Author: Ryan

Oh yeah.

Newsarama asked Joe Quesada what he thought about the notorious Heroes for Hire cover, and here’s what he had to say:

First, I think people are reading way too much into that cover than was ever intended. I heard terms such as “tentacle rape” being thrown around when that in no way is what’s happening, nor does it happen in the book. Those tentacles are the arms of the Brood who appears in the issue and is a major story point, the Brood have tentacles, sorry about that.

Secondly, the concept for that cover, soup to nuts came from a female artist. Thirdly, not being a deep follower of manga, I have no idea what recurring theme people are referring to or concerned with. While I appreciate the sentiment and the feelings that some may have about this, I honestly feel that there is way too much being read into this cover.

Also, HFH is a book that features two strong, lead female protagonist who kick major ass; somehow folks have forgotten to focus on that.

Somehow, Joe managed to sound both clueless and weaselly. Let’s try this again:

Yeah, I can see where people are coming from. Sana Takeda, who’s a great artist, did a fun cover that parodied and homaged a relatively obscure and completely absurd genre.

And while it’s obviously a bit of artistic license, it does hint at the issue’s content – there are plenty of tentacled aliens inside! But rest assured, there’s far more butt kicking than tentacle rape. After all, no one would put rape in a superhero comic. That’s just silly.

We really didn’t set out to offend anyone, but offer our apologies if we did. From what I’ve seen, most of our fans don’t have a serious problem with it, and I’m sure our audience is going to dig it even more when they read the issue.

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? At least acknowledge there’s an issue, even if you don’t really care about it.

I was going to make some sort of substantive post, but it’s Friday. Fuck it.

Instead I bring you this Heaping Amount of Awesome, found via Warren Ellis, who got it from Jess Nevins.

This, my friends, is what life is all about.

Bonus Awesome: Check out Jennifer DeGuzman’s Fun With Slush and find out what insane people expect SLG to publish.

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is probably one of the most successful and acclaimed graphic novels of the last decade. This week, the film version – co-written and directed by Satrapi herself – debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. In the fall, it will be released in North America with an English voice cast of Gena Rowlands, Catherine Deneuve, Kirsten Dunst, Iggy Pop, and Sean Penn.

Is there a more compelling story than Satrapi’s life and her accomplishments? Is there a more successful woman working in the comic book industry? (And by “industry” in this case, I refer to the actual industry, not just the genre-niche occupied by Marvel and DC)

But somehow, a limited-edition statue and the cover to a book that was the eighty-ninth best-seller in March are bigger news.

Don’t get me wrong: These things deserve to be mocked. But they deserve to be mocked swiftly and briefly, and then ignored.

Warren Ellis made a great point in his Bad Signal mailing list yesterday:

If your issue is that there aren’t enough female voices writing your favourite corporate-owned superhero titles, then, frankly, your problems are deeper and broader than you think.

Keep fighting. Keep kicking. But never, ever act like the women already working in the medium aren’t there, just because they’re not writing Batman or Supergirl.

It’s worth remembering that change seldom begins in the mainstream. Marvel & DC are going to continue to put out whatever crap sates their primary audience until they notice someone else making more money doing something differently. They deserve to be called out when they do the particularly stupid stuff, but that’s not nearly as important as recognizing the people who actually are changing things.

1. No one will ever retcon the endings to Seaguy or WE3 or Vimanarama.
2. Hellboy is the sort of comic Jack Kirby would have gotten around to eventually.
3. Madman is friends with Mott, from the planet Hoople.
4. Renée Montoya is a pretty interesting character, but she’s still just a watered-down and wimpy version of Tara Chace.
5. Alan Moore doesn’t write mainstream superhero comics any more.
6. Warren Ellis really shouldn’t write mainstream superhero comics. Except for Nextwave, anyway.
7. The two major elements in Phonogram are magic and Britpop.
8. Demo is the best X-Men story of the last decade.
9. Blankets may not be the best thing ever, but there’s still less whining and angst than in many modern superhero comics.
10. You probably never thought Louis Riel was interesting until Chester Brown came along.
11. Seth had an exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Jim Lee did not.
12. Scott Pilgrim gives you all the best aspects of romantic comedy, action-adventure, and 1980s video games.
13. Scott Pilgrim also gave the world Kim Pine, for which it shall always be blessed.
14. Just when you thought Cameron Stewart was an pretty darn good superhero artist, he does The Other Side and shows he’s a totally awesome everything artist.
15. J.H. Williams’ covers to Promethea. Also everything he did inside Promethea.
16. Maus is just as good as its reputation. Probably better.
17. Bone. Big, funny, sweet, and scary. Fighting evil is easy when you’re an invincible alien, but less so when you’re a short, white, pudgy fellow.
18. Rex Libris is an intergalactic librarian who talks like a forties gumshoe. He fights alien snowmen and his sidekick is a small bird with dreams of world domination.
19. Looshkin is the evolutionary pinnacle of the crazy, fucked up cat cartoonists have been developing since humanity learned to draw and figured out that cats were crazy, fucked up animals. Let’s see Heathcliff drive a tank or befriend a giant squid.
20. Street Angel fights ninjas, conquistadors, satanists, and poverty.
21. Desolation Jones: Hitler porn and Phillip K. Dick. Plus the best artwork J.H. Williams has ever done.
22. While Optic Nerve comes out less frequently than Ultimates or All-Star Batman & Robin, no one ever pretends it’s supposed to come out more frequently. And it’s always worth the wait.
23. Barry Ween and Pedro and Me will allow you to understand why Judd Winnick still gets work.
24. Crossing Midnight has one character who’s the Lord of Blades, and another who rules over needles. Also a dragon-headed samurai dude who likes chopping off heads.
25. All Star Superman is pretty great, but it’s WE3 that shows off why Frank Quitely is one of the best artists ever to pick up a pencil.
26. Johnny The Homicidal Maniac finds inventive uses for sporks and is a big fan of Terry Gilliam.
27. Filler Bunny is totally, utterly, amazingly disgusting. It is so wrong and so right.
28. Corey Lewis fixed everything that was wrong in Sharknife and kicked it up a couple notches for the super-fun Peng!, in which we learn about Canadians’ rock-throwing habits.
29. Top Ten combines the best attributes of superhero comics and Hill Street Blues.
30. Autobiographical indie comics look pretty crappy until you get to I Never Liked You. Then you understand what the fuss is all about.
31. Brian K. Vaughan saves all his best cliffhangers for Y The Last Man.
32. Niko Henrichon turned a story about lions and political allegory into one of the most gorgeous and moving books of the year.
33. Project: Superior: Superheroes, if they were fun and occasionally a bit silly. Where else do you get James Jean, John Cassaday, Bryan O’Malley, Tara McPherson, Scott Morse, and many, many others all in one book, all doing their own thing?
34. Chris Ware does more with sequential storytelling in one volume of ACME Novelty Library than most artists do in an entire career.
35. Ramona Flowers just really likes her hammer.
36. Serenity Rose can float, capture vampires in giant balloon ponies, and has great goggles.
37. Peter Milligan’s Skreemer is the best post-apocalyptic gangster epic ever committed to the page.
38. Teamups are actually cool: Madman has met Hellboy, Superman, and the Big Guy, and it’s fresh and exciting because it doesn’t happen every other month. Scott Pilgrim appeared in Peng! and it was still cool even while being totally gratuitous.
39. Grant Morrison.
40. I have no idea what the actual plot of Shaolin Cowboy is, but dear god that’s a pretty comic: Kung fu, gunfire, evil spirits, mean crabs, disembodied heads, and a giant freaking shark.
41. The best comic book movies (Ghost World and History of Violence) have had nothing to do with superheroes.
42. Mike Carey started with the mythology Neil Gaiman created (and appropriated) for Sandman and made it even bigger in Lucifer.
43. Gaudium and Spera, the bickering fallen cherub siblings, are the best comic relief in comics.
44. One of the greatest stories Neil Gaiman ever wrote was about cats.
45. Many people have complained about there not being enough women or minorities in comics, but few people seem to have read the Martha Washington books.
46. Local can make you cry.
47. Love Fights is a screwball romantic comedy set against a world of superheroes. It also features a talking cat.
48. Usagi Yojimbo is a rabbit with a sword.
49. Next Men was the last time John Byrne was interesting.
50. Absolutely anything can happen when your characters don’t have to appear on lunch boxes.

* By “mainstream superhero comics” I refer to Marvel & DC’s traditional fare. Vertigo, Wildstorm, Max, and Icon are fair game, though I’ve tried not to rely on them too heavily.

** Of course, many superhero comics are more than “good enough”; several are downright awesome. They’re just not good enough to consume an entire medium.

And no, it’s not even the Spider-Man thing. The cover to Ultimate Power #7:

(Note Kitty and the Thing at the bottom)

And then the cover to Ultimate Fantastic Four #31:

Oh, and two other drawings I pointed out here.

The Thing might not be quite the same, but Kitty is certainly in the same pose he’s used for the Invisible Woman three times already – the disappearing leg-stump is a dead giveaway. At least he changed the costume this time.

It’s really pretty funny at this point. Imagine how many of these things I could find if I actually read any books he drew.

Speaking of the DC solicits, we get this “description” of All Star Superman #9:

ALL STAR SUPERMAN #9
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely & Jamie Grant
Cover by Quitely
Behold the Eisner Award-winning creative powerhouse in another fantastic exhibition of All Star bravura! Perils loom as Superman faces the strangest of adversaries.

The reason for this utter vagueness must be one of the following:

1. Grant Morrison hasn’t written the script yet;
2. Grant Morrison has written the script, but no one at DC understands what it’s about. Maybe it’s a Mtzlplk story written completely backwards and features Superman being turned into a flying goldfish by red Kryptonite.

Jock is awesome, as proven by the cover images for DC’s August books:

Is there a better cover artist working in comics today? His interiors are pretty darn awesome, too. I’m going to have to go home and re-read Losers.

I’d forgotten how good Local could be.

It’s understandable, I suppose. The book has shipped pretty sporadically for a while now. And while I loved the first three issues (the first four? I go back and fourth on #4, but more on that later), the last few issues have been merely good.

But #9 is very good. Very, very good, indeed.

In a way, I’m reminded of Six Feet Under, and not just because this issue is about death and remembrance. Six Feet Under was often a difficult show to like: At any given point in the series, there was probably at least one main character acting like a complete jackass; the show was never afraid to explore the unpleasantness of human beings. And the show hit something of a rough spot in the fourth season, along with That’s My Dog, an episode that is both loved and hated for its divergence from the show’s usual tone.

Local had its own That’s My Dog with the fourth issue, Two Brothers, when a series that seemed to be all about subtle character work was interrupted with violence. (Interestingly, both stories begin with a seemingly innocuous hitchhiker; but then, I suppose a lot of stories do.) Two Brothers was a tonal departure from the series, but not a thematic one: Local has always been about making choices and taking responsibility (or not). And regardless of your feelings on the story itself, Two Brothers – like That’s My Dog – set the stage for the rest of the series. Set things up, knock them down, and then pick up the pieces.

Poor Megan McKeenan, who seemed to be getting her life together after a dubious beginning, had everything shaken. In the fifth issue, she was obviously kind of fucked up, but still likeable. By the end of the sixth issue, though, the reader would be forgiven for thinking Megan a complete bitch. The seventh issue offers a bit of a reprieve of sorts – Megan’s not really in it, but instead we meet her cousin Nicky, who’s even more of a fuckup but without the virtue having made any effort to pull it all together. The eighth issue came back to Megan, who seemed to be getting it all back together.

And so, of course, Brian Wood & Ryan Kelly have to pull the rug out from under her again. (They’re really bastards, you know.) Megan receives the news that her mother has died, takes a trip with her boyfriend, and relives some old memories.

Yes, I realize I just spent three paragraphs summing up the series and then covered the latest issue in two sentences. Suffice it to say that if you were getting annoyed with Megan’s behaviour, all will be forgiven with this issue. It ties up the series so perfectly that this could very easily be the final issue; it helps to explain how Megan got to where she was when the series began. And if you’ve been reading the series from that beginning, it’s entirely possible you may feel the slightest hint of a tear as you read this issue.

Local has been something of a rarity in comics these days: A book deliberately written for the single-issue format. Wood and Kelly have so far created eight stories that stood almost perfectly on their own, though each issue built on the last. In this respect, too, the book reminds me of Six Feet Under: Even when the series hit a lull, even when the characters got annoying and the stories began to drag, it was always going somewhere, always building, always heading to some unspecified release point. For Local, the ninth issue is that release point: This is what it’s all been about so far.

In that way, actually, this ninth issue is something of a failure as far as self-contained stories go. I suppose it’s a perfectly good story if you haven’t been following Local, but if you know Megan’s story so far, this is a great comic. The best issue of the series to date, and quite likely the best single issue of a comic I’ve read this year.