Mike Raub has a major interview with George Perez who tells us all about the new Brave and Bold and gives us the low-down on the Hero Initiative plus our usual allotment of comics and media news and Timeline.
All you have to do is… press play:
Over the last 30 or so years some comics have tried to bring the “real world” into the medium. One of the first and best examples was written by my fellow ComicMix columnist Denny O’ Neil. His epic story about Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy becoming hooked on drugs is a classic. That story was written over 30 years ago and could have been written today. It still holds up.
I will resist the urge to ask Denny why Speedy had to get hooked… hee hee hee.
Denny may not remember, but I often think back in fondness to a day I gave him a ride home from DC Comics. That, for me, was a good day. Denny most likely was thinking “tuck and roll” as he looked for an opportunity to jump out of the car.
That story Denny wrote was on the forefront of comics that tackled the real world. Since that comic there have been many comics that tried the real world approach — some of the finest have been Marvels, Kingdom Come and of course the granddaddy of them all, Watchmen. Now all of those comics and many others have dealt with the question, “What would happen if superheroes really existed?”
Well, none of those comics dealt with what really would happen if those superheroes existed in the real world… and tried to get a date. (more…)
At New York’s Museum of Modern Art, highbrow meets lowbrow once more – and, as usual, doesn’t get it.
“Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making” is organized by Roxana Marcoci, curator of the department of photography, and features "nearly 30 works in drawing, painting, sculpture, video and installation made over the last 16 years by 13 artists who borrow one way or another from comic strips, cartoons and animation."
That’s right, all the artists swipe from the comics format without once considering the point of comics — to tell stories. Some of us believe everything that can be explored about the form was already done in Lichtenstein’s day, which is why some of us will never exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art.
For those who enjoyed yesterday’s brief look at Marvel’s financials and want to see and understand more, the Motley Fool has done some of the heavy lifting for you. What’s telling is that the entire piece is spent detailing the financing behind Marvel’s movie production and licensing (which, admittedly, has been the object of speculation and is somewhat complex) but not a whit on the comics themselves.
The Ain’t It Cool News site has just come out with an "AICN Comics" presentation of its third annual @$$ie Awards, featuring your host Crucifer (the @$$keeper?), above. Categories include Best Single Moment/Single Issue, Best Cover Artist, Best Miniseries/Special/One-Shot, Best Comic Book Character, Best Artist/Art Team, Best Writer, Best Publisher, and Best Ongoing Comic Book Series. Mercifully, only the intro is done in comic book form.
This coming Sunday, March 4, the gamer channel G4 will be airing the fourth episode in its Icons series, this time featuring a look at Frank Miller. The episode "focuses on Miller’s work over the years as a creator of popular comic books, characters and graphic novels, many of which have and are being adapted for feature films." Miller will also discuss his next movie, an adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit. Set those DVRs for 11 PM Eastern time!
When writer John Broome, artist Gil Kane, and the real villain, editor Julius Schwartz, reinvented the Green Lantern in 1959, they were corrupting the youth of America, or at least the comics reading segment thereof, by promoting authoritarian attitudes and glorifying barely disguised fascism.
Weren’t they?
I mean, didn’t we agree, in last week’s installment of this feature, that Green Lantern was changed from a guy with magical powers derived from a lantern and a ring, a bit of a loner, not unlike Aladdin, into a guy with superscientific gimmickry who gave unquestioning obedience to his masters, the self-styled Guardians of the Galaxy? A member of a uniformed corps?
Well, maybe not.
Those of us who frequent the liberal end of the political blogosphere got a real kick out of A-list blogger and comics fan Matt Yglesias’ post The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics on the group blog TPM Café.
Of course, Denny O’Neil responded in his column last week here on ComicMix, and now Matt has since followed up on his own blog (of particular amusement is that post’s comment section). Will this be the last word on the subject? Check out Denny’s next column, available mid-day Tuesday, right here.
Budgie calls our attention to another anti-comics screed from the (London) Times Online entertainment columnist Kevin Maher, this time writing about the TV series Heroes. Not only does Maher begin his article with a "Holy fill-in-the-blank, Batman!" cliché, but his entire point is about how "there are no subjects and no areas of modern life that cannot be infected by the inane juvenilia of comic-book lore," emphasis ours. What, did Superman disintegrate his teddy bear when he was a kid or something? Budgie assures us this contempt is nothing new for Maher, whose bias ought to make his editors think twice about assigning him to write about anything remotely comic-related.
Jessa from Bookslut pointed to one of the archives at the Authentic History Center, specifically Treasure Chest’s This Godless Communism produced by the Catholic Guild (and with an introduction by J. Edgar Hoover herself!). This link led to much trepidation about time suckage, as the AHC has some really fascinating stuff. You can peruse WWII military cartoons, comics about atomic energy, a really wrong Howdy Doody cover… a great way to kill a few spare hours! Highly recommended, and adding stuff all the time.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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