Tagged: Martha Thomases

Every Day is Kids Day! by Martha Thomases

Every Day is Kids Day! by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • June 21, 2008

One of the things I learned at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival (aside from the fact that New York firefighters remain the world’s most awesome) is that independent, alternative cartoonists embrace the children’s market. This was evident not only in the major publishing launch of Francoise Mouly’s TOON Books, but also the work of a lot of young people with their self-published titles.

This may seem like a stupidly obvious thing to say from anyone who has watched the market for children’s books, graphic novels, and other kinds of mass media. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to apply to most comic book stores.

When I worked at DC, the typical story about comics had the headline, “Biff! Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just for Kids Anymore!” My boss explained to me, in great detail, why there was no need to make comics that children under 12 would enjoy. The success of Vertigo – Sandman in particular – meant there was a profitable market for comics among college-educated, affluent adults, especially to advertisers.

This was true, as far as it went. Good books can be good marketing. Sandman continues to make a lot of money for DC, even though there haven’t been new stories for several years. I have no doubt that many people for whom Sandman was their first comic went on to read lots of other comics by lots of other writers, artists and publishers.

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ComicMix Columns/Features for the Week Ending June 15, 2008

ComicMix Columns/Features for the Week Ending June 15, 2008

  • News
  • June 15, 2008

This week we’ve brought you a man-sized portion of columns and features by our intrepid band:

Strong enough for a man, but made for — well, everybody!

Sex, Lies, Random Thoughts, by Martha Thomases

Sex, Lies, Random Thoughts, by Martha Thomases

  • News
  • June 14, 2008

It’s one of those weeks. It’s hot, and the elections and other summer cross-over events are not even in second gear yet. Nothing grabs me for an entire column of deep thoughts. So lets skip some stones across the idea pond.

• According to io9, two of the summer’s big-deal super-hero movies use sex with super-powers as a major plot point. It’s been decades since “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” and even 13 years since Mallrats, but the American public, especially the movie-going audience, seems to be giggling little nerds when it comes to this topic. Or at least the movie-producing parts of it.

• Although, when you think about it, sex with Bruce Banner is kind of dangerous. I mean, if you scratch him or something that ticks him off, you’re talking about major tissue damage. Or at least a dislocated wrist.

• Grant Morrison recently said that Countdown had nothing to do with Final Crisis, even though the entire hype of Countdown declared it was all part of an overarching master plan. So Dan DiDio is a liar. Not misleading to make the story more fun for the fans, but a liar. If I were running DC’s convention presence, I wouldn’t put him on any more panels.

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ComicMix Columns/Features for the Week Ending June 8, 2008

ComicMix Columns/Features for the Week Ending June 8, 2008

Greetings from the MoCCA Art Fest, where ComicMix will be out in force today!  We’re probably having the time of our lives, having prepared this roundup well beforehand.  Good thing, too, as we keep adding more new features!  Here’s the scoop on what our columnists and feature-ists have brought you this past week:

Back to the fun at the Puck Building!  Or is that the pun at the F– no wait, that can’t be right…

Me, Come MoCCA – by Martha Thomases

Me, Come MoCCA – by Martha Thomases

I like New York in June. How about you?

There’s all the hippie, flower-child kinds of reasons. The days are warm; the nights are cool. The leaves provide dense shade, like stained glass windows from a Tiffany dream. The humidity is low, so the garbage isn’t baking on the sidewalks. Nature is reborn. It feels good to have a body.

There are also the 21st Century Geek Squad reasons. Free music in the parks. The summer movie season is at full throttle. The big cross-over events in comics are up and running, and, even when I don’t like them, they make the comic shops fun to be in on Wednesdays (fanboy fight!). Network TV is all reruns, but the cable networks bring in new stuff. The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a show on superhero costumes.

Best of all, there’s MoCCA.

More precisely, the Art Festival sponsored by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Usually held on the last weekend in June, this year, instead, it’s being held on the first. Today and tomorrow.

Now, if you’re a regular reader of these columns, you may have noticed that my tastes run to the pop. I like my comics fantastic. True, I also enjoy believable characterizations and witty dialogue, but mostly, I look to comics for escapism. Any coincidental addition of artistic merit to my entertainment is a bonus.

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending June 1, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending June 1, 2008

As readers doubtless have noticed, we’ve been adding a lot of regular features to ComicMix in addition to our columnists.  So it’s time to add Van’s Weekly Haul comic reviews to our rotation!  Here’s what we’ve done for you this past week:

In addition, here’s the listing of all the ComicMix Six fun we’ve come up with so far:

  1. April 2: Alan Kistler – Worst Moments in Skrull ‘Invasion’ History
  2. April 9: Alan Kistler – Why Marvel’s ‘Secret Wars’ Was Better Than ‘Civil War’
  3. April 17: Martha Thomases – Top Political Campaigns in Comics
  4. April 24: Alan Kistler – The Worst Superhero Names in Comics
  5. May 6: Chris Ullrich – The Worst Movies Adapted from Comic Books
  6. May 14: Alan Kistler – The Worst Supervillain Names in Comics
  7. May 21: Chris Ullrich – The Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books
  8. May 28: Martha Thomases – Biggest Tease in Comics (Male)

And with that, we bid our numbering goodbye!  Next week we’ll start adding in our Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica reviews (from Rick Marshall and Chris Ullrich respectively) to the roundup…

Are We There Yet? by Martha Thomases

Are We There Yet? by Martha Thomases

Every week when I’m considering a subject for my column, I look at the newspapers and the comic books cluttering up my living room. Perhaps this will be the week in which there is a perfect synchronization between the real world and the graphic world! Perhaps a team of comic book writers, artists and editors will perfectly capture the zeitgeist that is our national condition!

Perhaps this primary season will finally end.

I like elections. I like voting. I vote every chance I get. Because I live in New York, I’m accustomed to my primary vote not counting very much. I vote anyway. I voted for candidates I knew would lose, just because I wanted the Democratic Party to know there was a bloc of support for those positions. I’ve voted for Bella Abzug, Al Sharpton and Jonathan Tasini for Senate. I voted for George McGovern, Jesse Jackson and Edward Kennedy for President. I voted for Ruth Messinger for Mayor. I voted even though none of them had a prayer. When I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and he won, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 25, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 25, 2008

Hope everyone’s having a nice three-day weekend, and that we all remember that the real focus on Memorial Day ought to be putting an end to the sheer folly of war, so that someday we won’t have to mourn all those whose lives have been lost in its perpetuation.  Oh, and of course, outdoor grilling and summer movies and retail sales. 

Here’s what our columnists have been selling you — for free! — this past week:

Remember the barbecue sauce!

My Week Without Comics, by Martha Thomases

My Week Without Comics, by Martha Thomases

You may have noticed that my quick wit and adorable charm were missing from this site for a few days last week. From May 11 through May 19, I was away on vacation. It was the first time my sweetie and I have been away alone together for more than a few days since our son was born.

Not that we haven’t been on any vacations. We’ve had great times with the boy (who, riding horses with Holly Gaiman at Walt Disney World, sang the entire soundtrack to The Lion King), and with family and friends. But I hadn’t had any time alone to roll in my sweet baby’s arms, and we needed it.

To be a real vacation, a trip should totally take you away from your regular life. It should provide experiences that are different from the day-to-day, and that help you look at the world anew. We had a few days to ourselves on our tenth wedding anniversary, in 1990, when we biked through the Finger Lakes area in New York. It was so much fun that we explored doing something like that again. Spending a week on a bicycle, riding through small towns and countryside with a group of strangers, seemed about as foreign to crowded Manhattan as it was possible to get. We decided to take the train back and forth, so we kept our energy use down and kept the money in the USA. Less guilt!

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ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 18, 2008

ComicMix Columns for the Week Ending May 18, 2008

According to The Google, today marks the anniversary of the birth of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School of Design, whose influence can still be felt daily by urban workers every time they look up at a skyscraper featuring way too much glass.  Meanwhile, here’s what our designer columnists have created for you this past week:

Sure to keep your eyes from glazing over!

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