EXTRA MEDIUM #1: Batman: Arkham Asylum

Comic books don't stay in comic books, and that fascinates me.

It's hardly a phenomenon. I know. It's part of the point. For better or worse, most comics - certainly the superhero ones - are produced in the hopes they will lead to films, cartoons, action figures, video games, backpacks, beach towels and bubble baths.

Regardless, there's something about the process of adapting a story from one medium to another that intrigues me. Maybe it's an intellectual curiosity that comes from nothing more complicated than the childlike surprise at seeing characters I had previously known only as frozen subjects on a page become more defined in a film or even a cartoon. Maybe it's because Hollywood's continuing trend of adaptations and remakes has so overtaken film that it seems like adapting a story from one medium to another has almost become an art form in and of itself.

Or maybe I'm just pissed off about organic webshooters. I don't know.

Extra Medium is a (weekly? bi-weekly?) column about this fascination of mine, of what happens when the stories in comics end up in films, television, books, and even video games. I may also explore the opposite: when stories from other media end up in comics. We'll see. This is something new to me and I don't have a lot of rules just yet.

For my first subject, I decided to look at the new PC/Console game Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's a fitting choice because, as I realized while I considered what to write about in my first column, the game is indirectly responsible for Extra Medium. It was a commercial for Batman: Arkham Asylum that renewed in me the desire to own a game console system - my last was a PlayStation 2 which I sold around 5 years ago. My lovely and generous girlfriend bought me an XBox 360 for my birthday, and since then I've been stunned by how utterly cinematic video games have become. I've been thinking a lot about whether or not certain video games could even be correctly called "games" anymore, rather than interactive movies. So when TWC formed and folks were asked what they wanted to write about, since I already had the blurring lines between media on the brain, Extra Medium was the result.

So, without any further delay other than a caveat that I have never even considered reviewing a video game before today so I hope I don't sound too dumb, I give you the first installment of Extra Medium.

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Batman: Arkham Asylum
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Platforms Offered: PlayStation 3, XBox 360, PC

The Joker goes in and out of Arkham so often, they may as well rename it "Harley." This time, he plans to stay for a while. Backed by an army of muscle from Blackgate Prison and a handful of Batman's deadliest nemeses, the Joker plans to put Batman through the most hellish night of his life in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

In his BATMAN ALWAYS WINS column, Matt Springer wrote "There is no such thing as a "definitive Batman."" It's a strong statement, one I agree with, and it's part of what makes something like Batman: Arkham Asylum a challenge to create. Unlike Batman games of the past, Arkham Asylum isn't attached to any specific Batman film or TV show. That left the creators (among them, writer Paul Dini) with a long history of different interpretations of the dark knight from which to choose.

The result is a perfect marriage of the more recent and successful incarnations of Batman. In spite of the stellar success of Nolan's films, visually most of the ideas in Arkham Asylum seem to come from the comics. Characters like Joker, Scarecrow, and of course Batman himself look much more like the guys you'd find in the funnybooks. Of course, Nolan's influence is there in other ways. The game's music sounds mostly to have been culled from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, though every great once in a while you're treated to a thunderous clanging of bells and singing that sounds like it could be a Danny Elfman contribution to one of Tim Burton's films. Also, during some truly disturbing Scarecrow sequences, things like the distortion of Scarecrow's voice and the red glow of his victims' eyes resemble how the character was depicted in Batman Begins. Batman: The Animated Series isn't forgotten. Arkham Asylum's creators recruited some of their talent from Batman: The Animated Series veterans including Kevin Conroy as Batman, Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn, and of course Mark Hamill as the Joker.



Along with Joker, players will find themselves locking horns with Harley Quinn, Zsasz, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc and Bane though they're hardly the only super-baddies in Arkham. Just about any lover of superhero comics will love all the references - obscure or otherwise - to the broader mythology of Batman. Early in the game, the Riddler makes radio contact with Batman and challenges the dark knight to find dozens of objects Riddler's hidden on the island. They're not necessary to complete the game but you get rewards for completing challenges (I don't know them all, because honestly while I've finished the game I never managed to find everything). Some are simply "Riddler trophies" in hard-to-get-to spots. Some are patient interview tapes with inmates like Joker, Croc, Ivy, etc. Then there are certain items comicdom's favorite smart-ass didn't hide himself, but have to be identified with only his riddles for guidance, and many of these are objects belonging to, or newly emptied prison cells of, the absent members of Batman's rogue's gallery. While the villains don't appear in the game, players will find references to Penguin, Catwoman, Two-Face, the Ventriliquist, the Calendar Man, Mister Freeze, Mad Hatter and more. Mentioning my favorite of these fun additions would be a bit of a spoiler, so simply allow me to say the developers figured out a very inventive way to include Clayface in the game. And of course, all of these little references have potential to be more than simply references should Arkham Asylum enjoy a sequel, since Joker's actions have allowed for most of the aforementioned bad guys (including Riddler) to run free.

Also, while Batman: Arkham Asylum isn't the video game version of the Grant Morrison/Dave McKean GN of the same name (that would be one trippy damn video game), there's obviously a lot of inspiration from that story, as well as numerous direct references. The dark, tragic story of Amadeus Arkham is told in the game directly from the mouth of Arkham's ghost. Chapters of the tale can be accessed when the player finds stone tablets hidden in secret chambers, caves, and other various nooks and crannies throughout Arkham. Readers of the Morrison/McKean GN may notice the shapes of beetles littered throughout the architecture of Arkham's buildings. If you care to, you can even find Arkham's gravestone.

As far as its playability, controlling Batman is surprisingly easy. I'm still new to the most recent generation of video games, and I was worried there would be a complex button combination for every single move, but instead Arkham Asylum uses what the developers call a "freeflow" combat system. In other words, while there are maybe two moves that require specific button combos, for the most part there's one button to hit, one button to counter. The game decides exactly what Batman is going to do when you hit either button (e.g., whether he kicks a guy in the face or punches him in the stomach). It sounds almost too easy, but it's difficult to truly master. Eventually, you'll find yourself in the middle of crowds of literally a dozen or more thugs - some with automatic rifles, electrified batons, knives, and sometimes even boxes or cinder blocks they'll toss at your head - along with a Bane-ified thug or two, and it won't seem like child's play then. There's also a series of great stealth attacks. You can grab bad guys with grappling guns and pull them off catwalks. You can hang below them from a ledge, reach up, bang their heads on a railing and then throw them off. You can hang upside down from gargoyles (you had to know there'd be gargoyles), grab a thug, pull him up a wall and then hang him from the gargoyle. You can even wait until another thug walks under the first guy you strung up, cut the rope with a well-placed bat-a-rang, and take out the thug with the unconscious body of his buddy. As the game progresses, you get more and more gadgets (starting out with only bat-a-rangs), and your options just multiply from there.



What becomes more and more clear as you progress in the game is that the developers were committed to bringing gamers an experience that truly felt like a Batman story, and that came as close as possible to making the players feel like Batman. One interesting thing to note is that, as far as I can tell, there is no way to kill anyone in Batman: Arkham Asylum. I've tried a number of ways and so far I haven't been able to do it. First, I tried pulling a thug off a security tower. As the thug fell, a rope appeared on his ankle and he dangled rather than splatted. Next, I tried using Batman's grappling gun to pull a bad guy into an electrified pool of water. No matter how close I pulled him to the pool, like an overprotective parent at the beach, the game wouldn't let him go in the water. Finally, I tried using the same grappling gun to yank a bad guy into a seemingly bottomless pit. I succeeded, but just as I thought I had changed the dark knight forever by making him take the life of another, the game produced a splashing sound. And mind you, Batman: Arkham Asylum is no kiddy story. There are some fairly gruesome and scary bits. So I doubt the developers went out of their way to stop Batman from being able to kill bad guys because of worries about keeping it kid-friendly. They did it because that's who Batman is.

It also helps that Batman: Arkham Asylum feels like a video game created to accommodate a story, and not the other way around. Maybe more experienced video game reviewers would disagree, but to me it felt like the game had very few honest-to-God Boss Fights. While you eventually defeat each bad guy, the story doesn't follow the usual model of getting through a level, ending with a bad guy you fight, and then on to the next level. There are some villains you never really fight in a face-to-face sense, and there are some you never even capture. You could even argue, in at least one instance, that defeating the villain means escaping him, not beating him up or capturing him. It makes it feel like a genuine Batman story. With the exception of, if you so choose, spending hours and hours finding all of Riddlers hidden extras, Batman: Arkham Asylum feels like something that could easily be a story in a comic book. Nothing about it would feel awkward or forced.



I have to make a special mention of one aspect of the game that is absolutely stunning - Scarecrow. Three times, Scarecrow hits you with his fear gas, and the sequences that follow are the best reasons to play this game. As Batman, you find yourself in a nightmarish abyss, with howling vortexes spinning above and below while you try to navigate floating islands of reality to hide from a Godzilla-sized Scarecrow with a Freddy-Kruegger glove sporting syringes instead of claws. I really don't want to say too much about these sequences because, of everything that happens in the game, these are the last things I would want to spoil. Suffice to say they're scary, they're brilliant, and in one part they lead to something I really never thought I'd see - a video game's retelling of the deaths of Bruce Wayne's parents that is genuinely touching and powerful.

I guess I'll follow the best thing I can say about this game with my biggest complaint, and it's fitting because they're related. The only thing I HATE about Batman: Arkham Asylum is that it uses an auto-save feature. In other words, the game automatically saves your progress in certain spots, and writes over everything you've done. Meaning you can't just, for example, save the moment before a Scarecrow sequence starts because you love it and just might want to play that part again and again and again.

Overall, anyone who has ever cared at all about Batman's exploits should be thrilled at the idea of playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's a testament to how the advances in video game technology have made it possible to not only make games that are more fun, but games that are more cinematic, aesthetically pleasing, and even emotionally powerful. It just depends on who's holding the reins.

This Column is DOOMED! - One: Adventures Great & Small

I don't remember 1963.

I wasn't even alive yet, so don't expect me to wax nostalgic about the year, or tell you about the various things that were going on. According to Wikipedia, though, it started on a Tuesday, JFK was assassinated, Pope Paul VI came to power, ZIP codes were introduced in the United States, the first NHL draft was held in Montreal, Lester Pearson became the new Prime Minister of Canada, the first X-Men comic was released, Tab cola debuted, Dr. No was screened in US theatres, many other interesting bits of trivia, and Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani created the Doom Patrol.

Well, okay, it doesn't specifically mention that Drake and Premiani created the Doom Patrol in the run down of 1963, but in My Greatest Adventure #80, with a cover date of June 1963, they did just that. Prior to that issue, My Greatest Adventure seemed to have been an anthology title with multiple one-off tales per issue. After #80 the series continued on to #85 with tales mostly about the Doom Patrol (there are still a couple issues with other back-up features), before changing its title officially to The Doom Patrol. [My Greatest Adventure #80 - 85 are reprinted in The Doom Patrol Archives No. 1]

The intial team consists of the core of what you tend to think of when you envision a "classic" Doom Patrol line-up: The Chief, Robotman, Negative Man, and Elasti-Girl. Now, I'm not going to say that the stories are overlooked masterpieces or anything of the sort, but they are by and large fun. The dialogue is overwrought, the science is fantastically flawed, and the characterization is paper-thin, but this was the 60's: all of the the books were written like this. Which is actually partially the interesting thing; "strange heroes" with flaws coming up against equally "strange" villains like General Immortus as well as the scrutiny of the public around them. Almost sounds like a Marvel book, doesn't it? Issue #83 even has them fighting against themselves with the team trying to stop a Negative Man running rampant.

It's also somewhat quaint what's considered "strange" at this point. A guy in a wheelchair with incredible intelligence. A robot with a human brain. A woman who can shrink or grow at whim. A man in bandages that can create a "negative" version of himself that escapes his body to fly about and do whatever. Seems almost normal these days.

I'll have more to say about story when I take a look at what becomes of "Volume 1", however, what I do admire from the onset is the artwork from Bruno Premiani. It doesn't quite have the same economy of line, but it seems clear from this one of the influences on Mike Allred. Particularly when it comes to Allred's work on X-Force and X-Statix.

Next: Beast Boy and the ties to the DCU and everyone's got something to hide except me and my monkey.

Albany Comic Con Witchblade Variant Cover

Here's the Matthew Dow Smith variant cover for Witchblade #131, the start of a new storyline by writer Ron Marz, and available exclusively at the Albany Comic Con on Sunday, November 1st at the Holiday Inn on Wolf Road in Colonie. Click the image below for a larger look at the art.


And the solicitation information for the issue:

Witchblade #131
“A New Beginning”
(W) Ron Marz (A) Stjepan Sejic
(Cov) Sejic, Chris Bachalo, John Tyler Christopher

A new status quo begins here! Emerging from the ashes of “War of the Witchblades”, the new Witchblade bearer must struggle to adjust to her new responsibility with the reunified gauntlet. But will the gauntlet allow her a moment of respite in the wake of war and loss? Featuring a cover by regular artist Sejic and two additional variant covers by Chris Bachalo (Amazing Spider-Man) and newcomer John Tyler Christopher!

Cover A – Stjepan Sejic
Cover B – Chris Bachalo
Cover C – John Tyler Christopher

Full Color, 32 pages, $2.99, ongoing series.

Thanks to Ron Marz and Albany Comic Con organizer John Belskis.

Daily Breakdowns 024 - Nancy With The Laughing Face

The John Stanley Library: Nancy
Writing and Layouts by John Stanley
Art by Dan Gormley
Published by Drawn and Quarterly. $24.99 USD

I remember when this book was announced, and some respected blogger types started going on about it, and saying, "Jesus, now I gotta like John Stanley?" The more you get into comics, the further there is to go, and it's often exciting and revelatory to be introduced to another old master, but now and then it feels like a chore as well. What I mean is, anyone interested in reading Stanley's work should start with Little Lulu, available in a series of cheap paperbacks from Dark Horse. There is no really compelling reason for Drawn and Quarterly to publish something called, "The John Stanley Library," and focus entirely on Stanley's late career work for Dell Comics other than the fact that they couldn't get the rights to the earlier stuff, and almost certainly D&Q cartoonist Seth, a Stanley fan who has designed the covers for the series, holds great affection for this period of Stanley. It actually feels like Seth wants the reader to experience this early '60s work--intended to be disposable humor fare suitable for a rainy day or long drive--the way he did, in its crappy original presentation inside, but he can't help gussying up the package with his distinctive font, bold colors and embossing promising a rich, Sethlike experience with previously unheralded work.

It's a nice design (aside from the back cover sticker, which doesn't want to adhere to the raised cloth binding), but a bit overpowering, especially when the contents are kept with their dull, original four color printing and faux-newsprint backing. Whether this is the right presentation for these comics is a subjective argument akin to Beatles fans preferring the original mono or new stereo mixes. On the one hand, readers of a certain age who have fond associations with reading old newsprint comic books will probably enjoy this facsimile, while prospective new young readers may be confused or at least faced with a mild barrier towards engagement with the work.

In addition to being overpowering, Seth's cover with the abstract, almost inhuman white face of Nancy against the dynamic field of orange suggests that this will be the definitive Nancy work. There is no information in the book itself about Nancy being a creation of Ernie Bushmiller, or appearing in newspapers for almost 30 years before this comic book spin-off in which he had no involvement. The book's design is at cross purposes, its lavishness demanding consideration as a major work but with no essay to support this or give the strip any grounding in the context of Stanley's career or how it compares to Bushmiller's Nancy. The half page Stanley bio at the end is all the reader gets, the conclusion about Stanley leaving comics bitterly left unexplored, a tease.

If this all sounds negative, well, no. Seth is a huge talent, and it may be a case where his enthusiasm gets the better of him here; like a hotshot superhero artist, he's calling attention to himself rather than serving the stories. But it beats a brown paper wrapper. Perhaps we should at long last get to the comics themselves.

Stanley is considered one of the most consistently funny comics writers of all time, and here he offers several stories for each of the five issues collected. from one to eleven pages. I don't know Bushmiller's Nancy that well, but Stanley seems to stick to the basic model of Nancy being an irrepressible but basically decent smartass and troublemaker, with Sluggo her dupe, pal and soulmate in equal measure, and with a fair amount of moxie of his own. However, Stanley does introduce a new character, Oona Goosepimple, a nice but spooky-looking, cat-eyed girl with Addams Family-style relations. She appears in a couple stories, but other than that, it's standard, non-mystical hijinks for Nancy and Sluggo.

The artist, Dan Gormley, is a bit of a mystery, but was a frequent artist for Dell and did other work with Stanley. Although he reportedly had a style distinctive enough to be recognized as his own in earlier years, for licensed work like this, he subsumes it, so the results are successful but workmanlike. Perhaps only with Oona, where he was creating a character from scratch, is there a flash of originality, but it's not like those stories indicate a significantly higher level of engagment. He's fine, but seems to be under no illusion that the work he was doing was intended to be disposable kids' entertainment. Probably his greatest accomplishment here is the boyish joy he captures in Sluggo's face, quite a contrast from the frequent blankness of Nancy.

The real reason to get the book, and presumably future volumes, is that Stanley is funny. Stories involving Nancy trying to cover up the damage she thinks her new dog is making, or sight gags involving Sluggo wearing a tortoise costume, work like a charm, and the story of Sluggo seemingly making a rapid career ascent to bank president is well constructed. Stanley knows his business, and his hit ratio for gags is high. Although not quite an essential work, there are plenty of laughs to be had.

Damn, I guess I like John Stanley now.

Monday's Musings

I regularly come across things that I don't really want to write a full-fledged column about, but still want to throw my two cents in on. So, I'm putting together this thing for every Monday at noon that does a round up of various thoughts, ideas, and ephemera that I don't want to meld into any sort of coherence. It's not linkblogging, just scattershot ideas.

• After what I think has been years of waiting for Spider-Woman #1, the first issue of the new series finally landed this past week. Given the placement of the title, though, the creators seem to have clearly defined what they think the audience will be checking the book out for.

• Everyone and their brother seems to be talking about the Kirby heirs, the timing of their claim, and so on and so forth. Personally, when it comes to creators' families taking up the fight for equal share and ownership and such, I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I see them as taking up the cause of their family to fight for just, deserved compensation. On the other, I see them causing an almost catch-22 backlash amongst fans that "they didn't create" what they're seeking benefit from. I think they're perfectly within their rights to sue for compensation, that's their legal right.

• Apparently the scorpion-rat-human hybrid thing from the second episode of Fringe is not possible, or so says an expert for Popular Mechanics. The column also mentions the fuzzy X-Men variety, which always makes me wonder why the superheroes usually seemed to get fancy powers rather than cancerous tumours. I know this subject was broached in Warren Ellis' Ruins as well as Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men, but I still think it was terrible that when the "no more mutants" crap ran through that the more probable mutations in mutants seemed to be the ones that were wiped out. Rather than the ones that could shoot laser beams out of their eyes or turn into metal. Go figure.

• I've started a series of columns on Vertigo. The first one's available below and the second will be landing on Wednesday. Be on the lookout for "This Column is DOOMED!" which should give you a clue as to what I decided to tackle first. Also, if you're in the Vancouver area, be on the lookout for a raving madman going on about biting off more than he chew.

• Speaking of Chew, it's an interesting concept and relatively well-written and illustrated, but for the life of me, I just can't see why it's setting people into such a tizzy.

Tough Talk: An Interview With Erik Larsen

I met Writer/Artist Erik Larsen as one of the first people I contacted when I began writing about comics in 2002. I didn't know he'd be publisher of Image Comics shortly thereafter. But as such I've enjoyed knowing him and hearing his honest, sometimes brutally so, responses about the industry. As I've begun considering how the market is in comics, I immediately thought to interview Erik, his views are from the front-line, they are straightforwardly given, and, I think offer insight to the world from a number of valuable perspectives, that of Publisher, Creative talent, Reader, and, I believe, advocate of the medium.

Alex Ness: Is the Direct market for distribution of comics dead, and, was the former model better in any respects, that of the news stand distribution? What distribution model will likely be the one of the future, if there is a future?

Erik Larsen: It's not dead -- it's just very limited and very small. It does work but it works on a small scale and we'd all like it to work better than it does.

That newsstand model clearly worked for a lot of people for a lot of years. The problem with returns is, however, that there's an enormous amount of waste and an enormous amount of risk. Many companies have gone belly up by jumping into the newsstand game. Unfortunately, there's no flip, pat answer that works here. Clearly we, as an industry, are not creating the kinds of books that consumers want. At least -- not all of the time. Our books are difficult to find, impenetrable to all but the hardcore fans and expensive. Which is not to say that bringing down the cover price is a cure all -- it's not. You can price dog crap at 5¢ a ton but that still won't compel people to buy dog crap. The books need to be books that people want to read and other than the few gimmicks that reach the mainstream media -- Obama in this book or the death of famous guy in that book -- we're NOT getting the stuff out there. And even those novelty comics aren't getting read. How many people bought and read that Spider-Man book with Obama in it? How many read it and decided that they'd like to become Spider-Man readers? Based on their sales -- I'd say not a whole hell of a lot.

The problem with those big books that cracked into the news cycle is that, largely, they have been lousy comics. The Death of Superman was a lousy comic book -- especially as one to transform a non-reader into a reader. Comics are all splashes now? Comics are in black plastic bags? Comics are jacked up to $20 on the day they're released by greedy retailers? Comics are issue-long slugfests with no discernible plots? Not the kind of thing which would be likely to have readers coming back for more.

I completely agree with the fact that the event comics that got noticed were unsuitable to build new readers, that they were meant to be must haves for the already buying comic collectors, and that they were, in large part, nowhere near the best that comics have to offer. So how do you get the mainstream press to notice good comics, how do you get people to realize that popular or event oriented works aren't necessarily what is best in the market, and how do you convince kids to go out and find a comic store?

That's the big question that we've all been struggling with, isn't it? Believe me -- If I had the answer I'd be doing it. The two big project that were of relative high quality did get out there -- Watchmen sold, and continues to sell, a shit-load of copies. Dark Knight Returns has sold a lot of copies as well. The thing is -- there really isn't a book out there which is grabbing readers by the balls the way those two books did. Frank Miller took Daredevil from a bimonthly title, verging on cancellation to Marvel's best-selling title. We don't have that now. We don't have a buzz book that has everybody talking. And that's the real problem. Until we get comics that people want -- people won't want comics.

What was/is the most destructive trend in comics that contributed to their downturn as a product, if not artistically?

Gimmick covers and inflated prices and endless crossover alienated casual readers. Impenetrable story lines with interlocking continuity hasn't helped. But a lot of it is visual -- comics are dark, realistic and uninviting to the casual reader. Kids don't feel that comics are for them. Everybody is trying to do Watchmen and failing. But it's really hard to break out and try something else. This is working -- to a modest degree -- how do we know that stand alone comics with exciting art will attract new readers? Better do THREE of what we're already doing instead...

As a publisher you were in a place to approve new projects, to allow new kinds of works to enter the market. Do you feel you succeeded or failed in bringing new readers to the market through those comics?

Failed. I know that these books had an audience and that the numbers went way up during my time as publisher but I don't believe for a second that readers came in off the street because of what we were doing. We just did a better job of making books that the existing audience wanted. Unfortunately, that's the nature of Image Comics. We can only publish the books that we're pitched. As the publisher, I can't get everybody to do all-ages comics. And saying to, say, the Luna brothers -- "Hey, guys--what do you say to making GIRLS for all-ages?" would seriously hamper their creative process.

Is the loss of young readers, kids, the harbinger of death I seem to feel it is, and, how do you angle your product to appeal both to ongoing readers, and to create and interest new readers? What isn't being done well enough?

Everything. The problem is that we forgot to make books for all ages. That was the key to success for Marvel and DC for generations and now we've got comics for older readers or kids but few comics for everybody. I find it to be a pretty disturbing trend that there was a second MAD magazine aimed at KIDS--as though MAD was inaccessible to younger readers. The fact that Marvel has a line of Marvel superhero comics for kids is horrible. They're telling their audience that some of their books are for young readers and some are NOT for young readers and both young and old books emphasize the fact that they aren't for everybody.

That, and the physical look of the product is not uniformly good. Most comics look gray and muddy and unattractive. The art is dense and cluttered. If I was a kid and you gave me a stack of new comics--I'm really not sure what I'd find in there that I'd want to read.

What was/is the most destructive trend creatively that contributed to the downturn of the comic market readership?

Continuity. I, as a reader -- can't comprehend most comics from Marvel or DC. If I can't -- and I've been reading this stuff for over 30 years -- how can they expect anybody else to be able to read it? When Jim Shooter was running Marvel there was a lot of bitching -- and he had some stupid rules along with his sensible ones -- but the sensible ones led to comics that were extremely accessible. I hadn't read many issues of Thor prior to Walt Simonson's Thor but I could immediately grasp what was going on. When attempting to read most books these days -- I'm just lost.

I agree, again, the Continuity is one of the many things that contributes poorly to the market. But, then, are you suggesting that the Big Two continuity issues don't send new readers to new products and different ones?

I can't say with any degree of certainty what goes on with every potential reader. I do think that when you have something like a big-budget movie on the screen and ads all over the place that there's an opportunity to grab readers that most of us don't have. When a potential reader comes in looking to try out Iron Man and the Iron Man comic they're presented with isn't something that makes them want to continue reading -- I'm not convinced that they're going to look over and see what else is on the shelf. It may be that it starts and stops with that one dip in the pool. And I should say here that I'm picking Iron Man out of the clear blue sky as an example. I have no idea if the book is worth reading these days or not.

Is what you are saying more to say that the average reader coming in starts with the Big Two, but only after being a fan moves to try new and different publisher products?

I think, for the most part, that's how things work. Readers often start with familiar titles from the Big Two and branch out from there. But I don't think Marvel and DC are attracting a lot of new readers--for the most part they're just servicing an existing, aging market. Not all readers are the same, of course. Some just see a cover in a store window and that compels them to come in off the street and try something out.

How does the internet contribute to the problems, how does it offer a solution to them?

It doesn't help. I think in many ways it makes matters worse. writers pander to the fans instead of trying to make thinks accessible to new readers. Books become in-jokes for old fans. That, and it provides a way to download comics for free, which can't help but impact sales in a negative fashion.

So web comics and online retailers don't expand the market?

Not in significant numbers. I don't think you can look at the numbers across the board and say that with the advent of computers readership has increased. Reality tells a different story. These people are, if anything, reading comics exclusively on their computers and not spending money on physical comic books.

If we are transitioning to a more paperless world, regarding products of entertainment, doesn't online seem to be a must have in order to succeed?

It would certainly seem that way. But at this point I don't see a lot of success stories. We're in the Napster stage when it comes to comic books--we don't have an iTunes yet. People are simply stealing everything.

Shouldn't there be an effort to create a new model that recognizes the patterns of today but with an appreciation for the past? I love the smell of paper when I go into a comic store, or used book store, I hate many webcomics, and don't download, and won't read stuff on the web, so I am not, NOT saying I am one of the new kinds of readers, I am saying that the market shouldn't focus on me, but my ten year old son, (who btw loves many of the Image Comics he has read) who is in many ways more tech literate than me. And for the record, my best friend refers to me constantly as an "effing Luddite," so...

I'm pretty much in your boat. I read a few comics on computer because that's how I see them first -- I get the Luna brothers books sent to me via email and I get Kirkman's comics the same way. I read them in that form and the printed comics are something of a formality. At that point they're books I've already read. I do agree that it's something we need to work on but like I said -- until an iTunes emerges we're stuck with Napster and none of us are seeing a dime from this. But everybody is on this. It's on everybody's mind and I've seen several promising apps for comics.

But I sure as hell hope that printed comics don't go away.

I personally don't believe comics will die, and believe that the market is just going through a transformation, do you agree with that? Or is the outlook much more bleak?

I don't think we've done any damage that isn't reversible. But it's going to take some serious effort to make things work. It can be done--but I think it may have to come from somewhere outside of the "big two" who seem to be determined to go head-to-head in their monthly market share pissing contest. What they're doing is extremely unhealthy for the market. I think more books like Bone and Scott Pilgrim will make a difference. Another Spider-Man title isn't likely to do much of anything in regard to the mainstream.

How do you change mentalities? If comics are to break out of the doldrums that seem to exist, you have to change things, don't you?

I really think it comes down to the product itself. Times have shown that when there's a book that people want--that book will sell. There's a lot of product out there but it really doesn't seem as though the authors have a lot to say and to a large degree, I blame the powers that be. I don't think that the suits understand how some creators can get emotionally invested in the books they're working on and why that is a GOOD thing.

Joe Quesada, for example, never stayed on any book for any great length of time--including ones he created--and has spent most of his career jumping from book to book, jockeying for position and trying to get his name in the news. Joe spent his time promoting Joe. He didn't seem to care what book he was on as long as people paid attention to it. The idea that anybody would deliberately choose to stay on one title for an extended period of time was foreign to him. These days creators don't get the chance to do what Miller did on Daredevil or Byrne did on the Fantastic Four or Simonson did on Thor, taking an existing book and make it their own. Sure, a few writers do but largely artists are shuffled from one book to another and it's really difficult to build any kind of momentum when things keep getting shuffled around. If Miller's run on Daredevil had been a six to twelve issue arc and he was bounced over to Spider-Man or the Hulk we might have been spared the introduction of Elektra and the compelling saga that followed.

John Byrne had the rug pulled out from under him on X-Men: The Hidden Years and Quesada didn't seem to understand why Byrne would object to that. He was offering John more work, after all -- a chance to do a new book and get a new #1 and get his name back out there -- why would John possibly object to that? But with a number of creators -- they want to be able to call a book their own and build something. That's lost these days.

One can look at present day Marvel and see Joe's vision in action as creators shuffle from title to title and few stick with anything for long. It's all a big chess board. Keep things moving -- make sure you can grab a headline and and a story. John Byrne doing a book for ten years isn't a story. John Byrne doing a new book? That's a story! And DC is the same, to a lesser extent. The end result is, as you might expect, that creators can't afford to get emotionally attached to the work they do and what that does is nip long term plans in the bud and make for books that are emotionally detached and somewhat heartless. The editorially driven events are there, sure -- things are happening -- but those events are not the same as the kind of thing that leads to a genuine phenomena like Miller's Daredevil, Claremont's X-Men or Simonson's Thor. Without that emotional investment -- it's just work -- it's just more product and that's what we have a lot of these days from the Big Two: product.

I agree that the best books are not the most popular, but, as a creative talent don't you agree that,the market is in many ways models what has been sold before, following the path that revenue streams create?

Retailers can't help but order books based on past performances. That is one of the pitfalls of the direct market. If Image was really excited about an upcoming Savage Dragon story, say, we really have few options available in order to get more books in the hands of more readers. We have to depend on retailers ordering the comics.

How does Savage Dragon fit into the success stories of the market, how does it fail? What is upcoming for you in the creative arena?

It's a success to the extent that it's still being published and still providing me with an income. But I'm not kidding myself -- in the grand scheme of things it's a footnote at best. I'm still working on the book and on Image United as well as a handful of other projects. I'm still here. And actually -- Image United is one of those projects with the potential to reach out to readers. For older Image fans it's a must buy and it's getting all kinds of media attention, starting with a full page news item in the New York Times. I imagine there'll be some kind of a trickle down effect in regard to Savage Dragon.

I'm okay with that.

Seven Things to Do at the Albany Comic Con

The next Albany Comic Con is Sunday, November 1st from 10 AM to 4 PM at the Holiday Inn on Wolf Road in Colonie, NY. This is, I think, the fourth time the convention has been held, and each time out it seems to get a little bigger and a little better. Here are seven things I recommend you do if you're attending.

* Buy some original art. I bought an amazing Archie drawing for my wife from artist Joe Staton at the show a year ago. This year, Staton returns and is joined by other artists like Fred Hembeck, John Hebert, Joe Sinnott, Herb Trimpe and Matthew Dow Smith, among others. Bring some cash, help support talented artists and bring home a one-of-a-kind piece of art. Writers at the show include Todd Dezago and Ron Marz (who I recently interviewed), who no doubt will be bringing some of their work as well, which you can, of course, get personally signed.

* Hang with your comics-loving pals. I met writer Tim Callahan at a previous Albany Comic Con and had a great chat with him. I also always try to find bloggers/FantaCo alumni Roger Green and Rocco Nigro, who I think have made every show thus far. The fact is, if you love comics and live anywhere within 200 miles of Albany, chances are you'll run into friends and have a chance to catch up and talk comics.

* Attend a panel discussion. I'm told the show will include a panel about a particularly timely issue to the artform and industry of comics, as well as an interview with one of the major artists in attendance. Convention panels are one of the unique things about comics conventions that you can't experience in any other way (as opposed to buying comics or chatting with your pals), and all the panels I've heard about for the November show sound like they should be fun and informative.

* Win stuff. Hang on to your ticket; all the previous shows have had hourly-or-so giveaways of great prizes donated by dealers attending the show, and I assume that will be the case this time around as well. Previous giveaways included high-end statues and hardcover comics collections, so it's always worth checking your ticket to see if you're a winner.

* Check out the costumes. The Albany area seems to have some very devoted fans who must spend a small fortune on their costumes. The Star Wars contingent is always amazing and very open to letting you get your picture taken with them.

* Get some amazing bargains. The economy hasn't recovered since the last time I attended this show, and many of the dealers seemed to be operating on the assumption that people don't have a ton of money to spend and adjusted their prices accordingly. I got some pretty pricey hardcover collections (brand new and still in the shrinkwrap) at 30-50 percent off the cover price. I'd bet the farm there will be similar bargains this time out.

* Get the convention-exclusive Witchblade written by Ron Marz and with a variant cover by Matthew Dow Smith. I've had a look at the cover for this special issue (and Smith posted a sneak peek here), which is the launch of a new storyline, and I can tell you it is the single best piece of Witchblade art I have ever seen. If you remember the art Smith did for Hellboy a few years back, he brings the same sense of mood and portent to the cover of this issue, and I'm hoping to snag a copy. As a bonus, Smith even worked Albany into the art into a pretty clever manner. Production was limited on this issue, so if you want one, be sure to grab it early.

Remember, the Albany Comic Con is Sunday, November 1st at the Wolf Road Holiday Inn in Colonie, New York. I hope to see you there!

Through a Glass Darkly

ver·ti·go (vûr'tĭ-gō')
n. pl. ver·ti·goes or ver·ti·gos

1. 1. The sensation of dizziness.

   2. An instance of such a sensation.

2. A confused, disoriented state of mind.

[Middle English, from Latin vertīgō, from vertere, to turn; see wer-² in Indo-European roots.]

1a. Introduction

I'm probably an atypical comics reader.

I didn't come to comics through animated shows or friends playing with action figures on the playground. Aside from Batman, in my youth, I was never really into superheroes. I liked horror, fantasy, science fiction and mystery. Although superheroes are a sub-genre of science fiction, in general, most of them never really clicked for me.

Anyway, in the next section is part of the initial column that I wrote for my now defunct "Scary Monsters & Super Creeps". I hope you'll forgive reusing an old column, but it lends credence to what will come. If you've already read it, feel free to skip down to 1993.

1b. Moore Repurposed

Do you remember the first comic that you ever bought?

Do you remember the circumstances surrounding it? Whether you were a kid with your friends, riding your bike up to the local 7-11, and you had an extra sixty cents to spare, so you bought that issue of Amazing Spider-Man that was sitting there with a Lizard cover that looked cool? How you sat down and pored over the pages before lending it to Jimmy, who returned it without a cover and chocolate prints all over the pages.

Well, I have an eidetic memory, basically, I remember everything. I can tell you what the first movie I saw in theatres was: ET: The Extra Terrestrial. I can tell you what the first adult novel I read was: a hardcover edition of HG Wells' stories including War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man, given to me by my grandfather when I was four and I devoured every page. The spring of that year was also the first time I kissed a girl, Margaret, as she was five and going to Kindergarten the next year, starting off a long string of affairs with older women (I've never dated anyone younger than me).

I thought it would be interesting to start off the "first" column discussing "first" things like my first comic. Yet, through all of this, I haven't got a clue what my first comic book was. This suggests to me that it was something bought for me before my second birthday -- which would mean before 1983. It's somewhat strange, because usually you can hand me anything in my vast collection of stuff and I can tell you when I got it and the circumstances surrounding it, but I can't remember that.

I know that I would have got it at the Jerseyville General Store, which had a rack of comics that changed regularly, usually carrying DC and odd small publishers, never any Marvel there. Marvel books I had to get in Ancaster at the Zehrs there. Both the Gene Colan and Ed Hannigan Batman stick in my mind, I remember having Batmans around #350, but I couldn't tell you which ones. This is my problem actually, my earliest comic books I don't have anymore. Either they were thrown out, given away, or destroyed in some, way, shape or form. It really wasn't until '84 or '85 when I got my first long box that I really paid any attention to what I had and where I kept it and even then things I "didn't like", didn't get put it the box, it was mainly reserved at first for Swamp Thing, horror books, Batman and Detective Comics from then on.

Up until Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, I wasn't exactly what you'd call a comics "collector", I was just a reader. I honestly didn't care if I got the next issue of Batman or not, it was just another form of entertainment, and often I could get better out of old sci-fi and horror novels. Swamp Thing was what changed my mind. Moore's stories, with richly textured art from the likes of Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Stan Woch, Ron Randall, and Rick Veitch, just drew me in. They were exactly what a young horror fan needed in addition to the black and white magazines, Stephen King novels, and the bad horror b-movies I used to watch on Sunday afternoons, like It Came from Outer Space and Horrors of the Black Museum.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you, "I was there from the very beginning." I wasn't. I read several of Marty Pasko's Swamp Thing issues before Moore and really didn't care for them, it made me pretty much ignore the book on the stands, even when the writer changed. The first issue of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing I bought was #38. It was illustrated by Stan Woch and John Totleben, and quite simply I bought it because it had underwater vampires. That may sound silly now, but to my four year old brain, I heard "underwater vampires" and I automatically thought "cool", or whatever it was that kid's then said when they thought something was neat.

For those of you who haven't read it, let me tell you a little bit about it. The story takes place during the American Gothic storyline, the one where Swamp Thing is state-hopping at the bidding of John Constantine. Basically, it's your "town overrun by vampires" story, but with a twist. As the years progressed, a group of vampires discovered a perfect way to exist without being bothered by pesky things like sunlight by moving underwater in the dark, living in the sunken town of Rosewood, Illinois. There's your high concept there that hooks the kids, like me. Basically, from there, it's up to Swamp Thing to stop the underwater vampires, who've started to breed, from coming back up out of the water and killing whatever they feel like. Simple, isn't it?

It continued into the next issue with "Fish Story", and that may be one of the reasons why I continued reading the book, but dressed up in an intelligently told tale, were all of the things that I loved from the horror b-movies I watched. Now that I can look back upon this with more "worldly" eyes, I can see that Moore was playing with the classics, turning them on their ear, and creating something that was true to the heritage of the "monsters" and yet completely fresh and different. He did it in these two issues with vampires, then werewolves, zombies, serial killers, and the haunted house. As a horror fan, I just ate this stuff up like candy.

Honestly, though, it does show you a method to Moore's madness that you can see is even true today. He's very good at taking something old and making it new, giving it a fresh spin. Swamp Thing has its roots in all the old horror stories, Watchmen grew out of Charlton, Tom Strong and Supreme both come from Superman and Captain Marvel, and so on and so forth.

It's amazing how he does it.

2. 1993

Let's put a few things into perspective. In 1993, I was twelve. If you didn't clue in already, I was a strange kid. A little better than a year before, I had been hooked by X-Men #1, which was more or less my gateway into Marvel Comics. Even though I liked the adventures of Marvel's merry mutants, my heart still lay with DC. They just seemed to have more interesting stories, more willing to do things that were outside of the box. In 1993, my preteen brain was blown when DC started a new imprint "suggested for mature readers".

Although many of the books had carried that moniker beforehand, by labelling them under "Vertigo", it somehow felt a little more illicit. At first, I though maybe the comic shop I went to was no longer going to sell me titles I had previously purchased. I was already reading Hellblazer, Swamp Thing and Sandman, but maybe I had just sneaked by in picking those up. Maybe there was content in there that my twelve-year old brain shouldn't be reading. Maybe by branding them separately, DC was signalling that these comics were "off-limits" to me.

Thankfully, this wasn't the case. I squared things with my parents - showing them what I was reading - and they squared things with the comic shop - basically, I was allowed to buy anything I wanted. ...and so, branding the comics with "Vertigo", I was opened up to other titles. I loved Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, and Sandman, but what were these other pretty things that had somehow flown by my notice? Seeing things like Shade, The Changing Man and Doom Patrol bear the same logo, opened my eyes. I had sampled some of these comics before, but never really followed them too closely. By putting them all under one sign, I decided that I was going to have to read them all.

In January of 1993, with a March cover date; Vertigo launched with Swamp Thing #129, Hellblazer #63, Doom Patrol #64, Animal Man #57, Sandman #47, Shade, The Changing Man #33, and the first issues of two limited series, Death - The High Cost of Living and Enigma. Stories written by Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Peter Milligan, Jamie Delano, Nancy Collins, Rachel Pollack. Art by Jill Thompson, Steve Dillon, Steve Pugh, Chris Bachalo, Duncan Fegredo. It was like crack. I've since gone back and filled in the earlier runs of Doom Patrol, Animal Man, and Shade; I wanted to see what they were like from the beginning.

3. A Road Less Travelled

For something that grew out of the strange and dark corners of the DCU, though, Vertigo has become something more. It became a place for creators to do their own work unfettered by the tamperings of corporate comics and the pressures of licensing and keeping characters "pure". It has seen such heights as Preacher, The Invisibles, Fables, Y - The Last Man, 100 Bullets and Transmetropolitan. It spawned a brief-lived sister-imprint in Helix and countless limited series and graphic novels. It has been publishing comics on its own terms for over sixteen years.

As such, I though it would be an excellent source to mine for material; the only problem is, where to begin?

Confidential: For Tom Spurgeon's Eyes Only

Tom Spurgeon isn't kidding about his email problems. I tried to send my Five for Friday entry to him, well, ironically now that I think about it, five times. Anyway, the question was "Name five great things about Steve Ditko." I hope you'll use this if you spot it before you post your entries, Tom, and I invite the TWC gang and anyone else reading this to post their answers in the comments. Mine are:

1. His depiction of New York City
2. His refusal to compromise
3. His work for Charlton
4. His Spider-Man run
5. His other-dimensional freakscapes

10 Thoughts About SPX99

With the Small Press Expo in full swing this weekend in Bethesda, MD, I thought it would be fun to turn back the clock a decade and re-read the old SPX anthology from 1999.

1. The Jay and Silent Bob cover by Matt Wagner is a reminder of just how big a deal Kevin Smith once was to comics fans, and how much that has changed in the subsequent decade. I don't think most comics fans have had any real kind of emotional investment in Smith's movies since Chasing Amy, and Smith's few forays into writing comics have either been mired by ridiculous delays or simply underwhelming stories.

2. "The Worst Gig I Ever Had," the opening story written by Top Shelf publisher Chris Staros and illustrated by Rich Tommaso was a funny little piece which I assume is autobiographical. In high school, Staros and his bandmates inadvertently get roped into a playing a gig for a bunch of drugged out biker dudes out in the woods somewhere and live to tell the tale. Tommaso will go on to do much better art later on, but at this point, his facial expressions were still a little rough. His figure posing, overall panel designs and storytelling instincts are all strong, though, and for an early effort, it's not bad at all.

3. The anthology contains one true masterpiece, a forgotten gem that, if you have the book on your shelves, you should go and re-read right now. That piece is Jordan Crane's "Only A Movie." I won't spoil it in case you want to go back and read it, but it's a dark little tale-within-a-tale with some truly masterful linework and use of shadows and light. I love pretty much everything Crane has ever done, but I totally forgot this story even existed.

4. Another highlight is "Big Trouble," Brian Ralph's silent story about a caveman and a giant robot saving a monkey. That's pretty much it plotwise but Ralph's distinctive character designs and meticulously textured brushwork, particularly in his landscapes and backgrounds, makes the story very pleasurable to look at.

5. Some other odds and ends that I enjoyed include: Eric Reynolds' silent one-page strip of a baby dancing while the world explodes, likely inspired by the Y2K craze that briefly consumed the world, but also could have been inspired by REM's "It's the End of the World (And I Feel Fine)." I also really liked Bruce Mutard's "When Hitler Was an Artist." His art in this piece reminds me a combination between Rick Geary and Jason Lutes, and the story, which will no doubt resonate with any artist whose ever felt rejected after showing his/her portfolio to an editor, carries the obvious added emotional weight of what might have been avoided if only Hitler had been admitted to the academy. I remember enjoying Mutard's first graphic novel, The Bunker, but I barely remember anything about it now and I haven't read his more recent graphic novels. The final story in the book is a great two-page Astounding Space Thrills tale by Steve Conley about sun spots. It's fiction, rather than the science documentary style of his later works, but Conley's art in this piece is really stunning.

6. There's also a number of enjoyable early short stories by artists who went on to become well-known on the indy comic scene, including Nick Bertozzi's Incredible Drinkin' Buddies (this comic kind of freaked me out back when I first saw it, especially the weird old man in the fetish leather straps, but reading it now, it's just kind of goofy), Jason Little's Bee (this is actually an early three-page excerpt from what would eventually be collected as Shutterbug Follies. Little's a hugely talented artist, with a great sense of color, and Shutterbug is one of those underrated books that deserves more credit and attention than it gets). There's also an excerpt from Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison, which eventually became the artist's widely acclaimed first graphic novel.

7. Whatever happened to Joe Zabel? I used to love his old Trespassers mystery one-shots.

8. Although I wasn't familiar with the artist, I really liked Chris Shadoian's art in "This Little Piggy" (written by Chris Bleistein), so I googled him and discovered this great webcomic called "Popcorn Picnic" that he's doing now. Check it out, it's really good.

9. Rich Koslowski contributed a funny little five-page spoof on the CBLDF. I remember meeting Koslowski at the Heroes Con in Charlotte back in 97, I think, and he was such a nice guy; I still have my autographed copy of the first Three Geeks Special with a little sketch in it. I also remember thinking at the time that Koslowski was destined for great things in the comics industry, but to be honest, I haven't read any of his graphic novels since then, though they've been generally well-received.

10. Overall, the anthology is better than I remembered, and while not every piece withstands the test of time, more than half do which is pretty good for this kind of book. Although I haven't read them in years, I remember thinking that the 2001 and 2002 anthologies were the best of all of the SPX collections I have (for some reason, I only bought up through 2006), so who knows, maybe I'll do this again next year.

BATMAN ALWAYS WINS: All Your Batman Are Belong To Us

Let's start here: There is no such thing as a "definitive Batman."

You may have heard different. Perhaps you're under the impression that the grumble & grimy Batman of the past twenty years is the "definitive Batman." Or maybe you grew up in the fifties, and to you, Batman just ain't Batman without some aliens and rainbow-colored costumes. You may believe the earliest Batman stories are the best and most important, or that Grant Morrison's current run on the character is the greatest interpretation yet created by mankind.

There's a good word, "interpretation." This is a bold statement, but Batman might just be the most interpreted character in pop culture. That's not to say he's the one with the most comics, movies, TV series, childrens' underpants, and so on. But when it comes to the sheer variety amongst the many depictions of this one guy who fights crime in a cape and tights--different and varied views of who the character is, how he operates, and why he does what he does--there may be no single modern character who has been conceptualized in so many divergent ways.

Which is good, because otherwise, this column would be about 50 words long.

On a semi-regular basis, this space will be devoted to discussing Batman. Just Batman. Not superheroes in general, or DC universe superheroes, or even DC universe superheroes who live in Gotham City. JUST BATMAN.

And somewhere tangled above rests our essential thesis--rather than cherrypicking through this character's history and deciding which versions of the Bat we prefer, only to discard the rest, we're going to operate under the assumption that it's ALL TRUE. It all happened, because it did. Maybe it's not all there in the current fictional history of the intellectual property published in modern corporate superhero comics as "Batman," but it's all there in the culture--the comics, the movies, the TV shows, the childrens' underpants. We can look at all of it, turn it over, see what makes it work, or not so much. (FULL DISCLOSURE: We will not be looking at the childrens' underpants. At all.)

Batman has been MY FAVORITEST since I was about four years old. At that age, I simply bought into the adventures of Adam West and Burt Ward as though every cliffhanger death trap had an actual prayer of dicing the Dynamic Duo to paper-thin bits. By the time I was old enough to really nurse a comics habit, Michael Keaton was in theaters slapping around Jack Nicholson. I stuck it out through Knightfall and Knightryder and Knightfever; up until a few months ago, I had every single color variant of Legends of the Dark Knight #1. (I kept the turqouise.)

More recently, I was there opening weekend for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, totally jazzed that somehow, the movies had managed to make Batman awesome again. A variation on the greasy & grubby interpretation, to be sure, but still nuanced in its own ways...just like practically every separate take on the character.

These Batmen scattered across my life, the pop detritus I stumble upon in my brain on a daily basis...they all MEAN something, even if it's dumb. Let's crawl down to the Bat-Cave of the blogosphere, pop some punch cards into the Batputer, and see what we can deduce.

***

Okay, so it's no fun to just have some random blabby "here's what I'm gonna do" intro column and not have at least ONE treat, right?

It seems as though the sixties, in addition to being the most turbulent cultural period in our nation's history, were also the years when every two-bit actor with a role on a TV show thought they could record a pop record. Shatner, Nimoy, Sebastian Cabot, Eddie Albert...the list is endless, and the stars of Batman are no exception.

Brian Heater did a fun write-up on Burt Ward's foray into pop music with none other than FRANK ZAPPA (!!!), so let's give a listen to Adam West's single, "Miranda." Wikipedia informs us that this song was actually performed LIVE by West at personal appearances in the 1960s; I don't think I'll encounter a more pathetic factoid today.

Ward actually acquits himself pretty well on this one, so it's not quite at Shatner "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" stature. It's also catchy as hell. You have been warned.

Next time: We return to where it all began: Detective Comics #27.

Giant Size Hernandez Bros!

The cartoonist Michel Fiffe has amassed a second master posts-worth of great Hernandez Brothers rarities that are definitely worth glancing at regardless of whether you're a fan or not (although you really, really should be!). Check it out! You can also see his first master post here.

This and That, and the always popular Other Thing.

I know my contribution to TWC (as well as my own place) have been somewhat slack, mostly due to a hellish workload lately- now, stay with me, this is not another non-posting apology post. Stuff happens, I'm not losing too much sleep over it. That said, I have been trying to think about what I could do on a more or less regular basis here, and while I do have a couple of pieces in the pipeline (and keep your sewer jokes to yourself, please), they're still a ways away. It did occur to me that I could perhaps post a list of things that I've noticed here and there throughout the Comics Blogospheriverse, with the attendant commentary, so that's what I think I'll do. Now, I know there are no shortages of these sorts of columns throughout said CBverse, and chances are you read them all. I don't presume to be any sort of linkblogger, nowhere near in the same league as Heidi or Tom or Dirk or the fine people who write for Comics Should Be Good or Robot 6 or Blog@Newsarama. However, as always, I do strive to not suck, and try to remain true to my writing voice...and for better or worse, you won't find that at any of the other sites!

So...shall we begin?

• I didn't really have much of an opinion one way or the other about the whole Kirby Heirs vs. Marvel and Disney thing, in fact, I only knew what I knew from skimming some posts at the aforementioned sites and the buzz on Twitter. I think Steven Grant put it in perspective very well in his latest Permanent Damage column, though. I say, go for it, Kirby Heirs, get what you can, and hopefully a satisfactory solution can be reached. And to those who whine about how Kirby knew what he was getting into when he did all that wonderful work back in the day, since when does knowing you're getting screwed make a difference when you don't have choices? If Wal-Mart is the only game in town, and you need to feed your family, then by God you're going to go hat in hand to Wally World and put up with it till something better comes along. And unfortunately for the King, by the time something better came along, he was in the twilight of his career. It wasn't like Kirby could tell Martin Goodman and Stan Lee or Irwin Donenfeld to take their jobs and go to hell and take his fertile imagination and start his own comics company- and nobody self-published on the level at which he was accustomed to in those days, either. As a product of the WWII generation, he did what he had always done- cooperate and pitch in to make his situation work. He was getting a wage, and he felt like he needed to justify it...and pitching ideas to Stan was one way of making comics the way he wanted to do it. Means to an end, if you will. People forget that then isn't now, and modern business practices in the comics industry (for good or ill) didn't exist. And don't worry- it will be in Marvel/Disney's best interests to settle in order to maintain control over these properties. They won't let the Kirbys take them away, which I doubt they'd want to do anyway, none of them being publishers.
  
  
• I am finding myself wondering, and if it was mentioned in Blake Bell's otherwise fine book I missed it...but does Steve Ditko have any heirs? Did the man ever marry? Have kids? Does he have a sister somewhere in western Pennsylvania that he will leave whatever passes for his estate to? Or will he be buried at state's expense when he passes, if he ever does? Don't mean to be morbid, but I would think that Steve (not that he would pursue it) or his heirs, if they exist, would have a pretty good reason to take similar legal action, get their share of the pie, so to speak, for not only Spider-Man but Doc Strange as well. Just the type of rampant supposition that you don't find at respectable comics news sites!
  

• A few comics that have made an impression lately: Ghost Rider: Heaven's on Fire #'s 1 & 2- I've never really been a big fan of the Ghost Rider character, but I am an admirer of Jason Aaron's scripting, and I've been reading all over the place about how good his take was, so I broke down and checked the first two issues (I think #3 comes out next week)- and imagine my surprise when it turns out to be a continuation of Warren Ellis' excellent 1990's refurbishing of the Daimon Hellstorm/Son of Satan character! I am on record as being an unabashed fan of Ellis' short-lived run, and while others have brought the character back in years since, none of them had the same, proper mix of dry wit and Lee Marvin-style badassery...until now. He even brought back Daimon's girlfriend in that series, "occult terrorist" Jaine Cutter. There are tweaks- Daimon has a shaved head and goatee now instead of shoulder-length hair and five o'clock shadow- but all of them work just fine. Aaron's one of the best writers going right now, and this somewhat-gnarly storyline, continued from a previous series (but not especially hard to follow because of it), is shaping up nicely, and Aaron seems to be having a blast. Beasts of Burden#1 reunites Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson on the animal characters from Dark Horse's Books of... series; I own two of the four, and read the BoB stories in those, but I hate to say I found myself at a bit of a loss when it came to figuring out this dog from that dog and that cat from that cat, and if I don't identify, I don't feel the tragedy when something bad happens to one or more of them. Definitely one time you should acquaint yourself with the previous stories, and you can do just that right here. Anyway, the main attraction for me isn't the premise, or even Dorkin's serious scripting side (to one who came to his humor work first, it's interesting to see him expand his palette)- it's Thompson's wonderful watercolor artwork. Now, I know nothing about "serious" art circles these days, or who the best watercolor artists are...but based on what I've seen here and elsewhere, she's got to be in the conversation. I've tried to paint in watercolors, and let me tell you it's fucking HARD. She makes it look effortless. Models, Inc.#1- So now, on the heels of the better-than-you-expected Marvel Divas, we get the Mighty Marvel Model Stable, all in action, all in the present day, and all with modern continuity intact- Patsy "Hellcat" Walker is indeed the very same member of the Avengers who starred in her own funnish miniseries, was married to the aforementioned Son of Satan, and is doing double duty in Divas. Millie the Model's the nominal star, but Hedy Wolfe, Chili Storm (she's a LESBIAN, the writer wishes us to know), and others all get their turn in the spotlight. It's an uneasy mix of what used to be fun and what we get in its stead now, and I wish the art was a little more idiosyncratic and less plain, but it works in spite of itself and while I'm sure the rank and file X-buyer won't be bothered, I think I'll see where it goes. Finally, it's official: I was intrigued by Blackest Night there for a little while, but that dog has gone hunting and won't come back. It's just not yanking my crank, if you know what I mean.


• Speaking of Aaron, he recently informed his readers that he signed a contract with DC/Vertigo that ensures that his masterful Scalped series will at least make it to issue #49, and you have to believe that they'd at least squeeze out a #50 before it was over. This makes me happy, and I hope it does you too.
  

• Artist Trevor Von Eeden recently informed all his Facebook friends, of which I am honored to be one, that he had recently secured the rights to re-ink and publish his Original Johnson, which had originally been serialized at ComicMix.com. Here's what he wrote: Mike Gold requested a sit-down with me last August--and told me that the pages from "The Original Johnson" that were inked by Don Hillsman were done on overlays (for Internet presentation) and that my original pencils are to be inked by me--for the print publication of the book. I said "Ok." We had no further problems. My book is mine again. Johnson was some of the most committed and original work I had seen from Von Eeden in many years, and it's great news that he's going to take it further.

• I've written about this in other places, but not here, and I want to draw as much attention to the plight of writer Steve Perry as I can. Perry co-created (with artist Tom Yeates) and scripted one of my all-time favorite comics series, the mid-80's Marvel/Epic Timespirits...and, down on his luck in recent years, he's been diagnosed with cancer and is destitute to boot. Recently, his friend, artist Steve Bissette, posted an entreaty on his blog, asking anyone who could to help him by sending money to help him meet his expenses. Apparently, it's doing some good, as this more recent post bears out. I hope that if you can, you'll find it in your heart to help out.
  

• I like the Cyclone character in Justice Society of America, another in a long line of redhead comics characters that I've been fond of over the years. Cf. Killraven, Son of Satan (see above), Kinetix of the Legion of Super-Heroes. She's cute and fun, or at least as cute and fun as a DC character gets these days. I'm surprised she's avoided rape and evisceration so far. Maybe that will happen in the new title she's apparently been farmed out to; I don't know. I won't buy- the mother book has become increasingly leaden and dull, and I don't see this being any better.
  
  
• I see where DC plans to release a hardcover reprint edition of Steve Ditko (and Dennis O'Neil)'s Beware the Creeper; I approve of this, and if you can afford it, then go for it. I can't, so I won't...but I still have my original copies, so I'm content. You'll be getting what I consider Ditko's last hurrah before he slowly slid into irrelevance. The stories are nothing special, but the character has a kooky charm, and the art is '60s Ditko good in a lot of places. The rest of the volume is padded with Steve's late '70s return to the character via World's Finest, and it's weak beer indeed.
  
  
• Finally, your art appreciation this week is Mr. Eric Canete, whose dynamic, energetic work on the recent Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin miniseries had me raving and keeps me mentioning it two years later. Here's his blog, and here's his new Deviantart site. At right, a recent commissioned illo of Zatanna. Click to see even bigger.
  

Hey! That's all I got for now. Maybe we should do this again real soon! Thanks for reading.

Thursday Link Party: Lonely Astronauts Go To Church

Sam Henderson has pages up from a Kennedy parody comic of the 1960s, "Bobman and Teddy." (via Craig Yoe)

Staying in the sixties, Jog tackles both the Beatles and a rarely-discussed Beatles comic in his latest edition of The Watchman at Comixology.

Kevin Church expands his webcomics empire with The Loneliest Astronauts, collaborating with artist Ming Doyle on the strip. It launches September 29 (but you can set up your RSS reader now). As the site describes it: "They’re light years from home on an airless moon, living on carefully-rationed supplies, and unable to contact Earth. The worst part of all this? They hate each other’s guts." (via Kevin Church)

Graeme McMillan continues his dissection of the Claremont/Byrne X-Men run with a look back at how far the mighty fell after Dark Phoenix.

If you are fascinated by such things, here's a bit more financial corporate nitty gritty on the Marvel/Disney deal. (We need a word like "Kremlinology" for all these behind-the-curtain Marvel type things. I'm open to suggestions.) (via Robot 6)

I am incredibly excited about the new Gabriel Ba/Fabio Moon book for Vertigo (cover shown above). It's on sale in December; here's a preview.