Thursday Link Party: A More Sincere Pumpkin Patch

Man, I love It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Comics Alliance caught a great image from artist Steven Sanders (S.W.O.R.D., Five Fists of Science) featuring Lockheed and Kitty Pryde doing their best Chuck D and Flavor Flav impersonation. So cool. Have I mentioned lately how excited I am for S.W.O.R.D., basically The Thin Man in space starring the X-Men's Beast and Agent Brand? I am very excited for S.W.O.R.D., yes, I am.

Twitter pal Scott Cederlund has a great review up of a somewhat under-the-radar book from a few weeks back, the Joss Whedon/Fabio Moon one-shot Sugarshock, collecting comics they put together for the online-only compilation MySpace Dark Horse Presents. Reading it, I found myself sharing many of Scott's observations although he's far more articulate in phrasing them than I could ever be. It's a very scattered book, lacking focus and heft, but it has a slight goofy charm, and more Fabio Moon is always a good idea. Guy could draw the phone book and I'd buy it.

I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy James Hem's new comics movie column over at Bleeding Cool, as long as he keeps contributing turns of phrase like this:

Paul Cornell has been hawking his Black Widow series to SFX. It only exists to plug the Iron Man 2 film right? And to get people “ready for” Scarlett Johannsons’ character? Surely what the typical fanboy needs to do to get ready for Johansson in a catsuit is to sit on their hand for half an hour?

Ha ha ha! It's funny cause it's true cause we masturbate.

Sean T. Collins over at Savage Critics has a great defense up of The Dark Knight Strikes Again that puts the work in a really fitting cultural context. I'm still torn on the book myself but I do think it says something that there's still intelligent things to say about it years after its release.

Inspired by a recent post over at Bat-Blog, I put the term "comic book" into Google's new Life magazine archive and in ten minutes dug up a few gems:

• A January 1964 profile of Roy Lichtenstein
• A June 1946 piece on Li'l Abner and artist Al Capp
• A November 1944 story on "junior geniuses" contributing war inventions to the Captain Midnight comic, including a brilliant machine gun/palm tree mashup that, like DKSA, was years ahead of its time

Anyway, I'm sure there are a multitude of treasures within that archive waiting to be uncovered by other intrepid internet explorers, so have at it.

NOT COMICS: The world's only analog blog.

(Post image courtesy Cape and The Bat-Blog)

Daily Breakdowns 033 - What A Wonderful World!

When there's only one thing you need to own
And that is hunger, hunger itself"

--U2, "Disappearing Act"

What A Wonderful World! Vols. 1 & 2
Story & Art by Inio Asano
Published by Viz Signature. $12.99 USD (ea.)

In these two volumes, Asano tells a number of short stories dealing with people who are ready to give up, either on their dreams and aspirations or even life itself. As one can guess from the quote above, I'm listening to U2's The Unforgettable Fire reissue while writing, the album itself inspired by a museum exhibit of the same name, featuring drawings by survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The traumas of the characters in What a Wonderful World! do not compare to those atrocities, of course, but they are traumas more relatable to you or me. Achievement is emphasized in Japan over personal expression or fulfillment, and several of Asano's stories deal with characters in "cram schools" that prepare them for college entrance. Those who fail to be accepted by a university are jokingly referred to as ronin, diminished academic warriors searching for an institutional master. Some skip class, some struggle to please their parents, some drift through school, friendless and miserable. Some drink, alone or with others, perhaps with sex involved, and none of it with much desire or purpose other than killing time.

Several stories are linked, and there are a few recurring characters such as Horita, the young mohawked punk who gives up music for faceless corporate life, only to return much later in the second volume, in a bad relationship, out of work and numbed by failure, only a glimmer of life left. There's also Tae, raised by her older brother and sister after her mother died, who disappears for a week every year around the time her mother died, a coping mechanism. Asano's linkages are rarely forced; although his character designs are often samey, once recognized, recurring characters are invariably welcome. Once or twice there's a pedestrian linking device like a wandering stray dog but it's inoffensive. For the most part, Asano's use of animals is not sophisticated, but effective nonetheless. A turtle in an aquarium represents a character feeling trapped by the expectations placed on her. Black cats and dogs symbolize a guileless, non-accusatory resilience; i.e., they know how to get by without moping and self-destructive behavior, unlike many of our characters.

As with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors' drawings, and as with some of the better U2 work, Asano's stories here fall under healing arts. There is a strong feeling of identification with these sad, disillusioned souls, but Asano seems always to be fighting pessimism to rescue them. The characters fall often--literally and figuratively--and there is usually something around the corner to pick them up, or to rekindle a dim spark of the will to live and go forward. Magic realism abounds, with crows and other aspects of death, but Asano doesn't give up on them. And as some of the characters grow, so too does Asano, the more cartoonish figures in the early stories--bundles of awkward nerves against the rigid, precise architecture--evolving into a more refined and open style, with more delicate shading and some time for more reflective moments of beauty. As he refines his style, so does he seem to refine his worldview, the punkish extremes getting deeper and mellower, and often kinder. The first volume has a more attractive energy to it, but the second volume, while more somber, pays off the investment made in the characters as we see a little farther along in how their lives have been playing out, not to mention that the art becomes pretty gorgeous. Excellent work.

Christopher Allen

Complimentary copies were provided by the publisher for the purpose of review.

Daily Breakdowns 032 - Batman Confrodisiac

Batman Confidential #31-35
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Andy Clarke
Published by DC Comics. $2.99 USD ea.

I suppose these days, those who want to read comics with Bruce Wayne as Batman will take 'em where they can get 'em. That was part of the reason I started reading this storyline, the other being the presence of Milligan. I remember kind of liking Clarke's style from some 2000 AD stories, too.

In this one, Batman travels to Moscow to take down the Tsar, a scarred but handsome, youngish crime lord who has control over all the kingpins who have sliced up the city like pie, and he keeps them in line through the use of the Bear, a huge and powerful, but childlike and trusting, furry young man. I think you can see where this is going: Batman will get to the Bear and make him realize what he's doing his bad and that the Tsar doesn't care about him, which will be revealed at a crucial moment when the Bear is going to either kill Batman or some innocents.

Not badly done, just very predictable and forgettable. Clarke makes a game effort and draws a nice Batman, but there's never anything in the art that looks like Moscow. Lots of the action takes place indoors or underground, and when it doesn't, it's on nondescript nighttime streets or there are no backgrounds at all. Seems like cheating. And Milligan is complicit as well, peppering his script with vodka and babushka and other Russian words any simpleton knows, but nothing authentic. There's never a feeling that Milligan has discovered any uniquely Russian characteristics or knowledge he's dying to convey. The story could just as easily taken place in San Antonio and given us Alamo and River Walk and Tex-Mex references. The only interesting aspect is early on, when Batman discovers the Moscow criminals don't fear him. As he works harder and figures out how to get to them, Milligan ironically works himself right out of the novel and into the mundane. For completists only.

Afrodisiac
By Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca
Published by AdHouse Books. $14.95 USD

Rugg's and Maruca's '70s blaxploitation spoof character has been around for several years, appearing here and there in anthologies, and now those pieces and a lot more have been jammed into this collection. Since pimps appear as Halloween costumes -- even for children -- we can assume most readers aren't going to be particularly offended by the hero of these tales being one, with a stable of pretty white women calling him Daddy.

When Afrodisiac, or "D" to his friends, isn't pimping, he's involved in all sorts of adventures, stopping aliens, cult leaders, Hercules and even Dracula, with either his fighting skills or his power to make women love him. It's a fun premise, though the stories themselves are without any complication or suspense. Mainly, they're just parodies of bad '60s and '70s comics. That's not such a bad thing, as there's much to admire about how Rugg gets close to the look of Dell, Gold Key, Charlton and Marvel Comics, and with the excellent AdHouse production, the colors are perfect, and not only do the covers look beat up and dated, one even has a child's marker scribbling on it, as if the issue in question was found at a garage sale or flea market. Fans of old comics will find all that's missing is the smell of decaying newsprint.

In fact, it's the process that gets the most attention, from the production touches to the minor fun of giving Afrodisiac different origins that remind readers of famous characters. It would maybe be counterproductive for Rugg and Maruca to try to make Afrodisiac more dimension, or make his stories more meaningful and layered. We're just supposed to chuckle at yet another blaxploitation parody because it's been mashed up with stupid old superhero comics. It is pretty amusing throughout, but it's hard to look at this lavishly produced trifle and not wish the creators would get working on something original and a little more meaty real soon.

Christopher Allen

Albany Comic Con is Next Weekend!

I hope anyone within traveling distance of Albany, New York will stop by the Albany Comic Con on Wolf Road in Colonie (right next door to Albany, as any local can tell you).

I previously posted Seven Things To Do at the Albany Comic Con, and you can get full details on the show at the official MySpace Albany Comic Con page.

Come meet comics pros like Ron Marz, Fred Hembeck, Joe Staton, Matthew Dow Smith, John Hebert, Todd Dezago, Herb Trimpe, and more. Bump into bargain-seeking Galaxy contributors Alan David Doane and Mick Martin. And more!

Full disclosure: The Albany Comic Con is an advertiser here on Comic Book Galaxy, but I'd be excited about the show even if they weren't, and inviting you to come all the same.

Hope to see you there!

EXTRA MEDIUM #3: Hulk vs. Hulk

Believe it or not, a comparison between Ang Lee's Hulk and Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk is often one of the first conversations I have with people. It's not on purpose, I don't ask for it, but sometimes it's inevitable. I get introduced to someone, the introducer mentions my interest in comics and my sometimes obsessive attachment to the Hulk, and the person to whom I'm being introduced will usually say something along the lines of "Oh yeah, I liked that last movie with Ed Norton. That one before it though, MAN, did that suck." I don't agree, but I'll usually nod and say something like "Yeah, it did drag in parts."

I think Lee's Hulk gets a bad rap. It's a deeply flawed film to be certain, but it doesn't deserve the space it's enjoyed on most viewers' mental scorecards -- somewhere around Batman and Robin and Elektra. Sure. I can't deny it. I'm a huge fan of the character so there's definitely bias. But I still have problems with the film. They just seem to be different from the problems everyone else has with it.

Most haters of Lee's film mention the computer-generated Hulk right off the bat, and my response to their criticisms makes me feel very old. All I can think is, "What the hell did you expect?" Yes. You're right. The giant green monster looked like it wasn't real. I guess as someone who was just barely old enough to see the first Star Wars film, I'm used to giving the filmmakers a break when it comes to bringing fantastic creatures to life. Considering the possible alternatives -- a muscle man in green paint or a "Hulk suit" like the Thing suit Michael Chiklis endured two years later in Fantastic Four -- I didn't think I was straining my disbelief-suspension muscles nearly as much as I might have otherwise. Lee's Hulk never fooled me into thinking he was real, and yeah he could've been better, but he could've been worse too. I think, more than anything, we were all spoiled by The Lord of the Rings. Don't get me wrong. The creators of those films deserved all of the accolades they got when it came to the special effects, but let's not forget something fairly important. Jackson and co. brought us stunningly rendered fantasy creatures living in a fantasy world. Lee's Hulk, on the other hand, is a creature of the fantastic set against the backdrop of the real world. There was no way he was going to look like anything but a cartoon.


Leterrier's Hulk is certainly an improvement, mainly because of lessons learned from Lee's film. To make him look more realistic, Leterrier shrinks him, both making him shorter and a bit more lean and sinewy. His Hulk is also a much darker shade of green and it helps to minimize the cartoon-y contrast that helped damn Ang Lee's version. But I'd be curious to see what Leterrier and co. would've come up with if they didn't have Lee's version from which to learn. The Hulk of Incredible Hulk is certainly better and, physically, more believable. But he's still a computer puppet in the real world, and it shows.

The place where both films unquestioningly pale in comparison to LotR's Gollum is in the inability of either Lee's or Leterrier's computer-generated Hulks to convey a full range of emotions. You can't fall back on the fantasy/real contrast excuse here. The movie Hulks of both 2003 and 2008 have exactly three different kinds of facial expressions -- anger/pain, dull/expressionless, and what I call the Betty Face. It's just a slight variation of the dull/expressionless face that looks just a little more pathetic, like a monkey about to fall asleep, to convey that Betty is nearby.

Incredible Hulk, I think, also got the sound of the Hulk in a way that Hulk just didn't. I remember, maybe 10 years ago, I wanted to put together a desktop theme for the Hulk, complete with some kind of sound that would play whenever I booted up my PC. I tried different soundbites from the '90s cartoon, the opening theme from the '70s show, and finally settled on something that sounded like the Hulk I imagined even though it wasn't from any media involved with the Hulk franchise - the sound of the T-Rex roaring in Jurassic Park. The Hulk should sound big - bigger than he actually is. But the green goliath we got in Hulk hardly even sounded like a particularly loud person. He snarls, grunts, and growls, but he sounds like a small, choked animal. In Incredible Hulk, though, I have to say, they really got it right, particularly during the few instances when he speaks, like when he roars from the shadows "Leave me alone" or his "Hulk smash" towards the end.

Computer puppetry aside, visually there are some truly stunning moments in Hulk. To go along with the the film's message of interconnection, Lee blends wildly different settings seamlessly. One of the things that impresses me the most about his ingenuity here is that, in spite of using a plot that necessitated jettisoning quite a bit of the source material, he pays homage to the original comic visually, and in ways that make it seem quite a bit more than mere homage. They almost make it seem like metafiction.

For example, in the origin story Bill Mantlo added in Incredible Hulk #312, a story that laid much of the groundwork for Peter David's historic run on the book, as a child Bruce Banner watches his mother endure physical abuse at the hands of his father until he finally beats her to death. This is one of the most powerful and important stories ever told in the comic, because it introduces the notion that, at least in some sense, the gamma bomb blast didn't create the Hulk so much as set loose what had already been created by emotional trauma. This is presented differently in the film. There is no recurring abuse in the film, but Banner's father still kills his mother. Lee merges the murder scene with one of the discarded aspects of the original comic - the gamma bomb blast. Earlier in the film we see that Bruce's crazed father caused a meltdown at the military base where he was stationed, and in the murder flashback we see that his mother died the very moment the base exploded in a green mushroom cloud. After being stabbed, Bruce's mother pushes her way out of her house, crawls across the ground, and finally reaches towards the sky at the very moment the green of the gamma blast flashes across the desert. As a Hulk fan, it's a moment that's absolutely heartbreaking. And it unquestionably beats homages like putting file folders on computer screens named after past X-Men storylines.


Unfortunately, there's some bad here too. Lee tries a lot of visual tricks in Hulk, and they don't all work. In particular, his use of comic-book-panel-like splits largely comes off as gimmicky: something that might have been novel if Hulk had been the very first film to be based off a comic. I want to think it was more than a cheap gimmick, but there are a lot of instances in which I genuinely don't get what he's trying to convey. And in other cases, I get what he's doing, but it just doesn't work. In a lot of cases, like when he splits the screen to show two different points-of-view of the same conversation, it looks like a cheesy long distance phone commercial. In some, it just seems useless. For example, after the military captures Bruce Banner, we watch a bunch of helicopters transporting him across the desert. Lee uses his panels to show us four different points-of-view of the same helicopters doing the same thing and I can't even really say I know what the point was. There are some instances when it's interesting and even inspired, but not often enough to forgive the bad.


Leterrier, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to want to do much visual experimentation in Incredible Hulk, which is unsurprising because of the movie he makes. For better or worse, it's just another superhero movie. That's not meant to be dismissive. It's a good superhero movie. In fact, I was surprised by how much I liked it. But visually it looks exactly like I expected it to look -- like a slightly Michael-Bay-ish movie that seems to want to say "I could be a car commercial, just longer."

As far as the various actors' performances, it's tough to say in the case of Lee's Hulk. Most of the actors were well cast in their roles, but unfortunately I think the dialogue ruins most of it. You get the feeling that the writers got lost trying to take a story meant for adults -- because of tone, not content -- and rewriting it to be accessible to children. Out of all the actors, the only one I have a strong opinion of either way is Nick Nolte, who makes for one of the most wonderfully twitchy and believable supervillains on film.


I've been saying for a while that Ed Norton, who built his career playing characters that could be doormats one minute and intimidating macho types the next - most notably in Fight Club and Primal Fear -- would make the perfect Bruce Banner. Unfortunately, Incredible Hulk failed to touch the more emotional side of the character. If you spend the extra dough to get the special edition DVD, you can watch a very brief impromptu therapy session between Bruce Banner and Leonard Samson, but it hardly scratches the surface. We never really see any of the Hulk in Norton and never learn much about his past at all. He still does a good job, but it's such a wasted opportunity. The rest of the cast is fine. Liv Tyler is a far less annoying Betty Ross, William Hurt is an unexpectedly un-William-Hurt-ish General Ross, and if a sequel does see the light of day I wouldn't mind seeing Tim Blake Nelson return (presumably, next time, as The Leader). Tim Roth is okay, but I don't believe his character, mainly for physical reasons. I understand that he's supposed to be an older soldier, and that that's part of why he fixates on the Hulk and harnessing his power for himself, but I just don't buy it. He not only looks too old to be an active special ops guy, but looks far too unshaven to be in the military at all. And it has to be said, while I fully admit that this may be nothing more than the memories of other movies coloring my impression of Incredible Hulk, there's something about Roth's demeanor that says "gangster" or "thug" more than "soldier."

What I have to say about these movies may seem contradictory. It may even seem just plain fanboyish somehow. Overall, I think Incredible Hulk is the better film. But I like Hulk more.

Incredible Hulk is a better film in the sense that it succeeded at being what it was trying to be -- a summer money maker. Leterrier succeeded in taking the Hulk and fitting him into the proper superhero formula. Audiences bought tickets to Hulk and didn't know what the hell they walked into. The movie was too long, there wasn't enough action, and the Hulk took too long to show up. But Leterrier gave us exactly what we've come to expect. We got a lot more action, we got a villain from the comics, a love interest denied because of the hero's heroism, and we even got something not too different from that moment towards the end of most superhero movies when the hero stands astride the rooftops of his city victoriously (except rather than standing astride a gargoyle or a flagpole, he's leap-frogging away from a helicopter spotlight). Incredible Hulk succeeded in being what it was trying to be, but what it was trying to be was something we've already seen again and again.

I like Ang Lee's Hulk more because while it failed to be what it was trying to be, it failed because it was trying to be something more than the next funnybook-inspired popcorn flick.

I can't tell you that I know what Lee was trying to say with Hulk. At the risk of sounding like a wise-ass, I suspect Lee wasn't completely sure himself. When I look closely at Hulk, I see a mishmash of ideas, but nothing that unites it all.

In particular there's a lot going on with nature. We see Banner as a toddler associating his mother with nature as he watches her garden. Later as an adult, he keeps some kind of moss-covered rock by his home computer which Lee makes sure we see him water and care for. When he temporarily escapes the army, the Hulk only stops to ponder Zen-like over strange plants and rocks far from civilization. When Betty Ross first meets Bruce's alter-ego, he is initially hidden when his skin blends in with the shadows of the massive sequoia trunks surrounding her cabin. Along with plants, there's a lot of animal imagery in the film. As early as the opening credits when we see David Banner performing his dangerous genetic experiments, he has a veritable zoo he sacrifices for his science and later when Bruce Banner is hit with the gamma radiation in his lab, the zoo reappears in flashes, suggesting that part of what makes the Hulk who he is has been culled directly from the animal kingdom. In the final scene, as Banner's eyes flash a dangerous green and it's clear he's about to change into the Hulk again, the camera raises to reveal a green parrot perched nearby and a green frog hugging the brim of Banner's hat. As the camera shot takes us to a bird's eye view, the green of the jungle completely swallows the scene.

The suggestion seems to be that Lee's Hulk is meant to somehow be an agent of the Earth or nature, not radically different from how Alan Moore envisioned Swamp Thing; not in the sense that the Hulk is supposed to be able to control nature or that he's an elemental, but that the Earth is his "mother" in a very literal sense. This seems to be supported by Lee making the Hulk a modern version of Hercules. He battles the three hulk dogs just as Hercules battled the three-headed Cerberus, and the climactic battle begins with the Hulk's father absorbing the electricity of San Francisco to become something suspiciously like Zeus (and Zzzax). Just before he turns into Big Daddy Zeus, David Banner screams wildly about his son becoming a hero like those who "walked the Earth long before the pale religions of civilization infected humanity's soul!"

The political relevance of Hulk is potent, though it seems to be something that was overlooked or ignored at the time of its release. The environment has been a hot topic since the '90s, but more than that it needs to be remembered that Hulk was released 2 years after 9/11. It doesn't seem to mean so much now, but consider the immediate Post-9/11 environment. Consider the anger and the fear of the time. Consider why, and then consider a movie about a superhero who spends most of his time fighting the United States military. In the desert. With Arabic music playing the background.

There's a lot of potential here, but none of it seems to go anywhere. There are messages about manhood, and emotional trauma and repression, but it's all a jumble. You get the feeling Lee didn't really know how to turn it into a united, cohesive message but convinced himself otherwise. It's messy and ultimately I just don't know what the hell to make of it. If nothing else, I think it's safe to say Hulk is the most unique superhero film we've seen so far, and I think that's precisely why I like it more than Incredible Hulk, even though of the two Hulk is the lesser film.

I think we like to use words like "bold" and "risky" and "courageous" for certain artists and their work, but ironically most of us fail to use those words precisely when the artists prove just how bold, risky, and courageous they are by trying something and failing. I think if we only recognize brave artistry when the bravery is rewarded with unquestionable success, then it kind of kills the meaning of the word "brave." And I would like to think if the choice were put to me, rather than opting to succeed at what's easy, I would choose to fail at something great.

BATMAN ALWAYS WINS: Englehart & Rogers

We started our exploration here of all things Batmanish with a simple statement of purpose: There is no "definitive" Batman. It follows, then, that all Batmen are worth our time, whether wacky or gritty or remarkably sane.

That doesn't mean I don't have a favorite Batman, or several; for the longest time, one stood pretty clearly in the lead, and that's Frank Miller's Batman, as depicted in The Dark Knight Returns. Easy answer, but I gotta keep it real.

That's from a character perspecive. Based on visuals alone? Jim Aparo, followed closely by Norm Breyfogle.

After I finally got off my duff and read the legendary Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run of Detective Comics, it dawned on me that maybe the EngleRogers (does that work, like a "Brangelina" kinda thing? Maybe yes?) version of the Caped Crusader is now my favorite.

Because frankly, Batman's been depressing as hell for a really long time, and EngleRogers' Batman is actually (gasp) FUN.

***
We all know why Batman is. One minute, he's an eight-year-old skipping out of a screening of The Mark of Zorro; the next, he's kneeling in a pool of his parents' blood, which usually also contains bits of pearl necklace and movie theater popcorn as well.

It's an incredibly simple, elegant origin. It's lasted for the better part of seventy years with nary a tweak. It doesn't just work; it RESONATES. You may or may not be the vengeful type, but you can at least understand the cataclysmic event and its emotional fallout. You yourself may not choose to become a Creature of the Night in response to your own parents' murders, but you can sorta see where Bruce is coming from.

The problem with that origin is that sometime round about the emergence of Mr. Miller's vision of the character, the origin stopped being an inciting moment and became far more. Because it's an easily-drawn line connecting li'l Brucie in that alley and Big Bruce dressing up in a bat costume, that line has become everything the character is. The death of his parents grew to be far more than just Batman's origin; it became the totality of his being.

Which is what led us to Bat-Dick, the popular online term for the asshole Batman who prowled the streets of Gotham for something like twenty years, or basically, since the immense commercial and critical success of Miller's Year One and Dark Knight Returns.

There's something about those two stories standing as they do at the dawn and the twilight of Batman's career that underscores the origin-as-essence phenomenon; later creators must have looked at these two towering tales and realized, subconsciously or otherwise, that Miller had already done the heavy lifting for them. Whatever happened to Batman in their stories, it was simple enough to plug it into the template, since the template was not just easy and well-defined, but literally spanned Batman's entire life as a character, as defined by Miller.

So: Miller draws the pearls and the popcorn; a parade of talented creators fall in line; we get two decades plus of angry, vengeful Batman, some of which is perfectly good stuff, but all of which is frankly a fucking downer.

***

Of course, as I do a bit of internet research for my next trick, I discover a far more talented writer has already done an incredible piece on EngleRogers' Batman. Apologies in advance to Peter Sanderson if I eventually follow along the path he carefully cleared through the jungle of Batman, and we'll get back to his essay in a moment.

***

What struck me most powerfully about the EngleRogers Detective Comics run is that their Batman is not a character defined by vengeance. The death of his parents is what drove him to become Batman, but it is not what drives him to continue being Batman.

What keeps him going is a sense of justice, and frankly, a sense of adventure -- you get the sense that the EngleRogers Batman enjoys what he does, and that he's not undertaking some solemn, lonely vocation that would handily destroy most men, and quickly.

There's lots more to love about EngleRogers' Batman; his relationships with Dick Grayson, Silver St. Cloud, and Alfred all seem much more healthy and grounded, and the guy's actually able to deal with police and citizens without terrifying everyone who bumps into him. But it all stems from the central conceit of Batman as dark, heroic adventurer, NOT Batman as brooding, vengeful sociopath.

In interviews just prior to launching his run on Batman, writer Grant Morrison referenced the "Neal Adams hairy-chested love god" version of the character, and that quote certainly stuck in my mind. On reflection, I think Morrison actually aimed for more of an EngleRogers conception of Bruce Wayne, one able to absorb all of the various aspects of the character without becoming too beholden to any of them. Bruce Wayne had an actual healthy romance again (at least, until she went and got evil on him), he had more fully developed relationships with his supporting cast, and he dealt with a wider range of threats than the vicious street scum he would regularly beat to within an inch of their lives as the Deep, Dark Knight.

Then there's the issue of Morrison's run as all-encompassing clearinghouse for ALL of Batman's history -- he's said that he's taking the approach that every adventure we've seen Batman have since 1939 actually happened to this guy over the span of twelve-odd years. That again has echoes of EngleRogers, as Sanderson astutely points out in his essay linked above:

All of this reflects a different mindset than that which prevails in comics today. Englehart believed in drawing from and incorporating the classic stories of the past, presumably not just because they provided him such rich material, but also out of respect for the writers, artists and editors who created those stories. Englehart was presenting his stories as the latest in a long and honorable tradition. How different this is from the current fashion in comics, whereby classic stories are regarded as dated antiques to be superseded by new versions by whoever the current hotshots are considered to be.

Englehart's approach was more of a pick and choose strategy, closer to what Geoff Johns has done with heroes like Green Lantern and now Superman; Morrison's actually dragging it ALL in to see what that does to Bruce Wayne. But the principle's similar.

Morrison took Batman on quite a freaky psychological journey in "Batman RIP," and I enjoyed his Batman more than any I've read in years. It's because Morrison's conception of the Dark Knight owes quite a bit to the EngleRogers version of the character. It's a Batman you WANT to read about, that you want to cheer for, and that you want to see happy.

That's right -- a balanced, HAPPY Batman. Shocking, but as Englehart and Rogers demonstrated, quite possible, and endlessly entertaining.

Next time: If all goes well, we'll have an interview with Norm Breyfogle, the iconic Batman artist for an entire generation of fans. If nothing goes well, then we'll talk about Burton's Batman. Either way, we're going back to 1989.

A version of this column originally appeared at Alert Nerd, where I frequently blog as well. Come on over and check it out!

Daily Breakdowns 031 - Never Too Late for Tardi

I suppose I shouldn't start off by admitting that for some time, when people mentioned Jacques Tardi, I confused him with the French filmmaker Jacques Tati, of M. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle. Well, at least he's in good company.

West Coast Blues
Adapted by Jacques Tardi, from the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette
Published by Fantagraphics Books. $18.99 USD

West Coast Blues is Fantagraphics first offering in what one hopes will be am ambitious Tardi reprint project, though only You Are Here has been announced as a follow-up. Tardi has enjoyed a long career as a cartoonist, with his own popular original creation, Adele Blanc-Sec, appearing in several albums over the past 30 years, as many adaptations such as this one, from 1976.

We meet George Gerfaut, a salesman, drunk and high and driving too fast, with a scar on his forehead, and we meet one Alonso Emerich y Emerich, an ugly, brutal killer, and then Tardi backtracks to let us know how Gerfaut got this way and what will bring him in conflict with Emerich. It's an elegant, somewhat unorthodox set-up, at least with Tardi's narration, and indeed Tardi makes a number of creative, idiosyncratic choices in adapting the novel. For instance, we're told Gerfaut and his wife screwed, but it's not shown, and how many artists fail to throw a little sex into a story when they have the freedom to do so? At another point, a grieving killer is comforted by a favorite comic character. Like many men, Gerfaut wants to finish off a tough day with some booze and music--in is case American jazz--rather than open up to his wife, but she seems pretty used to his act by now.

Rather than getting into the specifics of the plot, let's just say one decent act on Gerfaut's part brings some paid killers on his trail. The killers are as quirky as Tarantino characters, though one won't mourn their loss, and Gerfaut, despite not being the fittest or smartest man, nonetheless finds a strong survival instinct even as his plight plunges him into an existential fugue for which the cure may or may not be payback.

The '70s milieu shouldn't put anyone off, and in fact that's one of the book's charms, with Tardi's clean line depicting classic old Mercedes and Citroens, and plenty of legwork and driving rather than digital assistance. Tardi has a really appealing style, clear and photorealistic in the details and yet messy with life. It's fun to see a car chase on tree-lined streets. Tardi doesn't shy away from the violence of the story, but he doesn't revel in it, either, his pages all varying grids, many with tall, narrow panels that keep the pace brisk. He makes interesting choices with what he illustrates vs. what he narrates--twice he lets us know that Gerfaut has burst into tears, but we never see it; one could therefore focus on the visuals and retain the impression of a more resolute, typical action hero rather than a guy doing his best to hold on.

The "mountain" portion of the book is perhaps the most interesting, as Gerfaut has dropped out of society and made a new life for himself, seemingly a fairly carefree one that could have continued if Emerich had given up searching for him. The ending, which brings us back to the beginning, ripples with meaning. Gerfaut has accomplished every goal but in doing so he's missed his chance to escape.

Christopher Allen

Thursday Link Party: The Webbing Represents Something Else, I Think

Let's take the long way today, a rambling spin through the interwebbes. We'll start a little far from comics but get there quick. Trust me.

This titanic (get it, cause he directed the movie Titanic, and I'll shaddap now) profile of James Cameron is a must-read, especially if, like me, you get a little dizzy when you think about seeing Avatar in a few months. (via Kevin Church)

Didja know Cameron wrote up his own treatment for a Spider-Man movie back in 1991? And it's online? Read and imagine what could have been.

Supposedly Bruce Campbell will have a larger role in Spider-Man 4, which won't be directed by James Cameron but will be directed by Sam Raimi. I'm glad to hear that as Campbell's extended bit role as the enthusiastic French waiter was for me perhaps the most entertaining part of Spider-Man 3.

Ya know who I'd love see writing a Spider-Man movie? Grant Morrison. (Okay, not really but it's a transition. WORK WITH ME PEOPLE.) Ya know whose upcoming series Joe the Barbarian I'm superexcited about? Grant Morrison. Pretty excited about Sean Murphy too, who is already looking to be KICKING ASS on this book.

Morrison's All-Star Superman did pretty well on the Best Comics of 2008 Meta-List, an indispensible resource once created by Dick Hyacinth but this year created by Sandy over at I Love Rob Liefield (title ironic, I think) using the original formula created by Chad Nevett.

Speaking of Superman, I agree wholeheartedly with Kiel Phegley that Hipster Superman sucks and slutty Halloween costumes do not kick ass. As he says:

But boy oh boy is there a big difference between someone, male or female, who is confident with their body and sexuality and looking to explore that and some who just wants to be slutty. And holy shit, will there be a lot of people slutting it up out there on Halloween this year.

I like skin as much as the next dude but I've got a daughter now and if she tries to parade herself around like a hooker one day a year, I swear to Jesus I will ground her until she's at least as old as those ladies in Grey Gardens.

Finally, I just loved this piece of iPod Touch art that Lea Hernandez created. So evocative and beautiful.

Barry Windsor-Smith on Health Care

The acclaimed comics creator shares his experiences with both the US and British health care systems. This is a must-read for any thinking human being, but especially for anyone who has enjoyed Barry's comics work over the past few decades.

Mighty Chew

(FAIR WARNING: I'm not 100% sure this will go anyplace substantive. I have questions but no answers. I hope we can discuss in the comments.)

Yesterday's release of the DC Comics solicits for January 2010 revealed that issue 12 of The Mighty will be the series' last.

This bums me out, as I really enjoyed this series; I honestly could not believe it was being published by DC at times, not because it was horrifically violent or featured lots of gratuitous nudity (it had neither), but because the storytelling was so smart and methodical. I won't get too far into it, at the risk of spoiling for those who may read it someday (this would be a GREAT trade paperback purchase and an even BETTER dollar-bin roundup). It's essentially a suspense thriller about a superhero who may or may not be insane, told from the point of view of his all-too-mortal lieutenant and friend. It's a great comic.

Thing is, there's lots of great comics within what I'll term for the purposes of this conversation the American genre mainstream -- basically the Big Two and the other large, medium, and smallish publishers who also publish primarily superhero, action, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc comic books.

It seems universally true (to me at least) that for the most part, the books that sell in the top 50 or 100 are usually not as good as those that fall beneath that rough line of demarcation. I say that as someone who enjoys Bendis and Brubaker a whole hell of a lot, worships the water Grant Morrison walks upon, and even occasionally gets into the gore-infested melodrama of Mr. Geoff Johns.

But if you think about the really great mainstream genre comics out there, it's almost always stuff that is either "comfortably" in the midlist or pretty much always in danger of cancellation. From the past few years alone, so many examples come to mind -- Agents of Atlas, Captain Britain and MI:13, Secret Six, Incredible Hercules, Jay Faerber's books for Image, Checkmate, Blue Beetle. These are just from the top of my noggin. Pick through your own brain, or poke around your longboxes sometime, and you'll no doubt find your own pet favorite series that ended too soon because it sold too little, in spite of high quality, many positive reviews, and maybe even a fan campaign to resurrect it. (Shit, forgot Manhunter. Especially Manhunter.)

So this got me to thinking about not the whole "why don't people really like the good comics that it seems like everyone agrees are good but nobody buys" argument, which is kinda played out, but a more specific argument. To wit:

Why did The Mighty fail, and Chew succeed?

I like Chew, a lot. I like The Mighty better, I think. But this isn't a value judgement on either comic. It's more about two mainstream genre comics, one that sank like a stone over a year, and one that already seems to have drummed up enough buzz and sales to see it through two or three years.

Obviously it's not strict apples to apples, and maybe that's all the answer we need. The Mighty was a superhero book from a superhero publisher that didn't take place in said publisher's mainstream superhero universe. It was marginalized from the start. Chew is not a superhero book and has no aspirations to be one. The Mighty has a much less poppy "hook" than Chew, which is about a guy who eats dead people to find out about how they died. (Damn, that's a great high concept.)

There's also huge differences in the philosophies of the publishers; Image is clearly willing to nurture a title like Chew for long enough to let the book either make an impression or fail to do so, and even after it fails to do so, it may keep publishing it anyway, because those guys are cool like that. I have no knowledge of their inside baseball but one look at a smash TPB hit like The Walking Dead proves that it must be worth it for them to try lobbing out interesting books into the marketplace and trying to see what will "stick" in a similar way.

DC...well, like I said, I have no idea why DC even agreed to publish The Mighty. It's not a DCU book. They rarely publish non-DCU books. This might not have been the best fit for something like Vertigo but it could easily have folded into the Wildstorm line instead, not that doing so would have helped or hurt its chances much, in my opinion.

Does Image just care about comics more than DC does? There has certainly been plenty of press and buzz surrounding Chew, some of it organic to the book and its hooky concept, but some of it definitely stoked and driven by the Image marketing and exec team. On the other hand, I do recall interviews promoting The Mighty upon its initial debut.

Are we just that shitty a readership, that we can't spot the good books from the massive wall of absolute pablum wretched up onto the stands every week? Maybe so. According to estimates The Mighty 1 sold around 17K; by issue 3 it was at half that number; by issue six it was under 6K. So some of us tried it and gave up; fine, it's not everyone's cuppa. But that first issue was so purposefully slow and careful that I wonder if it didn't push people from picking up a second and third installment. I guess that could be our fault as lazy addled readers, or the creators' fault for not putting enough BANG in their big debut; I still thought it was an awesome opening.

Oddly enough, Chew started at around 5K in sales reported for its debut month (with more thereafter as the issue went through multiple printings), and had hit 13K by its third issue. So a nice sizeable climb...but ultimately in the same ballpark as The Mighty, honestly. And frankly, DC just has much deeper pockets than Image, at least I would think they do.

So why not just keep publishing The Mighty for a while longer, put out some trades, try to nurture the book more than just a push off the ledge with a few Newsarama articles to help it fly?

I don't know. I'm running out of questions and I'm pretty absent of answers. I'm bummed; not like indignant and angry, like you are all morons cause you didn't buy this comic book I liked. How sad would that be? Pretty sad.

But every couple years, I'll pull out my meager stack of Mighty issues, and I'll read them again, and I'll wish I had more to read. I don't know why I won't have more, and I don't know if there are easy answers to these questions. I just wish more of the good stuff got more of a chance to be even better, I guess.

Daily Breakdowns 030 - Delayed Dalliance with Delphine

Delphine #1-4
By Richard Sala
Published by Fantagraphics Books/Coconino Press. $7.95 USD ea.

There's a sense that Richard Sala is a fairly restless creator, going from a twelve issue series, Evil Eye to original graphic novels, children's storybooks, even illustrating an unearthed Jack Kerouac screenplay. Now he's possibly moving into the young adult genre with Cat Burglar Black, but just prior to this he finally completed his four-part Ignatz collection for Fantagraphics, Delphine.

Longtime Sala readers will recognize some familiar tropes right away: strange surroundings, shady characters who seem to hold malevolent secrets. And Sala's art is familiar as well, but taken to a new level -- lovely watercolors on the covers and moody washes on the gray interiors. The creamy paper that's typical of the Ignatz releases lends additional otherworldly, othertimely atmosphere to the story. And the logo itself is so good it deserved to be used for a long-running series.

But it's the story that departs from Sala's work in some major ways. First, we have a male protagonist. With most of Sala's stories, there's a cute, plucky heroine solving some sort of creepy mystery. This story's plenty creepy, but our hero wants to find the girl who got away, Delphine. She went home after college to tend to her sick father, while he took a London fellowship, and when she didn't write he got worried and heartsick and wants to find out what happened to her.

He comes back to her town, and after several forbidding portents he ends up in real trouble, nearly beaten to death at the end of the first chapter, and encountering witches, werewolves and religious zealots. And without giving too much away, his quest is unsuccessful, though the ending, with its use of dreamy, cloudy panel borders, certainly opens up multiple interpretations.

It would be presumptuous, maybe unfair, to see this as a more personal project for Sala just because the protagonist is male. Still, it's intriguing that so many past stories featured variations on a particular female type, of which Delphine fits into in the few glimpses seen here: clever, girl-next-door sexy, but with a edge, and now that Sala girl is absent and the hero can't recover her. The Sala girl always solves her cases, but the guy can't, and is lost and possibly ruined because of it. He encounters the same monsters and secret societies that Judy Drood or Peculia would, but unlike them, he can't overcome them. He's always one step behind, one movement too late, his inability to comprehend the world he's been plunged into and adapt to it becoming his ruin. It's true the ending is going to disappoint many, but the rest is so resonant and unsettling that, even flawed, it has to rank as one of Sala's major works.

A Report From A Con You Probably Haven't Heard Of, Yankee

WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS

A Con Report From A Young Turk Attempting To Storm The Castle

I love comic cons. Always have. As a young nerdlet I attended UKCAC (the United Kingdom Comic Art Convention) every year from '91 to '96, and at least once after that -- I forget how many more years it ran. I considered it an almost religious experience, a chance to pay tribute to my gods, and bask in their divine glow. I queued up to stammer at a remarkable number of my heroes, at a very tender age. I even entered the costume contest a few times -- my Hellboy was particularly good, if I say so myself. I've always enjoyed going around the various small press stalls, finding hidden gems and under-appreciated geniuses (geneii?)... I remember buying the first issue of Kane directly from Paul Grist at UKCAC one year, and I've made a point of seeking him out and buying something from him at every con I've attended since.

Nowadays, here in the UK we have two major comics specific events (although there are a few smaller things bubbling under, and the twice annual London MCM Expo, which draws in far more people but for some reason doesn't get the same focus from the comics industry), the Bristol Comic Con, which I can't attend because it takes place the weekend of my fiancee's birthday (I mean, Jesus, I love that woman -- I'm not going to make her go to a comic con on her birthday!); and the Birmingham International Comics Show- now rebranded as the British International Comics Show- which happens in the first week of October every year.

Birmingham's a bit of an odd con, to be honest. The fan/pro ratio (if by pro you include every exhibitor) feels like it's nigh on 1:1, which should tell you something about the difference between UK cons and their American counterparts. This leads to a wonderfully informal atmosphere, but it can be a bit disconcerting if, like me, you've never quite got over your fanboy reflex -- you know, the one that leaves you quivering and stuttering like an idiot as soon as you realise you're in the presence of someone who's work you enjoy.

This year's con was particularly surreal for me, since it was my first time on the other side of the table (at this con, at least -- I've exhibited at the even smaller UK Web And Mini Comix Thing a couple of times).

I thought maybe you might be interested in hearing what it's like to be a fanboy masquerading as a pro at a con. Hopefully, I'm right about that, because that's exactly what this here massive smear of writing is. I shall try not to let it turn into a straight up list of name drops and plugs for my friends; I'd advise you not to hold out too much hope for that though.

You know what the worst thing about exhibiting at a comic con is? You don't get to go to any panels. Which means I missed Bryan Talbot launching Grandville, Howard Chaykin being interviewed about his career, Geek Syndicate's 70 Years Of Marvel panel with Alan Davis, Mark Farmer, Andy Diggle and Paul Cornell (although I at least got to listen to that one afterwards via the geek Syndicate podcast ), and, er, the cosplay contest. Okay, I'll admit I'm not heartbroken about that last one. But on the other hand, I got to stand next to Chaykin in a queue for luke-warm fish and chips at the surprisingly unpleasant launch party. So there's that.

No. I didn't talk to him. I couldn't; for some reason the organisers felt that it would be appropriate to have a DJ playing god-awful top 40 RnB at ear-splitting volume all night. Because, you know, us comics fans just love the R&B apparently.

Here's the depressing little secret of what it's like to be a *cough* pro *cough* at a comic con: I spent two days sitting behind a table trying to sell my comics to people who didn't want to buy them, because they rather understandably wanted to save their money for Grandville. Luckily, I found myself sandwiched between the writers Ian Sharman and Chris Lynch (both of whom produce work you should definitely check out -- You'll find Ian's work here and Chris's here ) who helped put me at my ease with a rousing barbershop rendition of Color Me Badd's classic 80's hit I Want To Sex You Up, allbeit with the lyrics amended to I Want To Fuck A Goat. Well, maybe it was just Ian singing those words. Anyway, as I'm sure you can imagine, this wasn't an uncomfortable experience at all, and I wasn't in the slightest bit disturbed or frightened each time over the course of the weekend that Chris would begin humming the melody. Not at all, no.

Ian, by the way, is a bit of a renaissance man; he pretty much runs studio cum indy publisher Orang Utan Comics, as well as writing a pretty large chunk of the output. He's also a professional letterer (many of you will soon be reading his lettering work in the Top Shelf published AX), and an incredible inker. And he now owes me a double Laphroig on ice for the plug.

Oh, and in the interest of balance, Chris managed to impress me greatly by taking a random idea that came up in conversation on the saturday morning -- just after the singalong- and proceeding to craft a complete script from it in his notebook over the course of the weekend. That's creativity in action, folks.

Anyway, I have to say that while the experience was far more fun than sitting in one place for two days sounds, it also went by kind of fast. the daytimes quickly blurred together into one long weird smudge, a seemingly endless parade of upper halves of people appearing before me, picking up my comics, looking through them, and in most cases putting them down again and moving on; but in a few cases buying one, and in one rather memorable instance saying "Huh. Bit shit," and moving on... (I like to think that the next thing she did was fall down the stairs and break her neck. what, bitter, me? Noooooo.) Naturally, in such circumstances, the people who go out of their way to stop and chat are much appreciated, and I'm pleased to say a surprising number of people did. I can link you to three of them -- Scott from Comic Book Outsiders, Stace from Small Press Big Mouth and Jared from OK Comics all stopped by and brightened things up -- but most were simply straight up fans of the medium, pleased to be seeing a comic they hadn't heard of before, which gave me a real warm glow- even when they didn't buy a comic. I swear, social skills aren't our strong point as a subculture, but our genuine and unembarrassed love for this artform is a beautiful thing to behold. The teenage boys dressed like Tank Girl, the girls who wanted advice on how to make their own comic, Sam the cosplayer who played the most popular Superman I've ever seen (and who impressively suppressed his desire to kill me for not liking Starman)- every one of them made it fun to be behind that table, when it could so easily have been a terrible chore. If nothing else they drowned out the endless repeat eighties hair-rock a cappella karaoke performance taking place directly to my right...

As the weekend progressed, I found myself experimenting with different ways to encourage custom. Singing attracts attention, but not necesarily the right kind; while waiting to catch someone's eye and then performing a theatrical hand flourish towrds your wares actually seems to repel people. Surprisingly, the most effective technique turned out to be waiting untill a potential customer is within earshot and then simply saying, in a friendly but not loud or pushy manner, "these comics are really good." It worked every time. And now I have told you my secret and must kill you.

Unsurprisingly, it's the not-strictly-con-related stuff that sticks out in my memory. For example, chatting with PJ Holden in the street outside the hotel on the Sunday morning when I should have already been setting up at the con- that was a pretty massive thing for me, as I'm a big fat fanboy when it comes to mr Holden's work (and also the fucking hilarious podcast he co-presents, Sunnyside Comics ); his old-school 2000AD style and inventive but always clear and easy storytelling just sing to me. My annual visit to Paul Grist's table to pay tribute, tug my forelock, and back away respectfully was as important to me as it always is. Having a beer with Paul Cornell while Ian gushed about his Captain Britain run was fun and surreal. Sharing tales of heavy metal gigs and comparing moshpit scars with the Bearded Skull guys was a fun way to start the Saturday evening, and having a good long catch up and drinking session with my mate Tom and his brother was an excellent way to finish it. Putting faces to the names and avatars of the various podcasters and bloggers that I've chatted with online over the last few years was nice; apparently wearing a bloody great badge with your name on it makes that easier to do... it's not exactly the transition into some secret world of glamour and coolness that I think many comics fans imagine, crossing that con-table divide; it's more like starting work at a new place; being the new boy in some big institution. Some people will be friendly and welcoming, some will be standoffish and snobby; most will be cautiously affable, sizing you up to see how long you're going to last, and whether you're going to be trouble for them or their friends- or if you're going to be someone they want to work alongside. As you can probably imagine, this is both exciting and scary; my way of coping was to drink lots and lots and lots of whisky. Hey, you've got to have a system.

The thing that surprised me the most about the con was the sketching. Now, I'm told that it has been standard practice for years at American cons for pros to sell sketches -- but this was the first time I've seen it at a UK con; traditionally, artists have always done free sketches for all comers over here. Apparently over the last year there has been a spontaneous concensus decision amongst British creators that this is just silly, and a huge loss of income, which seems fair enough. Anyway, the thing about it that surprised is that EVERYONE was doing it, not just the "big names"; as well as Ian and Chris, I was also sitting with a couple of artists, MWM's Stu.Art (who I have decided I do not like because he is just too bloody good) and the rather lovely Simon Wyatt ( who is also bloody good but in a very different style from mine so it's ok), who does work for both Orang Utan and the increasingly popular Insomnia publications -- and both of them spent the entire con hunched over the table drawing, producing an impressive number of sketches which they then sold for a fiver apiece. Obviously, I will be doing this myself at the next con I go to. Frankly, if I'd thought to bring a larger sketchbook, I'd have been doing it at this one.

And well, that's it, that's the whole sorry tale. I'll finish up with a word of advice to anyone planning on attending a con anywhere: book an extra night at your hotel. Everyone I spoke too was travelling home on the Sunday night, and every single one of them looked positively forlorn as they made their tired, broken way to the train station or car park, laden down with unsold comics and table paraphenalia; meanwhile I took myself off to KFC for a boneless barbecue banquet box and then retired to my hotel room, where I was asleep by nine, so shattered was I from the weekend's shenanigans. Sure, it cost me a little more, but boy was it worth it.

I slept like a baby, too.

The Future of Comics: A Retailer's Perspective

I have been casting a wide net recently, in hopes of a greater understanding about the state of the comics industry and Direct Market. This week I snared two retailers, Tim Broman and Aaron David, who jointly run Collector’s Connection in Duluth, Minnesota. Tim and Aaron have been in the retailing end of the industry for 20 some years, and as such, I think they have some valuable insights into what is happening in the comics world.

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

Tim Broman: The question behind these questions seems to be in regards to Marvel Comics being taken over by Disney. Direct Market dead? Not from where I sit. The only problem is “not enough players on the field.” Instead of more distributors, I think that the smart Disney people will use the newsstand style distribution to get more Marvel Comics into more spaces. "Marvel Comics - available anywhere with floors, doors, and oxygen."

Aaron Davis: As a whole, the only problem I see with the direct market distribution is the lack of competition/distributors. I know it costs me more money and I get poorer service since Capital City Distribution went under.

Is the Direct Market dead? No. If we did not order through the Direct Market and get the discount necessary to make a profit, we would not be in business. If the direct distribution ends, the only place to buy comics would be stores like Barnes & Noble. There would be fewer buyers and fewer comic specialty stores.

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

TB: Nothing -- although the comics industry has always had the bad habit of discovering the Golden Goose, and killing it through overdoing things. Examples of G.I. Joe (the Marvel ones), independent comics, variant covers, #1 issues, no matter...whatever is hot, gets done and redone until no one cares anymore. But every time the prices go up, we lose committed readers. Of course by the time most of them turn 16, we lose committed readers...it’s just that at 16, we start to lose them to cars, and girls. Currently, I hear several complaints about the costs ($3.99 per issue, on average), and the lack of quality that you get with these books. Marvel Comics puts out 16 pages of art -- and most of them are two panels per page -- and the rest is ads. All for $3.99 per issue. But hey...after 23 years in the business, I heard the same stuff when comics hit 75 cents...then a buck...then $1.50...and so on, so forth, and-you-get-where-this-is-going...



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

TB: Again, I say nothing. Comics have always been a “kids” medium. You read them as a child. It wasn’t until the movies made them hip that you would dare read comic books in the open. Otherwise other adults might think you retarded (and we all know that’s what the WWE is for).

AD: I have been reading comics regularly for more than 30 years, and owned a store for 25 years. There are very few comics I follow anymore. For me, the problem is the continuing storylines. The plots are complex, bizarre and hard to follow. It seems the creators are catering to the comic nerd, and not to the mass market that like to pick up a comic once in a while. Some of those casual readers will become regulars if they enjoy the issue they pick up, but if the casual reader has no idea what is going on, you will not gain a new regular reader. The creators seem to have lost the ‘fun’ part of comics, trying to be artsy, gritty, or trendy. Get back to basics, and you will gain new readers to replace the ones that are lost due to the natural life progression. Many readers stop collecting as they enter the high school and college years, but pick it back up once they settle down and have kids of their own.

For me, the comic heroes are fine, but the stories should be based more on reality. I can identify with a hero fighting a human with enhanced abilities attempting to rob a bank, but some of the comics feature the heroes fighting bizarre space aliens trying to blow up the Earth in a story that started 14 issues ago. I have a life, and I cannot follow the story-lines that take months and months to complete.

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

TB: “If it don’t kill ya’, it probably makes ya stronger.” That’s how the Internet is. Admittedly, it is harder for a retailer to sell his back issues when you can buy the same thing on eBay for about 25-35% less (including the shipping, which no one does). I’ll bet that a lot of the “brick & mortars” that used to be open are still on Amazon, or eBay.

The internet does offer a solution via its multiple outlets for free advertising and promotion. Collector’s Connection has a FaceBook site. It also lists items and events via CraigsList. We just signed up for LinkedIn (a FaceBook site for Business People), and there is a Yahoo! Group called DULUTH DEALS that we list on. And, aside from your time and labor, it’s all free. So far...

AD: For my business, if I do not have a comic or back issue in stock, my customer will find it online. In the past, the customer would buy something else for his collection, and/or wait until I could find the item he wanted. Now, there is no patience. I cannot carry everything, and I cannot compete with the online community, either on price or selection.

As far as a solution, I can sell my excess inventory online.

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

TB: From where I sit, the fundamental difference between Disney and Marvel is that Marvel has been actively working on Branding, and Product Placement since the 1990's (although they started in the 1960s, they stepped up a notch in the '90s). But the Disney people have been doing the same branding and placement since the 1930s, and are therefore a lot smarter about it.

If you doubt me, pick a large corporate chain (Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart, etc.). Wander through and keep a mental tally of how many Disney items you see, versus how many Marvel items. If my theory holds up, the number of Disney items will be larger. But, in about three to five years, the Marvel market penetration will be on par with the Disney stuff, thanks to the smarter Disney people.

Short term -- lotsa Marvel Comics available anywhere you find Magazines. Bad news for comic shops. Long term -- lotsa new Marvel geeks who will want your back issues. Good news for comic shops.

Also, long term, you will be able to turn your home into something that’ll make you think that Martha Stewart got bitten by a Radioactive Spider...Good news for comic geeks...bad news for comic geeks that want female companionship.

AD: There will always be a core group of collectors, but when comics are not trendy, the number of collectors will shrink, reducing the market, print runs, and number of stores catering to them. They will come back, but there is a lot of competition for the entertainment dollar, and the trend is toward flashy electronics. I don’t believe comics will achieve the level of popularity they enjoyed in the past.

Flashmob Fridays #004: Planetary #27

Christopher Allen

I won’t be commenting on the long-awaited twenty-seventh and final issue of Planetary. I haven’t read it. But like a baseball player, you want to get your swings in, and the reason I’m not reviewing the final issue right now is what I wanted to write about.

Planetary and The Authority hold some meaning for me, as much as any superhero comic of the past decade. I first encountered both series in mid-1999. I hadn’t been reading comics for a year or two, having gotten married, bought a house, and tried to get serious about work. One day I noticed a nice-looking comics & collectibles shop in a strip mall in my new neighborhood, and went in, marveling at such things as busts of superheroes, and wondering what this card game was that the kids were playing at a table in the middle of the shop. Well, the need to read some new comics gripped me, and I looked over the shelves, which had new releases with prior issues underneath. Being out of the loop, I looked for some familiar faces. Hey, that looks like John Byrne art, and he’s doing my favorite character, Spider-Man in a kind of Year One thing? Cool! Hey, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

But I also noticed a couple other books, nearly jumping off the shelves with their stylish covers, and these were the two Warren Ellis series. I wasn’t reading many comics when Ellis made his earlier splashes in comics, so his name meant nothing to me at the time. But these books, they really had the look of the state of the art in superhero comics, and so I picked up the first couple issues of each (there were complete runs there) and read them that night. The Authority was a glorious kick up the pants to superheroes, with stories of real scope and consequence and a fresh attitude to solving them, while Planetary was an ingenious way to pull together every cool superhero/sci-fi/horror character or concept, with either some new tweaks or a good scrubbing to get them down to what made them cool in the first place.

The Authority was great, but it had already been out for a while when I discovered it, and Ellis was just about done writing it, a rare case of a comics creator making the perfect exit, but Planetary only had a few issues out when I started with it. I recall my boss at the time, who was my age, sharing a fondness for superheroes, and I soon lent him these books, making him an instant fan as well. As The Authority passed through many creative hands and with increasingly diminishing returns, Planetary kept going, and with generally good stewardship by Ellis, aside from some less-than-stellar one-shots.

Unaccustomed to paying for high-priced hardcovers, Absolute Authority and Absolute Planetary were nonetheless instant purchases for me. As they were state-of-the-art monthly comics, so too did they lead the way towards the boom in fancy slipcased editions. It was upon my purchase of these that I stopped buying Planetary on a regular basis. It’s not that I was disillusioned at all—I forget a lot of what I read, but several years on, The Drummer, Jakita Wagner and Elijah Snow are still there for me in my mind, along with certain scenes and dialogue. No, it’s just that I felt like the next time I read them would have to be in another Absolute edition. I didn’t want fifteen minutes of brilliance whenever Ellis and Cassaday could get together to make it happen, once a year or so. It’s really nothing on them; I’ve never been one of those guys who turns on creators for missing deadlines as long as the work’s good. It’s just that I set Planetary aside, a reward of hours of images and ideas to be enjoyed fully upon its completion. Various projects, illnesses and other difficulties aside, I really think this has always been a special book for Ellis and Cassaday, and that neither wanted to do it unless they could bring their best effort to it. And so, when the time comes, I will read it in the best format possible. A thank you to both for some great memories, and more to come.

Michael Paciocco

I had become largely bored and uninterested in comic books by the time I was twenty. Not surprising really; the adolescent power fantasies and melodramas that I was all too familiar with by the time had no longer anything to offer me except the promise of the same, and I was ready to move on out of comics. However, needing some kind of stimulation that wasn’t offered by mass media, it was a combination of boredom and experimentation that I picked up issues #3-6 of Planetary from the local comic shop.

So, it’s all Ellis, Cassaday, and Martin’s fault that I’m still buying comics at all nearly ten years later. And not just because I’ve been waiting for this particular issue either, although there were a few occasions where it certainly felt like it.

At the time I started reading the series, there was nothing like it, and that there still isn’t anything comparable to this is a credit to the creators, and the strength of their vision, despite the waxing and waning of the title over the years as various, sundry reasons, both professional and personal, diverted some of the energy and immediacy from this work. Still, it was worth the wait for this epilogue and endcap for the series.

Ellis’s best works are often obsessed with “A Finer World” and the efforts, sacrifices, compromises, and rewards of the quest to create them. In that sense, this finale represents a Platonic ideal of how such a world might come about. There’s a sense of unbridled optimism and selfless altruism that is absent in most of his other writing, which makes it all the more rewarding to examine and immerse oneself in. As an epilogue, it is more concerned with wrapping up various loose ends, some of them going back a decade (in publishing time). Most of the mysteries are solved, one is left wide open, and a few more are actually created.

It’s often been claimed (and by Ellis himself) that Planetary was his ultimate meta-story about the transformative powers of fiction, and comic books in particular. If that’s the case, I’ve long held to the belief that the core members of Planetary are metaphorical stand-ins for Ellis’s own instincts as a comic fan: the ‘mad idea’ lover, the action junkie, and of course, the puzzle-maker and problem solver as embodied by the acerbic and brilliant Elijah Snow. And this final issue is, like many of the best issues, a story about Elijah, about the quests that drive him, the decisions he make to better the world, and how much of the world and its wonders he’s willing to risk for the sake of making the world a more tolerable place.

I’ll make an admission here that I’m sad to admit -– I generally don’t like Cassaday’s art on other works, as there’s just no way for me to separate his visual style in my head from this series. I can’t think of any other artist that can create the rich tapestry of worlds that seem both old-fashioned in their opulence and at the same time incredibly advanced beyond our technical grasp. I hope that he enjoys a successful career in the years to come because I do admire his work, but it is as difficult for me to imagine this series as presented by any other artist as it is for me to see his work and not immediately think of his efforts on this series.

Laura Martin is the unsung hero of this series, and her palate here, as with the rest of the series, is as vibrant as it is necessary. Martin’s colors here and in the rest of the series has been essential in setting both the tone of the series, and in subtly bringing out characterization and mood in many of the defining sequences of the book; take a look at how a shadow never falls on Elijah’s white suit, and yet it never appears to glow or reflect light. There’s a dozen unique effects just like that in this issue alone, and hundreds more over the length of the series. Martin shows how vital color can be in a story, and that makes her as indispensable as anyone else on this book.

And so Planetary ends, not with a bang or a whimper, but with the final pieces falling into place and locking together into a complete picture, as it should. I admit, I’ll miss this series, and I highly doubt we’ll see something like this from the Big Two for a long time to come. What I will miss more than this book though, was its effect on me – this series lead me to scour the net for good comics and for fellow fans to discuss the series with. It led me to Warren Ellis’s site, to that of other creators, to meet fans that I still talk to today, and of course, to Comic Book Galaxy. I will miss discussing the various mysteries and fan theories that circulated about the story over its long run, and I’ll miss the thrill of turning the cover of an issue to see something new and unexpected behind it. It was a strange world, and let’s keep it that way.

(But I think I know who the fictionaut really is, and if you’ve read the series carefully, you’ve probably come to the same conclusion. If you want to discuss it with me, feel free to contact me anytime...)



Marc Sobel

Alright, let's get the issue of the delay out of the way first so we can get to the actual comic.

I've never been one of those fans who gets too uptight when a comic I like is delayed. I understand that drawing, inking, coloring and lettering hundreds of little panels takes time, and I'd much rather creators focus on making their pages as great as possible, rather than rush to meet some corporate-imposed artificial deadline. However, there is a limit to this philosophy. When an artist leaves a title unfinished to work on other projects, this seems unfair and disrespectful to the fans who supported the series. The reality is that this book is so delayed (issue #26 came out nearly three years ago), that I have little to no recollection of what was going on in the story, and to really get back into it would require going back and re-reading the series, which is a time commitment I'm not willing to make right now.

The whole issue is basically a rescue mission to save Ambrose from some kind of time vortex he sealed himself in right after being shot. Unfortunately, I remember very little about who Ambrose is, what happened to him, or why it's so important that the others rescue him. Although there was undoubtedly a lot of context I'm forgetting in those earlier issues, the opening pages of this final chapter do little to recap what went before. One would have thought, given the delay, that it would have been common sense to add a "Previously in Planetary..." style recap before launching into this final chapter, but unfortunately, there is nothing. The script also suffer from an overwhelming amount of pseudo-science, the kind of made-up techno-jargon that sounds like it could almost be real, except that it's actual meaning lies just beyond your grasp. It's like your typical Grant Morrison comic, strung together with ideas that almost make sense, but never quite coalescing into a coherent, believable concept. What is "quantum foam?" "Chernekov radiation?" "Super-massive frame dragging?" These are just a few examples of the physics-based techno-babble that weigh-down the first half of the book. In that sense, the story is alienating and confusing.


All that being said, John Cassaday delivers in a big way. Cassaday is the best artist Ellis has ever worked with, and he's worked with some pretty good ones. The artwork in this final issue is superb! In fact, it's THE highlight, and for fans of Cassaday's work, it was worth the long wait. The amount of attention paid to every tiny detail, and the architectural precision throughout is impressive. There's also some exceptional coloring in this issue. I find most digital coloring in mainstream comics to be overwrought and eye-numbing, washing out the linework rather than enhancing it, but Ellis's script calls for bright, popping colors, crackling off the page like raw energy, and to that end, Laura Martin delivers in spades. Her electric, neon colors jump off the page in places and go far beyond just filling in the spaces demarked by the linework.

Overall, I didn't think this final issue was anything amazing, though the artwork was certainly worth the price. I suppose it was good enough to make me want to go back and re-read the series again (though I doubt I will anytime soon), and that's perhaps the best compliment I can pay it.

The rest of the issue features a 6-page "sneak peek" of Victorian Undead, and the generic title tells you pretty much all you need to know about this creatively bankrupt concept. It's yet another zombie book, this time set in Victorian England and from the preview, it looks like a hideously-colored atrocity, regurgitating the same old cliched zombie crap as if a new setting could somehow magically reinvigorate this exhausted genre. I hope it's better than it looks in this preview, but I kinda doubt it.