The other day I was in a comics forum and saw a certain creator roasted in absentia.  Par for the course, so far.  We’re comics geeks.  We eat our own.  Most of the people in the forum joined in the, how shall I put this, unholy orgy of hate.  Again, that’s pretty normal for the internet, and I have, in the past, not been above joining a group that took pleasure in tearing into an innocent human being who has done nothing more than write a comic in a way I don’t approve of. 

This time, however, it surprised me.  A single apoplectic comics fan can happen anywhere.  And, of course, there are pockets of fan-worship and deep hatred depending on which section of the internet you stumble into.  On one site Frank Miller is a misunderstood genius.  On another he’s Satan incarnate.  But this creator would have been popular anywhere a couple of years ago.

I haven’t been a comics fan for all that long, but even in a few years, I’ve noticed that there can be a complete reversal of popular opinion about one creator or another.  Sometimes it can be as simple as having a huge build up to a disappointing run.  Sometimes it’s an unpopular decision about what to do with one character or another (although that usually is what gets editors in trouble).  Sometimes it’s an unfortunate public statement.

Sometimes, however, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it at all.  One year, the creator is the best thing happening, and then the tide turns.  Fans go from clamoring for more to screaming about how that’s enough already.

I wonder how comics professionals feel about this.  I suppose anyone in charge of a  comics company has resigned themselves to hatred, but what about those who depend on popularity for a living?  Do they live in dread that one day their name on a website will mean an avalanche of scorn and criticism?  I certainly would.

Fortunately, critics are immune.  Right?

Philip Bond is one of my favorite artists. He absolutely killed on Vimanarama and Kill Your Boyfriend, not to mention his Invisibles work. He’s one of the artists I follow on Flickr, and he’s got all of his art neatly sorted into a group cleverly named “artwork.”

He’s got a very cool set going of female astronauts. Each head shot comes along with a bit of history. Here’s a sample:

Delta Tau Delta sweetheart Judith Resnik became the fourth female astronaut when she flew as mission specialist aboard the maiden voyage of the Shuttle Discovery in 1984. Judith was killed during the launch of her second spaceflight aboard the Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

He’s got a ton of pieces of art, and about half a dozen astronauts. Go give it a look.

A public opinion poll conducted jointly by Gallup and Japan`s Yomiuri Shimbun in November of 2008 revealed that positive feelings toward America were at their lowest ebb in decades with only 32% of Japanese respondents saying that they “trust” America compared to 67% of Americans who express “trust” for Japan.[3] Rather than being channeled constructively, such as through discussion of the nature of the Japanese-American relationship, however, these feelings are instead manifested in examples like Morikawa’s war image and simplistic “vengeance through boxing” narrative.

–Nationalism and Anti-Americanism in Japan – Manga Wars, Aso, Tamogami, and Progressive Alternatives

I found this link via Brigid at MangaBlog this weekend. It’s a long read, but a rewarding one. It doubles as both a sociology and a history lesson.

Hunter.

I’m a huge fan of Darwyn Cooke, which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads 4l!. I’m also a big fan of Payback’s Straight Up Director’s Cut, one of the few Mel Gibson movies I still watch on purpose. I first saw it when I was a kid and enjoyed it, but the new cut makes it more true, in tone at least, to Richard Stark/Donald Westlake‘s The Hunter. This series is about an unrepentant criminal getting into situations that sometimes involve evil actions to get out of, which basically makes it right up my alley as far as story concepts go.

So, what’s all this got to do with Darwyn Cooke? I’m a fan of a lot of things, but rarely do things that I’m a big fan of intersect like they are going to when Darwyn Cooke draws an adaptation of Richard Stark’s The Hunter. That link contains a link to the preview, which is a downloadable PDF.

What I’m trying to say is that you need to read this, or else you’ll hate yourself forever. The release date can’t come fast enough.

In 1997, Frank Miller did this book called Tales to Offend. It was an extra-sized one shot, rather than a graphic novel, and featured three stories. One of the stories was Daddy’s Little Girl, a Sin City tale about a sadistic couple and brutal violence. The other two were about Lance Blastoff, Frank Miller’s take on Buck Rogers.

It isn’t exactly a straight take on the character at all. Lance is brash, loud, and offensive. He’s Buck Rogers after making his way through a crooked mirror, eight or nine packs of smokes, and probably homelessness. The two stories are ’90s-era pop psychology and political correctness versus an unbelievable level of super tough guy machismo. Think of every role Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Clint Eastwood ever did being ground up into bits and reformed as one being, and then that one being being force fed a diet of trashy movies and old EC books.

I don’t think that it’s Miller’s best work, but it is one of the relatively few times he’s done an out and out humor book, so it’s pretty interesting to see. It’s also one of the things he’s done that I can’t seem to find reprinted or collected. Daddy’s Little Girl made it into “Booze, Broads, & Bullets,” a collection of Sin City one shots, but Lance has faded into the ether.

I hadn’t even actually read the story until last week, despite having heard about it off and on for years. I love that Miller’s space ships still look like big body Cadillacs. Also nice is how the story is told in pages of two panels a piece until the last two. The “CHOMP” on the next to last page is a total cartoon bit, and I mean that in the best possible way. Lance Blastoff would fit right in on [adult swim] nowadays, I think.

Kate Dacey, formerly of PopCultureShock, has launched a new blog called The Manga Critic with two things: an adorable avatar and a name so obvious and well chosen that I can’t believe no one beat her to it. It’s subtitled “Reviews for the discerning manga fan,” and a very good read so far. I added the RSS to Google Reader. You should, too.

Funnily enough, or maybe not, she’s already reviewed a book I was thinking of checking out. Samurai 7 is a retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and Kate tackles it with gusto.

It’s been an interesting week for Dr. Doom. Wait, let me rephrase that: Dr. Doom has been a total jerk this week! Yes, I know being a jerk is his thing, but he’s gone the extra mile lately. In Dark Avengers, he’s rude to Osborn and his henchmen for saving his life. In Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil, not only does he double-cross Magneto, but the entire miniseries is reasoning to make Doom even more of an asshole. Then you have Dark Reign: The Cabal. In one segment, he burns alive two of his servants just to make sure Loki is who she says she is.

Plus there’s the first segment, written by Jonathan Hickman and Adi Granov. I thought it was a cool segment (I love Granov-drawn Venom), but… I just didn’t think they went far enough. So I went back and fixed it up. The first page is untouched, but I’d like to think that the rest of it is an improvement.

Interesting that Doom thinks that Noh-Varr and Ares won’t stand for Osborn’s shit for too long. Plus I guess we’re getting the Spider-Man movie Goblin armor in comic form once Osborn gets tired of being Iron Patriot.

I know that I’m Mister Push Comics Forward Break Them Characters Give Us The New-new, but I do have one continuity-based pet peeve. I really dislike it when creators take established characters and regress them, or just change them entirely, in order to fit them into the story they want to tell.

There are plenty of examples out there. The most egregious are probably Bobby Drake, Iceman, and Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, with Sam Guthrie, Cannonball, bringing up the rear. Bobby and Johnny were the hot-headed youngsters of the X-Men and Fantastic Four, respectively, and Sam is pretty much the poster-child for the second generation of X-Men. All three have gone from immature, mistake-making, and newbie heroes into grown-up, mature, and seasoned adults.

Bobby is an Omega-level mutant with an insane amount of control over ice, and therefore water, and has come to terms with that. Johnny has wielded the Power Cosmic a couple of times, saved the world several dozen times, and seen planets, dimensions, and time periods other people don’t even dream about. Sam was trained by the son of the X-Men’s best strategist, who was himself a child of war. He also had the benefit of being trained by two generations of X-Men, and when he struck out on his own, he found success.

The problem is that when a writer has a story that needs an impetuous kind of fella, or a newbie to make a dumb decision, or someone to show just how mature or smart another character is… guess which dudes are the fall guys.

Reed Richards has gone through the “ignoring his family for the benefit of science by the way he is a jerk” cycle a fistful of times now, most recently in Mark Millar’s Civil War. You’d think that Cyclops’s turn as the depressed and distant loner would be over after New X-Men, a story designed to push him past that, would never happen again. Or that Beast Boy, who is like thirty years old and should get a new name, would be written as something other than a horny teenager. Nah.

This is something that’s been bugging me more than usual lately, since the three biggest guys in comics have all been doing it. Mark Millar, Brian Bendis, and Geoff Johns have all taken characters who had established personalities or gimmicks, tossed it out, and slotted something new in because they needed X so that they could write Y. Rather than creating X, they just took Z and turned it into X. And that’s lame.

I brought visual aids. Read the rest of this entry »

Barry’s back, Bart’s back, Ice is back, and now, in the Legion of 3 WorldsConner Kent is back.  I am just waiting for Thomas and Martha Wayne to pop back to life.  (Ever notice there seems to be a theme to which of the Wayne’s appears?  Martha always seems to show up in fever dreams and near-death states, and Thomas always seems to appear in flashbacks doing things that influence the physical present.  He’s hung out with Jor-El, joined a Secret Society that, against his wishes, drugged the Gotham water supply, and healed the hell out of tons of mobsters.)  And we haven’t even gotten to Blackest Night with the Black Lanterns yet.

The reaction to all of these resurrections has been mixed, but I am all for it.  Bring them all back, I say.  Why?  Because I like characters to be alive, that’s why.  A dead character makes for some pretty angst from the survivors, and a few Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn!-type moments whenever the survivors meet up with the person who killed off their loved ones.  Other than that, they’ve been neutralized.  All the potential for more stories and unique character moments is lost for one big, dramatic moment, and a few echoes down the line. 

Some people say that bringing all these characters back to life lessens the impact of a character’s death.  Although I can see their point, I disagree.  I think death itself lessens the impact of death.  Recently, every big event had to come complete with a dead character.  Some one’s head was on the block, or it couldn’t really be called an event.  Something had to ‘change forever.’  Not only was death a guarantee in event books, more often than not it was announced.  It was hinted at half-a-year before the issue came out, solicits for the months after were littered with references to some big loss.  We all saw it coming.  Death stopped being a shock, and because one more required dramatic beat. 

Not that most resurrections aren’t hinted at as well.  Perhaps I just welcome these hints because they mean new potential and not grim inevitability.  I like them.  I look forward to them.  Why?  More characters, more stories.  Less deaths, more happy stories.  The combination: a big universe overfilled with happy stories.  That’s my kind of place.

For fun:  Which comic-book character’s death would you reverse?  (For me it has to be The Question.)