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Medium Rare, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • November 29, 2007

You can learn the damnedest things in the most unexpected places

I was paging through last week’s Entertainment Weekly, the one where they anoint their entertainers of the year, and came across four women – Glenn Close, Mary Louise Parker, Kyra Sedgewick, and Holly Hunter – all grouped together by the fact that they are over 40, that they are starring in their own TV shows on cable channels, and all had a uniting reason for doing so: the work simply wasn’t out there in movies for them.

Okay, that’s not news. And that’s what wrong. Pop culture is a reflection of our society and the way that it chooses to show certain demographics of people – including sometimes their omission – says a great deal about our society and what and who we value. While the article made me think of older women, the same point can be made for other minorities. We’re talking not only of movies and television but comic books and other entertainments as well. It is not only the portrayal of these groups – to which there is some increased sensitivity – but their omission that reveals how our society sees itself. (more…)

DC responds to piracy — 2½ years later

  • News
  • November 28, 2007

There’s been a lot of talk about how DC and Marvel started going after scanners and torrent sites this Thanksgiving weekend, and now Z-Cult has agreed to take down all Marvel comics and wait a month before posting any DC books.

To which my response is: what took you so long?

I have particular reason to say so: I met with DC’s vice president of legal affairs, Lillian Laserson, and her assistants, Paula Lowitt and Jay Kogen, about the issue of scans available online back in April 2005– over two and a half years ago.

At the two hour meeting which covered legal issues, business cases, media ecology, and public relations, I delivered a spreadsheet to them that was current as of April 1, 2005, showing them how many DC comics had been scanned in and were available online. This wasn’t a spread sheet I created, mind you, it was created by the scanning community showing their progress. And they had made some serious progress: I pointed out that of all the comics published by DC in their (at the time) 70 year history, over 75% of them had already been scanned in and were available online. The numbers were closer to 90% post-Crisis. In short, the genie was already pretty much out of the bottle. (more…)

Happy 45th birthday, Jon Stewart!

  • News
  • November 28, 2007

Jon Stewart, American comedian, iconic host of Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show" and hero to geeks all over turns 45 today. In an era of corruption and cynicism, Stewart leads the pack in irreverent humor.  His open criticism of the Bush administration and personality punditry shows gives its viewers hope in the face of governmental disappointment.  Granted, the president and his cronies have provided Stewart with ample material, but faced with the alternative, I think we would all prefer that Stewart have to work harder to make fun of the times at hand than have them so tragically, if easily, at his disposal. 

Happy Birthday, Jon– and hell, if we can’t cry about it, thanks for helping us laugh.

Obligatory comics related video. Damn, he’s young.

 

 

 

 

Comics, community and The 99

  • News
  • November 28, 2007

elayne100-4266390One of the things I mentioned in a previous column is how frustrating it is to many readers that reviewers have so many negative things to say about comics and so few positive ones — one of the reasons being, of course, that it’s simply easier (and, for many, more fun) to slag on someone else’s hard work than to praise it, to pick at the missteps rather than examining the story as a whole.  I still suspect this ties in with why so relatively few reviewers discuss the art in a comic book; as they’re writers, it’s easier to concentrate on just the writing, which one can then proceed to negatively nitpick to one’s own standard of personal amusement, rather than learning about how to talk about the main thing that separates comics from prose work, from movies, from just about any other form of entertainment.  But I digress.

I’ve had the first four issues of a comic book series in front of me for months, wanting to talk about them. This was before the series even debuted in the US, and now the first two issues have already appeared in stores. And with one thing and another in my crazy life, I haven’t had the time nor the wherewithall to actually sit down and review anything. And it’s become, as these things do, rather an albatross ’round my neck that I haven’t gotten to it. After all, a wonderfully talented, amazing woman who happens to edit the books sent them to me in good faith that I’d get to reviewing them sooner or later. And after all, wasn’t I the one who did over four years’ worth of weekly reviews on Usenet, covering at least a dozen comics during some of those weeks? What, besides life’s vicissitudes, was preventing me from sitting down and doing this review?

Sooner or later we all have to face our own procrastinating natures. For me, the approach of the year’s close and the feeling of community that means so much to me in this industry prompted me to finally get down to it. After three introductory paragraphs, naturally. Has the time finally come for me to say a few words about The 99 from Teshkeel Comics? Well, yes and no. I’m not going to do a structured, formal review per se, but discuss the series more in terms of its inspiration and ideas. (more…)

Our nights in Columbus

  • News
  • November 27, 2007

After a few rough nights on the road, ComicMix Radio is back on schedule with a new week and a great post-holiday stack of new comics and DVDs to run through for you, plus:

  • News from MidOhioCon on a John Byrne JLA and a Barry Kitson Spider-Man
  • Two covers coming on Hulk #1 (and aren’t you shocked?)
  • You could own one of those Tim Sale paintings from Heroes – if you hurry!

You will never know how unless you Press The Button!

 

 

WSJ: Why your newspaper’s comics pages bore you

  • Uncategorized
  • November 27, 2007

From the Wall Street Journal, Joanne Kaufman’s article on why your comics page in your newspaper is making you snooze:

Janet Grimley had some hard-won investment wisdom to share with colleagues at a gathering earlier this fall of the American Association of Sunday and Feature editors in Savannah, Ga. "Look at your comics pages like a stock portfolio," advised Ms. Grimley, an assistant managing editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Diversify. You need to have some risky comics," for instance the slightly subversive observational strip "F Minus," and "some safe purchases like the old favorites." Such "safe purchases" would include blue chips like "Blondie," "Beetle Bailey," "Dennis the Menace" and "Hagar the Horrible."

Heaven forfend anyone thinks of adding an additional page to the comics section or anything. I mean, it’s not like the comics section is one of the most read sec– pardon?

"Many editors like to think Pulitzer Prizes sell newspapers, but comics sell them too — and probably more than Pulitzer Prizes."

And papers wonder why they’re losing readers. Coming up next: USA Today decides they’re no longer going to cover Tennessee, citing cutbacks.

Jack of Fables V2: Jack of Hearts Review

  • News
  • November 27, 2007

Brand extensions can be tricky things. Sometimes you end up with Lucifer, but sometimes you get Witchblade Takeru Manga instead. Jack of Fables, from DC, was a clear attempt to extend the brand identity of the Fables series, written by Bill Willingham and mostly penciled by Mark Buckingham, with a companion series about one of the more interesting characters from that world. As far as brand extensions go, it hews most closely to the Sandman Mystery Theater model: the writer of the main series is involved (though it’s always difficult to tell, from the outside, just how much involvement that is) and the tone and style is very close to the original.

I wasn’t completely thrilled with the first Jack of Fables plotline (which I reviewed on my personal blog), finding it a bit too heavy-handed and dark. Jack is an unrepentant rogue, and to care about a rogue, he has to either not be too nasty to people, or mostly run into much worse folks than himself. Either way, he has to have a lightness of touch – the story can’t focus on his worst impulses. (See Jack Vance’s novels The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel the Clever for one of the best examples of the form.)

Jack is mostly acted upon in the title story of this volume, which is good: a rogue off balance is more interesting, and his scramblings add a feeling of urgency to the proceedings. But that’s actually the second story in this volume, so I have to backtrack.

Jack of Hearts, the book, starts with a two-issue story called “Jack Frost,” framed as a tale Jack tells some of his fellow escapes from the magical prison from the first volume. They’re hiding high in the mountains from those who would recapture them, and Jack mentions that he was once Jack Frost…and so of course has to explain. (more…)

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Is Iron Man Mike Hammer? by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • November 27, 2007

schepper__mike_hamme_60417h-4232768So where we at?  For the past month or so, we have, in a scattershot and disorganized way, been discussing the various elements involved in the evolution of superheroes.  I don’t think we’ve come to any conclusions worthy of being preserved for the ages, nor should we: things change, darnit. But maybe a little tentative upsumming would not be inappropriate.

Upsumming:

Haberdashery: There is currently a trend away from putting superdoers in costumes, though the big bucks movie heroes are still wearing the suits and, judging from the films I know about that are in development, this will not change in the foreseeable future.  But most entertainment consumers — I’m excepting comics fans here — get their heroism, super and otherwise, from television and maybe because of tv production hassles, costumes aren’t common.

Powers: We’ve agreed (haven’t we?) that for a long time the superbeings of mythology and folklore got their powers from some supernatural agency: they were gods, or demi-gods, or friends of ol’ Olympus,  or something.  Or they were agencies of darkness — black magicians of one kind or another.  Then science became the rationale, most famously with Jerry Siegel’s extraterrestrial origin of Superman.  Last, and decidedly least, there was technology allowing the good guy to do his  stuff. And now…well, it’s anything goes time.  Look at the current television offerings: we have a superhero private eye whose abilities are due to his vampirism, which we can call magic; a technology-enabled superhero(ine); and a whole bunch of peripatetic whose gifts have “scientific” explanations, or so it currently seems.

(more…)

Starman Over Ohio

  • News
  • November 26, 2007

Direct from the floor of the Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, we introduce you to a creator who has taken the joy and pain of working in a collectible toy store and made it into a fascinating web comic. Meet David Willis and his creation, Shortpacked!  Plus:

• DC steps up and collects Starman in a great omnibus project

• Thor sells out again — deja vu?

• Terry Moore is back in the world of self publishing — an Echo of future past, as it were.

And you should meet Captain Ohio, so Press The Button!

 

 

Comics gives back

  • News
  • November 26, 2007

Comics folk are known for their generosity  year-round but, as the seasons turn and the nights turn colder, the spirit of giving seems to kick into overdrive.

Out in Portland, OR, Floating World Comics is all set to hold their Spacenight tribute to Bill Mantlo on Friday, December 6 (coincidentally, the birthdays of at least four comic book creators of which I know).  As many people are aware, in 1992 the longtime Marvel mainstay was struck by a hit-and-run driver and suffered a closed-head traumatic brain injury from which he has never recovered, so as you can imagine the medical bills are formidable. If you can’t make it out to Oregon, you can always donate to the Spacenite – Bill Mantlo Fund via the above link.  The Oregonian has more information about the event.  And of course you can still order Mantlo: A Life in Comics from David Yurkovich’s Sleeping Giant Comics.

And the Hero Initiative blog features a very touching story about the latest recipients of that organization’s largesse.  As Laura Gjovaag says, read the whole thing including the comments, "Then go to CBGXtra.com and click on the banner ad to donate a dime to HERO."  Or more, if you can spare it!

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