Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was this publisher called Harvey Comics. They were in business to sell comic books to children: Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Hot Stuff, Sad Sack, Little Dot, Richie Rich… well, mostly Richie Rich. As in “I counted 47 different Richie Rich titles from Harvey Comics, not including the daily and Sunday newspaper strip.” Most were bi-monthlies and quarterlies, so to be fair I doubt Harvey released more than a four or five Richie Rich titles every week.
The modern-day equivalent to Richie Rich is Wolverine, who appears in dozens of Marvel titles each month. The sundry Avengers titles, the sundry X-Men titles, Wolverine, Savage Wolverine, Wolverine Max, Wolverine’s Bank Vaults, Wolverine Dollars and Cents… When it comes to that mad little bugger, well, no unemployment lines for him.
Batman is almost as heavily exposed: his various titles, his “family” titles including Batgirl, Batwoman, Nightwing, Robin, blah blah blah. He’s got Batmen stashed all over the world; perhaps the universe. Multiverse. Whatever.
Spider-Man, Iron Man, certainly Captain America… there’s no shortage of work for these guys, either. So why am I bitching? What, am I opposed to the free market?
Aside from the fact that the “free market” is a bigger fantasy than the multiverse, I do not begrudge a publisher its opportunity for success. However, there is the element of uniqueness that makes comics fun. That element is lost, rather rapidly, with overexposure. There are something in the neighborhood of 7200 members of the Green Lantern corps, and if I’m not mistaken all but the Moslem dude has his own comic book. Sarah Palin just found a power ring in her Rice Krispies.
When was the last time there was a truly original, a truly unique, successful superhero launch? Spawn and Savage Dragon? That was 20 years ago. DC Comics rebooted its universe 14 times since then. Before that? What, maybe Judge Dredd (depending upon your definition of “superhero”)? That was back in 1977, when Jimmy Carter was sworn in as President.
Have we lost our originality? No, we simply don’t have publishers with either the backbone or the resources to pull it off. So instead we clone ourselves. The major superheroes are little more than a fourth generation photocopy of what made them unique.
If the marketplace supports mega-multiple titles for its half-dozen most popular characters, why shouldn’t publishers meet that demand?
Because, today, Richie Rich is not being published at all.
In February 2002, almost twenty-one years ago, DC published a Batman graphic novel that I had written called Batman: Seduction of the Gun. It had its genesis two years earlier when John Reisenbach, the son of an executive of Warner Bros., was shot dead while using a pay phone. DC execs, themselves struck by the senseless act of violence, decided to address the issue of gun and gun-related violence in a special book. Batman was selected as the character best suited for such a story as he has witnessed his own parents shot to death when he was just a boy as part of his mythology.
Our own Dennis O’Neil was the editor of the Batman titles at the time and he approached me as the writer. I had worked with an anti-gun lobby at one point so he knew I was already conversant with the issue. Neither of us wanted to create just a screed against guns. Denny was clear: it first and foremost had to be a good story. What we wanted to say could be layered in but the story itself came first.
I agreed wholeheartedly. As I’ve said elsewhere, I prefer to write questions rather than answers. I believe in having a point of view, especially when writing on an important issue, but I prefer to lay the matter out (as I see it) to the reader and let them come to their own conclusion.
I also did research and found out that, at the time, government statistics suggested that one of four guns used in criminal acts in New York City (where the weapon was recovered) were bought in Virginia. It was one in three for Washington, D.C. Gangs from along the Atlantic Coast came into Virginia to buy guns by the dozens as Virginia had the loosest gun regulations perhaps in the nation. I worked all that into the story.
At the time, Virginia’s governor, Douglas Wilder, was trying to get a very mild gun control measure passed. It would limit gun owners to purchasing one gun a month. You could have belonged to the gun of the month club and still been legal. He heard about Batman: Seduction of the Gun and bought a bunch of them. He placed an issue at every legislators desk and issued press releases how even Batman was talking about the Virginia gun laws. The measure, against all odds, passed.
So – what has happened in the almost twenty-one years since Batman: Seduction of the Gun was published? Guns are more prolific, there have been more shooting in schools (as was depicted in the story), and Virginia repealed the One-Gun-A-Month law last year. The book could be published again today and, aside from a few continuity changes, be as relevant as when it was published.
All this has come to mind not only in the wake of the shooting of the children and teachers at Sandy Hook, CT, but in President Obama’s recommendations this week on gun violence and the NRA’s and the Right’s somewhat hysterical over-reaction to it. Comparing Obama to Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot because of these recommendations? Saying that Martin Luther King, Jr, would have sided with the gun nuts? How do you even start to have a reasonable conversation about guns and gun violence when it begins at that level?
The book was and is controversial. Friends and relatives who are gun enthusiasts hate it and have told me so. However, it is not, in my view, anti-gun. It does not, as I do not, call for outlawing guns. Aside from the Second Amendment debate, I think a prohibition on firearms would be about as effective as the prohibition on alcohol was or the prohibition or marijuana is now. It would just create a new revenue stream for the mobs.
Allowing military style assault weapons and 100 bullet clips, however, makes no sense to me, either. There are those who claim that the real intention of the Second Amendment was to fend off the Federal government. They are delusional. That was written when the gun was a musket. Today? Anyone who thinks their horde of guns is going to deter a government with guns, planes, ships, and drones is having a Red Dawn wet dream. No Amendment is absolute; you cannot libel someone, or shout “fire” in a crowded theater with the intent of starting a riot, no matter what the First Amendment says.
In the story Batman says, “No law passed can change the human heart or open up a mind that is closed. We must give up the guns in our hearts and minds first.” Art is one of the ways you reach hearts and minds. Story can do that, I believe. I look at things twenty plus years since the book was published and I have to wonder.
My hope is that someday Batman: Seduction of the Gun will be regarded as a quaint curiosity; my fear is that it won’t.
When I was a kid, comics were all I thought about. There was no better time in my day than when I was finished all my crap schoolwork and was able to turn my attention to the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man or Batman
I was a child of DC but soon I was just as vested in Marvel as I was in DC. I remember when Kirby left Marvel to do the Fourth World books at DC. That to me at the time was as big a deal as Obama becoming the first black President is now.
Really.
Kirby coming to DC was Huge. I’ll never forget when I got my first issue of the Forever People and saw Kirby’s Here on the cover.
Comics golden age for me was the second silver age. That second silver age was Walt Simonson’s Thor, Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, Frank Miller’s Daredevil, Marvel’s Secret Wars, The Killing Joke, the Dark Knight, The Watchmen and about another dozen or so titles.
I freely admit that I’m biased in my thinking about comics and what’s important and what’s not. I also freely admit that I have no right nor do have any influence over what you may think.
But…
In my day I think comics were better than they are today.
That’s my opinion and I’m welcome to it but consider the following before you dismiss me, are you tired of new universes and new number ones?
In my day a number one was the Holy Grail of the comic book world.
Now?
New number ones are as common as a new Kardashian lover and just as relevant.
While I’m on the subject, Kim Kardashian has no talent and contributes nothing to the world, yet millions of people hang on her every stupid move. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for her milking America for millions of dollars when she has no value whatsoever.
That’s not a joke, I respect anyone who can figure out a way to milk millions from people with absolutely no talent or value. Again I’m not kidding I respect that kind of moxey.
But…
Come the (bad word here) on, what does she or her family contribute except some of them have really nice tits? Oh and yes, I’d hit that but that’s beside the point. She and her family really have no significance in the real world.
Comics on the other hand do have significance in the real world.
How so you ask?
A hundred years from now Superman will still be relevant. Kim? She may not be relevant in two years. I know this for sure because America has a way of waking up to bullshit. It may take a moment but soon perhaps very soon the country and world will see that the Emperor (Empress?) has no clothes.
How do I know this for sure? Two words: Paris Hilton.
But I digress (thinking about you, Peter). I maintain that the comics in my day were better than the comics today and what follows are my admittedly flawed arguments.
When ever a comic universe goes to a new number one that erases the vast history of what was gone before. It’s a ‘do over’ and a ‘screw you’ to fans that loved the universe at the same time. When Marvel did Secret Wars and DC did Crisis those were really massive events but they were not do overs or a screw you to fans. Those were events that changed the universe not events that discarded the universe.
They were also the kind of events you talked about for years because they really were events.
Now an event is talked about until the next event, two, three weeks later.
B L A M!! R I M S H O T !! I’m here all week! Try the veal! Herman Cain, try the watermelon!
When Marv Wolfman killed Barry Allen (something to this day I have not forgiven him for) I felt that lost. When Stan Lee killed Gwen Stacy I felt I had lost a girlfriend. Now these sort of deaths are commonplace and it my humble opinion it’s because of Superman.
When Superman “died” no one and I mean no one in the comic book world thought for a second he was really dead. The only people who thought he was really dead were the suckers who brought 50 copies thinking one day they would be worth millions.
BAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
If you can kill the most important superhero in the history of the industry then everything and I mean everything is fair game.
But…
That fair game seems to be monthly now. When DC killed Superman it, at the time, was a bold move designed to boost the icon’s lagging sales. Now characters dying, coming out of the closet, going over to the dark side, etc. is no longer an event it’s as common as the Cubs not making the World Series. The Cubs suck; that’s why they don’t make the series. Comic book creators don’t suck; comic book creators are better than the bullshit event like Archie kissing a black girl.
What the heck was that anyway? Archie Andrews pulling a black girl? Talk about imaginary stories.
Yes, I’m quite aware that the audience today is not me. Yes, there are books being done today that quite frankly are works of art and literary genius. Yes, some books today have transcended comics, TV and film and become part of what fuels movements.
But…
Forget all of that. In my day comics were better and that is that.
Most of ComicMix’s readers know that Tim Burton made his live action Frankenweenie short (starring Barret Oliver, Shelley Duvall, and Daniel Stern) while at Disney and was too quirky for the Mouse House so left to carve out a career of his own. The short was visually stylish, creepy, and filled with affection for the horror films of his youth. Since then, he has created his own brand of horror (Edward Sciossorhands, Legend of Sleepy Hollow) and has reinterpreted classic works (Batman, Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Planet of the Apes) with varying success.
Last fall he finally released a feature-length version of Frankenweenie and while it underperformed at the box office, it is a creatively satisfying effort, and a great family feature. This can now run with The Nightmare Before Christmas as annual Halloween viewing for which I am grateful.
As with most great tales, this is a love story. In this case, it’s about a boy, Victor (Charlie Tahan), and his dog Sparky. When the beloved pet dies in a car accident, Victor uses his scientific genius to bring Sparky back to life. While some see this as a noble thing, Victor’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein (Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara), worry that their son is overly involved with the dog and lacks human friends.
A boy and his dog is classic and Sparky is your typical dog, although he now has trouble keeping all his parts intact, notably his tail.
When the local boys hear about the successful experiment, things begin to go off the rails. Victor may have Sparky back but things have certainly not gone as planned and that’s where the film’s charm and humor shines through in a well-plotted expansion of the original tale. That said, things do drag the further we move on, as if Burton said all he had to say and needed to stretch to get to a proper running time, 87 minutes, for a feature.
Burton stayed true to his vision, retaining the black and white, evoking the great Universal horror films of the past. And like them, this is filled with winning supporting character — Mr. Rzykruski (Martin Landau), Edgar (Atticus Shaffer) — enlivening the overall story.
The film is being released by Walt Disney this week in multiple formats including the four-disc combo pack — 3-D, 2-D, DVD, digital — and the Blu-ray comes packed with fun extras starting with “Captain Sparky vs. The Flying Saucers” (2:30) — a new short with Victor and Sparky watching the title home movie; “Miniatures In Motion: Bringing Frankenweenie To Life” (23:00) minutes), your typical behind-the-scenes featurette; Frankenweenie Touring Exhibit (4:30) 1/2 minutes); the original Frankenweenie short film (30:00); “Pet Sematary”, a music video from Plain White T’s. The first few featurettes are eye-opening in the effort that goes into making these stop-motion films. Burton, executive producer Don Hahn, producer Allison Abbate, and animation director Trey Thomas exhaustively cover the production, shot at the London-based Three Mills Studio.
This is the most entertaining video release of the week and comes highly recommended.
It used to be, when I was about to go home from the San Diego Comic-Con or some other show that required a stupidly long plane ride, I’d drop by the dealer’s area (you know, that ever-shrinking portion of the main floor where people would actually sell comic books at a “comic book convention”) and I’d blow about twenty bucks on stuff to read on the return trip. These purchases were almost exclusively of “funny” comic books.
Sadly, we have come to the point where, in the world of contemporary comics, the phrase “funny comic books” has evolved from a redundancy to an oxymoron and the funniest comic around these days is Deadpool – a title with a death count high on the Tarantino scale.
No, the funny books I’m referring to were, well, funny. One of my favorites was Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye, a somewhat maligned title because the Snoots insist upon comparing it to E.C. Segar’s newspaper creation. Whereas Sagendorf was Segar’s assistant on said feature, they were produced at different times for different audiences and they occupied different landscapes. You tell a story differently in a newspaper strip, usually ending each day with both something resembling a punch line as well as a hook or a cliffhanger to bring the reader back. In comics back in those ancient times, stories were self-contained with a beginning, a middle and an end.
And Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye was brilliant. He certainly got the characters right, employing Segar’s entire cast and adding a few great characters of his own. The stories were as compelling and entertaining as anything on the stands at the time – and we’re talking about a period that encompassed Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge, John Stanley’s Little Lulu, and Shelly Mayer’s Sugar and Spike.
Yes, I just compared Sagendorf to Barks, Stanley and Mayer. If you don’t like that, well, in the words of Mike Baron, you can bite my Twinkie.
Our pal Craig Yoe has brought this stuff back to the masses in IDW’s Classic Popeye series, and I see they’ve begun to anthologize their “early” issues (I think they’ve published six issues so far, so “early” is relative only to Doctor Who fans).
But that’s not why I’m writing this. Fooled you, didn’t I? Opening with a 385-word digression. My journalism teachers would plotz. No, I’m writing about a one-shot comic released last week that, on the face of it, seems like a cheesy exploitation gimmick or, in other words, my kind of comic book.
The aforementioned folks at IDW possess the Mars Attacks license as well as the Popeye contract. People think this is because IDW’s Chief Operating Officer Greg Goldstein was a honcho at Topps, the bubble gum people who created and own Mars Attacks. I don’t think that’s the reason. I think it’s because Goldstein has the same strain of arrested development that I do and, instead of growing up, we got into the comics business.
So IDW is doing what every other publisher does with such a property: they’re squeezing the licenses until their eyes pop. Which is why we’ve now got, of all things, Mars Attacks Popeye.
The effort of writer Martin Powell and artist Terry Beatty (yep, the guy who draws The Phantom Sundays and Ms. Tree and Batman and stuff) and edited by the professionally unusual Craig Yoe and Clizia Gussoni, this is one funny, clever and well-produced comic book. It didn’t have to be that; it easily could have been a stupid cheesy exploitation gimmick. No, in the finest American tradition, it is a solidly amusing and entertaining cheesy exploitation gimmick.
Stylistically, Mars Attacks Popeye is done as a Popeye comic in the finest Sagendorf tradition. It employs almost all of the Popeye cast going back to 1919 (not that I really should give away Olive Oyl’s true age) and they take on the advancing army of bubble gum card fame – this time, under the provocation of Popeye’s very own Doctor Doom, the Sea Hag.
Look, you’ve probably got an extra four bucks on you, but if you don’t roll a school kid or something and check it out. It’s about time we got us a funny funny book.
I think tomorrow I’ll call up Merriam-Webster and suggest a new word for their dictionary. That word? Geeklitism. (Not to be confused with Geekleetist, which posts fun stuff).
It should be in the dictionary, because it certainly is a thing that exists. But how would I suggest they define it? Damned if I know, although I guess the short version could be: “claiming you’re a ‘real geek’ and other people aren’t; claiming you’re the superior geek.” But really, the various aspects of both this attitude and of being a “geek” generally are so broad that I’m not sure they can be encompassed in a dictionary definition.
The reason for this, and the funny thing about “being a geek,” is that it’s a different experience for everyone. For instance, I’ve been a geek probably all of my life; but I don’t know that I ever really knew it until adulthood, when, thanks to the increased ease of finding like-minded people via the internet, it suddenly turned out it wasn’t such a bad thing to be. As far as I recall, no one called me a geek growing up. I had no idea I was part of this mysterious group of people called “geeks.”
“What??” I can hear a geeklitist out there crying out in triumph. “No one called you a geek? That must mean that you didn’t get bullied by the “cool kids” in school! Haha! You can’t understand the suffering and hardships that I went through in my formative years because of my love of stories about hobbits! You are not a real geek like me!” (This is the kind of thing geeklitists say, don’t you know. Sometimes they also add, “And all the girls made fun of me!! I’ve never gotten over that! My life was so hard!”)
But that’s not really what I said, is it? Of course I got picked on. Most kids do. For instance, when I was in first grade and all the cool kids in my new school had moved on to jeans or whatever was in fashion, my mom, bless her, still dressed me in cutesy pastel sweatsuits with big decorative (but pointless) buttons and bows on them. It follows that one of my first memories of my new school is three girls in my class making fun of my clothes on the playground – at which point I probably said something mean.
I was a well-read little child, who could creatively insult other children with words that none of us really knew the meaning of; but they sounded like insults, so it all worked out. For example, at some point in my primary school years, one of the biggest insults I remember using was, “You’re corroded!” (Which makes no sense under the real definition but sounds like maybe you have a gross skin condition?) My favorite of the weird words I personally transmogrified into an insult when young was “You’re a transubstantiationalist!” No one else had any idea what it meant, but I managed to convince the kids I was using it on that it was a really horrible thing to be. Mwahaha. But I digress. Anyway, at that point, we all got in a fight. Like a physical fight, of the kicking and punching and hair and decorative bow-pulling variety. Yowch.
“Whatever!” the geeklitist is saying. “That’s not what I meant. That’s just fashion. You were only a geek if you were ostracized because of your offbeat hobbies and/or love of genre fiction as a child! That’s what makes you a real geek like me.” Well, yes. I was that, too. I used to sit by myself at lunch and read giant books that were too “old” for me, like Clan of the Cave Bear and The Mists of Avalon, propped up in front of me as I ate with painful slowness (something else for which I was occasionally teased, but which turns out to be the healthy way to eat. Take that!). I’d walk down the school halls reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet or maybe The Deed of Paksenarrion without looking up (during which I developed a great sixth sense for not running into people while looking down, which is very handy these days when texting while walking to work).
I was definitely called weird, and often, annoying (because I used big words and talked a lot) more times than I can count. I engaged in some geek activities that probably would have been thought cool by at least the little boys in my class, like watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men cartoons, but I never realized that, because at that point in my life, boys had cooties. (Of course.) I’m not saying I didn’t have friends; I did, and they were a lot of fun. But I also got made fun of; and as far as I knew, most of my friends were not actually interested in The Lord of the Rings or Batman: The Animated Series. I don’t even know that I ever thought to ask most of them.(Or if I did, and received blank stares, I probably never brought it up again. This is why I’d never make a good Whedonvangelist, another word I’ve decided should be in the dictionary.)
Those were the sorts of things I often enjoyed alone, and didn’t really talk about that much, and that was fine. I knew (from others telling me, repeatedly) that I was a weird child, and I guess I just kind of assumed that was how life was and would continue to be for me – having some interests that nobody around me shared. Of course, that feeling of being alone in one’s interests is often cited as part of the experience of geekdom; and of course, in truth, lots of other people also had those interests; I just hadn’t discovered them yet. But I guess that’s all part of being a geek.
“Ahaha!” an entirely different brand of geeklitist is chortling. “But none of that matters! That’s just kid stuff! You’re not a real geek like me unless you can list, right this minute, in reverse alphabetical order, every superhero who turned out to be a Skrull during Secret Invasion! And until you can name at least three obscure continuity errors in [my favorite comics character’s] ongoing storyline! And unless you can tell me your three favorite fighting tactics for the video game character whose costume you are now wearing!” But, second brand of geeklitist…the water is wide, and the world is large, and I might like a different character than you do, or I might focus on something for different reasons than you do. Are you saying your viewpoint and favorite genre things and factoids are inherently better and geekier than mine, and are the only things that can bestow upon all of us admission into the uber-exclusive society of geekdom, just because they are yours? …Well, yes, yes you are, and that’s pretty self-centered. We can all be geeks in our own ways, with our own specific areas of interest and knowledge. Right?
“No no,” chides another, lone geeklitist, standing apart with one brow raised and pointing a finger at each of us in turn. “You will never, ever be a real geek, because you didn’t watch Firefly until it came out on DVD! You only like the newest Doctor Who! You never participated in the drive to keep Chuck on the air via purchasing mounds of Subway sandwiches. You’ll never be a real geek, not any of you, because (cue dramatic music and Iwo Jima flag-raising reenactment) I was here first, and I claim this geekdom in the name of Geekmoria! It’s mine, all miiiiine!!!!!”
…What? No, really, what? That’s just asinine.
“…”
“…”
“Well…maybe,” says the lone geeklitist doubtfully. “But I was here first.”
How do you know, lone geeklitist? Did you turn on your TV to a new show before anyone else in the entire world? Acquire an ARC of the first book in a now-beloved series? Hold in your excited hands the very first copy of the very first appearance of a comic book character? And even if you did…why does that give you any more claim to an appreciation of it than anyone else? Why does timing somehow make you more passionate about your geekdom than all the other geeks?
“…?”
Exactly.
So, any other geeklitists out there want to make a stand about how they’re the real geeks? I just ask because I don’t like to exclude people, although I realize the irony of saying that to you, geeklitists.
…
…
I’m hearing a lot of silence out there. Guess I’ll just wrap this u–what? I’m sorry? What did you say?
A chorus of low, angry, guttural voices rises from the deep to repeat itself, as one last group of geeklitists has its say:
I’m nothing if not a slave to predictability and tropes. Sure, I wax poetic weekly on how I loathe authors and artists who fire off the same crap week in and week out,but I’m nothing if not a glorious hypocrite. So, after my “best and worst” article, what better to follow it up with a “New Year’s Resolution” article! Lest I be completely worthless to you, I promise to keep this punchy.
I resolve to wean myself from the teat of Marvel and DC. When I looked over my buy pile of books littered throughout my basement from the last few years, I’ve grown sick at the sight of so much mainstream chum. Not that I ever considered myself anything less than a mainstream whore before… it’s now with half a decade under my belt as an outsider indie guy, that I’ve decided to grow up, if only a little bit.
My rule of thumb has been pretty clear: every week that I have less than four books to buy, I will add one indie title to my list. Thus far, I’ve added Revival, Clone, and Nowhere Men. Two of which landed on Mike Gold’s list of awesome things. This obviously means I’m on the right track. Image, Valiant, Dark Horse, IDW, and the litany of unknowns are making me realize there’s so much more out there. More creativity. More unpredictability. More leaping from the cliff, and hoping to fly. It’s time to read what I sow; it’s time to tell Bob Wayne and Mickey Mouse I’m quitting (just a little bit, cause you know… I’m really liking Batman, Batgirl, and some Marvel Now titles).
I resolve to draw and write everyday. I’m not going to be a fool and say I’m “doing it for myself” because it’d be a lie. I’m going to write and draw more to do it for my company and my family. Not that I don’t love my day job, but let’s be real. Unshaven Comics gets where its going because we work at it. So, by proxy should I vow to write or draw everyday, I will presumably see Unshaven Comics be more lucrative. More than that though, the ideology is clear. The more you work at something, the better you’ll understand it. And while I presently work nearly every day as it stands? Making a concerted effort to spare time every day to do something for Unshaven Comics means there’s more chances at eventually becoming one step closer to semi-obscurity.
I resolve to make better connections with those in the industry – both here with my ComicMix mates and abroad. Unshaven Comics is traveling to 15-16 conventions this year. Simply put? There’s no excuse I shouldn’t be exercising my networking abilities. They’re what landed me here in the first place. As I stated last week, no better memory convention-wise comes to mind more than Baltimore, where I was in contact with Glenn Hauman, Mike Gold, and Emily Whitten, all of ComicMix fame. My hypothesis that possibly making ways to meet my other fellow contributors in the coming year could only benefit my growing rolodex of people I admire also knowing my name. Egotistical? Sure. But I’ve had breakfast with John Ostrander, so suck it.
I resolve to turn off the TV more. I realized over this “holiday break” of sorts how much worthless drivel I surround myself with when I’m home. I only actively watch TV in the last hour of consciousness. But the TV is on in my home basically from the time I get home to the time I go to bed. I tend to lazily leave the set on, with a cooking show, or rerun of The Cosby Show for background noise as I go about my business. Suffice to say, it’s silly of me to do so. Shutting off the set will give me an appreciation for when I turn it on. And maybe in a year’s time, I might just see the heavens part and drop my expensive cable bill in lieu of a Roku system. But that’s a long-game I plan on playing.
Lastly, I resolve to be a better columnist to you, my readers. I look over my body of work here at ComicMix, in 2012, and I certainly see some high points. But like many an artist, I also saw bouts of frustration on my part. Weeks where I had no real points to make outside the handful I’ve relied on: DC sucks. Marvel Sucks. Being an Indie Guy is hard. And so forth. So, in 2013, I vow to return to those tropes only when there is new meat on the bone. I’ll seek out bold and new directions to tantalize you from. I’ll strive to make you angrier, sadder, happier, or flameier. I’ll do everything in my power to remain relevant, and entertaining to you. And I’ll do it all with a smile.
Thanks for sticking with me for another year. The only place to go from here? Up, up, and away.
Mary and Bryan Talbot’s Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes has won the Costa Book Awards biography of the year. They won the £5,000 biography prize for a book that interweaves the true and tragic story of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia with Mary’s own troubled relationship with her father, the eminent Joycean scholar James S. Atherton.
The Talbots have known of the win for several weeks. “It has been really hard keeping quiet about it,” said Mary. “We were astonished. Just being shortlisted was amazing and hearing we’d won the category was stunning. We’re delighted of course, both personally – it’s the first story I’ve had published – but also for the medium, I can’t believe a graphic novel has won.”
It is not the first graphic work to win a major literary prize – Art Spiegelman’s Maus won a Pulitzer in 1992 and Chris Ware won the Guardian first book prize in 2001 for Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth – but the Costa award is still a significant moment for the graphic medium.
“It is a good thing for graphic novels as a whole,” said Bryan Talbot whose prodigious output includes The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Alice in Sunderland as well as strips for Judge Dredd and Batman. “Graphic novels are becoming increasingly accepted as a legitimate art form.”
The last graphic novel spike came about 25 years ago with the popularity of books such as The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen and Maus. The problem then, said Talbot, was that there were not enough books to feed this. “By the time you’d read a dozen or so of the best titles, there wasn’t enough left to keep this nascent interest going. Since then, there has been an increasing number of graphic novels published and now we have this whole canon of quality work.
“We are living in the golden age of graphic novels. There are more and better comics being drawn today than ever in the history of the medium and there’s such a range of styles of artwork, of genre and of subject matter.”
Judges called Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes “a beautifully crafted” work “which crosses the boundaries between literature and the graphic genre with extraordinary effect”.
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, my ComicMixers! I hope you all had a merry Christmas, a sassy Chanukah, and grumpy Festivus if you were so inclined. So, with Father Time about to hit the retcon button on our daily calendars… I thought it would be apropos to reflect a bit on those amazing and terrible things that made my year. Please note: this isn’t ALL about comic books; you’ve been warned.
Because I like to start on a dour note… here’s The Worst!
5. Avengers Vs. X-Men Vs. My Sanity: Simply put, this stands up as yet-another-example of what makes me hate the mainstream comics business. No matter how many times they lather us up with “we’ve got the best talent on this”, “this will change everything”, and “you won’t believe what happens!”, they always end up the same. Bloated, predictable, and unending. Every Marvel event since the dawn of Brian Michael Bendis has finished up in deeper doo-doo than when they began. His boner for “shades of grey” is unnerving. We get it; making our favorite characters wail on one another is why we buy comics. But, hey… guess what? It isn’t. I’d much prefer a well thought out story that ends instead of a non-stop soap opera.
4. The 2012 Election: Not the result, mind you, but the unending nature of it all. For what felt like nearly the entire year, we were privy to 24 hours a day coverage of not only our POTUS but everyone vying for his seat. It brought out the worst in the candidates and the politically charged masses along for the ride. In the worst case, certain louder-than-usual politico-creators became so unnerving I was forced to hide them from my feeds. First world problems? You bet. But no less annoying on my life and times this year.
3. Wizard World Conventions: The movie definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So Wizard World changes the guard on high. They attempt to make sweeping changes on the floors of their traveling circus, making D-List celebs the premier attraction. They continue to maintain the second highest per-show cost for visiting artists. In short? They continue to drive away the very thing that started them out so very long ago: comics and the people who make them. While my li’l studio always sells well at these abominations… rarely are we joined in celebration at the end of the cons. Hence, my finger of shame this year.
2. Green Lantern: Another finger of shame… a ring finger! Geoff Johns has taken Grant Morrison’s Five-Year Plan model and Michael Bay’ed it to death. As I’ve been forced to note several times this year, the continual event fatigue on the entire line –which shouldn’t even be a line – is too much to bear. And while the majority of 2012 was spent with Sinestro and his gal Friday Jordan traipsing around the universe righting wrongs… this Rise of the Third Army is the emerald icing on a sheet cake of excess. Too many McGuffins, too many predictable plots, and a brand-new Lantern who thus far is more a caricature of “not-a-terrorist” than a fleshed-out legacy ring-slinger. One I’ll happily predict will last in prominence half as long as the last not-ready-for-prime-time-player, Kyle “Costume Change” Rayner.
1. Comics News Coverage: Well it finally caught up to us too, didn’t it? CNN begat CNN, and from them spawned the 24-hour news cycle that has extended to comics. Between Newsarama, Bleeding Cool, Comic Book Resources, and others (hold your tongue for a second, please) all looking for an audience… We’re left scouring trash-bins and date books in order to report anything about our beloved industry. I waive the white flag. And now to those who think I hold this very site on the fire? Nay. ComicMix is about writers expressing their opinions, and that’s enough for me to remove us from said blaze. Simply put, the news is important, but the environment we’ve built to report and sustain it is sickening. Marvel, DC, and the like can’t sneeze without us finding out about it… and then creating a backlash over it before the press releases have hit an inbox. Enough is ‘nuff said.
And now… The Best:
5. The Dark Knight Rises: Three cheers for Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus. Yeah, I know… The Avengers was more fun. But it wasn’t close to TDKR’s level of sophistication. Neither movie was flawless, but Batman kept me on the edge of my seat pretty much the whole way through. The depiction of Bane was as good as it will ever be – menacing, big picture villainous thinking, and an actual brain amidst the brawn. But Bane wasn’t what made the movie. Bale’s Wayne was nuanced, angsty without being annoying, and above all else… visibly human. Nolan, in spite of Frank Miller and Grant Morrison showed that you don’t have to depict the God-Damned Batman to show the world a fantastic caped-crusader. Add in a brilliant turn for Selina Kyle, and it added up to one of my favorite flicks of the year. I would have put Django Unchained in this spot, but I haven’t seen it yet.
4. Marvel Now: If you read my reviews over at Michael Davis World (and I know you do…), then you’d know just how much I’m loving the House of Mouse these days. Fantastic Four / FF is proving thus far to balance the whimsy the series used to be known for with mature overtones. Iron Man, while nowhere near as good as Fraction’s run, is still entertaining. Superior Spider-Man has me legitimately interested in the wall-crawler again. Mike Gold has tried several times to recommend Captain America to me. My Unshaven Cohort is reading an X-Men book for the first time ever. And Avengers? Epic as I’d ever want it to be. Marvel looked at DC’s retcon-reboot-whatever, and opted instead to play it safe. Frankly, it’s proven to me that it was the right thing to do. Sales spikes or not. By choosing not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, Marvel is stealing me away one book at a time
3. The Baltimore Comic-Con: Unshaven Comics took the 13-hour drive to the East Coast, and boy howdy was it ever worth it. We sold an incredible amount of books. We rubbed elbows with industry giants at the Harvey Awards. We got to hand our book to Phil LaMarr. We had dinner with Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, Glenn Hauman, and Emily Whitten. And at that dinner? We had crab cakes as big as softballs. Frankly? It was a weekend of a lifetime. Such that we’ve already registered and purchased our table for 2013. It’s the most comic-book-centered convention we’ve been privy too. Charm City? Color me charmed.
2. Unshaven Comics’ Sales: Hate to get all self-promotional here, but screw it. Unshaven Comics had a simple goal. With no distribution, no investors, and nothing more than our blood-sweat-n-tears… we wanted to sell 1000 books over the course of a year. After attending a dozen shows, and doing our best work ever? We sold 1406. We made amazing connections, saw fans actually seek us out at shows, and gained over 300 Facebook fans without purchasing an ad or doing anything more than hustle. By hook or crook, we’re making the smallest impact known to man on the comic book industry. But I’ll be damned—it may actually be working. All it’s done is fuel our fire for 2013. 1,667 books moved next year will mean we see the shores of San Diego in 2014. Beards on.
1. Bennett Reed Fishman: Simply put, no other moment, comic book or otherwise, is worth a hill of beans in my world. On January 27th, 2012, I became a father. Ever since, every single thing I’ve done has been for the betterment of his life. Having been an ego-centered bearded ne’er-do-well for far too long, suddenly became moot. In his eyes and smile, the world around me means nothing. And when at 5:30 every day he stops whatever he’s doing, and smiles ear to ear when Batman: The Animated Series comes on? It tells me this kid is my kid. And my worldview is 100% different. Sorry, comics. You never stood a chance.
Happy New Year to all of you who read my articles week in and week out. May 2013 prove to be a safe, prosperous, and amazing year for you all.
It’s the end of the year, so it’s time for still another mindless list of favorites – maintaining a cloying, egotistical annual tradition throughout the media. Once again, here are my self-imposed rules: I’m only listing series that either were ongoing or ran more than six issues, I’m not listing graphic novels or reprints as both compete under different criteria, I’m not covering Internet-only projects as I’d be yanking the rug out from under my pal Glenn Hauman, and I’m listing only nine because tied for tenth place would be about two dozen other titles and I’ve only got so much bandwidth. Besides, “nine” is snarky and when it comes to reality, I am one snarky sumbytch – but only for a living. On Earth-Prime, I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.
Having said all that, let’s open that hermetically sealed jar on the porch of Funk and Wagnalls and start.
1. Manhattan Projects. If I had to write a Top 9 of the Third Millennium list, I’d be hard pressed not to include this title. It’s compelling, it’s different, it’s unpredictable and it’s brilliantly executed by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra. It turns out the scientists and the military leaders behind the creation and the execution of the Atomic Bomb had a lot more in mind than just nuking Japan… a lot more. And their plans run decades longer than World War II. Based largely upon real-life individuals who are too dead to litigate, each person seems to have his own motivations, his own ideas for execution, and his own long-range plan for how to develop the future. Yet the story never gets bogged down in political posturing or self-amusing cuteness – the latter being a real temptation for many creators. Each issue gives us the impression there’s more than meets the eye; each successive issue proves there most certainly was. If the History Channel spun off a Paranoia Network, Manhattan Projects would be its raison d’être.
2. Hawkeye. If you’ll pardon the pun, Hawkeye has never been more than a second-string character. An interesting guy with an involving backstory and enough sexual relationships to almost fill a Howard Chaykin mini-series, this series tells us what Clint Barton does when he’s not being an Avenger or a S.H.I.E.L.D. camp follower. It turns out Clint leads a normal-looking life that gets interfered with by people who think Avengers should be Avengers 24/7. He’s also got a thing going with the Young Avenger who was briefly Hawkeye. Matt Fraction and David Aja bring forth perhaps the most human interpretation of a Marvel character in a long, long while. Hawkeye might be second-string, but Clint Barton most certainly is not.
3. Captain Marvel. Another second-string character. Despite some absolutely first-rate stories (I’m quite partial to Jim Starlin’s stuff, as well as anything Gene Colan or Gil Kane ever put pencil to paper), the guy/doll never came close to the heritage of its namesake. This may have changed. A true role model for younger female readers and a very military character who uniquely humanizes the armed forces, Carol Danvers finally soars under writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy – both as a superhero and as a human being. DeConnick doesn’t qualify as “new” talent, but this certainly is a breakthrough series that establishes her as a truly major player… as it does Marvel’s Captain Marvel.
4. Creator-Owned Heroes. Anthology comics are a drag upon the direct sales racket. They almost never succeed. I don’t know why; there’s usually as much story in each individual chapter as there is in a standard full-length comic. I admire anybody who choses to give it a whirl (hi, there, honorary mention Mike Richardson and company for Dark Horse Presents!), and I really liked Creator-Owned Comics. Yep, liked. It’s gone with next month’s eighth issue. But this one was a lot more than an anthology comic: it had feature articles, how-to pieces, and swell interviews. The work of Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Steve Niles, Steve Bunche and a cast of dozens (including swell folks like Phil Noto and Darwin Cooke), there wasn’t a clinker in the bunch. I wouldn’t mind seeing follow-ups on any of the series featured in this title, although I must give a particular nod to Jimmy and Justin’s Killswitch, a take on modern contract killers, and on Steve’s work in general. This is no light praise: I’m not a big fan of horror stories because most of them have been done before and redone a thousand times after that. Niles is quite the exception.
5. Batman Beyond Unlimited. Okay, this is a printed collection of three weekly online titles: Batman Beyond, Justice League Beyond, and Superman Beyond. But it comes out every month in a sweet monthly double-length printed comic, so it meets my capricious criteria. Based upon the animated DC Universe (as in, the weekly series Batman Beyond and Justice League, and to a lesser extent others), these stories are solid, fun, and relatively free of the angst that has overwhelmed the so-called real DCU stories. Yeah, kids can enjoy them. So can the rest of the established comics audience. Pull the stick out of your ass; there’s more to superhero comics than OCD heroes and death and predictable resurrection. These folks have just about the best take on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World characters than anybody since Jack Kirby. That’s because Jack remembered comics are supposed to be entertaining. Honorable mention: Ame-Comi Girls. It’s based on a stupid (but successful) merchandising idea but it’s just as much fun as anything being published today.
6. Batgirl. O.K. The real story here is that DC Comics mindlessly offed writer Gail Simone from this series only to restore her within a week or so after serious (and occasionally, ah, overly dramatic) protest from both the readership and the creative community. But there was good reason: Gail took a character who was in an impossible situation and, against all tradition, put her back in the costume without resorting to ret-con or reboot, which have been the handmaidens of the New 52. She brought Barbara Gordon back to action with all the doubts, insecurities and vulnerabilities one would expect a person in her position to have, and she does so in a compelling way exercising all of her very considerable talent. This title thrives despite being engulfed in two back-to-back mega-non-events that overwhelmed and undermined all of the Batman titles.
7. Orchid. I praised this one last year; it comes to an end with issue 12 next month. That’s because writer/creator/musician/activist Nightwatchman Tom Morello has a day job and the young Wobblie still has a lot of rabble to rouse. Orchid is a true revolutionary comic book wherein a growing gaggle of the downtrodden stand up for themselves against all odds and unite to defeat the omnipresent oppressor. Tom manages to do this without resorting to obvious parallels to real-life oppressors, although the environment he creates will be recognizable to anybody who thinks there just might be something wrong with Fox “News.” But this is a comic book site and not the place for (most of) my social/political rants (coughcough). Orchid succeeds and thrives as a story with identifiable, compelling characters and situations and a story that kicks ass with the energy and verve one would expect from a rock’n’roller like Morello.
8. Revival. A somewhat apocalyptic tale about people who come back from the dead in the fairly isolated city of Wausau Wisconsin (I’ve been there several times; it is a city and it is indeed fairly isolated). But they aren’t zombies. Most are quite affable. It’s the rest of the population that’s got a problem. The latest output from Tim Seeley and my landsman Mike Norton, two enormously gifted talents. Somewhere above I noted how Steve Niles is able to raise well above the predictable crap and that is equally true here: the story and formula is typical, but the execution is compelling. That I’ve been a big fan of Norton’s is no surprise to my friends in Chicago.
9. Nowhere Men. I’ve got to thank my ComicMix brother Marc Alan Fishman for this one. Admittedly, it’s only two issues old and it has its flaws – long prose insertions almost always bring the pace of visual storytelling to a grinding halt – but the concept and execution of this series far exceeds this drawback. Written by Eric Stephenson and drawn by Nate Bellegarde and Jordie Bellaire, the catch phrase here is “Science Is The New Rock ‘N’ Roll.” Four guys start up a science-for-the-people company and that’s cool, but twenty years later some have taken it too seriously, others not seriously enough, and things got a little out of hand. Sadly, I’m not certain who understands that, other than the reader and one of the major characters. Science is the new rock’n’roll, and exploring that as a cultural phenomenon makes for a great story – and a solid companion to Manhattan Projects.
Non-Self-Publisher of the Year: For some reason, I’m surprised to say it’s Image Comics. They’ve been publishing many of the most innovative titles around – four of the above nine – all creator-owned, without going after licensed properties like a crack-whore at a kneepad sale.
No offense meant to either publishers or crack-whores; I said I’m really a sweet, kind, understanding guy.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was this publisher called Harvey Comics. They were in business to sell comic books to children: Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Hot Stuff, Sad Sack, Little Dot, Richie Rich… well, mostly Richie Rich. As in “I counted 47 different Richie Rich titles from Harvey Comics, not including the daily and Sunday newspaper strip.” Most were bi-monthlies and quarterlies, so to be fair I doubt Harvey released more than a four or five Richie Rich titles every week.
Mary and Bryan Talbot’s 
