Truthiness in Advertising, by Elayne Riggs
The 2008 Democratic convention is currently well underway. It being the Age of Reality Shows That Aren’t Real, every bit of spontaneity is of course tightly scripted to allow for maximum media control, not unlike all those Beijing Olympics stories that practically write themselves. What you see is pretty much what they tell you you’ll get.
As a society, we seem to have inured ourselves to accepting style over substance as the norm. We judge books by their covers all the time — even more so when we look at comics. First impressions are the lasting ones. We expect what’s on the cover to reflect what’s inside, often because we’ve been assured that it will. When the cover artist’s style doesn’t jibe with the interior art, the result can be a bit jarring. When the cover art misrepresents the story within, we can feel cheated or used.
And that’s all well and good when it comes to consumer entertainment. We’re used to being lied to, it’s all part of the advertising fake-out. If a certain type of cover art moves product, the actual interior content is irrelevant from the seller’s point of view. We accept (some more grudgingly than others) that we’re going to be subjected to this little dance every time we buy, and buy into, our culture of mass-produced entertainment.
The problem arises, as it usually does, when this mentality shifts from the fictional to the real, and we find ourselves judging people by their “covers.” (more…)
Meantime, Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, comes up from under the sea to lend her voice as Barbie to Michael Keaton’s Ken in Toy Story 3. The film, coming June 18, 2010, of course reunites voice actors Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as the toy’s owner, Andy, moves on to college.
The actual events involved a robber who either shot the 60-year-old Siegel or the event triggered a fatal heart attack. Meltzer’s novel, on sale next Tuesday, uses the gun shot but in an afterward he explores the issue and admitted to Colton the truth was more likely a heart attack.
There’s an upcoming story in the Superman/Batman title that will involve our long-eared Dark Knight getting superhuman abilities (albeit, temporarily). Writers Michael Green and Mike Johnson have been doing great work on the title, so this promises to be an entertaining tale.
Apparently the end of August has been designated as catch up week, at least in the land of comics and DVDs. Over the next few days, you have the opportunity to jump into a number of critically acclaimed series, contained in trade collections or DVD sets . We lay them all out for you, plus:
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After rumors began swirling late last week, Publisher’s Weekly now confirms that Virgin Comics has closed. The SoHo offices have been shut down, the staff let go and principals Sharad Devarajan, Gotham Chopra and Lance Leiberman have not returned attempts by the media to get details.
In today’s brand new episode of 
