Tagged: comics

Dennis O’Neil: Heroes and Villains

  • News
  • February 27, 2007

dennyoneil1005-1920411When 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.

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GL political followup

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  • February 27, 2007

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.

Vitriol across the ocean

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  • February 27, 2007

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.

Authenticating real history

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  • February 26, 2007

authist-copy-7614437Jessa 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.

Mike Gold: True Convention Thrills!

  • News
  • February 26, 2007

mikegold100-2736036Great Caesar’s Ghost, my first comic convention actually was 38 and one-half years ago. I thought about that a lot this past weekend. I recall hearing about 300 people attended that show; we were completely astonished by the huge turnout.

It was one of the late Phil Seuling’s first Fourth of July shows in New York, and he established the standard by which I measure all comic book conventions. I helped run the Chicago Comicon for ten years, and I tried to hold us to that same standard. Phil’s shows were absolutely great, and of course they grew in size and importance with the times.

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NYCC – Panel reviews

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  • February 25, 2007

During the most crowded day of a comics convention (or even on the other days), it’s never a bad idea to take in some panels.  The best conventions offer a wide variety of programs in comfortable and intimate settings that you just can’t duplicate at a booth or exhibition hall.  They represent just about any interest and subculture related to comics and other "geek-centric" entertainment, and create a participatory and egalitarian feel among panelists and attendees.

This NYCC saw a diversity of topics to please everyone from moviegoers to Japanophiles to old-school aficionados to the creators of tomorrow.  One of the best things about it was the implicit acknowledgement that about as many women as men were expected to take in the programming.  At least four panels so far have dealt with women in comics (real women storytellers as opposed to fictional women characters), and yet other panels having nothing to do with that topic featured female panelists as a matter of routine.  This is the very type of situation advocacy groups like Friends of Lulu hoped to work toward for so many years, and it’s a real privilege to see it come to fruition.

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Here’s a photo from a Friday panel.  Some thoughts on it and a couple other panels attended so far: (more…)

Performance art comics?

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  • February 25, 2007

metronome-9364260Metronome  is described as "a 64-page graphic novel by Véronique Tanaka: a ‘silent,’ erotically-charged visual poem, an experimental non-linear story using a palette of iconic ligne clair images. Symbolism, visual puns and trompe l’oeil conspire in a visual mantra that could be described as ‘existential manga’ if it wasn’t for the fact that there is a very human and elegantly-structured tale providing a solid foundation to the cutting-edge storytelling." 

The graphic novel will be published next year by NBM, but it’s available to view as a 17-minute animated (actually, still-shots) movie on this site if you fork over the equivalent of about four bucks.  I confess I didn’t last more than a minute and a half, two minutes tops.  Not only did I see no storytelling, but it seemed to have all the earmarks of a pretentious performance art piece worthy of the likes of a young Yoko Ono. 

If Grapefruit were a graphic novel-imagined-as-an-animated movie, it might look something like this.  Only without the grapefruit, and with a lava lamp, a fly, a piano, and a metronome, among other things.

Ain’t I A Woman?

  • News
  • February 24, 2007

martha200-3734293For as long as there has been a comics’ press, people have been wondering why there aren’t more women reading comics. And often those people wondering are, themselves, women: Maggie Thompson (who in 1960 co-published Harbinger, one of the first comics-themed fanzines back), The Beat‘s Heidi MacDonald, Trina Robbins (whom I’ve loved since the days of underground comix), cat yronwode of Eclipse, among many others.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Yet, like these women, I read comics. In my case, I read superhero comics. And I loved them. For all that time, when I was a girl, then a young woman, then a woman, a wife, a mom, I loved them. I still do.

How can this be? Don’t women hate superhero comics? Don’t we hate mindless violence, shallow characterization, demeaning stereotypes? Don’t we crave emotional connection and involving storylines?

(more…)

NYCC — News in brief

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  • February 23, 2007

Everyone’s getting into the podcasting act! Jamal Igle (see pictorial) will be participating in a serial podcast called The Mighty Mighty Adventures of Earl-Wayne and Chuckchuk (come on, you know you want to tune in on the basis of the name alone), which should be fun as he has such a terrific voice. And an old friend from college, David Levin, tells me his company, Brainstorm, Inc., is getting ready to do daily comics videocasts next month. With so much multimedia centered around comics, oversaturation might be a concern, but nobody ever complains about too much movie and TV coverage.

And in case you missed this news item amid the pictorial, Rob Walton’s Ragmop has been collected. This is huge news to those of us with very fond memories of that title. Lots of new words and art, updating ending, the whole shebang. Must dash and find out more stuff!

Michael Davis: Nut jobs

  • News
  • February 23, 2007

michael-davis100-5416924I said in my first article that I was a pretty simple guy. I see clear distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and Republican and Democrat. Blah, blah, blah. To that end, I think there are some things that people don’t talk about but should. Clearly in comics there is a subject or fifty that we don’t talk about. Well I’m going to talk about one right now. That subject is… nuts.

Not the nuts that come in a can, but rather people who are nuts… as in crazy.

No, I am NOT talking about people who have a real mental illness. I am talking about those people who have convinced themselves (sometimes with plenty of help from friends and family) that they are entitled to something that nobody else sees. Or their way of doing something is the only way something should be done regardless of any logical reasoning.

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