Why is the Faces of Evil series, which is a group of unconnected stories, share the same title, while the Battle For The Cowl series, which has a clear narrative running through it, be published under a bunch of different titles?

Gotham Gazette, Battle For The Cowl, Azrael, Commissioner Gordon, Oracle: The Cure – I’ll have to rifle through at least three of my longboxes to read it.

It’s enough to drive me to waiting for trades.

Oh, who am I kidding?  Like there’s a chance in hell that I’m not going to pick up a series about Barbara Gordon.

In the latest issues of Green Arrow, Ollie has a bushier mustache, a longer, curlier beard, and a darker attitude.  None of these new directions please me, but I’m a die-hard Ollie fan, so I forbear.

Ollie’s got a companion on his new, dark path.  It’s a girl who has a crush on him, and is proving her love by murdering his enemies.  She’s new enough that no one knows about her, so suspicion is falling on Ollie.  After a long talk with Dinah, he looks down in shame, and confesses, “Those men in the morgue.  My enemies.  Men who have sought to harm for money or revenge or to quiet the demons that sing to them.  They’ve caused so much damage, not just physically.  Emotionally . . . mentally . . . to this city.  To you.  To our family.  And I can’t help it.  I’m glad they’re dead.”

Dinah’s reaction is  a anguished look.

My reaction – well I had two.  The first reaction was that I have read every issue of Green Arrow since Ollie popped back to life, and quite a few before it, and if a guy named ‘Sling Shot’ caused physical, emotional, OR mental damage, I missed it.  The second reaction was, “Of course you’re glad they’re dead.”

Because, really Ollie?  Really?  You are still the Green Arrow, right?  You didn’t change your name to IsSorryBadPeopleAreDeadman when I wasn’t looking, did you?  GrievesForHisEnemies Avenger?  General Empathy?

Of course you’re glad they’re dead.  I know of people, people I have never met, people who have never done me any harm, that I would be happy to see dead.  I would never kill them.  I would never encourage anyone to kill them.  I would want their murderers, assuming they were murdered and didn’t just choke on their own bile, caught and punished.  But the fact that they were dead would put a spring in my step, and I won’t lie about that.  Call me Captain Schadenfreude if you like.

I would think that a man who has killed a few people himself wouldn’t sweat over understandable feelings of relief that cold-blooded killers wouldn’t be hunting him and his family anymore.  Anyone?

I’m putting this entry, shallow as it is, under a cut in case any of you don’t want to be even mildly spoiled for Battle For The Cowl. Read the rest of this entry �

Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

It actually took me seeing the variant for this one to understand what the hell was going on with the regular cover. Apparently our pinup girl is holding one of Wolverine’s claws for some reason, completely independent of his arm.

Anyhow. The recap page is skippable, at this point they’re so bare-bones from trying to sum up things and keep the illusion of a coherent plot that it’s not worth it. All it gives us that we didn’t know is, “Yes you are really about to read a comic where Wolverine evolved from an otter.”

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The most common question asked during a Con is, “How do I get into the comics industry?”  The most common answer is an extremely weary sigh, followed by, “Have a few comics published already.”

You can bet your life on hearing that conversation at least once per Con. 

When you’ve gotten a few Cons under your belt, you’ll hear the same circular exchange again and again, spiraling up through wannabe writers and artists, through independent publishers, all the way to established companies.  You’ll hear it cut across creative panels, marketing discussions, and technological analysis.  Everywhere, it seems, what you most need to succeed is success.

At WonderCon, I went to a panel of independent comics publishers.  A fan got up and asked why more of them didn’t move to an e-comic format, offering downloads for small fees and bypassing the printing and shipping costs.

*sigh* Read the rest of this entry �

Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

If you’re still foolish enough to trust the covers, you might think this issue is action-packed. You’d be very wrong, though. Let’s see what our recap-writing buddy has to say this time.

See that movie reference there at the end? Yeah, I don’t think Jemas knew there was a Jurassic Period, because over the next two pages they all keep referring to it as “How long until Jurassic Park?”, “150 million BC — Jurassic Park”, and it’s rather irritating. Also irritating: we know damn well from the first issues that the time machine can send things to a pinpoint time. It’s how all the stuff arrived right where Al was when it was sent back to him. For some reason, this has changed all of a sudden, because now instead of just punching in “150 million BC” as a destination, they have to count up through the years at “50 million years an hour” and so they need to stick a young organism inside the time machine with them inside a bag made from Al’s future-shirt.

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Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Every time I see that cover, I keep thinking it’s Lockjaw, the Inhuman dog. Anyway. This time we get a recap page full of straight-up lies.

Shot 1 is actually them sending back the time machine, from last issue, sort of ruining the “last son” thing they were aiming for. Why they didn’t mention, “Oh hey Al has a time machine now!” is anyone’s guess. The origin thing I can’t really debunk, the love story is mentioned here for a second and final time (and is still using panels from issue 1 because it does not exist), and I don’t know how the hell Al got credit for capturing Spike Lee when he, uh… just walked out of the room, and left a confused Frank Castle to talk with the irritated director.

Now, issue 3 of Marville is entirely different from the last two. For one, they didn’t bring in an inker on this one, and the change actually gives it a look I like. This will, of course, be tossed out in an instant when this issue ends. The second is that there are no word balloons, thought bubbles, or for that matter, anything beyond “what will make this shot look the best”, no real in-between panels for motion in here. Dialogue and actions are conveyed in the script laid on top of the images throughout the issue. It’s almost like a storyboard.

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Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Note this classy cover by Greg Horn. We’ll be covering those in the next update, don’t you worry. But when we last left Marville…

Ah yes. I also forgot to mention there is no love plot. There is no pining or anything. I don’t know why the hell they added that to the blurb, probably because almost nothing from the first issue is going to carry over into this one and they needed to fill space. Also space-filler: the Kingpin blurb, but we’ll get to that.

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42 drafts, 36 images, 28 posts, 28 days, and I’m still number one.

Black History Month has been over for a week. Coincidentally, this post is about a week late. I’d intended to do it after Wondercon ’09, but I ended up pretty sick without even realizing it. I figure I caught the nerd flu from the con or something, because I am positively miserable.

Anyway, BHM09 was an interesting experience. I started out with a solid third (give or take) of the posts written or in detailed notes form. That was enough of a head start to carry me through the month with no problems. But, I quickly went off script. I’ve got a folder full of half-finished drafts that’ll never see the light of day, either because I couldn’t make them work or because I made them work and then realized I hated them. Best laid plans, meet open window.

I had some very interesting conversations, many of which helped realign or clarify my own views on race and comics. I only ran into two outright trolls, neither of which had any heart, so I guess I didn’t make anyone important angry. Hopefully, and I think this is true, people read and learned or understood or got something they didn’t before. I realized partway through the month that I was repeating and reiterating what I’d already said, but race in comics isn’t exactly rocket science.

This is basically a table of contents for BHM09. It will explain what each post is about, in as few words as possible, and also the title. That’s probably the only real secret- each post’s title is a music reference. “Hip-hop and comic books was my genesis,” right?

Before I get into that, I’d like to thank the people who linked me when I first started out: Cheryl Lynn, Johanna Draper Carlson, Jog, Tom Spurgeon, Heidi MacDonald and especially JK Parkin, who so kindly offered to syndicate a post a week on Robot6, which is in turn hosted on one of the two biggest comics news sites around. Extra thanks to Pedro Tejeda of Funnybook Babylon and Cheryl Lynn (again) for a couple of really good suggestions for posts. Thanks also to everyone who emailed me over the course of the month who is still waiting on a reply. To all of you, I can only say, “I suck.”

If you don’t want to read this entire list, I asked around and apparently posts 22, 12, and 20 are pretty good. I also want to give special notice to this post on the official Atomic Robo blog, which is really very thoughtful and I’m kind of honored to have at least partly inspired it.

I’m pretty burned out on black stuff right now, so it may be a while before I do anything like this again. I am, however, planning on doing something big at least every other month this year. It may not be daily blogging (it will not be daily blogging), but it’ll be something.

Thanks for reading.
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Saw it.  Liked it.  Was rather surprised at that.

At first I thought the style would knock me out of the picture.  I was wrong.  There were some sequences, especially at the beginning of the film, that made me roll my eyes when they started but turned out to be strangely affecting.

Also, I think that my earlier concern that the overall darkening tone of comic book movies would take the edge off of this one was incorrect.  Obviously, this would be more of a shock if it were compared to the early Superman movies instead of The Dark Knight.  But Watchmen isn’t so much about shocking us as it is showing us these wacky people with certain power levels and certain senses of responsibility, and never quite the right balance between the two.

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