My Twitter feed informed me today that my current obsession, the <a href=”

music video to “Gangnam Style” by Korean pop singer Psy, has passed 100 million hits on YouTube. The cool kids love it. The masses love it.

Even <a href=”

Batman loves it.

So I was taken aback when a friend of mine went on a Facebook rant complaining about it. He’s Korean-American, and he not only hated the video, but everyone who liked it. If I’m understanding him correctly, he thought it was over-produced, hook-heavy, and reflected badly on the Korean music scene.

I felt as if I was being inadvertently racist. The things he slammed were the things I loved. Too many cuts? Impossible. Ridiculous imagery? That’s my favorite part. I have no idea what they’re saying, but I love the way they’re saying it.

Also, I love the guy in the yellow suit.

Is my affection for this video a sign of racism? In my experience, the easiest way to spot a racist is to listen for the phrase “I am not a racist.” I’m not going to fall into that trap. And I’ve had an interest in Asian culture at least since college, when a class in Chinese Literature in translation introduced me to a new way of thinking and a new way to see the world.

I’ve loved Japanese comics since before they were cool (or at least, the beginning of when they were cool). They displayed a depth and breadth of subject matter and passion that was missing from American comics at the time, whether focusing on politics, adventure or cats.

Still, I’m not very knowledgeable about Korea. And it’s certainly racist to lump together all Asian societies as if they are the same.

I’ve struggled with this conundrum before. In the 1990s, the film Bamboozled made me question whether my love of tap dancing was racist. I remember talking to Dwayne McDuffie about it, and he said, “I think Spike Lee likes tap dancing, too.”

Does that let me off the hook?

If you think I’m being too politically correct, consider how it must feel to be on the receiving end. I had that experience when I saw the fantastic French animated film, The Triplets of Belleville. There is a part of the film when the main characters get to the United States, and everyone here is incredibly obese. I wanted to raise my hand and say “We’re not all like that.”

I imagine that my friend feels the same way when he watches Psy. I wouldn’t enjoy it if all of American pop music was judged by Taylor Swift. And I don’t even hate Taylor Swift.

It would help if there was, generally, more diversity in our popular culture. If straight white male was not the default assumption, the exceptions to straight white male wouldn’t be startling. And the people who make these assumptions know they have a problem.

Those of us in comics are among the worst offenders. It’s still front-page news when a flagship character is African-American.

Let’s work together to fix this. But first, I have to work on my pony moves.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman Returns!

In the spirit of giving back to the comics community and helping retailers, ComicMix now has a Comic Store Locator!

We’ll be displaying store descriptions, hours, a website address, an email address, and tags for each store in our database, with easy searching so that you can find stores near you, wherever in the world you might be, and then provide you with easy directions via Google Maps. We’re even building in hooks so that people can find your store if you stock hard to find items like mini-comics.

Of course, for this to work well, we’ll need retailers to include stores in our database, and we invite them to so do. And if you’re a fan of your local store, please tell them to put their store info in, so we can send them even more customers. And if you’re a publisher, tell your retailers too, and make sure they include your company as a tag to make it easier for them to find your books!

This is an all-new clip from BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, PART 1 featuring The Mutant Leader giving his televised declaration of war on Gotham City, Commissioner Gordon and Batman. The Mutant Leader is voiced by Gary Anthony Williams, best known for his recurring roles on “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Boston Legal,” as well as voiceovers as Riff Tamsom on “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” Uncle Ruckus on “The Boondocks,” and Mongul in “Batman: The Brave and the Bold.” Williams’ casting as the bad-to-the-bone Mutant leader belies his true calling in comedy — he is co-founder and artistic director for the L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival in Hollywood.

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, PART 1, the next entry in the popular, ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies, arrives September 25, 2012 from Warner Home Video as a Blu-ray™ Combo Pack and DVD, On Demand and for Download. The PG-13 film is produced by Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation.

In my moment, it’s Labor Day. (In your moment…watch me shrug.) That being so – that Labor Day reality – it seems appropriate to think of unions and a cause dear to my heart.

Unions have not been consistent, not in my limited experience. An anecdote? Right after graduating from college, my friend Don Tonelli and I went to San Francisco. No agenda, just a long ramble to somewhere we’d never been. While in the Bay Area we visited my uncle Oscar, whom I’d seen once very briefly when I was a tot, and who was the subject of a bemused mention at clan gatherings. Oscar was a marvelous old man who kept us entertained and fascinated for most of a week. Among his entertainments were stories of the early days of the unions, when he and other skilled craftsmen went to meetings in large groups, armed with rifles, defying the fat cat bosses and their goons, demanding decent wages and working conditions. Back then, unions were the good guys.

But by the time Don and I shared wonderful hours with Oscar, unions had changed. Not for the better. The story went like this: unions had been infiltrated by criminals and had becomes nests of bullies and mobsters. Pretty damn shady enterprises, all in all. We baby blue staters grouped them with society’s ills. We didn’t consider that they provided insurance plans and pension plans and sundry other benefits, including a sense of the pride in working for a living. We were young. We were slow to look at both ends of a question. And, besides, it felt righteous to be pissed off.

Lately, I’ve grouped unions with the good guys again. They are among the few sources of campaign financing that can compete in fund raising with the billionaire-favored superPACs, and so they help blue collar voices to be heard. And they still provide those benefits. Those benefits are important.

We comics guys have never had unions. The closest thing to a union in our world was the Academy of Comic Book Arts, created by a motley crew of freelancers in 1970. ACBA, as we fondly called it, didn’t attempt to negotiate with the publishers, though that was discussed at early meetings, and in the end, did little to provide those important benefits. What it did do was present yearly awards for exemplary work, and that is no small task. But those awards weren’t of much use if your kid was sick or the rent needed paying.

No unions, no benefits. Good luck.

And this brings us to my heart’s dear cause: The Hero Intiative. Which is what, exactly? Here’s a paragraph from the organization’s website:

The Hero Initiative is the first-ever federally chartered not-for-profit corporation dedicated strictly to helping comic book creators in need. Hero creates a financial safety net for yesterdays’ creators who may need emergency medical aid, financial support for essentials of life, and an avenue back into paying work. It’s a chance for all of us to give back something to the people who have given us so much enjoyment.

If you get a chance to help H.I., you should take it.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases Goes Gangnam Style

With four months of digital success under their belt, Archie Comics brings their superhero stable back to comic shops with the first print issue of New Crusaders, in comic shops this week.  Each issue collecting the four weekly “acts” of the digital release, the comic is a response to the many requests from readers who wanted to see a traditional edition as well.  Archie has done a good job of it, with several special covers and some extra bonuses not seen in the digital release.

Archie Comics superheroes have had a long and varied publishing history. They premiered in 1939, enjoyed a a re-emergence in the 60s, another in the 80s, a couple revivals that never got out of the gate, and two attempted revivals by DC Comics, the woefully underappreciated Impact imprint from the 90s (helmed by our own Mike Gold), and the more recent Red Circle line which started strong with the J. Michael Straczynski books, but never seemed to find its audience.  This time around, Archie has chosen to do the job themselves, and unlike the DC revivals, have made the new series part of the continuity of all their books, starting back in to 40s.  While the book has decades of history and continuity, the book is carefully written to not require knowledge of those stories.  It can easily be picked up as a first issue, with no fear of getting lost.

The members of the superhero team known as the Mighty Crusaders did something never before heard of in the annals of super-herodom; they succeeded.  They beast evil into submission, sent the villains running, and spent the last couple of decades happily retired.  After an explosive tease, the story starts with the Crusaders enjoying a reunion in the peaceful  town of Red Circle, where Mayor Jack (Steel) Sterling is throwing a party for the heroes and their families.  While the heroes reminisce in the Mayoral mansion, their kids are getting to know each other outside.  Lucky for them, because one of their greatest foes, alien overlord the Brain Emperor takes the opportunity to take out his old foes all at once.  Only Joe Higgins, the original Shield, escapes, and manages to get the kids to safety in his home, or more specifically, his secret headquarters below, where he’s maintained vigilance for the return of their enemies.

Ian Flynn, who’s made quite a name for himself piloting both of Archie’s big video game franchises, Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man, handles the writing for the series, and he’s got a solid grasp of what makes an action comic work.  Even more importantly, as the digital book is coming out six pages at a time, he’s been able to pace the story so that each weekly chapter reads like a complete adventure, yet still flows smoothly in this single-issue format. Artist Ben Bates has a wonderful open style – his characters are drawn simply, his layouts uncluttered, very reminiscent of Impact artist Mike Parobeck; an art that is complex without being overly busy.  There’s lots of easter eggs for older readers; the aforementioned city of “Red Circle” is only the first. In addition to the main adventure, this issue features a reprint of a original Shield story from the 80’s run of the series, written by Marty Greim and art by industry vets Dick Ayres and Rich Buckler.

The print edition of New Crusaders publishes monthly.  The digital edition is available via an iPhone app and for the web and other devices via the Iverse website.  For a 99 cent weekly subscription, readers receive a new six-page chapter each week, as well as access to a growing library of the classic MLJ/Radio/Archie runs of the comics.  For the occasional “Fifth week”, a second series, Lost Crusade, will fill in the blanks of the events between the end of the 80s run of adventures and the new ones.  It’s one of the best digital books being done by a major publisher right now, and both it and the new print edition are well worth a look

For those interested in learning more about the members of the Crusaders, I have a series of histories up on my website:

The Shield

The Comet

The Web

Steel Sterling

Back in March, I was asked to put together video clips for this year’s Hugo Awards ceremony, which took place during Worldcon in Chicago on Sunday. Simple assignment— find short clips of the nominated works to introduce them to the audience.

Well, it didn’t quite happen that smoothly. As you may have heard by now, in the middle of the Hugo Awards ceremony at Worldcon, with thousands of people tuned into via video streaming service Ustream, from the people in the overflow room at the convention to people viewing it live at DragonCon to people all over the world, the feed cut off just as Neil Gaiman was giving his acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, “The Doctor’s Wife”, replaced with the words, “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.”

Here’s the video in question, the clip reel for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:

Do you see anything in there that violates Fair Use? Of course not. But then, you’re not an automated copyright violation monitoring service, which is what UStream is blaming the problem on. (You’ll note that this video is currently hosted on YouTube, and they don’t seem to be having any problems with it.) I happen to strongly disagree: this service worked almost exactly as UStream intended it to, with the exception that they couldn’t do anything when it was discovered that, whoopsie! The automated service has no intelligence and no off switch, and we’ve just pissed off people with millions of twitter followers. I also note that UStream has been taking down comments on their own site, which of course has not stopped people from commenting on Slashdot, TechCrunch, io9, and CNN stories.

I’m also marveling at the irony of cutting of Neil in mid-speech, as Neil is one of the foremost anti-censorship people in the comics industry, as a board member and major backer of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and a supporter of anti-censorship actions on the web going back to the 90s.

We’re still waiting for the full awards ceremony to be rebroadcast. In the meantime, we hope that you were following our Twitter feed, as we were covering the awards live. Universal Geek has posted audio of Neil Gaiman’s Hugo acceptance speech. And here is the clip reel for the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:

Congratulations to all the winners. We hope the rest of the world will be able to see your victories shortly.

UPDATE: Yes, irony of ironies, the video is currently offline at YouTube due to a copyright claim from the BBC. Yes, we’re disputing it.