Tagged: Bitch Planet

Martha Thomases: Gods and Starz

Forgive me, Constant Reader, but I am still somewhat hungover from my Eisner Awards weekend. As evidence, I tell you that I have the new issue of one of my favorite titles, Bitch Planet, in my apartment, but I have not yet read it.

(I may read it during the course of writing this, because I plan to have lunch today. Stay tuned.)

So this week, I plan to talk about something that is not comics, but comics-adjacent, American Gods, the new series on Starz based on the novel by Neil Gaiman.

My colleagues in this space, Emily Whitten and Mindy Newell, have already written about the great cast and the tight scripting. I want to talk about some aspects of the show that are more ephemeral.

I haven’t read American Gods since it was published in 2001, but I remember being knocked out by it. The story of a war was not that unusual, but the fighters were, battles between the old gods (from Europe and Asia and Africa, like Odin and Anansi and Star) and the new gods (technology, media, celebrity). I mean, I already loved Neil, both as a person and as a writer, and his previous novel, Neverwhere, had been fun, but I thought American Gods was a great leap forward. It had an empathy towards its characters that I found to be much more personal and nuanced than the previous book. In fact, I considered it to be downright politically radical.

All these years later, my memories of the story have faded. There are some vivid images, notably a vignette in a taxi cab, but I don’t remember a lot about the plot or the characters. I am old. I have a lot of characters already in my brain, and I try to prioritize remembering the ones in real life.

I was excited to sit down with my brand-new subscription to the Starz channel on Sunday night, a bit nervous because the early reviews I’d read all talked about how violent the series was. Sure enough, the opening scene looked like it had been dipped in henna. And yet, it didn’t give me the icks. Later, there was not only more blood, but walks through a forest filled with skulls, threatening skies and ominous, discordant music.

It wasn’t scary. It was quite lovely. And even though he hadn’t had anything to do with it (that I know about), it seemed like Dave McKean might have influenced the production design, at least for those scenes. They shared his sense of chaotic beauty.

The acting is terrific, and the casting superb. My foggy memories of the characters flash a bit, but I think I would relate to them just as much without reading the book. Even in the most dire circumstances, the actors seem to be having a great time, especially Ian McShane.

American Gods remains a political fable, albeit perhaps a different one than I read in 2001. My sympathies in the war among the gods remains with the older deities, although my mistrust of the whole lot of them is still strong. In this time, unlike the turn on the century, the war is also played out between the cities and the small towns, the coasts and the flat fly-over country. When there is a fight in a bar in the first episode, I have no doubt that the humans who watch are Trump voters.

Do I think that the old gods are Republicans and the new gods are Democrats? Hell, no. Neither do I think their worshippers divide up quite so simply. I think there are plenty of rural folks who love celebrities and smart phones. I think lots of urban hipsters would drink mead if it was offered. And I think all too many of us, no matter where we live or what we believe, would spill blood to get what we want.

This has been my first week with Starz. When I called my cable company to add it, I specifically told them I wanted it for American Gods. I see that they also have the new Ghostbusters. So I can have my Neil fix and Kate McKinnon without having to find the remote. That’s one less sacrifice to the tech gods.

Joe Corallo: Critical Thinking

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%e2%80%a2motorcrushpromo1Last week I picked up a copy of Motor Crush #1, the new Image comic with all the buzz, created by the team that brought us the Batgirl of Burnside, including Brenden Fletcher, Babs Tarr, and Cameron Stewart. Part of what motivated me to pick up this comic was the report at Bleeding Cool that some retailers admitted that they did not order Motor Crush for their stores because they didn’t think their customers would buy a new comic with a black female lead.

I got around to reading this comic a few hours after picking it up, and it really was a good, fun time. We follow the sci-fi adventures of racer Domino Swift as she fights biker gangs and the world around her of both legitimate and illegal racing is fleshed out before us. Other than perhaps getting a little lost reading one or two of the action sequences, it was a smooth and enjoyable read.

%e2%80%a2iceman_teaser-600x922There is one thing about the book that stands out to me though.

No one attached to the book is black. The entire creative team and the editor, Jeanine Schaefer, are white. The letterer, Aditya Bidikar, is Indian which is important as we don’t have enough Indian voices in Western comics. This does, however, leave the book without a single black voice attached.

Is that important?

It can be for a few reasons, one of which is related to how comics compares to other media. In prose, you’re often dealing with an author and an editor so you have little room to add more voices. When it comes to television and film, you have much larger groups of people working on them and the characters are played by real people. Maybe the creators are all white, but if the characters are black, they’re played by real people who can be admired and idolized who can benefit from that in their careers and inspire other people to be actors. In comics, particularly mainstream American comics, you can easily end up with teams of  between four and a half dozen or more working on a single story. If a team that isn’t black is making a comic with a black protagonist you have a situation where only non-black creators are making financial and professional gains from a book while many black and other marginalized creators aren’t getting the same levels of press and encouragement.

%e2%80%a2bitchplanet_vol1-1Is that what we want? It’s worth pondering.

Also worth considering: this team in particular is the same team that was involved in the horrifyingly transphobic and misguided Batgirl #37. That issue is so infamous to me I didn’t even have to look up the issue number; I just know it. The team created a terrible villain using dated trans tropes that disgusted me to the point where I didn’t read anymore of that Batgirl run until issue #45 to read Alysia’ Yeohs wedding – and that wasn’t enough to bring me back in. The damage was done.

The team apologized for the events of issue #37 and the collected edition was edited to remove some of the most damning content. Do I believe we have to chase every creative team out of comics who make big mistakes like this? Absolutely not. However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to trust that creative team with handling certain characters outside of their own experiences. Sometimes it’s important to have a team with people from a community you want to do a comic about to avoid a Batgirl #37 situation.

To a lesser extent, but with more consistency, we saw this happen with Iceman in different X-Men comics the last couple of years. I’ve been critical of how Iceman has been handled by Bendis as well as Lemire and Hopeless. Now Marvel is moving in a new direction with Sina Grace, a queer man, at the helm on the new Iceman solo series. Though the series isn’t out yet, I’m familiar with Sina’s other comics works and this seems like a step in the right direction.

There are also examples of comics that do have representation on the teams that have been wildly successful. Another title at Image, Bitch Planet, has been a big hit. Though Kelly Sue DeConnick is mostly writing women of color, her co-creator is Valentine De Landro, a black creator whom I’ve been a big fan of since his tenure on Peter David’s X-Factor, and the two of them together pulling from their own knowledge and experiences have crafted a brilliant comic that towers above most of what you’ll find one the shelves and spinner racks. Without a black voice behind Bitch Planet we might be getting a very different book that could easily be missing those high notes.

While I do believe it is important to have at least some representation in your comic of the people you’re writing about, it’s still possible to put out a good comic without that. Motor Crush #1 is a fun read and is worth considering. If supporting black characters in comics is important to you, definitely give this a chance. If supporting women in comics is important to you, Babs Tarr and Jeanine Schaefer are worth supporting. If supporting creators of color is important to you, you’re gonna have to look elsewhere.

Martha Thomases: Growing Opportunities

Marvel Plants

For this column, I have questions but no answers.

I realize this is a form of slacking. As a weekly contributor to ComicMix, I’m supposed to have the authority and gravitas that justifies the esteem in which I’m held by my colleagues, as well as the salary I’m paid. No answers, no paycheck.

Last week, my pal, Joe Corallo, wrote an impassioned column about Alters, a new series from AfterShock Comics about a group of superheroes that includes a transgender character. Joe was interested in the title but he confessed to a degree of fatigue caused by stories written by cis people about transitioning.

We met for tequila last week and talked about his column. While I hear his point, I think storytellers should tell the stories they want to tell. At the same time, audiences, of course, can ask for the kind of stories they want.

Apparently, Paul Jenkins, the writer and creator of the series, had somewhat similar thoughts. He reached out to Joe, and they did this interview. It touches on a lot of my obsessions. Who decides what stories get told? Who gets to tell them?

I don’t mean storytellers who are also fan, as my colleague Vinnie Bartilucci described. Fandom is its own thing, wild and free, which is as it should be. I mean people who are professional, who either work on creator-owned projects or get hired by the people who own the intellectual properties in question.

These people are, overwhelmingly, straight cis white men. They look like and talk like the people who hire them. Many of them create stories that move me and make me laugh or cry or hide under the covers with my cat because I thought I heard a noise. I’m very happy to live in a world where creators I like get to tell me the stories they want to tell.

At the same time, there are lots and lots of people who are not straight cis white men, who also tell stories that I enjoy. I like what I like. I hope you, too, enjoy getting to like what you like.

There are probably thousands (if not millions) of people of all colors and categories who also could tell me stories I would like, but I’ll never get to see them because they don’t have the same access to media as those mentioned above. I mean, I started to get work at Marvel Comics because I found out Denny O’Neil lived down the street from me, and I volunteered to water his plants when he went out of town. This is not an opportunity that anybody could have, even in the 1980s. It’s just about impossible now, not least because Denny is married and has a better support system for his botanical dependents.

Paul Jenkins wanted to tell a superhero story that includes a transwoman going through her transition. That’s the story that interests him. Joe has read a lot of stories like that (although probably without the super-powers parts) and he would like to read something different.

Who is right?

That’s the part I can’t answer. i’ve liked so much of what Paul has written over the years, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s going to do with Alters, especially since it seems like a terrific premise. I’m also with Joe, wanting to see more different kinds of stories.

However, I will note that the most recent issues of both Bitch Planet and The Beauty are telling non-transition stories about transwomen.

The Internet was supposed to change a lot of this. It was going to be easy and inexpensive to publish, and everyone would have equal access to the means of distribution. That didn’t happen in quite the way I wanted (perhaps I’m too old, but finding new comics and reading them online is frustrating for me). The big names tend to be the people who look like the editors, and the editors keep looking like the money people, and the corporations are overwhelmingly run by straight, white men – who also are in charge of distribution, retail, and media.

With exceptions, thank the Goddess.

We need more people telling more kinds of stories that more kinds of people will like. We need to acknowledge, with respect, that some people want to create and/or read stories that we, personally, might not want to read. Having highfaluting discussions about the socio-political implications of our choices is a wonderful thing, and my life would be diminished if I couldn’t do it.

Those opinions are not the same thing as criticism.

Are there stories you want to read about parts of life you think shouldn’t be ignored? By all means, speak up. Tell publishers what you want. Maybe try to create that story with your friends, and self-publish. That would be great.

Do you want to see more diversity in the professional comics community? So do I. Make a lot of noise. Write letters. Post columns. Ask questions at comic book conventions, especially at panels. Our industry is way behind the curve in this matter, and we all suffer as a result.

Paul Jenkins should tell the stories he wants to tell at AfterShock. And AfterShock should have more than one woman on staff and more than three women creators on their roster.

Molly Jackson: Loud Voices

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I’ve spent the past week or so in a bubble, apparently hiding from the news of the world. Which is why I was startled by the influx of posts yesterday announcing it was International Women’s Day. A day to recognize all the inspirational women in our lives.

It seems odd that I would miss such a day but it is a funny thing to have a single day dedicated to all women from the planet Earth. Women still make up half the planet, and there are similar days on the proverbial calendar. Still, the necessity of such a day is irksome. The year is filled with days where I can laud women from all walks of life.

Being torn on how to move forward with this column, I decided to err on the side of not nitpicking yesterday’s recognition and to try to enjoy the moment.

Truth be told, women have made strides in comics, both in the industry and in the stories. A few decades ago, I doubt Kamala Khan would have made it to the page. Even if she had, I doubt that she would have the same depth that she does now. The same could be said for one of her creators, Sana Amanat, who is an editor at Marvel Comics. But now we have a character that resonates across cultural and gender lines as a role model to the young and old.

The same exact excitement could be applied to Bitch Planet. Could we have had that book years ago? Of course. Would it have received the same praise it receives now? I doubt it.

However, this is still a small percentage of the comics pie.

Female characters still lead fewer books than male characters. Female creators still make up a small portion of the industry. Now, it is a point of conversation and an area of development. Companies are looking for ways to expand as they realize that courting the opposite sex is a growing market. It will continue to be as long as we look towards the future and remind them that we women are still here and will not be ignored.

On this site, we have amazing women who broke barriers in comics for my generation. For starters, Martha Thomases and Mindy Newell both worked in the industry, creating female-driven stories as they worked in a male-dominated industry. Emily Whitten has written for multiple sites about geekdom, something that isn’t easy as a woman. All of them have been an inspiration as well as a source of encouragement.

So, on this random day, I want to thank all the women who made it possible for me to be recognized as a voice to be heard. Everything you’ve done is helping move us to an equal future.

 

Molly Jackson: The Men Of Angoulême

AngoulêmeLast week, my column looked forward to all the potential of 2016. Sure, 2015 had its rocky moments but it also had some great ones. Well, 2016 has arrived and is ready to smack my enthusiasm back down.

This week, the Angoulême International Comics Festival announced the nominees for their lifetime achievement award, Grand Prix Angoulême. This is the 43rd year of the French award, which is considered a great honor to win. However, this year not a single female creator was nominated. That’s unusual considering there is a (albeit just one) past female recipient, as well as a number of past female nominees.

Creators are already taking to the internet to decry this. Grand Prix nominee Daniel Clowes has even removed himself from the running in protest. I do believe that he will not be the last. Other past attendees have also taken a stand against this, stating that they will be boycotting the award votes.

I’ll admit error here; I haven’t followed the comic awards as closely as I probably should. Mostly, creator friends that are posting on Facebook or the follow-up PR emails announcing the winners is the closest I really get to any award show. Still, when a comic I like gets noticed, I am happy for them. When a creator gets recognized for their work, it is a wonderful thing.

One thing I do know is that award competitions have had to grow and change with the changes in the industry. Web and indie comics have definitely affected the field. The changing diversity has affected comic awards too.

In searching for any women comic creators, I found a long list of winners from 2015. Women cleaned up at award shows, with hits like Lumberjanes, Bitch Planet, or Ms. Marvel. After 43 years of this lifetime award, I can understand that it is more men recipients than women. However, I don’t understand the no women. Plenty of women have been building careers in comics over the past 43+ years, despite the challenges they’ve faced. Their hard work and dedication should be recognized.

I think the biggest reason for my disappointment is because the past years’ winner is the head of the nominee selection for the next year. A comic creator was in charge of this and failed to look past gender lines. I don’t know if it was done intentionally or not, but someone who works in the industry failed.

In 2016, isn’t it about time that gender diversity wasn’t an oversight?

Mike Gold: Looking Forward

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In these waning days of 2015, our media tends to look backward at all the great stuff that came down during the previous year. That’s because there’s damn little that happens between Christmas Eve and New Year’s morn and people like me are tasked with filling space. This plays nicely with my powerful sense of cynicism. Hey, it’s a living.

But what the hell. For all practical purposes 2015 is already history (and I hope that comment doesn’t come back to bite me in my ass). Instead, in a fit of optimism I’d rather talk about what I’m looking forward to in the new year.

When it comes to the mother medium, I eagerly await the return of Bitch Planet, easily my favorite new series of 2015. Actually, I have yet to stop being pissed at Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro for having the audacity to take a vacation.

The third and final volume of the graphic novel series March, Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell story of the struggle for civil rights, is due out this coming year. If you haven’t read the first two books, you’ve got time to catch-up. This series carries my highest recommendation. By far.

DC and Marvel have retconned and rebooted and reimag

Bitch Planet, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro, March, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, Savage Dragon, Superman v Batman, Deadpool, Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch, Agent Carter, Hayley Atwell, Civil War, Skottie Young

ined their respective universes to death, so it’s hard for me to show any enthusiasm for their upcoming projects. Why bother? They’ll only be retconned and rebooted and reimagined still again. Give me the stability and pure fun of Savage Dragon any day.

We’ve got lots and lots of comic book based movies and television coming up because Hollywood lives to run stuff into the ground. I can’t say that Superman v Batman or Civil War makes my pulse race – we’ve seen it before, and besides I have no reason to be optimistic about any Warner Bros. superhero flick. While I hope for the best, the comics movies that are putting the salt on my popcorn are Deadpool and Doctor Strange – which are two different movies.

Our pal Emily Whitten talked about the Deadpool flick in this space yesterday afternoon and backed up her enthusiasm with 32 links, so I don’t have to be repetitious. I will say that from the trailers and the hype this appears to be a movie that will either be a lot of fowl-mouthed fun and a much needed satirical jab at the form… or a complete disaster. I like both the character and the lead actor, and the campaign has been very amusing so I have reason to be optimistic. We can always use a good laugh.

Doctor StrangeDoctor Strange has been one of my favorite characters since Lee and Ditko invented the psychedelic superhero way back when I was still (barely) a pre-teen. He’s never really been able to hold onto a title of his own, but he’s been a vital – even critical – part of the MCU for over a half-century. And casting Benedict Cumberbatch as the Sorcerer Supreme (which still sounds to me like a Baskin-Robbins flavor of the month) seems perfect.

As for comics-on-teevee, I’m looking forward to the return of Agent Carter because the first series was my favorite comics-based series on broadcast television. Hayley Atwell will also be reprising Peggy Carter in the Civil War movie, which is set in contemporary time. Peggy will be real old and nobody expects her to make it to the end-credits, but, of course, that doesn’t mean she won’t be in future flicks. It’s comics, folks.

What would I like to see in 2016? Hey, I’m glad you asked. I’d like to see a year of solid storytelling that does not reply upon overworked and overproduced “events” and variant covers (except those by Skottie Young) and phony deaths – in comics, that’s redundant – and astonishing resurrections. Honest, comic books are stories; let’s get back to good stories.

You know, the kind from which they make movies and teevee shows.

Have yourself a safe, productive and amazingly entertaining new year. You deserve it.

Martha Thomases: The Smartest Catharsis

Bugs Bunny Elmer Fudd

I don’t know about you guys, but catharsis is kind of my jam. I seek out entertainment that expresses my dark and violent emotions so that I won’t act on them in dark and violent ways.

And these past few weeks have been rough. The terrorism in Paris, the terrorism in Colorado, the police terrorism in Chicago, all arouse in me a feeling of despair and helplessness.

I need violent media.

Not more violence, just choreographed fights, fake blood, and the massive destruction of props. I like to watch stuff get blowed up real good. Imagining the destruction of my enemies, or even just the assholes who wear backpacks in crowded subways, makes me feel better.

All without hurting anyone.

In decades past, there were arguments that excessive exposure to violent media dulled the audience, making them indifferent to the pain caused by real-life violence. It’s entirely likely that those who are mentally ill would have such an unhealthy reaction. I mean, mentally ill people can have unhealthy reactions to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Adults, however, who are not mentally ill can use entertainment to engage their emotions in imaginary battles to the death against those who must upset us. Even the Bible will work, especially if you enjoy a deity who drowns everybody (including animals) for no good reason.

I think we should find a way for more people to enjoy imaginary violence, instead of the real thing. There is far too much of that in present-day America. If I might quote: “More than once a day on average this year, mass shootings have destroyed lives and families. President Obama on Saturday said this endless ritual of murder is “not normal,” but that is precisely the problem: In America, it has become all too normal.”

Wouldn’t it be great if the new normal was to simply go to the mall and see a movie? Isn’t that better than all of us getting a gun?

(Or at least, some of us.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, reading quotes from the GOP presidential candidates defending the Colorado terrorist is making me need to read Bitch Planet.

Mike Gold: Redundancy, Repetition, and Superhero Melanoma

spider-verse-variant-cover-by-skottie-young

Several decades ago the American comics medium in general – and Marvel Comics in specific – were criticized by some in fandom for being overly formulaic. I realize it is possible for a few fannish souls to overreact, but I have to admit there was an element of truthiness in their concern.

Today we can clearly see a contemporary incarnation of this issue. Not that plotlines are being rubber-stamped; slavish adherence to ever-shifting continuity undermines such creative shortcuts. No, today we are suffering from a different sort of redundancy: overexposure to such a degree that most truly successful superhero characters have become akin to amoebas.

I was just thumbing through the sundry Diamond catalogs announcing comics and related effluvia ostensibly set to ship this coming February. Out of convenience and a desire to meet my deadline, I am going to focus on Marvel’s output – but DC, and to a lesser extent other superhero publishers, are also guilty of sequential overexposure.

This coming February, Marvel is supposed to be shipping (in the unlikely event that my math is correct) no less than three Captain Marvel books, seven Avengers titles, four Deadpools, seven X-Men, three Inhumans titles, six featuring the Guardians of the Galaxy…

and no less than fifteen titles featuring Spider-Man and his Spiderverse. Fifteen. Back when people were criticizing Marvel for recycling plots, they didn’t publish fifteen different titles a month! I guess that’s pretty damn good for a character that can’t even hold onto a major movie franchise.

Of course, the sundry Spideys also appear in various Avengers titles, as do most if not all of the aforementioned properties. And many of the other Avengers like Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, and Captain America have their own titles as well.

It is true that this sort of thing has been going on for a long, long time. Maybe not quite as long as it may seem to geriatric fans who recall Superman appearing in seven different titles in the late 1950s (Superman, Action Comics, Superboy, Adventure Comics, World’s Finest, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen), but only two of those were published monthly. The rest were published bi-monthly or every six weeks. Still, five titles a month is a lot. Fortunately, continuity was weak at best and if you had an aversion to pill-box hats you could safely avoid Lois Lane (and her omnipresent scissors) and still understand what was going on in the other titles.

However, we have not previously seen such character redundancy to this degree. Not even when the original Captain Marvel and his family were featured in eight different titles back in the 1940s. Not all were monthlies, although the Big Red Cheese did see his own book go out every three weeks for a spell. Then again, in February at least two Spider-Man titles double-ship, and, for the record, February 2016 only has four ship weeks. It’s pretty rare that Leap Year Day falls on a Wednesday.

So, why is this a problem? Well, if you’re a massive Spider-Man fan, it might not be. However, ComicMix columnist Emily S. Whitten is a proud Deadpool fan, but having a job, a life, and a commitment to writing one of the best comics and pop culture columns on the Interwebs, so even Emily has a hard time keeping up with the nutty merc.

This is a problem because it undermines the uniqueness of the character. It’s called overexposure. We used to have three or four Punisher titles; in February 2016 Marvel won’t be releasing a single one.

Sure, as I said, all this goes for DC as well. They’ve been pushing Batman titles out as though they were Cheerios, and they out-X-Men the X-Men by having several thousand different characters all named Green Lantern.

At least Image only produces one Bitch Planet a month… and that’s on a good month. A very good month, in my opinion, but your mileage may vary.

 

Molly Jackson Has Pull List Envy

Dr Fate

I’ve learned a very important lesson this past week: Never ever start training for a new day job the day after a four-day convention. All it does is turn your completely exhausted brain to mush. However, with said new position I will have a very small amount of extra cash available to do something I miss. Set up a comics issue pull list at a local comic store (LCS).

Many moons ago I moved from the suburbs to the bright, shiny lights of NYC. When I did that, I left behind my LCS Amok Time (Go check them out, I still heart them so much!) and with it, my last pull list. I wanted to give myself a few months of trying on the large variety of comic shops in my area and finding one that fit well. Alas, a few months later when I was getting serious about committing, I ended up in a 14-month period of unemployment.

I made the responsible but not fun decision not to commit to buying single issues on a regular basis and began reading graphic novels from the local library, which I totally recommend. Being unemployed made me a little nervous about committing to spending on a regular basis. Even after being employed steadily for almost two years, I am only now considering it because I am getting the aforementioned raise.

My real desire to move forward is all the amazing books starting to come out. At NYCC, I picked up a few things I have been meaning to check out and frankly, I am afraid I will miss an issue here or there. And after finally getting and reading Bitch Planet Vol. 1 at NYCC (I can almost hear EIC Mike Gold admonishing me for waiting so long), I don’t want to wait for Vol. 2 to come out. I want to see each issue unfold. I got issue #1 of We Are Robin (plus got it signed by Khary Randolph at NYCC) and almost missed issue #2 coming out this past week! Not to mention I only just discovered Paul Levitz’s Dr. Fate! Pull lists will mean I don’t always have to be on top of what comes out when.

So yes, it will be a very small pull list. Probably five or six titles at the max. I need to save a lot of my moolah for the future, like attending more conventions, so my LCS spending will still be at a minimum. However, part of my relationship with money is prioritizing what is important to me. Comics, like probably all of you, are important enough to me to bring lunch to work rather than buying or passing on some unneeded shopping.

And, I miss the special trip of picking up my pull.

 

Mike Gold: Four Comics Things That Piss Me Off

Bitch Planet

Number One: Bitch Planet

Bitch Planet ran only five issues. I know it’s coming back in a new mini-series story arc thingy, but nobody – not even Valentina De Landro and Kelly Sue DeConnick – have any business producing such a compelling series and not publish it every damn month for the rest of their lives. And I’m counting string theory afterlife dimensions.

I mean, look folks, characters like Batman, the X-Men and My Little Pony are being published weekly under a variety of titles. Marvel’s pumping out so much Deadpool that even Emily S. Whitten has a hard time following them all. So is it so much to ask that we get Bitch Planet at least once each month? These are two incredibly talented cartoonists. I’m sure they have lives and loved ones and such, but I don’t care. October will come and go without an issue of Bitch Planet, and that is wrong.

Number Two: Roots of Evil?

SvengoolieLast week, the courageous and gifted Svengoolie ran the movie Monster On The Campus on his Saturday night Me-TV show (a great channel, usually on one of those digital side channels the broadcast stations use to fill out their bit of the broadband spectrum). It’s about a not-mad scientist – although at times he’s rather testy – named Doctor Donald Blake who imports a honking big fish that’s been frozen for over one million years. Blake gets pricked by one of the fish’s humongous teeth. It turns out the fish was preserved with Gamma rays for some reason that kind of made sense when they said it. Donald Blake temporarily gets transformed into a gigantic hairy monster who is violently cantankerous.

Seeing as how this is a website named “ComicMix,” three facts probably leap out at you. First, the dude’s name is Doctor Donald Blake. Second, the major plot point is that he transforms into something mighty. And, finally… Gamma rays, huh?

This movie was made in 1958. The Incredible Hulk got his dose of Gamma rays in 1962. Doctor Donald Blake first transformed into The Mighty Thor that same year. My question: is this an incredibly amazing series of coincidences (Ian Fleming would have called it “enemy action”), or did Stan Lee happen to see it and those elements impregnated his imagination? Or did he simply borrow the material, never thinking (logically) anybody would ever see that movie again? Probably not; Stan always had a lousy memory.

Sven did mention both Donald Blake and Bruce Banner during his always-brilliantly-silly studio segments.

Number Three: Color Everywhere

Boris The BearNow that small print runs of color comics are economically feasible (well, feasibler) we seem to have a drought of black and white comics. That’s annoying. The so-called independent comics movement started out in black and white – Elfquest, Cerebus; even Dark Horse’s first title was in black and white. By and large, the Warren magazines (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and particularly Blazing Combat) featured some of the best artwork by many of the best cartoonists ever, all in glorious black and white. Whereas they weren’t quite up to Warren’s level, the Marvel Comics magazines were pretty damn good and I think Conan in particular looked great in that medium.

Number Four: What’s Black and White and Dead All Over?

And let’s take this one step further. Many of the few surviving newspapers, perhaps most, have been coloring their daily comic strips for several years now. This is also true of the newspaper strip websites GoComics.com and ComicsKingdom.com. Here’s a news flash: guys, you’re not helping. By and large – there are notable exceptions – the coloring is dreadful. Comics are not coloring books where everything is cool if you just stay in the lines. Color is a storytelling device. That’s why the great color artists deserve the big bucks.

Note I did not say “the great color artists are getting the big bucks.”

That’s four. There will always be more. Get off my lawn!Bloom County