlettered previews are pretty bad, and I didn’t really realize how bad until I did a few myself. It’s sort of a “Hey, pimp this incomplete product for us that was chosen at random from an upcoming issue that we need to goose the numbers on” thing. I’ve never seen an unlettered preview that was chosen specifically for its artistic content. They’re always either from the first four (or so) pages or random pages throughout the book that don’t have “spoilers.”

I hate those stupid blanked out covers. Oh, you have a new team? And you can’t show it to me? Cool, hit me up when you have something to say. No, no, I understand. If you have a cover with say, six blacked out characters, then you get to have one post with the blank cover, one for each of the six characters, and then, if you’re lucky, another post for the completed cover. And that’s seven, maybe eight posts on the front page of a website that DC doesn’t have, and doesn’t that feel good? Great, go feel good over there and away from me.

You know what I heard through the grapevine about DC’s New 52? One of the edicts of the press campaign was “no story info.” You could describe the basic status quo, but nothing more than what’s in the solicits. And if you go back and look at the vast majority of those interviews from May or whatever til August, what do you see? A bunch of writers spinning their wheels, trying to describe their book in vague, unappealing high concepts, and the occasional artist dropping a cool piece about design. iFanboy had a good take on these. They got broke away from the standard rigmarole by getting creators to do goofy interviews that were informative in terms of approach and perhaps scope, but not necessarily on details. They made water into wine with that.

Oh! I hate playing the firsts game. Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley created more continuous issues of any comic ever as a team, as long as you define any comic as “Fantastic Four” and team as “everyone but the inker, colorist, letterer, and editor.” Batwoman is something like “the first lesbian superhero to star in an eponymous solo title from DC Comics That Isn’t The Holly Robinson Catwoman.” There’s so many caveats that it doesn’t even matter, does it? Batwing is the first Black Batman (except for the devil-worshipping black Batman who went on to be Azrael the other year). Instead of trying to grasp cheap glory, why not just make some good stories and be like “This is the first good Cloak & Dagger comic ever!” (hasn’t happened yet) or “This story will make you like Donna Troy!” (ditto).

While I’m being negative, what else do I dislike… posting press releases with no commentary is one, I figure, but that one’s obviously stupid. Announcing comics with no creative team. If you don’t have a creative team, back down until you do. I don’t care if you’re giving Hypno Hustler a 100-issue maxiseries that forms one huge story that maps to the rise of rap worldwide. Who’s writing it? Who’s drawing it? I’m not reading no comics by scrubs, fellas. Put your best foot forward by putting your best asset forward: the creators.

Yeah, basically? I got a lot of issues with comics internet. I’m guilty of a few, and I’ve spent the last however many weeks trying to course-correct and obsessing over it. Gotta do better to be better, right?

With all of that out of the way, I really dug the marketing for Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Fatale, an Image comic that drops in 2012. Check the rhime:

The interview with Kiel at CBR is pretty good, too. It’s full of information. Fatale has its roots in a Wildstorm pitch. It’s a genre mash. It’s a Brubaker/Phillips joint, which means that at worst it will be “pretty good.” It’s Brubaker attacking his relatively poor (but generally well-written, nonetheless) usage of women as undeconstructed (™ 2011, Brothers Before Others, Inc.) femmes fatales or trophies. It’s got monsters. It’s got guns. It’s twelve-issues long, but may run longer. It hits the ’30s, ’50s, and the ’70s, which are some of my favorite decades to read about. It’s gonna be sorta weird to read Brubaker/Phillips without Val Staples, but Dave Stewart is a monster. Basically, Brubaker gave an interview that made me want to read their book. It’s enormously effective.

But the truth is, it was too late. I wanted to read the book after I saw the images. They’re a movie trailer fitted to a nine-panel grid. It fits in praise for the team a couple places. It gives you a taste of the story by teasing a few scenes. There’s even a bit of narrative in the preview, thanks to the scenes that bookend it. The preview really tells you everything you need to know (how it looks, how it reads, where to find it, what it’s called) in a few short pages. Very deft work.

More like Fatale, please, and fewer blacked out X-Men or Avengers teasers. Cater to me, internet.

Takeshi Koike is doing the designs (or more?) for the 40th anniversary animation of Monkey Punch’s Lupin the Third. Here’s some more info, courtesy of Crunchyroll. The special is called Lupin the III: Chi no Kokuin ~ Eien no Mermaid.

Lupin is very much one of my favorite things. It’s a smart and clever crime series with plenty of jokes, an interesting cast of characters (marksman, samurai, femme fatale, dedicated idiot cop, and a goofball kind-hearted savant in the lead), and a throwback style. The series always feels like the ’60s tipping over into the ’70s, when suits were still in style and cigarettes were something everyone smoked.

The cast is seriously good. Fujiko Mine is, yes, a chesty femme fatale, sending men to their doom with the power of her beauty while simultaneously making off with the loot. Jigen is a jaded shootist. Goemon is a fallen samurai who is all about the ideas of honor and legacy. Inspector Zenigata is… well, he’s talented, but he’s no match for Lupin, who is the emperor of all thieves. There’s nothing special about any of the characters in theory, but when thrown into the same mix, you have this weird motley crew of bad guys having adventures in glamorous locations. Lupin and Fujiko’s off-again, on-again, no way, it’s off-again because she just bit the heist Lupin was planning relationship is great. Jigen and Goemon playing conscience for Lupin (to an extent) makes for two devils on his shoulder, not one. And Zenigata is a bumbling oaf who is consistently ten steps behind, but trying his hardest to catch up. It’s endearing and funny. It just works. I can’t explain it. It’s good. Shut up.

Koike, of course, is the guy behind Redline, one of the best movies I’ve seen in the past two years. It was goosebumps all up and down the arms good, and the ending was dead on perfect.

And a hypey review from yours truly.

(The thing about Redline is that it made me feel like style vs substance is a false dichotomy. I probably need to think it through more, but Redline‘s style made what was an otherwise straightforward plot (a boy and his hobby, a boy and a girl) into something magical. It isn’t a bad plot, and it’s pretty well-written. The style just kicked it up another notch entirely, and there are points where that style bleeds into the script, too.)

(I miss Lupin’s red jacket though)

A quickie, since today looks to be dumb busy at work:

I reviewed Ultimate Spider-Man for ComicsAlliance. Creative team’s Brian Michael Bendis/Sara Pichelli/Justin Ponsor. Here’s a few random excerpts:

In a development that will surprise absolutely no one, Sara Pichelli (art) and Justin Ponsor (color art) absolutely knock their half of the book out of the park. Since this is a quiet issue, Pichelli doesn’t get a chance to really chew into any action sequences with her usual flair. Due to the absence of action sequences, we’re left looking at Pichelli’s other skills: fashion, body language, facial acting, and everything else that comes into play when drawing people.

Ponsor’s color art is pretty good, too, and a great complement to Pichelli’s art. There’s a page around the middle of the book that features five characters of a few different races. There are five different skin tones present in the scene. That’s something that is painfully rare in cape comics, even when talented colorists are doing otherwise virtuoso work on the page. I don’t know that this is worthy of praising Ponsor to the high heavens–“He got it right when everyone else didn’t, even though they should have!” only goes so far–but I definitely appreciated seeing this sort of attention paid to race in a Marvel comic.

A lot was made of Marvel’s new black Spider-Man by everyone who heard about the character, whether they were for or against the idea. I was pretty pleased to see that the issue of Miles’s race got just the amount of attention it needed in this issue: none. Setting aside the difficulty in explaining the complicated racial and ethnic overlap and intersection between blacks and Latinos — a subject that is probably too complicated for cape comics — Miles and his family are presented as just like any other family in comics. He doesn’t fight roving bands of racists, the Klan, or talk about how he’s from the hood. He’s got a family, his parents want his life to be better than theirs, and they love him very much. He’s normal, and that’s just as it should be.

Despite my qualms about the length and price point, this first issue hooked me. Miles Morales isn’t Peter Parker, his status quo isn’t Peter Parker’s, and his powers have just enough of a twist (hinted at early in the story) that they aren’t exactly Peter’s either. I wanted Bendis to impress me with this issue, and he did. My complaints really boil down to how much space he was given to impress me, rather than anything he did wrong, exactly. This is good comics, and the start of something cool.

And I seriously want to shake Bendis and Pichelli’s hands for introducing an Ultimate version of one of my all-time favorite members of Spidey’s supporting cast.

The new Ultimate character is Prowler, but not Hobie Brown.

I’m mad I left the scare quotes off the one time I said “black Spider-Man.” Turns out being passive-aggressive and snarky late at night is tougher than I expected.

Four bucks for twenty pages is 2011% garbage, but I liked it. If I’d paid for it, I might feel otherwise, I dunno. Anybody read this yet? Spoil away in the comments.

Marvel can seriously blow me over that price, though. Disgusting.

All of these are taken from the first five (seven, in one case, but I forget which) pages of Scott Snyder’s most high profile work: American Vampire (with Rafael Albuquerque, Daniel Zezelj, and Dave McCaig, Detective Comics (with Jock, Francesco Francavilla, and David Baron), and Swamp Thing (with Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn). Snyder’s had fifty or so comics published thus far, but all of these hit in the last 18 (or so) months. American Vampire is 18 issues deep, his run on ‘Tec was 11 issues, and Swamp Thing just started.

Do you see what all of these have in common? “[Aged male mentor figure] used to say [anecdote relevant to the plot].” He switches it up in American Vampire 12 with “Someone once told me”, and he pulls out families and tv shows for another. The real twisty one is ‘Tec 875, where Harvey Bullock, the aged male mentor figure, talks about how kids these days just don’t get it and AM radios are a thing that exists and here’s how to survive in Gotham. Never a mother, interestingly. Always either dudes or groups that are traditionally led by dudes.

All of these are basically the same thing. Anecdotes to kick the story off and show what sort of things the issue’ll be dealing with. It isn’t a bad technique, exactly, but it’s in half of ‘Tec, a quarter of American Vampire, and the first issue of Swamp Thing. It’s substantial, and it’s noticeable, when what it really should be is invisible.

It’s like Garth Ennis and Ireland or (expletive)(facial feature), Brian K Vaughan and stupid trivia, Chris Claremont and BDSM, Brian Bendis and his style of dialogue, Greg Rucka and characters like Sasha Bordeaux/Rene Montoya/Tara Chace/Dex Parios/what’s her name, the lady cop from Adventures of Superman/Elektra/maybe the newlywed widow from Punisher I dunno/the marshal from Wolverine/etc, Mark Millar and really specific numbers and/or really out of place diminutives, Frank Miller and hardboiled/Dirty Harry-style heroes, Warren Ellis and his hard-drinking British dude or lady who takes no guff off anyone and comes up with clever insults while moblogging all the way up and down the Web 2.0, Alan Moore and rape, Nick Spencer and writing terrible comics, Grant Morrison and dead cats, Frank Cho and impeccably drawn but super out of place boobs/butts, Ed Brubaker and women being arm candy for troubled dudes, Peter Milligan and identity issues/questions, and Bruce Jones using “______ THIS!” as a response entirely too often. It’s a tic, and once you notice it, you can’t not notice it, and it yanks you out of the story. It’s the FedEx arrow.

I don’t know how I noticed it, or how whoever told me noticed it (it was my man Luis, as a matter of fact), and his editors didn’t, but man. I opened Swamp Thing 1 and immediately rolled my eyes.

It sucks, because Snyder is a pretty good comics writer (American Vampire is definitely ill), but this is just so… lazy. Like “How to setup history and foreshadow a resolution to a cliffhanger for dummies” lazy. If this was some wack writer who kept trotting this out, I wouldn’t care, because I wouldn’t be buying his comics.

edit: from Amy K, here’s an example from Severed, Snyder’s creator-owned book, where a kid doesn’t have a father to tell him stuff like “Don’t take wooden nickels” and horrible things presumably happen to him as a result of taking a gang of wooden nickels off some demon-possessed hobo or something:

I hate everything tonight for some reason. Maybe it’s because I made the mistake of seeing how many posts I’ve done on this site (1100+) right at the moment that the site was threatening to implode for four hours last night, I dunno. (“I’ve spent HOW much time doing WHAT now?”) Probably. But seriously, right now?

Rather than salt your day with my thoughts on all your favorite comics, though, here are some things that I do like right at this moment:

-I bought Tupac’s All Eyez On Me on vinyl this weekend. I like Makaveli a whole, whole lot, but All Eyez is still no joke. It’s so commercial, but still so personal. It’s a perfect storm on wax.

-And “I Ain’t Mad Atcha” might be his best song:

-I’ve been thinking a lot about Mobb Deep’s “Quiet Storm” after it popped up on a mixtape I downloaded. It’s such a good song, and the intro is one of my all-time favorites for a song:

-And that remix featuring Kimberly Jones before she burned out:

-Mobb Deep at their best… it’s that nihilism, that bleak outlook on life, that makes Prodigy so compelling. Getting that feeling across to the listener, that’s his strength. From The Infamous… to now, his voice has always sounded a little strained to me, like he’s tired. Not tired like “Just ran up and down some stairs like Young Jeezy does before he raps” (ha haaaaa), but tired like he’s tired of life. It’s been too long and too painful. He’s got that Gil Scott-Heron creak to his voice.

-Quiet Storm: “You try to stop mines from growin’, I’ll make your blood stop flowin'”.

-Sudden flash connection: Mos Def on “Astronomy (8th Light)”:

Black like assassin crosshairs
Blacker than my granddaddy armchair
He never really got no time to chill there
Cause this life is warfare, warfare

-And “Life is warfare, warfare” bounces me right to “Shook Ones Pt II”:

I got you stuck off the realness, we be the Infamous
you heard of us
official Queensbridge murderers
the Mobb comes equipped with warfare, beware
of my crime family who got ‘nough shots to share
for all of those who wanna profile and pose
rock you in your face, stab your brain wit’ your nose bone

-I dunno, maybe this is how kontinuity kop komics kollectors feel when they spot Kang or something in comics.

–My friend Steve wrote the shortest of short stories on his tumblr. I like it a whole lot, and it’ll take you fifteen seconds to read.

-John Rozum wants to do an Annotated Xombi post. Please support his efforts!

-I wrote a thing about steampunk and hardboiled fiction, and why I prefer one over the other:

Steampunk provides writers and artists with a way to take hold of the past and fix it, molding it into a much more interesting, and perhaps even healthier, shape than it possessed before. It lets you wash away the unpleasantness of yesterday and replace it with something majestic. It’s nostalgia for a time that never was.

-I dunno. It’s probably an okay read. Esther edited it into a readable shape, which was verrah nice of her.

-I love Decapitate Animals. That link gets nsfw at a few points.

-I love at least six photos in each new post, minimum, and I like way more than that. It’s one of my favorite things on the internet.

-It’s a photoblog and there’s always a few themes running through each image. What’s fun is figuring out the themes and how they connect or fade into one another as you scroll down the page. It’s one of those things like–I love the three pictures of people laughing here. And the pictures come after weed, sunken ships, horrible wartime death, and terror. It’s a release. Of course, it’s followed by an image from Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead (speaking of things i don’t have kind words for) where something horrible has happened, so maybe it’s a brief respite, a nervous laugh.

-Maybe it’s intentional, maybe not, but the author’s intent doesn’t really matter here.

-I feel like I’m explaining the joke, and I don’t want to do that. Poke around their site. There’s a lot of beauty there. There’s a lot of terror/comedy/smiles/melancholy/beauty there.

-Anyone who tells you colors don’t matter in comics is an idiot. Look at that transition.

-I actually bought a lot of vinyl this past weekend, but I had a coupon.

–Dogg Comix are the best comics.

-Comic books… give me a couple days.

-No, that isn’t true. I’ve been reading a lot of Kishimoto’s Naruto lately. Seven volumes? Might could be eight.

FRANK MILLER

HOLY TERROR

PREVIEW

i stripped out the images and posted them here, too, because i probably will have osmething to say when i get out of this snakepit of a napoleon dynamite panel

look at them chunky blacks, mmmmmm

boy do i hope this isn’t super racist when it drops

I’ve been working on my next We Care a Lot article, which centers on a certain 14-part Spider-Man/Venom team-up story from the 90’s that we all know so well. It’s going to be one of the longer write-ups and it should be up in just a day or so. Because of the length, I couldn’t find a spot to fit this in. It’s from the editorial column in Web of Spider-Man #102 and it caught my eye.

That’s kind of rough to read in hindsight. For the few of you not in the know, that’s talking about the Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie from the 90’s. A terrible movie created on a shoestring budget for no reason other than allowing the studio to legally hold onto the franchise for a few more years. The entire movie was created and only a handful of people involved knew that the studio had no intention whatsoever to release it. It stands with the Star Wars Holiday Special as one of the most bootlegged videos out there.

I love how excited that article is. All that hype. They just can’t wait to be able to watch THIS.

“REED! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?! WHAT HAVE YOU doooooooooooone?”

The wedding scene mentioned is also the final scene of the movie, so thanks for the spoilers, jerks!

New York Times bestselling writer Brian Azzarello, author of The Joker and 100 Bullets, teams up with the immensely talented artist Cliff Chiang (Neil Young’s Greendale) for WONDER WOMAN #1, an exciting new series starring the DC Universe’s greatest superheroine. The cover to issue #1 is by Cliff Chiang.

I’m going to go on ahead and call this DC relaunch a success, because they’re getting me to buy a Wonder Woman comic for the first time in… years, probably, during a brief dalliance with the Greg Rucka run. It’s creator driven, obviously–Azzarello and Chiang a team that is too good for most any cape comics character–but here we are nonetheless. Also, I liked this bit from the last time Azzarello wrote Wonder Woman in Superman: For Tomorrow (two trades: one and two):

Couple other bits that seem interesting:

The world’s third-smartest man – and one of its most eligible bachelors – uses his brains and fists against science gone mad in MISTER TERRIFIC #1, the new series from writer Eric Wallace and artist Roger Robinson. The cover to issue #1 is by J.G. Jones.

I still think “third-smartest man” is a dumb gimmick (It’s on the level of “When a lady walks to me says ‘Hey, you know whats sexy?’ I say, ‘No, I don’t know what it is, but I bet I can add up all the change in your purse very fast!”), but I liked the Eric Wallace who wrote Ink and I like Mr. Terrific in theory and a few times over the past few years (Infinite Crisis talking with John Stewart, Checkmate, maybe a couple other spots). Titans, though, I’m not even remotely keen on. Fellas: wow me.

Rising superstar Francis Manapul, fresh off his acclaimed run on THE FLASH with Geoff Johns, makes his comics writing debut in THE FLASH #1, sharing both scripting and art duties with Brian Buccellato. The Flash knows he can’t be everywhere at once, but what happens when he faces an all-new villain who can? The cover to issue #1 is by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato.

Manapul draws nice.

One bit I’m not interested in:

Welcome to a major new vision of the Nuclear Man as writers Ethan Van Sciver and Gail Simone team up with artist Yildiray Cinar to deliver THE FURY OF FIRESTORM #1. Jason Rusch and Ronnie Raymond are two high school students, worlds apart – and now they’re drawn into a conspiracy of super science that bonds them forever in a way they can’t explain or control. The cover to issue #1 is by Ed Benes.

Ethan Van Sciver? Thanks, but no thanks–I’m not the type of guy who can knowingly put money in the pocket of a Joseph McCarthy fanboy and known associate of Breitbart/BigHollywood types. Not a chance, son. Those people are human scum.

I’ll have fuller thoughts once the solicits hit in a couple weeks, I guess. I’m gonna be checking for that new Justice League by Johns & Lee, too. More details here.

My attempt to do a post a day for this week didn’t work out so well for today. Last night I closed at work, today I opened, then once my shift was over I immediately put on a suit for a retirement dinner. That doesn’t give me much in terms of time and energy to get any decent writing done. Not only that, but it’s been brought to my attention that my article concept of “comic book writers as professional wrestling bookers” is actually a terrible idea.

Like Garth Ennis’ WWE where he brings back grizzled, Irish badass Finlay and pushes him through the roof. Throughout his rise to the top, Finlay makes John Cena, Randy Orton and Undertaker look like complete jokes while revealing that they’re all sexual deviants with bizarre fetishes. Coincidentally, Katie Vick is brought back into continuity. Oh, and Hornswoggle starts urinating on people all the time.

Okay, fine, I’ll stop. Instead, here’s a crazy commercial that my brother Geremy directed for Evian.

I’ve seen the behind-the-scenes photos of how they got those baby poses to work. It was… It was something, all right.

All right, so James Robinson’s WWE would have Drew McIntyre show how much of a threat he is by taking out a bunch of named jobbers and putting them on the shelf right as they’re released from the company. After getting the credit for taking out so many lower-carders, his supposed monster push is screeched to a halt as he ends up losing to Evan Bourne and is never heard from again.

…Yeah, now I’m done.

Noted funnybook writer Jeff Parker is making a big push to get a new title: “noted smut-peddler Jeff Parker.” From his Twitter, where he used Twitlonger to cheat and use more than 140 characters:

THE DEAL: Like all true artists, Kev Walker of Thunderbolts has no earthly ‘restraints’ and in the latest issue Marvel chose sagely to let balloons hide the contact between Satana and Moonstone on page six.

IF you would like to see that image sans dialogue, all I ask is that you help get the word out this Thursday on the webcomic BUCKO by me and @erikamoen . Spread the http://www.buckocomic.com/ link far and wide with vigor, and if (and when!) we pass our record number of site visits, I will twitpic that obscured file.

Here is the page in question, where Parker has written Satana as like a hyperactive genki girl from anime all hopped up on ecstasy and viagra. If I had the time, I’d photoshop in Moonstone going “Kyaaaaaa! -_-#” and maybe Juggernaut going “ch-ch-ch-ch-chotto matte!”

It’s pretty plain to see what’s going on, but sure, I’ll play your game, Parker.

The thing about Bucko is that it’s got a pretty impeccable creative team. Erika Moen did DAR for a billion years, at least in internet time. Her sense of humor is that right kind of lowbrow comedy that I like and her characters are full of personality (sorta like what I imagine old timey stage actors were like–very dramatic and intentionally overacted, but great for entertainment purposes). Parker’s been in the trenches for, I dunno, forever? Several years, at the very least. He made a splash with some good all-ages book at Marvel, then moved on to work like Agents of Atlas, The Age of the Sentry, a couple more Agents of Atlas, Underground, and Mysterius. These days, he’s writing what’re probably Marvel’s two best ongoing books, Hulk and Thunderbolts.

Bucko. Right. Let’s talk Bucko.

So: two creators who have established themselves in two entirely different lanes (corporate comics & webcomics) and are freakishly talented (poop jokes and talking monkeys a specialty) team up to create… what? Turns out, the answer is “a comic strip about Portland.” Moen and Parker’s comic is a murder mystery that begins when Bucko takes an emergency trip to the bathroom during an interview and discovers a dead body. The drama soon explodes (sorry), with a swirling mixture of threesomes (almost), stab wounds, corrupt cops, and a scathing exposé of the American penal system. Also there are jokes about fixies and Etsy.

All of the people I know in Portland (all… four of ’em, plus I guess a couple of tiny dogs) demand that I move there. Thanks to Bucko, I now understand that this is a dirty, dirty trick.

It’s a really funny comic. Start here and work your way forward. It updates on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One chapter’s done (21 pages worth of comics), and the second chapter is in progress. You should be reading it, if only so that Jeff Parker can fulfill another lifelong dream.

(read Thunderbolts too, by the way.)