The Avengers opens today. As near as I can tell from the Internets, I’m the last person in the world to see it. The New York Daily Newsreviewed it on Monday, since apparently everyone in the city has the option of going to a screening.
I hope to catch it this weekend, like a rube from the sticks.
Which brings me to the graphic story that has me most excited right now. Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland. Written by Harvey with fantastic art by Joseph Memnant, was just published by ZIP in collaboration with Top Shelf.
Cleveland, Ohio is a large, midwestern city, and, like many large midwestern cities, is a shadow of its former self. Unlike Chicago, it is not the City of Big Shoulders, nor is it the Hog Butcher of the World. It’s not like San Francisco, Miami or New York, a portal to the international scene. Cleveland is kind of schlubby, most famous these days for the fact that the Cuyahoga River caught fire… over a dozen times.
To me, Cleveland was the Big City. Growing up in Youngstown (about an hour and a half away), Cleveland to me was a place that was big where my town was small: the airport, the art museum, the library, the department stores. My father’s work took him more often to Pittsburgh (also about an hour and a half away), and he liked the Pirates and the Steelers. My mother liked the shopping better in Pittsburgh.
For me, there was no comparison. Cleveland was the city where Superman was born. Cleveland was the more rock’n’roll town, and had the best radio stations to prove it.
Pekar loved Cleveland for some of these reasons, and more. It’s his hometown, where he grew up and worked and married. He revels in the seemingly contradictory traditions of progressive politics, union membership, and racism.
The mix of history and personal reminiscence is both seamless and magical. Reading this book, you feel Cleveland as a place, not just a spot on a map, but a city where people live and work, dream and comfort each other. You root for the mass-transit system and the used book stores.
I was lucky enough to meet Harvey a few times, although never in Cleveland. I don’t have that chance anymore. Still, there’s a chance we might be able to keep more than his spirit in the city he loved. If you haven’t chipped in on this project, think about it. I’m told they could use more money.
I blame our tyrant-in-chief, that miserable cur of a backstabbing foreigner who lives in the White House. Yes, who else? Barack Hussein Obama. Stands to reason – it has to be his fault. There is no other reasonable explanation – hell, no possible explanation.
Last weekend, the Avengers movie opened in 39 overseas markets, made a whopping $178.4 million. What opened here? The Five Year Engagement. Oh sure, all us guys want to see that! We won’t get our Avengers fix until tomorrow. I have to wait almost a week before, movie money clutched in my sweaty grip, I ask the nice lady or gentleman at the monsterplex for a ticket, creep into the semi-dark theater, sink into a seat and prepare for moviegoing bliss. (My cell phone will be turned off. I don’t even have a laptop or a tablet. I’m a good audience member!)
What I’ll be seeing, in the following two-hour ecstasy fest, is the latest manifestation of the genius of Stan Lee. Years ago, before you were born, Mr. Lee revolutionized comic book publishing by… well, maybe by several things, but one of them was doing something there wasn’t even a name for back then (at least none that I ever heard): branding. Using what I think was a combination of intuition, native smarts, and years of sitting behind an editorial desk, Stan didn’t give us just comic books, he gave us Marvel Comics. So you didn’t go to he newsstand (this was before comic book shops existed) and buy an issue, say, The Amazing Spider-Man, you bought a Marvel comic that was about your friendly neighborhood web-slinger. And you were encouraged to get – to collect! – other Marvels, like Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk. These heroes seemed know each other and sometimes one of them would appear in another’s comic and so Stan wasn’t presenting mere stories, he was presenting stories that were park of a (more-or-less) coherent universe that you could (kind of) get to now and it was a lot more fun than the universe outside your window and you couldn’t wait until you could get the next issue
Stan’s pals at the movie studios are following his example and putting on our screens, not superhero movies, but Marvel superhero movies. They’ve been building the brand by such ploys as adding teasers to the end credits, brief scenes that referred to forthcoming films, thereby helping to create the theater version of the Marvel universe and, incidentally, creating anticipation for the next set of astonishments, much as the young Stan Lee did with coming issue blurbs and text pages.
Does the still-spry Stan approve? Hey, true believer, he does make those cameo appearances in the movies, doesn’t he?
At this point, if you have a wandering, non-linear mind, you might be wondering why Comrade Obama played us dirty and allowed the Avengers flick to debut in far places. Isn’t it obvious? We all know that Barack Hussein Obama wasn’t born in the land of the free. (Surely you heard that.) He isn’t a real American. So of course he favors the foreigners.
I used to provoke this asinine debate – one of a great many – that if we refer to comics published circa 1943 to 1950 as 52-pagers, we should refer to contemporary comics as 36-pagers. I always got pushback from my fellow fanboys; consistency is in the mind of the beholders, hobgoblins that we may be.
Well, finally, decades after I threw in the towel, this debate has been resolved. And not in my favor.
This physically came to my attention in the form of an advance copy of IDW’s Frankenstein Alive, Alive! It’s by Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson, which is some amazing pedigree. Of course, Bernie has been known for his efforts with the Frankenstein Monster since well before his first name grew that extra E, and Steve has been l’enfant terrible of horror-themed comics for the past decade. Both earned their high reputations the hard way: they worked for it. Joining the two is sort of like taking bits and pieces of two gifted bodies and stitching them together.
Hence, Frankenstein Alive, Alive! It is at least as brilliant as we have every right to expect. You’ll probably just gawk at the art for a couple hours, but the joy is totally revisited once you realize you’re actually supposed to read the thing. It comes out next week. If you want it early, get yourself your own column.
But that’s not my point… which is why I can get away with such a short review. After reading Frankenstein Alive, Alive!, I had the uncanny feeling something was missing. No, not my brain, Igor. I went back and counted the pages.
32. Not 36 counting the cover. 32 total. The cover was there because you can’t publish a pamphlet starting with page two, but it had what we in the publishing racket call a “self-cover.” That means there’s no four-page addition on higher quality paper surrounding the interior. It’s all of the same stock, all printed at once without the additional collating and binding step and it saves a bit on shipping costs, saving the publisher money. The story page count is 19 pages, a tad short but there’s plenty of groovy supplemental material.
So I checked another IDW book set for the same week’s release: John Byrne’s Trio #1. I haven’t read it yet, so you won’t have to suffer from another half-assed semi-review. But it, too, is 32 pages total. We get 20 pages of story here, but there’s advertising material in the back.
So, are we being short-changed? Well, maybe a tiny bit. For $3.99 we should get more than 19 or 20 pages of story. Otherwise, no, not in the least.
The thing is, self-cover comics have been quietly creeping up on the racks for a while now. I prefer to read comics on my iPad, so it took the power of a Niles/Wrightson collaboration to make be return to the traditional stapled way of life. I can hardly fault publishers for this effort, given the higher quality of paper stock generally used these days.
But it is a bit of a sea change, one of the last before the 36… sorry, 32 page comics pamphlet disappears into the digital ozone. And that saddens me, ever so slightly.
You know how sometimes you lie in bed late at night, eyes closed, willing your brain to stop humming that stupid pop song, or stop thinking about the errands you forgot to run today, or stop telling you to get up and write down that story you just had an idea for, because by gods you have to get up at 6 a.m. for work and your boss is going to be really super unhappy if you fall asleep at your desk?
Do you have a brain that works like that? A brain that never seems to shut off, and is always reminding you of ideas or tasks or things you need to write down right now or you might forget them and then they’ll be gone forever and wouldn’t that be terrible? Yeah, my brain is just like that; and at least a third of the time those ideas my brain won’t stop having are about comics and pop culture and what I think of them or want to write about them. Luckily (maybe) for you, I’ll now be writing down those ideas here on ComicMix each week for everyone to read. Hurrah!
Hi, by the way. I’m Emily, and I’m happy to be here as the newest ComicMix columnist. I’ve been writing in one form or another since directly after birth. (I believe this to be true even though I have seen no photographic evidence of it. This is because for years my dad mostly took photos on slide film, which requires a special projector to view, and so even though he swears up and down that there are many, many photos of me as a baby I’ve only seen about two, one of which featured me with birthday cake on my face and the other of which featured me dressed as a clown. But if I ever see more I am sure they will be of Baby Me writing very studiously). I’ve also been writing online since 2002, and blogging and tweeting (unofficially) as the Marvel character Deadpool since 2008.
Most recently, a number of webcomics written by me and drawn by artist Marc Vuletich have been featured on pop culture and comics movie news sites Reelzchannel and MTV Splash Page, and the lovely folks at the Tonner Doll Company featured a guest post by me about the awesomeness that is Deadpool.
But even with all that, I still have plenty to say here! For instance, did you ever wonder what Tony Stark or Loki or Black Widow might smell like? Next Tuesday, I’ll be reviewing the Marvel Avengers colognes and perfume that were designed to smell like the Avengers movie characters (and may even give one away to a lucky commenter)! Or perhaps you want to know why Cable & Deadpool was the most dysfunctionally awesome buddy adventure ever? I might just write about that. Did you like the webcomics I linked above? New ones may show up here! The debate about digital comics; a look at comics and merchandise marketing from a woman’s perspective; copyright infringement and legal issues in comics (did I mention I’m an attorney?) – no topic is safe from me! So I hope you’ll click on over each week to see what’s new.
In the interim, show of hands: who’s psyched for The Avengers on Friday? I know I am. In fact, I’m so excited(or perhaps insane) that I’m going to the Ultimate Marvel Marathon on Thursday so I can see all six relevant Marvel movies in a row. Anyone else here doing that? (And what’s in your Marathon Survival Kit?) Are you dressing up for the movie? Doing something else special? Tell me all about it in the comments so we can be excited together!
And don’t forget: I’ll be back next Tuesday, so Servo Lectio!
Today I’ve come up with a brand new superhero and I’m proudly unveiling him right here. ComicMix – meet The Lazy-Man™*
The date of this writing is April 29th, 2012 and it just so happens to be my birthday. Somehow after working all month on two other book projects a TV project and various other stuff like Comic Con and staying up drinking tequila most of last night, somehow Lazy-Man just came to me!
Wow. What an unexpected yet not unwelcome birthday gift!
I work really hard but last week was such a bitch on my time and gray matter that towards the end of the week I felt overwhelmed and a bit depressed. But somehow at the very depths of those emotions came Lazy-Man!
Who is Lazy-Man?
Why, Lazy-Man is all of us when we have reached a point where we just need to be lazy. I say Lazy-Man is all of us, but on the one in a billion chance that this bullshit idea I made up just because I’m too exhausted to think of something to write about catches on, let me be clear-Lazy Man is me and me alone.
Yes, Lazy-Man is me (if it hits big) you (if it goes nowhere) all of us (me, hits big; us, goes nowhere) and sometime we must embrace our inner Lazy-Man and recharge.
I see Lazy-Man as a six-issue mini-series, which coincidently fits my “must write about comics” criteria for ComicMix.
Lazy-Man’s story is told via his journal entries. The first of such are here as a ComicMix exclusive:
From The Journal Of Lazy-Man
April 29, 2012
Yesterday morning I did not exist. Yesterday afternoon I was not alive. Last night at around 11pm I was born fully formed.
My mother was called Tequila my father’s name was Fatigue. Together they made me. I am Lazy-Man! Beware me! Beware my wrath! Now go! Go before you fall victim of Lazy-Man!!
But-before you go, can you hand me the remote?
*Lazy-Man: trademark & copyright Michael Davis 2012. All Rights Reserved.
It’s interesting to watch different interpretations on a given character. Later this summer we’ll see Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/The Amazing Spider-Man and can compare/contrast it with Tobey Maguire’s version in the previous three Spider-Man movies.
For me, it’s even more interesting when you compare two different versions in two different media. You can do that with Spider-Man or any of a number of different superheroes recently. The upcoming Avengers movie will offer that in spades.
The one I’m focusing on here, however, is the character of U.S. Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens, created by Elmore Leonard in a number of short stories and books, the most recent being Raylan. He’s also the central character on FX’s Justified, which just wound up its third season recently.
For many, Elmore Leonard is the best crime novelist writing today and one of America’s best novelists – period. Lots of his stuff has been adapted to movies, including 3:10 to Yuma, twice, and Get Shorty, which resuscitated John Travolta’s career) He’s not always expressed pleasure with adaptations of his work but he’s pleased with Justified which is as should be seeing that he’s listed among the writers for the series and is among the executive producers.
The character of Raylan Givens is a throwback, a frontier type lawman in the modern world. He’s not above prompting the bad guy to draw on him, dispensing his own kind of justice in a way that works as justifiable homicide. Hence the title. He cuts it a little too close in Miami and gets sent back to Kentucky from whence he came and to which he’s not real keen to return.
The cowboy imagery is re-enforced by the cowboy hat that Raylan habitually wears. In the books and short story, he wears an open road Stetson hat, flat brimmed, similar (according to Leonard) to the hats worn by the Dallas Police at the time of the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. In the TV series, it’s a hand-modified Stetson 4x beaver with a basket weave embossed leather hatband, with a three piece buckle set. Does it make a difference? It does to Elmore Leonard who does not care for the TV version. I’ve seen both hats and, well, Elmore Leonard is wrong. There, I said it. And it underscores what has to happen in adapting what works on the page to what works on the screen, big or little. The hat on Justified is a better visual.
Raylan Givens is laconic, iconic, and charismatic, especially as embodied by Timothy Olyphant for the TV series. Elmore Leonard has a great way with dialogue and the TV series stays true to that. It also keeps true to Leonard’s worldview and sense of character. I read somewhere that the producers of the TV series approach the writing by asking, “What Would Elmore Do?”
In watching the series and reading the prose, it’s interesting to see how plot elements in Raylan were taken and adapted to the series, some more successfully than others. There’s a plot involving illegal harvesting of human kidneys that plays better in the novel than in the series, mainly because on TV it gets squeezed in as a subplot and done in essentially one episode.
On the other hand, the TV series has made changes that were brilliant. Boyd Crowder, played by Walton Goggins, dies at the end of the story Fire In the Hole. The TV series wisely let him survive and change and grow into a truly compelling character. Mags Bennett, played by Margo Martindale who won an Emmy for her portrayal, is new to the series, to the best of my knowledge, although her sons are in Raylan along with their father.
There’s a plot involving a coal company and the woman representing it to the community that it has poisoned and that’s about the same in both the book and the series. Elmore Leonard has used elements and characters that have appeared in the series just as the series has used characters and elements that have appeared in the stories.
It’s apples and oranges, I know, but if I had to pick, which would I prefer – the series or the novel? To be honest, I prefer the TV series. The novel, Raylan, is more like a series of linked short stories; each one has its own climax and then it’s on to the next one but there’s no overall climax. Each season of Justified has worked as an entity of its own and reaches a single climax to end a given season.
Both are worth the investment of your time and together they form a sort of alternate universe take on the main character, Raylan Givens. Same guy but slightly different incarnations. It’s a concept familiar to comic book readers or viewers of Fringe. Ah, Fringe. That’s another column at some point in the future.
Seriously, it happened so slowly, I never saw it coming. It’s long been a fact: Marc Alan Fishman is a card carrying member of the DC Nation. But then, something changed. Flashpoint was one epic-crossover-super-event-that-changed-everything too many. With the New 52, I’d made a steadfast rule: In order to conserve money and my sanity, any book that delivered two issues in a row that left me bored or was just terrible I would remove from my pull list.
Like every red-blooded nerd worth his salt, when a book is dropped from my box, I can’t help but seek to replace it with something new. And now that I look across the board, Marvel is now on equal footing, book-for-book with my pull list for DC.
More important, every Marvel book on that list is one that when I see it on the shelf, I get truly excited. Truth be told, I get Blue Beetle, Batgirl, Justice League Dark, Green Lantern Corps, and Resurrection Man – and they are good comics, but none of them excite me anymore. I’m slowly coming to terms with it; New 52 be damned… Make Mine Marvel.
Simply put, right now Marvel is putting out better books than DC. I welcome the flame war and argument from the interwebs. Based solely on the Marvel books I’ve read in the last three-four months, DC pales in comparison in story depth, quality, scope, and clarity. A few examples, you ask?
Take the Fantastic Four. Jonathan Hickman’s run on the title has been compared to Kirby and Lee’s initial run; and said with sincerity. His “War of the Four Cities” multi-year arc was as epic as any DC “Crisis” without the multitude of mini-series. While it did spawn a second book, FF, the grandeur has been well contained. Even better, FF brings the ideology of the family and creates an excuse to explore more of the Baxter Building collective without over-saturation. It’s a riff, not a rip-off. Compare this to the four Green Lantern titles being pumped out at DC and you can see how a little consolidation can really tighten up a title’s overall quality.
How about the newly relaunched Defenders? Matt Fraction’s “vacation” title is a glorious send up to an old and mostly forgotten secondary team… dusted off, polished up, and presented wonderfully in the modern age. While only five issues in, I’ve been nothing but impressed up until now. In fact, Defenders #4 easily tops my list of best comics I’ve read for the year. The year is early, yes, but amongst dozens and dozens of issues, I’ve little doubt it won’t falter from my top ten by years end. It’s a comic not afraid to be written with a smirk… that knows when to be deadly serious, or just go for the nut shot. Something Justice League International tried to do, and fell on its face for attempting.
For those following my reviews on Michael Davis World, you’ll no doubt also note my recent jaunt into Spider-Land with the Amazing Spider-Man title. With the promise of the “Ends of the Earth” storyline being a good jumping on point for new readers, I dove into a title and character I’ve always wanted to read, but never did because of the bad mojo that came with the book. Ask anyone about Spider-Man’s most recent bullet points and I doubt you’ll see a face light up when discussing One More Day, the Other, or even Spider-Island. That being said, the series thus far has been a joyous romp. A Saturday morning cartoon concept with a hidden maturity, that has a perfect balance of comic-book-quirk with well thought out plot development.
And over in Invincible Iron Man? Well, Matt Fraction is proving what a truly potent writer he is by shaking off the grime of the horrendous Fear Itself crossover crud and taking his baby book back to form. His long-winding plot of Mandarin’s careful and calculated destruction of Tony Stark has been a slow burn that’s been a long time coming. And when everything recently came to a head, we got a moment in comics I’ve dreamed of reading since I finished The Watchmen – an arc where the hero loses because he’s been out-matched. It was bold, ballsy, and has me chomping at the bit for more.
All this, and I’ve not even mentioned Daredevil or Ultimate Spider-Man. I’d love to, but well… I’ve not read them yet. But they are high on the list for me to catch up on, the second the next DC book takes a dive in my box. Resurrection Man? I’m looking at you.
Now, of course, Marvel isn’t perfect. Just a few weeks back on my podcast, a lifelong X-Men fan told me he’d literally given on comics all together because of the terrible decline of his favorite mutants. And let’s give credit where credit is due: Fraction and Hickman’s bold pacing is very much in-step with Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison’s work on Green Lantern and Batman over the last 60 or so issues. Anyone who read “Batman R.I.P.” can see what “The War of the Four Cities” or most of the run on Invincible Iron Man is being inspired by (not directly mind you… but certainly in conceptual scope). And DC is not without its own amazing titles. Action Comics, Batman, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, and Green Lantern always float to the top of my reading pile when I pick them up.
This of course leads me to ask the bigger questions. Was the New 52 not powerful enough overall to keep me from being lured away? Is Marvel just in a great rhythm right now? Will X-Men vs. Avengers cause some major crisis to interrupt all the goodness coming out in their top titles? Or with the second wave of new books (Dial H and JSA are both looking mighty fine to me…) hitting shelves soon, will DC reclaim me?
As a child growing up, I loved cartoons. At that time (the 1950s and early 1960s), that’s a bit like saying that I loved breathing. There were cartoons on Saturday morning, and cartoons every afternoon. The movie theater near my Grandmother’s house had Saturday matinees that were three hours of cartoons.
But I loved comic books more.
My husband, John Tebbel, was the first animation maven I ever met. He not only knew the difference between Disney and Warner Brothers, but he knew the individual directors, and quickly taught me how to spot Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. He explained who the Fleischer Studio was and why I should care.
We went to animation festivals in Ottawa, Canada and Annecy, France. I saw films by George Dunning that weren’t Yellow Submarine. I met Bill Scott and June Foray. We would go to the Jay Ward store when we were in Los Angeles.
Naturally, I tried to share my love of comic books. My success rate was lower. He liked Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. He loved Kyle Baker. Milk and Cheese made him laugh out loud. Still, he never quite got the superhero thing.
I’m not writing to celebrate two geeks in love. I’m writing about how sometimes, we let our differences divide us. Do you like Marvel or DC? The Big Two or independents? Broadcast or cable?
We defined our affection for two art forms that were graphic storytelling. One moved and one didn’t. One had finite time limits and one didn’t. Each of us, with our affection for our chosen art, could appreciate the other’s favorite.
I would like our political discourse to work at this level, but that isn’t going to happen as long as there is so much money and power involved. However, if there is anything that would make my husband’s life more significant, it would be if we could each of us share our love for pop culture with the rest of the world. Instead of fighting over which piece of the pie is the biggest or the best, we could have more pie.
I’m not as good-looking as Tony Stark – not even close. And I’m not a billionaire – not even closer. And as for technology…well, let’s just say that I’m not exactly an early adopter – more like an after-the-sun-cools adopter.
About two feet from where I sit, there languishes an iPod Touch that Mari got at no cost when we bought this computer because she’s a teacher. I don’t know how to make it work. Neither does she.
Her Kindle sat on a table for a month before the lovely and accommodating Perri Pivovar did some wizardry and now Mari’s reading the second volume of the Hunger Games trilogy off the Kindle screen (and enjoying it, you very much.) But without Perri’s kindness? Maybe Mari could have used the Kindle as a bookmark.
I’m reluctant to buy electronica because I fear the frustration I feel when the things don’t perform.
So when the editorial fates landed me the job of writing the monthly Iron Man comics a couple-three decades ago, I wondered what there was in the Tony Stark/Iron Man character for me to identify with. The first Iron Man I ever did was a single issue fill-in and I had Tony able to solve a problem only by shedding the armor that enabled him to claim superhero status (and feel free to read into that anything you like.) But when I agreed to do 12 Iron Mans a year, I knew that Tony’s metallic striptease was a one-time-only trope, best not repeated anytime soon, if ever.
So I had a hero whose very existence was based on gadgetry and I was cursed by Crankus, the evil god of technology, and how was I to bridge the gap between high tech fiction and the Luddite real life me?
Ah. A realization. I drive cars, don’t I? And Tony “drives” his armor and maybe therein lies the commonality between Mr. Stark and me that would save me whatever woe might come from doing stories about a guy I neither knew nor liked. Anyway, good enough. I embarked on what was, for me, a very satisfactory three-years as Iron Man’s chronicler-in-chief.
But I still had trouble with technology, even after I dropped dead in a café and was revived by John Ingallinera, Lizzie Fagan, Michael O’Shea and Bryan Holihan, who knew where a defibrillator was and how to use it. The gadget literally brought me back to life.
Maybe Crankus was easing up?
So a month ago, I decided that I’d had enough of not being able to understand song lyrics, conversations at parties and my wife’s comments on television shows we were watching, among other irritants. I had hearing loss. And a technological remedy existed. And that being the case, it was foolish vanity to go through life saying, “Huh?”
We went to the hearing aid place in a nearby town. I got tested and yep! – loss of hearing in both ears. Conversation was held, a down payment proffered and off we went, to return a few weeks later. I now owned two nearly invisible hearing aids. A new dawning? Should I have another shot at the iPod? Maybe get my own Kindle? A tablet with a Skype attachment? How about those video games the youngsters like?
I put ‘em on, went home and…
Discovered that the one for the right ear didn’t work.
All of a sudden I find myself in the midst of a half-dozen publishing projects. All are comics, and all but one are comics stories.
Here’s the rub: I’m dying to tell you about them. Really. I’d kill to tell you about them. But I can’t. I’m not the publisher, I’m not the artist, I’m not the writer of most of them, and I’m not the publicist. So it’s not my place to blab. I’m the editor, the dealmaker, and in at least one case the conceptualizer. So you’d think my ego, which even I call The Hulk, could handle a bit of a wait.
Well, no. That’s why I call my ego The Hulk. That’s why, when Jack Kirby came up with an entire living planet named Ego (Thor #132, cover-dated September 1966), I identified like crazy.
There’s another reason. These deals haven’t been papered yet. “Papered” is high-falutin’ dealmaker speak for “signed contract” or “signed letter of agreement,” which are the same thing. Anyway, any or all of them can still collapse. That happens all the time.
So my ego is so big I’m telling you these deals are happening even though they haven’t been papered yet. Of course, having a signed deal is no guarantee that a project will ever start, let alone be released. If you took all the development proposals, all the unreleased master tapes both audio and video, all the edited film footage and laid ‘em all end to end, it would stretch from the San Diego convention center all the way to Ego The Living Planet.
So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit excited. I’ll be working with friends old and new, including at least seven folks who are currently involved with ComicMix. There is no greater pleasure (with my clothes on) than doing creative work with good friends. People whose talent I can count on and the readers enjoy. People whose work habits are compatible with mine and vice versa. People I can call at 2 AM if they’re late on a deadline.
True story. Back when I was working at DC Comics in New York, I made an emergency trip to Chicago to be there for my father during his surgery. Of course there was nothing I could do during the surgery itself, but I was a ten-minute drive away from a freelancer who was almost a month late on a deadline. I borrowed my father’s car – hell, he wasn’t using it – and drove to said freelancer’s apartment. He wasn’t home, so I bribed the building superintendent into letting me in. I took a sheet of art board and scrawled in red marker “HEY! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU! YOU’RE LATE! I BETTER HAVE THE PAGES ON MY DESK BY MONDAY! Love, Mike Gold.” I taped it to his drawing table and then I returned to the hospital, stopping only for an Italian beef sandwich. Yes, I had those pages on my desk by Monday.
So pay attention and you’ll hear about all this stuff. I hope. Actually, we teased a couple of them at the C2E2 convention last week, so if you were there you can easily connect some of the dots. And I should be in San Diego annoying the masses with all this as well.
Huckstering is an intrinsic part of our popular culture. But I pride myself in my inherently total lack of common sense to promote nothing by name… and to do so months in advance.
The Avengers opens today. As near as I can tell from the Internets, I’m the last person in the world to see it. The New York Daily News reviewed it on Monday, since apparently everyone in the city has the option of going to a screening.
