The mask came before the scarring. So...Itchy!!!
I majored in Yiddish at Berlin Community College.
It took Arnim Zola and I a while to come to terms. We had trouble seeing eye to eye on certain issues.
The Berlin Zoo has the best facilities for nocturnal recreation. And you can take that to the bank, Jack.
Do you know that bastard Red Skull still owes me for 15 hours of overtime?
I’m a little grumpy about this week’s comics, but that may just be the fault of last week’s comics. Here are THIS week’s new and noteworthy titles.
I’m not the biggest fan of the Adventure Time cartoon writing here, that honor goes to Matt, but I do enjoy it a great deal and check it out somewhat regularly. Therefore when Boom! ??? announced they were doing a new Adventure Time series written by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, I was in. I’ve got to say, it’s pretty great. It opens with a really
interesting sequence that reveals how the cartoon’s opening sequence was created, in a way that allows for the uninitiated to understand while providomg more depth if you get the reference. There’s all sorts of easter eggs in this book, including light blue notes in the gutters that are JUST legible enough to read…if you see them.
The main story’s art by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb is drawn in the Adventure Time house style, but Aaron Renier’s backup tells a story in his own painted style instead, and it’s a nice touch that we get to see other artistic interpretations of the characters. Boom! and all the creators involved really knocked themselves out with this one, and it’s well worth picking up if you’re a fan of hijinks, high adventure, and high…fist-bumps.
I feel like I’m the only one excited by Rob Liefeld’s Extreme relaunch, but I’m genuinely enjoying it. Prophet #21 was excellent, and Glory #23 continues the streak of success. The Rob obviously knows to set up his talent and then get out of the way, as the characters are established and yet feel all-new. Or in Glory’s case, 500 years old. Credit artist Ross Campbell with that, as he manages to make Glory look young and childlike yet world-weary and battle-damaged, all at the same time. The artwork really is an amazing strength. Writer Joe Keatinge manages to incorporate a healthy amount of intrigue (and provides answers to key questions in the first issue! What an concept!) while working in enough humor and action to keep things moving. In fact, the only knock I can think of is that it feels a bit too much like Promethea in places. As much as I enjoyed Prophet, I loved this book. It’s been selling briskly, but if you find a copy on the shelf, grab it.
Do. Not. Buy.
Bloodstrike and Youngblood will round out the relaunch in the next few months, and while they’re the titles I’m least looking forward to, the strength of the first half are going to force me to give them a chance.
The less said about Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #12 the better. With the story mostly wrapped up in issue 11, IDW felt it was appropriate to charge $4 for shots of wreckage and a few wrap-up captions. This is the biggest waste of money I may have ever spent on a comic, and IDW should never have put it out.
Ranting complete, that’s it for me this week. What looks good to you?
As many of you know Matt and I hail from South Louisiana, and this time of year is very important to the culture: Mardi Gras season! While not too many comic characters live in New Orleans (where IS Hawkman now, anyway???), many still take the opportunity to celebrate in their own ways. For this week’s list, we proudly present Mardi Gras Traditions of Your Favorite Comic Characters.
It's baggy sweats for Kara. Let someone else put their cleavage on display for a change.
Let’s just dive in to this week’s new and noteworthy titles!
AVENGERS #22 and NEW AVENGERS #21 – Now that my pull list experiment is over, I must confess that none of the Avengers titles have impressed me that much, other than Warren Ellis’ Secret Avengers. These guys get the drop.That’s it for this week, folks. What looks good to you?
I tried the hero thing for a while, but they told me they already had enough Spider-Man/Batman mashups.
I once got off on a murder rap using the bantha defense. "It was cold that night, your honor! I would have frozen to death!" Chump.
I decided to go with slippers because I AM A DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN!
This costume is a Herbie Popnecker original. I traded him for some magic lollipops.
You think you're so great, ARTHUR. I been rockin' this bident for YEARS.
Man, there’s only one book for me out this week! I can’t remember the last time that happened.
I suppose it’s good that this is a light week, as I’ve completed a few important runs this week. I’m now current (on finding, not reading…yet) Jeff Parker’s Thunderbolts. Every single issue is just a joy to read. I’ve also been trying to figure out who Kev Walker’s Juggernaut reminds me of, and it’s Marv from Sin City. I’ve also found all of the issues of Flashpoint, the end of my DC’s incarnation. The most expensive issue was #1, at $3.25. I hadn’t really been looking forward to it, but I imagine it will be a bittersweet read as it signifies my drifting away from DC.
Sorry for such a light report, but the books are what the books are. What’s looking good to you this week? It’s the perfect chance for me to jump in on something new.
Famous cities — even fictional ones — have a government, infrastructure, and oftentimes a SLOGAN. Something that embraces the idea of the community and concentrates it into a digestible chunk, preferably for putting onto a flag. For this week’s LIST we somewhat-proudly present City Slogans and Mottoes.
Gotham City: We Mugged the Sun. What are you gonna do about it?
Wednesday morning DC Comics announced the long-awaited (and long-reported by Rich Johnston) news that they would be “building” on Watchmen by releasing a series of “Before Watchmen” mini-series. Featuring each of the major characters in the original series plus a Minutemen series, the new series will build on the mythology of the Watchmen universe and finally turn those characters into a fully-formed brand to be marketed and exploited.
I spoke about this on our Twitter account a couple months ago when Bleeding Cool started running leaked concept art by creators we now know are attached to the project, but since 140 characters bursts doesn’t allow for much depth of thought, it seems like the opportune time to elaborate.
It’s long been the conventional wisdom that for Marvel and DC, comics don’t pay the bills, it is the licensing of characters that brings in the real money. And especially recently, with line-wide relaunches, monster trucks, and twitter accounts hyping mass media appearances more than comics, it feels like more than just the conventional wisdom. Comic books may be dying out, but through licensing the characters can live on in perpetuity. Therefore, with every financial reason to do it and no creative impetus behind it**, Before Watchmen isn’t an artistic endeavor, it’s a blank check for DC to enhance the brand and keep the licensing money coming.
Let’s be honest, most of the major comic book characters you know and love are 40-60 years old now. Other than
Watchmen, which is one of the best selling graphic novels ever, how many comic book characters can you name were created in the last 25 years and are household names? Spawn, probably. Deadpool, maybe. The list is pretty thin. The Watchmen characters are well-known, popular, and just sitting in the DC vaults unused. Perhaps it’s inevitable that Watchmen gets dragged hurming and scheming into the 21st century, but without the unanimous blessing of their creators I can’t put my support behind it.
Kudos to DC for getting Dave Gibbons’ approval on the new works, but that’s only half the solution. In order to get me on-board for this (and I want to be, truly I do) Alan Moore has to sign off on it as well. Can you imagine Steve Dillon spinning off Preacher without Garth Ennis, Eduardo Risso continuing 100 Bullets without Brian Azzarello (one of the Before Watchmen creators!), or Darick Robertson doing more Transmetropolitan without Warren Ellis*?
Of course not. Those books were made by creative TEAMS, and the artist and writer are both critical to their success. Before Watchmen is an event by committee, not an artistic vision at work. But the main reason those spinoffs wouldn’t work? All of the books I mentioned are creator-owned titles. Watchmen had the misfortune of coming out too soon***. Had it been published in 1996 instead of 1986 it would have been released as a creator-owned series through the Vertigo imprint! Had Vertigo existed back then Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons would have owned the series and its characters, never squabbled about DC keeping it in print in perpetuity (therefore preventing the rights from reverting back to Moore and Gibbons) and they probably would have done the prequels they considered TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO!
The Internet, predictably, exploded. And there have been some good rebuttals to the outrage. J. Michael Straczynski, who will be working on the Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan books, told Comic Book Resources:
“A lot of folks feel that these characters shouldn’t be touched by anyone other than Alan, and while that’s absolutely understandable on an emotional level, it’s deeply flawed on a logical level. Based on durability and recognition, one could make the argument that Superman is the greatest comics character ever created. But neither Alan nor anyone else has ever suggested that no one other than Shuster and Siegel should ever be allowed to write Superman. Alan didn’t pass on being brought on to write Swamp Thing, a seminal comics character created by Len Wein, and he did a terrific job. He didn’t say “No, no, I can’t, that’s Len’s character.” Nor should he have.”
That’s an excellent point. Here’s the thing: Siegel and Shuster never intended to be the only ones ever telling Superman stories, or that it would never continue past a certain point. Hell, Superman was originally a newspaper strip, a serial if ever there was one. Their only beef was that they didn’t get adequate payment for all DC exploited Superman. The same goes for Kirby. Truth be told, the same goes for Alan Moore when he worked on Batman, Vigilante, and Green Lantern. Moore doesn’t WANT the money, he wants DC to leave it alone (well, that and let him get the rights back).
JMS goes on later to say:
“Again: on an emotional level, I get it. But by the same token, Alan has spent most of the last decade writing some very, very good stories about characters created by other writers, including Alice (from Wonderland), Dorothy (from Oz), Wendy (from Peter Pan), as well as Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Jekyll and Hyde and Professor Moriarty. I think one loses a little of the moral high ground to say, “I can write characters created by Jules Verne, HG Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Frank Baum, but it’s wrong for anyone else to write my characters.”"
Again, there is a bit of a difference here. Presumably Moore has no problem with others using his work 70 years after his death, when it would enter the public domain. He’s a smart man, and understands public domain (which kept Lost Girls from being published in the UK for a while, until the Peter Pan rights expired) and the concept of transformative works. Now I do feel from time to time like Moore is a crotchety, hypersensitive guy who won’t rest until he can find fault in everything, like someone’s grandmother, but in these instances I feel he’s got a solid basis for his feelings.
With the New 52 relaunch, the over-reliance on events (and making them bigger and more inflammatory each time), and now this, DC is making it quite clear that they are more concerned with getting our money and the perpetuation of brands rather than integrity. And not necessarily the artistic kind, just good ethics. And I just can’t support that any more. With Watchmen 2 happening, I am officially done with DC Comics and all it’s associated creators. At the moment
that includes:
Seriously, I would LOVE to read this. But I can't.
Brian Azzarello
Not that I was buying any JMS titles anyway, but we’ve been always told that we vote with our wallet. Well, my three dollars (let’s face it, they weren’t getting $4 from me anyway) isn’t going to support this system or those who enable it.
Most support I’ve seen so far has come in the form of how DC is a company whose goal is to make money, so they can do what they want with characters they own. Or that the new titles sound great. And those statements are ALL true. These are DC’s characters, and maybe it IS stupid of them to have these characters and not capitalize on them. I think an Azzarello/Bermejo Rorschach series would be AMAZING. But I can’t support it, not without the approval of both Moore and Gibbons.
And may God have mercy on our souls if we ever see a Dr. Manhattan monster truck.
Over the course of our lives, Matt’s heard me talk a lot of craziness, make a load of overreaching declarations, and talked me down off many a ledge. So these were his thoughts when we discussed the news.
So then…
Where does this idea come from that Alan Moore is the only one to touch Watchmen?
Who’s out there clamoring for more? It’s a fairly complete story with few or no holes. If nothing else, didn’t we learn our lesson as fans with The Dark Knight Strikes Again?
Before Watchmen, so what? When rumblings of this started way back, I had no interest in seeing prequels or sequels. That view has not changed. I don’t get the idea that people are so attached to the unlikeable, shallow, impotent, and petty caricatures that Alan Moore used to tell his story. Anything I ever wondered about them is given to me in the pages of the original 12 issues. So if I want a good Rorschach prequel story, I’ll read The Question, and the same goes for Moore’s other “creations” and their Charlton counterparts. I can’t make myself care about it because it isn’t affecting how I feel about the original story. Just because DC’s doing it doesn’t mean I have to read it.
It’s funny that Watchmen is the third rail of comics. Why does this story get people so up in arms?
In terms of the outcry and insistence that it have Moore’s blessing, I find myself agreeing with… God help me… JMS. It’s DC’s property. Again, whatever is done now by whomever will not change the original story, its significance, or my own feelings about the story.
Maybe the stories will be good. Maybe they’ll be forgotten not unlike DC’s Kingdom. At the end of the day, the only problem I have is that I always find blatant pandering insulting. It bothers me that DC feels that it can dangle new Watchmen stories and we’ll automatically open our wallets and fork over four or five dollars a pop.
All great points. JMS continued his excellent point-making this morning, after drawing comparisons to his work Babylon 5. Namely, the company owns the property and it would suck, but they have the right to do what they wish with the characters. And I agree, they certainly do have the right, I just wish they wouldn’t exercise it.
The rights for Watchmen were always supposed to revert to Moore and Gibbons once the book went out of print, which it never has. The was never supposed to be an issue, a book had never stayed continuously in print before. Watchmen is a victim of its own success. So I’d say that’s why Moore is the chosen one in this case.
While several creators have tried getting the rights to their creations back, namely Kirby, Siegel, and Shuster, but as recently as Marv Wolfman, but Steve Gerber was notoriously against other creators working on characters he created, notably Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown.
A strange assortment of books this time around, but enough to be enthusiastic about! Here’s this week’s new and noteworthy titles.
In the past couple weeks I’ve gotten a chance to sample two Marvel .1 issues. Uncanny X-Force 19.1 and Secret Avengers 21.1 were both written by Rick Remender, so that’s a pretty good control va
riable to sample how they’re doing. Ostensibly a “good jumping-on point” for new readers, I was pleased to find them because I’m getting back on the monthly Marvel bandwagon but still have a little catching up to do on the regular series.
What I found with these was definitely a mixed bag, though. UXF was fairly impenetrable to me, and I’d read everything up to issue 11. I had no idea what was going on or why, and though I think I’d have enjoyed it a great deal if I were current on the series, I wasn’t, and thus the whole point of the Point 1 was negated. Secret Avengers did a much better job at getting me up to speed, though that was potentially just due to it being Remender’s first issue on the title. We find out that Captain America and Hawkeye are on a covert mission on foreign soil, and Cap is evaulating Hawkeye to take on a leadership role with whoever the rest of the team will be going forward. And as a jumping on point it worked great, but as a book in and of itself I had some issues. To wit:
If I’m honest, the only issues of SA I’ve enjoyed at all were Warren Ellis’ brief run. I’ll give Remender a few issues because he’s usually great, but after that I’m willing to call the whole thing off for disinterest.
That’s enough ranting and raving for one week. What’s looking good to you?
