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 »

For me, Huntress has always been one of DC’s least accessible characters.  It seemed like she was given half a helping of costume, two helpings of temper, and sent in whenever Batman needed to tell someone they had ‘crossed a line.’  Helena Bertinelli could kick, punch, toss off one-liners, and work with a cape, but she was more like a collection of behaviors than a person.

That’s why Huntress: Year One was such a pleasant surprise.  Though it is a Year One book, the mini-series follows Helena from childhood up through her assumption of the Huntress persona.  It examines her deep religious convictions, her time bouncing between mafia families after her parents are killed, and her instinctive feminism.  What emerges from these examinations is a young woman who  is surprisingly thoughtful, though still in possession of the smoldering anger that characterizes Huntress in regular continuity.

It’s the characterization of Huntress, and of those who inhabit her world, that makes this book really interesting.  Through Helena we meet various mob bosses, young heirs, mistresses, wives, and hangers-on, none of them boring.  Some surprise the reader only with the depths to which they will sink.  Others take unexpected turns.  All of them have a heft that’s unusual for comic-book characters.

Another strength of Huntress: Year Oneis its overt feminism.  Unlike most comics, Huntress doesn’t confine its feminism to a wronged woman beating up a sexist man.  It considers an adolescent’s first few quibbles with male authority and gendered language.  It explores the compromises made by women and men living in male-dominated social structures like the mafia.  And it takes a refreshingly unsentimental look at female victimhood.  This book doesn’t frame its victims as martyrs meant to set the plot in motion, or provocateurs who are complicit in their own suffering.  Nor does it imbue female suffering with any kind of glorification.  Victimhood is a shitty way to live, not an operatic finish to a pretty story.

The true test of a mini-series is if it leaves you wanting more, and Huntress did that for me.  The continuity would be tough to hammer out, of course, but in some ways continuing the comic would take fewer contrivances than a lot of other series.   The figures in Helena’s life are so fleshed out that they seem able to carry on the story simply by being themselves.

All six issues of the Huntress: Year One mini are out.  It is also available as a softcover trade paperback.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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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(Gavok note: Several weeks ago on the Something Awful forum, someone started up a thread asking for people to name five comics that are effectively worse than Countdown to Final Crisis. An interesting challenge, I filled out my list by mentioning Marville. I had never actually read it, but I’ve heard such horror stories. This led to two main reactions. Some suddenly remembered the series and angrily agreed with my suggestion. Another decided to test my suggestion by seeking out the book and reading it for himself.

That would be Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett, who was astounded over what a piece of shit the book was and readily agreed that it was easily one of comic’s greatest missteps. It only seemed natural that I’d try to convince him to put his knowledge to use and do a series of guest articles about the short-lived (not short enough) series. Sit back and enjoy his descent.)

You know how in high school, you can slowly start to see people form their opinions on alcohol? There are the kids who try it out, some don’t like it and stop, others become social drinkers and learn their limits, others just leave it alone for their own reasons, so on. But sometimes you see the ones who obviously haven’t had a drop in their lives trying to talk it up like they were getting shitfaced all the time. Odds are you know the guy I mean. Always telling stories that anyone who had ever had a drink knew were blatant lies, you just nod to his face, and laughed when he left.

All right, now if you run into that kid again, I want you to show him Marville, because this book feels like a drunk wrote it. I don’t mean that it’s puke-stained or anything, but anytime it looks like something is gonna start to take shape in this (like, say, A PLOT), it all gets thrown away for another tangent, like the guy lost his train of thought and just came back with, “So then this other thing…” Over and over again.

Let’s back up a second. Marville is based on a bet between then-President of Marvel Bill Jemas, and Peter David, who was writing Captain Marvel at the time. The most details I can find on why the bet came about has something to do with self-referential writing: Jemas claimed David’s book was too insular and thus its sales were plummeting. It kicked off a promotion called “U-Decide”. Captain Marvel would be renumbered to 1 again, David would make it more accessible to people unfamiliar with the character, and it would be put up against Marville, Jemas’ entry into a competition of sales numbers. (Ron Zimmerman somehow wedged himself into this contest with Ultimate Adventures. Not a single person knows why.) In the long run, David beat out his competition handily, going on to 25 more issues after the reboot, as opposed to a combined 13 (if I’m kind… technically it would only be 12, more on this later) from his opponents.

I tell you this story because the fact that Jemas decided to enter a sales competition spawned from an inaccessible book’s failure with Marville, a series which permanently lodged its head up its own ass about a page in, is irony in a painful to read format.

Read the rest of this entry »

Scans_Daily, the livejournal community that used to regularly post pages from comic books, is no more.

I’ve mentioned scans_daily in at least one entry, so it’s no secret that I knew the place, and although I didn’t check in as religiously as I did when I first started reading comics, I’m sorry to see it go.  Obviously it was plagued with the same things that blight most internet communities – warring cliques, random trolls, dog-piling, off-topic ranting, and the occasional full-blown crazy person. 

At the same time, it was the perfect resource for the new, enthusiastic comics reader.  The journal format made it easy to have back-and-forth conversations without having to scroll through eighty pages of random remarks.  All sorts of people frequented the community, so discussion topics ranged from superhero crushes to continuity details to creator gossip.  With over nine-thousand members, it was also the perfect place to find out more about anything you were interested in.  If you needed an issue number or a costume variation, all you had to do was ask and wait. 

Still, I can’t say I’m surprised that it was shut down.  Post scans, especially a lot of them, and you can expect trouble sooner or later.

I don’t want to get into the drama of the shut down.  I’m sure it’s googleable.  And I don’t want an onset of internet lawyers, talking about fair use and creator rights.

What I would like to hear, from anyone here who has an opinion, is whether or not this was a victory or a setback for comics marketing. 

As I said, I frequented the community, especially in the early days, and it really expanded my reading list.  Nightwing, Birds of Prey, The Blue Beetle, Secret Six, The Ultimates, and Green Arrow are a few I can list off the top of my head.  There are also countless back-issues, mini-series, and one-shots that I picked up because I saw something I liked on scans_daily, and got into a conversation with someone who told me about other issues that I would like even more.

At the same time, look at my list again.  Three out of those six titles are currently cancelled.  And I distinctly remember picking up a trade at a booth at WonderCon, flipping through it, and thinking, “I’m not buying this.  There are only a few pages I’m interested in and I know they’re on scans_daily.”  Of course, for a few pages out of a whole trade, the vendor would have had to offer a hell of a discount for me to have bought it.  And I don’t think the book would have caught my eye in the first place if it weren’t for seeing those few pages on scans_daily.  But in an industry where every sale counts, is this a significant dent?  Of course there are a ton of torrent sites, but how many people look at a book and think, “Why shell out three dollars when the pages I most want are on scans_daily?”

How many years have you been reading comics, and what got you into them?