Category: Comics

  • Gasp! Panic!

    Yet again, it appears the comics industry is doomed, because kids don’t read comics.

    Of course, that’s not really what the article is about. The article is about Marvel and DC superhero comics not being for kid. Which is true, for the most part, but it’s only really a problem if you run a business that orders 95% of your inventory from those two companies.

    I don’t have any problem with the idea that publishing superhero comics aimed almost exclusively at adults is a pretty dim idea, but Marvel and DC have plenty of dim ideas beyond that one. Even if they started publishing dozens of family-friendly books every month, it’s unlikely that many comic stores would actually order them, catering as they do to the twenty- and thirty-something crowds.

    It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing, though it makes me wonder: How many of the retailers quoted in the article make an effort to stock these books and attract a younger audience? Most comic stores – and there some very good exceptions – stock only a certain kind of product aimed at a certain audience, so how can they complain when they don’t seem to attract anyone else?

    Manga gets a cursory mention, but in the usual sense of being something other than comics – that is, kids are buying comics (that aren’t really comics) in stores that aren’t comic stores, so it doesn’t really count.

    No mention is made of the books that have had significant success with young readers, like Bone or American Born Chinese. Again, I guess those sales aren’t coming from the average comic book store.

    Thankfully, the article gives us one awesome example that totally proves its point:

    The power of graphic novels — lengthy, illustrated stories published in paperback or hardcover — is evident in the upcoming film “300,” which is meant to be a live-action translation of author-artist Frank Miller’s visual style. But “300,’ … [is] rated R, which means no one under 17 is supposed to get into the movie without being accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.

    Y’know, Zodiac is out this week, and it’s based on a book, and it’s rated R… does that prove any sort of point that no one publishes prose books for kids? It’s not the same thing, but it doesn’t feel too far off. 300 may be R, but Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man 3 are all sitting around the PG level.

    There’s a very telling quote in a similar article from Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley:

    “Books that lean more toward the humorous don’t do as well in the hobby market.
    [emphasis mine]”

    It’s so completely, depressingly true: The direct market is largely about a hobby, not about reading. No, comic shops don’t cater to kids, but neither do stores that sell souvenir spoons and Elivs Presley Commemorative Plates.

  • Someone buy me this. Right now.

    Seriously, this is the most fucking awesome thing ever.

    The brilliance will probably be lost on you if you’ve never seen (or at least read) Jeeves & Wooster. In that case, I offer you my pity and condolences, the sort one offers a 35 year-old virgin in Las Vegas.

  • I haven’t been reading Civil War…

    … But is it true that the ultimate point was that masked and unidentified vigilantes with incredible super powers enforcing the law on their own terms and waging destructive battles with super-powered villains is a bad thing?

    Because that seems kind of obvious.

    Other possible interpretations:

    • A guy with no superpowers but a bunch of guns is invaluable if you’re fighting a lot of people with superpowers.
    • Being an obscure black superhero is not a good idea.
    • Spider-Man is kind of stupid and flakey.
    • Iron Man is mean.
    • Mark Millar licks goats.
  • Why Are These People So Attractive?

    Courtesy of a link from When Fangirls Attack, my “Willow is Hot” post received a couple hundred hits.

    This is slightly embarrassing.

    Not because I’m ashamed of thinking Willow (or, more accurately, Allyson Hannigan) is hot, or even because it’s boorishly male of me. No, just because I like to think I have something more interesting to say than “ooooh, pretty” when people are actually reading this blog. The fact I was sandwiched between this and this may not mean I’m a chauvinistic male pig, but perhaps it calls for a bit more examination.

    So: Willow is Hot, revisited. Or, Hey, Is That Supposed to be Xander?

    The debate, it seems, starts here:

    That’s supposed to be Willow – who has grown a foot, had breast implants and stole Buffy’s pants. She has also apparently spent the years since we saw her last searching out the single most impractical garment ever made to wear as a top.

    Bah – I was so excited about season 8, but I’m not sure I can take it if every female character is drawn for men.

    While I’d dispute the pure cheesecake quality of the cover, that’s not entirely the issue. Besides, I’m a comics-reading male, so it’s always possible I’m oppressing people without realizing it. Let’s acknowledge, at the least, that artist Jo Chen has glammed up Willow quite a bit. I don’t think it’s too far off Season 5 & 6 Willow, but it’s a bit more Magazine Cover than we usually saw on Buffy. (Though not nearly as Magazine Cover as some of the actual magazines in which Hannigan appears and looks far less appealing) But is polishing up Willow to a Hollywood ideal the result a sexist publisher catering to a male audience, or is it something else?

    Exhibit A:

    Whatever happened to Willow managed to get Xander, too. He’s wearing a lot more clothes, obviously, and isn’t striking quite the dramatic pose, but still: That’s not really Xander. Xander, even in the later “mature” seasons, was awkward, dorky, and pretty much useless in a fight. (Also, annoying and excessively self-righteous, but that’s harder to convey in a still portrait)

    But the guy on this cover is cool, attractive, maybe even a little dangerous. He’s a mix of James Bond and Nick Fury. While the end result is different, the gap between “real” Willow and comic Willow is no larger than the one between our two Xanders. (Our Two Xanders being a great title for a TV show, if it weren’t for the fact that one Xander is annoying enough.)

    There may be problems with Chen’s approach to the characters – perhaps they’re too idealized, too stylized into typical heroic, dramatic roles. But it’s not necessarily down to male/female divisions or catering to male audiences. What’s good for the Witch is good for the Weenie.

  • Other Things that are Awesome

    A brief summary of things that have been awesome over the last few weeks. Not all of these things are fucking awesome, but they are nonetheless pretty darn cool.

    • The Complete Six Feet Under. I bought this after Christmas (I had a coupon – save $15 on a $250 box set! How could I afford not to buy it?), despite not having seen most of the series before. It’s such a great, twisted show with black humour and characters who are quite frequently entirely unlikeable. Everyone’s just so totally fucked up. Like real life, only moreso.
    • The Other Side: The final issue of Cameron Stewart & Jason Aaron’s Vietnam minseries came out last week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, if “thoroughly enjoyed” can be applied to what is ultimately a dark and depressing story. It’s true that the themes and ideas have been done before, but while Aaron doesn’t have a lot that is truly new to say, he does say what he has to say very, very well. Cameron Stewart’s art is amazing – while the story holds its own, Stewart sells it completely with the perfect mix of black humour, reality, and horror. A surprisingly excellent book. Aaron’s other book, Scalped is showing some potential after two issues, but is not quite awesome just yet. Nonetheless, it’s something worth checking out; just go for The Other Side first.
    • Dinosaur Comics. Because it makes no sense whatsoever. My favourite webcomic, by leaps and bounds.
    • Curses, by Kevin Huizenga. My most-excellent girlfriend got me this for a Valentine’s gift, quite fortuitous since I kept meaning to buy it. Huizenga’s got a simple style – there’s a blurb on the back comparing him to Hergé, of Tintin fame – but his stories are quite dark and surreal, and have something of a modern, slightly more absured Kafka feel. I’m only halfway through the book, and it definitely requires re-reading, but so far it’s quite excellent.
    • Absolute New Frontier. I really should have written a full post about this by now, but let’s just say that it’s exactly as awesome as everyone has said. Darwyn Cooke’s look at the birth of DC’s Silver Age heroes is reverential of the era and characters without being mired in the past, a story full of conflict, betrayal, and cynicism that’s nonetheless rooted in the very best of the superhero genre: Heroism. It builds slowly, with a huge cast, but it all comes together beautifully. Along the way, there are many wonderful moments, both big and small. And the Absolute format is gorgeous: This is the way great comics are meant to be read.
    • Alastair Reynolds. Technically a person, not a thing, that is awesome, Reynolds writes big-time, hard-core sci-fi novels. (Having used up my reserve of hyphens in that sentence, there will be no more for the rest of this post.) I’ve just started Absolution Gap, the final volume of his trilogy (that’s really a quadrilogy) about what’s been causing all these extraterrestrial extinctions that keep being discovered. He occasionally gets too big: I got halfway through Redemption Arc and thought “My God, isn’t it over yet?” Not because it’s a bad book, but just out of sheer exhaustion. And sometimes he gets bogged down in the scientific details, but that’s probably to be expected: He is an actual scientist, after all. Still, an amazing author with a fantastic imagination and sense of scale. Revelation Space, the first volume in the series, can be a bit dry, so start with Chasm City: It’s part of the tapestry, but not entirely central to it (though there are parts of Redemption Arc that probably make no sense if you haven’t read it). Plenty of mystery and magic. Also, the standalone Pushing Ice is an entertaining read, even if the pacing gets a bit dicey in the latter half of the book.
  • Classic Seventies Medical Excitement!


    Not enough comics these days offer “throbbing excitement.” Well, not a lot of all-ages ones, anyway.

  • My Favourite TV Redhead Still Looking Good

    I’m still not sure if I’m going to buy the Buffy Season 8 comic — okay, I’ll probably pick up the first issue at least — but regardless of how long I’ll keep reading it, I’ve gotta say that I love Jo Chen’s cover for #3:


    I make no secret of being one of the many who fell in love with Willow. And this cover is a much more pleasant to reflect upon than Alyson Hannigan’s post-Buffy career.

  • Also Awesome: Free Bryan O’Malley

    Courtesy of Chris Butcher, the very nice cover to Comics Festival, the absolute best thing (probably) going on Free Comic Book Day. Some retailers might not order this one: See that yours does. How can you possibly miss something this awesome?

  • Wormwood returns

    One of my favourite “pleasant surprise” books of 2006 was Ben Templesmith’s Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse. I picked it up pretty much on a whim and thoroughly enjoyed it. I keep meaning to write something about it more fully, but never get around to it. Suffice to say that it’s kind of what you’d get if you made Hellboy as a sitcom, and it’s pretty darn great.

    The fifth issue (starting a new storyline) comes out this week, and Templesmith has a nice preview over at his livejournal. Go and check it out – it’s really a fun book. There are leprechauns in it.

  • New Beginning: Crossing Midnight #1-3

    It’s an unfair comparison, but probably an unavoidable one: How does Crossing Midnight, Mike Carey’s new book, stack up to Lucifer, his old one? They’re both Vertigo, they’re both fantasies about mortals ensnared in the plans of the gods… it’s only natural to compare. Carey is even revisiting Japanese mythology, an area he explored nicely in Children and Monsters and came back to for a final look in Evensong.

    But Midnight does have its own identity – as much as a series can have one after three issues – and a different approach. And I’d go so far as to say that if you enjoyed Lucifer, you should at least try the first few issues of Crossing Midnight. But other than that, we shall speak no more of Lucifer, and look at the new book on its own merits.

    The book is, in brief, about a pair of twins whose lives are tied up in supernatural forces. After praying to his grandmother’s shrine, a father is gifted with a second, surprise child, born minutes – on the other side of midnight – after the first. And while the slightly older Kai grows up fairly normal, Toshi seems oddly protected from certain dangers. Things come to a head when the Lord Aratsu, a spiritual figure of some sort with a thing for blades, arrives to demand the teenage Toshi accompany him as part of her father’s bargain. Naturally, she’d rather not go with the strange man.

    In the opening three-issue arc, Carey sets up the basic setting and characters, and at least some of the themes that will run the series. There’s even a mini-resolution to the opening arc, though it’s obviously one with a great bit “To Be Continued…” sign at the end. The two leads, Toshi and Kai, don’t have much in the way of personality just yet: Kai is the sensible one, while Toshi is the rebel in the family. Mom is sensitive and caring, while Dad is overworked and possibly involved in something shady. There’s an all-knowing police detective with an odd assistant, the mean guy with all the flying knives, and an unhappy dragon samurai.

    There’s much more of a real world emphasis here than in Lucifer (I know I said I wouldn’t bring that up, but whatever): The twins’ family life is important, and not all of their magical problems will have magical solutions. Indeed, it’s hard to say where one begins and the other ends, as the police detective seems to know more than he’s letting on.

    Art comes courtesy of Jim Fern and Mark Pennington, who have some definite strengths and weaknesses. Their character work is very nice, offering visuals that are clean and realistic, but not overly so. And they do some excellent work on some of the spookier, darker scenes, aided ably by ace colourist Jose Villarrubia. There’s also a great flashback/fairy tale sequence done in a more traditional Japanese style that I hope returns in future issues. But some of the bigger, magical scenes just don’t pop like they should: Aratsu’s grand entrance, with knives swirling about him, seems fairly underwhelming. It’s a fairly subjective complaint, I suppose, but a significant one: While Crossing Midnight may be grounded in the real world, it needs that added oomph when some of the big, fantastic moments happen. (It’s probably unfair at this point to mention the lovely covers by J.H. Williams III, or to fantasize about him drawing the entire series. Alas.)

    Crossing Midnight has yet to really wow me, but it’s only been three issues. Nonetheless, Carey has created a setup with great potential, established some mystery without being overly vague convoluted, and introduced intrigue, with multiple parties taking an interest in Toshi and Kai’s fate. As is Carey’s strength, he’s building a strong supporting cast with an array of distinctive motivations and voices. While the first issue didn’t immediately grab me, there’s a definite improvement over the first three, as things begin to build and the suspense and mystery tighten. I’m doing it again, but what the hell: The book is showing many of the strengths that made Lucifer one of my favourite reads, and I’ve got some very high hopes for it. I’ve got faith that Mike Carey won’t let me down.