Today is that annual day when websites like to toss in jokes about how they’re closing or now owned by _____ or how they’re going to make a sequel to your favorite videogame. All that shit. Personally, I’m not in the mood.

But on the subject of jokes, I think of the latest issue of Prelude to Deadpool Corps. For those of you who haven’t been able to keep Deadpool’s multiple titles straight, Prelude is Victor Gischler’s concurrent follow-up to the canceled on-going Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth, which will end in several months. It’s been a weekly, five-issue romp as Deadpool goes from universe to universe to put together a team of his female self, his hungry and decaying head from the Marvel Zombies universe, a kid version of him from a world where he’s a student at Xavier’s school, and a gross dog with regenerative powers. Each issue has a different artist and the quality ranges from good (Paco Medina) to Rob Liefeld.

I made the mistake of picking up #5 without even flipping through it. After all, it features the art of Kyle Baker. I mean, Kyle Baker is awesome! Didn’t you read Plastic Man? That series was brilliant! Okay, sure, the middle issues were a bit uninspired, but the rest of it was tops! He’d be absolutely perfect for a Deadpool comic. But it’s weird, I strictly remember that Baker’s done Deadpool work before. Something about Deadpool #900 and a segment of Merc with a Mouth when Wade went through different universes. For some reason I made myself forget about those issues. Why would I do that? Kyle Baker is an awesome artist.

I look through this issue and… oh, yeah.

Sweet Jesus! This comic has more lens flare than it does yellow word bubbles! Kidpool (not to be confused with the infinitely better, yet forgotten Kid Deadpool) complains about the lack of fries even though there’s two orders of them laying on the table! The Grandmaster and the Contemplator look like unfinished action figures! The textures are eye-rape! Everyone looks like rejects from that Avengers in Galactic Storm arcade game that nobody’s heard of!

There’s more that I’m not showing you. A lot of the time you can barely tell the difference between Deadpool and Lady Deadpool. Horrible filters and color schemes are rampant. When Dogpool crawls out of a crater after an explosive ship crash, his physical damage is portrayed by making random parts of him transparent. A subplot involves the Deadpool Corps opposing an army of Carebear knockoffs, but it doesn’t work. The whole point of the gag is that these guys are fighting and slaughtering a bunch of bloodthirsty space pirates who happen to be cute, but how do you portray that when everything about the comic is so goddamn ugly?

So, yes, April Fools Day is all about jokes. And yes, we get it, Mr. Baker. It’s a funny prank you’ve been playing on us for the past few months, but it’s getting old. You can go back to drawing GOOD art now. Any time, now. Please?

Wonder-Con is tomorrow!

The booths!  The people!  The smell of storm-trooper armor.  Me, skulking around the DC area hoping that someone will say something spoilerish like they did at Comic-Con.  Me staring at Gail Simone like a creepy fangirl who can’t manage a conversation – which I kind of am.  Oh well!

The panel that David and I and the theyFanboys are hosting on Saturday, 12:30, in room 220.

Already I’m thinking about the regrettable purchases I am going to make, the awkward questions I am going to pose, and the possibility of running into Kevin Smith in the halls.

Oh, it is going to be fantastic.

And seriously, I thought Birds of Prey was gone forever.  It was cancelled, people.  Cancelled and the characters parcelled out to to other books.  It was sold for scrap.

Well, ba BAM!

They are back in May, and they are back written by Simone.  With two new characters.  That’s like seeing the dog that ‘went to live on a farm upstate’ returned to you with a litter of puppies. 

And if they include Creote and Savant?  And Helena keeps up her weird-ass thing with Catman?

Hell, even if she doesn’t, and they don’t, I am a happy, happy person.

So some of you might be wondering about the Wrestlemania Countdown and how I never got around to posting the top 3. I really wanted to get that done in time, but 11 straight days of writing plus coming down with a cold led to some nasty fatigue and I lost my writing momentum. I’ll get to it, but sometime in the next few days, albeit when nobody cares because Wrestlemania 26 already happened.

In other news, I stumbled across this the other day. It’s a well-known fact that the videogame Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time has one of the all-time greatest soundtracks. A guy by the name of MasDaMind decided to merge the tracks from that game with other pieces of music to create Teenage Mashup Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time Tribute.

Some work better than others, but I personally dig “Got Yourself Sewer Surfin'”.

I realize that I am staking a lot of my happiness on the Return of Bruce Wayne series, but I just can’t seem to care.  Here are some scans from the first issue, via the DCU Source.

It would almost be worth it to be a cave person, even one of those pervy Clan of the Cave Bear cave people, if you got to see Batman take his utility belt to the stone age. 

And?  And?

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I wondered aloud about the skin tone of a character in Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s upcoming time-spanning SHIELD. In short, Imhotep, Egyptian doctor and Agent of SHIELD (Officer of SHIELD?), was modern-day white, rather than ancient Egypt brown.

I emailed Dustin Weaver with a link to the post, and he wrote back pretty quickly. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially, it was a mistake in the production process. He’s done a lot of research on the book to try and make sure things make sense, and that’s something that slipped through the cracks when doing color tests. He’s gonna try to get them fixed in the trade, if Marvel’s amenable to it. He’s a pretty cool guy.

Just an update!

edit: I asked Dustin to quote a bit of his email and he agreed. In his own words:

Oh, man, you’re right! I’m embarrassed and shocked that I didn’t catch this mistake before it was finished. I’m surprised nobody caught this mistake.
The 2 page spread of the Egyptians fighting the Brood was the very first thing that got colored for this book and it was the testing page for the style of this whole series. I think it went through 4 different versions before we got something we liked. I think with all this back and forth with the style of the thing we missed the fact that they were white. I feel pretty stupid. I seriously did a lot of research to get a lot of the details right. To miss something so blatant is embarrassing.

Why is this example of a monkey and a robot making out stuck under a sad line from “Today?” It doesn’t make sense! After all, this panel from Doom Patrol #34 has everything. Action, adventure, someone being a jerk, and it’s all in a title that is epic, overwhelming silliness. Also, as I said before, a monkey and a robot making out.

Why, because it’s DC, of course!

Marvel, it’s about time you had some “crazy, reprogrammed robot” on “talking, violent monkey” characters blatantly made for rampant and gratuitous fan service. Vision and Gorilla Man, separately and together, are half-way there already. And they’re good guys! Get on that! I have faith in you!

Why is this example of chickkissing stuck under one of the sad lines from “Yesterday”? It doesn’t make sense! After all, this panel from Incredible Hercules #141 has everything. Action, adventure, someone being a jerk, and it’s all in a title that is epic, overwhelming silliness. Also, as I said before, chickkissing.

Why, because it’s Marvel, of course!

When I told Gavok about Venus, Aphrodite’s freaky siren copycat who had mind-control love powers that she used on everyone, I did not entirely believe myself. Now I see that it’s true. Too bad he’s such a psychotic jerk (by that I mean Gavok. Gavok is a jerk).

DC, it’s about time you had some crazy, love-power-having bisexual characters blatantly made for rampant and gratuitous fanboy service. Karen and Helena, separately and together, are half-way there already. And they’re good guys! Get on that! I have faith in you!

Why is this example of dudekissing stuck under the only sad line from ‘Tomorrow’?  It doesn’t make sense!  After all, this panel from Dark Wolverine #84 has everything.  Action, adventure, someone being a jerk, and it’s all in a title that is epic, overwhelming silliness.  Also, as I said before, dudekissing.

Why, because it’s Marvel, of course!

When David told me about Daken, Wolverine’s freaky son/clone who had mind-control sex powers that he used on everyone, I did not entirely believe him.  Now I see that it’s true.  Too bad he’s such a psychotic jerk (Daken, not David.  David is nice.).

DC, it’s about time you had some crazy, love-power-having bisexual characters blatantly made for rampant and gratuitous fangirl service.  Dick and Roy, separately and together, are half-way there already.  And they’re good guys!  Get on that!  I have faith in you!

This is the last entry! the previous entry is up on Chad’s site! Spoilers abound, ladies and gents, we are officially in the danger zone!

DB: Oh man, I’m positively obsessive about the audience. I have a third-party counter and the official WordPress stats plugin going. The third-party is so that I can point to our stats and go, “Hey, look! You should let us interview X or give us a preview of Y! People read us!” A certain (a lot) of it is almost definitely simple ego-stroking. It’s nice to be wanted, and as a writer, about the best compliment I’ve ever gotten is “I like to read your stuff.”

Another reason why I pay attention to hits is money. I added ads to 4l! about twenty months ago, Amazon Associates maybe a year ago, and knowing the hits is a good motivator. I know that going a week without content means that hits drops which means Project Wonderful advertisers may not bid as high as they usually do which means I’ll eventually have to go back to paying for hosting. Which is no big deal, I did it for four years, but I really, really enjoy that after five years, 4thletter! pays for itself. It’s like the little blog that could.

But the hits thing… I think you’ve got to know your audience. The WordPress stats gives you the views by post, which is enormously useful. There are a few weird bits in the system (posts with a Read More tag get more traffic than ones without, for obvious reason), but it’s helped me figure out what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes I’ll write a post, be completely unsure of it, and throw it out into the ether and bam, it does gangbusters. That gives me something to look at and figure out what I did right, or what I did wrong, and adjust for the future. Not that I’m writing for hits, but it helps to know whether or not people are listening or if you’re just talking to yourself.

As far as approaching an audience… I kinda do and I kinda don’t. I like a lot of popular stuff, and I know if I do a cheap snark post it’ll get a different response than a long, in-depth analysis of some comic. But, when I’m sitting down to write, I’m just thinking of myself. I mean, I dedicate a month’s posting in February to racial issues, something 10% of comics fans barely care about and the other 90% are actively hostile to, I’ve done several thousand word essays on rap music, and I swear I’ve done other posts that only I care about in the entire world.

So, short, probably more sensible answer: I have an idea of what the audience wants, and while that sometimes lines up with my interests, I don’t have a reader in mind other than myself. I write what I want to read, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

CN: I imagine I would care more about hits if I had my own site and hosting fees like you do, but being on a free site like Blogger means I can be as oblivious as I want, thankfully.

I’m not sure there’s anything else to cover. We’ve discussed the past, the future, and well a bunch of stuff not covered by either label. I’ve really enjoyed this. A nice way to celebrate five years or so of comics blogging. Hopefully, we’ll be around in another five.

DB: I don’t have much to say (all appearances to the contrary), barring sincere and genuine thanks to Gavin, Esther, Thomas, and Paul. Hopefully in five years we’ll have another dot-com boom and we can all live in Comics Blogospheria, our own island country.