The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Joe Corallo: Powerless And Super

Back in February, a new comics publisher debuted called Vault Comics They hit the ground running with Fissure by Tim Daniel and Patricio Delpeche. Focusing on telling fresh, fast paced science fiction and fantasy stories, Vault has managed the Herculean feat of launching six different comic book series within three months and I’ve picked up all of them.

One of those series, Powerless, gives us a fresh take on the idea of superheroes; something you’ll rarely hear me say. I got the chance to talk with Powerless creator/writer David M. Booher and artist Nathan C. Gooden.

Joe Corallo: Let’s start with the basics. For those who aren’t familiar, what’s each of your elevator pitches for Powerless?
David Booher: Tough question because I could go on for days about this story. Here’s the 37-second pitch: We’ve flipped the idea of superpowers on its head. Every single person on the planet has some extraordinary ability, but a virus is spreading that takes away the powers of those infected. Using elite agents, the government has instituted Quarantine and the infected are starting to fight back violently. Our main characters find themselves caught right in the middle.
Nathan Gooden: Powerless is a world that asks the question: Do superpowers really solve any of the world’s issues? Does the ability to switch places with anyone or help the life of a depressed teenager, only add fuel to the flames of a brewing war? It’s a character-driven thrill ride that will answer these questions and many more.
JC: What was the genesis of this project? When did you each get involved?
DB: I created the series, but I’ve actually been nurturing the concept for years now. It sprang from my love of stories about people with extraordinary powers, from traditional superheroes to novels like Firestarter and Carrie by Stephen King. With so much out there, I took it as a challenge to create something fresh and different. It came to me – what if there were no superheroes because everyone had powers? What if I didn’t? From there it snowballed: How would I survive in that world? Where would I find power? How would others look at me? And on and on.
NG: I met David four years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con and we immediately hit it off. His pitch completely sold us on the idea of Powerless. We knew we were going to publish it, but I was even more honored and humbled, to have David ask me to do the art for the series.
JC: Powerless takes place in a world with a wide range of existing superhuman powers. What kind of powers can people expect to see explored and why did you pick the powers that you did?
DB: Again, it was about doing something that felt new. So, yeah, readers will see powers they’ve probably seen before – controlling elements, super speed, and telekinesis. But how about a million telekinetics? Or five million pyrokinetics? In a world where a superpower is no longer extraordinary, no one’s impressed that you can start fires. Now, how good you are with that power? That’s a different story. To use a sports analogy: I can throw a baseball over home plate, but will I ever be a pro pitcher? Hell, no. Pros have spent years training. The same with powers – lots of people might be able to do a certain thing, but you better believe there are pros who have perfected it.
Then there are the rarer powers. Switch is a modified teleporter who can swap places within anyone in her line of sight. Billy is a chronokinetic with the ability to go back in time 37 seconds. We carefully selected these powers because they have consequences for these characters as the story goes on. Our whole team has spent hours and hours talking about this world to figure out how it would really work. It’s been a ton of fun!
NG: I have always believed in taking the reader somewhere they have never been. So pushing the boundaries of super powers was such a treat. Without giving too much away, I’d like to call attention to one of my favorite characters, Grant Porter. He’s a mid level Serokinetic who can extract blood from organisms in a unique way. It will make for some beautiful, but gruesome brutality.
JC: Why Vault Comics?
DB: Long before Vault existed, I met Adrian Wassel (editor) and Damian Wassel (publisher) along with Nathan at conventions when they were publishing gorgeous graphic novels under a different imprint. I loved their books so much I pitched Powerless to them. The timing couldn’t have been better because they were already talking about creating Vault Comics. Then Nathan came on board as the artist and we were off to the races. They’ve been nothing but amazing from the very beginning.
NG: Well I have been a part of Vault Comics since day one, literally. Adrian and Damian are my very close cousins (more like brothers), so it was a no brainer to be part of the team and help the family.
JC: A common critique of mainstream comics lately is that there isn’t enough story in individual issues. That’s certainly not the case here with Powerless which is dense in story as well as panels and dialogue. What drove the decision to pack so much into the first issue of Powerless and what were the benefits and challenges of that?
DB: I’ll let Nathan talk about page layouts, since I almost always defer to him on that. For my part, I didn’t really make a conscious decision about how much or how little to put in the first issue. It was all dictated by the story. We had 28 pages to create a complex, nuanced world on the brink of transformation and characters who react to it in very different ways. And then we had to overlay all of that with superhuman abilities. There was a lot of ground to cover, and hopefully issue one balances all of that to hook readers. As the series moves forward, we do open up the pages and dialogue a bit now that the world has been established.
NG: I wanted to get the readers into the world as fast as possible so we could prove to them that we are going off the beaten path. You won’t have to invest months only to get a small taste. I went with an almost kaleidoscope panel design to fill this issue with as much depth and detail as humanly possible, sometimes leaving Deron with the hardest job of all. As David stated, the issues do intentionally open up as they progress and the panels and compositions will reflect that.
JC: To follow up on that, could you all discuss how you went about laying out the more complex pages and what was the most complex page to put together from the first issue?
DB: One thing I love about Nathan’s art (among so many things!) is his use of nontraditional page layouts. This is a non-traditional story, so it fits perfectly. We didn’t make Deron’s lettering job easy at all, but he sure made it look that way. Beyond those things, I’ll let Nathan and tell you which pages in the first issue drove him nuts!
NG: Pages 13 and 14 gave me a very big challenge. This is the first major conflict and has several Quarantine agents using their powers at the same time. It was a struggle to not make it just a big glowing mess or fists and kicks. As far as layout, I really wanted to walk the line of overwhelming the reader, without kicking them out of the book.
JC: While reading Powerless #1 I interpreted influence from events in American history such as the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, the AIDS epidemic, and politics post 9-11. How did these aspects of history impact the story of Powerless and what other historical and political events played a role in creating this story?
DB: As I wrote the scripts, of course lots of these historical events were in the back of my mind. As a gay creator, I probably thought most about the AIDS crisis and the horrible treatment of LGBT people that still happens today. Honestly, it’s been hard to stay ahead of all the crazy social and political events happening right now. I mean, if I wrote some of our current events into a script, I’d get laughed out of my editor’s office. That said, the political and social aspects of Powerless are there, but they provide the backdrop for the very personal stories of these characters and how they react to each other and the world around them.
NG: I think David covered that very well. I would just add, those exact thoughts are what drew me to the series in the first place.
JC: What fictional stories, comics or otherwise, influenced Powerless as well your other works?
DB: I think everything I read or see influences me in some way. I was an 80’s kid and I still love just about everything from that decade. Lately I’ve been focused on reading a lot of what Image, IDW, Black Mask, and of course Vault have been publishing. It’s incredible to watch indie creators push the boundaries of comics and see indie publishers support that. I will give a shout-out to IDW’s Locke & Key by Joe Hill. A masterpiece of comic storytelling.
NG: I’d have to say, just my love for all things X-Men as a child. I’d have to give a huge shout out to Saga‘s creators, Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples for really reigniting my creative fire.
JC: There are quite a few different factions in this comic leading to a wide range of outfits and uniforms. Can you discuss the process behind developing these outfits and uniforms? Any nods to uniforms from stories you love?
DB: I’ll let Nathan field this one. Like page layouts, I left most of the character design in his capable hands. Seeing the amazing results, I’m glad I did!
NG: Oh, I could go on for days about the design of these characters but I will try and focus in on the most important among them, Quarantine. I wanted this to feel like an oppressive version of Apple’s marketing. Very recognizable logo that will be spread across the globe by force. The uniforms themselves, I wanted a modern Nazi feel. Crisp clean uniforms, where individuality is reserved for those of high rank. The boots and capes for decoration of higher ranking officials. I also had to think of how clothing would change in a world where people could burst themselves into flames or change their body mass in the matter of seconds.
JC: Diversity has been a hot topic in comics lately. Judging by the diverse group of characters featured in Powerless, diversity is important to you all. How did you go about creating a diverse cast of characters and why is diversity in comics important to you?
DB: For me, there was no question but to include a diverse cast. Powerless exists in a world very much like ours, and diversity is part of that. I also wanted to create characters that are relatable for all readers. But it’s not just about diversity for diversity’s sake. If I included characters with all the same background and experiences, they’d just agree on everything. How boring would that be? When characters start from different places, that’s when things get interesting.
NG: Powerless is an exploration into civil rights. It’s only natural to try and see it from as many sides as possible. Visually, I wanted every reader to have the chance to see themselves in at least one of the main characters. Diversity has always played a critical role in my life. I’m biracial, and often wondered as a child, why the heroes or characters didn’t look like me. Sure, there were blonde hair and blue eyed characters that look like my mother’s side of the family. Darker skinned characters that resembled that of my father’s side, but where was the character that looked like me?
Sorry for rambling, but diversity was important to me when doing all of the designs for the world.

JC: It’s fine, I don’t mind rambling! It was great hearing what you both have to say about diversity. Before we wrap this up, could you tell us where people can get a copy of Powerless #1 and when Powerless #2 will be available?
DB: Issue #1 is on shelves now at comic shops. Issue #2 will be on shelves tomorrow!
NG: Issue #1 is available everywhere Diamond distributes, just ask your local comic shop. Issue #2 is out Wednesday April 26th. Also, A huge shout out to Oliver Ridge and Blood Moon, who helped make this all possible.

JC: Thank you both so much for taking the time to chat with me, and for everyone reading this interview, go check out Powerless from these guys and letterer Deron Bennett as well as the rest of Vault Comics’ line-up!

REVIEW: Mars

When some of the smartest people alive today insist we need to begin colonizing other worlds, you tend to believe them. When science fiction fans hear those words, we begin to salivate at the possibilities.

National Geographic cannily appeals to both audiences with their hybrid miniseries Mars, which mixes today’s science with tomorrow’s fiction by positing what the actual colonization of the planet, a mere 140 million miles away, might look like. Yeah, we got a glimpse of that in the adaptation of Andrew Weir’s The Martian, but this goes further and shows more of the risks involved.

The miniseries, out now from 20th Century Home Entertainment, is a captivating piece of work if unevenly assembled. You get all the usual suspects weighing in why and how we might get there including Space X guru Elon Musk and the ubiquitous Neil deGrasse Tyson. Accompanied by a Greek chorus of NASA scientists and engineers, we get a frim grounding on where we are today and what it will take (including how much and how long) to reach Mars and stay there.

With the firm guiding hand of Brian Grazer and Ron Howard – who took us to the edge of space with the gripping Apollo 13 – the fictional sections are visually interesting and feel like they could possibly happen over the next hundred years. The most fictional part of the story may be the notion that countries around the world can put aside their partisan issues in order to partner for such a project. Given the expertise and money required, it’s unlikely any one country can mount such a mission. Of course, it’s equally unlikely we can all come together fast enough to actually do it on the timetable envision by the likes of Stephen Hawking. That this story takes place in 2033 may be the most fantastic concept of all.

With a nice nod to Greek myth, the Daedalus is sent to Mars and we follow the crew, led by Ben Sawyer (Ben Cotton). The crew and their personal issues are far less interesting than the real science employed to get them there, which is a shame. After all, one reason America was captivated by the Mercury program was the canny PR done to turn the Mercury Seven into instant heroes, their every move followed by an eager public.

Obviously this was intended to be a utopian or dystopic view of life on other worlds, but the hazards and problems encountered are therefore representative, but also almost predictable, spoiling some of the dramatic satisfaction the fictional sections intended.

The sets and tech look fabulous as one would expect from the channel and production team. Watched as an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1, it looks great on the home screen accompanied by a serviceable DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix.

The miniseries does boast a rather impressive physical (and/or CGI) production, with decently realistic sequences set on board the Daedalus and, later, on Mars itself. The fictional element’s “look” has obviously been highly influenced by The Martian (as can clearly be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review), with some individual shots looking like they in fact could have been lifted directly from the film. But again and again it’s the current day scientists and explorers who provide the most riveting information. As odd as it might sound, this is one miniseries that might have benefitted from a kind of “reverse seamless branching”, where viewers could choose to skip the fictional parts and stick to the facts and only to the facts.

The three-disc Blu-ray set comes with a handful of extras, starting with Making Mars (47:17) which does a fine job recounting how the mockumentary was made. There’s Before Mars – A Prequel (33:00) which offers up some welcome backstory for the dramatic portion. There’s the brief Before Mars Behind the Scenes (2:28); Getting to Mars (13:51); Living on Mars (10:26); More Mars (10:29); Behind the Scenes (14:38); and, Cast and Crew Interviews (25:06). Taken as a whole, the extras greatly expands our understanding of the nearby world, the difficulties in getting there, and how we might extend our stay. Additionally, the behind-the-scenes interviews with the production crew shows the meticulous detail that one expects from National Geographic.

Mindy Newell: Summertime Movietime — Already?

This week’s Entertainment Weekly (a “double issue” dated April 29/May 5, 2017) is its big “Summer Movie Preview” release, one that I usually really look forward to reading over my breakfast tea. But after doing that this very morning – which was yesterday by now – I realized that, in all honesty, there’s very little coming out on the big screen that warrants my plunking down my hard-earned dollars.

There’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, in theaters in just 12 days from now as I write this. (Btw, isn’t May 5th a little early to be calling it a “summer movie?”) Maybe I’m not taking much of a leap here when I say it will be the big blockbuster hit of the season. It’s classic “superhero space fantasy” and, of course, there’s Rocky. Not to mention Baby Groot. Then again, im-not-so-ho, there’s not much competition.

Though there is Wonder Woman, premiering June 2. This is the one I’m really rooting for, which should be understandable to anyone who knows my history with the character. Though… I’m baffled as to why the film is set during World War I; a strange choice. I’m a history buff, and I understand the significance of that war and how it birthed the geopolitical landscape in which we live today, but as a backdrop to the Amazonian’s first cinematic venture? I dunno. I just don’t know if it will sell. Though – and I admit this is incredibly sexist of me – Gal Gadot in an armored swimsuit will undoubtedly bring in lots of those coveted male teenage and young adult dollars. But, although Ms. Gadot has legs that don’t stop, will Wonder Woman have legs past the opening weekend? We’ll see.

Let’s see, what else? Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? It’s been 14 years since last we saw Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, so the hunger just might be there. It could give Guardians a run for its money. It could also tank, big time. Either way, I’ll pass. If I feel like a pirate movie, it’s Errol Flynn in Captain Blood.

Aliens: Covenant? Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Prometheus (which I never saw), takes place a decade after the later, and 20 years before Alien. To be fair, I will have to stream Prometheus before I decide on whether or not I want to go to the movie theater. But I have a feeling – unless word of mouth and critics lure me in – that this one is going to be either a cable watch or a streamer, too.

Baywatch? Never saw the television show, ain’t gonna watch this one. Not even on cable or streaming.

Then there’s Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 7). I really, really, really liked Tom Holland’s Peter Parker/Spidey in Captain America: Civil War – he almost makes me forget Tobey Maguire –and the trailer for Homecoming is incredibly fun and enticing. Plus, my not-so-secret crush, Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man.  But I still like Singer’s take on the webslinger’s ability to, uh, sling that web. Sure, it’s not canon, but it always made more sense to me that it was part and parcel of that radioactive spider’s bite’s effect on Peter.

And since I’m a sucker for World War II movies – which may be part of the antipathy I feel towards a Wonder Woman movie set in 1918 – I am looking forward to Dunkirk, out on July 21. The evacuation of the Allied forces – more than 300,000 soldiers – over eight days (May 26 to June 4) in 1940 from the beaches at Dunkirk, France is an event that could have had a very, very different outcome.

All in all, EW covers 110 movies that will premiere over the summer. Quite possibly at least one of them could turn out to be a sleeper hit. But right now the summer entertainment I’m most looking forward to is the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, starting April 26 on Hulu – okay, it’s not technically a movie – and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – okay it’s not technically a movie, either – on Starz as of April 30.

In other news, daughter Alixandra has started watching Doctor Who, beginning with Christopher Eccleston.

 

Ed Catto: The Cutie & the Indefatigable Entrepreneur

I’ve listened to many podcasts during the long upstate winter and one of my favorites has been Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This. It’s billed as a storytelling podcast exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. I enjoy it because Longworth spins great yarns, with vivid insights, about Hollywood stars and their careers.

But I think there’s more to why it’s popular and why I enjoy it so much. I’m starting to realize that the inevitable ups and downs of yesteryear’s Hollywood Stars are analogous to the rollercoaster rides that categorize so many of today’s careers.

It’s astounding to hear about how a legendary star’s career might have floundered at one point, only to do a complete 360 as he or she gets cast in a successful blockbuster movie. Thundering successes and crushing failures become the tales told time and time again on You Must Remember This.

I believe that it’s optimism and hope that fuels our passions for Hollywood heroes and that keep us believing in ourselves too.

Longworth told the tragic tale of Carole Landis in one particularly memorable episode. I wasn’t familiar with Landis. In fact, the thing that drew me to that episode is the fact that Landis strongly resembled a friend of mine, Rosie McCooe, who’s also an actress.

The tale of Carole Landis is especially heartbreaking, and when you’re in the right frame of mind, I’d encourage you to listen to the episode here.

As I listened to the podcast, I was fascinated with Carole’s volunteer efforts during World War II. In fact, she played herself in a Four Jills in a Jeep, a movie that detailed her wartime experience.

Having learned about Carole Landis’ USO efforts, I was especially intrigued when my friend, Sean Dulaney, reached out to tell me about this latest project, Miss Vicky and Her Commando Cuties. In some alternate universe, Carole Landis would play the lead in the cinematic version of this upcoming graphic novel.

Sean’s an indefatigable, creative entrepreneur who’s always got something going on. I’m at the point now, and maybe you are too, where I admire the guys who have the internal motivation to keep getting up to bat and to take a swing as much as I admire the guys who hit the homers.

So, as you can see from the text below, I was eager to learn about this new project.

Ed Catto: Miss Vicky and Her Cutie Commandos looks like so much fun. What’s it all about?

Sean Dulaney: It’s the adventures of an all-female commando unit in World War II who operate using the cover of being USO-style entertainers to get them close to the front lines. They’ve been operating for a while when the story opens and we meet Lt. Thomas Hardy, our P.O.V. character. He’s a young guy who got a battlefield promotion, but what got the attention of higher-ups with the OSS is he grew up with four older sisters. His job is to serve as the girls’ liaison with Military Intelligence, his cover being that of their manager. He gets the orders from the higher ups, but Vicky is the one in charge. I’ve used the elevator pitch “Sgt. Fury in a skirt,” and that’s a good way to describe her and the series. Stan Lee’s old tagline of a “war comic for people who hate war comics.” Six women of different backgrounds, different talents, brought together to try and make the world safe for democracy.

EC: Is this something that just came up or have you been working on it a while?

SD: Miss Vicky and Her Cutie Commandos has been gestating for a while now. I think the initial pitch with Stephen Molnar (Danger Girl and Star Trek for IDW) on art was put together in 2006/2007. We had some nibbles and a tentative agreement in place with Praxis Comics at the New York Comic-Con in 2008, but I don’t think they were around too long after that. A few other Indies expressed interest, but the deals offered just didn’t feel right to us at the time. Shortly after that, Stephen got snapped up for some Marvel assignments and then IDW grabbed him and kept him busy. After letting it sit for a while, Tony Lee helped me find Ron Joseph and I shopped his version of the pitch a bit. Again, interest but not any great offers. When I decided to go ahead and just bite the bullet and self-publish, IDW was keeping Ron busy so I recruited Eliseu who I had been wanting to work with since the Digital Webbing days.

EC: Are the main characters based on real women?

SD: Yes and no. One of the lines I had written down was “Pin Up Commandos” and some of the initial character design directions I gave the artists for inspiration were 40s pin-ups and actresses. Vicky, the leader, I saw as a mix of Betty Grable and Bette Midler in “For The Boys.” June’s backstory was she was supposed to be the next Josephine Baker before the Nazis invaded Paris. Loraine has the smoky blonde Veronica Lake/Lisbeth Scott vibe mixed with the Varga Girls. Annie Sue is a cross between a teenaged Shirley Temple and the Gil Elvgren models. Betsy, the British member, has a touch of Caniff’s “Miss Lace” character he did for military papers and Roz… She may be the most modern influenced of the six. A mix of Lanie Kazan and Stockard Channing.

Since I’m shopped the pitch around, I’ve had people mention the story of Carole Landis and I can see some similarities with her group of entertainers.

EC: The art looks strong and engaging. But I’m not familiar with your artist.

SD: Yeah, Eliseu Gouveia is the artist for the project. I’ve known him from the Digital Webbing message boards going back to 2001 – 2002. In fact, the first “Dreah, Queen of Thieves” story from Digital Webbing Presents #12 was written for Eliseu, so we’ve been trying to work together for a while. I’ve amazed, and rather fortunate, that he hasn’t been snapped up by a major publisher here in the states. He’s done some stuff here and there like Genie for FC9 and Palmiotti and Gray’s Cloudburst for Image (I think Arcana has released the trade on that one), but being in Portugal I think he’s been off the radar of a lot of people but I can see that changing soon. He recently released his own Jungle Queen Sheva via ComiXology.

I also want to mention Jasen Smith who’ll be doing the colors on the book. He’s doing great work.

EC: As a big Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos fan, I can see some similarities. Did that series, often marketed as “The war comic for people how hate war comics” influence you?

SD: I think Kirby and Lee’s Sgt. Fury (and the later Gary Friedrich/John Severin run) ranks with a lot of other media as part of the prototype the book was built on. The Sgt. Fury book, The Dirty Dozen, Hogan’s Heroes… even Simon and Kirby’s Boy Commandos I think can be found in this book’s DNA. Even more obscure stuff like the 70s TV show The Goodtime Girls, Tales of the Gold Monkey from the 80s and the BBC’s ‘Allo ‘Allo are in there. Honestly, I came in late to Sgt. Fury, as I was more of a DC kid growing up and the War titles I would pick up were Our Fighting Forces with the Losers and Unknown Soldier.

Sgt. Fury and Hogan’s Heroes did something back in the 60s that now would be seen as trying to be politically correct in having members of different races and nationalities as part of the unit. Those books and shows are so ingrained in the 50+ years since they debuted; it’s hard to imagine them without Percy and Gabe or Newkirk and Kinchloe. In our case, we have Betsy and June, who each have great backstories that I hope we get to explore.

EC: More recently, I really enjoyed Jonathan Case’s The New Deal. Did that graphic novel influence you? And what other recent GN’s have influenced your efforts.

SD: Actually, I haven’t gotten to check it out. To be honest, my current reading list isn’t always that “current.” I try to keep up with books my friends are working on, but I don’t get out to the comic shops as regularly as I’d like, so I wind up playing a lot of catch up.

EC: The Kickstarter looks pretty cool too. How did you make the decision to launch it via Kickstarter and how is this one structured?

SD: As Kickstarter became more viable, it was always an option. The problem was trying to figure out the rewards. With Eliseu in Portugal, original art and rewards like that would have some serious shipping expense. We’ve not ruled out maybe some sketch cover commissions once we get into stretch goals, but they weren’t a default reward option like they’ve been on some campaigns. I looked into having some artist friends doing sketch covers, but schedules were a bear to coordinate.

In the end, we’re keeping it pretty straightforward. We have the first issue, physical and/or digital. We have a short story with guest artists doing pin-ups and the pin-ups are also collected as a portfolio option. I love the pin-up art painted on the nose of bombers, so we designed stickers of the girls in that style. We’ve got four variant cover options, Stephen and Ron signed off on the covers they did for their versions of the pitch to be variants and another Digital Webbing alum, Chad Hardin (DC’s Harley Quinn) will be doing a cover for the “Director’s Cut” edition.

We’ve also set up a special “Retailer Tier” for shop owners who might want to take a chance on putting Miss Vicky on their wall where they’ll get standard and sketch blank copies along with a retailer incentive cover edition. The stretch goal rewards…well, let’s hit the original goal first.

EC: This graphic novel looks like it might reach out to and appeal to classic Pin-Up fans. Is that your intent?

SD: Oh, definitely. I think Dave Stevens opened the door for that cross-pollination of comics and pin-up cultures and it’s only been in the last couple of years that the major publishers really embraced that market with things like DC’s Bombshells. I hope pin-up fans will take a chance on the title, enjoy what we’re doing and want us to do more.

EC: I’ve been fascinated with your work on the Dell superhero monsters. Can you tell me a little about those efforts?

SD: The initial response to the Miss Vicky campaign pretty much guarantees that my next Kickstarter will be Section: M.

The readers are going, “What the hell is Section: M?” It’s a super hero team book featuring the 1966 monster heroes published by Dell Comics during the post-Batman ‘66 super hero craze. Ron Joseph is the penciller on the book and the premise is the heroes went on a mission around 1968/1969 and wound up in suspended animation, only to wake up in the 21st Century. Because they’ve all been lost in time, they are kind of stuck together as they fight crime and try to adjust to the modern world.

EC: What else should I know about Miss Vicky and her Cutie Commandos?

SD: The campaign runs through May 30th, the day after Memorial Day, and folks can check it out here.

EC: Thanks for your time and good luck, Sean!

John Ostrander: Wait. What Was I Thinking?

On May 23, DC will release the sixth volume in their TPB reprint series of my Suicide Squad work. It’s sub-titled “The Phoenix Gambit” and, as is my wont, I’m going to share some thoughts about the stories therein. This might actually take a few weeks.

The volume covers issues 41 through 49 and, with one exception, was co-written with my late wife, Kim Yale. It was at this point that we shook up the Squad (and the book) to a large degree. When we last left the Squad in issue 40 (and the end of the previous TPB), the Squad had disbanded or dispersed. Amanda Waller was in jail as a result of her hand in executing the criminal gang calling itself the Loa; she just surrendered and, at the time, many people both within the book and without wondered why. Why didn’t she fight it? Why didn’t she scheme to get out of it?

In one of the stories in this issue, Amanda explains why to a friend – she felt she deserved to go to jail, that she had stepped over the line. This re-enforced the fact that, so far as I was concerned, Waller has always had a conscience of some kind, even when she crossed it. I think that’s the main difference between my Amanda and the film’s Amanda – mine is not a sociopath. Please note: this is not a criticism of the film; they wrote the character as they saw her, as they needed for their story. Mine is just a bit different. The first story starts with Waller in a prison cell in Belle Reve and the caption “One year later.”

This was slightly controversial at the time. There were fans who felt this now put the Squad out of sync with the rest of the DCU. Kim and I weren’t overly concerned about that; we figured over the run of the stories, they’d even up. It was important to Kim and I that the time elapse between the end of the last story and the start of this one. Not only did Waller need time out, some of the other characters need time to elapse as well.

Sarge Steel approaches Amanda in her cell. (Steel also works in the Intelligence biz and he and Waller have been at loggerheads since the Squad began.) He could use her help and advice with a problem and makes her the same deal she made others – do the job, succeed, survive, and get time off your sentence.

Amanda smiles at him; she’s been waiting for this or something like it. She has a counter-offer. She gets a presidential pardon; she gets to put a Squad together like before, they work without governmental ties or oversight, and they get a million dollars. Oh, and Batman has to help with the first mission.

This would be one of the big changes in the book; no more Belle Reve, no more supporting cast. Smaller Squad and, for the most part, no costumes. Every day clothes. They were free agents. More expendable than ever and the U.S. Government had less (or no) control over them (and especially Amanda).

These were significant changes. The book was over three years old and time, Kim and I thought, for a shake-up. While the new direction seemed to me at the time to be a good idea, in retrospect I’m not so sure. Fans can be a conservative bunch; they tend to want the same thing each time but different. That’s a hard trick to pull off. Don’t you need the characters in costume to really know who they are? It could be argued that Deadshot’s costume WAS the character. In losing the Belle Reve, we lost not only the Squad’s HQ but a genuine character in the series.

It could also be argued that having the characters running around in costume negated their being a covert action bunch. This seemed more “realistic” although realistic in this context is somewhat malleable. It also got Waller more out into the field as part of the operation rather than waiting at HQ and that seemed to me to be a better idea.

The Squad itself was a somewhat different group. Deadshot and Captain Boomerang were givens and Vixen and Bronze Tiger were regulars although we had messed with Tiger a bit, scuffed up his “good guy” image. They were joined by Count Vertigo and now Poison Ivy and the modern Thugee, Revan, who previously had been a Squad opponent, working with the terrorist group, the Jihad.

They were also joined by the Atom or, shall I say, an Atom. It appeared that Ray Palmer was killed in an explosion and a new Atom, named Adam Cray, had taken his place. Most the of the Squad members (and many readers) believed that Cray was actually Ray Palmer; they thought Palmer had, for some reason, faked his own death and was now assuming a disguise.

I always felt that the Atom would be an ideal member of an espionage team, especially the Squad. His ability to shrink could make him an ideal spy and so, when he became available to us, Kim and I jumped at the chance – albeit with our usual touch of twistiness.

The Phoenix Gambit also included the Russian equivalent to very early Superman crossed with Captain America, Stanoivolk (“Steel Wolf”). And Batman. Lots of Batman. In fact, the first chapter of The Phoenix Gambit could almost be thought of as a Batman story. He’d stick around for the other three issues as well. No great mystery there – Batman already had a history with the Squad and doing something of a crossover could be a nice way to boost sales, Especially at this stage of the Squad’s history.

Getting ready to write this column (and the next few) gave me a chance to go over the volume myself; I hadn’t read most of these in more than a decade. I think, as a whole, they’re among the strongest in the series. Kim and I were really hitting our stride and there are places where I can clearly see her hand and hear her voice. There’s a place where a drugged and deranged Count Vertigo gets all biblical while in battle. That was almost certainly scripted by Kim; her father was an Episcopal minister and she knew the well from which she drew.

The main artist at this point was Geoff Isherwood who had been one of our inkers for a long time. He gave the art a nice illustrative feel while, at the same time, keeping the down and dirty realism the book required. Luke McDonnell, our original artist, would return here and there but the bulk of the work is Geoff’s and he does a fine job.

Well, that does it for this week, my li’l Squadders. Join us next time when, among other things, we’ll talk about our Secret Origin of Captain Boomerang and how that came about. That’s next week – same Squad time, same Squad channel.

Or something.

 

Marc Alan Fishman: Epic Barriers to Entry

That thought of a 9-year old girl being intimidated by her local comic shop has not left my mind, kiddos.

I said what I could on the subject just a few weeks ago. Beyond the local comic shop being the culprit for the stagnation we as fans feel for the specific love of the pulp and paper side of comic bookery, there’s a plethora of other barriers to entry. Little mountains that stand in the way for people of all ages, shapes, sizes, and level of declared geekery that make the journey to our shores feel not unlike the one those halflings took from their little town, to that live volcano. And much like that epic, the damned eagles were there all along if anyone would have thought to ask for a quicker trip.

Epic Back Catalogs    

“I like Captain America!” the little tyke exclaims. He’s taken to his local comic shop, allowance in tow. Where, oh where does he begin? If he gets the current issue, he might be wondering why Steve Rogers is an agent of Hydra. Or why Sam Wilson isn’t Falcon. And just how many issues does he need to go back and buy to catch up? Of which volume? And what about trades vs. floppies? Or what if, by chance, the book falls in the middle of an epic crossover?

Touched on lightly in my aforementioned article, the advent of the epic crossover has been a thoroughly exhausting trend weaved into the modern comic book production schedule. It seems once to twice a year now, the big boys of comics (who are the specific targets I’m aiming at here) are hellbent to change the status quo. Grand schemes crawl and sprawl across special mini-series, and dump into the pages of dozens of titles – all in the effort to tell a larger story.

When it was done with years in-between, it was great! Crisis on Infinite Earths, Civil War, or The Infinity Gauntlet each stood as massive touchstones for years to come. Their larger-than-normal villains had massive plans, which required the multi-tentacled reach of an editorial Cthulu in order to come to the final catharsis. And in their wakes? New rules, new books, and time to let what transpired breathe.

Now?  Not so much. Every book becomes mandatory reading, and before you blink, new series are given birth, fail to catch on, and are chucked into the ethereal pit from whence they came. How could a muggle traipse into their local comic shop, cash and enthusiasm in hand, be told in order to jump on board they’ll need to drop serious coin, and spend the remainder of their afternoon reading Wikipedia to make sense of it all? This, of course, leads me to…

Epic Pricing

A standard comic, all-in-all, isn’t that expensive… until you compare it to similar media. A weeks’ worth of books for me (back when I bought books weekly) ran me $15-20 for a small haul. Left on the back of my toilet for easy-reading and metering out, I was done just in time for a whole new set the following week. For roughly the same amount of money I can have both the WWE Network and Netflix… which combined provide me thousands of hours of entertainment I don’t even need to read to enjoy. Apples to oranges you say? Correct, padawan. But tell that to an 8-year old.

Make no bones about it: kids do love comics. The static art being produced in any number of styles, slaved over by teams of passionate creators should be beloved, cherished, and sought after. For Rao’s sake, that is why I toil nightly to produce my own books! But I’d be lying if I didn’t feel like it can be a bit of a hard sell when the average comic can be absorbed in 15 minutes. The economics of it are depressing.

And, to my knowledge, publishers-at-large haven’t exactly solved how to compete. While Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, and their next-of-kin pony up money for solid, respectable original content in addition to their bread-and-butter second-hand material… they have all found the panacea to their pricier counterpoints (cable TV, and the movie theater). Simply put, they found a price so low that people can barely argue about their subscription. For roughly ten bucks a month, their consumers have more content available then they can consume.

So, why haven’t the publishers figured this out?

Epic Conclusions on Infinite Earths

As it stands, there are no easy answers. Netflix and the like all started in different places – Netflix as a mail-order rent-a-DVD catalog, Hulu as pricey YouTube – but would up in the same business. DC, Marvel, and the other major publishers each offer a maddening number of ways to consume their comic content. Floppies or trades? Printed or Digital? Direct market, subscriptions, ComiXology, Comix Blitz, or any other number of other ways I don’t know? Because the original content is printed (but doesn’t necessarily need to be), it simply stands to ask the biggest question of all:

In the land of plenty, is the niche market of comic books too splintered to be as profitable as it needs to be… to sustain real growth? Are there simply too many choices out there for a truly casual fan to make a choice they can feel confident in, when it comes to their consumption? And is the looming specter of a digital device being so ubiquitous, how far off are we truly to even needing paper books? It’s why vinyl records made a comeback, and CDs are nearly non-existent. It’s why DVDs and Blu-Rays are slowly being discount-binned into-oblivion. And why we all have at very least… free Spotify or something similar on our smartphones.

In my estimation, the only way comics can truly save the day, is to match what their brethren in other industries have done. There needs to be a singular wave of content accessible, available, and bingeable… offered at a price so low it can’t be argued with. Weekly comics need to still create an eco-system in the direct market… but come packaged in such a way that it allows new readers to have their cake and eat it too. The ocean of content that exists in long boxes needs to be set free, where all publishers can coexist. The eagles are soaring over our heads. We need only ask for a ride into the mouth of the volcano.

REVIEW: How to Make Awesome Comics

How to Make Awesome Comics
By Neill Cameron
David Fickling Books/Scholastic, 64 pages, $8.99

Aimed at 7-10 year olds, this book attempts to explain how to create comics when it merely scratches the surface and suggests mash-ups are the only way to design characters. Neill Cameron should know better considering his background with YA graphic novels and his role as artist in residence at Oxford’s The Story Museum. This collection is culled from weekly installments that first saw print in England’s The Phoenix.

Narrated by Professor Panels and Art Monkey, they breezily and cheekily tour the most basic aspects of telling a story, creating heroes and villains, and putting them all together to form a visual narrative. Every chapter tells you how to do something awesomely but it’s too much in too few pages.

There are some basics early on that are age appropriate for the readers but once he tells you awesome ideas are to take one from column A and one from column B and your done does the budding comics creator a major disservice. This mix and match approach is carried on throughout the book which suggests to readers there is just this one way to tell a story or creator interesting characters.

Cameron should have dropped some of the silliness in favor of elements like making sure each panel leads the reader’s eye in the proper direction. How to place balloons, captions, and sound effects to aid in the reading.  There’s nothing on anatomy, perspective, or page design which might seem too sophisticated for the age range, but these are essentials for good comics literacy.

I would warn well-meaning parents away from giving this to their budding talents and instead find other sources (or courses) that would do a better job training them.

Martha Thomases: Naked Dessert

My jealousy nearly deprived me of Girls.

You see, Lena Dunham went to the same college I did, albeit several decades later. And here she was, a successful filmmaker with a series on HBO. That should have been me! She was being hailed as a feminist hero. I should have been the feminist hero. How dare she take successes that should have been mine, just because she actually did the work and put it out there!

Lucky for me, the backlash against her started almost immediately. She didn’t deserve her success, said critics, because her parents were famous and that gave her an unfair advantage. I felt quite comfortable ignoring the show. In fact, I felt cool, because only lame people follow crowds.

Real mature on my part.

My moment of truth came during the opening number of the 2012 Emmy Awards, which featured a peek into the ladies’ room. In a shot that is almost a throwaway, someone opens a stall and there, naked, sits Lena Dunham. Eating an entire cake. With her hands.

It was every nightmare I have ever had.

I admired her willingness to go there, to stand (well, sit) naked on national broadcast television. Like me, Dunham’s body is short, squat and generously padded. Unlike me, she didn’t seem to care.

If this were all there was to this story, there wouldn’t even be a story. I started to watch the series, and, at first, I didn’t understand why there was such a fuss. A series about four hipster twenty-something gifs in Brooklyn on a pay cable network that had just finished Sex and the City (about four stylish thirty-somethings in Manhattan) didn’t seem that daring to me. They were white and educated and had parents who were all capable of bailing them out of any problems they might have. They were pretty much the epitome of white privilege, and they seemed oblivious to it.

This turned out to be a feature, not a bug. A lot of the humor came from the obliviousness of the four main characters.

A lot of Very Serious People have written a lot of Very Serious Commentary about the generation dubbed Millennials. These kids want everything handed to them on a silver platter. They care more about their Instagram accounts than they do about real people. They don’t understand the meaning of hard work. They expect to be coddled. If you added a few insults about their hairstyles and choice of music, you’d have the exact same complaints that I’ve heard about every new generation for as long as I’ve been alive.

Young adults, just out of school, are assholes. It’s simply a law of nature. I, myself, was so insufferable when I got out of college that I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, remembering the stupid things I said in arguments with other people in public places. And it wasn’t that I was evil or anything. I just had strong opinions, but not enough experience with the world to test my opinions in reality. Learning how my values work in the real world has been one of the most interesting experiments of my adult life, and if I’m lucky, I will have time to do a lot more learning.

The four women who form the core of Girls are figuring out how their very different world views interact with their very different ambitions. There is the earnest Hannah (Dunham), the conventionally beautiful (and rather conventional) Marnie (Allison Williams), the cute but serious Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) and the utterly insufferable Jessa (Jemima Kirke), a character I found so repellent that it took me several years to consider whether I hated the actress or maybe was supposed to be that repulsed.

They have crap jobs with good prospects, boyfriends and one-nighters, failures and successes. They have men who are their friends, and men who are their rivals, but none of them have men who define their lives, either to the audience or themselves.

By the final season, which ended last Sunday night, we had a sense that each character had a life in front of her that would not be perfect, not by a long shot, but that would be much more complex than any happily-ever-after could possibly be.

I expect the same will hold true for Lena Dunham. She didn’t create a “perfect” television show, but she did create one that was interesting. She is not a “perfect” public figure, and she often said some incredibly stupid things. She will probably say more. I did. Unlike me, she’s in a position to use her privilege in a way that makes her mistakes more difficult to make in the future.

I don’t know if there will ever be a Girls reunion, although I would imagine that there are those already lobbying for one. I wouldn’t want to see one for a few decades. It would be fun to see them together, maybe at an independent living facility, catching up with each other’s lives and grandchildren, trading tips about how to best be female at this stage of their lives.

Tweeks April Loot Wear Unboxing

This week we unbox April’s Loot Wear — all 5 subscriptions (For Her, Socks, Wearables & Tees!. The theme was Primal and featured were items from Beauty & The Beast, Wolverine, Godzilla, The Legend of Zelda, Ren & Stimpy & more.

If you want your own Loot Wear – you can get it at lootcrate.com

Dennis O’Neil: Marvel’s Blame Game

The first time you ever ate a Yummy-Lump candy bar – second grade, wasn’t it? – you were sure you’d never tasted anything so good and you couldn’t wait to taste another. You didn’t have to wait long. Your aunt – the one who lived upstairs and always smelled like wet laundry – loved Yummy Lumps and when she learned that you, too, favored that sugary delight she took it upon herself to be certain that you were never without it. Nice aunty!

Day after day, year after year as soon as you passed through the front door your aunt hit you with the candy and, dutifully, you unwrapped and bit and chewed because aunty was nice and besides your mother seemed to be afraid of aunty and told you that you’d best not offend her sister and so you didn’t. The candy made you want to puke, but so what? You ate it and ate it and ate it…

All this has exactly what to do with the nominal subject of these comments, comic books?

A while back, in what has become a reliable supplier of comics news, and I refer to nothing less than the August New York Times, the paper ran a story headlined Don’t Blame These Heroes for Slumping Sales. The adjacent story told the world that, as the headline proclaimed, Marvel Comics was off its game in the money-making department. That’s disconcerting, but far from catastrophic, but the situation got worse when a Marvel executive blamed the faltering sales on the company’s diversity.

Time was, not so long ago, that Marvel’s primary product was superhero stories featuring costumed good-guy vigilantes who went around having double identities and kicking heinous ass. These stalwarts were, with few exceptions, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. (Okay, I’m not sure about the “Protestant” part. Matter of fact, these folk didn’t seem to have religions. Did this disqualify them from seeking elected office?)

Now, though superheroes come in diverse sizes, shapes, genders, ethnicities, orientations. (Of course, you know all this.) The Marvel exec apparently blamed limping sales on the diversity of revamps of familiar characters. The story mentions a female Thor, an Asian Hulk and a black Captain America.

But a respected comic shop owner in San Francisco, Brian Hibbs, disagreed. Mr. Hibbs blames Marvel’s woes on the plethora of series reboots with a Number 1 on the cover. (Number ones can be marketed as collectors’ items and so hobbyists may decide to buy extra copies; the flood of new series (more collectors’ items and the satisfaction of being there from the beginning) andt he promise of significant changes in storylines where, it turns out, there are none.

Questionable marketing tactics, unfulfilled promises and maybe just too much of the same stuff… In olden days these special issues were rare and maybe appeared when someone had a story idea that demanded special handling, and not one that existed just to sweeten profits.

There is, of course, no reason why a comic continuity can’t do both, but maybe it’s not a good idea to do them both every day.

Yummy-Lumps aren’t always yummy.

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