Comics at Columbia

Yesterday, I took a trip into New York City with my cartoonist buddy Robert Berry to attend the first day of the Comic New York Symposium at Columbia University.  The symposium was the brainchild of Columbia Librarian Karen Green, a Medievalist by training and a graphics novel librarian by force of will.  Karen's been a big supporter of Rob's work over the last few years, and I've gotten to know her while riding on his coattails to all these cool comics events to which he gets invited.

The inspiration for the symposium was longtime X-Men mastermind Chris Claremont's donation of his archives to the library's Rare Book and Manuscript collection.   I think this is a very significant development, and Claremont's probably the most mainstream of comics writers, and that his career only stretches back into the '70s, and not the periods we generally think of as historically important.  I'd never seen Claremont speak before; generally, when I attend a comic book convention I tend to prefer blowing my family's savings wandering the floor to attending panels.  But Claremont's a tremendously engaging speaker, and I, never much of an X-Men fan, found myself enraptured like the world's biggest Marvel Zombie. 

You've Gone Too Far, Conan

Look, I've been a Conan O'Brien fan for a long time.  I've been on Team CoCo long before we were calling it Team CoCo.  And sure, I never watched a minute of his "Tonight Show", but I was still outraged when he got hosed for Leno.  And, even though I haven't watched his new show, I'm glad it's there.  But now... now I'm not so sure.  Because Conan... you have crossed the line.



Now, let's overlook for now Conan's rather baffling inclusion of longtime Flash nemesis Captain Boomerang on a list of super heroes that suck, or his declaration that the guy who came up with a magic ring that turns the bearer's thoughts into solid-light constructs was "mailing it in that day".  No, what's really stirred me up is that Conan had the audacity to call Bat Lash- Bat Lash!- lame.  And that is something for which I shall not stand.


Bat Lash is a western character (please note I said western character, not super hero, which should automatically disqualify him from Conan's list.  But I digress) created by Reuben- award winning cartoonist (which is the highest award a cartoonist can receive, not, in this case, a sandwich) Sergio Argones.  He briefly had his own series in the late '60s, written by Argones and Denny O'Neil and beautifully illustrated by Nick Cardy.  Lash was a character very much influenced by the popular James Garner tv show Maverick, and his adventures were quite unlike any other western series comics had seen.  Though short lived, Bat Lash is remembered as one of the high points of the Silver Age, and widely regarded now as a classic. One of the first things I did when I started buying Silver Age comics was put together a complete run of Bat Lash, and I was not disappointed.  They are great comics, very sophisticated for the time and well worth reading.

In short, Bat Lash does not suck.  He is awesome.  You know who sucks?  Conan!

Conan's entire argument against Bat Lash seems to revolve around the fact that he looks like a bit of a dandy.  Now, I will grant you that the illustration that Conan showed (by Dave Gibbons, which I can't seem to find online) is not the most flattering, but come on.  Just because a man appreciates the finer things in life, it doesn't make him gay!  That's like saying that recently deceased NFL Hall of Famer Cookie Gilchrist wasn't a tough guy because he answered to the name "Cookie".  And Cookie Gilchrist was plenty tough.  Tough as nails.

One of the things that's always kinda bugged me about Conan is that he's obviously a geek, but he often ridicules geek culture for the sake of Joe Six-Pack.  He's like a geek minstrel.  It's just sad.  Well, I for one am not going to take it any more.  You're dead to me, Conan.  Dead to me!  From now on, I'll stick with a geek who remembers his roots: Stephen Colbert.

I'll give you Space Ranger and Ultra the Mulit-Alien, though.  They do suck.

Wrapping Up Ex Machina

So I just read the last volume of Ex Machina, which has been out for a little while, but being frugal I waited until I found a copy for a price I could stomach on Amazon (boy, that must drive comic book creators nuts.  They already hate that we wait for the trade, and now they've got to deal with us waiting for the trade at a discount).  This was a bit of a milestone for me, because Ex Machina is the first comics series that I bought and read entirely in trade paperbacks as they were being published.  I've read other series entirely in this fancy new format, but that was always after publication had long begun (and, in some cases, finished) and it was just easier to buy the books.  But this was the first time that a new series was published, and I said nope, I'd rather have those as books, I'm gonna wait.  Now that's become standard practice for me, but at the time I remember it being excruciating.  I'd see the new issue on the shelf, and want to read it, but I'd pull my hand away like Stimpy with the History Eraser Button:

Minimate Customs: Shade the Changing Man

One of my all-time favorite comics series is Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man, one of the late '80's mature readers books that DC published that eventually became the foundation for Vertigo.  For my money, it's the best long series in the Vertigo catalog; yes, better then Sandman, and Preacher, and certainly the criminally overrated Transmetropolitan. Though, I have to say, the series does fall apart a bit after issue #50, when Milligan kills off one of the main characters whom, it turns out, was actually the heart and soul of the book.  Milligan admitted in an interview with the Comics Journal that this was probably a mistake, although it's one that he would repeat again in X-Statix.  Some people never learn, even when they learn.

Anyway.  To give you an idea of who I'm talking about, here's a couple bonus wallpapers I made of Shade:

 The artwork here is by Chris Bachelo, Shade's original artist who would go on to greater fame at Vertigo by illustrating two Death mini-series.  He then went to Marvel, where he does largely shitty (though stylish) work on the likes of the X-Men, Spider-Man, and other characters for whom he's wholly inappropriate.


So Shade was always on my to-do list, and, well, one day I did 'em.

His hair comes from the Secret Invasion Phoenix, his head from BSG's Sam Anders.  The hair, I think, is what spurred on his creation, but the face is what gives him just the right poet/pretty boy look.  His boots come from the ice skates that came with Pet Shop Adrian (and yes, I hated to ruin them, but sacrifices must be made sometimes). 

And the coat.  Shade's funky coat.  I really wasn't sure how to do this; in the comics, Shade's coat is very much the byproduct of computer coloring, so I tried as best I could to replicate the blend.  It's just an old white lab coat Sharpied in many colors. Here's a look from the back:

For once, my general sloppiness was actually a help, and not a burden.  He may well be my favorite Minimate custom; my buddy Kevin called him my "masterpiece", and I'm not one to argue... okay, I am, but not in this instance.  Issues of Shade are pretty easy to find in the cheapie bins, and DC has been reprinting the series recently; if your curiosity is at all peaked by what you see here, I strongly recommend you check this overlooked classic out.

I Made a Quiz--Marvel/DC Crossovers

Yeah, busy day around here... I made another comics quiz. This one relates to the Marvel/DC intercompany crossovers, on which I'll have more to say at some point.

Can you name the DC/Marvel Comics intercompany crossovers? - sporcle

I Made a Quiz-- Showcase 1st Appearances

Here's a new comics quiz that I made: characters that first appeared in DC's legendary 60's series Showcase. Not a whole lot more to say about it.

Can you name the comic book characters that first appeared in Showcase? - sporcle

When Killing Spider-Man is Your Best Idea, You're Out of Ideas

Okay, I'm going to level with you here: the main reason for this post is to break up the monotony of Minimate custom posts. If I'm not careful, this blog will devolve into nothing more then a home for them... and we don't want that, do we? I'm more then just a Minimate customizer. I've got thoughts, feelings, opinions that should... nay, must be shared, for the good of society.

On the other hand, I suppose I also post Sporcle quizzes, so... ah, I've already started typing. Might as well keep going.

The biggest problem in comics these days (not the only problem, mind you, but the biggest) is that the companies rely too much on stunts and gimmicks rather then good solid storytelling to sell comics. Now, I'm not saying that good solid storytelling has disappeared, but rather that books don't succeed or fail because of their quality. I can't tell you the amount of comics that have come and gone recently that everyone seems to like, but can barely sustain a readership above 20,000 copies a month and are thus canceled within two years. The reasons for these failures are varied, I'm sure, but basically it all boils down to a matter of perception. Books that don't "matter" don't sell, period, regardless of quality.

I put "matter" in quotes there because, well, it's just comics. Nothing really matters. I remember Valiant Comics once referring to an issuer (Rai #0, if memory serves) as "the lynchpin of history". Which was a great little line, but ultimately meaningless, particularly after Valiant went bankrupt. Hyperbole has become such the norm in trying to sell comics that it's just a bunch of empty calories. I recently read a Marvel solicitation that referred to "legendary artist Barry Kitson". Really? Legendary? No offense to Barry Kitson; he's perfectly fine. But I doubt anyone's writing ballads about him.

Hyperbole... I keep expecting people to become numb to it, and maybe they are. Maybe that's why readership is falling so precipitously; people just get sick of all the hype, month after month, and just stop reading altogether. Each subsequent stunt and gimmick does worse then the one that preceded it, and overall sales fall, forcing the publishers to rely more on stunts and gimmicks.

Which finally brings me around to what I want to talk about today: Marvel's announcement this week of their latest gimmick, "the Death of Spider-Man". Now, don't get too excited: it's not really Spider-Man that's dying. It's Ultimate Spider-Man, a bait-and-switch worthy of your local nightly news. Just for fun, here's some copy from the press release, and one I made up: "...the groundbreaking new story that forever changes the Ultimate Comics universe..."; "...this is the story that no comic fan can afford to miss ..."; "...he one thing that could be bigger than the CREATION of the Ultimate line..."; ...should be up there with the very small number of events that really mattered."

Good lord. Coming on a little strong there, don't you think? I guess they could have said "if you don't buy this comic, your entire fucking life will have been pointless", though I think that's implied. Or am I inferring?

The Ultimate Comics line, I think, makes a fine case study for what's ailing comics. Begun in 2000, the Ultimate Universe was designed by Marvel as a way of rebooting their characters without blowing up the regular Marvel Universe. Characters were modernized; whereas regular Spider-Man was a chemestry whiz, Ultimate Spider-Man was a computer prodigy. Continuity anchors were shucked, allowing creators to tell stories without worrying about having to make their work jibe with decades of history.

And it was a big deal. The Ultimate titles (Spider-Man and the X-Men) sold very well right out of the gate, and subsequent books were all hits, with the peak probably being Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's the Ultimates (aka Ultimate Avengers). Hell, even Ultimate Fantastic Four was a big seller, something that can't be said about the regular book since John Byrne left in 1986.

Personally, I was never a big fan. The whole thing seemed a little pointless, since much of the Ultimate line seemed dedicated to rehashing storylines that had occurred in the Marvel Universe over the course of it's forty-odd years. I read the first volume of Ultimate Spider-Man, and thought it was terrible. But I was clearly in the minority, and readers and talent flocked to the Ultimate books. At one point the Ultimate version of Marvel Comics seemed so much more popular then the regular one that it seemed to me replacing the latter with the former made a lot of sense.

But it was not to last. I can't say when it happened, exactly, but at some point Marvel seemed to focus all the attention they'd given to the Ultimate line back to the regular universe, and the fans followed. Here's the funny thing about Marvel Comics: they are by far the dominant publisher in American comics, but they only seem to be able to get their fan base really behind one area of their line at a time. In the '90's, it was the X-Men and their fifty billion spinoff titles (a conservative estimate), and everything else played second fiddle. For a while there, it was the Ultimate books, and now it's the core Marvel Heroes books carrying the standard. And I can't really say why this is, except to take it back to the earlier point about stunts and gimmicks. It's almost as if Marvel says "these are the books that we're focusing on; these are the ones that matter", and readership blindly follows.

Marvel tried to reignite the Ultimate line a couple years ago, cancelling all the core titles and running a stunt series called "Ultimatum". Even by the dubious standards of "event" comics, Ultimatum was a critical disaster. Written by Jeph Loeb, comics' answer to Michael Bay, Ultimatum both sold very well and killed off any lingering interest in the Ultimate line, as well as a score of characters. The core titles were relaunched with new numbering, but Ultimatum was so poorly received that much of the readership used it as a jumping-off point, and even formerly solid sellers struggled to regain their pre-Ultimatum sales numbers.

Ultimatum and its' high body count apparently weren't the sign of ultimate desperation (yes, pun intended. I think it's rather clever) it seemed. No, that's certainly "the Death of Spider-Man". Well, just think about the Marvel Universe- any Marvel Universe- without Spider-Man around. Who would want to read that? Whatever momentary sales boost the related titles will receive from the curious will be undone by the absolute collapse of post-Spider-Man sales. I've no doubt we'll be reading a lot in six months about how "exciting" an opportunity it is to tell stories without Spider-Man around; I also have no doubt we'll be reading about the end of Ultimate Comics this time next year.

Of course, in saying that, I'm making the probably foolish assumption that he's going to stay dead. After all, why wouldn't he? It's just Ultimate Spider-Man. Who cares?

I Made a Quiz-- Marvel Minimates (Part 1)

Yep, another one. This one's a lot longer, and probably even harder if you don't know anything about Marvel Comics, not to mention Minimates. But I wanted to do it, so here you go. "Part 1" is because you can only have 200 answers in a Sporcle quiz, and there have been a lot more then 200 Marvel Minimates. So part 2 will follow sometime soon.

Can you name the Marvel Minimates (part 1)--Sporcle quiz

EDIT: Finished Part 2. Looks like there's going to have to be a Part 3. Dammit.

Can you name the Marvel Minimates (part 2)--Sporcle quiz

I Made a Quiz-- Superhero Pets

I've been fooling around with the quiz site Sporcle a lot recently; there are quizzes in all sorts of different categories. You would be surprised how much time you can waste here. Or perhaps you wouldn't. Anyway, I decided to try my hand at a quiz. A pretty simple one, but hopefully challenging and fun: superhero pets! I encourage you to give it a shot, and I will hopefully find the time to come up with a few more of these.

Can you name the superhero pets? - sporcle

Banes of My Existence: Kevin Smith

I suppose it was inevitable that something would set me off to rant about Kevin Smith here. It's probably a surprise it's taken this long; after all, I've been ranting about him for years. It's fair to say that I hate his work, in that I've hated every movie of his I've ever seen or comic book that I've ever read. I've often wondered if I'd hate him personally if our paths were ever to cross. He seems like a nice enough fellow. We'd certainly have plenty to talk about. I also wonder if it's possible to be friends with someone if you despise their work; I guess it's like dating a girl even though you think she's a twit. And I did once chase after a girl that thought there should be a Constitutional amendment passed requiring every American to see Pearl Harbor. She, though, was a helluva lot hotter then Kevin Smith.

I'm going to go on a quick tangent (or continue the tangent) here and tell a story about my friend Travis. He was talking to some girl once at a party, and she was telling him about her boyfriend, and how they have such a great connection, like all the same things, ect. And she said something like "he likes ice cream and puppies, just like me!" And Travis, bless him, told her how stupid that was, because every body likes ice cream and puppies. And she got mad at him and, I think, tossed his hat in the pool. But what impressed me was that Travis did something that men in our twenties never do, which is call out a girl we're hoping to pick up on something inane she said. I have the utmost respect for him for that.

I want to make one thing clear here: I'm not one of those Johnny-come-lately Kevin Smith haters. I've always hated his work. No, I did not think Clerks was funny, or keenly observant, and I was, in fact, working at a convenience store at the time. Mallrats I did not see, but I did see Chasing Amy, oh so many times. I was working at the Ritz Five in Philly, the art house chain, and Chasing Amy must have played there for about seven years. By the end of its' run I couldn't even bring myself to walk into the theater while it was playing. I've gone around and around with people on this, but what I always come back to in criticizing the film is that it is so ineptly made. Let me give you an example: there's a scene at the end of the movie where Jason Lee is talking to a fan at a comic book convention. The scene basically cuts between shots of the two of them, with the fan's monologue running uninterrupted between shots. Except that the background audio is different between each shot. This might not seem like a big deal; but, for a guy making his third film, it's inexcusable.

And then there's Dogma, the last Kevin Smith film I've ever seen. Against my better judgment, I allowed my brother to talk me into watching it, with promises that it was a very smart deconstruction of organized religion. No, it is not. It's a shambles of a film, confirming that Smith still, after now four feature films, does not understand the first thing about storytelling, and has no ability as a director to illicit a compelling performance from an actor. So after that I swore that I'd never give the guy another chance, and that was it. And, really, it hasn't been that hard to avoid him. Sure, the Jay and Silent Bob movie *shudder* was a hit, but Jersey Girl pretty much exposed his limitations, and he's never really recovered. Certainly, the bloom is off the Kevin Smith: filmmaker rose.

And then... there's comics. I guess that, if Kevin Smith is a terrible filmmaker, he's at least only a very bad comic book writer. His dialogue doesn't read quite so stilted as it sounds coming out of an actor's mouth. And he certainly knows comics, unlike some of the other Hollywood bigshots that slum it up for Marvel, DC or Image now and then. I certainly feel, as a comics fan, that we're expected to be thrilled when even the most minor of celebrities does comics, because even the most minor of celebrities is bigger then anyone in comics. So Seth Green's comic is about frat boys with super powers? Who cares, it's by Seth Green! From Austin Powers!

You get the idea. Smith, at least, really did seem to be committed to being a part of the comics industry-- at first. He did successfully relaunch both Daredevil and Green Arrow, though, so I suppose that's something, even if the former did result in the death of a longtime supporting character at the hands of a minor villain, and the plot of the latter revolved around a grandfather raping his grandson. Yes, you read that right.

But his own inability to complete projects soon destroyed his reputation. There was his Spider Man/ Black Cat mini- series that had a literal wait of years between issues. Then there was the Daredevil mini- series that only saw one issue released before Smith just stopped writing it (that one issue, by the way, is among the worst comics I've ever read). And that, really, was it, until DC Comics decided a few years ago to cash in on whatever remaining cred Smith's name has by letting the guy write some Batman. And the first series, Cacophony, was relatively well received.
Well enough, at least, for Smith to do a sequel, The Widening Gyre, originally intended for six issues, but now apparently to be twelve.

And this, finally, is what brings me here today. Because, frankly, Smith had fallen so far off my radar that I was only vaguely aware this thing was even coming out. But this review here really does a nice job bringing me up to speed. And, please, go read it for yourself, because I really don't want to spoil any of the awesome, awesome twists described there. You should have the same thrill of discovery I did when you learn that Kevin Smith had Batman tell a story about... no, no, see for yourself.

But I would really like to share with you a quote from this interview with Smith, that I think explains a lot: " I’m not telling you anything new…I’m far more creative now, you know. I’ve been writing this Batman: The Widening Gyre miniseries, and I’m stoned all the time when I’m writing it. And, I swear, I’ll write it, and then, it’s not so much blackout, but forget, so much so that the next morning, I go to read what I wrote, and it’s, like, I’m that fuckin’ little cobbler and elves came and fuckin' wrote it in the night, because I’m, like, "This is better than anything I’ve ever written before." I mean, like, I’ve done comics, but this is way better."

That really wraps it up nicely, doesn't it?

The Tale of Todd

I spent an hour or so the other day reading this eyewitness account by Comics Buyers Guide Senior Editor Maggie Thompson on the most recent court case involving Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane. It's pretty entertaining. Both Gaiman and McFarlane take the stand; my favorite part is probably here, at the end of Gaiman's lengthy testimony, where he denies that comics have a history of scantily- clad women. I mean, I understand that you don't want to give Todd's lawyers anything, Neil, but come on.

This trial, though, is really just an extension of the seminal 2002 trial between the two. To understand that trial, you really have to go back to 1992, when McFarlane tapped Gaiman to write the issue of Spawn you see to your left. McFarlane, along with several other top-selling comics artists of the day, had just left Marvel (and the Spider-Man title they created specifically to keep him happy) to form Image Comics. There, the artists would be unfettered by the restrictions of Big Brother Publisher, free to create comics that... were distinctly similar to the comics they'd created for Big Brother Publisher. Huh. Well, at least McFarlane's Spawn was somewhat different from Spider-Man. He wore a cape, after all.

Most of the Image guys, and McFarlane in particular, soon suffered from a fan backlash when it was noticed that their comics were really really poorly written. Todd, at least, came up with a novel strategy to rebut this claim: hire the very best writers in comics to each write an issue of Spawn. Gaiman joined Alan Moore, Dave Sim, and Frank Miller in writing Spawn #s 8-11. If you're wondering, they aren't particularly good comics, though they are a step up on the average issue of Spawn at the time.

Gaiman summarized the genesis of his issue quite well in his recent testimony. Essentially given no parameters by McFarlane, Gaiman decided that, if Spawn is a warrior of hell, he must have an opposite number from heaven. So Gaiman created Angela, a female warrior angel babe, and member of a host of female warrior angel babes. Furthermore, to establish her as a killer of Spawns, he created a past Spawn for her to, well, kill; he became known colloquially as Medieval Spawn. Gaiman later returned to Angela for a three issue mini-series, which introduced more female warrior angel babes.

All of this is fine and good, until Gaiman and McFarlane have a falling out. For which there are several reasons, but for our purposes now you only need to know that Gaiman became upset that McFarlane reprinted his issue of Spawn without paying Gaiman royalties, and turned both Angela and Medieval Spawn into action figures, also without compensation. Gaiman claimed he was co-creator of the characters, McFarlane claimed it was work-for-hire, they went to trial, and Gaiman won. At least, that's the 10-cent version.

I've always found it ironic that McFarlane, whom had made grandiose claims of being "emancipated" when he left Marvel, had been so willing to screw over another creator. In fact, the issue of Spawn immediately following Gaiman's, written by Cerebus creator and noted self-publishing iconoclast Sim, is a ham-handed allegory about the evils of Big Brother Publishers, and the freedom that Sim, McFarlane, and their creations were now afforded. It seems, though, in McFarlane's mind at least, that freedom didn't extend to those he hired.

The 2010 trial stems from the findings of the 2002 trial, with Gaiman now suing McFarlane over characters he considers derivative of those from Spawn #9. Two of them seem pretty straightforward, to my eyes: they are female warrior angel babes of the same host as Angela, which everyone agrees was Neil Gaiman's idea, and not Todd McFarlane's. The defense's retort? Oh, they're entirely different... because they've got different haircuts, and their skimpy armor is different from Angela's skimpy armor, and look, this one uses a gun! Um, yeah. Point (or two points, as it's two characters) for Gaiman.


The other claim is far more interesting, involving the character (and title) known as Dark Ages Spawn. This is a series from 2001 set in the Crusades, and featuring a knight tricked into becoming an agent of hell, who still fights to retain his nobility. Sound familiar? It did to Gaiman, who claims that Dark Ages Spawn is just Medieval Spawn by another name. To refute this claim, Dark Ages Spawn writer/creator Brian Holguin took the stand. He stated, basically, that he'd been only midly aware of the earlier character, did not have him in mind at all when creating his character, and that Todd had just told him to "come up with something cool" and he'd hit upon the Crusades theme on his own. Which all seems plausible enough. You have to wonder, though, if McFarlane wasn't just trying to stick it to Gaiman by tweaking one of the characters they'd been feuding (and would later go to court) over. On the other hand, considering that McFarlane at this time still believed that he owned the character outright, it wouldn't make sense not to just call him Medieval Spawn and attempt to cash in on whatever cachet the earlier character possessed. It's certainly conceivable that McFarlane didn't put two and two together and realize that he already had a Spawn running around that was a knight from the Crusades; after all he is the guy that "...couldn't even keep track of how many spikes were on the costume."

That was not an argument that worked for the judge, as she found for Gaiman in all counts, just as the judge in 2002 had done. She did not buy the argument that McFarlane was unaware of the similarities between Medieval and Dark Ages Spawn; or, perhaps more appropriately, that he should have been aware of them, which in the eyes of the justice system is the same thing. I love how, in her decision, she offers several interesting and plausible variations on the Spawn character that McFarlane has not considered. Are you a frustrated wannabe comic book writer, Judge Barbara Crabb?

McFarlane's detractors (of which there are many) look at Neil as a hero that finally called out the bully and won. Meanwhile, Todd's fans (of which there are also many) think the whole thing is preposterous, because Gaiman was just playing in Todd's sandbox (ugh, I hate that term), and anyway, the whole thing was clearly work for hire, even if there wasn't a contract explicitly stating so. The truth, of course, is probably somewhere in between. Gaiman is clearly at least the co-creator of Medieval Spawn and Angela, in that they would not exist today were he not there to think them up. Would Todd (or somebody) have come up with something else? Probably, but legally that doesn't really matter. At the same time, I do think that the working situation for these hired gun writers was always intended to be work-for-hire, and Gaiman is taking advantage of McFarlane's lack of early business sense in clearly defining terms. But that's Todd's problem, not Neil's, and while this latter trial does feel like piling on (particularly since Gaiman doesn't even care about the profits he's to receive, and will donate them to charity), it's certainly legally justified.

One thing we can all agree on, I think is this: Todd McFarlane has the absolute worst track record when it comes to court rooms. He's now 0-3 in big time court cases, with these two joining the fairly ridiculous Tony Twist case. McFarlane, a big NHL fan, named a mafia don after Twist, a notorious goon. Twist, he of 10 career goals and 1121 career penalty minutes, sued on the grounds that his character had been defamed and his marketability hurt. Actually, as I research this, he's actually 0-4, because the there were actually two lawsuits lost to Twist; the first one was thrown out by the judge after the jury awarded Twist $24.5 million; the second case, in which Twist was awarded $15 million, was upheld on appeal. The two eventually settled for $5 million, with McFarlane's company being driven into bankruptcy.

Litigation, unfortunately, is a large part of Todd McFarlane's legacy, as are toys, Korn videos, and home run balls-- pretty much anything but comics. McFarlane hasn't drawn Spawn regularly in over a decade; his last few attempts at a comeback have resulted in painfully missed deadlines. It's been suggested that comics were never Todd's passion; while I can't speak to that, he's certainly marginalized himself in an industry he once ruled. And that's a shame, because McFarlane definitely brought something to the table back in his day. He legitimately reinvigorated Spider-Man; his work, vibrant and energetic, was exactly how a teenage boy would draw a comic book. I always felt that McFarlane lost his edge when his work became too slick and polished. Still, at least it was work. What does he have now? Not Angela, Medieval Spawn, or any related characters, that's for sure.

The San Diego Stabbing

Well. This was surprising. A fight at a panel at the San Diego Comic Con ends in one man stabbing the other in the eye with a pen. Looking at the pictures of the assailant being led away in handcuffs made me sad; no one expects their day at a convention to end in a jail cell. Of course, no one expects their day to end with a pen in the eye, either, so I suppose my sympathy should be tempered.

Not to excuse either party in this situation, as violence is obviously not called for, but the convention organizers share a large part of the responsibility here. The hullabaloo about Comic Con panels has clearly gotten out of hand, and little has been done to adjust. At my one and only San Diego Comic Con, I ended up avoiding the panels almost entirely because Hall H, where the panels are held, was chaos. Lines for the big panels are so long, with people waiting in line all day for afternoon panels, that it seemed pointless. I don't really understand this need to attend a panel, to the point that you'd pay whatever the cost of tickets, transportation, and accommodations only to spend a day at the con sitting in a hallway.

One thing San Diego doesn't do that most other major cons do is clear the convention halls after each panel. This has lead to people sitting all day in convention halls, "attending" panels for which they have no interest, waiting for their panel later that afternoon. And that, apparently, was the cause of the dispute this year, and it's surprising, really, that there hasn't been more instances of violence.

This is a monster of the Con's creation. They've spent so much time building San Diego as the event of the year for all things nerd, and the panels as the must-attend for "true" fans of your given property, that people have become desperate to be in the room. And it gets worse every year, even though every panel is extensively covered from several sites, and video of most panels eventually makes it online. Is the need to ask Joe Quesada a question really that great?

The Beat this morning has several suggestions for alleviating the problem. I agree with most of them, but I think the idea of distributing tickets/collectible wrist bands for the panels will just cause more chaos. You'd just be shifting the problem, not solving it, and by creating a new "must-have" collectible, possibly adding on. I think, first off, San Diego has to start clearing out the panel rooms immediately. Also, it's time to start streaming the panels online, and perhaps even take online questions during the panel. Perhaps, if it's clear to all that you'll still be able to participate in the panels even if you're not in the room, some tension will be alleviated.

There's been a lot of talk over the last few years about the con leaving San Diego, with the thought being that the con has outgrown the hall. I wonder if this incident will be the tipping point that expedites the process. That Harry Potter fan may just have stabbed the Comic Con out of San Diego.

Things That Make You Go Hurrm

A couple months ago, comics rumor monger Rich Johnston reported that DC Comics, and perhaps more specifically parent company Warners, was exploring ways to expand Watchmen-- sequels, prequels, you name it. And this of course caused quite a kerfluffle, and this of course led to then-editorial director (and now co-publisher) Dan Didio to deny that DC would ever do anything of the sort. "Shocked, I am SHOCKED at this outrageous insinuation", I believe he was heard to say. And I meant to blog about it, and then I didn't, and it all went away.

Until this week, when right before Comic Con, Wired released a teaser for an upcoming interview with Alan Moore in which he claims that DC offered him back the rights to Watchmen in exchange for new stories. And he, of course, turned them down, because basically the characters are dead to him. So that was it, right? DC asked, Moore said go fuck yourselves, and we all went on with our lives. Well, here's what now-copublisher Didio told Comic Book Resources yesterday:

"[T]he one thing that we've been saying for a while is that 'Watchmen' is truly one of the premier projects out there, and if we were ever to proceed with [a sequel] the most logical place to start would be with Alan and Dave. For me, it's one of those things that's still one of the crown jewels in comics, and if you ever wanted to approach it, you'd have to do it in that manner – making sure the best talent available and possible was working on it."

So, obviously, they're doing it.

Which, hey, is their right, since they own the characters. And Moore did essentially base the Watchmen off preexisting characters, so there's that. And... it's still pretty shitty.

Thing is, to DC/Warners, Watchmen isn't just a book anymore, it's a tentpole franchise (that's the kind of thing they like to say) sitting around collecting dust because some asshole freak writer got his feelings hurt 20 years ago. And that must seem pretty insane to them. I mean, the book sold a million copies last year alone. A million copies. They'd be stupid not to make sequels! And the only thing stopping them is a guy that doesn't even work for the company any more?

The biggest- perhaps only- drawback for DC will be to find anyone willing to step over Moore's corpse and risk career suicide for this. Because "best talent available" means a lot of things, but if it's "in Alan Moore's league", well, there's basically Neil Gaiman, and he sure as hell isn't going to do it. Then there's the generation of British writers that followed in Moore's footsteps-- Morrison, Ellis, Ennis, ect. On the one hand, they might be intrigued to tackle such a daunting challenge; on the other, well, they'd be insane to do it. Certainly, none of them needs to be the new Watchmen guy, and it's really not worth ruining their careers to be universally deemed an inferior sellout. One guy that makes for an interesting possibility is Peter Milligan, whose just as good (if not better) then the others, but has never received the same kind of public acclaim, mainly because he has no feel for writing traditional superheroes. Would it be worth it to him to try and, finally, make a name for himself, basically going all-in?

Probably not. Try as I might, I just see the name "Judd Winick" floating around in my magic 8-ball. "Best available talent" will mean "the guy under contract that says yes". All we can really be sure of is, no matter what happens, it will not be very good. Because if there's one thing DC Comics has taught us under Dan Didio, it's no matter the project, no matter the concept, they will absolutely, positively fuck it up somehow.

Jonah Hex Makes Me Sad

I didn't see Jonah Hex, which, judging from the box office totals, makes me just like each and every one of you. In five weeks it's barely made $10 million dollars, and is now only playing on 65 screens nationwide. With a budget of $47 million dollars, that's a pretty awful return. It's the type of movie that gets people fired, and will, hopefully, keep director Jimmy Hayward from ever working again. And here's something interesting: I just looked at this guy's Wikipedia page, and he used to work for Pixar. Guess he didn't learn much about storytelling there....

None of that matters so much, except now the character of Jonah Hex will be forever tainted by this mess. And that's a terrible shame, because Jonah Hex is a terrific character, probably the preeminent western character in comics. Moreover, the current Jonah Hex series, by writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray and illustrated by a host of artists, is fantastic, probably my favorite comic book currently being published. It's also a fairly low-selling comic, and it's long been assumed that the book was safe because DC wanted to have a Jonah Hex comic on the stands when the movie came out. That certainly worked out well.

I have no doubt that Jonah Hex would make for a great movie; he's a gritty, complex anti-hero that carries death with him wherever he goes. Hex (especially in the current comic) is basically just a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western; it should translate to the screen seamlessly. Heck, given the character's tragic past and brooding nature, a more serious tone akin to Eastwood's Unforgiven would not be inappropriate.

What is inappropriate is to give Hex some kind of wonky power to reanimate the dead, a Morgan Freeman-style weapons smith, a superweapon right out of Wild Wild West, and, of course, Megan Fox. It's a Jonah Hex movie in name, and scars, only.

What really boggles my mind is how poorly DC Comics have allowed their properties to translate into movies. Even ignoring the success blood rival Marvel has had, DC's track record is astonishingly poor. Seriously, excepting the Batman movies (and even they have the two Joel Schumacher films), what's a good movie based on a DC Comic? The first two Superman movies are fine (and I'm of the camp that liked Superman Returns, mostly). Beyond that... what? V for Vendetta? Well, it was better then Watchmen. Conversely, look at the absolute disasters based on DC Comics' characters that have shamefully made their way into Razzie contention: Catwoman, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and, now, Jonah Hex.

It's particularly appalling because DC is owned by a movie studio, Warner Brothers. Please, don't give me that old "right hand doesn't know what the left is doing in a big company" song- and- dance. DC and Time Warner should want to make the very best films possible, based on the characters that they own, because it's an investment. Now, DC has had success in generating interest in the comics source material (a lot more then Marvel), which is great. But what they don't seem to get is that a poor translation will permanently stain the property. If a movie comes out based on anything- be it a comic, book, video game, whatever- and it's incoherent and asinine, people will assume that the source material is incoherent and asinine. Don't believe me? Here's what Roger Ebert wrote about Jonah Hex: "It's based on some DC Comics characters, which may explain the way the plot jumps around. We hear a lot about graphic novels, but this is more of a graphic anthology of strange occult ideas."

Thanks to Frank Miller, it's going to take years before Will Eisner's work on The Spirit will ever be viewed with anything but skepticism by the general public, and Jonah Hex will probably end up getting the comic canceled and sending the character back into hibernation. Mommas, don't let your cowboys grow up to be in bad movies.

1986- the Year We all Died

Recently, DC Comics released a collection that I've literally waited 25 years to read. The Atomic Knights was a strip that ran in the DC Sci-fi anthology series Strange Adventures every few months, rotating with such strips as Star Hawkins and the Space Museum. Fondly received, the strip ran for several years before falling largely into obscurity.

My first exposure to the strip was in the 1985 book The Comic Book Heroes, by Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones. I received this as a gift that year, for Christmas or my birthday, and it's probably my favorite gift of my childhood. Yes, even better then my Coleco Vision or GI Joe headquarters (though if I'd ever gotten the aircraft carrier...). It's the one time I can really ever recall my parents encouraging my burgeoning love of comics. I can remember, a few years later, my father asking me what I wanted for my birthday; when I suggested there were a few comics that I would like, he frowned and replied "No, I want to get you something good."

Anyway. That book... well, I devoured it. I can't say how many times I read the thing, but my copy is now well worn, and I can still recognize many of the panels reprinted in the book when I come across them. Covering Marvel and DC titles from the Silver and Bronze Ages (with a little bit of what was then the modern stuff thrown in), the book exposed me to a history of comics at a young age. I fully credit it with encouraging an interest in the comics from these eras that I've since cultivated in my adult years. I learned about the work of guys like Jack Kirby, Gardner Fox, Neal Adams and Gil Kane long before I actually it in person.

Much as I loved learning about the origins of Spider-Man, or the transition of Batman from silly, outdated '50s relic to campy '60s icon to fearsome '70s creature of the night, what really captured my imagination were (to steal a college basketball term) the mid-majors. Jacobs and Jones raved about several series that I'd never even heard of, with names like the Doom Patrol, Master of Kung-Fu, Adam Warlock, or the Secret Six. For the young me, this was like learning about the secret history of comics, one which remained tantalizingly out of reach.

Two strips in particular stood out to me: Sergio Argones, Denny O'Neil, and Nick Cardy's short lived western anti-hero Bat Lash, and the Atomic Knights. When I began going to comic cons regularly, and with a bit of cash to spread around, one of the first things I did was put together a complete set of the Bat Lash series (that's not as impressive as it may sound: the series only lasted eight issues, including the character's debut in the pages of the DC tryout mag Showcase). The Atomic Knights proved more elusive; because the strip hadn't run in its' own title, but in the pages of an anthology magazine, determining which issues featured Atomic Knights tales was difficult. Covers were no help; as I was to later learn, the Knights had only been featured on one Strange Adventures cover.

Which brings us to today. Or, rather, a few weeks ago, when I was strolling through my local comics shop and was stunned to see the just-released Atomic Knights hardcover collection. I'd been hoping for one of these for years, ever since DC first began their archives books in the late 1980s. When that line petered out a few years ago, I figured that was it (not to mention that DC's only midway through reprinting Jack Cole's Plastic Man...). But DC started a new classic reprint program in the interim, beginning with Jack Kirby's Fourth World saga, though at the time those looked to be singular publications. Since then, DC has moved onto other Kirby works, like The Demon and Kamandi, and even his Golden Age work for the company, such as the Sandman and the Newsboy Legion, finally building a nice little Kirby library. I quite liked the production values on the Kirby books, and presumably DC did too, because they've begun to use the same basic format in reprinting other works. Unlike the Archives books, which are a bit dull design-wise, these books are bright and colorful-- just like the comics they celebrate.

The Atomic Knights came from the editorial office of Julius Schwartz, for my money the premiere editorial vision of the Silver Age. And, yes, I'm including Stan Lee in that equation. Schwartz is mostly known for super heroes- he essentially launched the Silver Age by reviving the Flash- but science fiction is where he heart lay. The strip was written by regular Schwartz writer John Broome, regular scripter of Green Lantern and the Flash, and illustrated by Murphy Anderson. Though a superb penciller in his own right, Anderson is best known as an inker, most notably lending his pristine pen to Carmine Infantino's pencils on the Flash. I'm a big fan of Anderson, and I consider him to be the finest inker the field has ever seen, the rare talent that made every artist he worked over look better.

The basic premise of the series finds the world in disarray, after a sudden, short planetwide nuclear war. Enter Gardner Grayle, an average former soldier, and I do mean average-- Grayle even has a pre-war newspaper article that declares him to have been found average in every conceivable way. What an odd distinction. I suppose, in a post-Armageddon enviornment in which the world's population has been devastated, the average soldier is pretty darn good, because Grayle quickly establishes himself as the leader of the community of Durvale. The Knights gain their name when they don suits of Medieval armor to protect themselves from the deadly rayguns of the Black Baron, who has used his possession of Durvale's remaining food stocks to extort to town's survivors. After making quick work of the Baron and his forces, Grayle and the other Knights- Bryndon, one of the world's last remaining scientists, brothers Wayne and Hollis Hobard, schoolteacher Douglas Herald, and his sister Marene- form a permanent band of adventurers, with their armor continuing to serve as historic protection against science fiction threats.

One of the more interesting plot devices of the early Knights stories is the fact that the atomic war has killed all animal and vegetable life, meaning that mankind's remains must subsist on food stocks left behind before the war. This element gives the strip a dramatic weight missing in other post-Apocalyptic fiction, because we know that the survivors are living on borrowed time. It might be generations, but eventually, mankind is going to run out of food.

However, despite this doomsday scenario, not to mention the strip's basic premise, the Atomic Knights is not gloomy by any means. If anything, Broome and Anderson invest a kind of breezy optimism to their work. When the Knights go to New Orleans, it becomes an opportunity for Broome to express his obvious love for jazz. It's like watching an episode of Treme.

Some might find this tone to trivialize the strip's serious undertones. Certainly, were this a Marvel publication, we'd be treated to issue after issue of doom and gloom. I find it refreshing; it's one of the reasons I prefer Silver Age DC comics. In a Schwartz comic, you can be sure that the pathos would never get in the way of the adventure. Hell, that could've been their slogan.

Still, it's not a perfect strip. For their part, Jacobs and Jones believe that the feature lost it's edge when (and I suppose this next bit qualifies as a spoiler) it's revealed that the real hand behind mankind's destruction wasn't the governments of the world, but a race of underground mole people. Personally, I think that story's fine, but I do think the strip looses something when the Knights are able to rescue various vegetation to reseed the planet from Atlantis, which... oh, never mind. It's too convoluted. But, needless to say, without the threat of eventually running out of food, the comic looses a good deal of momentum.

And then there's Marene. The girl. The token girl. Now, Silver Age comics were never exactly a bastion for strong female role models, but Marene is a particularly egregious example of '60s sexism. Marene actively takes part in exactly two of the Knights' fifteen adventures, the first and the last: in the former; she sneaks into the last remaining suit of armor, deemed too small for a full-grown man, thus earning the nickname "the littlest Knight"; In the latter, she cuts her hair, puts on some baggy clothes, and infiltrates a gang of orphaned teenage boys terrorizing the town. No, it's not good.

But the comic, overall, lives up to my expectations. Anderson's work is just a joy to behold. I love that each of the Knights' armor is subtly different, so that you can tell which is which when they are in action. While there are certainly goofy moments, they are endearingly goofy. And I love that the strip doesn't focus on events that lead to mankind's destruction, but rather on the survivors' efforts to rebuild. Whatever it's flaws, the Atomic Knights is a lot of fun, and an obvious labor of love from the creators. Sadly, though, there was never a proper ending given to the Knights' adventures, they just end. Perhaps Broome decided that, if he'd reached the point that he was putting Marene in the stories, he'd run out of ideas. We'll never know.

It's a shame that this volume doesn't provide any insight to the Knights' behind-the-scenes origins or endings. While the Kirby books are chock full of extras, including both forwards and afterwards, Who's Who pages, and Kirby's rare Hunger Dogs graphic novel, The Atomic Knights features only a short forward by Anderson. And it's great- he includes a neat story about former DC writer/editor Mike W. Barr calling him on the day in 1986 that the fictional atomic war occurred- it's barely half a page. Also missing is the Knights' final appearance, in the pages of the Superman team-up book DC Comics Presents. And that's not a happy comic, not for fans of the Atomic Knights, but it does provide some closure. And more Anderson, which is surely a good thing.

Bill Watterson Speaks

Well, this site isn't exactly a Bill Watterson tribute site, but his work did inspire the new title, so it's only appropriate that I mention his first interview in fifteen years. Not coincidentally, that's also the number of years it's been since Watterson ended Calvin & Hobbes. And that seems really weird. I can remember the runup to the final strip like it was yesterday, and buying (and saving) the Inquirer that day. The last strip, if you've never seen it (or haven't for awhile) is really quite beautiful. It says goodbye in a hopeful, if sad, kind of way.

Watterson never wanted to be Jim Davis. I don't think he ever expected his strip to be so successful. If he did, he really may not have gone ahead with it, given how much he hates the spotlight. But thank God that never happened. I don't mind saying that I think Calvin & Hobbes is the last great comic strip, and one of the five greatest of all time. It's certainly the best of my lifetime.

It's amazing that the strip still has such power today. Unlike, well, just about every other cartoonist ever, Watterson was adamantly opposed to exploiting his characters in other mediums, so the books collecting the strip are it. Every other piece of merch that you see bearing Calvin and Hobbes' likeness is a bootleg; especially those retarded "Calvin pissing on things" stickers you see. Man, I hate those. I will admit, though, to owning a pair of Calvin & Hobbes boxer shorts; I'm not sorry at all. They are awesome (even if not very comfortable).

The interview itself is not that great. Watterson doesn't really say anything that he didn't say fifteen years ago, so it's really a lost opportunity. Really, the only thing exciting is learning that the Post Office is issuing a Calvin and Hobbes stamp! I didn't know that. How awesome. Hey, when you're dealing with Calvin & Hobbes, you've got to take what you can get.

Oh, and thanks to Dave for pointing that out.

Blackest Lost

Okay, so just bear with me a minute here. This will be cool. I promise.

So DC Comics is doing this big event right now called Blackest Night, which flows from what has been going on in the Green Lantern comics the last few years. You all know about the Green Lanterns, right? They're an interstellar police force that use Power Rings guided by their willpower. Anyway, writer Geoff Johns has been riffing on the concept by creating new Lantern Corps, using different colored rings powered by different emotions (I know, willpower isn't an emotion... just go with it). Red ring bearers, for example, are filled with rage. Yellow Lanterns (led by ex-GL Sinestro) instill great fear, blue lanterns inspire hope, and...

I'm loosing you, aren't I?

Okay. Blackest Night. Basically the dead have risen, powered by Black Lantern rings. And, as there has been a lot of death around here in the DC Universe the last few years, the whole thing seems centered on Earth. We've got a Black Lantern Aquaman, and a Black Lantern Martian Manhunter, and now a Black Lantern Hawkman (he died in the first issue), and many, many others. And representatives (the nominal leader) from each Corp have formed a little band, because only by the rings working together can the Black Lanterns be destroyed. That's the gist of it.

There, that wasn't so bad, was it?

Only in the last issue, and I suppose this is a spoiler, but the damn thing's been out since Christmas, so you only have yourself to blame if you don't know this, it was decided that one of each lantern isn't enough to kill all the Black Lanterns on Earth. So the rings duplicated themselves, and hastily chose deputies from amongst Earth's heroes and villains. The Flash, for example, inspires great hope, so he's the Blue Lantern. The Atom feels great compassion, so he's the Indigo Lantern... yes, indigo. I'm not making this up.

Look, it might be easier at this point if you go to the Wikipedia page. I'll wait.

So the wife and I read this, awhile back, and she asked me what I thought of Johns' choices for Lanterns. And I think they're fine, mostly. Scarecrow, as the Yellow Lantern, makes sense, but is a little too obvious. I like Lex Luthor as the Orange Lantern, which feeds off greed (my friend Kevin was especially unimpressed by Luthor as greed agent, suggesting that he should be the Blue Lantern, because he fights Superman, and you've got to feel a lot of hope to do that. I think it's an interesting premise. I don't agree with it, but I think it's interesting). The only one I really have a problem with is Mera, Aquaman's little-used wife (who has, at least, played a big role in the series thus far) as the Red Lantern. That's the best you could come up with? Mera?

Anyway. While we were chatting about this, and probably because we were finishing rewatching season 5 of Lost on DVD, I started speculating which characters on Lost would wear which rings, if the same thing happened on the Island. And, you know, there's a lot of dead people on the Island with axes to grind. Who represents will? Fear? Rage? Love? Hope? And the rest?

Yep, that's it. That's what this post is about. Sure took a while to get here, huh? But moving on. Hillary and I talked about it for a while (meaning: most of the rest of the night, and I think it probably kept both of us up), and we managed to assign rings to everybody. I think it's a fun game, and I encourage you to try it. Pick your favorite show- or, better yet, your family and friends- and try to decide who would get what ring, if the dead were rising. Only they're not zombies. Just very, very zombie-like.

1. Green Lantern/Willpower: Jack Sheppard. I know: too easy. But it's the only real choice. Jack is the guy who's totally dominated by his iron, stubborn, will. He's the guy who is always chasing off into the jungle, and carrying dynamite in his backpack, even though he's the doctor and the survivors' most precious resource. He's the guy that wanted to perform his own appendectomy. Hell, he's the guy who refused to believe that Locke had moved the Island even after watching it disappear. So this isn't really a validation of Jack as a hero, just an admittance that he is... shall we say focused to the extreme.

2. Yellow Lantern/Fear: Sayid. Well, duh. I think that the Yellow Lantern Corps might have been invented with Sayid in mind. I also think that Naveen Andrews would make an excellent Sinestro in the upcoming Green Lantern movies, but I digress.

3. Red Lantern/Rage: Sawyer. I thought about this one for quite awhile. Both Ben and Sayid would have a great claim on this one as well, but I think Sawyer takes the cake. His entire life (much like Batman) has been built around revenge for his dead parents. His personality for much of the show was really just a mask; it's not until this last season, trapped with the Dharma Initiative in the '70s, that Sawyer begins to come into his own. And then it's all taken away, the life he's built, and he watches the woman he loves pulled to her death, knowing that she goes to her grave doubting his love for her. So yeah, I'd say rage is Sawyer's primary motivation.

4. Orange Lantern/Avarice: Ben. If we'd done this around seasons 1, 2, or 3, no doubt this would be Sawyer. And I don't really like reducing Ben to being all about greed. But he is still a villain, after all. And almost every action he's ever made has been about preserving himself and his power. And, I think, his speech to Jacob, his declaration of "what about me?" ultimately reveals a lot about him.

5. Blue Lanterns/ Hope: Locke. What is Locke's defining character trait, it it's not hope? He wants to be special, desperately, and on the Island he finally succeeds, or so he thinks. Unfortunately, this optimistic desperation seems to leave him constantly exploited by others: first his father, who tricks him into giving up a kidney; then the cult he joins, and the police that see him as an easy way to infiltrate it; Ben, over and over again; and finally Jacob's unnamed enemy, who uses Locke as a pawn to both manipulate Jack into returning to the Island (to, ultimately, be involved in the Incident), and to get close to Jacob. I'm not saying these are their best traits, only their most dominant....

6. Star Sapphires/Love: Juliet. This one was all Hillary. It was definitely the toughest one to identify. For one thing, the Star Sapphires are only women, so that eliminates much of the cast (including Desmond, sadly). Kate? Please. Sun? Oh, don't give me Sun. Anyone that would abandon their child, perhaps forever, on a wild revenge kick doesn't know a damn thing about love. Even amongst the dead, there's not much. Thought about Penny, but she's not really a part of the main cast, and she's never even been on the Island (that we know about.... bum bum BUM). But Juliet...? Yeah, Juliet works. First off, her whole reason for accepting Richard's offer is to help her sister. And she keeps working to try and save the women impregnated on the Island, even after watching so many die. And there's Goodwyn, and Jack, and Sawyer... she does crazy things, for all of them, because she loves them. We watched the season 5 finale after talking about this, and Hillary must have said 50 billion times "she's so the Star Sapphire", to the point I almost had to slug her. But she's right.

7. Indigo Tribe/ Compassion: Hurley. This stems from my belief that Hurley is the heart and soul of the show. He was always the great mediator amongst the survivors, while never wanting to be the leader. I think it's telling that, on an island full of liars- Ben, Kate, Sawyer- people don't lie to Hurley often. Even Jacob, when he visits him, is entirely straight with him. Perhaps that's why the dead want to visit Hurley.

Okay, I lied. That wasn't cool at all, was it?

Marvel Comics is Run by a Bunch of First Graders

I just wanted to take a minute to talk about a little controversy that the so-called House of Ideas stirred up in the nerd-verse earlier this week. Here's the gist: longtime rival DC Comics recently hit upon a neat marketing thing by offering them rings based upon the various Lantern Corps running around in Green Lantern and Blackest Night. Retailers could order bags of the rings and do whatever they wished with them, and collectors could have fun putting together a set of power rings. Here's the catch: in order to a bag of rings, retailers first had to meet a minimum order number of a certain comic book. In other words, to order a bag of blue rings, retailers had to order, say, 25 copies of Booster Gold (I'm just guessing at the exact criteria). Nearly all of the books tied to the ring promotion were among DC's lower selling titles, and each jumped up several thousand units for the ring tie-in issue.

In order to understand this story fully, you must understand how comic books are sold to comic book shops. Comics are sold as a non-returnable items to shops at a deep discount; it's been this way since the direct market supplying comic book specialty stores began three decades ago. The reasoning then for non-returnability (unlike traditional newsstands, which have always been able to return their materials) was that comic shops were also in the back issue business, so why would they want to return comics? They'll just sell them later. So comics remain an unreturnable item, even though the back issue market for comics published after 1980 or so has long since collapsed, and most stores have tons of leftover, overordered merchandise with very little hope on which to turn a profit. Some store discount this stuff almost immediately; it's not uncommon to find comics selling for a fraction of their original price within a few months of their release.

This is very important to remember, whenever you read anything about comic book sales, positive or negative: those figures represent sales to retailers, not readers. I often hear retailers shrug and happily say, "hey, we screwed up and ordered too many". Which is true, I suppose. But the fact is that retailers bear all the burden whether a book is a success or not. If Marvel or DC promote something as being the be-all and end-all event that every comics fan must take part in, and it flops, well, the editors have to read some nasty posts in the forums, and have some uncomfortable moments at convention panels. But the retailers are the ones stuck with the comics.

So back to the main point: DC offered a cool promotional item, and used it as a chance to prop up some of their lower-selling titles. Or they inflated the sales of several of their weak titles for a month by bribing retailers. I guess it all depends on how you look at it. Keep in mind that DC didn't say anything to retailers about how they distributed the rings. Some offered them for free with the purchase of the title they came with (which is what I would have done, were I a retailer, incidentally). Others just gave them away. Some probably sold them individually, or as sets, for an inflated price, because there are some shady comic book dealers out there. Whatever.

So we've got most of the factors here: nonreturnability; a promotion tied to comic book sales. Which brings us to what Marvel did this week: they announced that they would send retailers a free variant comic book for the covers to the unsold comics tied to the ring promotion. Let me make sure you've got this straight: Marvel announced that they would take returns on DC comics. And they were offering to give retailers a bribe for taking part in their little scheme.

The hammer of internet nerdom was swift. Most felt that Marvel was being juvenile. Some were offended that Marvel was encouraging retailers to destroy perfectly good comic books (by allowing the retailers to send just the cover, not the whole thing). Marvel editor Tom Brevoort tweeted about the controversy (and I know what you're thinking: if this is a tweet, why is it so long? Did he really just keep typing all these entries in little 140-character bursts, stringing them all together until they made sense? Yes, actually, he did. Which proves the problem with Twitter: you can't make any kind of substantial point. Imagine if I was tweeting all this crap right now. What a pain in the ass that would be). I give Brevoort credit for standing up and responding to the critics (especially because, as an editor, he probably had nothing to do with it). But his response is bullshit, and here's why.

Brevoort says that Marvel is "in the business of selling content rather than Cracker Jack prizes...[w]e're not making any money on the deal, but we are helping our retailer partners during a tough economic time." Oh, that's nice. See, they're not trying to embarrass their competitor by pointing out that people were more interested in the toys then the comics. Nope, they're just trying to help out. Which means that they'll be taking back returns on their own unsold comics, right? Well no: "[Marvel won't be accepting trade-ins for unsold Dark Reign and The List books] because there, what we were selling and what the retailers were buying were the books."

Now, that doesn't sound like bullshit, does it? Here's the thing that Brevoort so conveniently overlooks: variant covers. And what are they? Well, they are a marketing stunt, an incentive that comic book companies regularly offer to retailers for ordering a certain number of comic books. And this is something DC does all the time, yes, but nowhere near the extent of Marvel Comics.

Here's an analysis of Marvel's month to month sales, courtesy of The Beat. They do this every month, and as I read them, one thing keeps popping up to me, over and over: variant covers. Some months, it looks as if Marvel is publishing more comics with variant covers then without. Retailers order a certain number of copies of books (a number set by the publisher) and they can order the variant, or variants, as there are often more then one per comic, each with an escalating order number. So here's what happens: retailers hit these thresholds, order the variant, and sell them at inflated prices. Ebay's loaded with them, conventions are flooded with them. It's hard to say how much Marvel's sales month to month are inflated by variant covers, and I'm not about to try and figure it out, but it's safe to say it's a significant percentage. After all, they keep doing them.

This damn post has gone on much longer then I expected. I just wanted to make a simple point: Marvel engages in the very practice they are decrying- offering retailers a carrot to inflate their orders- multiple times a month. And this whole return offer is just a naked attempt to embarrass DC, plain and simple. So here's my challenge, to Brevoort and his bosses: stop the variant covers. Offer returns to retailers for comics that have been bought solely to hit the variant cover insentive. Shore up your own glass house before you go thorwing stones.

My Wallpapers Part 2: Frank Quitely

Since I just wrote about him, it seemed like a good idea to post some wallpapers I've made from the works of the great Frank Quitely. Surprisingly few, really, considering my admiration for his work. So many of his images are so iconic, I think, they tend to be made into wallpapers a lot, and I've tried to avoid those. I suppose that I'll have to remedy that. Anyway, these are all 1024 x 768, as usual.

The Comics Journal #300 Conversations: Dave Gibbons and Frank Quitely

Among my Christmas presents this year was the 300th issue of the Comics Journal, a bit of a bittersweet milestone, as it's the last regular issue for the foreseeable future. I've always appreciated the Journal, even though I found it less enjoyable over the last few years. And I'll be sorry to see it go, even if it's not really gone; the Journal will be expanding it's online presence while publishing a few special print issues a year.

But back to #300. The Journal has always done a fine job with special issues, and this one is no different. As editor/overlord Gary Groth explains, the Journal editors brought together several creators from different generations together for informal conversations. The results, we hope, will enlighten us all about how comics have changed over the last 20-30 years. So I thought it would be fun to read each one and post my thoughts and reactions. I'll be reading these, more or less, in my own order of interest. First up: Dave Gibbons and Frank Quitely.

The first time I ever saw Dave Gibbons' work would have been during his Green Lantern run in the early '80s, but the first time I became aware of it would've been the same as most everyone else: Watchmen. And I think, frankly, that he's more or less coasted on that; the only other work of note that he produced was the Give Me Liberty cycle, of which I'm not a fan. Frank Quitely, on the other hand, is just about the best artist in mainstream comics at the moment. My first exposure to his work (I think) was the Vertigo series 2020 Visions, and I thought it astonishing. I've bought pretty much everything he's done since then, and Quitely's name on the book is one of the few ways to guarantee I'll read something.

Anyway. Judging by the bits I've read of the other conversations as I flipped through the Journal, I'm afraid that I may have chosen to start with the least interesting first. There's sadly very little discussed between the two men that could be considered engrossing. Much of the conversation revolves around the effect of computers upon working methods, and I think the most interesting thing said here is that Frank Quitely still draws on paper because he feels he needs to have the original art to sell in order to make a living.

Think about that for a minute: Frank Quitely, one of the most successful artists in the industry today, can't survive on his page rate and royalties alone. And sure, a lot of that has to do with being a British national working for an American company, and the lousy exchange rate, but still. Quitely's been the artist of some of the most notable books published in the last decade; one would think he'd at least feel financially stable enough to abandon drawing on paper if he wanted to.

Which leads me to a topic that I would have loved for the two to discuss, but sadly is never brought up: perennials. Gibbons, of course, is one of the creators of the ultimate perennial, which will probably always be one of the best selling books in any given year (though probably never again quite like the last year); Quitely, I suspect, will have a perennial of his own with All-Star Superman. How much does this mean to the artist? Will they continue to see monies from books that continue to sell years after their original publication? Is having a perennial on the shelf something to strive for, or does it still not matter in comparison to having the hot new comic on the stands?

One other item from the conversation struck me: the changed role of editors in comics. When Gibbons broke in, editors were still very much teachers, and his work would often come back with notes of things that needed to be improved. But Quitely, 20 years later, has never had such interaction with his editors. He notes that, nowadays, editors have probably never worked as writers or artists previously, and aren't likely to offer any kind of tutorial on the mechanics of storytelling to young talent. And I thought: yeah, that's true, why is that? Used to be, guys like Geoff Johns and Bendis would get a staff job, just like Marv Wolfman and Len Wein and so many others did in the '70s and '80s. But you don't see that any more. My guess is, probably, because the economics have changed. Most of those writers and artists became editors (or the editors started writing) to sublimate their incomes. And guys like Johns and Bendis make plenty of money- and have plenty of say in the direction of the respective fictional universes they shape- without having to worry about the letter page getting to the typesetter before the deadline.

This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I'm not sure it's a good thing either. You've now got at least a generation's worth of editors that have little power, really, compared with the talent; again, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but what if the talent's wrong? What about when a writer wants to have the spouse of a prominent Justice League member raped? Does the editor have the position to say no, and be backed by his bosses? At the end of the day, I think the paradigm has shifted towards the talent. Again, this in and of itself is not a bad thing, but without the likes of Archie Goodwin behind the scenes, are we really better off?

But I digress. You'll note that the things I found most interesting in this conversation weren't really things Gibbons and Quitely talked about at all. At the end of the day, these are two guys who are pretty satisfied with their careers, but pretty far removed from comics as a whole. Sadly, it feels like so many other topics are left on the table untouched. Like: these men are primarily known for having worked with two of the most brilliantly idiosyncratic writers in comics. Shouldn't their names have come up a few times? All in all, this conversation feels like a lost opportunity.