Listen y’all, here go the moral of the story.

Bonny Blue Beetle is dead and gone. He’s joined the ranks of Firestorm (35 issues), Spider-Girl (130ish issues), Checkmate (31 issues), Manhunter (30-odd issues), Catwoman (82 issues), The Order (10 issues), Blade (12 issues), and dozens of other critically acclaimed victims of the direct market. All of these, excepting I think Catwoman, fell prey to the doom of all comics: low sales. Sales spike every once and a while, but comics generally sell less each month.

Now, the question isn’t whether or not these comics are dead. That’s obvious– they are, and they aren’t coming back. And if they do come back, they’ll just pull a Manhunter and bite it again six issues later.

No, the question is who killed Blue Beetle, and when?

Most people would say DC Comics killed it. They didn’t market it right, they didn’t give it enough of a chance, maybe they should have eaten their losses, maybe so-and-so (Blue Beetle) can join one of the worst written books in the line (Teen Titans), and so on. If only DC Comics had done their job, things would be okay!

I think the answer is a bit more obvious than that. Who killed Blue Beetle? Comic fans did.

Looking at the top 300 books for September 08 tells me one thing. There are exactly two books in the top 20 that fall into the critically acclaimed column– All-Star Batman and All-Star Superman. Those don’t count, though, since they have big names attached and are tentpole titles. I had to drop down to #41 to find another one of those books (Incredible Hercules), #61 for the next (Nova), #69 for another (Captain Britain), and it stays dire after that. Blue Beetle came in at #161, with around twelve thousand sales.

The “Blame DC” model tends to work in the “If you build it, they will come” model. However, DC built Blue Beetle. They made it easy to get into and it tied into a few of their big events (Infinite Crisis, Sinestro Corps, and Countdown). It was fun and funny. They did their job. Why didn’t it work out and go on for 800 issues? (My question is ‘why should it?’ but that’s another post entirely.)

It didn’t work because of comics fans.

Comics publishers push a certain subset of their books as being very Important and Essential and Vital to Understanding the Future of the ______ Universe. “This is the story you need to read,” they tell you. “This is the story I need to read!” you respond.

And that’s how Ultimates 3, a book that I have yet to see one person say was worth the 2.99 online or in real life, sells ten times as many comics as Blue Beetle, a book that everyone supposedly loves.

Every time a new event is announced, comic fans grumble. “Ugh, I have to read all these books to know about the Marvel Universe?” I was in the room at New York Comic-con ’07 when World War Hulk was announced… two days after Civil War #7 shipped. The room didn’t cheer. There were no excited “WHOO!”s going on. There were some polite claps. Everyone was tired of events. “Event fatigue.”

World War Hulk came and went and was a big success. Big surprise there. Event fatigue must be a myth, because people grumble every time one is announced and then it goes on to become a sales juggernaut.

Comics companies have learned that if you say that something will change everything forever, or feature a character death, or kickstart a new and important story, comics fans will eat it up.

Blue Beetle, despite its original positioning, was not Important. It was about a kid from El Paso who was wrestling with a hero’s life. Catwoman was about a morally gray woman who wanted to look out for herself and her child while pulling off some cool heists. Spider-Girl was the last vestige of ’90s Marvel.

They are separate from the main continuity. New Krypton has no ties to Jaime Reyes down in Texas. Selina Kyle doesn’t even know Black Lanterns exist. Spider-Girl can’t factor into Secret Invasion. So, these books are unimportant. You can get the whole story by reading the Important books, why should you bother with these stories that don’t have nothing to do with nothing?

Do you see what I’m getting at here?

Companies realized that comic fans will eat up that continuity porn garbage rather than read an irrelevant story, no matter how good. People would rather see a halfway decent Batman story than a great one featuring anyone else.

New Krypton has so far resurrected a couple of Golden Age heroes (one of them over Grant Morrison’s wonderful Manhattan Guardian), killed Pa Kent, shipped two specials, re-introduced Nightwing and Flamebird (don’t ask who they are, you mean you don’t know already?) and gotten down to tying all of the Superman books together into one tightly packed ball of continuity.

Geoff Johns’s JSA has been talking about Kingdom Come for what feels like eight years already, but that’s impossible because the series hasn’t even been around for two years yet. Final Crisis is setting up some big new status quo that we don’t even know the details of yet, and Secret Invasion is getting us ready for Dark Reign, where Norman Osborn runs SHIELD and Iron Man is on the run.

Green Lantern is busy turning space cats into murderous vomit fetishists and naming villains things like Atrocitus and Kryb and Spacehitlersiegheil so as to set up Blackest Night, where a bunch of dead characters will come back and have their own space laser rings so they can shoot the people with other space laser rings of other colors until Hal Jordan gets one of each ring and becomes the White Lantern, the greatest of them all, and we will all learn a very valuable lesson about controlling our emotions, but not being afraid to feel, at the end of the day.

And all of these stories will sell 100k copies a month while other series die on the vine.

Basically, us comics fans got the comics industry we deserve. Why? Because we care about important books.

This is the industry we’ve built.

Add “Chasing the Dragon” into that super-long title, too.

I was talking to Graeme (Savage Critic(s)/io9) McMillan over email a few weeks back and he mentioned how he wasn’t sure that being a fan and being nostalgiac were two different things. It ties into the first shock of experiencing certain things. To paraphrase and extrapolate on his point a bit, you end up chasing the dragon.

My response was in the negative– nostalgia is obviously something that old people have for old boring comics. It’s new comics being written like old comics because that’s the way it used to be. It’s Hal Jordan being Green Lantern again, Superman’s dad dying, and all that continuity cop crap. It’s strip-mining the past to tell stories today. I’m the kind of fan that likes the new hotness, not that old and busted crap that somebody’s grandpa wrote.

The long and short of it is that I’m a liar and Graeme McMillan is right.

I had this realization a few days ago. Despite working with video games all day, I’ll throw on a game I like and fool around for an hour or so to relax and chill out. One of the games I’ve been screwing around with for the past week or two is Spider-Man: Web of Shadows on Xbox 360.

Now, I’m a huge Spider-Man fan. He’s my favorite hero, even beating out the Flash, and I’ll generally try anything he’s in. Spider-Man 2 was an excellent Xbox title and easily the best movie tie-in, but the franchise has suffered since then. Ultimate Spider-Man had a great style, but the chase scenes were a lot like being forced to pull splinters– necessary and amazingly annoying. Spider-Man 3 was better than the movie, but still featured gameplay that was kind of like waking up to find Jabba the Hutt’s butt in your face.

So, for some reason, I was a little interested in Web of Shadows. It had Spidey, Venom, an interesting story, and more than a few cameos. Luke Cage, Black Widow, Wolverine, and Moon Knight all show up. I figured that I’d at least give the game a go, since they’re marketing it directly at me and all.

Turns out that I can only stand to play the game for 15-30 minutes at a time. It’s buggy, the characters are annoying, the missions are repetitive, and the tutorials are terrible. The lock-on system varies between being too sensitive (“Hey awesome I locked on a dude two blocks behind me, screwing up the camera and my current fight”) and terrible (“oh what’s this i can’t lock onto a guy directly in front of me?”). The auto-upgrade system doesn’t tell you what it upgrades or when, and the manual upgrades have clunky menus, making it a pain to get new skills. The new skills you just bought? Generic thugs will block them all day like they were some kind of kung fu master, making your brand new Maximum Spider attack or Ultimate Web Throw completely useless.

Playing it for more than around half an hour brings all of these screaming to the forefront of my brain, but I kept going back to the game this week. The animation on Spider-Man is great, and the web slinging is sublime. It’s the best it’s ever been, and I sometimes spend ten out of those fifteen-to-thirty minutes just swinging around the fake New York.

I was airing these grievances to a few of my FBB4l brethren and Pedro, always trying to one-up a Brothers, told me “Why are you playing a garbage game?” Every time Pedro reads a bad comic and complains about it, I ask him the same thing. It was a fair point, and one that made me rethink my position on the game.

Basically, WoS adds in one good gameplay mechanic (web swinging) and then layers on cameo after cameo in an attempt to keep me interested. These cameos lead to boring tutorials (“hey go beat up 15 of these guys”) which lead to boring missions (“all right go beat 20 of these same guys”) which lead to worse boss fights (“do this three minute sequence six times in a row while you fight wolverine”) which lead to the next cameo. It’s garbage. The game is weak and not even remotely worth the sixty bucks. I’d rather they just put the city and web slinging on Xbox Live Arcade and charge ten bucks for that.

On the other hand, post-One More Day Spider-Man is exactly what I want out of Spider-Man comics. It isn’t perfect, but it’s easily the best Spider-Man has been since Kraven’s Last Hunt, which was back when Peter and MJ first got married. Mephisto getting rid of the marriage is a sticking point, I guess, but it’s been blown out of proportion. I think that if the stories are going to be this good, then losing a marriage that had stagnated? Net gain.

Moving all of that to the side– the stories are much better than they have been before now. I wasn’t a Dan Slott fan before his run on Amazing Spider-Man. His first go at She-Hulk was okay, until he got bogged down in continuity cop and fanboyisms. But Spider-Man? For some reason, Dan Slott’s Spider-Man is a lot of fun.

That’s a theme that’s run throughout Brand New Day and onward. “Spider-Man is fun.” He’s young, he makes mistakes, and he’s down to earth. He’s clearly experienced enough to hold his own, he’s smart enough to improvise solutions to weird problems, and he enjoys his life, despite the Parker Luck. He’s comfortable in his own skin.

He’s got a strong supporting cast again, including Harry Osborn, the best character who isn’t named J Jonah Jameson. Peter’s got a best friend again, which gives him something to bounce off of, and he’s got girl trouble. We’ve got more than just Aunt May and MJ, though both of them are present in one way or another.

The art is amazing. I don’t think I have to say more. If you don’t like John Romita Jr, Marcos Martin, Chris Bachalo, Barry Kitson, or the other cats who have put pen to paper (or stylus to Wacom), something is wrong with your brain.

Finally, the pace is excellent. Shipping three times a month gives the book an entirely different feel. Story lines pop up and end within a month. Subplots percolate in the background, old school style, and there are a lot of them. Despite all of this, the book is very manageable. You won’t miss out on a reference because you missed an issue six months ago. It keeps you in the information you need.

The first few months were dedicated to creating new villains, rather than reusing old ones over and over again. This resulted in both having an interesting new series of characters for Spidey to interact with, but also making the return of the old villains in New Ways to Die a blockbuster occasion.

After the latest issue, where we get this scene:

Amazing Spider-Man is pretty much everything I want out of a Spider-Man comic. It’s a great mix of funny, fun, and action. Spider-Man looks amazing. We get expressive eye lenses and half spidey masks, a couple of personal favorites, Ben Urich, an Aunt May who isn’t just an old lady, and by the way, did I mention the amazing art?

You want to know the difference between why I pushed and played Web of Shadows long after I was tired of it (two hours, for the record) and why I love reading Amazing Spider-Man these days?

Nothing. I’m a fan of Spider-Man, and it makes me happy to see that this character who introduced me to comics is once again receiving the quality I think he deserves. It’s nostalgia. It’s being a fan. I am a fan of Spider-Man because I was once a fan of Spider-Man.

That has waxed and waned over the years. I quit JMS’s run after JRjr left, which turned out to be a great idea, since the next two years were pretty much crap. The Clone Saga helped chase me away from comics when it was getting going. For a while, I liked X-Men more than Spidey, but quickly came back around when the art got better. Save for Paul Jenkins and early JMS, the majority of Spider-Man books printed between say, 1994 and 2008 are not worth your time. There are a few exceptions– Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo had a fun run, for example. However, you aren’t missing much if you don’t buy that Spider-Man trade collecting, say, Maximum Carnage or anything Howard Mackie ever had a hand in.

Now, though, it’s back in full force. I look forward to picking up Amazing Spider-Man three weeks out of the month. I know I’l get a treat that pleases me and the me from however long ago I started reading comics.

What’s kinda funny is that Tucker Stone wrote about this same thing on Wednesday, though I found it on Sunday morning.

The moral of the story is that Graeme McMillan and Joe Quesada are both right.

Even back in the day, before I even really read comics, I had somehow heard of Scud: The Disposable Assassin. I’m not really sure how. I didn’t have any diehard comic-reading friends. I’ve never even touched a Sega Saturn, so I wouldn’t have paid attention to his game. Yet somehow I knew of the series and what the main character looked like despite the series having less than two years’ worth of issues during its initial run while being published by an independent company. That’s pretty impressive.

In all the years I’ve been into comics, I never thought about getting into the series because all I had ever heard of it was that it was jarringly unfinished. I’m a guy who enjoys closure, so that would have bugged the hell out of me. Luckily, series creator Rob Schrab finally got around to finishing the series off ten years after the fact with four additional issues.

I learned this when the Barnes and Noble I work for got in Scud: The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang. That’s the funny thing about being the comic guy at the book store. You’d see something pop up in the receiving department and buy it yourself. Then when the store gets in a second copy in to replace it, you’ve already convinced a co-worker to pick it up. It’s a while before the book-buying public gets a chance to see it.

I picked up Whole Shebang on a whim. I remember hearing enough good things about the series and the art looked fun, so why not. I got through the whole book, filled with 25 and a half issues, in about a week and I had a complete blast doing so. I highly recommend it.

The comic takes place a couple decades into the future where murder is perfectly legal, at least in America. Street corners have vending machines that offer disposable assassins referred to as Scuds. Upon completing their mission and killing their target, they self-destruct. Our Scud is part of the company’s “Heart Breaker Series” and is hired to take out a nightmarish female mutant creature named Jeff. Midway into the mission, he discovers the sign on his back warning bystanders about his eventual self-destruction. Not wanting to die, he instead wounds Jeff, calls 911 and has the monster put on life-support. Scud gets to live, but he also needs to pull assassin jobs to pay for the life-support.

Read the rest of this entry �

Well. Yes. There is also that.

There has been plenty of criticism of Superman/Batman, most of it deserved. The comic is where kitsch goes to die a long, agonizing death. Its inhabitants often act so baffling out of character that it’s hard to believe that their names aren’t misprints. Many of the issues play fast and loose with continuity.

The most cynical part of this book is right on the cover. Whoever conceived of this book took the two most lucrative characters in the DC universe and stuck them in a book without even a proper title. No ’The Adventures of.’ No, ’Duo.’ No ’League of.’ They just put a forward slash between the names, presumably so no one will think the book’s about a mutant hybrid. As grabs for reader’s money go, that falls somewhere between having the Birds of Prey go undercover as porn stars and just gripping readers by the ankles, holding them upside down and shaking them until their wallets fall out.

Read the rest of this entry �

In writing, the phrase ‘killing your darlings’ refers to the painful process by which authors weed out their favorite lines, best scenes, and most precious concepts because they distract from the story. In comics fandom, I think of it as describing the way that fandom crushes its own favorite characters under the weight of their own popularity – a process I can’t help but take part in.

Oracle is one of the best characters in comics. Her role on the various teams she’s on is irreplaceable. Her history is as varied and interesting as any character’s could be. She has a defined personality but isn’t a tired, one-note character. Her strengths and weaknesses make every fight she is in even enough that the reader cannot predict the outcome. Of the hundreds of people in the DCU running around in capes and solving the problems of the world by punching people, Barbara Gordon, confined to her wheelchair while being the Lone Ranger of cyberspace stands apart as a unique character.

I, as a reader, would give all that up in a second if she could be Batgirl again. I wouldn’t do it because I lack female crime fighters to identify with. After Fempocalypse – the cancellation of Manhunter, Batgirl, and the elimination of Spoiler, Onyx, Leslie Thompkins, and Gotham Central – DC is gyning up their superhero roster again and I can find strong females without resorting to the Teeny Blue Miniskirt. (Although, to be fair, Kelley Puckett has done an excellent job on Supergirl and I’ve been reading that again, too.)

I wouldn’t even do it because the Batman: The Animated Series episodes that starred Batgirl brought joy to my pre-adolescent life, although admittedly that would be a secondary reason.

I’d regress Barbara Gordon from a team leader to a Batman knock-off with problem hair for one reason: I think it would make her happier.

Yes. You read that right. I want a fictional character to be able to take a walk in a fictional park, then maybe go out dancing with her fictional boyfriend. Just to end the day right, I want her to get her fictional feet massaged. She’s earned it, hasn’t she?

The idea of treating characters as real human beings is plainly ridiculous, but it’s also only an extension of what comics fans do all the time. When we can’t believe that these characters have a life of their own, if only for twenty-two pages, then all we’re doing is staring at ink splotches on wood pulp. And while obsessing over a pet character can be silly, I don’t want to meet the comics fan with a soul so dead that they let go of all character identification and only read comic books ‘for the story.’ However, there does need to be a story, and indulging love for a pet character most often turns that character and every story they’re in as flat as the page they’re printed on.

Striking a balance between wanting a good story and wanting to cater to a favorite character is difficult. The character that makes me topple over is Barbara Gordon, obviously, but I’m willing to bet that every comics fan has one or two characters they’d like to get hold of. Someone out there wants to cast believability to the wind and make Ted Kord and Booster Gold in charge of the Justice League, or allow Superman to rebuild Krypton, or save Bruce Wayne’s parents.

Of course, thinking about 800 issues of Batman in which Babs Gordon goes for a walk with Martha Wayne on New Krypton and talks about how smoothly things have been going since New League took over earth is enough to make me glad there are strict copyright laws.

Couple last hits. Jeff Lester and Graeme McMillan of Savage Critic(s) did their own list, one of them under threat of violence from yours truly.

Besides that, friend of 4l Abby L. hit me with her own list of 50 Things. Check them out.

Firefighter
Daigo of
Fire Company M
“…I am trying to give a name to the force that set them in motion.”
Making comics
Making Comics
Dazzler in the 70’s

Kitty Pryde’s horrible old costumes (rollerskates what)
Days of Future Past
Storm
Nightcrawler
The Wake

Making fun of Liefeld and Land
Please
Save My Earth
Snow falling in Bone
Etta Candy
Brian K. Vaughan

Eyeshield 21
Rose of Versailles
Thor
Hellboy
Strangers In Paradise

Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art
Runaways
She-Hulk
A Superman for All Seasons
Crime/Horror comics

The convoluted backstory of The Green Lantern, explained to me aloud
by a friend.
Kate Beaton
Lackadaisy Cats
Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix
Awesome Andy

Big Barda
American Born Chinese
Persepolis
Superman: TAS and Batman: TAS
My LCS – The Source

Checkerboard Nightmare
Spike of Templar, AZ
Oracle
355
Gratuitous male ass shots

And now, my first and benchmark comics: (Note that not all of these
are quality comics…)

What If Volume 2 #89 Spider-Man: Arachnomorphosis
X-Man #34: The Wanted
Disney Adventures’ Bone
Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh
The Jar

Cardcaptor Sakura single issues 1-10
Identity Crisis
John Byrne’s She-Hulk
Oh My Goddess single issues
Runaways

Two entries this time. This first list is from Kyle, one of my oldest friends. I hit him up over IM and bullied him until he gave me his list. I also bullied him into having a 100-item pull list once, too.

Ha ha ha. Eat it.
1. Mr. Mind
2. Darkseid
3. Zatana
4. Warren Ellis
5. Grant Morrison
6. Mike Choi and Sonia Oback
7. X-23
8. Scott Pilgrim
9. Matt Fraction
10. Ed Brubaker
11. Iron Fist and the Other Weapons
12. We3
13. Runaways
14. Jamie Madrox
15. Layla Miller
16. Jubilee
17. Drax
18. Cammy, Drax’s spunky sidekick
19. Both Annihilation series
20. Invincible
21. Watchmen
22. Transmetropolitan
23. Molly Hayes
24. Batman: The Animated Series
25. Nextwave
26. Tim Drake
27. Explaining crazy comic book stuff to people who aren’t keeping up fully with the series.
28. The resulting look on peoples faces when you are explaining that crazy stuff… ranging from confusion, to the inevitable “WTF!” look when explaining DC continuity.
29. Humberto Ramos
30. Justice League Unlimited
31. Heath Ledger as the Joker
32. The Current Wildstorm Universe… never believed it would go that far.
33. Planetary
34. Paul Jenkins
35. Kingdom Come
36. Jerk Batman
37. Captain Marvel from the Peter David series
38. Harley Quinn
39. The Daughters of the Dragon
40. “52”
41. Black Bolt
42. Anytime Black Bolt talks
43. “Son of M”
44. Kabuki
45. “Fables”
46. “Y the Last Man”
47. Echo
48. The Tick
49. “Maus”
50. Chris Latta… voice actor for Cobra Commander and Starscream.

This second list is from 4l reader Lt. Ken Frankenstein. He’s got some great picks here.
1. The second time I read Grant Morrison’s The Filth and it finally all made sense.
2. Reading Alan Moore’s Watchmen at thirteen years old and having my mind completely blown.
3. The cover of Avengers #4.
4. The last eight pages of Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, which get me all misty-eyed every time.
5. Ed Brubaker’s Criminal, the best comic being published right now.
6. The Human Bomb losing it and murdering Dr. Polaris, a moment of unbridled greatness in the otherwise lackluster Infinite Crisis.
7. Matter-Eater Lad, my favorite underused member of the Legion of Superheroes.
8. The first twelve or so issues of Mark Waid’s relaunch of the Legion of Superheroes.
9. The Death of Captain America and the return of Bucky Barnes.
10. Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. All of it.
11. Miracleman #16, the most violent, disturbing, heartbreaking comic I’ve ever read.
12. The last page of Ex Machina #1, the ballsiest moment in superhero comics.
13. The second to last page of Civil War #2, the second ballsiest moment.
14. Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, any time they interact.
15. Geoff Johns, the Michael Clayton of the DC Universe (He’s a fixer. See Green Lantern: Rebirth and especially his run on Hawkman)
16. Ares setting himself on fire and having Hercules fastball-special him into a crowd of warriors. All while wielding twin uzis.
17. Lone Wolf and Cub and Akira, the twin high watermarks of manga.
18. Barry Allen’s sacrifice in the pages of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
19. Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers, the ultimate shot of adrenaline into a long-running franchise.
20. Alan Moore’s “For the Man who has Everything,” and its note-perfect translation in Justice League Unlimited.
21. 52, the DCU’s year long mad-science experiment.
22. Mark Millar’s Ultimates, or, “The Avengers if The Avengers were Assholes.”
23. Brian Michael Bendis writing Luke Cage
24. Brian Michael Bendis writing Daredevil
25. Alex Maleev Drawing Daredevil
26. Frank Castle meeting Bullseye for the first time in Daredevil #181. “You might do something stupid. Get yourself killed. I’d like that.”
27. Art Spiegelman’s Maus
28. Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, one of the weirdest comics of all time
29. Wonder Woman as portrayed on Justice League Unlimted and in Grant Morrison’s JLA
30. Plastic Man serving as the JLA’s resident Ace Ventura.
31. The ‘White Martian’ story arc of Grant Morrison’s JLA, where Batman and Wally West exhibit true greatness.
32. Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis’ baby.
33. The original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run of Fantastic Four.
34. Superman: Red Son, especially any scene with Lex Luthor.
35. Christopher Reeves as Superman.
36. John Williams’ Superman theme.
37. The Dark Knight.
38. Batman nightmarishly unleashing a swarm of bats in Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One.
39. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark
40. Civil War: The Confession, the moment where everything was, ironically, worth it.
41. Superman vs. Captain Marvel in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come.
42. Two-Face coming full circle in The Long Halloween: “Two shots to the head. If you ask me, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
43. Two-Face breaking convention at the end of Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum.
44. The Joker as a concept.
45. Jason Rusch: Firestorm.
46. Deadshot’s casual “C’est la vie” murder of Plastique in the Justice League Unlimited episode ‘Task Force X,’ the most brutal moment I’ve seen in a children’s cartoon.
47. Venom as drawn by Todd Macfarlane.
48. The first four or five story arcs of Fabien Nicieza’s Cable & Deadpool.
49. Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, the ultimate counter-culture comic.
50. All-Star Superman #5, the prison issue. My favorite Superman comic ever is one where he never shows up in costume.

#12 was why I kept reading Ex Machina. I got the Free Comic Book Day issue from Kyle way back when. I checked it out, read it, and was like “Eh, that’s all right, I guess, but I don’t know if I’d buy it.” Then I got to the last page. And then I started buying Ex Machina. I switched to trades when I realized its pacing, though. Here’s the last two pages, for reference:

Esther is a real life friend of mine who I regularly talk comics with. I’ve been bugging her to write something for me, ’cause I think she has a great POV, and I finally have proof that peer pressure and pestering works! She sent over a list of five things she likes about comics. Read on, and hopefully she’ll be back for more.
-djdb

1. Rafael Albuquerque
The most recent example of Albuquerque’s art is in Superman/Batman #51. It’s an appropriate book for him, because Albuquerque is one of those always-underappreciated artists who can differentiate between Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent without going directly for the glasses and the spit curl. Clark Kent has a sunny expression, a chin that could only work on Superman or John Travolta, and the thick neck of a guy who is always the most muscular person in the room. Bruce Wayne has a scowl that blots out daylight and permanent lines of concentration over his eyes. Albuquerque has a talent for using subtle differences in facial features and musculature to give each character a different face and a different body. Too often, in comics, the reader is unable to tell characters apart until the colorist gets to them. It’s something special to be able to make two of DC’s most similar looking heroes unique.

2. Kevin Maguire
No one can finish a book drawn by Kevin Maguire without checking the cover to find out who the artist is. No one who has read one book drawn by Kevin Maguire can fail to recognize his style if they see it again, even if it were only a doodle on a cocktail napkin. I can’t think of another artist who is that skilled and that willing to be so gloriously silly. Kevin Maguire’s characters have faces made out of putty with the kind of expressions you might see if you hit the pause button during a Jim Carrey movie or an old Warner Brothers cartoon. Take any mildly funny scene and Kevin Maguire’s art will put it over the top. What’s more, instead of limiting Maguire to comedy, this style makes tragic moments even more poignant, because character’s face twist with recognizable pain instead being stuck in a stock pose. A lot of people think Maguire’s style isn’t pretty, and often they’re right, but I’m glad there is an artist who will sacrifice prettiness in order to let the characters express as much emotion as they are supposed to feel.

3. Roger Robinson
Which isn’t to say that I can’t appreciate prettiness. Have you seen Robinson’s work in Gotham Knights? The man draws cheekbones that can cut glass. And I haven’t seen that many moodily lit abdominal muscles since the movie 300. All that, and he doesn’t sacrifice expression or context. His subjects are beautiful, but they are subjects in a story, not objects in a pin-up. That’s impressive.

4. Amanda Connor
The Green Arrow and Black Canary Wedding Special really played to Amanda Conner’s strength, and not because of the subject matter. Playing to Amanda Conner’s strength means giving her a huge panel, the bigger the better, and filling it with people. Conner’s style is clean enough to keep the page from looking cluttered and she plans well enough to place little visual jokes that lead the reader from one part of the page to the next. Every character is looking, talking, or reacting to at least one other character. As a result, huge group scenes stop looking like a flat jumble of bodies and faces and become a number of little action panels, depending on which part of the page the reader is focusing on.

5. J.H. Williams III
A lot of artists have a style. J.H. Williams III has every style, including his own. In Batman #667-669 Williams draws a large group of characters, each of them penciled and shaded differently. And he’s not shy about throwing in pages that show a massive black fist superimposed over an exploding plane, or pages in which the panels form a huge pair of bat wings. Instead of distracting from the story, William’s art makes the arc into something both surreal and self-contained. It’s a beautiful piece of work, and something that should be shown to anyone who doesn’t consider comics ‘art.’

Julian Lytle hit me with fifty… and then fifty more.

1) X-books from 1991-1999
2) Generation X drawn by Chris Bachalo
3) That ill cover to the old Who Killed Jean DeWolfe Spider-Man trade
4) Erik Larsen on Amazing Spider-man
5) The First pages of X-Men #1 drawn by Jim Lee with the X-men in a training session
6) X-men #4 where they are playing Basketball
7) Jubilee in all her Mutant awesomeness
8) Backlash by brett booth
9) Back in the day when Savage Dragon and Pitt would guest star in almost every Image comic
10) Michael Turner on Witchblade
11) Joe Madueira on Uncanny X-Men
12) Storm in punk rock gear and no powers with a Mohawk
13) X-Men Series 1 trading cards all drawn by Jim Lee
14) Marvel Universe Trading Cards Series 3
15) Spaceman Spiff
16) Kandea
17) Kaneda’s jacket and bike (it’s an ensemble)
18) Mad Love
19) Dark Knight Returns
20) A Dame to Kill For
21) Kingdom Come
22) New Frontier
23) Darwyn Cooke
24) Bruce Timm
25) Gen 13
26) Humberto Ramos
27) Crimson and Out There
28) Geoff Johns’s Teen Titans Run
29) New X-Men By Grant Morrison
30) The Fourth World by Jack Kirby
31) Spider-Man
32) Galactus
33) Batman
34) Superman
35) Crisis on Infinite Earths
36) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
37) Luke Cage beating Dr. Doom for his cash
38) Dr.Doom
39) Inhumans by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee
40) Earth X, Universe X and Paradise X (with Heralds)
41) The Legion of Super Heroes
42) SUPERBOY-PRIME
43) Love and Rockets
44) Mike Mignola
45) 7 Soliders by Grant Morrison and various artists
46) 52
47) Akira
48) Naruto
49) Calvin and Hobbes
50) Peanuts
51) The Crew
52) Priest’s Black Panther
53) Bendis writing Luke Cage
54) The New Avengers arc with the Hood drawn by Lenil Francis Yu with no inker
55) The Crew’s White Tiger aka Kasper Cole
56) The Master of Kung Fu
57) The Phantom
58) The Authority By Ellis and Hitch
59) Planetary
60) Alan Moore
61) Alan Moore and Travis Cherest on WildC.A.T.S.
62) Cyber Force
63) The Justice Society of America
64) Captain Marvel (Fawcett)
65) The Ultimates 1 and 2
66) Ultimate X-men By Millar and BKV
67) Dazzler
68) Boom Boom
69) NextWave
70) Dragonball
71) TMNT
72) Concrete
73) Elfquest
74) Jason Todd
75) Robin
76) Runaways
77) Young Avengers
78) The Metal Men
79) Rusty and Skids
80) New Mutants
81) Adam Pollina on X-Force
82) War Machine
83) Ed Brubaker’s Captain America
84) Casanova
85) Umbrella Academy
86) Marc Silvestri on Uncanny X-Men
87) Watchmen
88) Podcasts
89) San Diego Comic-Con
90) New York Comic-Con
91) Alex Ross
92) Moebius
93) Gambit charging a bike to blow up the Phalanx creature the X-men fought
94) Secret Wars
95) Maus
96) Sinestro Corps War
97) The Punisher
98) Preacher
99) Cliffhanger
100) Capcom’s Marvel fighting games

Me and Julian are from the same era of comics, man. Jim Lee X-Men, Jubilee, Moebius (who remembers that Silver Surfer story he did?), Gambit… it’s all dope.

Here’s his #5, for example:

I learned the word “cripes” from this comic. No joke.