I got an email earlier this week (or maybe late last week) from someone I’d spoken to a couple times. She wanted to interview me at Wondercon! Being a suitably narcissistic fellow who loves the sound of someone listening to him speak, I said “Yes!”

–So, at 1030 Saturday morning, I was interviewed by the wonderful Lene Taylor of I Read Comics. She asked me my opinions on comics, race in comics, and my Black History Month series. What a start to the day! Thanks for letting me ramble, Lene. Hopefully it came through all right in the recording.

–I bought a grip of trades again. I can’t help it, man. The haul this time was Peng (signed by Rey, and shoulda been bought years ago when it came out), Dr Strange: The Oath, X-Men Legends vol 4: Best of X-Men Unlimited, Human Target, Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs Nighthawk, and Gambit: House of Cards.

I know someone who’d kill for that Gambit trade. Eat it, Sara! It’s going for 130 dollars on Amazon! I paid half cover for it!

Cripes, she might actually kill me at that price.

–I caught some awesome panels. First was the podcasting extravaganza. It was moderated by Matt Silady and featured Ron, Josh, and Conor of iFanboy, Lene Taylor and Logan Hall of I Read Comics, Chris from Around Comics (I forgot his last name like a jerk, though I’ve hung out with him basically two or three nights in a row now), and Bryan Deemer of Comic Geek Speak. It was a fun panel, made double fun by the fact that I know/am familiar with most of the people up there. I got to ask a question about timeliness in podcasts with regards to content. Does it matter at all? Chris had the best answer: “Nope.” The others mostly agreed, with the caveat that they will cover something if it is underreported or if there’s a demand for it. Otherwise, there’s no reason to feel pressured. It was a great panel, and everyone involved did a great job. Also, Conor is incredibly awesome and has a hard life being so awesome.

–The next panel was the Animation Break-Down panel. I’ll let the convention site tell it. I added in iMDB links.

4:30-5:30 Animation Story Break (“Wait, does it HAVE to be a story?”)— Go behind the scenes as writers take an idea for an animated superhero story from one-sentence premise all the way to a full-blown beginning, middle, and end. Then the real fun begins with audience participation! The crack writing staff features Charlotte Fullerton (Kim Possible), Michael Jelenic (The Batman), Dwayne McDuffie (Static Shock), and Matt Wayne (Justice League Unlimited). Moderated by Eugene Son (Storm Hawks). Expect laughter and tears – mostly the latter.

Um, wow, what a line-up! Basically, the gimmick of the panel turned out to be breaking down a Howard the Duck vs Green Lantern Corps movie. It was pretty ridiculous (in a good way) and a lot of fun. Also, as seen below, I got McDuffie to sign a couple of trades– Static Shock and Fantastic Four, in fact. That was a great moment.

–After that, I chilled out a bit, went home, changed, and went out to the world famous Isotope Comics for the awesome Darwyn Cooke signing event. I’d volunteered to work the art table, so I stuck around upstairs for most of the night, giving people the mean mug when they get their drinks too close to the art.

Did I mention the art? We had J. Bone drawings, we had some stuff from Spider-Man Tangled Web by Darwyn and J (I want to keep calling him J.Bone, but man! that’d be weird), we had some Doop/Wolverine stuff… and we had pages from the as-yet unreleased New Frontier Animated Special. It drops the first week of March!

How were the pages? They were awesome. Beautiful, every single one of them. I saw a few pages that I kept going back to. You’ll see them when the book drops. I’ll just say that there is a note in them that just says “Think fast” and a wonderful smirk. That character should always smirk. Manoman.

How was the party? Hrm. Did you know that a million people were there? Maybe not a million, but it sure felt like it. The party was out on the street for a bit and getting across the store was nearly impossible. The guest list was completely ridic, though. There were some folks in costumes. The mascot or whatever from the new Zelda was in effect. There were some burlesque-looking girls.

There was also Amy Jo Johnson a.k.a. THE PINK POWER RANGER (according to Ron), JH Williams III, Paul Dini, Bill Willingham was maybe there, Antony Johnston stopped back in again, Ross Richie of Boom Studios was there, and a grip of people from DC Comics/Warner Home Video were there.

Repeat: Pink Power Ranger.

I might have possibly kind of told Paul Dini to get his drink off the art table before it spills, but in my defense if I did do such an unconscionable thing it was because I didn’t recognize him until Marsha, Darwyn Cooke’s wife, pointed him out to me.

Oops!

It was pretty cool talking to J. Bone and David Bullock about art and work and like that. Those were great times. Bullock did some work on the upcoming Spidey cartoon and being something of a big Spider-Man fan, it was cool to speak to him.

Oh yeah, Darwyn Cooke… he is awesome, through and through. I finally saw a break in the signing line and he signed my copy of Selina’s Big score and the print of the Isotope flyer. We talked more about the John Henry stuff. I mentioned that I was going to fanboy at him for a moment and told him that I led off my Black History Month posts with the John Henry sequence from New Frontier and he was like “That was you?!”

So, uh, Darwyn Cooke reads my blog! He also told me to post this picture.

He thanked me for feeling that the John Henry stuff wasn’t overwrought or horrible and I thanked him for writing it.

I’d brought a camera with me with the intention of taking a ton of pictures, but instead I basically just took shots of me and my friends chilling in the art room. Check the flickr set here!

Sunday is almost guaranteed to be more laid back and less awesome than today. I’m going to be trade bin diving with Keith and Ash (I want to score another Gambit book!) and just wandering the floor the rest of the show. I’m definitely gonna do a stint at the Writers Old Fashioned table, too.

Also, wandering the Wondercon halls listening to Saul Williams’s “The Inevitable Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust” is really, really weird but really, really fitting. I don’t know why.

One quick reminder: You can still enter the contest to win a free copy of New Frontier! Go post on that thread to get it done and I’ll pick the winner Sunday night.

I read some comics and I review them here. Just click “Read the rest of this entry” to see them. I know you’re all very excited. Happy Valentines Day!

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Especially when there are superheroes involved.

Awesome preview of New Avengers #38 over at CBR. It’s Bendis doing little character moments and it’s rock solid. I’m suddenly way more interested in NA than I already was.

Or do they?

How long do you give a story before you judge it? If it’s obviously one part of a series, do you wait until it’s done or are you just so turned off that you shun it forever and cast it into outer darkness?

I tend to walk the line. If it’s a writer I trust, I’ll ride it out and see where it takes me. If it’s a writer I don’t trust… well, I don’t generally read books by writers I don’t trust, so that problem basically solves itself.

I mean, I saw one of the best black characters in comics catch a bullet to the dome a while back. It was a good scene and a good story, so I stayed interested instead of turned off.

Also, can we please stop talking about how much X writer hates Y character just because bad things happen to that character? One joke in an interview two years ago does not a vendetta make, no matter how often and how loudly it’s repeated. Bendis doesn’t hate Tigra any more than he hates Dr. Strange or Mary Jane.

I should probably also talk about Young Avengers #1: Patriot sometime soon, too, huh? I’m sure you’re all dying to know my thoughts on it.

“There’s no such thing as bad characters, just bad writers.” – Unknown

It’s the truth. Especially in a medium where characters rarely have one set writer, sometimes not even one at a time, the quality of a character is largely decided by how they’re written. But sometimes a character needs a little more effort to work; characters with no set goal or motivation, a lack of personality or simply an outdated concept. Tigra is one of those characters. She never struck me as interesting in anything I’ve read featuring her; She was either just kind of a generic urban vigilante with a cat theme or caught up in the plights of some society of cat people with a convoluted history that I couldn’t care less about. But recently Marvel seems to have been making people more aware of the character, by making her the one who betrayed Captain America in Civil War, the person the Hood beat the crap out of to set an example in New Avengers and as one of the characters in the House of M: Avengers miniseries. So if you’re going to bring her to the readers’ attention, the least you can do is make her compelling. That scene in New Avengers was the first time I’d felt any sort of emotion towards the character, but it hasn’t been followed up on so far and it’s unclear if it will be (although I’m still holding out since Bendis tends to write stories with a slow burn). So here are some things I would like to see happening with the character to make me interested in reading about her:

– Politely ignore the cat people stuff. It’s unnecessary baggage and too goofy to take seriously in this day and age. There was a Tigra mini a couple of years back by Christina Z and Mike Deodato Jr. that did exactly this. It wasn’t very good because the writing was too cheesy, but at least it tried to do something new with the character and give her a place in the universe. Oh yeah, she became a cop at the end of that mini. That was sorta interesting. Whatever happened to that?

– Change the name while you’re at it. “Tigra” makes it sound like she should a member of the Thundercats. Either go for the Luke Cage angle and get rid of the name altogether (“Greer Grant” has a nice enough ring to it), or change it back to the more generic yet elegantly simple “The Cat”.

– Change the outfit. It makes her look silly. Yeah, I know, she’s confident about her sexuality, blablabla. Lots of people (real and fictional) are confident about their sexuality, yet they generally don’t walk around in a bikini all the time. Besides, we all know the real reason she’s dressed like that. It’s not even a practical outfit, since very rarely is it drawn as giving any sort of support. The only thing it’s good for is removing the impact from dramatic scenes. She doesn’t need a superhero outfit anyway, much in the same way Wolverine doesn’t need one. She has no secret identity anymore and her look is distinctive enough to not warrant a flashy costume. Like I mentioned, she’s supposed to be a police officer now, so put her in a police uniform.

– Yeah, she’s a police officer! That’s one of the things that always appealed to me about Savage Dragon, that he was a cop who got super powers but chose to stay a cop in favor of becoming a generic superhero. Focus on that idea and it’d both give her a unique role in the universe and be the perfect opportunity to show the Initiative in action; Superheroes actively working together with the police force. And, hey, holy crap, guess who’s the new top dog in Marvel’s criminal underworld? The Hood. The guy she’d have a very personal reason for going after. This stuff practically writes itself.

In fact, this can all be brought back to simply remembering that she’s a cop. That one story element from a five year old miniseries suddenly makes the character relevant again. This really isn’t that hard.

How many comic characters have come up with recently revealed/brought back into play children?

Wolverine has Daken and X-23, kinda. Agent 13 is preggo with Cap’s baby. Namor had that son show up in his mini. Superman has Chris Kent. Batman has Damian. Hulk has Skaar or whatever. Corsair had Vulcan, though that’s kind of stretching the timeline a little. Punisher’s got a tyke.

That’s eight in, what, just under two years?

Anyway, Christos Gage is one of my new favorite writers. His Union Jack was the bomb, his House of M Avengers was mostly recap/revamp for Cage fans, but good, and so on. He’s got a couple books dropping soon. Iron Man Annual #1 and T-bolts: Breaking Points. Both are one-offs.

Tony Stark as James Bond + Bruce Wayne is a brilliant move, seriously. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? It’s totally Tony Stark. Danny Rand is Kung Fu Billionaire, Tony Stark should be Mecha James Bond. I want to pick up both books now. Gage generally does good.

But yeah, there’s something else in those previews that I noticed. Check out this image and think back a few months to the Mary Jane statue thing.

I laughed.

My question is– is this a knee-slapper with a knowing wink or a face-slapper with a mean glare? It’s kind of obviously presented as something that isn’t altogether kosher or positive… my money is on wink.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Frank Cho apparently needs ten hours to draw each female butt cheek and get it just right, the current arc in Mighty Avengers would be long over and we would be getting ready for the symbiote invasion. That’s not stopping New Avengers, where the underdog superheroes have already been possessed by the liquid nightmares. Not too much of the story is revealed yet. We still don’t totally understand what is going on and how all this came to be. Instead, New Avengers focuses more on the Hood hanging back with old Luke Cage villains and a Punisher bad guy Bendis has taken a shining to.

We do know that in the story, we will eventually see what looks like the Carnage symbiote take over Wasp and become giant. Bendis has also spilled the beans long ago that Doctor Doom is behind this for some reason. The first place my mind goes to is the old Spider-Man arcade game from the early 90’s. Not only did that game feature a 40-foot Venom, but the gist of the plot is that Doom was trying to take over the world with an army of symbiotes.

But that’s not what this article is about. This is about the first time New York City was under siege by the toothy, gooey monstrosities. As much as it might pain you to do this, let’s take a trip back to 1995, for the Planet of the Symbiotes.

The story thus far: Venom was in the midst of his anti-hero run, which only I enjoyed, apparently. Though stationed in San Francisco for a while, he relocated to New York City because the crossover potential was stronger. Enter Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider. This clone of Peter Parker heard Venom was in the area and made his superhero debut by defeating him. By removing the symbiote from Eddie Brock with his impact webbing (remember that?), he was able to dominate Venom in a way Spider-Man never could at that point. Eddie and the symbiote stayed separated for quite a while, until getting involved in an adventure with his colorful symbiote children introduced in the Lethal Protector story. Eventually, Eddie and the symbiote became one again.

Here’s the thing that few people realize about Eddie Brock, or at least Eddie Brock in the 90’s. Eddie never really was all that crazy. He was never the picture of perfect mental health, yes, but he wasn’t a raving lunatic. All of that came from the symbiote and being Venom. When the symbiote and its influence were taken away during that period of time, Eddie had time to reflect. He realized all the death he’s caused and how pointless his hatred of Spider-Man was. He didn’t intend to ever wear the costume again and instead just wanted to die. After being forced to don the symbiote again, the subtle control over his actions returned. This time, he’s more aware of it and wants to investigate it.

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Yep. It’s time for another edition of Ruin the Moment, distracting you as I work on the next Professor Marc article.

This is based on Tim Drake receiving the call that Bart Allen has been killed needlessly because DC wrote themselves into a corner.

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Good God. I’ve reached the point where I use the term “musings” on the internet. Shoot me.

I’ve been taking a break lately, due to several things holding me up and taking my time, like a crappy work schedule, Guitar Hero Rocks the 80’s and a bunch of crap you don’t care about.

In the meantime, a couple quick thoughts.

– I made like 15 new 4th Letter headers and then hermanos had to go and redesign the site. Fuck him! Though I have to admit, the new look is growing on me. I like the little “4th ____” gags in some of those headers. Took me a second to get why Ares is labeled “4th Planet”.

– If you didn’t know by now, Greg Pak is going to be doing a What If issue with a trilogy of stories based on Planet Hulk. One has Hulk land on the peaceful planet as the Illuminati planned. One has Bruce Banner land on Sakaar instead. The last, and most interesting one, is about Hulk dying in the warp drive explosion and his queen surviving to seek vengeance on Earth. This comic sounds awesome.

– Norman Osborn is the glue holding Thunderbolts together and making it readable.

– I just bought a ton of trades last week. Ant Man: Low-Life, because even though hermanos dislikes it, I give Kirkman the benefit of the doubt. Hyperion vs. Nighthawk, as it’s the only Squadron Supreme story I haven’t read other than that nine issues of hurt called Ultimate Power. Cassanova, because hermanos loves it so much and I dig that Matt Fraction. The Hood, because it’s BKV and I could go for a nice Marvel MAX title that doesn’t star Frank Castle or his oversized, black nemesis. Seven Brothers, because I’m in the mood to read something by Ennis that isn’t “heheh superheroes is fags”. And I bought Goon: Noir and 52 Volume 2 because… uh… well, there wasn’t really any thought process in those decisions. One is the Goon and the other is 52. That’s reason enough.

– CHIKARA show this Sunday in Philly at the ECW Arena. Come and join the fun.

– The cover image to Ultimates Volume 3 fills me with a strong sense of dread. Not only is this going to be an awful comic, but it’s going to be like a shotgun blast to the Ultimate universe. If this comic is as bad as I fear it to be, then the Ultimate line of comics will be at death’s door in probably two or three years. That’s such a damn shame.

– On the other side of the coin, the Marvel Adventures line is pretty fantastic right now. While the first issue of MA: Hulk wasn’t special, I absolutely loved MA: Iron Man’s initial issue. That’s the best reimagining of his origin outside of canon I can recall. Pick up Giant Size Marvel Adventures: Avengers if you’ve ever wanted to see a gorilla suckerpunch Wolverine in the back of the head through a closing time portal.

– Not comic related at all, but in the last couple weeks, I’ve dropped 15 pounds. Hells yeah!

Next time I’ll have actual content. I promise.

I’ve seen this in a couple places, so I activated my giant brain and put some thought to it. 72 hours later, I have a solution.

Short answer: they don’t.

Long answer:

In World War Hulk, Sentry is shown as unresponsive and noncommittal. He has yet to lift a finger to help the anti-Hulk side.

In a recent issue of Mighty Avengers, so recent it just came out yesterday, something happens. Lindy Reynolds, wife of the Sentry, is apparently killed by Ultron. I say apparently because there is at least one 100% fake death in the series already, not to mention the fact that Ultron can create appendages and probably change shape.

People are linking this and WWH to explain why Sentry is so out of it. Here’s a simpler idea–

The Hulk is a good friend of Sentry’s. He’s only calm around the Sentry, so the Sentry has kind of a paternal love for him. He wants to be able to help him as best he can. And then, one day, Hulk comes back and blames Reed Richards and Tony Stark for firing him into space. The Sentry’s own friends betrayed Hulk.

And then they come to him and ask him to help the Hulk… by taking him down.

When they ask him to help, Sentry asks Tony for a moment. He wants a word with him. My bet is that Sentry asked Tony, “Is it true? Did you send him into space?” and Tony said, “Yes.”

That’s why he’s sitting on the sidelines. His own friends are using him.

WWH is a good story and it stands on its own. It doesn’t need Mighty Avengers and it’d be foolish to tie that in.

WWH is about old Hulk vs new Hulk. His new friends vs his old friends. General Ross shows up in the last issue. He’s an old enemy, but his daughter was married to the Hulk. She’s dead now, I think. Hulk’s invading Earth because his wife died. There’s your drama right there.

The Rick Jones = Miek thing is pretty dumb, though.

WWH, when you boil it down, is about relationships. World War Hulk: X-Men is proof positive. (It’s also the only tie-in I’m enjoying.) The X-Men, even after all the crap Xavier has put them through, stand by their former headmaster. Xavier is willing to give in, but the X-Men are a family. All for one and one for all. It’s pretty good stuff.

I’m betting that the big fight in WWH isn’t Hulk vs Sentry. Not at all. I feel kind of like it’d be an depowered Hulk (read: Banner) versus Bob Reynolds. It’s just a hunch.

Oh, and Spider-Man: One More Day isn’t about Mary Jane dying at all. That’s a smokescreen. Joe Q is pulling the wool over your eyes again.

It’s about Aunt May getting one more day with Uncle Ben, or maybe her family, before she dies.