Y’all have probably seen this clip from The Wire before. I think Matt Maxwell tossed it on Twitter a few weeks back, and I know I put it on tumblr shortly after. It’s about chicken nuggets and being rewarded for innovation. I’d embed it, but HBO hates the internet, so here’s a transcript:

Wallace: Yo, D, you want some nuggets?
D’Angelo: Nah, g’head, man.
Wallace: Man, whoever invented these, yo, he off the hook.
Poot: What?
Wallace: Mm! Motherfucker got the bone all the way out the damn chicken. ’til he came along, niggas been chewin’ on drumsticks and shit, gettin’ they fingers all greasy. He said later for the bone, let’s nugget that meat up and make some real money.
Poot: You think the man got paid?
Wallace: Who?
Poot: The man who invented these.
Wallace: Shit, he richer than a motherfucker.
D’Angelo: Why? You think he get a percentage?
Wallace: Why not?
D’Angelo: Nigga please. The man who invented them things just some sad-ass down at the basement of McDonald’s, thinkin’ up some shit to make some money for the real players.
Poot: Naw, man, that ain’t right.
D’Angelo: Fuck “right.” It ain’t about right, it’s about money. Now you think Ronald McDonald gonna go down in that basement and say, “Hey, Mr. Nugget, you the bomb. We sellin’ chicken faster than you can tear the bone out. So I’m gonna write my clowny-ass name on this fat-ass check for you”?
Wallace: Shit.
D’Angelo: Man, the nigga who invented them things still workin’ in the basement for regular wage, thinkin’ up some shit to make the fries taste better or some shit like that. Believe.
Wallace: He still had the idea though.

edit: Whoops, found an embeddable:

What sucks about this is how it shows both how the comics industry isn’t special — down here we all float, baby — and how… poisonous and mercenary and amoral this sort of thinking is. You can argue justice til you’re blue in the face, but that’s not what matters. When you’re a business, right isn’t even part of the equation. You’re only responsible for making sure that the money you make this year is more than what you made last year within the letter of the law. If the law doesn’t explicitly say you should treat your people well, then hey. Guess what: you don’t have to do it. You can strip mine a man’s ideas and give him the boot when you’re bored.

Did y’all know Frank Miller used to get a “created by” credit for Elektra? You can see it in that borderline unreadable Elektra: Root of Evil book that DG Chichester and Scott McDaniel produced in ’95. Part of his deal with Marvel was a promise, I dunno if it was written or verbal, that they wouldn’t bring Elektra back to life after she died. He left, and they brought her back to life. At first, they gave him a creator credit. Then they stopped. And just like that, the guy who made Elektra matter was stitched out of the narrative. She’s intellectual property now.

What’s so bothersome about McDonald’s vs Mr Nugget is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Common sense tells you that if you reward invention, you’re much more likely to get more of it. When a toddler poops in the toilet for the first time, you laugh and cheer and smile to show him he did good. (This analogy is terrible.) That encourages his behavior and makes him more likely to keep it up. We put kids on the honor roll to show them that there’s a reward for getting good grades, a certain level of prestige. You buy your old lady a wedding ring because she’s better than all the others out there, and it is important to you to maintain that relationship forever. (That’s what we call love, kiddo. You’ll understand when you’re older.) It’s gratitude and support, yeah?

Work-for-hire is fine. That’s not the problem. You can work on other people’s property and do a great job and create something with artistic merit or just really great drawings of bathtubs or whatever. It’s the culture around work-for-hire that’s the problem, where innovators are just cogs in the machine to be spun until they wear out. It’s where Batman is bigger than the people who make him.

Look at it like this. Alan Moore put his name on the map with Swamp Thing, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Miracleman, right? There were others, but I feel like those are the biggest milestones. DC published three out of those four, along with other books like Batman: The Killing Joke and that one Green Lantern story about sound. He gave DC a lot, especially since you can basically draw a line from Swamp Thing to the birth of Vertigo, but contract disputes and a foolhardy ratings system chased him out in the late ’80s.

Outside of DC, but still in a similar vein, he worked on books like 1963, Supreme, WildCATs, Youngblood, and more. He eventually launched his own cape-y line with America’s Best Comics, at which point DC promptly bought ABC’s parent company Wildstorm and began publishing Moore comics again. When Moore left again, the ABC comics were tainted and faded away.

Now imagine if DC had bent just a little and done some work to keep Moore under their wings. It takes a minimal amount of work to see how any of his cape-oriented ’90s work could easily be transplanted to the DC Universe. I mean, Supreme was “He’s Superman, But A Dick” and Moore switched him up to be more Silver Age. Imagine if Moore had been around when Vertigo kicked off, and DC would’ve been more open to works like From Hell. They probably wouldn’t have published Lost Girls, but if they’d thought “right” before “profit” just once, they could’ve reaped the rewards of having one of comics’ best writers in their stable for the next twenty years.

But, nah, that’s all hypothetical. It’s very easy to sit around and make things up about what could have/should have/would have happened. If we’re dealing with the real, then we’re dealing with Before Watchmen, a prequel to a twenty-six year old comic. We’re dealing with Swamp Thing being stuck in a cycle that keeps coming back around to shed further light on “The Anatomy Lesson” because the shadow Moore cast on that book is so large.

I’m not saying that the Big Two have gotta give up all rights to the characters and content. But throw some incentives at the creators, give them greater input into how these characters and stories are gonna shake out, push the creators as hard as you push the characters, give them a bonus if something blows up huge… do something to keep them happy. You’d gain so much goodwill from your creative staff, you’d have a lot more property to exploit, you’d have people getting even more invested in the work they do for you even if they don’t own it because they know you’ll take care of them.

It’s such a no-brainer. It’s so obvious that it can’t possibly be true. Marvel having Icon lets them keep Matt Fraction and Brian Bendis on lock even while they write Marvel’s marquee IP. Why not expand that?

My favorite part of that scene is when Wallace goes “He still had the idea though.” ’cause in the end, behind all the business and exploitation and sadness… these people had some amazing ideas. The Black Racer, John Constantine, Elektra, Howard the Duck… Marvel and DC can’t claim creativity, no matter how many crappy contracts they’ve churned out and creators they’ve burned. That belongs to Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Steve Gerber, and dozens more.

I don’t have a new or profound point here, I guess. I just wanted to talk this out, while I’m figuring out where I stand and where I should be standing.

The whole 4 Elements article concept is David’s baby. The four ties into the four in 4thletter and 4thletter comes from David’s name because he’s an egomaniac, an Eggo maniac and possibly a Lego maniac. You can also say that the four comes from there literally being four elements, but I’m pretty sure there are like a hundred of those things, so that’s definitely wrong.

This is David’s site and all, but Carnage USA is my comic. It’s a comic specifically made for ME. Me. Gavin Jasper. And since I’m Gavin, which starts with the seventh letter of the alphabet, that means I need to talk about the 7 Elements.

Carnage USA is the sequel to last year’s Carnage, both by Zeb Wells and Clayton Crain. Carnage was the story that returned Carnage from his grizzly death of being torn in half in space by the Sentry back in 2005. It acts as a loose sequel to the character’s most mainstream adventure Maximum Carnage while introducing yet another symbiote anti-hero in Scorn. By the end of the story, not only is Cletus Kasady alive and reunited with his blood-red costume, but he’s also on the loose and nobody knows where he’ll end up next. All we know is that he has something bad on the horizon.

The plot of Carnage USA has Cletus venture to Doverton, Colorado, where he goes to a slaughterhouse and kills the entire stock of cows. The symbiote grows off the meat and expands to the point that he’s able to infect and assimilate the entire town through plumbing. A handful of the Avengers (Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Hawkeye and Thing) are sent to go deal with it and find a town of frightened human puppets before Carnage takes them too. Spider-Man gets away and the government goes to plan B… while trying real hard not to move to the dire plan C, which is to blow the county to kingdom come.

This miniseries helps support the idea that in comics, there are no bad characters, but bad writers. For such a mainstream villain who got his own popular videogame back in the day, Carnage’s death was met with little backlash. For years he’s been seen as nothing more than 50% shallow Venom mixed with 50% shallow Joker. Nobody’s ever really tried to write something decent with him and whenever he got the spotlight with his own one-shot, it was usually a bunch of gory dreck that didn’t do anything for me.

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BREAKING BEFORE WATCHMEN NEWS! COURTESY OF COMIC BOOK RESOURCES DOT COM AND C2E2 AND DC COMICS!

“I’m happy to say that every single person sitting on this stage right now was at the top of the wish list,” he continued, saying he had “complete faith” in executing the series. DiDio also said he expected “more of a negative reaction” to the initial announcement. “What happened was incredible. Everyone I talked to was excited about it,” saying “all the concerns went away” when people heard about the creative talent.

After calling up a “mildly skeptical” fan to meet with Senior Vice President of Sales Bob Wayne, Wayne began showing the fan some material shown at the Diamond Retailer Summit.

After calling up a “mildly skeptical” fan to meet with Senior Vice President of Sales Bob Wayne, Wayne began showing the fan some material shown at the Diamond Retailer Summit.

“It tells it from his early childhood and becoming the Owl, his partnership with Rorschach and how that went badly,” said Straczynski, who specifically referenced the moment in “Watchmen” where the Silk Spectre found a signed picture of the Twilight Lady.

For “Minutemen,” DiDio said he felt Darwyn Cooke was the best choice for the book before Joe Kubert made a surprise appearance as a late addition to the panel.

Straczynski, characterized working with the Kuberts as “extraordinary.” “The work has just been phenomenal,” he said. “It’s so tight, you see such emotion in the characters, it’s just an awful lot of fun. What tickles me enormously is I get to see everyone else’s stuff and you guys have no idea what’s coming at you.”

The mildly skeptical fan was brought onto the stage after Wayne’s mini-presentation and said, “My skepticism has been put to rest and the artwork is beautiful.”

Good news, y’all. All of your concerns about the dubious business practices of DC Comics and how they basically robbed Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons of the rights to Watchmen have been resolved! DC found a paid shill to sit in the audience and pretend to be skeptical, all so that they could put on a song and dance to show us that the art looks nice!

Let me be the first to say WHEW! I’m glad that they managed to get the people at the top of their list, too, since Kevin Smith, Grant Morrison, and Frank Quitely all turned them down. That’s how you know they’re being truthful: there’s no hype, just hard-hitting facts. Funnybook Babylonian Chris Eckert has more on DC’s effective and inspiring marketing scheme here, and a hint for what JMS’s book might be like!

Our worries have been all for naught, so please rest assured that the art looks nice, and therefore the work is legally and morally correct! I don’t know about you, but I’m sure glad that this was resolved with a minimum of bloodshed and mealy-mouthed, spineless justificatiowhoops, hang on, I’m getting another transmission…

Straczynski addressed the online criticism of Alan Moore and said he got it on an emotional level. “Alan Moore is a genius. No question,” said Straczynski. “On the other hand, he’s been using characters like the Invisible Man, Peter Pan, Jekyl and Hyde in what one fan basically called fan fiction — in ways their original creators probably wouldn’t have approved of. … You stand on a slippery slope when you use the moral high ground.” “Did Alan Moore get a crummy contract? Yes. So has everyone at this table. Worse was Segal and Shuster, worse was a lot of people.” The writer went on to credit Dan DiDio for pushing the project through, despite the fact that most would not touch it.

He’s right! You know he’s right. Just admit he’s right. JMS has said this before, but since Alan Moore sometimes uses characters created by people who got to enjoy the money, fame, and recognition of the full lifespan of those characters before they died and the characters lapsed into public domain and therefore belong to the culture at large, enriching all of us, Moore is a hypocrite! Worse than that, he’s the most odious type of hypocrite! A fanfic hypocrite! I mean, what kind of writer works on things he didn’t invent himself? Slip and fall down your slippery slope, Alan, and take your moral high ground (how do I type with a whiny baby voice? is there an html tag for that?) with you.

I mean, who does he think he is? Have you seen this amazing moral high ground that he apparently has claimed? “Hey fellas, I got screwed over, and have been regularly screwed over the past dozen or so years by DC pulping my comics, interfering with my work, and hassling my friends. Please don’t help them screw me even more. I would like it very much if they would stop screwing me so that I can go back to smoking weed and writing books and hanging out with my wife instead of answering interminable interview questions about things that I’d like to put behind me.”

The nerve of this guy. All of us sign bad contracts, Alan. Siegel and Shuster and Kirby and Gerber and JMS, the creator of much-beloved space ships and lasers show Babylon 5 and dude famous for walking off comics because he gets bored or writes bad comics or something, got screwed, Alan. Do you think you’re better than us, Alan? Do you think you don’t deserve to be screwed like the rest of us, Alan? Huh? Do you? Are you saying that you deserve to be treated better than Jack “King” Kirby? Is that it?

Whatta prick.

Here’s some stuff I think you should throw money at or read or hear or kiss that I haven’t had a chance to write about in detail just yet but probably will in the future:

–Jack Kirby: Here’s a Jack Kirby youtube I liked:

I never thought of the Silver Surfer as a fallen angel before, but that’s good. I like that a lot.

–Carbon Grey: The Carbon Grey kickstarter is still going. I wrote about it here, and here’s the direct link. They need 40k, and they’re currently sitting at 32.5. Help out if you can!

–The Zaucer of Zilk: I haven’t gotten a chance to go and pick up my comics in over a month because of reasons, but I’m really, really looking forward to this. It starts (started?) in 2000 AD prog 1775, but CBR has posted the entire first chapter. It’s everything I expected it to be. Brendan McCarthy is great, and I love how he manages to make the drab psychedelic and the psychedelic into, I dunno, psychedelic plus? Just look at the thumbnails on the CBR page. They build to a fever pitch, like a dam breaking in slow motion except WHOOPS the dam was holding back a rainbow. I like Al Ewing, too. I haven’t read a lot of his work, but he did this nuts Judge Dredd choose your own adventure thing in prog 2012 that took me like three entire days to read, and I appreciate that in a writer. He created Zombo with Henry Flint, too, so he’s definitely got that mean sense of humor I like to see in my comics. My only expectations for Zaucer of Zilk is that it’s gonna be like nothing else in comics. Judging by the preview, I think they’re on the right track.

Actually, I just looked at my pull list or whatever, and I should have progs 1765, 1767, 1768, 1769, 1771, and 1770 (in that order) waiting for me. Who in the world is in charge of shipping those comics? And why are they like a full month behind in the US? Confusing. You may not be able to buy this yet, but if you can, do so. Comics!

-This video for Odd Future’s “Oldie” is fantastic, the most rappity-rapping thing I’ve seen in ages.

There’s something so pure about this video. It’s a bunch of friends having fun, and there’s always gonna be something magical about a gang of rappers spitting directly to the camera without any speedboats or video chicks gyrating. Also Frank Ocean has got that understated cool that works so well for him.

“Bumping oldies on my cellular phone” is so good, and so is Earl’s line about “crunchy black cats in a taxi,” but Tyler kills it with this:

This is for the niggas in the suburbs
And the white kids with nigga friends who say the n-word
And the ones that got called weird, fag, bitch, nerd
’cause you was into jazz, kitty cats, and Steven Spielberg
They say we ain’t actin’ right
Always try to turn our fuckin’ color into black and white
But they’ll never change ’em, never understand ’em
Radical’s my anthem, turn my fucking amps up!
So instead of critiquing and bitchin’, bein’ mad as fuck
Just admit, not only are we talented, we’re rad as fuck

The Of Tape Vol. 2, and I’m digging it. Mellowhype’s “50” is the crunkest song since whenever the last Waka Flocka banger dropped, and makes me want that Numbers album even more. Hodgy and Domo are all over the album, and Mike G gets it in, too. Hodgy is still probably my favorite lyricist in the crew, and he shows some nice range. Domo’s Under the Influence mixtape is extra dope, so you should cop that, too. Lotta OFWGKTA bangers out there now. Golf Wang.

–Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo: I wrote a thing about Stan Sakai’s lettering for ComicsAlliance and he showed up in the comments to thank me. That was pretty cool.

-Oh yeah, I took a month off from CA because… I don’t know, but I did. I’m writing there again, so y’all can resubscribe. I know you missed me.

–Alabaster: Wolves: This comic by Caitlín R Kiernan, Steve Lieber, and Rachelle Rosenberg is pretty dope. I wrote about the dialogue and art for CA. I like it. It’s on Dark Horse digital.

–Heart: I don’t think I ever mentioned it except in passing, but I was a big fan of Blair Butler, Kevin Mellon, and Crank!’s Heart. Sports comics are all too rare, and this is a good example of how they should work. The team stuck the landing. I wanted to throw this out there in case I get distracted again. It’ll cost you like eight bucks right now for the digital copies.

–Alpha Princess Garou Shoujo: My shoujo broujo Sloane made a comic about a wolfgirl. It’s pretty good. You should read it. “100% tooth & nail comix by sloane.” Magical Girl Wolf Pack Cute Them All, bang bang bang

–Esperanza Spalding: I really, really like Esperanza Spalding. Her Radio Music Society is a really good album. Very easy to listen to, catchy, intelligent, and plenty of other adjectives that all basically mean “I like this, you should listen to it.” I liked Chamber Music Society, too, but I think Radio Music Society is legitimately a step forward. Different, but very good. Here’s “Radio Song”:

–I Am Not David Bowie, But We Have The Same Initials: I’ve been listening to Ziggy Stardust, Diamond Dogs, and Station to Station. I’m pretty sure those three are my favorite (no rank) Bowie records. I’ve been fiending for some Bowie karaoke (Bowieoke?) but I’m hilariously broke so it’ll have to wait.

–Sourpuss Blvd: This is cute, and congrats to the winners, but I can’t help but feel some type of way since the artists here are making more money off the back of the Avengers movie than Jack Kirby’s family will ever see. Maybe that’s an obnoxious thing to say and now I’m That Guy, the sophomore who just discovered social injustice or philosophy or something and won’t shut up about it, but whatever. I don’t care. Marvel has screwed a lot of people, and I think that once we’re talking about billion dollar box offices or whatever, it’s worth pointing out that they could do much, much better than they do. “Hey Jack, we’ll dedicate comics to you all day, everyday, but when it comes to actually giving you what you deserve… haha, sorry bro, the lawyers won’t let us. It’s the Mouse. You know how it is. King!”

Anyway. Comics!

Neal Kirby, Jack Kirby’s son, wrote a remembrance of his father for the LA Times Hero Complex blog. It’s not a big to-do or anything like that, some type of wide-ranging biography. It’s just a guy talking about his dad through the lens of the early 1960s. It’s a touching portrait, and humanizing, too. We all hear about Jack “King” Kirby, father to everyone’s style and one of the greatest comics artists to ever do it. We rarely hear about Jack the dad, Jack the husband, or Jack the man. This is valuable reading. I loved this bit:

I wonder if Michelangelo had a kid watching him paint? Was there a little Luigi watching the ceiling from a quiet corner of the Sistine Chapel? Extreme example, maybe, but the emotion would have been the same that I experienced watching my father at the drawing board. I had to stand on his left, looking over his shoulder. Starting with a clean piece of Bristol board, he would first draw his panel lines with an old wood and plastic T-square. Then the page would start to come alive. He told me that once he had the story framed in his mind, he would start drawing at the middle, then go back to the beginning, and then finish it up. Everything seemed to come naturally; he didn’t even needed a compass to draw a perfect circle. He worked fast but smooth, too, no wasted movement or hesitation.

There’s something about watching someone work that’s magical, whether it’s bringing down a tree with precision or throwing lines on a page.

And I guess the punchline to all of this is that Marvel’s going to make a billion dollars off the back of the Avengers movie and Kirby’s estate gets nothing for it. That’s comics, I guess.

I liked this post by my bud Dylan Todd about Robert Kirkman, Nick Spencer, Felix Serrano, and Shawn Martinbrough’s Thief of Thieves. I’ve been making fun of that ridiculous “How does a thief stop being a thief?” line for ages now, millions of years in internet time, but Dylan pointed out something even more egregious. I don’t want to repeat what Dylan said, so be sure to read his post. The short version, though, is that this sort of construction makes for storyboard comics, “Please make this into a movie” comics, instead of good old adventure comics.

If you want to read the full sequence, CBR has a preview. It opens with this intensely boring page, trips to another conversation that’s just as stiff though not as static, and then onto an awkwardly depicted gunfight (what is with the jumping dude?). This page, though, is the sort of thing that makes bad comics worse.

“Talking heads comics” is a pejorative, and rightly so, I think. At this late stage in the comics making game, this sort of construction is enormously weak. There’s nothing to this page, no excitement, no drama, no nothing. The woman is stuck in a shocked pose, as if to say “WHOA, what?” (My twitter follower @ardaniel tweeted at me to say “I keep making that woman’s panel 1-3 pose and it just makes me go ‘DON’T LOOK AT MY NIPPLES.'” and I’ve been laughing ever since). The guy is holding his cup in the air while delivering life-changing information. And then… frame two.

I’ve got two reasons why this is so weak. For the first, let’s assume that you absolutely have to have a scene where two characters conversate in one room, never leaving their seats. A meeting, essentially. Now, have you ever had a conversation? Think back to the last one you had. Even if you’re theoretically sitting still, you’re moving around. You’re cocking your head, coughing, making hand gestures, or stretching. The only time you sit and stare directly into someone’s eyes for minutes at a time is… I don’t know, actually, maybe never, or if someone is in a coma but you think they might be faking. We emote when we talk, and we all emote in idiosyncratic ways. We pick up gestures (jerk-off motion, a pshaw hand-flip, a “stop right there” hand, a half grimace to show disappointment) from somewhere and employ them to our own ends. We make unconscious motions. We blink real hard. Our eyes wander. We move, basically, and we move often. Even when you’re having a conversation with someone when you’re half asleep, you still wave them away.

We all do these things. It’s what makes people-watching so interesting. Not including such a basic part of our lives in a scene that should have several different touchstones for us to latch onto takes whatever verisimilitude the comic has and beats it in an alley. I don’t believe in this scene at all. It’s stiff and awkward. Let’s assume that panel one is fine. She’s surprised and she doesn’t want the guy to look at her nipples, so her hands are up. Cool. Panel two — she’s just heard some serious news. What’s her next position when she’s trying to find out more information? A shrug would work here, or a cocked head. Something inquisitive, not surprised. She’s still surprised, but at this point, she’s moving on to the next step, which is “What the heck is this guy talking about?” In panel three, she’s starting to get angry and caustic. “What is with this guy?” That’s an entirely different motion than “You quit?!” Panel 4: she’s angry and he’s smug. Fine. Sure.

Reason two. I’ve been reading a lot of Leiji Matsumoto manga recently, specifically his Galaxy Express 999. A lot of his stuff doesn’t have any action at all, in fact, and is composed of long conversations. Bald exposition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and boy does Matsumoto indulge himself sometimes. I was particularly struck by a scene from Galaxy Express 999, volume 1, when Maetel and Tetsuro land on a planet and have a quick conversation.

Instead of it being rendered like this scene from Thief of Thieves, the conversation takes place over a series of different scenes. They walk around, they check into a hotel, Maetel takes a shower… it was a fairly exciting way to show both time passing and to still give the reader all the exposition in the world. The conversation is impossible as depicted — they cover too much ground and do too many things for it to truly be one conversation — but it works to both introduce you to the land and the characters.

I know the pedants are getting ready to chime in with cries of “Manga is different!” (it’s still comics, shut your face) and “You’re comparing one page to ten!” (I am, but it’s not a 1:1 comparison, obviously). The thing is, Galaxy Express 999 is a great example. You can pick any one page, barring the splashes, and you’ll see a visually interesting conversation. Matsumoto shows that you can do more on one page than just show people talking, and that if you are going to show people talking, you can at least make it interesting to look at. People move and react and look around. It doesn’t get the blood pumping, but it lets you build up your world and characters. It’s characterization and world-building all in one. Tetsuro laying on the bed face down is meaningful in a way that three straight panels of “Seriously, you cannot look at these nipples right now” isn’t.

That’s what this really comes down to. Characterization. Every single thing we do as humans reveals something about us. A sneer hints at arrogance. A tentative smile suggests shyness. A sleazy smile and low eyes puts us in mind of naughty times in the bedroom. This sort of acting is characterization, even if it’s just two characters walking around a city or sitting in a room. Comics are an amazing information delivery system, and this Thief of Thieves page is lacking in info. It’s boring. It’s a speed bump.

I’m not saying that all comics need to have intricate conversations conducted by people who wiggle their arms like muppets while traveling across a bunch of diverse locations. Not by any means. I’m not saying that statted panels are evil, either. They have their place, just like anything else, and can be used to great effect. But here? No. Here, they betray a lack of imagination, or oncoming deadlines, or something. What I’m saying is that there’s none of the drama that this conversation deserves or that would keep the reader glued to their seats. There’s not even enough drama to justify checking in every once and a while. This is anti-drama, something to make you remember that you’re reading a comic, and hey, guess what, you paid three or four dollars for this thing.

The entire point of verisimilitude is to trick you into believing something that isn’t true, but appears true. This doesn’t appear true. Instead, this is boring, and that is one of the worst things comics can be. Bad comics have their high points — discussing bad X-Men will never get old, like that time they left Gambit in Antartica like “Yeah, find your own way home, murderer” — but boring comics just feel like a waste of time. They fade from memory. They don’t leave an impression. They’re vapor, instead of being something more solid. Boring.

Further reading.

So it seems that there has been a development in the Wonder Woman continuity, and it’s even more of a surprise than Wonder Woman’s not-so-secret origin.  It has put the internet in an uproar.  On the off chance that you haven’t seen the spoilers, I’m putting in a cut.

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This is probably going to seem really namedroppy and braggy, but please believe me that I don’t intend it that way. I hope you see it for what it is–genuine gratitude and a sort of… stunned appreciation.

I walk around with a black cloud a lot of the time. I have for years, really. I forget if I ever went into detail about what went down during March, but it was a bad month. My knee, two different payday screw-ups (both out of my control), an absurd wisdom tooth situation, and a variety of other things, both big and small, made for a very, very cloudy month. When you add in my long-running breakup with the comics I grew up on… let’s just say I was Charlie Browned out, to understate the situation. I was having a hard time, despite the advice and efforts of friends.

My temper burns cold, too. Even when I’m really heated, it’s not really obvious to everyone else. It’s like… the cloud metaphor works, actually. It’s like a cloud swirling around in my head, building up a head of static, rather outward responses like screaming and yelling. But after nearly a month of letting this cloud run things, after some new trauma arriving with every new week, I decided that I could either let myself be crushed or just sort of roll with the punches and laugh about it. A hollow laugh, maybe, but better a fake-ish laugh than sitting in my room in the dark on the weekends like I’d been doing. (And if we’re being honest, my luck in March? It was at Charlie Brown levels, which is actually pretty funny.) I made a joke on Twitter that I’d need Emerald City Comicon to be transcendant. Turns out… it basically was.

I wasn’t going to go to ECCC originally. I’d been curious about it, but if you’ve been reading this blog at all over the past year, you know I’m pretty burnt out on the industry. But Brandon (King City) Graham and Adam (Empowered) Warren were tweeting about it one day, and I think Brandon suggested I should go. I pshawed. It’d be cool, but nah. I had the money, thanks to my first tax refund in several years (that evaporated in March thanks to my leg, ha ha), but comics? Comics, comics, comics. But then Dennis Culver, a local artist whose work you’ve definitely seen online, threw me a DM that basically called my bluff.

So I booked a hotel right then, booked a flight later, and then, on 03/29, I caught a flight to Seattle. Rooming with Dennis was a lot of fun. He’s a good dude, and he knows a lot of cool people.By Thursday evening, I’d been introduced to half of Portland’s comics scene and a wide variety of other people employed in and around comics.

That night basically set the tone for the weekend. I met a lot of new people and saw a handful of old friends, and all of them were extraordinarily kind. I described it as “unbearably kind” in an email to a friend, but that could be taken the wrong way. What I mean by that is that I was surprised and flattered to be where I was, in kind of a “What did I do to deserve this? Is this real life? Or is it just fantasy?” type of way.

Let’s be honest here: I’m nobody. I write well, and I’m thankful for every reader I have (even this guy), but as far as the bigger picture goes? I’m a customer, homey. But the kindness on display at ECCC, whether coming from a complete stranger or someone who knew my work, was stunning. No, stunning is the wrong word. Devastating? Imagine being given a gift and it’s so good that your first thought is “I don’t deserve this.” It’s that feeling. Whatever that’s called.

I met Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover. They’re outrageously funny people. I knew and enjoyed their comics work, but seriously: dang. Josh Williamson, Jason Ho, Dennis, Andy Khouri, Vinny Navarrete, Doc Shaner, and Mitch Gerads are great people to hang around with. I didn’t get a chance to get into a deep Spider-Man conversation with Josh, but we danced around it all weekend. My SF and former SF buds Chunk Kelly, Emily Stackhouse, Nick Shahan, Greg Hinkle, and Jason McNamara came through and we had a lot of fun catching up. Joe Keatinge was tabling with Emi Lenox and her awesome hair bow, and chewing the fat with those two was great, too. Jen van Meter and Greg Rucka were unbelievably gracious as we talked for an hour or so. Ravishing Ron Richards, iFanboy extraordinaire, was running the floor of the con when he wasn’t being stopped by his scads of fans. Euge Ahn, aka Adam Warrock, was kicking around. Steve Lieber is a funny guy. Jeff Parker is the best kind of rascal, and it was a pleasure to finally meet him. Zack Soto is another cool dude, even though I keep forgetting that I owe him emails (sorry! I am the worst at email). Adam Warren and Brandon Graham both let me chill behind their tables for a couple of hours and talk while they signed and chatted with fans. I met this guy Mike who sent me a really kind note when I talked about feeling down a long time ago, and he showed me his awesome looking comic. I ran into Nolan Jones, who is a cool dude, even if his beloved Kansas U beat my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes by two points in basketball on Saturday (booooo!). The always delightful Allison Baker & Chris Roberson were around. Rachel Edidin and I bonded over X-Men and Thor. I think I ran into Sam Humphries in two different elevators before we got a chance to stop and chat. I hung around with Ali Colluccio and Cheryl Lynn. I got breakfast with Tom Spurgeon, Graham, and Robin McConnell (there’s a pic or two here) I told dumb stories about breaking my finger while playing video games and played down my leg brace. I talked about shoes.

I basically got to hang out with a bunch of cool people and forget about everything (barring the knee, which was always present, but you’d be surprised what a bunch of alcohol will do for pain killing). At one point on Saturday, I was in a deep conversation with Cheryl Lynn and Ali (sitting on either side of me) and Graham and Warren (sitting on the wings). I took a quick moment to recognize that my life had officially passed the surreal barrier and shot on toward absurd.

A funny thing is that I realized once I got to the con that I’d read the brochure wrong and the panel I really wanted to see, a three-way conversation between Adam Warren, Brandon Graham, and Bryan Lee O’Malley, was happening when I’d need to travel to the airport to leave. I was pretty bummed about that. Then, on Sunday, I got a series of notices that my flight was delayed, but that I still had to show up on time just in case. Which is cool, whatever, I’d already resigned myself to not seeing the panel and just catching Robin’s MP3s at a later date.

And then I got an email that my flight was canceled and the soonest they could fly me out was Tuesday morning. Which is ridiculous, obviously. Suddenly I was homeless for the next two days and facing missing a couple more days of work than I’d planned for, which would basically tip the deadline dominoes much faster than I’d wanted. Cold temper, though, right? So I made a joke about it, decided to call the airline after the panel, and caught the panel of the convention. I had to rush out of the con a little after that, but it is what it is. (I later got a flight that next morning, after a whole lot of stress and a dead phone battery.)

I know I’m forgetting some people. I got sick after the con, sick enough to work from home today, and I’m buried under cold/flu meds, among other things. I apologize for that, but if we met and talked, I almost definitely liked you. (Everyone except that Ron Richards! :argh: ) I just wanted to thank as many people as I could, and by name and in public, because that’s how grateful I am. I can’t even tell you, man. My heart didn’t grow three sizes (it’s still blacker than midnight at Broadway and Myrtle), but like… I don’t know that I have the words to express the gratitude I feel. I was having a real hard time, and for a weekend, I got to come up for air and avoid that black cloud.

So, seriously, truly: thanks. I had a great time. Easily the best convention experience ever. Y’all are stunning, and I’m extremely, extremely grateful.

I like this comic Carbon Grey quite a bit. It’s created by Hoang Nguyen, Khari Evans, Paul Gardner, Mike Kennedy, and Kinsun Loh. The first four came up with the story, Gardner scripted it, and then Evans, Loh, and Nguyen are responsible for the art. It’s this fairly solid little steampunky tale, with a World War I-type setting and dirigibles and stuff. But really, it’s an art showcase. It’s very pretty.

Nguyen provides layouts for the issues, Evans does the pencils and inks, and then Loh colors everything. Evans is freakishly talented, one of those dudes who gets me to check out a comic just because his name is on it. Carbon Grey is clearly a Khari Evans joint, but it’s also unlike the rest of his work, due in large part to Loh’s colors. Loh’s doing a lot of rendering with the colors, and it makes Evans’s inks look more realistic than they usually do. There’s a synergy going on there that I like a lot.

I mention this because, unbeknownst to me, a Carbon Grey Kickstarter has been going on. They need forty grand to finish the series, and they’re a little over halfway there with just ten days to go. I kicked some money their way tonight, and if you like how this comic sounds, you should think about doing so, too.

I always make this assumption that people who make comics that I like are well off and can afford to do it forever. Part of me still thinks, “Oh, you’re doing books? You’ve made it! You’re doing great!” But that isn’t true, is it? If it was true, my bookshelf would look a lot different. It sorta sucks, really. I’d like to believe that everyone can make a living doing what they love, but that isn’t true, I guess. So when push comes to shove, if I’m able, I’m more than willing to help support the work of people whose talents I’ve enjoyed. (That sentence is awkward, but you get me.) I’m blessed enough to have a steady job that leaves me with a little bit of spending money, so I might as well pay it forward, right? Comics are hard, and I don’t mind helping out when I believe in the work.

I’ve written about Carbon Grey and Khari Evans a few different times. Here’s some further reading:
–‘Carbon Grey’ Gives Khari Evans A Chance To Show His Stuff (a detailed look at the art of Carbon Grey)
–Black History Month 2011: Khari Evans (a quick look at what makes his art so good)
–Pretty Girls: Khari Evans (a look at how important a sneer can be when you’re drawing ladies, amongst other things)
–Great Moments in Black History #11: “Leave a ring around your eye and tread marks on your back” (I like this fight scene)
–All the books available digitally (the original series is two bucks each, so if you’ve got coffee cash to spare, give it a go)

Here’s the Kickstarter vid and a widget:

If this is your thing, give some thought to backing the project. I’d like to see it finish.

I’m working on another Thing, and that Thing led to me downloading Brian Bendis and David Finch’s New Avengers #1 off the iBooks store for free. (iBookstore?) It’s intended to get you to buy the full trade for $10.99. I flipped through it and had a funny thought. I thought this was a stupid little mistake and almost didn’t post this, but I thought about it and here we are. Bear with me.

Nowhere in the comic is the creative team listed, barring the front cover, which just lists Brian Bendis, David Finch, and Danny Miki. I downloaded a sample of the actual book, which is the first twelve pages, and found a similar issue.

Here’s the page with the creative team from the printed comic:

I was thinking about this, and I sorta understand what happened. Bendis and Finch are listed on the cover to the free preview (and on the covers in the sample), as well as on the iBookstore. Cutting the credits box is SOP for Marvel’s trades, since it leaves the art cleaner and they throw a credits page into the front of the book anyway. This time, it slipped through the cracks. I checked another sample, Amazing Spider-Man: Big Time, and it still has a credit box on the opening spread. It’s an accident, then, right?

But what made me pull this post from the trash and finish it is that there’s an entire page dedicated to Marvel’s execs. A new page, one that hasn’t been in any printed comic ever. I think it’s pretty messed up, whether it’s once or twice or three times, that people who had very little to do with the actual creation of a comic get better billing than the people who spent months of their life working on the stupid thing. I mean, let’s be real here–I’m sure that Marvel Senior Counsel David Althoff (to pick a name at random) is a nice guy. He’s got a splendid first name, in fact. But what did he do that gives him bigger billing than anyone else on the creative team, half of which doesn’t even get credited at all?

This is a nitpick. I’ll cop to that. But at the same time… it really isn’t. Mainstream comics has a real problem with valuing the people who actually make the comics, and I think the prioritization of corporate over creative, which is exactly what this is, is pretty screwed up. I feel like it’s important to point out when this happens, even if it’s an innocent mistake. (Also I think I got the flu while I was out of town, I’ve been doing shots of cold medicine, and everything feels like a good idea right now.) We’ve got to do a better job of prioritizing creators over characters, and especially over corporate, especially when it would be as easy to fix as this would be. Yes, Bendis & Finch’s names are on the store, but there’s nothing about their roles. At the very least, that info should be in the comic.

If you’re inserting a dedicated corporate masthead into the book, make the facing page the creative team. The creative team is the important part, anyway. I try to emphasize that whenever I can. Let’s do better.