The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Marc Alan Fishman: What To Do At A Bad Comic Con

 

San Diego Comic ConA week ago Unshaven Comics had the pleasure to attend a convention in flux. The promoters – good, honest people – take this show to several smaller town and cities across our neck of the woods over the course of the year. I won’t divulge their name, nor the specific towns. Suffice to say the con was more or less akin to the conventions of yore versus the now-typical megacon. A single space occupied mostly by vendors, with a solid dozen or so independent craftsmen, creators, and miscellaneous geek-adjacent business-folk.

To their detriment, the convention grew from a single day endeavor to two. In doing so the minimal crowds that came were basically split. Twice the days meant twice as much transportation costs with little in the way of measurable sales increases. And because I like to be fully transparent about the plight of the indie creator: we sold less books at this show than the same show put on for a single day back in December.

It was, to Unshaven Comics’ till, a bad show.

But I’m forever an optimist – looking for a silver lining even when I need not go through the motions. When a show is not up to snuff, what do you do if you’re there to make money? Some slash their prices and attempt to break even with their sunk costs. Others cut bait and go home early. Unshaven Comics subscribes to the “make lemonade” methodology. We dig our heels in, enjoy the few victories we get, and we use the time to make strides at future shows.

So, what of those few victories? For us this past weekend, it was being able to take the time to really get into a deep discussion with someone who bought our book. It was having the ability to produce some extra sketch cards to fill our sample books to entice future commissions. It was being able to get up and talk to plenty of the other artists and vendors in attendance and network. In doing that, I now have a pile of business cards with potential for adventures down the line; a podcast looking to have us on right when our future crowdfunding campaign launches, a vendor who will be able to produce us some amazing cosplay materials, another who can assist us in producing some affordable up-sell merchandise, and lastly an artist who committed to producing a pin-up for the aforementioned campaign. Now, I’d certainly call that a win in the face of a loss!

If I can digress fully (kinky, eh?), allow me to end on an anecdote that reassures me that my commitment to being an indie creator will always be about the journey not the destination. During the show, a little girl came poking around my side of the table, as I was coloring in a sketch card. “Excuse me. Could you please make me a Fennekin?” One quizzical look later, and her mother came to translate. Fennekin is a Pokemon, and her daughter wanted a sketch card. Money was exchanged, and I assured my li’l fan that it’d take about 45 minutes for me to complete it.

“May I please stay and watch you draw?” she cooed. Oy the feels! “Of course!” I exclaimed. She then stood, stiff as board, locked to my left side, not even a foot from my drawing board. I propped my iPhone up with a reference picture, and she helpfully tapped it “awake” anytime the display dimmed. Whilst I tinkered away at her card, she proceeded to tell me everything and anything I wanted to know about Fennekin.

When I finished the card, I happily handed it over. She beamed from ear to ear, and thanked me. She would never have cared about The Samurnauts. She wanted a piece of art of her favorite cartoon. I obliged. And in doing so, I know that for at least a little while… she will treasure something for far longer than it ever took me to make. It’s a small and important victory not for my ego… but for my spirit. The joy I see in my own son was reflected back in a girl who herself was likely only three years older than my own boy. This moment to her, will be one for Bennett in hardly a blink of an eye.

With a genuine moment like that to cherish, who am I to say it was a bad show at all?

 

The Point Radio: Why LA SLASHER Is Bloody Real

We finally make it on set of the SyFy series KILLJOYS and the cast explains why this is a show you should be spending your summer watching. Plus reality TV gets a bloody visit from the LA SLASHER. Director Martin Owen talks about this much buzzed about new indy film.

We are headed to ComicCon., Follow our reports direct from the floor here #ThePointSDCC  and follow us on Twitter now here.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #363: SPIDER-MAN WATCHES A JUDGE GO FOURTH AND STULTIFY

backgroundWell, at least this time the judge had a reason for getting the law completely wrong.

We’re talking The Amazing Spider-Man #16.1 (16.1? Seriously? What’s with the odd-ball numbering in comics nowadays? We’ve had zero issues. Millionth issues. Fractional issues. Now decimal point issues? I should adapt Life of Pi to a comic book mini-series and number the issues 3.1, 3.14, 3.141, 3.1415, and so on.)

In the aforementioned and strangely numbered Spider-Man comic, Detective Teddy Rangel obtained a search warrant for a building based on a tip he received that it was a hideout of wanted crime boss Lonnie Thompson Lincoln, a.k.a. Tombstone. The New York Police Department, with the help of Spider-Man – because, after all, it was his comic – executed said warrant and arrested Tombstone and his men. Had this been Hawaii Five-O, the story would have ended when Danno booked em. It wasn’t Hawaii Five-O. It wasn’t even the revival. So the story didn’t end there.

Eight days later, Judge Anson Howell– who was to judges what Thurston was to millionaires– granted Tombstone’s motion to suppress the evidence. He ruled the search warrant was defective so the search was invalid and all the evidence obtained during said search was inadmissible.

As decisions go, that one was more questionable than “Put Your Daughters to Work Day,” which never really caught on the way that other day did. It’s true that ever since 1961 and Mapp v. Ohio, the states have lived under the exclusionary rule; a rule created by the Supreme Court that says when police obtain evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment, that illegally seized evidence must be excluded from trial. One would think that evidence seized under a defective search warrant would be suppressed. And one would be right, if the world had stopped in 1961. It didn’t. I know because I’m waaay older than nine.

Since it’s inception, the exclusionary rule has been less popular than Justice Scalia at a gay pride parade. Over the years, the Supreme Court chipped away at the exclusionary rule by creating exceptions to it. Lots of exceptions. Ever since 1984, the year not the novel, when the Supreme Court decided United States v Leon, the country has had a “good faith” exception to the exclusionary rule.

The good faith exception says that if the police execute a search warrant in good faith and later it turns out that the search warrant was defective, then the evidence obtained during the search should not be excluded from trial. The Leon court reasoned that the exclusionary rule exists to prevent the police from violating the Fourth Amendment, because they know evidence won’t be admissible, if they do violate it. However, if the police believe in good faith that they obtained a valid warrant, then they didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. It wasn’t their fault that a neutral and detached magistrate issued the warrant in error. So suppressing the evidence would not further the the exclusionary rule’s purpose of preventing police misconduct, because there was no police misconduct. For that reason, evidence obtained by good faith reliance on a search warrant that turned out to be defective should not be suppressed.

In the case of The People v Tombstone – yes, I know it’s actually The People of New York v. Lonnie Thompson Lincoln, but who wants to keep typing The People of New York v. Lonnie Thompson Lincoln? – Judge Howell should not have suppressed the evidence seized from Tombstone’s hideout. Even though the search warrant to have been defective, the police executed it in good faith and the good faith exception required that the evidence be admissible.

There are some exceptions to the good faith exception. One is if the police lie in their application for a search warrant and mislead the magistrate who issued it, then they know that warrant was defective They knowingly got the warrant in bad faith so can’t rely on its validity in good faith

So, did Detective Rangel obtain the warrant in bad faith by lying to the magistrate? Possibly. In fact, I’ll say probably. Detective Rangel’s source was the super villain crime boss Mr. Negative. It’s not likely that either the law or the order part of the criminal justice system would put much stock in what Mr. Negative said, as it would rather put Mr. Negative in the stocks. So it is likely that Detective Rangel claimed his source was an anonymous informant who had supplied him with reliable information in the past rather than admitting it was Mr. Negative. Judges routinely issue search warrants based on similar reliable anonymous informant representations.

If the basis of Tombstone’s motion to suppress the evidence was that the source who tipped Detective Rangel wasn’t reliable, Rangel would have had to testify at the hearing to vouch for the reliability of his source. I suspect that was the basis of the motion, as Judge Howell based his ruling on the fact that Rangel – who had been shot in the line of duty, was in a coma, and ultimately died – couldn’t testify and verify his source’s reliability.

If Rangel did lie about his source and misled the judge who issued the search warrant then he acted in bad faith. That bad faith would be imputed to the rest of the police department. So, if Judge Howell ruled that the good faith exception didn’t apply, he would have been correct.

But Judge Howell was still incorrect in suppressing the evidence.

Remember how I said that Detective Rangel was shot in the line of duty? Well, like Rangel himself, I was guilty of leaving out an important detail or two. What I didn’t tell you was that Rangel was shot by one of Tombstone’s men, when Tombstone and his men opened fire on the police officers who were executing the warrant. (Important safety tip, when the police are executing a search warrant, you don’t get to execute the police.) As soon as Tombstone and his men started shooting police officers, they broke several New York state laws. Not the least of which was NY Penal L § 120.11, aggravated assault upon a police officer.

The police had probable cause to arrest Tombstone and his men for their crimes. The police didn’t need an arrest warrant because they saw the offenders committing the crimes. When the police see people committing crimes, they have probable cause to arrest the offenders immediately and don’t need to obtain an arrest warrant first.

The police had the right to arrest Tombstone and his men for shooting the police. Tombstone and his men were in their hideout when they were arrested. That means the police were entitled to search the hideout as part of a search incident to arrest.

Search incident to an arrest, that’s another one of those numerous exceptions to the exclusionary rule I talked about earlier. When the police make an arrest, they are allowed to search the surrounding area for their own protection. So when the police arrested Tombstone, they were allowed to search the hideout incident to that arrest to make sure that there were neither more people nor more weapons in it. Judge Howell erred when he granted Tombstone’s motion to suppress. It didn’t matter that the search warrant was defective, the search didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment because it was as a lawful search incident to arrest.

So why did I say that the judge had a reason for getting the law completely wrong, if he suppressed evidence that should never have been suppressed? Because Judge Howell was corrupt. Tombstone was bribing him. And that was his reason for getting the law completely wrong.

Hey, I never said the judge had a good reason.

Martha Thomases: Stupid People and Irresistible Knowledge

Kurtzman

Banning books is stupid.

I mean, you probably already oppose book banning. It violates the First Amendment. But I’m not talking about the law or morality. I’m talking about the stupid.

All summer, ComicMix and The Tweeks will be urging kids and parents to read graphic novels that are being banned from school libraries.

Here is my experience with being a kid and reading a banned book. I was in the fifth grade, ten years old, and my mom saw a feature on The Today Show about kids who were so smart that they read books written for adults, like John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage and To Kill a Mockingbird. Not to be outdone by any other mother in the world, she promptly went to the Youngstown, Ohio public library and took both books out for me to read.

I chose to read the novel. It was shorter, and it had a story.

At that time, we were allowed to bring our own books to school to read in free periods, if we finished our work. So I did. When my teacher, Miss Jones, saw what I was reading, she sent me home.

That event changed my life. My parents were so angry that they took me out of public school and sent me to the only non-parochial private school in town. From there, it was a short step to boarding school, an elitist liberal college, and a northeastern urban ivory tower existence.

Here’s the thing: I had no idea what Miss Jones was so upset about. The book was, in fact, a little bit advanced for me and I missed out on a lot of the main plot points, the racial themes, the attempted rape. When someone asked me what it was about, I said, “It’s about a girl who dresses up like a ham, and also there are Negroes.”

(In the early 1960s, that was the polite term.)

Banning a book makes it irresistible to a kid, especially a teenager. There were only a few things that could make me want to read something in high school:

1) The author was attractive

2) Cool people were reading it

3) Someone told me I couldn’t.

Those first two, actually, might still be part of my criteria. It certainly explains my devotion to Will Self.

Because they had been banned, I read books by Henry Miller, which I loved, and by Charles Bukowski, which I didn’t like much. I read radical books about women’s bodies and how they work. I read comics with character that not only didn’t have capes, but often didn’t have any clothes.

Parents who support book banning in school libraries say they are protecting their children from ideas with which they disagree. They think that, if their children don’t read those books, they won’t stray from their parents’ moral compass.

It doesn’t really work like that. Maybe those parents will get a few months of peace and quiet, but not much more.

My parents, civil libertarians that they were, didn’t stop me from reading what I wanted to read. I mean, they weren’t going to go out and get me hard-core porn or vivid depictions of slaughter (other than what was on the news every night), but they didn’t mind if I read things they didn’t like. We talked about it. That’s what the dinner table was for, talking about those things. That’s what we did on long car rides (besides playing “I Spy”). And while I don’t agree with everything my parents believed (nor did they necessarily agree with each other), I didn’t stray very far, and I respect those differences.

Even better, I know how to form an opinion myself.

There are some books on the list of banned graphic novels that might not be appropriate for every child to read, and parents should be responsible for protecting their children from those books. For example, I think that a five-year old would not grasp Maus, and might be upset by it.

You know what I would do if that happened? I would take the book away from him. I would tell him he could read it when he was older.

I wouldn’t stop anyone else from reading it. Nobody should.

 

Tweeks: Teen Beach 2 Because Disney

Full Disclosure:  We are obsessed with Disney Channel musicals.  And who can blame us?  It looks like a lot of people (of all ages) are too. Disney knows what they are doing with the genre and according to the Disney Channel last Friday night’s Teen Beach Movie 2 was its biggest cable TV original movie of this year & the most-watched TV telecast in nearly 2 years in the youth demos.  It was watched by 7.5 million total viewers — and only 3.2 million were kids (6-11), 2.8 million tweens (9-14) in the Live +3 ratings.  There were 13.3 million total viewers during the weekend encores.  That kind of makes the sequel to 2013’s Teen Beach Movie starring Maia Mitchell & Ross Lynch a definitive summer event for our demographic.  If you want to be able to have something to talk to kids, tweens & teens this summer (besides our #ComicMixChallengedChallenge) our video will tell you all you need to know.  Though if you also love a good musical movie or have a soft spot for Frankie & Annette beach movies, we bet you’ll enjoy this too — at any age.

Dennis O’Neil: Is Superman Super-Smart?

superman

Yeah, I’ve heard that Superman is super smart as well as super all the other stuff he’s super at, but I don’t know. I can’t recall a single instance where he thought his way past some obstacle. More likely, he’d just uproot the obstacle and toss it to somewhere like Jupiter. Maybe he is really bright and it’s just easier to toss a problem to Jupiter than cogitate about it. But the question is there.

I mean, if he’s so smart how come he can’t remember his own name? You ask how I know that he can’t? (Maybe you’re not so smart?) It’s that big S on his chest. The darn thing serves on purpose other than that of forcing script writers to jump through hoops explaining why it’s there. And why is that? Could it be that the S is a prompt for those times, after a long bout with Kryptonite, say, when the Man of Steel needs a little help in the memory department. A quick glance at the torso and… oh, yeah, S. I’m Superman. Now if only I could recall what I’m faster than…

Allow me to escort you out of the world where we treat Superman like someone who actually exists and into the present moment, where/when we will let ourselves wonder why Joe Shuster, the guy who did the visual part of creating Supes, decided to put the S where it is in the first place. I looked at the earliest drawing I could find and yep, there it is, the S, encased in something that resembles an arrowhead. Present at the beginning, albeit in a pre-evolved form. What inspired teenage Joe to add it, that Cleveland summer’s day some 82 tears ago?

Both Joe and his writer-collaborator, Jerry Siegel, are gone and, I think, they weren’t nearly as often interviewed as they should have been, so, barring some new information, we’ll probably never know what was in Joe’s head. The best guesses I’ve heard regarding superhero suits, is that they were inspired by circus costumes and/or the illustrations in the science fiction pulps that Joe and Jerry almost certainly read.

Seems reasonable. But: no thoracic initials in those clothes. And none on the Phantom’s wardrobe, either. The Phantom’s creator, Lee Falk, later said that the Phantom’s outfit was inspired by the movies’ Robin Hood. Wherever it came from, it certainly is a recognizable superhero costume. But no dorsal P. Falk debuted the Phantom in 1936 and so his masked jungle dweller beat Superman into print by about two years. But Superman was created as a newspaper strip in 1933 and languished until Joe and Jerry peddled it to Max Gaines for use in one of those new funny book magazines. So the Phantom likely didn’t influence Superman and vice versa.

But the meme Joe and Jerry created, the costumed superman, influenced dozens – hundreds? thousands? – of later creations, a number of whom had something on their chests. No initials: that element of the meme was not widely imitated. But lanterns, lightning bolts, bats, stars, and my favorite, sported by a character named E-Man, Einstein’s E=MC2. Yep, world’s most famous equation, right there below his collarbone.

Ah, but does any of this mean anything? Well, does it?

 

Comics Round Up: June 2015

These books each deserve their own posts, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to get it. But here’s the deal I have for them: if I write more than three solid paragraphs about any one of them — and that does happen; I’m never sure how long my fingers are going to keep moving — that book will get broken out and become its own post. (So it’s entirely possible no one but me will ever read this introductory paragraph; that’s happened before with planned round-ups.)

Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen

by Dylan Horrocks

Autobio comics can be fun, but they can only go so far. Comics are such a time-consuming discipline, with so many hours spent hunched over a drawing board, that creators who rely on that mode either disappear up the navel of anatomizing their own process or misrepresent the few bits of their lives spent doing other things. Some creators, though, take “themselves” — or some version of their selves and lives — and throw that into something deeply unreal. And that can be much more satisfying.

This new graphic novel from New Zealander Horrocks — best known in artsy comics circles for his book Hicksville , best known in the CBR world for writing Batgirl for a while — is not about “Dylan Horrocks.” As you can easily see from the title, the hero is named Sam Zabel. And the Big Two superheroine he writes is Lady Night, a mystic hero in the Dr. Fate mode. And the fantasy world he falls into is, I have to assume, not something that comes directly out of Horrocks’s experience.

Though that would be pretty cool, if it did.

Any story about a creator becomes a story about creation: about making stories and being blocked and finding inspiration and working despite obstacles and the wellsprings of story and all of that jazz. Horrocks does a good version of that story here, but you’re not likely to be greatly surprised at the twists of the story or the places it goes. Stories about stories are a minor genre these days, and this is a pretty good one. (You can still read a version of it — I think it was somewhat updated and altered for book publication — on Horrock’s site.) And if telling this story re-energized Horrocks so he can tell more stories, and maybe even stories (unlike this and Hickville) that aren’t about how comics are special and cool and the greatest artform in the history of the universe while at the exact same time a pitiless industry that eats its young….well, that would also be pretty cool.

Sin Titulo

by Cameron Stewart

This is another fantasy story, with some elements in common with Sam Zabel — though not the connection to creative people or comics — but I probably shouldn’t emphasize that part, since those are the secrets that come out later in what’s mostly a mystery plot. And it also originally appeared for free online, though its URL leads to a blank page. (You can google it yourself, if you like: I see no reason to link to nothingness.)

So a young man goes to visit his grandfather in a nursing home and is shocked to learn the old man died a month before. A noir plot then start up: a photo of the grandfather with a beautiful young woman suggests depths, then disappears; a thuggish orderly is abusing patients and has darker secrets; the young man gets obsessed and starts neglecting his job and girlfriend. But there are also prophetic dreams, of trees and beaches, and the solution to this mystery will not be mundane.

Sin Titulo is a strong story, that turns naturally from realism into fantasy and uses its noir elements — not just plot; the layout and drawing style evoke classic strip comics and the dark alleys of old movies — with assurance and ability.

No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular!, Vols. 6 & 7

by Nico Tanigawa

Every series falls into ruts; every comedy finds that its running jokes stop running quite so well. I’m not saying that’s definitely what’s happened to this manga series, since I could have had an off day while reading these, or maybe these stories just didn’t connect with me the way I hoped they would. But I am feeling that WataMote (the fan-name for the series, from the first two words of the Japanese title) is thinning out a bit, and not as exciting to me as it was before.

(Speaking of before, can I point you to my reviews of volumes 1 and 2 , 3 , 4 , and 5 ?)

I don’t have much more to say about these volumes: I found parts of them funny, but more opaque. It may be because this clump of story got into more Japanese-specific moments that they didn’t connect with me, or maybe Tomoko’s schtik is wearing on me. Either way: this was still fun, and I’ll come back for another volume or two (which should see Tomoko to her graduation), but maybe not any more than that. It could be that the first few volumes are the best: that’s not uncommon. And those stories still exist, and are still as good as ever.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Comics Reviews (July 1st, 2015)

Part One: Comics

From worst to best of what I voluntarily paid money for.

Secret Wars #4

It’s not even that it’s a bad comic. It’s just that, well, at this point it’s become impossible to read this comic as a separate phenomenon from the overall realignment of Marvel comics (see part two of this post). Here we have what is in effect a brutal rejection of an entire line of thought in Marvel comics that has been going for several years – the Cyclops-as-Revolutionary angle. The comic is explicitly configured to allow Cyclops’s vision of fiery rebirth a moment in the sunlight and then to cut it down. Specifically in favor of a Reed vs Doom story. Although with the knowledge that both X-Men and Fantastic Four are being consciously downplayed within Marvel right now for broader corporate reasons, it’s tough to see that as a promising dualism either.

The real problem, though, is that I’ve always wanted to root for the Cyclops-as-Revolutionary angle. I’ve always thought that challenge to what superhero narratives are was worth exploring seriously and allowing the possibility of moral validity. Hickman turns away from it very, very hard here. I reject that, aesthetically. It’s not even that I think Cyclops is morally right. I think that’s a functionally meaningless question within the melodramatic metaphysics of a superhero universe. It’s that I think Cyclops is a vehicle for giving voice to perspectives superhero narratives don’t usually get to explore, and that Hickman gave him depressingly short shrift here.

Yes, there’s more issues and this may turn around. But this is a review of this specific issue. And given Secret Wars demands to be read as a meta-commentary on the state of Marvel Comics, I think what it’s saying this month is rank fucking bullshit.

Grant Morrison’s 18 Days #1

Honestly, I just think it’s unfair to ask the world to offer any sort of critical judgment of this, and I’m half-inclined to say that I’m going to buy it and not review it. It’s clearly not a major Grant Morrison project. And look, I don’t begrudge him taking the money and running, which he’s clearly done with this. But this book is a Kirby pastiche reworking of the Mahabharata with an artist who is not Jack Kirby. And a writer who is not Jack Kirby. It’s pretty. It’s competent. But what on Earth is one supposed to say of it? Morrison is in the backmatter comparing himself favorably to Lord of the Rings and Shakespeare. This issue doesn’t stand up to either. But equally, it seems vital to note that the problem is not what the book is – a western comic based on Hindi mythology. The problem is that this is just a Kirby pastiche of novel subject matter.

Ultimate End #3

There’s a shell game here, obviously. This book inherits its premise from other bits of Secret Wars. Not all of those bits are out yet. So the precise nature of Manhattan and of this mash-up of the 616 and Ultimate Universes is not yet revealed. I am interested in that question. The problem is, like Jason Aaron’s Thor run, it’s an intellectual problem, not a story.

Darth Vader #7

We switch to the good stuff for the week, I’m happy to say. Or, at least, what we might call the “good but didn’t quite work for me” stretch of reviews. This is capable, interesting, and still a Star Wars comic that I’m buying purely for the fact that I enjoy watching the writer work. In this case he doesn’t do anything that immediately grabs me, which is in no way a valid criticism.

Years of Future Past #2

A serviceable comic undermined by the fact that anything X-Men and Secret Wars related is aggressively ephemeral. That’s not a problem of course; the demand that comics “matter” is a very silly one based on a misunderstanding of what comics are. The problem, I think, is that Bennett is too restrained as a writer. She’s got loads of talent and style – the Colossus monologue page is a brilliant piece of style. She writes a brilliant Magneto. The final page reveal is a massive grin-inducer. But she has a post-apocalyptic team of mutants none of whom have to survive, and this book comes off as timid compared to its canvas.

Chew #50

I can tell that this is a well-structured issue. It’s obvious that it’s an interesting plot beat to throw at issue #50 of a sixty-issue series. It pays off a lot of stuff. It’s clearly a good comic. And I am entirely aware that my problem with this issue is quite literally my problem – one unique to me, and a failing on my part as a reader. That said, it builds to a final page reveal that depends on my being able to identify a character who has no dialogue in this issue. And… I can’t. I forget who the blonde woman in Chu’s arms is. I don’t remember her relationship with anyone. I’m sure she’s done stuff in the book and is important, but… nope. Total blank. So the whole thing just sort of… deflates for me. Like I said, my fault. My failing. Still didn’t work for me.

A-Force #2

It’s interesting to basically watch a book be demoed on a setting other than its actual one. Which is to say, I like A-Force, the comic about female Avengers led by She-Hulk. I like the takes on the major characters. I like the choices of major characters. But this still falls slightly short for me. I think it’s because, as an issue, it’s kind of vacant. As with Years of Future Past, Bennett (and she would appear to be lead on this issue) doesn’t really go for the sort of “and now for the big moment” revelry that the pop comics style she’s a best fit for demands. There’s no moment that feels like punching the air and saying “that’s what I spent my money for.” She’s good. I think she can deliver some top drawer comics. But she needs to work on that aspect of her game.

The Wicked and the Divine #12

And now we shift to the great stuff. And this is great. Gillen handles the shift away from McKelvie well. Kate Brown is a good transitional artist for this, maintaining the book’s basic visual grammar but introducing us to a spin on the premise. But this is a calm between the storms issue; Gillen is running out the clock, going down some side alleys and doing his worldbuilding. But it’s an obvious bit of non-misdirection. He’s flagging, in a variety of ways, that we’re eventually going to circle back to Laura and, by extension, Lucifer. I mean, if nothing else, gee, it’s funny how every god who’s died so far is an underworld god. I WONDER WHAT THE AFTERLIFE IS LIKE.

Which works. There’s a tension of an eventual reveal that infuses a side trip like “let’s pay attention to Cass’s old assistants for an issue” with a really compelling tension, especially as the larger “who’s going to figure out what Ananke is actually up to first” game plays out in the background. As serialize drama, the moving parts are exquisitely put together.

Equally, and again this comes down to “we’re judging issues here, not books,” Gillen makes a Sandman analogy in the backmatter that’s on point. This issue – maybe this arc, but certainly this issue – is one of those side trips like the dead boy detectives in Seasons of Mists or the entirety of World’s End – a conscious step away from the main story. And the truth is… well, that’s why Sandman works better in trade.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #7

What can I say. Ryan North is funny. He has clever ideas. This book shows that off. There are many highlights, and I will not spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it. Oh, OK. Ratatoskr .

Uber #26

Sheer bravado. Uber‘s version of “Blackwater” or “The Watchers on the Walls,” with an entire issue spent on a single battle. With twenty-five issues of buildup that have screamed loudly that this is not a book that offers a rosy view of war or history, the idea of a major battle testing a sympathetic character’s technical capabilities is genuinely terrifying. Uber has taught us to fear, very much, for our main characters. And this issue trades on that, while maintaining an exquisite balance of personal character focus and sweeping historical scope. Small moments and big ones juxtapose. It’s awful. It’s ugly. It’s intriguing. It’s brilliant. Fucking hell, this book.

Part Two: The Marvel Previews
 
From best to worst, with a clear marker of where the stuff I’ll buy ends.
  1. Karnak – Well, it’ll only be six issues, but this is delightfully batshit.
  2. Ms. Marvel – “Crushed it” indeed.
  3. Spider-Man – Love me some Miles Morales.
  4. A-Force – Wilson is an autobuy. Love the cast.
  5. Ultimates – Galactus on a team book by Al Ewing, yes please. Also Miss America. All the yes.
  6. Invincible Iron Man – Bendis on Iron Man sounds a safe bet.
  7. All-New All Different Avengers – Great cast, Waid’s a reasonably secure bet as a writer.
  8. Uncanny Avengers – Have liked enough of what I’ve seen of Duggan to try this, but Deadpool is worrisome.
  9. New Avengers – Buying entirely because Ewing is an autobuy for at least a first issue, but nothing that grabs me here as such. Squirrel Girl’s nice.
  10. Guardians of the Galaxy – Bendis is, ultimately, still an autobuy, although this has hardly been my favorite book of his.
  11. Contest of Champions – Seems very silly, but I’ll always give an Ewing book a shot, as I said, and very silly could be fun.
  12. Spider-Gwen – The abrupt pause in the series after #5 definitely screwed up momentum on this for me, not least because it wasn’t a great issue, so this could end up being a jumping off point for me eventually, but it’s not yet.
  13. Angela: Asgard’s Assassin – As the above reviews suggest, Bennett isn’t quite catching for me, but I kind of want to give her more chance, and I am already invested in the plot here. This is the lowest-ranked book to be a definite buy for #1.
  14. Spider-Woman – The premise grabs me, and I have a vague intention of giving Hopeless a try, as I don’t think I gave him a fair shake previously, so this is the best bet of where that might happen.
  15. Howard the Duck – Have had enough recommendations for this that I mean to check out the first run. If that’s good, will buy this too.
  16. Sam Wilson, Captain America – Nick Spencer can be good, and I like the idea of a Sam/Steve schism. Give me more premise and we’ll see.
  17. Daredevil – Soule is hit and miss, but he does do good lawyers, and the Daredevil/Gambit pair is intriguing.
  18. Web Warriors – Maybe, as I like some of the characters, but I’m pointedly trying to keep my pulls down, and this seems exactly the sort of book I can decide against.
  19. The Totally Awesome Hulk  – I don’t know, who is the Hulk? I tend not to like questions like that, but the name charms me.
  20. Venom: Spaceknight – OK, those are not two words I expected to see together, and that raises an eyebrow at least.
  21. Uncanny Inhumans – Probably not, as I haven’t fallen in love with any of Soule’s previous Inhumans work, but I’m not saying no.
  22. All-New Wolverine – OK, this doesn’t grab me inherently, but mostly because I don’t know who Taylor is. I like the art and the premise. The highest-ranked “maybe” for me – everything below this is a 0% chance of my buying it barring new information.
  23. Amazing Spider-Man – Haven’t loved Slott’s stuff post-Superior Spider-Man, and think this will be my exit from Spider-Man.
  24. Captain Marvel – I haven’t gotten to Agent Carter episode two yet, and it’s been months, so I don’t think this team will win me back.
  25. All-New X-Men – Of the three X-Men books, this is the most promising, not least as I do mean to give Hopeless a try on something, as I said. But with the X-Men line on the whole looking droppable right now, this falls below the plausibility point.
  26. Extraordinary X-Men – Lemire and Ramos are both “not dealbreaker” sorts of creators, so this just sort of leaves me cold, but I do like the feel for an X-Men book.
  27. Uncanny X-Men – Interesting premise, but I have no faith in either Bunn or Marvel tackling this sort of sinister X-book.
  28. Nova – Gutted to see that this does not feature the awesome Nova family from Infinity Gauntlet.
  29. Doctor Strange – I don’t think I like Jason Aaron’s work.
  30. The Mighty Thor – Will be dropping this, as I just don’t dig the angle.
  31. Hawkeye – I like the Clint vs Kate premise, but I’ve not been following post-Fraction Hawkeye, and this doesn’t look set to grab me.
  32. Spider-Man 2099 – Glad people who like this have a book.
  33. Star-Lord – Haven’t felt a hole in my life without a Star-Lord book before, don’t imagine I’ll start now.
  34. Old Man Logan – Not the Wolverine book I suspect I want.
  35. Ant-Man – Just sort of the purest distillation of “meh” for me.
  36. Silk – The character hasn’t grabbed me yet, and the villainy tone of the solicit leaves me cold.
  37. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – I don’t even like the television series.
  38. Drax – Can’t see this working for me.
  39. Vision – Don’t know the writer, no obvious hook in the premise, not a character that grabs me
  40. Illuminati – this looks utterly not like my thing.
  41. Deadpool – I don’t like Deadpool.
  42. Howling Commandos of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Cute premise, but this seems the embodiment of “cool idea but not a book I would enjoy.” Low place mainly due to the appalling resolution of the art, I suspect.
  43. Scarlet Witch – Robinson does not currently interest me, especially not after this shitstorm .
  44. Squadron Supreme – Cannot imagine why I would buy this.
  45. Carnage – I loathe Conway’s work.

Originally published on PhilipSandifer.com.

Molly Jackson: Knowing Too Much

Knowing Too Much

Marvel has been slowly and steadily announcing their plans for their “new universe” coming this fall. It has been the hot topic on most geek blogs and is keeping people excited, sort of. In just watching this event creating the new Marvel Universe unfolds, I already have some misgivings with how things are going.

With nearly two months left of the current world-changing event, we already know who is going to survive Secret Wars. We already know what new series they will be in and who the creative team is. It’s no fun if you know the answer before the question is done being asked. And now the question is, why bother reading the event at all?

I’ve waited a little bit before jumping into buying Secret Wars. I had just finished with Convergence – which was basically the same event – and needed a break from world combining. Also, I was not a huge fan of the Free Comic Book Day prequel comic. And frankly, I wanted to hear people’s reactions. A friend has told me the basics but admitted that while it is interesting, it is not the most cohesive story. I’m considering just skipping Secret Wars all together since I already know the outcome.

The other hand is, I was excited to give Marvel another chance sans the weight of their overgrown universe. In the past, I had a hard time trying to jump into large universes because of the weight of history and the complex, never-ending storylines. Then, Marvel Point One happened. I tried out and liked quite a few issues. However, the series I enjoyed failed to keep me interested because they immediately went back to complex tales. DC Comics learned from this, and then made their complete reboot a lot more accessible. My hope was a new start for Marvel meant an easier entrance to exploring that universe beyond just a few standalone stories.

It all comes down to why I read anything. I read to experience through another’s eyes, hear another’s thoughts and feel another’s feelings. I read to explore new worlds and characters. And I read to enjoy the plot unfolding before me. All I can hope is that Marvel’s new universe won’t be completely spoiled before it is even born.

Mike Gold: The Shoe’s On The Other Foot

gay-pride-2015-11-4825331

My long-time friend and colleague Martha Thomases does not like wearing high heels. This, of course, is her right. I have been sympathetic to her position, even to the point of referring to it as a contemporary form of traditional Chinese foot-binding.

gay-pride-2015-19-6714749That was until this past Sunday. Now, meh, not so much.

I’ve been to many a Gay Pride rally, including – yep, I’m bragging – the very first in New York. I’ve been to such rallies in several different cities; I’ve been to them after terrible tragedies such as the Stonewall Inn riots and, less than ten years later, the discovery and growth of HIV. Yet each and every march and rally has been fantastic fun, each one a deeply meaningful, fun-filled and life-affirming event. I have always walked away from the rallies and parades feeling much better about my fellow humans – even in my most cynical times that account for some six decades of my life.

More to the point, I always had a great time. Always.

So this year’s Gay Pride march and rally in New York City, coincidently held two days after the Supreme Court finally made marriage equality the law of the land, was something I wouldn’t miss even if I had lost my arms and legs and had to be carried in a basket. Thankfully, I was fully able to walk.

If Elon Musk had been there, he would have figured out a way to capture the energy of the event and use it to fuel a battery that would run every car in America for a year.

There’s no question the gay culture that has always affected our mainstream culture no matter how closeted it had been in the past. Several of our ComicMix columnists have commented on this point and several more may yet: right now, it is the perfect topic for a pop culture site such as this one.

The New York City parade, which attracted more than two million onlookers and, it seemed, about as many participants, was fraught with politicians and corporate sponsors. No, Mike Huckabee didn’t march, nor did any of his fellow Republican presidential candidates. That wasn’t a surprise and, besides, the parade route always was crowded. Delta Airlines, NBC/Universal, Master Card, and Coca-Cola were among the many who entered elaborate floats. So did a great many religious organizations – but certainly not all. Parents brought their children, both as onlookers and as participants.

This year’s parade marshals were two British peers: Sir Ian McKellan, also known as Magneto, Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf and others; Sir Derek Jacoby, a.k.a. Emperor Claudius and both Doctor Who’s arch-enemy The Master as well as The Doctor himself; and Ugandan LGBT activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera. All around, a class-act. It was sort of like the St. Patrick’s Day parade, but without the – what’s it called again? Oh, yeah. Blatant bigotry.

The parade ran in a light rain from 36th Street and Fifth Avenue to the Stonewall Inn, a distance of nearly two miles. From my vantage points I couldn’t conduct a scientific study, but I believe there were more adults wearing high heels than not. Of course, I’m also counting the dozens (at least) of paraders wearing stilts.

Seeing all those folks marching in their fine footwear, I think I’ve got to backtrack on that foot binding thing. I figure, it must be worth it.

gay-pride-2015-51-9257269Now… you say you don’t like gay marriage? You’re opposed to it? Somehow, it lessens the value of your marriage? Well, congratulations. You’re in luck. There is no more “gay marriage.”

Now… there is only “marriage.”

(Photo notes: At top – PBS’s rolling billboard for Vicious, starring McKellan and Jacoby. Up there on the right – part of the massive Delta Airlines presence, including a flight attendant with an astonishing hat size. Down here on the left – your humble columnist, posing with the newly transgendered crimefighter, The Shadow.)

 

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