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…)
This is part two of the Milestone Media story I began last week. What follows is a brief overview of last’s week article.
Pretty soon, this is going to turn into a review of Dark Horse’s [[[Creepy Archives Volume 1]]]. Hang in there; I’ll get to it, I promise.
Having previously announced 
DC Comics’ boring old Web site saw a big relaunch over the weekend, perhaps coinciding with the record-breaking debut of The Dark Knight film.
Fables]]] is one of the big successes of the current version of the Vertigo line, where every book has a Hollywood-style high concept: all males on Earth are killed – except one!; New York’s mayor can talk to machines!; Refugee fairytales live in the modern world! And, in another Hollywood-esque twist, Fables even has a spin-off of its own, like 
begat 
The 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo is underway. Just to start us off right, Midway released the first gameplay footage from the upcoming Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe videogame. Since we’ve seen the Mortal Kombatants before, the video wisely focused on the DC Comics characters. Superman, Batman, Catwoman, and Flash were shown in some exciting footage using their unique abilities. For instance, the Flash smashed his enemy through several walls while going through rooms in a few seconds.
