Category — Comics

There’s a flashback in NextWave to a moment where Captain America literally orders Monica Rambeau to cook him dinner.  It’s a goofy, irreverent tweak at the way that Marvel’s female characters were portrayed in the Silver and Bronze ages, where they were almost always played as The Girl, involved in a romance with a teammate (or a triangle between several teammates) and the voice of domesticity on their teams.

You’d think it would be a step forward for the women of the Marvel U to have their own all-girl team book.  In fact, looking strictly at the surface, that’s a little empowering, yeah?  But wait, this is the same publisher that did this, so let’s not be too hasty.  Marvel Divas is a book about four superheroines who are apparently boy-crazy and love shoes.  And it’s both written and drawn by men.  Which doesn’t bother me.  What does bother me is that the author, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (best known for his broody, supernatural swashbuckling over in the short-lived Nightcrawler series from a few years back), pitched the book to Marvel as “a lot of hot fun,”  and apparently Marvel was all, “hot fun sounds great!”  What about some hot character development and less of a straight Sex and the City lift?

What?

Listen, I’ll be over here re-reading Ultra.

Because when am I ever on time for anything?

Because a bunch of my writerly friends are doing this, I’ll pretend that I’m a writer, too, and share some scripty bits from the comic book that I’m working on with Matt Springer.  It’s still needs some reviseration, but I like this beat.

Panel 1: The Lab. Large, half-page panel. View from above, the Angerfish armor laid out on a table, looking like an autopsy patient.  Dr. Garcia, as-ever in his white lab coat, officiates the proceedings.

GARCIA: This is Angerfish.
McFLY (radio): Angerfish is in the hospital.  This is his suit.
GARCIA: Just so, Martin.  His suit.  And it’s amazing.

Panel 2: The Ops Center (OC).  McFly is in front of the giant screen, where Dr. Garcia’s ‘autopsy’ of the powersuit is the main attraction. McFly’s slouched in front of a table, and he’s tinkering with something we can’t see, a soldering iron in one hand.  Trish hovers in the background, watching the screen.

McFLY: It looks ridiculous.  And putting the nuclear power cell in the esca?  That’s stupid.

Panel 3: Back to the Lab, with Dr. Garcia looking up, quizzically.

GARCIA: Esca?
McFLY(radio): The dangly bit.

Panel 4: Back to the OC, McFly now tinkering in the background, Trish stepped up to the foreground.

TRISH: It’s thematic.
AL (OS, radio): It’s obvious he didn’t build this himself.  He thinks he can talk to dolphins.
TRISH, McFLY: He can’t talk to dolphins.

Panel 5: Trish and McFly share a ‘we just said the same thing at the exact same time’ look.

Late last week, DC Comics did the unthinkable: they took a bold step forward in social media and started a new blog, The Source.

I like it, and I’m probably one of the most vocal and rational critics of the way DC navigates the Internet.  It has good exclusive content, is updated regularly and doesn’t constantly indulge in the “READ THIS LINK” style of reportage that the publisher’s Twitter account consists of.  On top of that, it’s got a killer design.

It’s good to see DC taking some steps to connect directly with its base, and it looks like - maybe - taking their time was worth it.  I’ll be watching to see what kind of legs it has.

We’re having a bit of a thing over at Alert Nerd in honor of the fictional marriage of Scott Summers and Jean Grey (in an issue of Uncanny X-Men that came out on March 30, 199whatever) and we’ve been asking our nerdy friends what their geek sacred cow (their “Scott and Jean are the best couple evar”) is.

Because I’m a contrarian, I talk about the Jean Grey/Wolverine romance.

Read all about it here.  And I encourage you to post your own, too.

I think that Watchmen may be impossible to review.  I’ve read reviews praising what other reviews panned and damning what others deified.  I have friends who have seen it and loved it, loved it except for the ending, hated the whole thing, and a few who refuse to see the movie because they feel that making a film adaptation of Watchmen is misguided.

After having seen Watchmen myself, I have to cast my vote with the latter.  At least in the sense that the movie, as good as frequently is and as faithful to the text as it can be, is ultimately a gutless retelling of the comic’s plot that pares out the things that make Watchmen really resonate as a ‘graphic novel’ (or ‘maxi-series’, depending on when you first read it and in what format).

The sleek cinematography, complete with director Zack Snyder’s trademark fetishistic slo-mo, blood, violence and nudity are all present on film.  The pirate comic, the streetcorner, the backing material are mostly gone or severely diminished.  The first group are the things that I loved about Watchmen when I was ten years old.  The second are the things I like about the comic now.  I like the control and complexity in Moore’s script and in Gibbons’ layouts and pencils, things that are by the very dint of being filmed absent from the film.

Watchmen the film is ultimately a very slick looking, very bombastic presentation of all the things I loved when I was ten.  As a film adaptation of the main plot, it is entertaining; I don’t hate it.  The acting is mostly solid (with Malin Akerman being the weak link in that chain and Jackie Earle Haley and Billy Crudup both doing an particularly great job of bringing two very difficult characters to life), the action looks nice (and I’ve always secretly been a bit of a sucker for Snyder’s slow motion antics), but it’s hollow in comparison to its source - very much like the bulk of the Harry Potter films in a lot of ways.    I liked it.  I’ll watch it again.  It was entertaining.  But it doesn’t hold a candle to the original.

Today is new comic day, and I’m going to actually post some comics-related content in celebration of the event.

Age of the Sentry #6 comes out today, which is going to put an endcap on the best representation of the character that Marvel’s published since the original Paul Jenkins/Jae Lee event (The Sentry and the same team’s Inhumans are two series that really got me invested back into the Marvel U after years of only reading X-stuff).  If you don’t like The Sentry because he’s a basketcase who throws people into the sun and rips womens’ heads off, I’d strongly suggest giving this book a look.

Occasional reader of The Axe Jim McCann has his New Avengers: The Reunion #1 on stands today and as someone who likes Jim a lot and loves Hawkeye and Mockingbird, I am incredibly excited.  The 9 page preview over at IGN promises some good stuff from this mini.  The Clint/Bucky confrontation alone is maybe worth buying the book for.

Me: Wait, did that ad seriously try to use Tool Academy to promote Watchmen?

Also Me: I’m afraid it did.  You really shouldn’t go and see this movie, Jeff.

Me: Wait a second.  If the Doctor Manhattan condoms didn’t make me swear off the movie -

Also Me: And the Nite-Owl brand coffee.

Me: I don’t mind the Nite-Owl brand coffee. It’s a movie prop, and the design of it doesn’t suck.  And I’ve always liked the scene in the comics that it calls back to.

Also Me: Whatever.  What about all the toys?  Don’t you think Alan Moore is spinning in his grave?

Me: A) Alan Moore isn’t dead.

Also Me: That doesn’t mean he isn’t in a grave right now.

Me: You know, I never thought about it like that.  B) At first, I was kind of telling myself that the toys were enjoyably ironic.  But really, like this Tool Academy spot and the condoms et al, the toys seem in aggregate to be the result of a scattershot attempt to market something that the marketers don’t really get.

Also Me: Zack Snyder keeps saying that he gets Watchmen.

Me: But he never says what he gets about it, does he?  Early on in college, I played that game with Ulysses all the time to make girls think I was insightful.  And it worked, so good on Snyder, maybe.

Also Me: I really don’t think you should see this movie.  You’re going to regret it.

Me: I don’t know….

TO BE CONTINUED

I spent a decent amount of time at the unofficial Zuda booth over the weekend, and can’t stress enough that High Moon and Nite Owls are worthy of your comics-reading attention (though many of you already know that, I’m thinking).  However, I also got to talk with Bob Francis, who just pitched a comic called Flight Captain Hurricane to Zuda, and that’s what I really want to pimp today.

I saw way more of what Bob and his crew are putting together than I strictly should have, and it’s goddamn impressive.  It’s impeccably researched and has some straight-up beautiful artwork (the first full-page panel, for instance).

Hurricane is in Zuda’s hands right now, and I think it’s got the potential to do well on the Zuda platform.   I feel hackneyed or cliched when I say that “so and so creator is really just a nice guy,” but that’s definitely true of Bob.  He has a very infectious level of enthusiasm for what he’s doing.  He believes in the Zuda platform pretty strongly, and I really hope it works for him.

Still decompressing from the New York con.  For those of you who may be wondering I did not, as I told Ragnell I would a few months ago, stand up in the DC Nation panel and ask Dan Didio if he knew how the Internet worked.

He still doesn’t, by the way.  The DC_Nation Twitter didn’t do a damn thing for the entirety of the con - which, well, would have been a great way to announce all of those new Batman titles or the Giffen/?? Doom Patrol book, don’t you think?  Lots of retweets, lots of potential links.  Lots of buzz.  Because I didn’t hit a lot of panels, I heard all of my con news second hand and, even in real life, it would have been much more convenient for the big announcements to be aggregated somewhere.  If we can have EA’s giant photo wall or the Twitter wall at AdTech, this is something we can surely do.  In fact, the next con broadsides that Alert Nerd puts out will probably do something like this.  Not that that’s DC’s fault.  That’s on Reed and all of the big publishers, actually.

I have some hope for DC, though.  They’ve apparently brought social media microceleb Chris Brogan in to consult the Distinguished Competition on how to retool its online presence.  Chris is a good guy and also a comic geek, so I think that this meeting of the minds can bear some powerful fruit.  I don’t expect DC to just start aping Marvel (okay, I kind of do - there’s a track record there), but they’re experiencing a lot of bad weather online right now, and it’s totally within their power to right it. They just need to be willing to.  It’s not going to win their lost market share back immediately, but raising their profile should be at the top of their marketing gameplan right now.  As comics start to really go digital, it’s going to become more and more of a necessity.

If I’m gonna be honest, I’m a total net-hermit.  I have a core of real-life friends and an ever-expanding group of online acquaintances that I talk to.  One of the neat things about cons is getting to meet the latter group face to face, and those kind of meet ups are what really makes me excited about the comic con circuit every year.

Because meeting other fans and creators in person and just talking to them about the art form is good for creativity.  Going back and looking at the early talk between Matt and I on what would eventually become the currently artist-less book that we want to self-publish (or, at the urging of a few Zuda creators, possibly submit to Zuda), we play off of each other incredibly well, and even get into that kind of “I’m finishing your sentences” vibe, but I get the feeling that we’d be kicking even more ass if we could occasionally lock ourselves in a house with some pizzas and a case of beer for a day or two and just brainstorm and write and talk.  Hitting NYCC this year was like that, and I walked away from it with Ideas that I can’t wait to get on paper.  In fact, if my voice recorder’s batteries weren’t dead, I’d have been dictating my whole drive home.

I love it when this happens, and kind of wonder why I’m not also working on something with some of my local gang, like Rich, Cory or Perry.  Something else for me to think about in ‘09.

On the artist front, nothing promising happened at the con, but I got a really awesome pep talk from Dan McDaid (of Jersey Gods fame) that put the energy back in me.

Sorry for the rambly-ness, by the way.  I want to get back into frequent posts, maybe even one a day.  So yeah.