-I’m thinking about quitting floppies for a month and then picking it up when they’re cheaper and keeping up that way. I think paying three and four dollars for digital comics is stupid, and if I skip a month, when I come back, all the comics will be two bucks, which is still stupid, but more tolerable. I mean, these people want three dollars for twenty-six pages of 20+ year old Tank Girls by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. Really? In what world is that a deal, instead of a ripoff? And I say that as a huge Hewlett fan, from the Gorillaz to Tank Girl and back again. Bleah. I want to support, but I’m not going to be able to support if the prices are this absurd.

-My beloved friend and yours David Wolkin run an organization called Limmud NY. You can read about it here. Long story short, though, it’s about educating people with regard to their own Jewishness, and the broad spectrum of Jewish experience. It’s sorta fascinating, from the outside looking in, because it’s such a great idea. We all grow up in whatever culture or cultures we belong to and are expected to sorta keep up and mostly figure things out for ourselves. A concerted effort to educate people about their culture and how it applies to the modern day is… it’s beautiful, I think is the best word for it. I did those Black History x Comics posts for years for similar reasoning, and as a way to say that we’re here, we’ve always been here, and you don’t have to enjoy it, but please respect it. I did it because no one did it for me, so I’m glad to see Wolkin and Limmud NY doing their part. You can donate to Limmud NY here.

–Jason Latour’s giving away an art book. He’s got an ill style, and the sketchbook has life drawings and other things. I like how he draws buildings (page 7, 17) and the image on the bottom-right of page 5 is fantastic. He worked on BPRD Hell on Earth: The Pickens County Horror with Dave Stewart, and it was pretty good. Check it here and here. Mushrooms never looked so scary.

And yo, on his website, you see that header Pimp Trick Gangster Clicks? That’s how you know Latour is a real dude. Pimp Trick Gangster Click > Gnarls Barkley.

–I debuted the news that Tyler Crook is illustrating BPRD Hell on Earth: Return of the Master at ComicsAlliance. Crook is a pretty good artist, and it’s nice seeing his style evolve. I’ve got a copy of Petrograd somewhere around here. I need to sit down and read it. It’s high on my to-do list, but I keep getting distracted by old manga (this week it’s Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories, thanks to Jog.)

–Sean Witzke reviews 25 slashers, and kneecaps Cabin in the Woods in the process.

–Tucker’s Comics of the Weak @ TCJ are always worth reading. In fact, I think CotW and Jog’s column at TCJ are the only comics reviews I read at all these days.

–Giannis Milonogiannis, a dude whose vision of the future is right in line with mine (and Otomo’s and Shirow’s) is giving away comics. Go download OLD CITY BLUES: PROSTHETIC CORPUS PHASE ONE. I liked the original OCB (isn’t that title totally futuristic? Like OCP or something), which you can buy in digital or hardcover format. You can even read it online for free if you want.

-I liked Matthew Brady’s look at Hirohiko Araki’s Rohan at the Louvre. I’ve been meaning to pick it up, but (wait for it) I keep getting distracted. The preview is pretty tight.

-Eric Stephenson’s post about Bergen St Comics deciding not to carry Before Watchmen is a good one. “They’re leaving money on the table!” is a stupid thing to say. Every business makes decisions regarding what to carry and when. That’s their right. No one carries everything, and I think not carrying a book over ethical reasons is way better than not carrying a book because you don’t like Rob Liefeld’s art or something stupid like that.

–This quote from Joss Whedon is stupid. I can barely make sense of it.

–I like Chris Arrant talking about how we (fans, press, whoever) regularly and consistently devalue the artist in comics. I kinda sorta talked about this from another angle when I was talking about Marvel’s habit of ruining good books with rapid-fire art changes. It is an actual problem for these books and a problem for how we talk about comics. The best runs in comics have steady teams — look at the comics we got out of Claremont/Byrne/Austin, Claremont/Smith, Miller/Janson, Miller/Mazzucchelli, Brubaker/Phillips, Brubaker/Rucka/Lark, Bendis/Maleev, Ennis/Dillon, Ennis/Parlov, Nocenti/Romita, and more besides. If you give a team time to stick together and gel, you get better comics than you do when you reduce the artist to the level of an art robot. Having a steady team also changes how we talk about comics. We prioritize whoever is steadily present on a comic. These days, that means a writer. So it’s “Mark Waid’s Daredevil,” even though Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin had tremendous input on what we all like about that comic. To call it Mark Waid’s Daredevil is disrespectful and inaccurate. It’s stupid. And yes, wah wah wah using multiple names is clunky, but suck it up. If you’re writing about comics, you should be able to do your job well enough to sidestep that issue. Otherwise you’re just a scrub.

-And actually, while I’m complaining about my peers — if you write a review that’s got one paragraph of art discussion toward the end… mannnnnnn. I looked at the eight most recent reviews on CBR and seven out of the eight have a few paragraphs about the writing, one paragraph about the art, and then an outro. Like they’re writing from a template. Boring.

Listen, here’s a challenge to everyone who writes reviews, especially if you do this lazy words-first thing. Find a comic you like. Write a review that’s predominately about the art, and leave one short paragraph toward the end for the writing. Talking about art isn’t hard. You look at it, you examine how it makes you feel and how it portrays the action on the page. Take a close look and find something you like, and then talk about why you like it.

This is simple, and if you’re writing about comics, you should be able to do this. You don’t have to be fluent at art. You just have to be conversational. Comics is a visual medium. There are words, yes, but when you open a page, the first thing you see is the pictures. So how about you pay attention and talk about the pictures in something more than a perfunctory manner?

-Anyway.

–Brandon Graham blog updates include sketches, snatches of new issues, and dope old manga and comics. Pay attention.

–I’m a fairly recent convert to Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie. Maybe the middle of last year? I forget when my webcomics readin’ buddy Lauren Davis put me onto it. I haven’t made it through all the archives yet, but it’s good, good stuff.

-Comics comics comics! I’m working out how I feel about comics and comics discusso, if you can’t tell. It’s been a serious year so far. I’ve still got a lot to figure out, including what I write about and where. Pardon the dust and posts about things you don’t care about. I think the schedule I’m working with now, where Mondays have a Reading Comics bit, Wednesdays are variable, and Fridays have these posts, works well. We’ll see.

-Hawks over Celtics tonight! Josh Smith being out is no fun, but we’ll see how it goes.

I was very careful when I wrote that thing for ComicsAlliance. I don’t really have any interest in calling for a boycott or guilt-tripping somebody into thinking like I do. I just wanted to fill a hole I felt needed filling, and explain why I made a decision I did. It’s food for thought, and you can do the dishes on your own, right? It’s your decision, just like it was mine, and we’re all adults here.

I do like this idea I saw on tumblr, courtesy of a guy named calamityjon. I have friends who are gonna see Avengers and The Dark Knight and friends who aren’t. I have friends who agree with me on creators’ rights who are gonna see both flicks. No big deal. That’s their decision. But I do like the idea of people giving to the Hero Initiative as… not penance, because it’s not a sin to like movies, but as a… a good deed, let’s say. “I want to do this thing, but I don’t like how it got here, so I’m going to do a little something to hopefully prevent that from happening again.” That’s fair, I think.

Anyway, read this, and if you feel led to do so, kick some cash toward protecting the people who made these dumb old comics.

The Avengers opens in theaters in the US on May 4th, and it’s going to do blockbuster business. The individual films featuring these characters have already  grossed more than $2.2 billion dollars – that’s greater than the Gross National Product of almost half the countries on Earth – and it’s not unlikely that The Avengers will earn a hundred million dollars on its opening day alone.

This represents a pretty big payday to a lot of people – the actors, obviously, will take home pretty big paychecks. The director and the writers are well-compensated, and certainly the executives who greenlighted this project get to sit back and rake in large bonuses and healthy salaries.

Well, you know where this is going; shamefully, the people who aren’t making a big profit from these movies are the people (and the families of the people) who did the essential work of creating them in the first place. It’s not just Jack Kirby, either, or (Black Widow and Hawkeye co-creator) Don Heck, but also Steve Engelhart, Peter David, Herb Trimpe, Jim Steranko, Roy Thomas and dozens more – the artists and writers who refined and defined the characters appearing in this movie, who fleshed out the original creations and molded them into the figures we cheer for when we see them on the screen.

Some very sensible people are calling for a boycott of this film on those grounds, but I think it’s fairly obvious that a boycott of idealistic comic fans isn’t going to accomplish much – it’s not only comic book fans who’ll be dropping a collective billion dollars over the next eight weeks to see this movie, it’s going to be a lot of movie-goers who haven’t read a comic since they were kids, much less know anything of the controversy.

Plus, of course, you – the collective “you”, representing comic book fans all over the world – want to see this movie. And you’re going to, most likely, right? Even though you know of the morally shady practices of Marvel towards its creators, they’ve got you hooked. Don’t be ashamed, they’ve had you hooked for years. It’s what they do.

So how about this: You’re probably going to go see The Avengers and, judging by the early reviews, you’ll probably enjoy it. How about – as a thank you to the creators who brought you these characters in the first place, who gave you something to enjoy so much – you match your ticket price as a donation to The Hero Initiative? 

THI is a charity which provides essential financial assistance to comic book professionals who have fallen on hard times; for decades, the comic industry provided no financial safety net to its employees, most of whom it regarded only as freelancers and journeymen, meaning they were offered no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no retirement plans – none of the financial support most of us enjoy from our jobs and careers. A small donation will help this agency provide a valuable safety net in times of need to these beloved entertainers.

I don’t plan on seeing The Avengers, but I’ve donated $15 – the price of a 3-D ticket – to Hero. If every concerned comic fan – every superhero aficionado who learned to live by the lessons of altruism and sacrifice taught by these comics – donated the price of their ticket, well, it may not hit a billion dollars but it’ll bring in a lot of money for a good and relevant cause.

One last note: Remember what Spider-Man always says? “With great power comes great responsibility”. The lesson in that is that everyone has great power. Spider-Man’s great power is being able to lift a bus. Your great power is the ability to help good causes do good work for good reasons – so why not go be a superhero instead of just watching them on the screen…

(PS: “Liking” this post is nice, thank you, but reblogging/retweeting it helps get the message out and would be even more appreciated)

The Viral Factor (directed/screenplay/story by Dante Lam, story by Candy Leung, story by Wai Lun Ng): I caught Dante Lam’s Viral Factor back in January. I liked it a whole lot. It features Andy On from Mad Detective, the guy who played Detective Ho. Viral Factor is one of those movies that manages to hit every cliche in the book for its genre (~dreams as metaphors~, convenient callbacks, drowning, and there’s probably a scene where two dudes point empty guns at each other but I don’t remember), but everything is so well executed that it doesn’t even matter. It’s like watching someone play a video game that you know very well, but the player is so skillful that you can’t look away. The cast is pretty strong, too. Jay Chou is probably best known for being the biggest of the three or four good things about Green Hornet, and Nicholas Tse is an HK vet. I remember seeing and enjoying Time & Tide in high school, and I’m looking forward to watching that one again. (edit: I wrote this review like two months ago. I’ve since gone back and watched Time And Tide, and it is this weird, unfocused, awkward, entertaining little action movie. It’s also very post-Matrix, so the bullet time looks awful, but the chase/shootout in the apartment building rules.)

The most surprising thing about Viral Factor is how videogame-inflected it was. There were several action scenes that weren’t direct rips, but at least felt inspired by games. The opening is straight out of Call of Duty, there’s an Uncharted-style climbing sequence that comes complete with air conditioners in the way (which I thought was introduced in Uncharted 3 back in November, so it’s probably coincidence), several different platforming sequences, and finally, a platforming/fighting sequence in a transport ship. Obviously all of this stuff has been in movies before, but something about the way this one was shot and staged thrust the idea of a video game inspiration into my head, and I still can’t let go of it. I wish I had more concrete examples to give. I need to see this again so I can maybe take some notes. But the video game idea kicked around and actually made me like the movie a bit more, as they chopped up and remixed classic video game tropes into new or perfected forms.

Heightening the video game feel was the sequence when Man Yeung, played by Nicholas Tse, escapes from police custody. It put me in mind of that sequence late in Metal Gear Solid 2 where Raiden is running around nude, but filtered through Heath Ledger’s approach to the Joker in The Dark Knight. Tse has a reckless disregard for his own life, but he basically stumbles and fights his way through a bunch of guards (and pepper spray!) before making his way almost to safety… at which point he leaps off a walkway, falls a couple stories before crashing into a parking lot, steals a car, and escapes. It’s almost comical, but it’s basically exactly how the regenerative health in modern games would look in real life. An idiot, rushing headlong into death, but somehow surviving for no good reason.

I really liked how relentless this movie was. It opens with a stylish bang, spends maybe 15 or 20 minutes setting up the rest of the plot, and then it’s on. There’s a pretty crazy shotgun bit (you can see it in the trailer), wild car wrecks, well-done slow motion shots, guys swinging over gaps firing guns… I can’t even remember what else. It’s an action movie that goes all the way in. I cackled at this movie like the wicked witch of the west, and the people I saw it with did, too. It’s real nice to see all these tropes and gimmicks I’ve grown up totally in love with, down to the dynamic duo of good and evil teaming up to fight eviler, refined and perfected.

What’s cool is that the characters sort of fit that mold, too. Chou plays a doomed cop, Tse a villain who Isn’t That Bad, Really, and Andy On plays a dirty cop who’s out for himself. I’m not sure who plays her, but the little girl who plays Champ, Tse’s daughter and Chou’s niece, is great. She’s spunky and direct and yes, she gets kidnapped. (And tossed into the ocean!) She is also exactly like basically every single girl who shows up in these movies. A little sad, a super-snarky dick, and adorable. Their father is a broken, but dedicated, old man who regrets his sins. Chou’s mother is kind, but kept a horrible secret for years. There’s a dream that echoes throughout the movie with special meaning.

Viral Factor basically doubles down on every cliche in the action movie book and makes it out unscathed. It’s a tense and fun example of an HK action flick, without being overbearing about its central gimmick or wasting a bunch of time trying to make the movie seem like it has something important to say about morality or whatever. Viral Factor: it’s a movie where people get shot and die in interesting and exciting ways.

There’s a lot of little nods to Godzilla and kaiju film tropes I’m trying to cram into the book; some are just visual (drills on everything!), some are part of the story. The second issue even has the first test firing of the Maser, which anybody who has seen a Godzilla movie will know barely ever works as intended. I got completely stumped trying to figure out what the sound effect for Godzilla’s trademark roar would be, so I looked up what it looked like run through an oscilloscope and just traced over that with some vague lettering. Godzilla has almost 60 years worth of movies, in different eras and with some radically different tones, so it’s great to pick through and try to figure out how to make those ideas work in a comic book.

-James Stokoe, 2012

Every medium has its own way, or ways, to wow you. Books may be devastatingly lyrical. Music may sound like a slice of heaven or hell as it crawls its way into your heart. Movies show you another world in excruciating detail. There’s even a certain amount of pleasure in watching someone explain something you’re not interested in, if they’re a good storyteller.

I think of the art that really, really wows me as solutions to a problem, which makes the comic artist. How do you get from A to B? How can I show this insane thing that exists only in my head? How can I quantify the sound of Godzilla’s roar? I can wrap my head around Garth Ennis’s dialogue or Rucka & Waid’s structure or Bendis’s pacing. I may not be able to quantify what’s so great about “Finn Cooley. Anyone not wanting to die for Ireland better clear on out the back” in Ennis & Fernandez’s Punisher: Kitchen Irish — “It’s harder than a Spanish test” is about as far as I’d get there — but I can pull it apart and dig into it in a way that I can’t do with art.

I get writing in a way that I don’t get art, which makes me want to dig into art all the more. Stuff like this, stuff like “Oh yeah, something something oscilloscope, something something vague lettering” would never even cross my mind. It’s a new way of thinking, one that’s not alien to my day-to-day life but definitely on a different track from mine, and that makes it irresistible to me. I’ve gotta figure it out. I’ve got to make it make sense to me, and since I’ve got a comics blog, that means talking it out in public.

I like that Stokoe’s solution to this problem was so literal and figurative at the same time. The oscilloscope shows you what Godzilla’s roar literally looks like. It’s the literal solution to the problem. And Stokoe’s execution is the figurative solution. He sketched a few letters on top and came up with EEYAEEEARRGH and a few letters (?) I can’t parse at the end. Just looking at that doesn’t seem very Godzilla-y to me. But when you combine the two, you get that jagged scrawl of a roar ripping the scene apart and looking great on the page. The sideways creativity there is fantastic.

Y’all should already be reading Orc Stain. It starts off as this raw action/adventure comic about orcs, and that got me hooked. And then issue 7 hit and Stokoe is folding in Vietnam War iconography into orc mythology and man o man o man is it A+ fantastic stuff. Get some.

Hey there, my Letterites. It was a pretty good week, giving us a fantastic Flash issue (I’m really loving the designs of these new rogues), Eric Powell alternating between funny and whiny as well as FF giving us the best final page in a long time.

The last page of Goon really had me scratching my head. The whole thing, like the issue, was Powell being annoyed at the hold of Marvel/DC superhero comics have over the industry. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that his main point was how the comic industry needs its own Harry Potter.

If Harry Potter were a Dark Horse comic instead of a novel, it would be struggling to sell ten thousand, just because it’s not in a Marvel or DC superhero universe. Where’s our Harry Potter? Where’s our megahit that comes out of nowhere and draws people into comic shops? Why are we denying ourselves the possibility of that?

When reading this, I felt like meekly holding my hand up while saying, “…Walking Dead?”

Speaking of superhero tripe, I’m not going to be reading Avengers vs. X-Men, but I am reading Avengers vs. X-Men Versus. Why? Because I’m weird and I want to experience the Polly-O String Cheese of comic event tie-ins without any context for the sake of seeing how it comes off.

This week, Jody and Space Jawa have my back. Remember, you can help out too. If there’s a series you’re reading that you want represented, you can always toss me a couple panels. Email link’s on the right.

All-Star Western #8
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Patrick Scherberger

Aquaman #8
Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis

Avengers vs. X-Men Versus #1 (Gavin’s pick)
Jason Aaron, Adam Kubert, Kathryn Immonen and Stuart Immonen

Read the rest of this entry »

-I’m slowly getting into Michael DeForge’s work. It’s weird and a little out of my wheelhouse of cusswords and violence comix, but I like how creepy and weird and John K his style gets sometimes. He’s put Kid Mafia #1 online for free, asking only that if you read and enjoy it, you kick him fifty cents via Paypal. I read it, I liked it, and I paypaled him fifty cents in Canadian dollars. If you like it, you should do the same.

I like this idea, and I hope more cats who produce minicomics start doing this. I’m not much for paper books and totally fine with making it rain via Paypal. Hopefully you are, too!

–I did a podcast with Chris Eckert from Funnybook Babylon about our comic book origins. I really like this photoset he made for the chat, which really says it all:

Is it any wonder my taste in comics turned out like it did? That Batman cover is crazy, though. I also spill the beans on the time I had a nightmare about Terry Kavanaugh, which is one of the stupidest things that has ever happened to me. We talk a lot about Image comics, too. I guess I hadn’t realized how fundamental their stuff was for/to me until this chat, so it was nice to look back and sort of reconcile what I like now with what I liked then.

-Michael Peterson and Kevin Czapiewski have launched Project Ballad, a webcomic about a girl named Kendra Price, RPGs, and maybe… video games?? Start reading it here. It’ll update Monday-Wednesday-Friday from here on out. You should read it. I am.

-I watched Lena Dunham’s Girls, but I don’t really have a thinkpiece in me like the rest of the internet. I hated it, basically, because the experiences and people I watched on TV were so completely and utterly alien to my experiences. Like, magic, kung fu? I can buy that. Asking my mother for eleven hundred bucks a month to pay my rent while I douchebag around town? My mom would die laughing and then haunt me for the rest of my life, telling me to get a job in between ghostly guffaws. So yeah: not for me.

-I watched Frederic Jardin’s Sleepless Night the other night. I liked it a lot. It’s this tight little crime thriller about a cop who robs the wrong guy and gets his son kidnapped. Most of it takes place in one building, there are several factions, and I love love loved that the violence was so awkward and off-putting. Tomer Sisley as Vincent is not playing Jason Statham as Jason Statham, as the fight scene in the kitchen proves. He’s just a cop, rather than a supercop. Also there are father/son issues, and I’m a sucker for those, not to mention gunfights and action.

A lot of Sleepless Night takes place in a nightclub, but it never dragged the movie down like every other nightclub scene does for me.

Sleepless Night reminded me about Fred Cavayé’s Point Blank because… well, they’re both in the same genre, French, and pretty good. Point Blank shakes out a little differently. Samuel is a regular dude, a nurse, put into a tough situation. He sucks a a lot of things, but the movie livens things up by teaming him up with a hardened criminal. That doesn’t mean that you won’t see cross on double cross on triple cross over the course of the movie, though. Gilles Lellouche is perfect as the desperate regular dude, and Roschdy Zem gets a good turn as a gangster. There’s a scene in an apartment that was tremendous, really great writing, action, and film-making.

-My man Sean Witzke put me onto Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, which is a… some type of band. Rock? Noise? Whatever. I really like “Hoshi Neko,” but the entire album is pretty good.

I don’t really have the frame of reference to describe it in proper terms, I guess, so I’m going to copy & paste from their blog:

YT//ST was founded in late 2007 by performance artists alaska B and Ruby Kato Attwood, born from the ashes of the late Lesbian Fight Club. Armed with mixed-race identities, mad illustration skills and a whole pile of home-brew junk electronics, alaska and Ruby wrote and performed the first mini ‘Noh-Wave’ Opera, ‘YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN I’ in April 2008. YT//ST continued to perform short homebrewed operas, eventually forming a network of Asian and Indigenous artists through collaboration and formed the current YT//ST collective.

They have this weird multi-disciplinary sound, sort of dissonant but appealing at the same time. The vocals sound like they’re coming in from a distance, or through a filter, and instruments sound like they fade in and out of the mix as needed. I dunno, I could keep putting words that don’t quite fit on it or you can listen to “Hoshi Neko” and “Reverse Crystal//Murder of a Spider” and hear exactly what I mean. I bought the album and it was more than worth my time.

–This guy Boulet is so good. I love this strip about childhood dreams, too.

-Philip Bond is still drawing spacegirls.

-Faith Erin Hicks is great. I think she’s super interesting as a person, going by her essays on making a living in comics & animation and whatnot, and of course she’s scary talented. She’s got a Tumblr now, which includes this great picture of Liz Sherman from BPRD:

I really really like this. Liz’s bored expression, which extends to the lazily arcing cigarette smoke, is pitch-perfect. Even the lazy posture, starting from her bent left leg on up. But, and maybe this is weird, my favorite part is Hicks’s signature. “feh.” is the best signature since Walt Simonson’s dinosaur. Someone should do one of those knock-down, drag-out, ultra-long, “here are all of my opinions on every subject ever” interviews with Hicks. I bet it’d be a great read.

–Powerhouse blogger Kate Dacey is curating a Manga Movable Feast on Viz Signature, which may well be the best comics imprint since the glory days of Wildstorm. The MMF is a collection of reviews, criticism, and just content in general, all on the subject of Viz Sig’s fantastic catalog. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to contribute this time (my motivation for everything these days is on approximately a negative thousand million, but it’ll pass. I’ve been working on this simple post since Wednesday, ha ha), but I did pick Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond Vizbig 9 and Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka as part of my best of 2010, and I still like this look at Inoue’s writing. I’m down for another Vagabond reread, actually. Maybe that’ll be this summer’s big series of posts? Inouefest, 2012. In-No-Way-Fest 2012. Anyway! Go, read! Kate’s list of 7 essential books is pretty good.

-I’m probably going to pre-order the super deluxe funcrusher plus monster package of El-P’s Cancer 4 Cure (that title!!!!!) and Killer Mike’s RAP Music. I love those guys, and dropping 85 bones on their work doesn’t seem like a huge extravagance. I’ll have to wait to see how next payday shakes out, though. I definitely want the vinyl of both. I just have to make sure the math makes sense. It may be smarter to just order Cancer 4 Cure and R.A.P. Music on vinyl separately, though. I don’t necessarily need the instrumentals or poster.

-Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos have a kickstarter going for their book Fairy Quest. Here’s a video:

And a widget:

I like these guys, especially when they work together. I’m going to kick some cash their way come payday, too.

-Here’s a couple STS videos I liked. I like how regular the video for “Good Intentions” is. It’s just a bunch of guys hanging out and doing things. It fits the theme of STS’s Goldrush, too, which is laid back flips of established songs. And STS is a spitter, too. Always a treat to hear a new verse.

-Tucker’s Comics of the Weak is still the best post every week. He’s got Jog and Abhay backing him up this week, plus Nate Bulmer, so maybe you should get down or lay down. Also, I vote you don’t get to make the Holocaust into a pithy comeback in your stupid fight comics. Been there, done that.

-Next week: I’ve got my uzi back, you dudes is wack, face it, the Wu is back (hopefully, but if the Celtics beat the Hawks on Sunday, I may spiral back into the Pit of Depression)

Kids these days with their video games don’t know how good they have it. They have fully-realized stories right off the gate, treated to enough exposition and neat-looking cutscenes to paint a picture of what their game is all about. Guys like me and our Nintendo Entertainment Systems only got two paragraphs in the second page of the instruction manual and an ending. And if you were renting the game? Chances are you had to make a guess at what was going on.

The Mega Man games always had the barest of plots with just enough to make the sequels different in some way to what came before them. It got to the point where it would be, “The villain is this guy Dr. Cossack… oh, wait. It’s just Dr. Wily,” followed by, “The villain is Proto Man… oh, wait. It’s just Dr. Wily,” and so on. Just an excuse to keep giving us more of the same addicting gameplay. The endings were pretty dull until the SNES days with Mega Man X and Mega Man 7. The latter of which had the crazy-ass moment where Mega Man downright threatened to murder Dr. Wily on the spot.

While the later games introduced more story and cutscenes and even alternate futures and realities, the original games remained pretty barren. That is, until they released Mega Man: Powered Up in 2006, a PSP game that recreated the first game with new graphics, included a couple new characters (one of which being pretty racist-looking), gave everything a personality overhaul and allowed you to play through alternate versions of the game where the different boss characters switch places with Mega Man’s role and act as protagonists. While it crapped the bed in terms of sales, the ideas from it would be reused in the current Mega Man series released by Archie with Ian Flynn on words and Ben Bates on art. It’s a great comic and my only wish is that I’d be able to send it back in time to my ten-year-old self.

The series has finished its first year with twelve issues and three story arcs. The first covers the story of Mega Man 1, the second introduces Time Man and Oil Man from Powered Up (they fix the Oil Man controversy by putting a scarf over his mouth) and the third goes through the plot of Mega Man 2. The gist of the origin is that in the future, Dr. Light and his friend Dr. Wily have created a bunch of “Robot Masters” to help perform duties that will help out the human race and make the world a better, safer place. Due to Wily’s checkered past and notoriety in the public eye, Light insists that he stays out of sight for the press conference and the lack of limelight drives Wily over the edge. He rewires the six Robot Masters to do his bidding, has them attack the general public and plans some world domination. The only robots left unaffected are Rock and Roll, two housekeeping robots of Light’s who Wily felt were under his notice. With great reluctance, Rock volunteers to have himself turned into a battle-ready robot so he can bring his brothers back home and prevent Wily’s plot to take over the world.

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If Morrison’s personal history includes magic, wild experiments with consciousness-tweaking substances and reported alien visitations, why does he keep writing about square-jawed guys with capes? “We’re running out of visions of the future except dystopias,” Morrison says. “The superhero is Western culture’s last-gasp attempt to say there’s a future for us.” Sitting in his drafty house overlooking Loch Long, an hour outside his hometown of Glasgow, the 52-year-old writer smiles. “The creators of superheroes were all freaks,” he says. “People forget that—they were all outcasts, on the margins of society.” And then, inevitably, he shifts from the third person to the first. “We’re people who don’t fit into normal society.”

–Grant Morrison, Playboy, 2012

One minor point: it’s sort of weird to say that the creators of superheroes were freaks when that is pretty much factually not true. It’s the same line of thinking that suggests that “sex-starved geeks,” so described by IGN, created all the sexy ladies in comics. I’m not sure what your measure for freaks is, but I’d guess that Morrison’s is so low as to be meaningless. Here’s a quick sample that I used to debunk IGN:

Sue Storm: created by Stan Lee (married since 1947) and Jack Kirby (married since 1942)
Mystique: created by Dave Cockrum (married)
Jean Grey: created by Stan Lee (married since 1947) and Jack Kirby (married since 1942)
Mary Jane: created by Stan Lee (married since 1947) and John Romita Sr (his son JRjr was born 08/1956)
Elektra: created by Frank Miller (married to Lynn Varley in the ’80s, divorced now)
Rogue: created by Chris Claremont (has a wife and kids) and Michael Golden (can’t find any info on him)
Storm: created by Len Wein (married twice) and Dave Cockrum (married)

Siegel was married, and I can’t find anything on Shuster. Bob Kane was married. Jack Kirby was married, had kids, and served in the military.

And I mean, a lot of these guys were Jewish, and a handful of them probably drew porn comics at some point, but I think freaks is a bit much. Anti-semitic prejudice definitely factored into their lives, but a lot of people deal with prejudice without being turned into freaks. These were regular dudes who had lives and families, not freaks. Freaks makes for a good narrative (Superheroes as outsider comics! The freaks will lead the way!) but all of these dudes fit into normal society in just about every way, other than the (at the time) less-than-distinguished job of drawing funnybooks. I mean, if you called Robert Crumb a freak, sure, okay. But like… Jerry Siegel? Jack Kirby? Freaks? Ehhh.

Anyway, my bigger point (which is rougher than I’d like) regards my thoughts on this:

“The superhero is Western culture’s last-gasp attempt to say there’s a future for us.”

Me and Morrison differ pretty drastically on the subject of the superhero. From my perspective as a dude who grew up on capes under the shadow of Reagan and later Bush, I don’t see much difference between, say, westerns, cape comics, crime movies, and those dystopias that Morrison thinks are a cynical depiction of the future.

There are a few things that I feel like are an integral part of American (pop?) culture. We prize the individual who chooses to go his own way, at least up to a point or within certain accepted standards. America is built on a mistrust of authority, whether we’re talking about the Revolutionary War or the pervasive paranoia that infested films noir. We prize violent solutions not because we are bloodthirsty, but because they are permanent, and there is safety in permanence. There’s a certain beauty and honor in being an outlaw, and while we dislike when outlaws enter our life, there’s a vicarious thrill in watching them work.

I once tried to describe film noir to a lady I know as “the most American of genres” for a lot of these reasons. She thought I was being jingoistic, but I mean it in as genuine a way as it gets. That distrust of authority, wresting control of your life from those who control it, and having a driving need to uncover the truth even if it destroys you… There’s sort of a siege mentality there, like you have to protect yourself and repel the invaders at all costs, because you’re the last righteous/honest man, no matter your sordid past. Redemption and destruction, over and over again, shifting shape a little each time.

This is a story that has repeated itself throughout American culture, whether it’s Malcolm X transforming himself from a street hustler into a truth speaker or corporate whistleblowers or film noir or westerns or crime flicks. It’s all about being your own man and making your own way.

Dystopias are just another way for us to exercise our will. The dystopias are usually not the fault of the main character, but that main character is often the last of the righteous, or at least one of the last willing to stand up and fight back against the darkness. I really liked The Book of Eli, with Denzel Washington, for those reasons. In the world of the lawless, one last man holds tight to the law and lives his life accordingly. Or the Punisher — in the ’80s, he was explicitly a ripped from the headlines revenge fantasy. He went after fake versions of Norieaga, the dude who was poisoning medicine, gangsters… he fought against our fears on his own, because no one was strong enough to shoulder that burden but him. We excuse Rambo’s violence because he’s getting things done. We celebrate Ripley because she’s a problem solver, and John McClane because he knows how to not just get things done, but be charming and relatable while he does it. I mean, “Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?” and “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” isn’t just a cool one-liner.

(I think it was Dennis Culver who pointed out that Hans is a form of John, which shifted that movie a little bit for me, thematically. I haven’t quite quantified how, yet, but it’s something that’s going to run through my mind next time I watch Die Hard.)

So I think Morrison is wrong when he says that capes are the last-gasp at a future. I think that’s extremely myopic. We have a future. That future is that there will always be some rugged individualist willing to stand up and say, “No” or “Not in my name” before blowing the head off whatever scientist or priest or politician or cop put us in such a terrible condition. It doesn’t matter whether that future is dusty and barren or colorful and filled with costumes. It’s rap music and Scarface and rock music and The Godfather and Blade Runner and all the rest.

This was going to be a simple round-up of a few recent posts on DC’s Before Watchmen, but ha ha, I realized I still have stuff to say. Sorry.

The other day, out in the hardest part of the tweets on the wrong side of the twacks, a comics pro tweeted that the conventional wisdom that sequels or prequels don’t affect the source material isn’t true, because now that he was aware of Before Watchmen, it was impossible to read Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen without that kicking around in the back of your head.

He’s right. Before Watchmen colors what came before it. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Mel Gibson outed himself as being cartoonishly racist and bigoted (and somehow so ultra-Catholic that he thinks the Pope isn’t Catholic enough, or something, which is definitely some supervillain-type thinking) has definitely changed Lethal Weapon, hasn’t it? If I buy that new box set, I’m putting money in the pocket of somebody who told his old lady that he hopes she gets raped by a pack of niggers. WHOA! Am I down with that?

And so it goes with Before Watchmen. A connection has been made, and even if you consciously put it out of your head, the fact that Before Watchmen exists is still there. The creators’ rights skullduggery, Moore & Gibbons being cheated out of profits, the creators involved who’ve been throwing ill-advised bombs… it absolutely affects the work. More than that, it affects other work. I was digging Spaceman by Azzarello and Risso. I like Amanda Conner’s work. Darwyn Cooke’s adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker novels are more or less my favorite comics each year. I got that Martini Edition — have you seen that thing? It’s wonderful, easily the best packaged comic I’ve bought in ages. The next book, Parker: The Score, is probably one of my top 5 Parker novels. I’d like to read it.

But Before Watchmen makes me stop and start thinking about ideologies and differences of opinion, instead of the work. It doesn’t make me think that their work sucks. That’s stupid. They’re as talented as ever. But, like my newly complicated relationship with Frank Miller’s public persona and his work, I’ve got to think this through instead of just hitting pre-order on Amazon. Which sucks. “Ignorance is bliss,” right? Ugh.

Anyway, three must-read posts today. I have a round-up of stuff I’m reading & watching, but that’ll keep til tomorrow.

–Chris Roberson was interviewed by Tim Hodler over his… his whole situation, I guess. It’s a great interview. I’m super, super touched that I played even the smallest of small roles in him publicly parting ways with DC.

I can’t really summarize it, except to say that Chris has clearly thought all this stuff through and has a good head on his shoulders. I agree with him, obviously, and you may not, but I don’t think he says anything controversial or false. Please read it. It’s good, and a nice look at what it’s like making corporate comics. He spotlights Kurt Busiek’s fantastic idea about retroactive equity for creators, which I am 100% behind. I’m tired of hearing that the people who created characters I love are destitute and left begging for money every time they get sick. That’s pathetic, and a true failure of the comics industry and basic kindness. You made millions of dollars off a movie? Cool, then you can afford to chip in on the hospital bill of someone who helped turn a kernel of an idea into a comic that then became a movie.

Oh, and Roberson’s bit about there being no Creators section on DC’s website really says it all, don’t it? Welcome to Corporate Comics, 2012.

–Heidi Mac chimes in on Before Watchmen from an angle I hadn’t considered. I’ve had email conversations about this recently, actually, and they were eye-opening. I was born in 1983. I didn’t read Watchmen until… I dunno, 2004? I knew it was a Great Work, like I knew that Camus’ The Stranger or Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov are Great Works when I first read them. I didn’t know the actual history of the Great Work, just that I Needed To Read This.

Finding out that DC was pitching Watchmen as a triumph for creators’ rights while the entire community was rallying behind Jack Kirby feels like a sick joke in the light of Before Watchmen. At the time, it was, but then they saw dollar signs and whoops, sorry mates. Before Watchmen is a project that basically flies in the face of any type of advance in creators’ rights. It’s about prizing characters & concepts over creators, strip-mining history in an attempt to shore up today. In that light, Before Watchmen is the ultimate betrayal of what DC once claimed to stand for. It’s taking an icon for the creators’ rights movement and turning it into more grist for the mill.

It’s amazing how each new wrinkle from people who were around when Watchmen was making history and each new interview from DC Comics staff makes me like this project less and less. There’s so much… not lying, exactly, but dissembling and empty hype going on.

The Spacemen example is brutal, too. The only preview DC put out for that series was for the second issue? Even though that exact same team was hot off the best-received Flashpoint tie-in? Who is running things over there?

–Tom Spurgeon weighs in on the Roberson interview. Here’s a quick quote that I think is pretty good and relates well to Heidi’s point:

As much as you and I might shake our heads and do the Little Rascals surprise face when we hear someone say some of the things that have been said in support of and defense of Before Watchmen or the Superman lawsuit, imagine how distressing it would be if these were your creative partners, the people on which you hoped to build a foundation for a fulfilling life. The humor in the title is that Watchmen was seen as a creator-rights forward title with ambition; this new thing is certainly reflective of a time before that.

This is also must-reading.

True facts: I would have never written about Before Watchmen if not for Spurgeon. I don’t remember talking about it with him at Emerald City Comicon, but we probably did. But really, what prompted my posts was reading his “Sometimes They Make It Hard To Ignore Creators Issues”. Specifically, this: “I’m not sure I have much of a point here, except maybe please look at this. Look at this.”

That sparked something in me. “Look at this.” I took a look around to see what other people were saying and I realized that the sum total of Before Watchmen opposition online was Spurgeon, Eric Stephenson, and Abhay’s wonderful tumblr. I mean, we all had drive-by jokes on Twitter or in passing in posts… but organized dissent? The sort of thinkpieces that make comics internet interesting and valuable to me as a reader? Zilch.

So I looked at it. I sat down and thought about how I felt and dug up as much as I could on the history and I sat down and wrote The Ethical Rot Behind Before Watchmen & Avengers in maybe an hour and a half, if not an hour, on that Friday. I sent it to a few friends to read over and point out my mistakes and I edited it over the weekend. In between, though, JMS said something stupid about Alan Moore and I threw a jab. One jab turned into two. Two, eventually, turned into five posts about creators’ rights and Alan Moore.

It’s important that we talk about this, whether we is comics press or fans or creators, because no one else is going to. There’s something to be said for an objective press, sure, but part of the role of the press is looking at what the news actually means. Looking at trends, at history, at contradictions, at controversies. The comics press isn’t journalism, but we’re part of that same family tree.

So pointing out that there’s chicanery going on with Before Watchmen or how a company treats creators isn’t negativity. It’s doing our job. It’s shedding a light over wrongdoings that some people would rather were left in the past and unsaid. I mean, yo, if someone is lying in public, you nail them to the wall. You point that out. You don’t hem and haw about whether ethics matter. (They do, and you’re a moron if you think otherwise.) You look at the situation, you consider your own personal values, and you choose your position. You pick whatever feels right for you. There are no easy answers, no. But there are answers. Basic ones.

You like Before Watchmen? Fine! Cool. I get it. You don’t? Also cool! But it is vital that we talk out our positions on this issue. It is very much a creators’ rights issue, something that will have an effect on how the Big Two do business. If we can show them that we prefer that creative types be treated like people, we have a better chance of having a better, healthier comics industry.

So I want to publicly thank Tom Spurgeon for forcing me to put pen to paper, and Shannon O’Leary, writer of the PW piece and the person who asked the tough questions at the LA Times Festival of Books, for showing me that speaking out can actually have an effect in the real world.

I would like it very much if DC and Marvel had to answer as many questions about creators’ rights this year as they do about dumb plot twists and fan-favorite characters. If they dodge the question, they dodge it. But asking the question, and pulling apart their dodge, is honest work. It’s inside baseball, sure, but it’s also necessary. These questions need to be asked.

Sunday was my first time ever performing on stage as I ended my Improv 101 class at the Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center. Ultimately, I think I did decent for a first-timer in an entry class and luckily it was filmed. After hours upon hours of figuring out editing software and almost getting it right, I’ve uploaded the 45 minutes of show into four segments.

The class was of 16 students. One dropped out and one sadly had a family emergency, so we were split into two groups of seven. The plan is to get a suggestion from the audience, do a monologue, do a handful of skits based on the ideas of that monologue, do another monologue and so on. Of the nine skits my group did, I’m in five, plus I did a monologue at one point. I’ll do some commentary on my stuff after the fold.