Joëlle Jones took a stab at redesigning a few of the X-Women, with colors by her friend Terry Blas.

Props to Khux for the find.

Marvel’s Mythos series is pretty interesting. They’re 32 page one-shots that re-tell, and sometimes re-adjust, the origins of a few Marvel heroes. They don’t fit into any ongoing series, so the collection will likely come in the form of a “Marvel Mythos” premiere hardcover sometime over the next year, hopefully. From the first solicit:

AN ALL-NEW SERIES OF PAINTED ONE-SHOTS FROM MARVEL, RECAPTURING THE EARLIEST DAYS OF OUR GREATEST HEROES! The first of a series of quintessential, stand-alone, done-in-one stories by Paul Jenkins and Paolo Rivera, MYTHOS: X-MEN takes readers back to the formative days of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and recounts the first encounter between the nescient, teen-aged X-Men with their ultimate nemesis, Magneto! Filled with new detail and nuance, the MYTHOS books are also the perfect starter set for those readers new to the Marvel cast of characters, or to those who known them only from movies and television cartoons!

The line-up thus far has been pretty much par for the course. X-Men, Hulk, Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, and Captain America. The books haven’t really functioned as direct movie tie-ins, save for maybe Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four. Instead, they’re quick primers on the character that also serve as a light continuity patch. Characters are modernized and origins are retooled for the modern day. The FF were given their powers on a space station, instead of fighting Russkies, for example. Come to think, their origin is probably the most changed.

Usually, this is the exact kind of story I’m not interested in. Continuity Comix? Give it a miss. For some reason, though, I’m really digging them. I think it’s because they feel like a throwback. They’re like the backups that used to show up in Marvel comics, like “Here’s the secret of Spider-Man’s webshooters!” or “Here’s the layout of the X-Mansion!” Paul Jenkins and Paolo Rivera make it work, though.

Rivera’s art is fully painted, but still manages to come with enough of a retro flair to make it reminiscent of old comics. He uses a color palette that isn’t garishly dayglo, nor is it Alex Ross-y. It’s not subdued either. It feels just right. His facial expressions come through clearly, in part due to the large size of the panels giving him room to work. Johnny Storm’s casual embarrassment, the Congressman’s bemusement, and Sue Storm’s complete and utter lack of surprise at her little brother’s antics all are true to life. You can recognize them on sight. I also love that they included the schematic of the old school Baxter. I love seeing that stuff.

Paul Jenkins caught a lot of flack post-Civil War: Frontline. You’d think the man hadn’t written a good comic in his entire life, the way some people talk. However, looking back, he’s got The Sentry, Inhumans, and he had a killer run on Spider-Man. His last issue of Spectacular Spidey, with art by Mark Buckingham? That was one of the best issues of Spider-Man in years. It was pitch perfect.

The core of all of those stories that Jenkins did so well on lies in the relationships he puts on display. Ben and Peter, Norman and Peter, Black Bolt and his subjects, Black Bolt and Medusa, Sentry and his wife/friends, and so on. He’s putting in similar work on the Mythos books. They are about the origins, yeah, but more about the choices, or lack thereof, that led to the origins and the choices that followed. Reed desperately trying to talk Ben down, or Captain America thinking about the men he served with and the things he missed, are what makes these books so good. Johnny Blaze making the decision to sell his soul and Peter Parker’s rage and shame at realizing he caused the death of his uncle are more crucial scenes that succeed.

I started this post with the intention of talking about the Captain America book, but got way off track. The Cap book is a good one because it focuses on Steve Rogers, not Cap. It’s about his life, his dreams, and his regrets. I’d challenge anyone who thinks that Jenkins doesn’t “get” Captain America to read it. I’m willing to bet that you won’t come away with that feeling. This page alone is dead on. I love the dual Nick Fury appearances… and is that milk Cap is drinking?

The Jenkins/Rivera team is a great one. They’re telling tales that you’d think were inessential, but are actually really good. I’m hoping Marvel does the series justice when it collects it. I’m hoping for an oversized HC, myself, but that’s because I’m addicted. I also kind of want Jenkins to get a crack at the Fantastic Four for a while, too.

Also, this cover is basically the definition of awesome. I didn’t even catch the detail on the shield when I first picked up the book.

Ka-pow.

The weekend of chunky guys dressed like Colossus and hot women dressed as Slave Leia has come to an end. I myself had a great time, spent with hermanos from this very site and a whole bunch of guys from Funnybook Babylon. Sadly, Thomas “Wanderer” Wilde deemed himself “too broke” to consider joining us and Hoatzin would have probably involved a gigantic plane ticket paid in rare diamonds, since he’s from Europe. I don’t know. I really have no grasp on how that type of thing works. Besides, Hoatzin seems to have vanished from our planet. What happened to that guy?

This one movie sent the other movie into space.

Day One

Last year I got to New York the day before the con started, which allowed me enough rest and whatnot. This year I had to come in the first day of the event and kill time until David Uzumeri came in from Canada, since he was in charge of dealing with the hotel. I walked straight from the Port Authority bus terminal to the Javits Center, which tired me the hell out.

After getting my swanktastical press pass, I met up with hermanos and Joseph of FBB. They were at a panel starting up that was a screening for a new Will Eisner documentary. Since I was tired from all that walking, I decided to stick around and watch it. I found it interesting in the sense that I honestly didn’t know all that much about Eisner, which is almost a sin if you’re a comic fan. The four of us (David U. showed up towards the end) mostly agreed that while it had some fantastic stuff in there, such as taped conversations between Eisner and guys like Kirby, the sum of it was incredibly dry.

Shortly after, we went to the panel on online journalism, with guys from Newsarama and CBR there. It wasn’t as good as the comic blogging panel from last year and mostly focused on arguing over criticism vs. getting press releases. Once that was done with, I was rested up enough to do some wandering.

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The next Comics from the 5th Dimention column should be up soon. The big drawback about writing for PopCultureShock rather than here is that you can’t have your stuff up instantly. Them’s the breaks.

I plan to one day write my own comic series. I’m currently trying to move my gears forward on that. That said, I still find myself thinking about what kind of DC or Marvel-owned series I would love to write if I had the chance. Stuff like an Eradicator on-going where he stations himself in Coast City as a way to make up for and investigate the human feeling of guilt he suffers from his failure to protect the city from Cyborg Superman and Mongul. Or a Juggernaut series where he’s on the run from SHIELD, all while showing the parallels of the Superhuman Registration Act and being the avatar slave of Cyttorak.

There’s one comic concept that came to me the other day. What If occasionally had sequels, most of them not very good. Having read so many issues and having some of them so nestled into my memory, the continuity nut in me always compares some issues to events that happened after the release date. Sometimes it’s just to laugh at the continuity screw-up, like how Alicia Masters in What If the X-Men Lost Inferno was really a Skrull and the writer didn’t know it yet. That revelation gums up her part in the story.

Sometimes I realize how much more interesting stories become when you toss in delayed retcons and new pieces of canon. For instance, there’s the issue What If the X-Men Had Died on Their First Mission, where the New X-Men team (Wolverine, Storm, etc.) go to Krakoa to save the original X-Men and they all die. Xavier beats himself up over it, Moira comforts him and eventually another X-Men team is created. It was a good story, but compare it to what we know now. Deadly Genesis showed the other X-Men team that died fighting Krakoa. When they failed, Moira was angry, so Xavier erased her memory of the events. Put the two stories together and it’s pretty fucked up. Xavier deserves to feel bad. His Krakoa mission would have cost him three X-Men teams, totaling at 17 mutants. Then you have Moira trying to keep him from being suicidal, not knowing what a bastard he really is because the son of a bitch removed it from her memory.

What would have happened when Vulcan came back to Earth, not only forgotten, but now without his brothers? Now that would be a sequel issue worth reading.

I think back to other What Ifs that lead to a new status quo and how vastly different things would have been if they continued the story and met up with the events that were destined to happen. I think a handful of them could make for a good limited series.

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Seeing as how Hoatzin and hermanos have been getting so much attention for the criticism pile-on for Greg Land in light of him being the sour milk in the bowl of X-Men cereal… whoa! I’m not sure how I feel about that metaphor.

Anyway, I too have made a discovery about Mr. Land. I found an old sketch of Land’s from Ultimate Fantastic Four and noticed it looked a bit off. There’s something strangely familiar about this scene.

Maybe I’m just looking at it too hard. I don’t know.

By the way, Solenna updated her Peabody Award winning Greg Land/X-Men #500 gif. Good for her.

Check it, it’s like…
My man Jus used to keep an ox between his teeth
Said he could spit it with pinpoint accuracy if there was beef
We chuckled out loud… Still the thought of it intrigued me, (right)
So now I keep a jackal under my tongue to spit with related reasoning
–Aesop Rock, “Nickel Plated Pockets”

(an ox is a razor)

If he talkin’, he a target
–Royce da 5’9″, “Politics”

I missed my third year comics blogging anniversary by a just under couple months, looks like. I’ve been preoccupied, I figure.

Anyway– three years of blogging. Wow. I think I took a break of a few weeks at some point in 05, where I relaunched 4l after being a little less than enthused with both online and offline things, but it’s been more or less weekly ever since. Hopefully more than weekly. Maybe thrice weekly. Maybe a bit more, I don’t know.

I was mulling this over and thinking about what I’ve learned and seen. Interacting with people via blogs, message boards, and emails has been interesting. What have I learned? Let me boil it down to 13 things.

1: Don’t expect e-fame. Three years on and I’d consider myself small time. A few people who run popular blogs know my name, and that ended up in me running another comics site (and what a ride that is!). We’ve got a grip of readers, but 4l was never about hits anyway. It was about me listening to the sound of my own voice while I talk about comics with other people who may or may not agree with me. It was about learning, listening, and laughing.

If you’re blogging to get famous, you’re probably not doing it right. Do it because you like it.

2: Timeliness helps. If you want readers, you have to attract them. Part of that is being timely, whether that means meeting a daily deadline or talking about current comics events. Doing 29 days in a row for Black History Month was a beast, but I felt good when I finished and I felt like I’d learned something. Even better, I felt like maybe somebody else had their thoughts provoked a little bit.

4l has been not quite daily in varying degrees of “not quite” since forever. We’ve added a considerable amount to our visitors ever since we started doing “almost daily” rather than “not quite daily.” Timeliness helps.

3: Timeliness doesn’t matter at all. Honestly, if your content is good, people are gonna tune in. One of my favorite blogs is Not Blog X, a review blog for X-Men comics that were coming out in the 1990s. Each post is a trip down memory lane for me, but the most recent comic reviewed on the blog is basically 14 years old. Fourteen years old. Regardless– it’s awesome. Each post reminds me of something from when I was a kid, and G. Kendall is a pretty dope writer. He’s got a format, a good hook, and a site that I immediately added to my RSS feeds.

4: Blogger is terrible. Seriously, I switched to using WordPress and bought my own domain a few years back. It’s been pretty much smooth sailing ever since. My site only breaks when I break it, rather than when Blogger goes down and freaks out. I have total control, and that is a wonderful thing. 100 bucks a year isn’t a lot at all. RSS feeds, RSS comment feeds (I can’t describe how much I love those), plugins, all of that. It’s golden. Livejournal and blogger are dinosaurs. Make your own site.

5: Don’t name your site after yourself if it’s a group blog. For some reason, the exclamation point in my site’s name always ends up left out and a space gets added in between 4th and letter. However, 4thletter! means one thing– D. As in David. As in me.

Oops.

It’s catchy, though, and 4l/fourel is kind of a cool abbreviation.

Sorry Gavok and Hoatz! It’s all about me-me-me-me-me. We’ll have another 7thletter! and an inaugural 8thletter! day sometime in 2009 when I finally stop talking about black people in comics.

6: Don’t be afraid to use your real name. When I asked Gavok if he wanted to do some work at PCS for me, I also asked him if he wanted to be credited as Gavok or Gavin. He said Gavin, ’cause PCS was a different kind of site than 4l. Here, a nickname is gravy. It’s a fansite, it’s a place to make stupid posts about Jubilee or What Ifs.

I can see where he’s coming from, but I took it a step further. There’s only one place online where I still use a pseudonym, and that’s more due to laziness than anything. Plus, “hermanos” is a really, really crappy secret identity.

Using my real name is just taking away that (thin) veil of anonymity that the internet gives us. It’s saying, “Yeah, you can’t see me, but I’m here and my words matter.” No one can use that “Oh, you’re hiding behind a fake name” excuse when you call them out.

7: If you’re talking, you’re a target. This is step one is basic discourse: don’t open your mouth if you aren’t ready to back up what you say. This is the internet– someone is gonna argue with you on whether or not the sky is blue today. What makes you think they won’t call you out when you’re wrong?

I think about every blog post I write. I’ve had posts checked out by other people when I’m really worried. This is because I’m not the type of person to pop off at the mouth with something half-cocked. You have to think if you’re going to blog, and you have to be prepared to be disagreed with. Expecting everyone to fall in line behind you like you’re Pollyanna is dumb.

I once wrote a love letter to Joe Quesada. Joe Q is a guy that half of the fans out there want dunked in acid for “ruining Spider-Man forever.” I did it and got away with it because I backed up what I said. I thought it through and argued my points. Looking back, I could’ve done better, but that’s any post I’ve ever made. Some may not agree, but they can’t say I didn’t try and didn’t make sense.

8: Controversy sells. The flipside of the above is that the squeakiest wheel gets the grease. The loudest blogger gets the hits. Going off half-cocked and shouting at people is going to get you attention. Being a jerkbag is going to you even more attention, as people who should know better will come to try and set you straight or debunk your points. Don’t be afraid to troll a little bit. Call that blogger worthless. Call that creator as a pedophile. Put out that hit piece on a popular comic and how overrated it is and all its fans are racist ageist sexist misogynist misandrist flat-footed pot-bellied balding imbeciles who probably eat babies for lunch and senior citizens for dinner.

However, all of this will make you look like a jerk to everyone ever. At least, I hope so. Anyway, don’t do this one. Controversy doesn’t sell, it just makes you look dumb.

9: Everything has a funny side. Learn to laugh at yourself. Taking yourself too seriously is for, I dunno, action figure bloggers (do those exist?), not comics bloggers. We’re talking about funnybooks here, and while there are Issues to be solved, you cannot take this too seriously. It’ll kill you.

Seriously. Your blood pressure’ll get up and then you’re screwed. Semi-famous comics blogger dead at 27 of a fatal heart explosion due to reading the internet, news at 11.

Don’t be jealous, either. Sure, there’s an idiot of a blogger with crap opinions who has higher hits than you, but screw that. Do your thing. They’ll self-destruct eventually, right? If they don’t, uh, pretend like I never said that.

10: Comments count. I’ve had some of my best conversations in comments. That’s part of why I love WordPress’s Comment Feeds feature. It’s brilliant.

There are three kinds of blogs out there. Ones with comments, ones without comments, and ones with moderated comments.

Ones with comments are wonderful. You get to dig in, debate, question, answer, troll, reply, and figure things out with others. If things get out of line, the blog owner can step in and shut things down. In my mind, this is the perfect blog. It’s like a mini message board or classroom. It also turns the blog into a two-way street– if you’re going to make a stupid post, someone out there is gonna call you an idiot for it.

Ones without comments are less wonderful, but still good. Nine times out of ten in this case, you can toss an email at the blogger and get into private conversations with them. In a way, this is a better thing for the blogger, ’cause you’ve got to the space to make your point clear and you don’t have to worry about commenters getting things twisted up. It’s all about you. No distractions.

Ones with moderated comments are worthless, nine times out of ten. I feel like moderated (as in approval first) comments just lead to commenters toadying up to the blog owner, neutering your point so you don’t offend, and a culture of yes-men playing greek chorus in each post. It’s lame. The temptation is too strong to just leave out the negative posts. After all, who wants to be told that they’re wrong? Who wants to be questioned?

I want to be called out when I’m wrong or lazy or intellectually dishonest with my points. I’m in this to learn, not to have my feet rubbed. Yes, Virginia, that’s why this blog has comments– so that I can be called an idiot when I need to be.

11: Any idiot can be a blogger. And sometimes, that idiot is you. Or me. Or a friend. Make an effort to not be that idiot.

12: Make some friends. I hesitate to call them allies, mostly because that sounds corny and terrible, but go out and find semi-like-minded people and chat. Discuss things over email. Keep in contact. I’m hitting New York Comic-con again this year and I’m easily supposed to meet over a dozen people who I only know via the internet. All of these are online friends that I’ve been talking to.

This includes the iFanboy (though I met them at Wondercon), Funnybook Babylon, and PCS gangs. Not to drop names or anything.

I wonder if I can convince Pedro that the FBB/4l! alliance should be called F-Unit. Funnybook Babylon, Four(4)thletter!…

Anyway, knowing people is great. It’s a huge plus to blogging, and gives you even more people to talk shop with. If someone writes a post you like, drop them an email. It’s more personal than a comment, but less personal than visiting their house. Give it some thought. All of my e-buddies are e-cool.

Also, you can use your friends to bounce ideas off of, or check to see if you’re out of line.

13: It’s just comics. If blogging isn’t fun, you aren’t doing it right.

I’m with Hoatzin.

I love the idea of Brubaker and Fraction trading off arcs on Uncanny. I’m a Terry and Rachel Dodson fan. I think that they have an awesome style.

The only wrench in the works is Greg Land for me.

I’m not gonna lie– Land has a seriously sick art style. I used to dig it. His characters are realistic, though his action scenes are kinda stiff, but it’s aesthetically pleasing. Then I started noticing more and more weirdness. Didn’t I see this Storm two issues ago? Wasn’t this Wolverine from…? What’s with these facial expressions?

Land is a hard sell for me right now. Brubaker and Fraction are writing two of my favorite Marvel books and Land is the thing that will make or break it for me. Marvel released his cover for Uncanny 500 and it looks like more of the same.

Solenna, of SolArts.net, feels the same way, but she’s better than I am because she’s got proof and no small amount of skill in creating GIFs. Thanks to our own Hoatzin and FBB’s David Uzumeri in helping her source. Big ups to her for putting in all the leg work, so go to her site and show her some love.

The GIF’s 200-some k. Is that gonna lag anyone out? I figure that we’re all on broadband these days, so we can handle it, right? Direct: http://4thletter.net/gregland.gif

Marvel’s panel on the X-Books at Wizard World Los Angeles just ended. Check here for Newsarama’s coverage, here for CBR’s. The most interesting news? Matt Fraction is joining Ed Brubaker on Uncanny X-Men as co-writer starting with issue 500, with rotating art duties by the Dodsons and Greg Land.

Wow. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Fraction and Brubaker are two great tastes that taste great together, and the Dodsons are fine artists, but Greg Land? Seriously? Haven’t people caught on to his plagiarizing ways yet? Why is he on a comic that matters? He’s going to make that book annoying to read at best, unreadable at worst. Just look at the cover for issue 500 alone:

Let’s play “Spot the Ripoffs”!

– Warpath, Cyclops and the guy behind Cyclops have exactly the same body. Land has used it at least once before.
– Tattooed guy on the left and Colossus have exactly the same body.
– Wolverine and long-haired shouting man in the background on the right have exactly the same body, only Wolverine’s head is different. Land has used it at least once before. I distinctly recall Ultimate Namor in this pose as well, but I don’t have the relevant issue at hand.
– Land has used Cannonball’s body at least once before.
– Land has used Rogue (is that Rogue?)’s body at least once before.
– Land has used Storm’s body at least once before.
– Land has used Pixie’s body at least once before. It also happens to be the one with that ridiculous porn face made immortal by Ultimate Scarlet Witch. Very appropriate for a sixteen year old girl!

This is from spending maybe five minutes looking at this image and skimming through four issues of Ultimate Power. I could probably find a lot more if I spent effort on this. Maybe I’d even find the photographs he traced these from. Come on now. This is absolutely ridiculous. Why can’t we have an artist that actually draws?

I learned the word “feeble,” and also “feeb,” from X-Men comics.

That wasn’t very funny after all, was it?

I love those words that comics writers used back in the day when they had to play it safe with dialogue. Can you imagine saying, “Hey, frail! Get over here!” and a woman actually getting upset and infuriated enough to hit you with the focused totality of her psychic powers (awourrg) instead of, say, laughing in your face like would happen these days?

I wish someone, somewhere, had documented all those ridiculous ’80s phrases. Claremont alone could fill half a dictionary.

art from marvel comics’s black panther. words by hudlin, art by sal larocca, scot eaton, and cafu.Whether chocolate or vanilla, or you’re somewhere in between
A cappuccino mocha or a caramel queen
Rejected by the black, not accepted by the white world
And this is dedicated to them dark skinned white girls
–Murs, “DSWG”

This is kind of a hard post to phrase, ’cause, man, it’s rooted in old school prejudices. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to shake, you know? So, let’s just get right into it.

When Halle Berry was announced as Storm for the first X-Men movie, there was really just one response from most black people I knew who read comics, including my uncle who put me onto them in the first place: “Well, if that ain’t just the worst and most apt casting ever.”

Halle Berry has made a career out of being the “safe” black actress. She’s part (half?) polish and she’s fairly light-skinned. She’s just white enough to be nonthreatening, if that makes sense. I’m not dissing her for that, of course. She can’t help how she was born or why she sometimes gets roles. It’s just that, well, she’s got a reputation.

So, in a way, she was the perfect Storm and the worst possible Storm they could have picked. Storm is a regal, powerful, arrogant African Queen. Storm possesses some of the most powerful abilities on the X-Men and in the Marvel U. She’s a powerhouse. Storm also has long, apparently super-permed white hair, blue eyes, and distinctly non-african features for the majority of her lifespan.

That’s the crux of Storm right there. For a long time, she was only black in skin tone, and barely even then. Claremont built her up into this amazing goddess in Africa (and that is something else entirely), a master tactician (making for three on the X-Men), and generally just this amazing character. Thing is, she looked black. She doesn’t read black, she doesn’t feel black, and to a lot of people, that means that she’s barely black at all.

I mean, look at how long it took her to hook up with a black dude. Heyooooooo I’m here all night folks, try the veal. You guys are a great audience, really.

The thing is, Storm was all we had for so long that she’s kind of the pre-eminent black female of the comics world by default. I might find Misty Knight more interesting, but I like crime comics and blaxploitation. Misty pushes my buttons, but she can’t really go cosmic. Who else is left? Vixen can’t carry that burden. Natasha Irons is still way too green. Who’s left? Bumblebee from Teen Titans? I hadn’t even read her in Teen Titans before Tiny Titans came out, but I hate shrinky people, so that’s a big fat en oh.

This is the problem with only having a few black characters in comics way back when. You have to latch onto someone, and sometimes that someone isn’t really what you’re looking for. You settle for second best, basically. You can’t get the Smurfs, so you settle for the Snorks. You can’t get Beast Wars, so you settle for Extreme Ghostbusters. That sort of thing.

In a way, Storm is one of the best black females in comics. In another, she’s one of the absolute worst.

I love Storm, but I hate her, and what she represents, so much sometimes.