One thing that really bugs me when I’m signing comics for folks at a shop or convention is how some of you all refer to yourselves as “fanboys” or “geeks,” calling yourselves all kinds of bad names and making it sound like loving comics means being something less than human. I’ve met a lot of you, thousands of you, over the years. You’re a smart bunch, a literate bunch. You’re fun to talk with. The bad eggs, and the much-mentioned crazies, are few and very far between. I’m lucky to have the readers I have, and I’m grateful for your attention and loyalty.

A self-contempt, even a self-hatred, suffuses our amazing little field, expressed as often by publishers and writers and artists as by readers. The origins of this industry-wide inferiority complex are historical and foolish. Yes. We are a bastard industry, much maligned. Ours is a story form considered by many, even most, as juvenile and unworthy. So was the novel, once. So were the movies. And maybe people in my position, writers and artists, haven’t yet produced enough superior work to make the rest of the world think better of us. But superior works have been done, and more are in the pipe. The field is rich, very rich, in talent. The art form is unique in its capabilities. Our best days are ahead of us. Comics readers are likewise ahead of public perception. You know you love this stuff. Give the rest of them time to catch up, sure, but don’t think you’re a geek because you love good drawing or a good, dramatic story told well.

We must admit our love for our crazy little business of comic books. Screwy as our history is, unjust and splattered with the lifeblood of our best as our history is, we must move forward, unashamed, even a bit proud. Only that history can drag us back, and down. Only old, bad habits. Only that old, stupid self-contempt.

We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.

-Frank Miller, from the letters pages in the fifth chapter of The Big Fat Kill. (That issue also included this excellent and NSFW Sergio Aragones pinup.)

I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the way comics fans embrace nerd and geek as descriptions of a subculture. It feels a little self-loathing and a little high school. I don’t know that I can eloquently articulate why I feel this way, just that it rubs me in a weird way. I think Miller hits it closest when he mentions the self-contempt. Maybe that’s my issue.

Anybody have thoughts?

(While we’re talking Miller, The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century, the Miller/Dave Gibbons satirical future epic with one of the best black females in comics, is getting a softcover release in June. 600 pages. 20 bucks. You do the math.)

Wondercon is right around the corner, taking place from April 2nd to April 4th. It’s probably my favorite con, maybe tied with New York Comic-con, but slightly ahead because I can walk to Wondercon if I like. This one’s gonna be super special, as you can see from these descriptions of Saturday’s programming:

12:30-1:30 Comics Podcasting— Celebrating 5 years of podcasting about the comics industry, join the voices behind the iFanboy series of podcasts, Ron Richards and Conor Kilpatrick, along David Brothers and Esther Inglis-Arkell from the Fourcast! from 4thLetter, plus some possible very special guests as they discuss the ins and outs of podcasting about comics, what’s changed over the past 5 years, and what the future holds. You won’t want to miss this frank discussion, which is sure to be filled with often embarrassing stories of comics creators, conventions, and other comics related amusements. Room 220

6:00-7:00 Comics Journalism— Join David Brothers (4thletter!), Kate Dacey (manga critic), Graeme McMillan (io9), JK Parkin (Robot 6), and Ron Richards (iFanboy), for a roundtable discussion of comics journalism from all angles. What should publishers and readers expect out of the varied and often fluctuating landscape of comics criticism online? Is comics print journalism dead? What makes a writer worth reading? Expect answers to these questions and more as the panelists, each practicing a different discipline of comics journalism, talks about the what’s, why’s, and how’s of writing about comics online. Room 232/234

So, you know, if you’re around… come around. We’re up against some stiff competition, but really, who cares about Brightest Day and Toy Story 3, anyway?

To continue with the worthless trivia, here’s a list of the ten longest matches in Wrestlemania history.

10) Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior (Wrestlemania 6): 22:51
9) Triple H vs. Randy Orton (Wrestlemania 25): 23:34
8) Undertaker vs. Edge (Wrestlemania 24): 23:50
7) Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit (Wrestlemania 20): 25:10
6) Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels (Wrestlemania 21): 27:25
5) Steve Austin vs. the Rock (Wrestlemania 17): 28:06
4) Shawn Michaels vs. John Cena (Wrestlemania 23): 28:20
3) Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels (Wrestlemania 25): 30:41
2) The Rock vs. Triple H vs. Big Show vs. Mick Foley (Wrestlemania 16): 36:28
1) Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart (Wrestlemania 12): 1:01:52

That’s no surprise on the last one. But what of the shortest matches?

10) Big Show vs. Akebono (Wrestlemania 21): 1:02
9) Legion of Doom vs. Power and Glory (Wrestlemania 7): 0:59
8) Butterbeat vs. Bart Gunn (Wrestlemania 15): 0:35
6) Earthquake vs. Adam Bomb (Wrestlemania 10)/Red Rooster vs. Bobby Heenan (Wrestlemania 5): 0:32
5) King Kong Bundy vs. Special Delivery Jones (Wrestlemania 1): 0:23
3) Rey Mysterio vs. JBL (Wrestlemania 25)/Hulk Hogan vs. Yokozuna (Wrestlemania 9): 0:21
2) The Hart Foundation vs. the Bolsheviks (Wrestlemania 6): 0:19
1) Kane vs. Chavo Guerrero (Wrestlemania 24): 0:09

This is going to be a longer update. Between the two reviewed shows, I have 30 matches to work through.

Read the rest of this entry »

-Over at ComicsAlliance, I’ve got a pretty good idea on what major Marvel comic Charlie Huston’s gonna be writing later this year.

While “Deathlok” is currently being serialized, Huston doesn’t have any announced work coming out of Marvel’s stables. Until now, that is, as he spilled the beans on a few projects on his site on Thursday. Longtime readers will know that he’s written a year’s worth of stories on a major Marvel series which should debut this fall, but he also revealed that he’s doing a two issue story “about a guy who never misses [his] mark.”

-And at Tucker’s spot, I talk a little bit about How to Make It In America and Archer.

How to Make It In America is, at least theoretically, about Ben Epstein and Cam Calderon getting off their butts and making something of themselves. Now that they’re pushing 30, they’re gonna strike it rich, or at least solvent, by creating a new line of jeans. Along the way, they’ll have to negotiate with Cam’s menacing cousin Rene, played by an aging but still talented Luis Guzman, coordinate with one of Ben’s rich friends, and fight against everyone who is telling them that they can’t do their thing. And then, in the end, they’ll win. They’ll stick to their guns, believe in each other, and their jeans will be the talk of New York City.

-Archer’s last episode for a while aired last Thursday, and whooo. It was something else. Vile, obscene, disturbing, hilarious.

-David Welsh on the appeal of One Piece:

One observation that really caught my ear was about Oda’s world building and his willingness to plant tiny, seemingly irrelevant narrative seeds that come to full flower later, sometimes much later. Natsuki Takaya did this all the time in Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), turning seemingly oblique observations and sideways glances from volume two into searing heartbreak in, say, volume nine. It’s quite a skill, that kind of callback work, and it displays a great deal of confidence on the part of the creator that they’ll be able to tell their story according to plan.

-Esther writes about five ways you probably wouldn’t die in a vacuum at io9, and it is good:

Because a vacuum does not carry sound very well, you would not be able to hear the many, many alveoli in your lungs pop like bubble wrap under a child’s fingers, but don’t tell me that you wouldn’t imagine it.

-Judd Winick and Sami Basri are taking over Power Girl as of issue 13. Coincidentally, I have three extra dollars to spend a month now.

-Dave Johnson talks about his first cover for Abe Sapien: The Abyssal Plain.

-I haven’t talked about BPRD on here at all, I don’t think, but please believe that it has better than every single comic put out by mainline Marvel or DC for the past four or five years. Maybe All-Star Superman stacks up, maybe.

-Cheryl Lynn has a line on the hottest new t-shirt of the spring.

–Treme, the new show from David Simon and others, is gonna be a problem.

-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-It’s another Girlcast! We’ve got a couple of book reviews this time.
-First up is Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie’s Aya of Yop City
–Aya of Yop City is basically a straight up soap opera.
-Second is Raina Telgemeier’s Smile
–Smile is also pretty soap opera-y– it covers a few years of Telgemeier’s middle school/high school life, with the connective tissue being the fact that she had to get braces after a very relatable catastrophe.
-Disney digression.
-See you, space cowgirl!

Subscribe to the Fourcast! via:
–Podcast Alley feed!
–RSS feed via Feedburner
–iTunes Store

For those who haven’t noticed or forgot, a nasty storm caused me to lose my cable connection last week and rather than wait a day to post TWiP, I made the dumbass decision to add it onto the next week. Apparently I was too busy to notice that this week was a huge one regardless, making this a gigantic update. Welp, let’s get moving.

The A-Team: Shotgun Wedding #1
Joe Carnahan, Tom Waltz, Stephen Mooney

Amazing Spider-Man #624
Mark Waid, Tom Peyer, Paul Azaceta and Javier Rodriguez

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s take a second to look at some random Wrestlemania trivia.

Jeff Hardy and Goldust share the worst win-loss records with 0-5. After them are Crush and the Dudley Boyz, each with 0-4.

“Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff is the only wrestler to go from the main event of one Wrestlemania to the opening match of the next. Similarly, Lex Luger and Eddie Guerrero have gone from having world title matches on one show to being in the opening match the following year. Edge and Chris Jericho have done the reverse by being in the opening match one year and then the main event the following.

Hulk Hogan vs. Zeus was once in the cards for the main event of Wrestlemania 6.

For three years in a row, scheduled matches were dropped from Wrestlemania’s card due to time restraints: British Bulldog vs. the Berzerker (Wrestlemania 8), Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Kamala (Wrestlemania 9) and a ten-man tag match (Wrestlemania 10).

Shawn Michaels and Finlay have both opened three Wrestlemanias in a row.

Bret Hart and Owen Hart have a combined 20 matches at Wrestlemania. Only one of those matches (Bret vs. Austin) has ended with a Sharpshooter.

Wrestlemania 4 is the only time Ted Dibiase has won or lost a match via pin. He’s never won or lost via submission despite his finisher.

Yokozuna has wrestled four world title matches over the course of two consecutive Wrestlemanias.

Undertaker vs. Big Boss Man is the only heel vs. heel match to take place at Wrestlemania.

The mini-tournament in Wrestlemania 10 was decided with a coin toss in-story. Had it started with Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna, Lex Luger would have had a singles match with Crush before facing the winner.

If you face Kurt Angle in a title match at Wrestlemania, you will win. If there is no title on the line, you will lose.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Millar’s much-ballyhooed Ultimate Avengers is introducing two new characters to the Ultimate universe: “Nerd Hulk,” which is pretty self-explanatory, and something he’s been calling “African-American Hulk.”

CBR just released advance solicits for the June Ultimate books, which covers Ultimate Avengers 2, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Ultimate X. Check out the Ultimate Avengers 2 solicitation:

ULTIMATE COMICS AVENGERS 2 #3 & #4
Written by MARK MILLAR
Pencils & Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU
Nick Fury’s Avengers have assembled: Black Widow, The Punisher, a new Hulk, War Machine and Hawkeye are souped-up and ready to face Hell…literally. Evil’s emissary comes in the form of The Ghostrider, a mysterious new villain sent to collect Satan’s debts: human lives. But how do you fight the devil and his men? With big guns and even bigger cojones. Who lives, who survives? Who knows? But it’ll be one hellish ride!! Join superstars MARK MILLAR and LEINIL FRANCIS YU in another heart-pumping adventure!
32 PGS./Parental Advisory …$3.99

And the cover image:

Well, there’s your “African-American Hulk.”

I mean, honestly? Where is this guy from, 1987?

For the hell of it, I picked up the 2010 Wrestlemania XXVI Almanac, an overpriced magazine that features lots of facts and interviews relating to the past Wrestlemanias. A lot of it makes for good reading, but there are two things that bugged the crap out of me.

First, there’s a part where they talk about the “most evil Wrestlemania” and say that it’s Wrestlemania 24. The first reason on their list is, “Raven Symone was there. Almost reason enough.”

Yeah! Fuck that evil bitch for showing up to endorse the Make a Wish Foundation and bringing 50 kids to the show!

The other thing that gets me is this page where they show a bunch of pics from various Wrestlemanias and have you figure out which show they’re from. It’s a great idea and the choices work for the most part. Doink and Doink, Snoop Dogg clotheslining Santino, Big Show sumo wrestling, the Fink with a full head of hair, etc. But come on, guys. Can you make this just a little bit harder?

Gee… uh… hm… Summerslam ’94?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m calling it: Tim O’Neil wrote the review of the year with his review of the whole Rise and Fall and Rise of Green Arrow and Red Arrow Merry Christmas crapfest. A quote:

regardless of your best intentions we all get kind of rudderless and wish we could depend on some rock-jawed daddy figure like Hal Jordan to tell us what to do but really Hal Jordan is and has always been a douchebag and his rebelliousness never struck me as particularly principled so much as just erratic and kind of willful

There’s so much more love to be found over there, so click through and read the whole thing. It’s all true.