A Nice Place to Visit

by Jesse

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.

  • Smallville – The Roswell of Kansas!

  • Welcome to Westchester County. Hope you survive the experience!

  • Opal City – Enjoy your stay since hipsters don’t ask for money.

  • St. Roch – Our men don’t wear shirts, either!

    Gotham City: We Mugged the Sun. What are you gonna do about it?

  • Kandor – Come for the night-life. Stay…because that rat-bastard, Superman, can’t figure out how to free us.

  • Star City – Not one of those Jewish stars.

  • Fawcett City – Our cheese is big and red. Just like your mama.

  • Central City – Hey! We’ve got a Flash too.

  • Rann – What happens in the Zeta Beam, stays in in the Zeta Beam.

  • Bizarro Metropolis – Go Away!

  • Blue Area of the Moon – Come watch us now!

  • Doomstadt – DOOM welcomes you to submit.

  • Coast City – Fuck You, Hal Jordan.

Before Watchmen, The End of My Relationship With DC Comics

by Jesse

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

  • Lee Bermejo
  • Amanda Conner
  • Darwyn Cooke
  • Adam Hughes
  • J.G. Jones
  • Andy Kubert
  • Joe Kubert
  • Jae Lee
  • J. Michael Straczynski
  • Len Wein

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.

*Cully Hamner did some Red prequels without Ellis, but since we never heard complaints from him, we have to assume they were sanctioned.
** So far, what we’ve heard is Dan DiDio approaching creators to work on the project, which means it’s coming down from an editorial/managerial level.  And while I imagine the creative process behind these books is an honest one, it’s not the same as, say, Geoff Johns coming up with Green Lantern: Rebirth.
***Ditto Sandman, but DC has been very careful not to alienate DC by using his characters without his okay.  Their relationship with Neil Gaiman may very well be the result of lessons learned working with Alan Moore.

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.

No Capes Tuesday!

by Matt

Archaia's Tale of Sand

It’s no news to say that I’m a big fan of the Muppets, but it’s more accurate to say that I’m a fan of Jim Henson. These two ideas are not necessarily the same. A great many people love the Muppets, Sesame Street, and the Fraggles without every appreciating or “get”ting Dark Crystal. And that same crowd has almost certainly never seen Henson’s experimental film “Time Piece.” If you’re honest with yourself and think of yourself as more of a Muppet fan than a Henson fan, Tale of Sand is is not something you should buy simply because Henson’s signature is writ large on the front cover. Tale of Sand is decidedly non-Muppet.

Briefly, for those unfamiliar,  Tale of Sand was co-written over a seven year period, starting in 1966, by Jim Henson and Muppet head writer Jerry Juhl. To put it in perspective of Henson’s career, during that time period Henson was guest appearing regularly on a variety of television shows (Jimmy Dean, Ed Sullivan, etc…), developing the concept of Sesame Street, and producing television specials featuring the Muppets telling fairy tales. With all of these projects going, Henson and Juhl were also looking for money to make Tale of Sand. At some point they stopped shopping it around, and it ended up forgotten in a file drawer until recently. Henson Associates decided it would make a good graphic novel. The weren’t wrong.

Story-wise, this is straight forward in a convoluted way. Basically a man is on the run. Neither he nor we as an audience find out why. The disorientation, seemingly surreal events, and betrayal that occurs is actually reminiscent of The Prisoner. Even through the end, there’s no clear answer to any question a reader will have. There isn’t much dialogue so the bulk of the story is carried visually.

At first glance, Ramon Perez’s style is similar to Jeff Smith’s in RASL. His figures are fluid and distinct. There’s a nice realism that verges just this side of caricature. From his novel layouts, I cannot imagine that it was easy translating the screenplay and it’s multitude of descriptions and scene changes. As a final nice touch, pages of the screenplay are visible in the gutters between each panel. Perez and company made the best choice in avoiding coloring everything in the book. The minimal coloring in this book keeps the layouts and visuals from being too busy. This is a truly stunning book to look at.

This is a great book for students of the graphic novel form; the visual story telling here is phenomenal. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’d warn again, this isn’t a Muppet book. If you can wrap your brain around that, it’s a great piece of art and Jim Henson history.

This Week’s Comics

by Jesse

A strange assortment of books this time around, but enough to be enthusiastic about!   Here’s this week’s new and noteworthy titles.

  • FATALE #2 - Hellblazer Noir, I’d call this. A book worth checking in on, to be sure. I think it’ll be a fun one, and Brubaker and Philips tend not to overstay their welcome too long, so it’s not likely to be a six-year committment or anything.
  • HULK #48
  • PUNISHER #8
  • REED GUNTHER #8 - I put out a call for good all-ages books on our Google+ page a while back and got a very enthusiastic response for Reed Gunther. So I’m going to give it a shot.
  • STRANGE TALENT OF LUTHER STRODE #5 (OF 6)
  • TWELVE #9 (OF 12) - If Matt wants to dive back in to The Twelve, it’s back. If I had to put money on it, he doesn’t.
  • VENOM #13 - This is a $4 title, so I’ll have to back-issue dive for it in the future, but Remender is doing a callback to the 90s’s “New” Fantastic Four with X-23, Red Hulk, Venom, and the new Ghost Rider. I admit it, I’m curious!
  • WINTER SOLDIER #1 - I haven’t followed Brubaker’s Captain America run with any regularlity, but I’m intrigued enough to plunk down $3 to give it a shot. See how easy that is, Marvel? Solid creators and a reasonable cover price makes it easy to hook a new reader when the cost of entry is essentially disposable income.

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 variable 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:

  • A dude dressed like Captain America is NOT a fit for a covert mission. Though they address that in-story, it just feels like the wrong solution. I tell you, for all the times it feels like a character gets a new costume for a toy line or because the artist wants to put their own mark on a character, this is one of the times it would have made sense if he wore something else.
  • Hawkeye’s moviefication. Come on, Marvel, you know it won’t last. Hawkeye’s digs are iconic. You should make the movies conform to you or just let them be separate.
  • Hawkeye can fly now? Oh, sure, he’s firing some sort of rocket arrow, but that’s some serious Silver Age weirdness there. There’s even one panel where he’s swinging off like Romita’s Spider-Man. What the what?
  • The Avengers should be a bright and shiny superheroic example to the world, not a covert ops team. There’s a place for those teams (see: X-Force), but other than branding it doesn’t need to sit under the Avengers umbrella. There are plenty of unused Marvel trademarks, let’s use one of those. Or better yet, invent a new team name!

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?

Last Dispatch: Wizard World New Orleans.

by Matt

So…yesterday was a good day at the convention, but today was a great day. Like most other conventions, Sunday is the day to really get to talk to people and move around. There just aren’t as many people around. If you’re daunted by the price of the two day admission, but you want to get some autographs, some books, and chat up some pros, trust me when I say that the Sunday beats the Saturday. Everybody from looky-loos and casual fans to hardcore fans on a budget go on Saturday. Sunday is much more relaxed. So it was again this year at this con. There’s only one downside to Sundays: sketches are hard…if impossible to come by. I’ll post some time about getting sketches from folks, but for now suffice it to say that the artists are working during the second day to fill the obligations of the first…mostly.

But my general thoughts on attending a con are not why you’re here. You probably want to hear about the Stan Lee panel and the William Shatner Q & A.

As you might surmise from his exuberance in the media, Stan Lee looks like he’s genuinely having fun. His interactions with the crowd at the Q&A were warm and friendly. The man seemed to enjoy being there and interacting with the people. Sure there wasn’t anything revelatory today, (after so many years that wasn’t likely anyway) but it was a joy to listen to him speak about his career and his creations. As an English teacher, the greatest part of the session was his genial insistence on proper grammar. He corrected the moderator and a fan. It was a hoot! For an 89 year old man, there was a great deal of sharp give and take with the crowd. It was easily the best panel I’ve ever been to, and most likely ever will go to. AND I got to take a picture with him! It’s a rare thing for me to smile outside of laughing, but standing next to Stan Lee in that photo is a fool with a huge goofy grin.

The Shatner panel was a fairly different tone. Although he was standing in front of the table the entire time, there was a greater sense of distance between him and the audience. Mr. Shatner was entertaining, and he certainly knows how to work a room, but the tone was more like a monologue than a conversation. After he mentioned that he’s about to open a one-man show, I realized that this panel was probably a rehearsal for his show. Answers to questions were followed by anecdotes that didn’t always tie to the question. It felt like he had these set things he was going to say come hell or high water. Distance and all aside, it was an enjoyable panel.

Another thing worth noting about this year’s convention is the increased presence of costumes. There were some really impressive ones too. You’ll see a couple below taken by friend of the blog Southall. Remarkably, steam punk seemed to outnumber any other theme. There were quite a few Dr. Whos and Star Wars stormtroopers. Regrettably there were also a hand full of goddamn furries.

Well, that’s it until next year.

Dispatch from Wizard World: New Orleans

by Matt

In its sophomore year, Wizard World New Orleans is working hard to impress. Last year they were testing the waters to see if New Orleans could support a convention. The problem was that everything about last year’s convention was small. Don’t get me wrong; I had fun last year. I got to meet Adam West, Walter Koenig, and Kevin Maguire, but the convention didn’t have much else going. Few panels and relatively meager offerings in terms of vendors. It was…small and unimpressive… especially if you’re trying to convince people to attend annually.

This year everything is bigger. It’s much more in line with my other experiences in the comic book convention world. For starters, there have been some impossibly huge draws as far as guests go. Both Stan Lee and William Shatner are appearing. In addition, George Perez, Norm Breyfogel, and Mark Texeira have tables in the artist’s alley. Last year, there was a dearth of comic vendors with backstock much less bargain books. This year it’s very different. Tons of boxes of books as well as no less than three booths with substantial $.5o boxes.

Unlike last year, there was also much more in the way of fan costumes. Although there was more in the way of steampunk than the law should allow, there was also fair representation of the comic book world… including a phenomenal Aquaman and Mera which I’ll post tomorrow.

The con has room to grow though. The main area for improvement needs to be the lack of presence by any of the major comic companies…or the minor ones for that matter. To my mind, it’s still essentially a local con until the companies make an effort at attending.

I’ll have picks and panel summaries tomorrow. For now, suffice it to say that this is a good second year in a convention’s life. Today was a good day... oh… and there was beer sold on the convention floor.

The Man with the Amazing Screaming LIST

by Matt

This week’s challenge was to fill in the bubble. Here were our gems.

Why did I touch goats INAPPROPRIATELY?!?

Mom warned me this would happen!

So this is what they mean by the, ‘the old ginger fingers.’

Welllllll… It’s better than being Aquaman.

This isn’t the Irish Curse I was thinking of!

Which one of you slept with my wife!?

I don’t care how much you sons of bitches cry, we have to give Mom her
backrub tonight!

My fingers… tiny men… I’m speechless!

You never dress sexy for me anymore!

Ready? All right, let’s go f- up some little people.