As the WGA strike begins its second week, ComicMix staffers and columnists applaud our fellow writers, remind readers to keep turning to United Hollywood and Deadline Hollywood Daily for the latest news, and promise to keep entertaining you as best we can! Here’s what we’ve had for you this past week:
A little bird told us there’s a new unintentionally-comedic Jack Chick comic book tract out, number 18 in the evangelical publisher’s Crusader series (mock them all!).
This one’s called The Enchanter, and purports to warn of the dangers of Mormonism, claiming that "After people read this illustrated book, they will not be vulnerable to the Mormon recruiters!" It features panels like this one:
Now see, to me the problem here is that this preacher could be from just about any religion, particularly the brand espoused by Chick. I mean, if you’re going to call your series Crusaders Comics, that pretty much conjures up images of fanatics attempting to establish religions using swords. But I guess irony isn’t one of those lessons easily learned from Bible study.
Back in the days of Usenet, I used to hear a lot of variations of “Why are there so many negative reviews and so few positive ones?” As one of those reviewers who not only discussed the art half of comic books but who also wrote a lot of positive reviews in my 4½ years of doing Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts, I would see this manifest more as “Why are the threads responding to the few negative reviews so long, as opposed to those on the far more numerous positive reviews?”
The answer was pretty self-evident to most of us reviewers. In general it’s much easier for people to perpetuate clever putdowns, or to pile on a negative thread, than it is to engage in the vocabulary of positive discussion. One of the things we would identify as a next-to-useless post would be someone merely typing “Me too” or “Ditto.” It added nothing of substance to the online dialogue, it just took up bandwidth. But it had the opposite effect of the real-life etiquette advice that “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” It became “If you can’t add something of substance to a discussion rather than just agreeing with the original poster, you’re better off not contributing at all.” I suspect that what some of them actually meant was “Bored now. You’re being too nice; throw us some raw meat.
And of course, that was a shame. I’ve never found it that hard to say good things about comic books. I love comic books. I buy and read quite a wide variety of graphic literature, and as I’m generally not in the assumed demographic for much of it I’ve learned to adjust my tastes accordingly — that is to say, there’s still some subject matter that doesn’t appeal to me, but I’ll generally try to give most of my chosen reading a fair chance, and I think I tend to be easily pleased. Nitpicking details, while worth noting in a review, has never weighed as important to me as how the work made me feel, whether it held together as a whole and moved me during the time it took me to read it.
Before "trolls" became synonymous with "online idiots," and somewhat after they were best known as fairy-tale creatures that dwelt under bridges, they were so-ugly-they’re-cute collectible dolls made by the Russ company. While they’re not as ubiquitous today as they were a couple decades back, they do still pop up around this time of year in various venues, and this year the writers and artists at Girlamatic decided their work was going to suffer a Russ troll invasion.
Getting in on the troll action are Layla Lawlor, Lisa Jonte, Michelle Mauk, Ariel Childers (sub-only), and my hands-down favorite, Tara Tallan, who takes the opportunity to cleverly combine all three meanings of "troll" mentioned in the above paragraph in an 8-page Galaxion storyline featuring the little dears.
Great reading, and enough to make me want to don my troll earrings to greet this evening’s trick-or-treaters.
I’ve already spoken about how October is my favorite time of year, what with the baseball post-season and the foliage displays and the crispness in the air and, in 2007, my imminent lifestyle change and ComicMix Phase II debuting. There’s another reason I love this month — it culminates today in one of my favorite secular holidays, Hallowe’en.
[I emphasize "secular" because I distinctly remember when, as I kid, I was blatantly discouraged from trick or treating and otherwise celebrating the day, on the basis of the holiday’s etymological origin being the Christian commemoration of All Hallow’s Eve and therefore the holiday itself must be Christian. This is the same logic used by some fundamentalist Christians to denounce the holiday as Satanic — the flip side of Christian, and therefore Christian as well because non-Christians don’t really have this Satan thing going — because it emphasizes the supernatural. In fact, as with most seasonal celebrations coopted by early Christians, the holiday actually has pagan roots — in this case Samhain — which I’m perfectly fine with honoring, as those ancient nature worshippers may be the closest thing we have to modern sensible secular rationalists. I’m even half-convinced Christmas is becoming okay to celebrate because, despite the name, it’s essentially a corruption of the Saturnalia holiday. But I digress.]
One reason Hallowe’en is so cool for me is because of its emphasis, at least when I was growing up, on being a holiday for kids. As far as I can discern this mentality came about with the holiday’s commercialization (just check out the Wiki on Hallowe’en to see how many modern rituals involve spending money, from parties to costumes to decorations to candy), and of course since hyper-capitalism cannot be confined to just that segment of the population largely dependent upon others’ pursestrings, today it’s big business with "children of all ages." But I still think Hallowe’en has a particular power over children’s sense of wonder about the world around us, whether or not the lines between living and dead, between the ordinary and the magical, can indeed be blurred during the time of year when (the northern half of) the Earth starts preparing for its winter slumber.
So I like to give out comics to those few straggling trick-or-treaters who find their way to the group of houses hidden behind the main road where we occupy our top-floor apartment. Because I believe that, like Hallowe’en, comics still have tremendous appeal to kids, even as hyper-capitalism has led to their greater acceptance by and obsession for many adults. And so during the year I cull the Cartoon Network books from our DC comp boxes and go through the stuff I have from Free Comics Day to see what’s all-ages appropriate.
I do have a bit of a dilemma with the latter, though — I like all-ages stories. Most of the time, I like them more than the teen-targeted or "mature" readers-only books.
Out in the land of baseball humidors, the Beantown Bombers seem poised to win it all. But here at ComicMix we like to think our columnists hit home runs every day. Or at least we’re somewhere in the ballpark. Here’s what we’ve served up for you this past week:
Well, I said I’d be back and, since there were a number of terms I didn’t recall until after last week’s column went live, I figured I’d take note of them this week while I still remember what more I wanted to say.
For instance, I can’t believe I neglected to talk about surface form versus underlying construction. I consider it one of the most important criteria for judging good comic book art. The more I learn about how visual storytelling is done, the pickier I find myself becoming when it comes to appreciating crafting level. Art doesn’t need to look polished to be of professional level (although my particular taste does lean more towards smooth and streamlined rather than blocky and rough). It just needs to show that the artist understands the rules about how things are logically built. It’s like any other creative endeavor — if you’re going to break the rules, you first need to prove you know what they are and are able to follow them.
I have to admit, not being an artist, that I’m not so sure about construction rules myself, certainly not enough to be able to articulate them for you the way my husband does for me. But I do know that one of the biggest mistakes many comic book readers make is confusing style with substance. When they judge a comic they’re usually looking at the final polish given to the work rather than judging what lies beneath that polish. And that’s understandable; if you don’t know how a piece of furniture is supposed to function in its environment, or even whether it’ll hold what it’s supposed to hold, you’re pretty much going to base your opinion of that furniture by how pretty it looks in the catalog or showroom.
On this day in 1925, the first photoelectric cell was publicly demonstrated by the Westinghouse Electric and Mfg. Co. at the Electrical Show at Grand Central Palace in New York. That palace no longer exists, having been replaced by an office tower, but it seems photoelectrics will always be with us in one way or another. Heck, you’re probably soaking in them right now. And with that cheery thought in mind, here’s your weekly one-stop ComicMix columnist shopping:
As you can see in our previous item, Ric is across the ocean from us, probably having the time of his life, and will return next week. And now to return to my current masters, the television/DVD combo…
The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed the last of the major castings for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek prequel, scheduled to begin filming next month.
The role of James Tiberius Kirk will be played by Chris Pine (left), and the plum part of Leonard McCoy goes to New Zealand actor Chris Urban (right), known to genre film fans as Eomer in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Other cast members include John Cho as Sulu, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and of course Zachary Quinto from Heroes as Mr. Spock. Eric Bana will also appear as the movie’s antagonist, Nero.
Back in the days of Usenet, I used to hear a lot of variations of “Why are there so many negative reviews and so few positive ones?” As one of those reviewers who not only discussed the art half of comic books but who also wrote a lot of positive reviews in my 4½ years of doing Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts, I would see this manifest more as “Why are the threads responding to the few negative reviews so long, as opposed to those on the far more numerous positive reviews?”
Before "trolls" became synonymous with "online idiots," and somewhat after they were best known as 
The Hollywood Reporter has 
