Posts from — July 2008

So, a more intensive Google search informs me that the current Senior VP of Marketing at DC is Steve Rotterdam. As to why Ms. Fierman dominates the Google results for ‘VP Marketing DC Comics’, I’ve got no idea.

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Listening to: Neko Case - Hold On, Hold On

Standing on the shoulders of Axe Gang member Matt Springer here, but something in my Twitter stream really caught my eye a few minutes ago. Agent_M just asked for fan input on official Marvel Facebook apps and directing everyone to the Twitter of Alexa Mendez with their suggestions.

I know that Matt and I both seem to be pinning a lot on Marvel’s expansive use of Twitter, and maybe that’s because we both use it, but my main reason for bringing it up is that it’s an important communication tool as we march toward Web 3.0, Fail Whale or no, and DC’s presence on it is, to my knowledge, nonexistent. Considering that it’s free, that’s sort of embarrassing.

So what is the Distinguished Competition doing? Well, they did partner with MySpace to put previews of books like Countdown online in a place that gets much, much higher readership than either CBR or the ‘Rama do. Speaking of Newsarama, they do get some prime DC love, including lots of promotion for Minx and Paul Levitz does guest blog there from time to time. They also get some great author/artist one-on-ones, which may be a function of some of their staff (like Vaneta Rogers) having a very good relationship with some DC heavy-hitters (much like Steve Ekstrom does with Marvel’s Mike Carey). But beyond having relationships with the go-to news sources and having something resembling an online presence, they fall wildly short of the Marvel Marketing Menace, a fair amount of whose success I’ll go ahead and blame on Jim “Mad Dog” McCann, who has been unafraid to grow the brand in bold directions (like the Guiding Light crossover. Questionable, yes, but definitely bold).

And of course, there’s Marvel_b0y. Regardless of what he/she/it really was, the platform created interest in Secret Invasion in a pretty huge way online. Yes, flogging can be a dangerous game - just ask Sony - but as I’ve said in the past, marvel_b0y was done right.

The thing that mystifies me in all of this is that DC’s Senior VP of Marketing, Stephanie Fierman, is a self-professed social media expert. [NOTE: As seen in the comments section, Stephanie Fierman is no longer employed at DC. Does anybody know who is?]

Are DC’s wings being clipped by Warner Bros.? I doubt it. That story falls apart when you look at how The Dark Knight’s Web and viral campaigns worked like gangbusters.

So the question can really be framed as ‘why aren’t they doing anything?’ Why has DC not, for example, capitalized on the appealing but inaccessible-without-research plot of Final Crisis with an ARG leading up to the climax of issue #3? I mean, the ARG crowd tried to find lonelygirl15’s house by using Google Maps and context clues from her videos. That’s dedication you want from a fanbase.

Or is DC too scared of fan backlash? Are they so afraid of the social Web that they’d rather not participate than participate badly? Is this why they’re so mum about their strategy for online content - because they don’t have one? These are the questions we need to be asking. And ideally not just ourselves.

Driving home from work, I saw the sweet old lady who lives three doors down walking Einstein, her shaggy black dog, and not incidentally an animal about as big as its owner. And it struck me that, while I know the dog’s name, I’ve been living in this neighborhood for three years, have had several friendly conversations with this woman, and I don’t know her name. In fact, the only people who live on my quiet little street that I actually know are Curtis and Theresa, the grandparents who live next door.

It’s not a fact I paid attention to until this evening, but I think it bothers me.

Part of the problem is that, when we moved in, we tried exceptionally hard to not interact with our neighbors. The house across the street was empty, the house to our right was empty, and the house behind ours was full of ill-behaved children who used our yard as both a thruway and as a depository for their toys, trash and other leavings. During one of my abortive attempts to learn to play the guitar ‘for real’, I wrote a very rudimentary song entitled “Stay the Fuck Off Of My Lawn.” It was a song about and to these children. I hope beyond hope that wherever they’ve moved to, they’re in juvenile hall.

The problem came to a head when I chased one of the little brats off of my property for trying to beat a stray cat with a stick. I was angry at these devil children, I felt old for being the kind of guy who chases kids off his property, and I felt genuinely bad for the poor cat, whom my wife would not let me keep.

Something had to be done. So I hatched a plan.

To prize passage from their yard to ours, the children had to cross a hedge between our properties. As an outward sign of my negativity, I stopped trimming the hedge. I called it The Hostility Shrub, and after two years, it really began to look the it, a gnarled and wild verdant thing clawing up toward the sky. With time the Shrub scared even me; the last time that I mowed the lawn, I was afraid to get too close to it for fear of some kind of creature leaping out of it at me.

My wife believes that the Hostility Shrub is a handsome excuse crafted to explain away my hatred of lawn work. I point out that it worked; the old neighbors moved away earlier this year. I was ready to cut the hedge down to a reasonable size when, after asking to borrow my lawnmower, the new neighbor proceeded to rummage through my garage without taking anything and just generally be creepy. He doesn’t mow his lawn, which may be his own version of The Hostility Shrub aimed at me. Which I very clearly don’t deserve.

Or maybe I do. Hell, I’m the 29 year old curmudgeon in this story, so why not?

I think tomorrow, I may cut the Hostility Shrub down and try to be a more cordial neighbor. Maybe I’ll make scones for the family across the street - it might be weird because they’ve been moved in for two months, so we’ll see.

After reading through the Comic Con coverage, there’s one glaring omission that DC hasn’t addressed and nobody has even asked about:

Kapow! Zowie! Last weekend, nerds and geeks from all over the world lined up for Comic Con International. And the comics aren’t just for kids anymore.

For instance, Watchmen, a comic book adaptation of next Spring’s original superhero film, was reportedly sold out on the convention floor as fans turning away from old characters like Blue Beetle or the Question find more relevant voices in the form of dynamic new characters like the enigmatic Rorschach or the everyman Nite Owl.

More startling news - girls just don’t appear in comics, they also write and draw them. Some girls even read them.

Some highlights of the show include:

• Furries - I don’t trust them for a second. They’re up to something under those suits, dammit.
• Duros cosplay - none that I’ve seen. For shame, people.
• Is Grant Morrison seriously going to replace Batman? I’m afraid to reprint my answer from Twitter, so go find it there.
• The tens of thousands of con-goers waiting overnight outside the Heroes panel overwhelmingly believe that “Who shot Nathan Petrelli?” is a more important question than “Will I ever find love?” (the answer is probably no)
• Blackberry + glass of beer = Fail. This is why comics bloggers can’t have nice things.
• Wow, the Eisners were a bit crazy this year, no?
• Chuck Dixon still not rehired by DC; twelve Spoiler fans stage unnoticed protest at DC booth.
• BOOM! to publish Muppets, Pixar comics. Muppets/Warhammer 40k crossover in the works, revealing Gonzo as “a creature from the depths of the Warp.”
• Joe Quesada spotted paying panel-goers to complain about “One More Day.”

TOMORROW: The post that really breaks the Internet in half. See ya in 24 (hours, natch)!!!

Though the second issue of Grok isn’t out yet, I’ve gone and created a map of “Misspent From The Outset,” an essay about the ’secret origins’ of my geekhood, using Flickr.

Take a look at this experiment in locative journaling. Then maybe revisit all of your old geek haunts and do the same.

For those of you wondering why The Unknown and Comics On The Green didn’t make the list, the short answer is that they’re still in business and that I still shop at both locations, so I can’t very well wax nostalgic for them.

Since I crashed as soon as I came home from the midnight showing of The Dark Knight and went to work and then went out with my coworkers after work and then spent my weekend largely wasting time away from the Internet, accept my apologies for the lack of strict temporal relevance.

The Dark Knight is amazing. Yes, it’s better than Batman Begins. It manages to be a movie firmly rooted in its comic book origins while redefining the characters to ‘work in the real world.’ Normally, this results in a massive misfire, but as we know from the last film, Christopher Nolan can do it better than anybody else tasked with making a realistic superhero film.

Part of Nolan’s success is his willingness to let the characters look like comic book characters. Not strictly the canonical DC versions, mind you, but iconic, larger-than-life villains and heroes. The visual design is aided immensely by Aaron Eckhart and the late Heath Ledger giving definitive performances as Harvey Dent and Joker, the latter of whom manages to be deeply disturbing and highly charismatic at the same time.

The beauty of the Nolan Bat-franchise is that both films are not only above-average superhero movies, but excellent crime movies as well. The plot is taut and organically paced, and there are even a few ‘wow, I didn’t expect that’ moments.

As a theater experience goes, The Dark Knight had the most energy I’ve seen at a movie opening since I saw Independence Day on opening night in high school, back in the days before text messaging. Back in the days when interacting with the movie’s front matter (”Which NBA great stars in the fantasy adventure Kazaam?” “Larry Bird?”) wasn’t totally obsolete and I didn’t go to the movies often enough to have all the answers memorized. An incredibly earnest young man kept trying to get the crowd to do The Wave, an effort which failed time and time again. Others evangelized that the movie was “going to be awesome.” The crowd, many of whom were dressed as Batman, seemed more than willing to accept their message of hope.

If I want to split hairs, I can find things I didn’t like about the film, but the list begins and ends with nobody in the audience dressing like Surf Jams Joker.

In other cosplay news, I’m a bit saddened to report that the guy who came to the Episode I premiere carrying a toy lightsaber and wearing a white t-shirt with “I %#@&ed Amidala” scrawled on the front is NO LONGER the most entertaining cosplayer I’ve seen. Not now that I’ve seen Jack Daniels Batman. Imagine a young version of Springfield’s Comic Book Guy wearing a Jack Daniels t-shirt, jean shorts, and a Batman cowl and cape. I should have taken pictures.

I got to take a look at some of the pencils for issues 2 and 3 of Reign In Hell today and damn, does it look great. For an artist who reputedly quit penciling because of demanding, high panel-count, character-laden pages (and, you know, the infamous Legion poster), Keith Giffen certainly loves the exact same sort of script.

I’m reminded of a comment from friend Cory the other night when I pointed out that a scene he was writing might be difficult to stage. “I’m just the playwright,” he quipped, “I’m not responsible for making it work.”

Anywho, the scope of Reign In Hell and the cast of characters in it really make the mini intriguing. Even better, the same little bird that showed me Tom Derenick’s stunning artwork also may have let slip that one of Giffen’s signature characters is going to be playing an unexpected role in the event. Hint: it’s not Ambush Bug.

If you’ve been following The Chicago Tribune’s ‘Best Superhero Tournament’, you might have noticed a severe disparity in the Sweet Sixteen voting.

That Batman is losing to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Don’t believe me, check it out.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Buffy. Not as much as some people, but a pretty substantial amount.

But this is Batman we’re talking about. The Batman. The Goddamn Batman.

Really, guys. Let’s go fix this inequity.

Confession time: I’d never really read Hellboy prior to the first movie’s release. The comics-buying experience of my youth was so heavily skewed toward DC and Marvel that, as a child, I thought that anything not being published by the Big Two represented a lower quality product. I had my thinking backwards, but let’s not get into that here. And it should also be noted that when Hellboy debuted in 1993, I was still kind of out of the comics loop. And, well, my proclivities at that time lay elsewhere (as demonstrated by my unending love for Cable #1).

The first movie, though, made me fall in love with the franchise. The sequel, The Golden Army, is a big, fun popcorn flick - which is to be applauded - but it feels slight in comparison to the previous film.

The increase in humor and the accompanying decrease in plot makes me think that Hellboy II needs to be liked by everyone just as much as its title character does. That aside, the characterization of the main players is as good as last time; Ron Perlman still is Hellboy, Selma Blair brings more depth to Liz than she did in the first film, and Doug Jones turns in a good enough vocal performance as Abe that you may be all “David Hyde Wha-?” But Seth MacFarlane’s Johann was probably the surprise of the film for me, managing to be over-the-top silly in his articulation (”focused,” for instance) without making his character silly or ruining my immersion in the film.

Basically, everything about Hellboy II was good - the fight choreography, the visual effects, you name it - and I’d even go very good. But then the forest elemental scene was straight-up great, and it’s the only part of the movie that is truly great. It’s beautiful, poignant and haunting, and two hours of that sort of storytelling would have blown me away.

To sum up: See it. A bit watered down from the first film, but still a strong comic book movie.