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The Sound of My Own Voice

March 4th, 2008 Posted by david brothers

Matt Silady and I were interviewed at Wondercon for Lene Taylor’s I Read Comics podcast. Come out and listen to me blab about being a blogger and Matt talk about being a comics creator. I think that Matt’s bit is a bit more interesting than mine, but maybe that’s just my long-lost sense of humbleness at work! Anyway, I talk about blogging, black comics stuff, and tokenism and why I post on the internet.

I manage to mention a bunch of internet people I like, too. Pedro and co., Kalinara/Melissa, Ragnell/Lisa, WFA, Writers Old Fashioned, and Cheryl Lynn.

Whoo.

Give it a look and toss I Read Comics into your podcast catcher.

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5 Questions from Tom Foss, 8 from Carnage

June 27th, 2007 Posted by david brothers

Not that Carnage.

Before I get into it, though, I’ve got half of an idea in my head. Boxing, the NBA, and the NFL are mostly black (except for quarterbacks :doom:). What if you had a series of superteams, like say one in each of the 50 states, that were run like a sports team? Try outs, scandals, all stars, cocky all-stars fresh out of high school… There’s something there, but I can’t quite grab it yet. Any Given Sunday in a comic book universe.

First is Tom Foss‘s five questions:
1. You’re given the keys to the Marvel Universe, and your only order is to take one “What If” storyline from the entirety of the series and make it canon, along with whatever alterations occur to the universe as a result. Which story do you choose?

Geez. I’d probably pick Gavok’s #1, What If Iron Man Sold Out. It was an awesome story, one of the few What Ifs I owned as a kid, and had great art. It hit all my buttons– it was set just pre-apocalypse, semi-fascist, and had heroes coming back to be true heroes.

Actually, yeah, that’s it for sure. What If Spider-Man Kept the Power Cosmic was another great one, but it kind of takes my favorite superhero out of the runnings for further stories, so no dice. What If the Avengers Lost Operation Galactic Storm was great and I’d like to see that one. It was practically Annihilation III in terms of scope.

2. Who watches the Watchers?

The police. Peeping tom perverts always get theirs.

3. What five Marvel characters do you think are most likely to actually be Skrulls?

Sentry’s wife, the secret masters behind SHIELD, the secret masters behind HYDRA, and I don’t know. I haven’t really given specific Skrulls much thought. I’ll have to post my theory on why Nick Fury went underground, though.

4. Who are your top three, back-of-the-OHOTMU, favorite guilty pleasure Marvel characters?
1. Jubilee (who remains the only character I have a continuity nerd story pitch for)
2. Darkhawk
3. Terror, Inc.

Ugh, I was so impressionable as a kid.

5. Which Avengers base is/was the best?

I couldn’t pick if I tried! I only recently became an Avengers fan. So… I figure Stark/Sentry Tower? I don’t know. The mansion is just kinda blah.

Spencer Carnage is up next.
– I have to post these rules before I start.
– I have to tell you eight facts about myself.
– I have to tag eight people to participate.
– I’m supposed to leave a comment telling them they’re tagged and to read my blog.
– And the tagees need to write their own blog post, telling us eight things and posting the rules.

Ugh, eight things. Okay. Deep breath and
Read the rest of this entry �

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Five Reasons

March 26th, 2007 Posted by david brothers

This is inspired in part by Kalinara’s post here.

Five Reasons Why I Blog:

One: The only way to become a better writer is to write.
I write for a living, so it’s important that I stay in practice. Having a comics blog lets me talk about something that I love. I’ve been trying to move 4l to a daily blog, but sometimes that’s hard. That’s the dream, though.

Two: I am a hopeless narcissist.
I like when people pay attention to me, and having a blog gives me a chance to see what other people feel about my opinions and/or writing. I love getting comments and responding to them.

Three: Blogs and the blogospherohedron have a wide variety of opinions.
This is partially related to Two. Getting comments is an easy way to see these other opinions, but the best way by far is to read other blogs. I’ve got 108 feeds in NetNewsWire and at least 60-70 of them are comics related feeds. I read all the big blogs, as far as I know, and a bunch of the smaller ones. There are a lot I don’t comment on (I hate that Blogspot doesn’t have comment feeds), but I do read them. You get to meet cool people.

Four: I like being able to sit down and organize my thoughts on comics.
I do a lot of thinking. Putting words on virtual paper forces me to organize those thoughts in such a way that they are both palatable and understandable to people who are not me. Writing them down makes them real and concrete.

Five: I just love comics, man.

I just wanted to talk about the comics, see? All those shitty, amazing comics…”
–Wally Sage, Flex Mentallo #1

You probably haven’t noticed, but there’s a Podpress link text at the bottom of the page now. I wonder what that could mean?

Watch this space.

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I Read Comics talks 4l

March 2nd, 2007 Posted by david brothers

Yeah, so I accidentally overslept this morning, which means that I need to be out the door post-haste.

In the meantime, though, I got a lovely email from Lene Taylor of I Read Comics. She found my essay on Patriot via Kalinara and found it worth reading! It touched her enough that she talked about it on her podcast, which you may find here.

Give it a listen, and then go on to listen to her back catalog. Very good stuff!

Thanks again to Lene for featuring the post.

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It’s a thin line…

January 29th, 2007 Posted by david brothers

It is Hal Jordan Appreciation week. In honor of HJAW…

Huh.

I got nothing. Moving right along–


I love 100 Bullets. You all know this already, right? I’m confident that I can prove that it is the finest piece of comic literature amongst a field filled with self-absorbed people whining about their life and tights’n’fights.

Here’s the long and short of 100 Bullets: The Trust are the scary behind the scenes people that are usually referred to as “they.” They are obscenely rich and outside of the law without being outlaws. The Minutemen were a group of men who protected The Trust from threats both foreign and internal. If a member of The Trust moved against another, the Minutemen would handle it decisively. A few years back, The Trust tired of this and had the Minutemen eliminated in Atlantic City… or so they thought. Agent Graves, leader of the Minutemen, faked their deaths and dropped them into new lives through hypnotism. Now, he’s reactivating his army and appears to be in the process of taking careful revenge on The Trust.

One of my favorite characters in 100 Bullets is Isabelle “Dizzy” Cordova. A reformed gang member whose husband and son were murdered while she was in prison, Dizzy is both one of the reader’s many POV characters and a moral center for the series.

Graves approached her with a briefcase and revealed that two policemen were responsibile for the death of her new family. The briefcase held a pistol and 100 bullets, both of which were completely untraceable. They were “magic bullets,” and any police investigation that involved them would be canceled and wiped away clean. It was a license to kill.

100_bullets_n3-p03.jpgBy the end of that arc, it was clear that Dizzy was destined for greater things. She’s appeared throughout the series and you can see a clear progression from broken-hearted girl to grown woman. She’s still young, though quite some time has passed since she first crossed paths with Graves, or rather, since Graves began grooming her for his purposes.

You see, Dizzy is “The Girl,” and she is slated to become one of the new, post-Atlantic City Minutemen. Even more so than the others, Dizzy is slated to be a check within the group itself, as she has been given both a reason (or two!) and the training to kill Agent Graves if and when the time comes.

Time will tell how she ends up, but as-is, she’s easily my favorite female comics character. She’s got heart, she’s got character, and she’s awesome. She’s had an interesting character arc, too. She’s gone from ex-con with a death wish to a person with a fierce wish to live.

Early in the series, she’s told that she had every right to kill a man. She would have gotten away with it. “Well,” she responds, “that don’ make it right, knowhumsayin’?”

That’s Dizzy.


I have trouble with Green Arrow. Ollie Queen has only had a handful of stories that ever really interested me, and even then only slightly. It doesn’t help that the past few years of his book have been not to my taste at all. Longbow Hunters was good, and I’ve been meaning to read Grell’s run on the character because of it. It might help me “get” Ollie.

I think it boils down to his character. He’s this super lefty, hero of and to the people type of guy. He’s that annoying, loudmouth, brash guy who I don’t think anyone likes. He’d be positively frustrating to hang out with. I dig Black Canary, but I have no idea what she sees/saw in him.

Plus, there’s this kind of thing.

jle_03_15.jpg

So, in short, Ollie Queen is an annoying slimeball with a stupid mustache. I realize that this is a plot point in Justice League Elite, but I don’t see it being even remotely out of character for Ollie. Shoot, one of his character traits is “unfaithful.”

Also, Hawkeye has the same gimmick but is at least fifteen times as cool, Connor Hawke is more interesting, and Oliver Queen having a win against Prometheus is ridiculous. I actually like Mark Millar’s Ultimate Hawkeye more than I like Oliver Queen. Hate may be too strong a word, but I definitely am not an Ollie fan.

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One Year of 4l! or Weapons of Mass Destruction + 112

November 29th, 2006 Posted by david brothers

Hey!

Today marks the one year anniversary of 4thletter! Technically, we had a Blogger blog before then, but 4l! is what it is now, not what it was then. 365 days, 112 posts and 31,476 visitors later (as of this moment!) and we’re still here. We’ll be here for some time to come, if all goes well!

One year. It’s crazy, huh? One full year of completely questionable taste in comics, Gavok-style lists, brief appearances by the Spotted Wanderer, and hopefully bellies full of laughter. I was going to call 4l! Year Two “Questionable Taste In Comics Harder!” but focus groups decided that that was too clunky. Maybe “Where’s My Money, Honey?” U DECIDE.

Just FYI, 4l! Year One was “Is it time… or hypertime?” I don’t think I actually told anyone that, though, so don’t stress it. It won’t be on the test.

Muchas gracias to my blogmates Gavin and Thomas. The Big Gavoktus is consistently funnier than I am, but the site is named after me technically so it’s cool. We have spent enough time on IRC talking about A) What we would do if we had gigs at Marvel or DC and B) hilarious What If?/Elseworlds ideas that I am confident that if we ever did manage to con/blackmail our way into a position at Marvel or DC, the world would be a better and funnier place for it. Thomas brings a razor sharp critical analysis to the table and lets me bug him on AIM with ridiculous comics questions. He has a Tricky Brain, did you know that? He also has a sick mind for comics trivia, particularly in the X-Men and Spider-Man arenas.

Basically, though, we all love comics. Wait, scratch that. We all love good comics. Bad ones can go hang.

In the past year, I’ve learned that the comics blogospherohedron is kind of shockingly DC-slanted. (That may be just my inner Marvel Zombie speaking, though.) Tons of people have fond memories of the Legion of Super-Heroes, which I only recently got into with the Waid/Kitson reboot, and no one likes Identity Crisis. Feminism in comics is pretty big, too. A couple comics blogs have gone mainstream and ended up attached to Newsarama and Comic Book Resources, and I think that the comics media is better for it. I learned… you know what? This is slightly less profound than I expected. Let me cut to the chase.

I learned that a lot of cool cats like comics and want to talk about the effects of comics just as much as who would win in a fight, Big Barda or Wonder Woman (Big Barda, see below).

I would like to give a special shout-out to the people who let me blab on their blogs comment lines. The crew at Comics Should Be Good and Blog@Newsarma are all good people (and I really need to add B@N to my links there on the right). Kalinara @ Pretty Fizzy Paradise, Ragnell @ Written World, Johanna @ Comics Worth Reading, and Carla (I think?) @ Snap Judgements are all cool peoples. I should probably give special notice to my livejournalin’ buddies Lynxara and JLG. Fun times! Dwayne McDuffie’s forum is also a cool place to hang out, not to mention Batman’s Shameful Secret over at Something Awful’s forums. Best comics forum out, I will tell you what.

Also, my mom apparently reads the blog, so– Top of the world, ma!

One year down, hopefully many more to go. More questionable taste, more inexplicable love for ’90s comics, more stuff you never wanted to know about comics but now you do so you can’t un-know it, sucker!

I’m hoping to get some cool articles from all three of us up to celebrate the anniversary of this blah-blah-blog. Thanks for reading. Stick around, you might learn something!

As promised, here is why Big Barda trumps Wonder Woman:
jla1mpg10.jpg jla1mpg11.jpg jla1mpg19.jpg jla1mpg20.jpg
Yes, it’s future Wonder Woman, but you can’t argue with five tons per square inch. Big Barda is the truth.

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