Monthly Archive: July 2007

MICHAEL DAVIS: Do Over

  • News
  • July 20, 2007

michael-davis100-5644230The other day I met a young lady at an airport. She looked around 16 or so. I noticed her looking at the comic book I was reading. When I was done I gave it to her. We started talking. She is a young artist who is struggling with her weight. She is being picked on at school and has one real friend. She wants to be a comic artist and is a big fan of Static Shock. She rarely goes outside and says that she sometimes wishes she were not born. She also has a family, which is a little odd. I told her that her family does not define her and that one day what is happening to her will help her. She wished she could start over. Before I could tell her anything else her father noticed we were talking and told her to “Get the **** over here.’

I never got her name, but I hope she remembers the ComicMix information I gave her so she can read this. This is for her…

When I was in grade school I had a terrible reputation. I was known as a punk kid who could not fight. When I was very young I was raised by my mom, my sister and my grandmother. Being raised by three women you tend to get a lot of advice like this,

“You are better than that.”

“Just walk away.”

“Sticks and stones.”

From time to time, my sister would have a different slant on things. Her advice really depended on how she felt that day. I would get, ‘Who cares what he said?’ Or ‘I can’t believe you did not kick his ass!’ That kind of mixed advice is enough to land any kid in therapy.

Living in the projects the last thing you want to known as is a punk. If you are then you better hook up with a group of friends or a gang who can look after you. Either that or you need a family member who was crazy so people would leave you alone for fear of that crazy relative of yours. I actually have a crazy cousin. He murdered four people in a drug-induced state. He was my favorite cousin until he did that. I have not spoken to him in more than 30 years; that’s how long he’s been in jail. I am not one of those people who think that blood is thicker than water.

Nope. Not me, I’m not that guy.

I don’t care who you are, you murder four innocent people to support your drug habit, then you are out of my life, period. Before I get all kinds of comments saying that I am heartless and that family is everything consider this: you may stick by a family member no matter what and I respect that, but I’m not you. As loud as I can get sometimes I am a real simple guy. My simplicity is almost comical to my family and friends. I only need one thing to make me content, that one thing is piece of mind.

If he ever gets out of jail then do I really want him around me? Do I really want to hear him explain why he did it? Do I really want to share holidays with this stranger? Make no mistake, the moment he killed four people he was no longer my favorite cousin, he was a stranger because the cousin I knew would not have done that. Yes, I have forgiven him, but that’s not even the point because the people he needs to forgive him is the family of those kids (yes, kids) he killed.

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Super Hero Comics and Art

  • News
  • July 19, 2007

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I took my two sons (ages six and nine) off to the Montclair NJ Art Museum Thursday afternoon for an exhibition with the unwieldy title Reflecting Culture: The Evolution of American Comic Book Superheroes. (The picture at the top is the free giveaway comic that MAM has in lieu of a catalog or list of exhibits.)

The materials on exhibit are a roughly even mixture of original art and published comics, ranging from a 1906 Little Nemo in Slumberland page to an issue of Marvel’s recent Civil War. The focus, though, is on the major superhero comics characters, from the Golden Age through today. So there’s a lot of Superman and Batman in the earlier sections, and then a lot of Marvel heroes once the exhibit gets into the 1960s. The original art tends to be by major names – I remember seeing work by Dave Cockrum, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, and Dave Gibbons – including some very well-known interior pages and covers.

The exhibition is organized around real-world trends and events: World War II, the Wertham years of the ‘50s, the “relevance” years of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and so on up to a display case of 9/11 comics. The small size of the exhibition and tight focus on superheroes doesn’t always work in its favor – their Wertham area contains no EC horror comics, and I didn’t even see any reference to Wertham’s claim that Batman and Robin’s relationship was essentially homosexual. There also doesn’t seem to be a guiding philosophy other than “comics reflected their world,” which is applied very simplistically and obviously. (There’s all the covers you expect from the late ‘60s, for example – the “Speedy is a junkie,” the “black Green Lantern,” the “why do you always help the purple people,” and the Nehru-jacketed depowered Wonder Woman.) (more…)

Who’s Porg?

  • Uncategorized
  • July 19, 2007

0200733072500-9292714The British media have been busy snapping photographs of "Porg" (not his real name), who’s been hanging around the set of  "Voyage Of The Damned," this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special. This is the one that hooks U.K. pop singer Kylie Minogue up with the temporarily companionless Doctor, as currently played by David Tennant.

It seems Porg – that’s just his on-set nickname, by the way – crashes the Titanic’s launch party by donning a white dinner jacket. Hey, look, Superman fooled people by putting on glasses… Anyway, it is believed the alien will not be smoking cigarettes on-camera.

The Doctor finds his TARDIS materializing on the Titanic, where he is joined by an on-ship waitress named Astrid (Minogue) to save the planet from the evil red spikey thing and, no doubt, tons of CGI. Mr. Tennant has some scenes where he doffs his trademark longcoat for a tuxedo.

doctor-who-4The one-hour ""Voyage Of The Damned" airs on the BBC, aw, you guessed it, on or around Christmas. The second season of the spin-off series Torchwood is expected to begin a couple weeks later.

X-Men Make Noise!

benturpin-8344189In a world where most of the comic industry is trying to "do it digital" we found a guy who is bucking the system with a new project in print only – and on today’s Big ComicMix Broadcast we reveal his story! Plus news on Image’s new Dynamo 5 collection, big heat in the X-Men titles, how you and someone you know can be a "Simpson" and some old rockers who rose out of the ashes to go multi-platinum.

Press The Button – we need to sample your DNA 

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Today’s Smoky Comics Links

  • News
  • July 19, 2007

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Marvel editor Tom Brevoort posts Mark Millar’s original memo/pitch for Civil War.

Comic Book Resources presents the third part of their look at Homosexuality in Comics.

Blogcritics reviews a pile of DC and Image comics, starting with Dynamo 5 #3.

Blogcritics also has a Marvel comics review, and is particularly fond of Nova #4.

Forbidden Planet International reviews a couple of Marvel Comics from years past..

Comics Reporter reviews Ted May’s Injury #1.

Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog reviews the saga of the Mighty Marvel MegaMorphs.

Hannibal Tabu reviews his purchases this week for Comic Book Resources.

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JOHN OSTRANDER: Potter’s End

  • News
  • July 19, 2007

ostrander100-7365603We’re at something of a cultural crossroads.

On July 21, Saturday, the last new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, will be published. With this, J.K. Rowling completes her story and a literary phenomenon is completed. Yes, I know there are two more movies and scads of related tie-ins still to come but the story itself will be complete. We’ll know how it ends.

I have a mistrust of anything that labels itself an “instant classic.” It suggests adding water to a half-baked idea, mix, and you have something for the ages. For something to be classic, time must pass. The work must speak to more than one generation. In the 1920 and the 1930s, the detective Philo Vance was all the rage; today, virtually nobody has heard of him, let alone read him.

All that said, I do think the Harry Potter books have the potential to become classics, to be read and loved by future generations. There is a timeless quality to them; they create their own separate but accessible world; and – as with all truly great children’s literature – they are accessible to adults as well as children. I’m 58 years old; I write GrimJack and have written things like Wasteland. I’m a fan of hard-boiled noir detective fiction and, yes, I’m a Potter-head as well.

What is going to decide whether or not the Potter books become classics or not, I think, is going to depend on how author J.K. Rowling winds up the series. I have nothing but respect for Ms. Rowling; she went from being a single mother on welfare when she wrote the first Potter book to being worth more than the Queen of England as she winds up the series. By the end of the summer, they’ll have to start inviting her to G8 meetings. On a simple commercial level, the writer in me is in awe.

The writer in me also admires her clear-headed vision of herself and of her work. I’ve dealt with fans, my own and Star Wars fans, and while I love them I know how fanatical some can get. There can be this sense of identification with a work to where they can feel entitlement or ownership even above the creator his or herself. On a video, I heard Ms. Rowling address this and say, pretty close to verbatim, “Is it important to me what the fans think? Absolutely. Should it change one word of what I’m doing? Absolutely not.” For the record, I think Ms. Rowling is spot on.

As I was saying, however, whether or not the Harry Potter books go on to become a classic or a flash in the pan will depend on this final book – on how she winds up the series. That ending must satisfy everyone, young readers and older ones alike, who have made an emotional investment that spans years. That doesn’t necessarily imply a happy ending; the movie Casablanca doesn’t have a “happy” ending in that the two lovers, Rick and Ilsa, are together. But, boy, does the ending satisfy the viewer.

There’s been a lot of speculation about how the series will end. Word has it that two of the series’ characters will die and that one of them could be Harry Potter himself. Since this is my last shot at it before the book comes out, I’m going to chime in with my own opinions/speculations. WARNING: SAID SPECULATIONS WILL NECESSITATE REVEALING EVENTS THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN PREVIOUS BOOKS. IF YOU’RE NOT CAUGHT UP AND HAVE SOMEHOW AVOIDED LEARNING WHAT’S HAPPENED AND WANT TO LEAVE IT THAT WAY, GO READ SOMETHING ELSE. NOT THIS.

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Scream, Harry Potter, Scream!

  • Uncategorized
  • July 18, 2007

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Various torrent sites, and others, have posted what are claimed to be scans of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, implying that either a few copies of the US edition have escaped the strict security measures or that some sneaky hacker has Mad Photoshop Skillz. This has caused just one or two small news stories, such as:

The Boston Globe runs another countdown story, this time quoting the Massachusetts governor, who claims to be a big Potter fan. (And it may even be true, though any time a politician claims to love something that millions of his constituents are currently doing, it has to be a bit suspect.)

Peace Arch News, man, gives the South Surrey spin, man, on Pottermania, man.

The Sydney Morning Herald wants to let the book speak for itself.

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Big-Time Comics Links

  • Uncategorized
  • July 18, 2007

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Comic Book Resources has the second half of their look at Homosexuality in Comics.

Brian Cronin at Comics Should Be Good has a new, useful, term for our collective little dictionary of comics: False Epiphany Characters. (Also for that same dictionary, and from the same place: Grace Notes.)

Steven Grant gives us a thumbnail history of the convention once and forever known simply as “San Diego.”

And Josh Elder (any relation to Will, I wonder?) of the Chicago Sun-Times looks at the launch titles for DC Comics’s Minx line.

Borders is moving Tintin in the Congo to the adult section in the USA as well (after British complaints), reports Fox News.

Edward Champion thinks the “real books” industry should take an idea from the comics world and institute “Free Book Day.” I think that’s a splendid idea.

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Meet the Real Sgt. Rock?

  • News
  • July 18, 2007

june5_bb-sgt-rock-3950821Perhaps the comic book world has achieved a higher level of respectability. According to WCBS radio in New York, military recruiters have discovered two new and potentially lucrative areas to ply their trade, as they have started targeting shopping mall food courts and comic book stores.

Whereas at first this might seem like a clever (or, given the nature of shopping mall food, desperate) approach, at least three groups of people are upset with the practice: parents who don’t want their kids to go to Iraq, mall managers who are accustomed to renting space to recruiters, and comic book collectors who are concerned about receiving their alternate cover editions in Falusia in mint condition.

It’s hard to say if this approach has been worth the effort, but many readers have noticed the increased level of military recruitment advertising in DC and Marvel comics. I’ll have to check to see if such ads have been appearing in Rick Veitch’s Army @ Love.

Artwork copyright DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Scout, Vol. 1

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It’s a good time to be a comics fan of my age – someone in his thirties who started reading comics in the late 1980s – since there’s been a continuing wave of reprints of the better comics of those days in more permanent form. A lot of things that I hadn’t read in a decade or more, because the original issues are bagged up in longboxes now buried under other things in a messy basement, are coming back into print on slick paper with square covers. It’s very nice to have these things in a form that fits on a shelf, but I do sometimes worry that some things that I loved at eighteen won’t be as compelling to me at thirty-eight.

I think I was on board for Scout when Eclipse started publishing it in 1987; I’d been following comics for a year or so then, and I knew Truman’s work from GrimJack, which he illustrated over John Ostrander’s scripts. I know I loved it immediately, and have been known to grouse, in the years since, about wanting all of the sequel series that Truman had sketched out, way back then. (Scout: Marauder and Scout: Blue Leader, which I’m still waiting for…but I’m also waiting for Ty Templeton to return to Stig’s Inferno and Zander Cannon to pick The Replacement God back up, so I may just not know when to give up on things.)

I was a bit apprehensive to go back to Scout after twenty years. On the one hand, I was pretty sure I’d still be happy with Truman’s art, since the recent GrimJack reprints (on much nicer paper than back in the day) showed off all of the little details of his line work, and that still thrilled me. But I remembered that Scout was a post-apocalyptic story, and I’ve developed an allergy to those since having kids. (It’s just one of those things – if a book is set in the near future, I work out how old my sons would be in that world, or how old I might be, if I’m not dead yet, and try to figure out what I or they might be doing. Stories that slaughter my family and I, especially as part of megadeaths off-stage for cheap pathos, aren’t things I’m as interested in any more.)

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