Future Comics: "Tokyopop Who?"
Is it just me or is this Pulse interview with Future Comics' Bob Layton really surreal?
  ¶ 3:39 PM | |

  Blogs Run Amuck!!
Just as Matt Brady speaks out against the dangers of rampant blogging, several more comic-focused bloggers spring up, as if to cruelly mock the venerated newshound:  Kevin Melrose, Rick Geerling, and Ron Phillips.  They're all fairly new, but they look pretty strong so far.  Welcome to the ever-growing club of those who wouldn't listen to the voices, guys.  (Links via poking around Grim's Fanboy Rampage!!)

Also added a link to a site I hadn't run across before -- Diverging Comics, whose Mission Statement (a site with a Mission Statement?  I'm having flashbacks to bad "brainstorming sessions" for various college volunteer groups) is to champion the issues of Diversity of Genre, Comics as Art, Public Perception, and Gender Balance as they pertain to comics.  All issues worth tackling, and a snazzy site design to boot.  (Link via Thought Balloons.)
  ¶ 1:46 PM | |

  Comics Grab Bag: Around the Dial
While I search for more challengers to pit against the Manga Stack of Intimidation, here's some other stuff I noticed at various sites:

• Newsarama has an interview with Eric Powell, writer-artist creator of The Goon.  I've expressed my love for this series before but, thankfully, I'll spare you the pictures.  Check out this book if you're looking for a good laugh.

• Steve Rude reports that Dark Horse is still planning to release his Moth one-shot, and they've also requested four more issues beyond the special, so that's encouraging.  Not so encouraging is news that the legal issues with Marvel (over the Moth logo being too close to the logo for the Punisher movie) have yet to be resolved.

• Tokyopop's mature-readers manga Battle Royale had been delayed due to issues with reproducing the artwork (so that's what happened), but the third volume should be out next week (which probably means I won't see it til December, since my October comics will probably ship before then).  This also reminds me that I have to watch the movie so I can compare Battle Royale in all its varied incarnations.

• Broken Frontier is celebrating its first anniversary.  Site guru Frederik Hautain has lined up some special features to celebrate the milestone, including the relaunch of the new-and-improved Showbuzz section and guest columns from comic pros like Jeph "Superman/Batman" Loeb and Justin "21 Down" Gray.  BF is also running a fundraiser to benefit ACTOR, which I thought was a classy touch:  Nice to think of others while celebrating your own success.  I'd encourage everyone to help out if you can.

• James Sime keeps on pimpin' comics, while Alan David Doane objects to the whole enterprise on moral grounds.  No word yet on the formation of a "Concerned Comic Citizens Council" to protest Sime's activities officially.

• Eve Tushnet has read the first volume of Uzumaki and appears to be hooked.  If you haven't read this top-notch horror manga yet, what's stopping you?  Buy it for yourself as a Halloween treat.  Go on -- you deserve it.

• Franklin Harris does not love Jeph Loeb's Superman/Batman as much as Graeme McMillan does.  (If anyone wants to lend me their copies, I'll volunteer to be the tie-breaker in this dispute.  World's Funnest or Flimsiest?  I'll decide!!)

• The insanely-prolific Sean Collins continues his "13 Days of Halloween" countdown of the 13 scariest movies of all time.  I agree with his pick of, and thoughts on, The Ring.  I know many prefer the Japanese original, Ringu, but I thought the remake was much more frightening.  Jason Adams is probably right about a big part of one's preference being due to which version you saw first.  How one experiences each film probably matters, too:  Ringu probably would have had more impact if I hadn't viewed it as a crappy, choppy DivX download on my computer monitor.

Finally, how did Dirk Deppey know that I photoshopped a box of Wheaties to make it look like Total?
  ¶ 9:14 AM | |

  More Measures of Manga
Yesterday's comparison between manga and American comics led to requests for some other matchups.

12 issues of Shonen Jump vs. 4 Marvel Essentials (4 @ $15 = $60)

12 issues of Shonen Jump vs. 2 Marvel hardcovers (2 @ $30 = $60)

12 issues of Shonen Jump vs. 1 bowl of Total (100% Daily Value of 12 Vitamins & Minerals)

Not pictured:  12 issues of Shonen Jump vs. 8.6 issues of The Comics Journal.
  ¶ 12:00 AM | |

  The Weak American Conversion Rate
After the last couple long posts, I figured I'd do something light.  So here's a comparison of what $60 will get you in manga versus American comics:


Gee, I wonder why young kids are flocking to manga?

(In case you're wondering, that's 12 issues of Viz's manga anthology Shonen Jump (with a $4.95 cover price) on the left and 24 issues of various American comics at $2.50 a pop on the right .)
  ¶ 12:30 AM | |

  And Now For Something Completely Same-Sex
Well, as promised, Eve Tushnet has organized her thoughts on same-sex marriage into a more readable form on her blog, so I suppose I'd better keep my promise and address her arguments.  First, here are links to her blog entries on same-sex marriage in order:

• Part 0:  Setup (In which Eve warns the reader that this is going to be long)

• Part 1:  Three Types of Argument (In which Eve classifies her three basic types of argument against SSM)

• Part 2:  Eve's Basic Position (In which Eve mainly presents her view of What Marriage Is and why SSM doesn't fit that model)

• Part 3:  Boyz II Men (In which Eve discusses how heterosexual marriage makes men more manly, and how SSM would ruin all this)

• Part 4:  Friendship (In which Eve ranks SSM closer to Friendship than to Marriage, hierarchically speaking)

• Part 5:  Quick Hits (In which Eve responds to some responses to her posts so far)

• Part 6:  Heather Has No Daddy (In which Eve worries that SSM will do away with Daddies)

• Part 7:  Sapphistry and Sophistry (In which Eve looks a little more specifically at lesbian SSM)

• Part 8:  Hmmmm... (In which Eve worries about straight married guys wanting to have as much extracurricular sex as all the gay married guys would presumably have)

• Part 9:  The Gay Russians Love Their Children Too (In which Eve further contemplates families with no Daddy)

• Part 10: Why? (In which Eve explains why she thinks and writes about SSM so much)

I'm not sure I'll address all of Eve's points.  In fact, given how much she's written on this topic, there's no way I can cover her entire output in one entry.  But I will try to hit on what I consider the major features (and major flaws) of her position.  And even if I don't fully do justice to Eve's thoughts on this issue, I hope that responding to her writings will at least allow me to set out my position on SSM, something I haven't tried to do in writing for quite some time.  (Or in other words:  Thanks, Eve:  Your blogging serves as motivation to articulate my own position!)

I suppose I'll start out where Eve ends -- by laying out my own background and/or biases.  Eve, responding to emails asking why she spends so much time thinking and writing about SSM, reveals that one reason is because she's queer (bisexual) so perhaps people who would otherwise dismiss an opponent of same-sex marriage will listen to her.  Eve also reveals in the queer link that she's Catholic and chaste.  So going by labels at least, Eve and I differ on pretty much every score:  I'm a straight, married atheist (although I was raised Catholic, including eleven years of Catholic school and several years of service as an altar boy).  I'll let the reader decide if these identifications render my position overly partial.

With that out of the way, I'll turn my attention to Eve's actual arguments.  One of the first things that struck me about Eve's arguments is that they rely very heavily on what I'd consider macro-level considerations:  How would SSM affect the societal institution of marriage?  Would SSM weaken any of the state's interests in promoting marriage?  Would marriage become a less effective method for raising children?  On the one hand, I can certainly understand why one would want to focus on the larger societal ramifications of a change in public policy.  On the other hand, it seems strange that so little attention is given to micro-level considerations:  What about individuals' rights to self-determination, personal autonomy, and the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness?  Eve appears to brush aside such concerns in her post on her basic position:  "Americans still think the debate over same-sex marriage is about gay people.  We still think it's about your best friend who's just said she's a lesbian, or your son who's just come out. We still think it's about whether homosexual acts are sinful.  It's not.  The same-sex marriage debate is about marriage, above all else."  I agree that the SSM debate requires that we spell out just what it is that we mean by marriage.  And I'll gladly agree that we should be at the point by now where we can assume homosexuality is not sinful.  But I also think the SSM debate is about equal rights, above all else.  True, as Eve states, marriage is itself a kind of "special right":  Something that, as Eve puts it, "a relationship earns because of what it gives society."  But access to that right should be granted equally, and denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates that principle. 

The debate over same-sex marriage is about equal rights.

So what is it about marriage that confers special societal status on that arrangement above all others?  My take on the matter is that marriage is privileged because it's seen as providing stability, which in turn benefits the state.  The types of stability are varied, but certain ones stand out in my mind:  Married couples are able to support each other in times of financial difficulty or hardship.  Marriage stabilizes a man's sexual drive by focusing his efforts and energy on one partner.  Finally, for those couples who chose to start a family, marriage provides a stable framework in which to raise children.

Eve answers the question a bit differently, but I think there are some similarities in our approach.  Here's Eve's take:

Why do we give marriage more societal honor than we give these other, often deeply important, relationships [best friends (which many women will recognize as the closest relationship they've ever had); mentors; grandmothers; beloved teachers]? Because we recognize that marriage has evolved to do more than these other relationships do for society. These relationships do less (not nothing, just less) to nurture children; to bind the young to the old; to corral the often destructive forces of desire into productive and loving channels; to bring people from youth to adulthood; and to align the interests of parents and children, rather than forcing tragic choices between the two. Marriage gets "props" from society because it does all these things more than any other institution does, or could.

Marriage developed over centuries to meet several specific, fundamental needs: children's need for a father. A couple's need for a promise of fidelity (and consequences for breaking that promise). Young people's need for a transition to manhood or womanhood. And men's (and women's, but mostly men's) need for a fruitful rather than destructive channel for sexual desire--a way of uniting eros and responsibility. In other words, marriage developed to meet the needs of opposite-sex couples. Why would same-sex couples expect that this institution would meet their very different needs?

In Eve's view, same-sex marriages would fall short in meeting these specific, fundamental needs:

At best, marriage only addresses one need of homosexual couples: sexual fidelity. Even there, it should be obvious that same-sex couples will be less likely to insist on physical fidelity than heterosexual couples. If your man might make babies with someone else, you're more likely to see the point of restrictions on male sexuality. If you can get pregnant, you're more likely to see the problems that might result if the father isn't legally tied to you. So the connection between sexual fidelity and the institution of marriage is a basic consequence of the fact that when men and women--but not same-sex couples--have sex, babies often result. When the institution is no longer responding to opposite-sex couples' needs, we can expect the emphasis on sexual fidelity to weaken.

I think one of the reasons SSM scores so low on Eve's scale is because of the way in which she weights the original measurements.  Because she builds the premise as "children's need for a father" of course same-sex couples (particularly lesbian ones) will fall short.  But what if the salient detail in marriage isn't children's need for a father but children's need for two supportive parents?  Just as couples support one another during times of financial strain, married couples can balance and support each other in parenting:  When one parent is too lenient, the other can be more of a disciplinarian, regardless of each parent's sex.  Simply to assume that children need a father seems to beg the question at hand.  (To be fair, Eve does return to the point of children needing fathers later in the section titled "Heather Has No Daddy" but I fail to see the force of her position.  Again, she simply seems to posit that children need daddies without really arguing for it.  I suspect that much of her position has to do with her more general point about humans seeking to be defined in terms of gender, something I'll try to address later.)

Next on Eve's list is marriage's role in fulfilling a couple's need for a promise of fidelity.  Eve grants that same-sex marriage would satisfy this need for same-sex couples, but, at the same time, she assumes that same-sex couples will be less likely to insist on physical fidelity than opposite-sex couples, mainly because pregnancy is not a possibility when same-sex couples have sex.  Although I understand how pregnancy can play a part in expectations of sexual fidelity, I fail to see how this neatly resolves the matter.  Yes, women have reasons for wanting to be married when they are pregnant.  But this doesn't mean that pregnancy will always result in increased demands for physical fidelity, or that pregnancy is the only factor which can influence desire for monogamous arrangements.  A woman may have gotten pregnant by one man but have no desire to marry him; she may chose a spouse other than the biological father.  In fact, legally a woman could conceive a child with a man other than her husband, but her husband would still be the presumptive father.  In both cases, the woman may want marriage and the support/stability it brings, but she may not want to marry the biological father of her child.  Further, once married, a woman may not require physical fidelity from her spouse, so long as she has the stability provided by marriage.  (I'm not making any claims about the relative likelihood of such scenarios, only pointing out the logical possibility of divorcing the benefits of marriage from the act of procreation.)

Coming at the matter from another perspective, I can imagine same-sex couples insisting on physical fidelity just as strongly as the most devoted opposite-sex couples.  As I see it, the degree to which any couple demands (and honors) fidelity depends on the beliefs of the individuals in the relationship.  I can imagine same-sex couples who remain faithful to each other just as much as I can imagine opposite-sex couples who are lenient on this matter, so long as the marriage is preserved.  But these thought experiments all revolve around the character of my hypothetical couples.  Aren't there any "real" reasons for homosexual couples to remain faithful?  I think one of the most obvious reasons a same-sex couple (or an opposite-sex couple, for that matter) would have to insist on martial fidelity would be the threat of sexually-transmitted diseases.  And I'm not trying to insinuate that AIDS is a "gay disease" or anything like that.  I just think that this is a factor that would encourage monogamous couples to remain faithful.

Another important function that marriage serves for Eve is acting as a marker for a young person's "transition to manhood or womanhood."  Eve doesn't seem to think that same-sex marriages would fulfill this role, but it's not clear why:  Couldn't marriage serve as a rite of passage into adulthood regardless of one's sexual orientation?  Wouldn't straights and gays alike start assuming all of those adult responsibilities traditionally (but not essentially) tied to marriage, such as paying the mortgage, opening shared financial accounts, and arguing over whose family to visit for the holidays?  I'm guessing that Eve wouldn't dispute these points.  Instead, she would worry that allowing same-sex marriage would weaken the gender-specific concepts of manhood and womanhood.  But this takes us into Eve's views on gender identity, and I'd like to postpone that discussion until later.

The final point in marriage's favor according to Eve is "men's (and women's, but mostly men's) need for a fruitful rather than destructive channel for sexual desire--a way of uniting eros and responsibility."  By this I assume she means a way of channeling (mostly) male sexual drive into a more stable framework than simply having sex with as many partners as possible.  I think similar points can be made here as made above in the "fidelity" section:  Yes, women have reason to want their mates to stay with them and devote their resources toward raising their offspring, rather than siring more offspring with other women.  And presumably society breathes a collective sigh of relief whenever an individual man outgrows his wild "sowing oats" days and decides to settle down to mow the lawn and fix the faucet.  But wouldn't society also benefit from this "calming" influence of marriage on its homosexuals? 

Well, one of Eve's worries appears to be that the flow of influence will backfire and non-monogamous (but married) gays will weaken not only the institution of marriage but straight men's confidence in their masculinity as well.  Let's consider these in order.

First, how would the existence of same-sex marriages where the spouses sleep around weaken the institution of marriage?  Eve's answer:  "SSM will change the cultural ideals of what it means to be a good husband. If you tell men that husbands who sleep around with other men are a-okay, you lose an important self-image tool (I won't do this because I want to be a good husband) that societies have used for centuries to rein in tempted men."  This answer bothers me for several reasons.  One, I don't think straight guys need to see gay guys engaging in adultery to get the idea about cheating on their wives.  I think straight guys have pretty much figured out the concept of cheating, even without gay guys to show them how.  In fact, married men cheating on their wives is a fairly constant staple not only in fact but in fiction as well.  I still remember being introduced to the concept of unhappy marriages by watching old Hitchcock films, and there cheating wasn't even the worst that could happen when a husband lost interest in his wife.

Two, I'm not sure why Eve seems to presume that SSM will tell men that it's OK to sleep around.  Although the same-sex marriage debate is a topic that interests me, I'll admit that lately I haven't been following it that closely.  Perhaps I missed the part where gays stated they want the right to marriage "but without all that stuff about monogamy and fidelity."  Perhaps I'm reading Eve uncharitably here, but her arguments seem to paint same-sex couples in a bad light while opposite-sex couples come across as as basically good but struggling to resist the evil forces threatening to tear them apart.  I think the truth of the matter would be considerably more complicated than that.  I think both types of couples would end up representing the range from wonderful relationships to horrible failures, with all the messed-up but sticking-at-it marriages in between.

I think Eve may be worrying that more radical camps within the GLBT community may push for more expansive definitions of what marriage is.  Perhaps there are activists arguing that gays should not wed themselves to a "straight" concept like monogamous marriages.  Even if this were true, so what?  Heterosexual couples went through periods of sexual experimentation in the Sixties and Seventies (key parties, wife swapping, "open" marriages, etc.) but marriage as an institution survived these "threats."  As Eve notes, monogamy and fidelity are becoming "hip" again.  I think marriage would be able to withstand the challenges its new members might bring to the concept.

Moving on to Eve's concern that seeing homosexuals marry will queer straight men on the whole concept of marriage, we finally begin to touch on Eve's theories of gender identity.  As Eve sees it, the problem is that "[s]ame-sex marriage is unisex" so "[m]arrying a woman is significantly less proof of one's manhood when a woman can do it!"  How exactly this would work is unclear.  Reading it, I pictured grade-school children on the playground squealing in disgust, "Ewww!  I'm not marrying a girl if a girl can do it!  That's so gay!!"  And perhaps young children would react in such a manner to news that same-sex couples could marry, but hopefully the passage of time might allow for the eventual maturation of such an opinion.

Actually, I'm probably being unfair.  I think I can see what Eve is trying to get at; it's just that it strikes me as so crude that I have a hard time holding it my mind in order to respond to it seriously.  I'll attempt to set out why Eve's position (as I understand it, which may be part of the problem right there) rubs me the wrong way:

• It's patronizing to men.  Men need to have their narrow concepts of masculinity protected from outside threats/influences?  Please.  If anything, men need help in expanding their concepts of masculinity so they're not so rigid.  (Not to be flippant, but it actually occurs to me that "Gay Culture" is doing a lot on this front.  For all its possible faults, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy at least seems to be teaching straight guys that it's okay to know something about fashion, cuisine, and culture.)

• It assumes that men get married as a mark of manhood.  I understand that the concepts Eve is discussing are probably meant to work on a somewhat subconscious level, but even when I plum the depths of my psyche I find no evidence to support this claim.  I can honestly say that when I thought about getting married, proving my manhood never entered into it.  (That came on the wedding night. [Sorry, couldn't resist -- bad joke, I know.])  And in all the talks I've had with other male friends who have contemplated marriage, I've never heard them indicate anything that sounded anywhere close to a desire to achieve manhood.  Adulthood, yes, but nothing specific to their concepts of themselves as men.

• It assumes that men avoid activities open to women.  If this were true, men would have abandoned the professions of law and medicine once they were opened to women.  But those professions still maintain their prestige, even though they're no longer "male only."  If men were only attracted to marriage because it was a symbol of something exclusively male (which I don't see how it could have ever been, since most men would probably view the relevant act as "marrying" not "marrying a woman"), then they probably weren't very good candidates for marriage in the first place.

• It assumes that gender identity is something that should take precedence over couples' happiness and self-determination.  Even if we granted that allowing SSM might weaken traditional markers of manhood/masculinity to some unknown degree, I don't think this would be a strong argument against same-sex marriage.  I think couples' right to determine their future together would trump such a vague, nebulous concern.  To argue otherwise seems reminiscent of opposition to interracial marriage:  "It will dilute racial identity!"  Sure, one's sense of racial and gender identity are important, but they are also adaptive and flexible.  I don't think either type of identity needs to be frozen in order to have value.  In fact, stagnation is probably the opposite course one would want to take in order to promote healthy concepts of gender and racial identity.

Honestly, I find it a bit surprising that someone like Eve -- whose identity as a gay, chaste Catholic opposed to SSM is pretty non-traditional -- seems to favor such rigid, standardized concepts of identity.  I would think she'd have an appreciation for the endlessly possible permutations of identity.  And I'm not sure how advocating greater flexibility in identities equates to "fewer role models and ideals."  Wouldn't such an advocate be offering more role models, not fewer?  Eve seems to think that more possibilities will lead to more confusion on the part of married couples looking for guidance on how they're supposed to act.  See this entry, for example, where she rails against Michael Kinsley for suggesting that married people "set their own rules" regarding children and finances:  "How could anyone look at marriage in America today and think it needs to become more ad hoc, more centered on the individual contracting adults and not on the children and the wider society, more do-it-yourself?"  I can sympathize with the concern to an extent:  Even something as mundane as choosing a digital camera can feel overwhelming when presented with a multitude of options.  But I guess that if I had to choose, I think it's better if people are able to pick the marital methods and models that work for them rather than forcing everyone into the same "one size fits all" structure, ignoring individual needs or preferences.  I know married couples who have individual financial accounts (checking, savings, credit cards, etc.) and while it may seem strange to me, if it works for them...

Oh, god -- there's so much more:  So much more to address; so much more to write.  But this is already getting so long that I fear no one will read through it all.  I'll end by tossing out a couple points I wanted to make but didn't get to yet:

• I'm not sure why Eve seems to assume that same-sex couples who want to get married know in advance that they're not going to be faithful to each other.  I mean, it's not like gays are pressured into marriage or do it because "I dunno, it seems like the right thing to do, like something I have to do if I want to be a grown-up."  Sure, I can imagine some couples agreeing to do it primarily for the benefits.  But opposite-sex couples abuse marriage for benefits (such as green cards, to name one example) and I don't see efforts to close off heterosexual marriage.  If we only focused on the absolute worst-case scenarios, I think any form of marriage would come out looking pretty bad.  But I think we have to have to assume that most people will go into marriage at least intending to make an honest go of it.
  

• I don't think same-sex parenting would be as deleterious toward child-rearing as Eve seems to think it would be.  I think it's more important that children have two loving parents to support each other as they raise the kids; I don't think it's crucial to ensure that the parents represent both sexes.  But even if studies were to show that children did better with opposite-sex parents, I don't think this would decide the matter against SSM.  Imagine if studies were to show that children do better when one parent stays home full-time.  Perhaps there are even historical studies showing that children's development was negatively impacted when women began to enter the workplace in full force.  If this were true (and I'm sure there are already studies out there making such claims), should wives be expected to stay home as full-time mothers?  I don't think an entire group or class can be punished for such social developments.  (And, yes, I view the withholding of life options such as a career or marriage as a form of punishment.)  If anything, society has to work together to solve the problem (children doing poorly according to certain measures) without reversing any civil rights advancements made.

• Regarding the taming of the male (or female) sexual drive:  I think this only ever works if the individual in question choses and commits to it.  In general, I dislike the question/concept of "But if I get married, how do I know I'll stay in love with that person forever?"  Because you don't know -- that's looking at it all wrong, in my opinion.  Loving someone for the rest of your life isn't some passive thing that happens to you -- something you can seek out and find if you only look hard enough.  It's something you actively work at -- something you decide to do and follow through on.  Or at least that's my take on it.  (And this might be an area where Eve and I agree, assuming I'm reading her comments on the transformative power of promise-making in marriage correctly.  I just think (unlike Eve) that society should extend the opportunity to engage in this transformative power to same-sex couples.)
  

In closing, I think that Eve is right to wonder about the difficulties extending marriage to same-sex couples might raise for society.  It's certainly wise when changing public policy to think about the impact to society at large.  I just happen to think that none of the difficulties Eve raises are insurmountable deal-breakers.  I understand that the uncertainty surrounding such changes can be unsettling.  I don't think we should be blind to such complexities, but I don't think we should let our worries blind us either.
  ¶ 8:47 AM | |

  Loading The Canon
About a week ago I wrote an entry discussing Steve Higgins' call for a Comic Book Canon.  Since then, Steve has gone on to take a stab at putting together his list of recommended classics (not a permalink).  I haven't made any progress in assembling a list of my own, but a couple readers did point out several resources that might prove helpful:  Sequential Tart's Recommended Reading Lists; Friends of Lulu's Recommended Reading Lists; Comics Worth Reading's List of...Comics Worth Reading; and the Artbomb site (thanks to Jason Kimble and Johanna Draper Carlson for the links).  One book that seems to pop up on almost everyone's list is Watchmen.  In fact, Eve Tushnet suggests Watchmen is worthy of inclusion in "not solely the comics canon, which is boringly obvious, but the ultimate canon where all art forms converge."  I guess if there's one book that's sure to make everyone's list, it would be Watchmen, right?  Well, maybe not.  I recently stumbled upon this review of the comic book classic from Steven Berg.  Unlike most comic readers, Steven does not appear to be an unqualified fan of Moore's work (Steven does like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen considerably more than Watchmen, and From Hell even more than that, so it's not as though Steven is a simple Moore basher, either).  Although I count myself among the legion of Watchmen fans, I thought Steven raised some interesting points, so I'll reproduce his "bullet-list review" (yes! bullet points!!) and respond to his criticisms in bold.  I've reproduced the main body of Steven's criticism below, but I've touched up some misspellings (it's Dr. Manhattan, not Manhatten) and I've replaced all nongendered pronouns with their more traditional counterparts:

• What's up with that pirate comic? First of all, it sucks. Second of all, it's totally thematically redundant with the main story of Watchmen. It adds nothing that I can see. OK, it answers the question, "What comics would people read if superheroes actually existed?" But we didn't need an entire lame comic story about zombie pirates written in overwrought purple language to answer that question.
  
  I thought the pirate comic was pretty good, even taken in its own right. Not to say that it's great literature, but it certainly works as a moralistic tale in the vein of old EC horror comics or Twilight Zone episodes.
  
  I also think the pirate comic contributes to the larger narrative.  First, as Steven said, it answers the question of what comics might be popular if superheroes really existed.  Second, I believe the pirate comic adds a bit of complexity to the main storyline.  As I read it, the survivor in the pirate comic is meant as a rough parallel for Veidt:  Someone who is so wrapped up in his fear of some future horror that he kills his fellow man in order to save him.  As Veidt says to Manhattan at the end, he dreams of himself as that survivor, swimming out to meet the pirate ship. Although Veidt protests that he makes himself feel every death, Veidt has set himself off from humanity by putting himself above (outside) human morality.  
  
  Another interesting complexity that the pirate comic adds, in my opinion, is the suggestion that Veidt's slaughter of millions was unnecessary.  For if the parallel holds, Veidt's plan to save humanity was just as superfluous as the survivor's plan to "save" his town.  In both cases, the threats seemed inescapable.  But in the pirate comic, the threat never came to pass.  Perhaps the war between the U.S. and USSR, which seemed so inevitable, would never have happened even if Veidt had not intervened.
  
  
• Sally Jupiter was a slutty pin-up action girl who was raped and then had an affair with her rapist. Excuse me, Mr. Moore, could we get some nuance in here? (I'm probably being unfair. Not all the characters were as flat as Sally Jupiter, and anyway I'm probably forgetting some minor roundness in Sally's character. Actually, it's not Sally Jupiter as an individual character that bothers me, but Moore's tendency to use sexual abuse as facile characterization. It's also evident in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It would be evident in From Hell, but I'm willing to give Moore some slack there because, hey, it's about a prostitute-murdering crazy Freemason -- it sort of has to involve lots of sexual abuse stuff.)
  
  This part disturbed me as well, but I don't know if that's a weakness on the book's part.  I think we're supposed to be upset by the idea that Sally would have a willing, consensual affair with Blake after being assaulted by him years before.  Sally herself confesses that she felt ashamed about the affair when confronted by her daughter's knowledge of events.  I think the point Moore was shooting for was the one that Laurie expresses to her mother:  "People's lives take them strange places.  They do strange things."  Although Sally's actions are less than ideal (I seriously doubt Moore intended to offer up the character as a role model worthy of emulation), I think her character does capture how basically good or decent people can make decisions that strike observers (and themselves) as bad.
  
  I think a distinction has to be drawn between something being objectionable considered absolutely and something being bad writing.  Often times fictional characters do things that you may want to rail against, but that doesn't mean that the overall work is flawed, just that real-life people often are and that gets reflected back in fiction.
  
  Regarding the charge that Moore tends to subject characters (especially female characters) to sexual abuse in his stories, I'd have to re-examine more of his works to address that point.  I do remember being disturbed by the treatment of Evie at the hands of V when I read V for Vendetta, but that abuse (and it was abuse, in my opinion, despite V's defense of it and Evie's eventual acceptance of it) wasn't sexual, and it did serve the story, even if I found it extremely objectionable.
  


• Actually, I thought Watchmen was pretty good for the first 11 chapters. Then Veidt's plan is revealed. OK, I'm willing to believe that Veidt is crazy enough and has the resources to put this plan in motion. However...
  
  I can understand how a work's ending can retroactively ruin the entire work, especially when the work's ending is essential to understanding what was going on in the earlier plot.  But I disagree that everything falls apart at the end of Watchmen, as I'll argue in what follows...
  


• As far as I can tell, Moore expects us to believe this is actually a sort of viable plan. Uh huh.
  
  
  1. Like the nations of the Earth are going to just drop the Cold War and start working together to stop the extraterrestrial threat? Un-fucking-likely, sez I. Even if you could convince every nation that it's not just some crazy trick the US is pulling, or something like that, and you could convince them the best way to deal with the threat is to create a peaceful world alliance, it'd take some serious diplomacy to get such an alliance together and coordinated.

     I agree with Steven here:  This is the weakest part of Watchmen for me as well.  But we have the benefit of post-9/11 events to aid our analysis.  September 11th showed us that just because other nations may be sympathetic toward the U.S. in times of tragedy doesn't mean those nations will abandon their own interests or aspirations, or trust us in all matters (or that the U.S. will act any more multilaterally).  And there will probably always be some fringe elements who would suspect the U.S. of perpetrating any horrific act on its own citizens.  Looking at the events in Watchmen, it seems plausible that the USSR might be so shocked by the horror that befell New York that they would withdraw their troops from Afghanistan out of sympathy.  (I can also see how a nation might use such an opportunity to press its advantage against an opponent.  Which outcome is more probable is anyone's guess but probably depends on knowing much more about the situation at hand).  But it does seem unlikely that one isolated event (no matter how horrific) would suddenly cause two nations with long-standing conflicts to become best friends forever.  In Moore's defense, however, I'm not sure just how long-term he intended us to view the peace on display at the book's end.  For one thing, the threat of Rorschach's journal being discovered is the final scene in the book–the implication being that Veidt's plan will be exposed after all.  Even if we discount this (as most people living in the Watchmen-world probably would were it ever published), I don't know if anything in the story requires us to assume that Moore saw this plan as viable.  Although we see signs of what appears to be a peaceful, Russian-influenced U.S. in the last few pages (a "Burgers 'n' Borscht" fast-food joint; a sign advertising a screening of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice (another nice thematic touch by Moore); a "One World, One Accord" poster), for all we know, these may be isolated occurrences, and may all be attempts by Veidt to manipulate the public (like the "Millennium" billboard also on display, replacing the now-retired "Nostalgia" campaign).  And even though Veidt says he now wants to "help [Earth] toward Utopia," there's no guarantee that he'll be successful in his efforts.  Consider the example Veidt offers to demonstrate the brilliant "lateral thinking" of his idol, Alexander of Macedonia:  Alexander didn't succeed in untying the Gordian knot; he only succeeded in destroying the problem.  If the point of the Gordian knot was to untie it, Alexander was a failure, not a success.  Similarly, although Veidt may have eliminated the immediate problem facing him (the US-USSR tensions in Afghanistan), he didn't learn anything about "untying the knot" (establishing lasting peace).
     

  2. And by the time it's coordinated, somebody's going to have figured out Veidt was behind it all along, and that's the end of the alliance. If crazy fuck Rorschach managed to figure everything out, the CIA and the KGB and whatever other intelligence organizations are going to have it figured out it about 5 minutes.

     Perhaps, but Rorschach is also somewhat of an...unconventional thinker, so maybe not.
     

• Related to the above point, Moore has Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk, after a few minutes of horror, decide they should let Veidt get away with it all because they apparently think the plan will work. I don't really see Dan and Laurie being stupid and/or crazy enough to think the plan will work. I think the point is that there are no heroes, so Moore has to have Dan and Laurie sacrificing their heroic ideals and all that, but they should have come up with a way to make that point that doesn't make them look like incredible idiots.
  
  I didn't read it as Dan and Laurie necessarily agreeing that Veidt's plan would work (although, as Moore depicted events, Veidt's plan did appear to be working, at least for the moment).  I saw it more as Dan and Laurie acquiescing to Dr. Manhattan's observation that exposing Veidt's plot would serve no practical purpose at that point.  True, Laurie and Dan utter overwrought lines such as "Jesus, he was right.  All we did was fail to stop him saving Earth." and "How...how can humans make decisions like this?  We're damned if we stay quiet, Earth's damned if we don't."  But I'd chalk this up to both characters being overcome with emotion and exhaustion at that point (if you want an "in-story" explanation).
  


• Anyway, what's up with this stuff about there being no heroes? Lots of people do heroic things in real life, so why can't there be heroes in superheroland? I'm not bitter or cynical enough to appreciate Watchmen's thematic content.

  Although most of the "superheroes" are less than perfectly heroic, I still think Moore depicts them as trying to do good/right.  Or at least most of the human ones–Dr. Manhattan seems too far removed from humanity to be considered heroic, and the Comedian seems too amoral.  Even Ozymandias acts in a manner motivated by what he considers to be right (viewed from a utilitarian perspective).  Further, the scene where Malcolm (the psychiatrist who treated Rorschach) attempts to intervene in the fight between two women always struck me as heroic/uplifting.  Although his faith in an objective moral order and higher meaning has been shaken, and although his estranged wife begs (orders) him not to get involved, Malcolm soldiers on:  "Gloria, please.  I have to.  In a world like this... I mean, it's all we can do, try to help each other.  It's all that means anything."  Although the worldview in Watchmen might appear cracked, I don't think it's broken beyond all hope.
  

• Dr. Manhattan's murder of Rorschach was despicable plotting on Moore's part. Up to that point, I thought Dr. Manhattan was about the only sympathetic character for me in the entire story (on the surface he's the least human character, but really he strikes me as the most human in depth, since he's not based on shallow caricatures like the rest -- "slutty rape victim," "megalomaniacal supervillain," "costume fetishist," "psychotic vigilante," blah blah blah). Then -- why? Couldn't Dr. Manhattan just erase their memories or something? It's not like Dr. Manhattan's powers are limited by anything other than plot necessity, so Moore must have had some reason for turning Dr. Manhattan into a cold-blooded killer. What was it?

  Well, Dr. Manhattan was already depicted as a cold-blooded killer earlier in the book (in chapter four he's shown blowing up a villain's head and the narrative caption reads "The morality of my activities escapes me.")  Plus, Jon cheats on Janey with the younger Laurie, so it's not as though his motivations were traditionally moral.  In fact, throughout the story, Jon only seems to respond to logical considerations, not moral ones.  As for why he killed Rorschach rather than somehow else incapacitating him, perhaps it was because Manhattan still viewed human life in the abstract:  Although he had come to admire life as "the thermodynamic miracle," there was no indication that particular human lives meant very much to him.  He had already grown distant from Laurie (his relationships–like his clothing–seemed to be artifacts that he shed along with his humanity).  Perhaps Moore had Manhattan kill Rorschach to drive home the point that Manhattan–with the power to create life as well as destroy it–had become more god than man.

Is this a mark of a classic–to be generating commentary and controversy years after it was written?  Or are we only proving Jess Lemon's point for her? ("Find something new to analyze to death, you blasted fanboys!")  I'll have to find something else–something recent–to pore over...
  ¶ 9:03 AM | |

  Marvel's New Year's Resolution: More Crap
Marvel has finally released their solicitation info for comics coming out in January 2004.  Comments:

• Regarding this solicitation for X-Statix #18: "When a mysterious CD gives new meaning to the term 'killer track' — leaving its listeners dead — it's up to the X-Statix to figure out why!" Because to the RIAA, nothing is too extreme if it discourages file-sharing?



• Avengers #77 features "new costumes"? Already? Didn't Coipel (who is still the regular Avengers artist as far as I know) just redesign most of the characters' costumes a couple issues ago?



• Interesting that the solicitation for Hulk #66 has a spoiler that you need to highlight to read, at least in Toon Zone's version of the solicit.  Wonder how they'll get around that in the Previews catalog—include a pair of those "decoder" glasses in the mag?  Or maybe they'll just run it without the spoiler warning, as Comics Continuum has.



• Checking in with Captain Marvel, now at #18:  Yep, Marv's still crazy.



• The Incorrigible Hulk one-shot is by Peter Bagge, so I will be buying this.



• Ultimate Six #6 (of 7): "Now 7 big issues!" Or as I prefer to look at it: "Yes, we know it would make more sense if a mini-series featuring a team called the Sinister Six lasted only six issues, but hotshot writer Brian Michael Bendis doesn't know how to rein in a story, and we don't know how to rein him in!"



• Ultimate Spider-Man #52: "It's an Ultimate 'Cat' fight when Black Cat & Elektra face off, with Spider-Man caught in the middle ... (we should all be so lucky)!"  Ugh.  And people give anime a hard time for indulging in fanservice...



• I love how Marvel's covers continue to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the content inside.  Case in point:  Amazing Spider-Man #503, whose story is decidedly mystical ("In the aftermath of the inter-dimensional rift caused by Spider-Man & Doctor Strange's battle with Dormammu, a sorceress of limitless power is set free from years of captivity — and sets forth on a quest through Manhattan to properly thank the one responsible for it — Spider-Man!"), features this inappropriately street-level cover:
  
  
  
  
  
  Because nothing says "inter-dimensional mystical adventure" like a generic cover of Spider-Man webbing up some nameless young punks with guns.



• Interesting copy for 1602 #6:  "Doctor Strange goes to the moon!"  I don't know whether to make a Honeymooners joke or wonder if Gaiman thought he was writing a children's book again ("And Doom ran away with the spoon!")



• And Marvel has taken a different tack than I expected with the Essential Punisher TPB, reprinting most of the Punisher's early appearances in other titles and ending on the five-issue mini-series from the Eighties by Steven Grant and Mike Zeck.  Here's the full solicitation:

  ESSENTIAL PUNISHER VOL. 1 TPB
  
  Written by Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Frank Miller, Bill Mantlo, Steven Grant & Mike W. Barr
  
  Illustrated by: Ross Andru, Tony DeZuniga, Keith Pollard, Frank Miller, Al Milgrom, Greg LaRocque, Mike Zeck & Frank Springer
  Cover by Gil Kane
  
  When the mob killed his family, Frank Castle went to war. But before he became the scourge of the underworld, the Punisher set his sights on a certain world-famous wall-crawler. In time for next summer's THE PUNISHER big-screen adventure, Marvel presents the vengeance-seeking vigilante's earliest appearances in the pages of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, DAREDEVIL and more. Collects in black & white format AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #129, #134-135, #161-162, #174-175, #201-202 & ANNUAL #15, GIANT-SIZE SPIDER-MAN #4, MARVEL PREVIEW PRESENTS #2, MARVEL SUPER ACTION #1, CAPTAIN AMERICA #241, DAREDEVIL #182-184, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #81-83 & PUNISHER #1-5!
  
  January 21 :: 568 pages :: B&W :: Marvel PSR :: $14.99

  I may actually consider getting this.  I'm such a schmuck for nostalgia.
  

EDIT:  In case anyone was wondering, like me, what the heck MARVEL PREVIEW PRESENTS #2 and MARVEL SUPER ACTION #1 are, here are the covers courtesy of Mile High Comics:


According to this site, the Punisher stories in these mags were reprinted in something called Classic Punisher back in 1989.
  ¶ 3:16 PM | |

  Return of the Patron Saint of Grotesque Anatomy
Now I know how late-night comics must have felt when Schwarzenegger announced he was joining the recall race for California's governorship.  From today's Lying in the Gutters:

I also hear that Rob Liefeld is to take full creative reins on a new "X-Force" title, as Marvel outsource the entire creative and editorial responsibilities on the book to him. Liefeld will also be responsible for producing a range of one-shots and mini-series associated with the project. Expect the return of a number of his New Mutants and X-Force characters. Liefeld declined to comment.

Yeah, because the last time Marvel outsourced a comic to Liefeld that went swimmingly.  Either way this is great news for me:  Either Liefeld will make excuses for missed deadlines, thereby providing material for mockery; or Liefeld will produce actual artwork, thereby providing material for mockery:



Grotesque genius.
  ¶ 1:51 PM | |

  Mainstream Magazine Mentions of Comics
The latest Entertainment Weekly (#735, October 31, 2003) has a review of Mythology, the Alex Ross art book.  It gets an A.  (ADD also reviewed the book and gave it a grade of 4.5/5.)

And I forgot to mention this earlier, so I might as well do so now:  The October 20, 2003 issue of The New Yorker (the "Making Movies" issue) refers to two Marvel movies, The Punisher and Hulk.  The Punisher is mentioned in an article on stunts ("The Art of the Crash") and the scene in which the Punisher's family is killed before his eyes is dissected in detail.  The character of the Punisher is described as "the darkest character in the moral universe of Marvel Comics" and "a gun-toting vigilante superhero" whose simple philosophy is "'I kill only those who deserve killing.'"  Hulk is discussed in an article about how writing credits are arbitrated for movies ("Credit Grab").  Two earlier, rejected plotlines are mentioned:  "The earlier plotlines ranged from having Bruce Banner, the Hulk's mild-mannered alter ego, hang out with a delinquent teen-age sidekick in Las Vegas to having him undergo experiments for a mission to Mars."
  ¶ 1:10 PM | |

  No Adrienne Barbeau??
Guess it's time to start stockpiling lame blurbs and bad puns to mock the more-than-likely flop known as Man-Thing:

• "Whoever Knows Crappy F/X  Bombs at the Box Office's Touch"
• "Audiences Want No-Thing to do with Man-Thing"
• "Man-Thing Giant-Size...Flop, That Is"
• "Muck This"

Also fun:  Anticipating the inevitable odd-sounding quotes, such as this one from Artisan Entertainment Executive Vice President Patrick Gunn:  "We feel this film impressively introduces MAN-THING in a manner that will really thrill the viewing public.”  ¶ 3:53 PM | |

  [Need Cute Alliterative Title Using Letter M]
Saw this article over on Folio thanks to Dirk Deppey's link:  It's a piece titled "Mighty Manga Mags" and it looks at how manga magazines are doing here in the U.S.  The main focus is on Viz's Shonen Jump, but it also mentions Gutsoon's Raijin Comics and the possibility that Del Ray may be looking at launching a manga mag.  A couple things that raised questions in my mind:

• I didn't understand how these figures for Shonen Jump jibe:  "Its publisher, VIZ, is guaranteeing a circulation of 150,000 by 2004" and "VIZ plans to print 1 million issues a month by 2005....double the 500,000 for Shonen Jump in September."  Why is Viz's estimate for circulation in 2004 350,000 lower than the print run for September?  Was the 2004 circulation goal misprinted?  (I seem to remember that Shonen Jump launched with numbers near 300,000, so "circulation of 150,000 by 2004" would be quite a disappointment in my mind.)



• I wonder how Gutsoon's collected editions are selling.  I had no idea the numbers for Raijin Comics were so low (assuming the article's circulation estimate of 15,000 is correct).  I thought Gutsoon had signed some distribution deals to get the magazine (and books) into different markets, but I'm not sure how successful those arrangements have been.  I haven't seen Gutsoon graphic novels in any of the local bookstores when I've looked, but I always find plenty of collections from Viz (and Tokyopop, of course).  I hope Gutsoon is doing OK, if only for the selfish reason that I want to continue reading Slam Dunk in collected form.



• I was disappointed to see no mention of Dark Horse's Super Manga Blast! in the article.  I have a personal fondness for the anthology, since it was what turned me on to manga in a major way.  I've since dropped it (and other manga anthologies) in favor of the collected editions of the series I really enjoy (Club 9 and What's Michael? from SMB; Slam Dunk and maybe City Hunter from Raijin), but I still think SMB deserves some props, since it's been around a couple years longer than the more recent upstarts.  Maybe the "flipped" format keeps SMB from being hip enough to rate a mention.

Shawn Fumo also shares his thoughts on the short piece.  Shawn is particularly impressed with news that Viz has signed a distribution deal with Scholastic's book club (the article isn't clear on whether the deal is just for Shonen Jump, the Shonen Jump collections of select series, or Viz books in general).  And even though it really has nothing to do with the topic, here are some old reviews I wrote for early issues of Shonen Jump and Raijin Comics over at Anime News Network.  ¶ 2:17 PM | |

  Mreow! Catty!!
Ladies and gentlemen, the real costume Halle Berry will be wearing in her upcoming Catwoman movie:


  ¶ 10:05 PM | |

  Marvel Comics for January 2004
Marvel's solicitations for January 2004 still aren't up at any of the usual sites, but Diamond has uploaded its new order forms for Jan. 2004 (warning: big-ass text file).  Here's the Marvel section (minus the backlist):

AVENGERS #77 (Note Price)    $0.50                           
AVENGERS #78    $2.25                                           
ULTIMATES #13 (RES) (Note Price)    $3.50                   
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #2    $2.25                           
FANTASTIC FOUR #509 (#80)    $2.25                           
INCREDIBLE HULK #65    $2.25                                   
INCREDIBLE HULK #66    $2.25                                   
STARTLING STORIES  INCORRIGIBLE HULK ONE SHOT #1    $2.99   
SILVER SURFER #5    $2.25                                   
HULK NIGHTMERICA #5 (Of 6) (RES)    $2.99                   
CAPTAIN MARVEL #18    $2.99                                   
CAPTAIN MARVEL #19    $2.99                                   
HAWKEYE #4    $2.99                                           
THANOS #4    $2.99                                           
THANOS #5    $2.99                                           
CRIMSON DYNAMO #6    $2.50                                   
THOR #73    $2.99                                           
IRON MAN #76    $2.99                                           
ULTIMATE SIX #6 (Of 7)    $2.25                                   
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #52    $2.25                                  
SPIDER-GIRL #68    $2.99                                          
SPIDER-GIRL #69    $2.99                                          
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #503 (#62)    $2.25                           
SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED #1    $2.99                                  
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #9    $2.25                           
SPIDER-MAN DOC OCTOPUS  OUT OF REACH #3 (Of 5)    $2.99           
SPIDER-MAN AND DR OCTOPUS NEGATIVE EXPOSURE #4 (Of 5)    $2.99   
NEW X-MEN #151    $2.25                                           
NEW X-MEN #152    $2.25                                           
ULTIMATE X-MEN #41    $2.25                                   
UNCANNY X-MEN #437    $2.25                                   
UNCANNY X-MEN #438    $2.25                                   
NYX #4    $2.99                                                   
X-STATIX #18    $2.99                                           
X-TREME X-MEN #40    $2.99                                   
X-TREME X-MEN #41    $2.99                                   
EXILES #40    $2.99                                           
EXILES #41    $2.99                                           
WOLVERINE #10    $2.25                                           
WEAPON X #19    $2.99                                           
DAREDEVIL #56    $2.99                                           
ELEKTRA #31    $2.99                                           
ELEKTRA #32    $2.99                                           
MARVEL 1602 #6 (Of 8)    $3.50                                   
CAPTAIN AMERICA #22    $2.99                                   
HULK GRAY #5 (Of 6)    $3.50                                   
ANT-MAN #2 (Of 4) (MR)    $2.99                                   
SUPREME POWER #6 (MR)    $2.99                                   
PUNISHER MAX #1 (MR)    $2.99                                   
PUNISHER MAX #2 (MR)    $2.99                                   
DEATHLOK DETOUR #1 (Of 4) (MR)    $2.99                           
DEATHLOK DETOUR #2 (Of 4) (MR)    $2.99                           
RUNAWAYS #10    $2.99                                           
MYSTIQUE #10    $2.99                                           
EMMA FROST #7    $2.50                                           
VENOM #10 (Note Price)    $2.99                                   
NEW MUTANTS #10 (Note Price)    $2.99                           
INHUMANS #9    $2.99                                           
INHUMANS #10    $2.99                                           
SENTINEL #11    $2.99                                           
NAMOR #11    $2.99                                           
HUMAN TORCH #9    $2.99                                           
BORN HC (MR)    $17.99                                           
PUNISHER VOL 3 HC    $24.99                                   
ESSENTIAL PUNISHER VOL 1 TP    $14.99                           
UNCANNY X-MEN VOL 4 THE DRACO TP    $15.99                   
ULTIMATE X-MEN VOL 7 BLOCKBUSTER TP    $12.99                   
X-TREME X-MEN VOL 6 INTIFADA TP    $16.99                         
EXILES VOL 6 FANTASTIC VOYAGE TP    $17.99                   
SPIDER-MAN LEGENDS VOL 3 TODD MCFARLANE BOOK 3 TP    $24.99   
CAPTAIN AMERICA VOL 4 CAPTAIN AMERICA LIVES AGAIN TP    $12.99   
ELEKTRA VOL 3 RELENTLESS TP    $14.95                           
EARTH X VOL 5 PARADISE X BOOK 2 TP (RES)    $29.99           
MARVEL MASTERWORKS FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 5 2ND ED HC    $49.99   
MARVEL MASTERWORKS SUB-MARINER VOL 1 2ND ED HC    $49.99          
MARVEL MASTERWORKS UNCANNY X-MEN VOL 2 2ND ED HC    $39.99   

Stuff that catches my eye:

• A 50-cent issue of Avengers?  Guess the 25-cent promo comics lost too much money, huh?
• If I remember correctly, INCORRIGIBLE HULK is a one-shot by Peter Bagge (much like his Megalomaniacal Spider-Man).  If so, I'll be picking this up.
• Any guesses as to what the ESSENTIAL PUNISHER vol. 1 will reprint?  The original mini-series and subsequent ongoing from the 80s?  If so, I wonder if they'll throw in the Punisher's earlier appearances from Amazing Spider-Man.

  ¶ 4:57 PM | |

  Is It Really Time For A Nineties Revival Already?
Finally, Sandman done right.  ¶ 10:20 PM | |

  Bill Jemas, Senior Citizen
Mark Millar steps up to defend friend and former boss Bill Jemas from the trolls on the Newsarama board.  It's a sentiment I can certainly respect, and I do get sick of fanboys attacking Jemas for everything they dislike about Marvel (or NuMarvel or M*rv*l or however the Jemas era at Marvel is designated).  But this line really irked me:

Bill...co-wrote the Spider-Man title that formed the basis of the 800,000,000 dollar movie

Bill Jemas co-wrote Amazing Fantasy #15?  ¶ 7:51 PM | |

  Small Press Short Bus?
Quote of The Week:  "The problem isn't that the bookstore market is being held to some Olympian standard of sales, but that in the Direct Market, anything that doesn't feature superheroes or hard genre trappings is held down to a Special Olympian standard."  - Dirk Deppey, discussing the relative merits of the bookstore market and the Direct Market with retailer Brian Hibbs.  ¶ 1:23 PM | |

  CrossGen: All Infinite Things Must Come To An End
Bill Rosemann, recently promoted from Director of Marketing & Communications to Senior Vice President of Publishing, addressed (among other topics) the cancellation of most of CrossGen's "Sigilverse" titles, which includes all of the titles from the company's initial lauch (Meridian, Mystic, Scion, Sigil, and the previously-cancelled The First).  I found these two bits from the interview amusing:

BILL ROSEMANN: First, since the launch of CrossGen, Mark Alessi and the creators repeatedly talked about how each of the series, while they would last longer than a four-to-six-issue miniseries, were, in fact, finite stories.

ROSEMANN: The intention for each of these titles to last indefinitely was sincere -- just as it is with any publisher who launches an ongoing title.

While I realize the two statements aren't outright contradictions, they still struck me as incongruous:  "We'd sincerely hoped we could milk these series indefinitely, even if the stories we actually had to tell were limited."  ¶ 10:39 AM | |

  DC's New Year's Resolution: Stay The Course
DC's solicitations for January 2004 are up.  Not much that excites me.  New Frontier and Superman: Secret Identity were projects that sounded interesting when they were first announced (which seems like years ago), but now I'm thinking that I'll (all together now) "wait for the trade."  About the only new project that catches my eye is the Vertigo romance mini-series, My Faith In Frankie.  In terms of my usual stuff, the 200th issue of Wonder Woman sounds nice:  I'm enjoying Greg Rucka's run so far, and I like that DC is working in a couple shorter tales reflecting the history of the character.  And the description for H-E-R-O #12 sounds promising, but I also realize that it could easily devolve into an exercise in the very exploitative trends it claims to be parodying ("This manly man is now an electrifying, beautiful babe, complete with a revealing costume and the figure to fill it.").

In terms of stuff I used to get, I certainly picked the right time to drop JSA:

Writer Geoff Johns has thrilled fans and critics alike with his groundbreaking work on JSA (featuring art by Don Kramer & Keith Champagne) and HAWKMAN (featuring art by Rags Morales & Michael Bair), mixing the high adventure of classic comics with a modern cutting edge. Now, these two titles come together to shake these hallowed characters to their very core in a 6-part weekly crossover running through JSA #56-58 and HAWKMAN #23-#25: “Black Reign!”

A six-part weekly crossover with Hawkman?  Ugh.  So glad I decided to drop JSA with this month's order.

And, damn, Tomer Hanuka can design a cover:

  ¶ 3:22 PM | |

  Are Zombies The New Ninjas Monkeys Pirates?
What is it with zombie comics lately?  Lone, Walking Dead, several recent issues of Metal Hurlant.  All have featured plots with human surviviors forced to deal with zombies in post-apocalyptic futures.  Is it something to do with a general sense of unease?  ¶ 9:49 AM | |

  First-Ever AC/GA Crossover!
Steve Higgins calls for the establishment of a Comic Book Canon in his most recent "Advocating Comics" column (not a permanent link, so search through the archives if the link turns up some different topic by the time you click it).  I was going to respond with my thoughts on Steve's column on his message board, but I figured since Steve namechecked me in his column (but not my blog, the bastard), it was only fair that I return the favor here.  Plus, I promised him a crossover before I read his article.  [Gratuitous Aside:  I was tickled at the way Steve described me in his piece as "former reviewer for Broken Frontier and fellow comics advocate."  While these are both fine and true descriptions, I wondered if people might read this and come away with the impression that Steve and I first met while on staff at BF.  If I recall correctly, our association goes back a little further than that:  I believe I first met Steve on the old DC message boards where he and I would argue over which series was better–DOOM PATROL or POWER COMPANY.  Eventually we both lost, but we continue to disagree on other topics on other boards to this day.]

Although Steve's column was apparently inspired by my disagreeing with his word choice in an earlier column, I do agree with Steve's general point about establishing "a literary canon of sorts for the graphic narrative."  I know some people bristle at the term 'canon' but I've always understood the concept in the sense of "a group of literary works that are generally accepted as representing a field."  For me the important qualifier is "generally."  I think there will always be disagreements about what works are most representative of a given class, but I do think it's worthwhile nonetheless to have a shared frame of reference one can point out to people interested in learning more about a medium (or genre, or author, or whatever the topic in focus happens to be).  When I dabbled in Film Studies back in college, for example, I was glad to cover "the classics," even if I'd already seen them or ended up thinking they were terribly boring.  By looking critically at important films, I gained an appreciation for why particular films were considered essential, and I learned the basics of film criticism in the process.

Another issue that surfaces when trying to piece together a canon is that certain works can appear problematic from a modern perspective.  Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a perennial target for charges of racism, for example, yet most courses in American Literature leave it in the canon.  Personally, I think works that are historically important should be acknowledged as such, even if they are controversial for various reasons.  Just because something is included in the canon doesn't mean it's a flawless work or worthy of moral approbation.  In Film Studies, both Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will were shown, mainly for their historical and technical significance, but the discussion also covered why the films were reprehensible.  So important comics such as Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 could be included in the Comic Book Canon and still acknowledged as "dumber than a bag of hammers."

If we agree that a shared frame of reference can be a useful thing to have, then the task turns to setting out just how large that frame should be.  Not everything can be included, of course, and this is where disagreements inevitably spring up:  Why was such-and-such a work included?  Why wasn't such-and-such a work included?  Because there's no way to satisfy everyone with one list, I think it's important to view the lists as starting points, both in terms of a starting point which can lead enthusiasts to discover new works and in terms of a starting point for discussions about the criteria behind the lists.  ("Why does this list leave off European or Japanese comics?"  "Well, we wanted to limit the scope of our overview to North American comics, but that isn't to suggest that there aren't worthwhile comics from those regions."  "Oh, OK.")

So, what works would I nominate for inclusion in the Comic Book Canon?  I haven't even started to think about that yet.  There's a thread in Steve's forum taking suggestions about what should be considered "Essential Works of Sequential Art," and Steve has promised to reveal his picks in next week's column.  I'll mull over it myself, but I consider myself pretty bad at coming up with lists like this.  It's a cop-out, but I'd probably like to start by looking at other people's lists (and then criticizing their picks in true blogger fashion), and even then I can only think of one serious attempt to establish a list of canonical comics, The Comic Journal's list of Top 100 English-Language Comics of the Century (and the accompanying lists that fed the final list).   Does anyone else know of other attempts to list some of the best comics ever?  (Anyone who suggests any of Wizard's endless "Top 100 X-Men Comics of All Time!!" rankings will be dealt with appropriately.)  ¶ 5:03 PM | |

  Things Looking Grimmer, But In A Good Way
Damn, more competition in the comics blogosphere.  I mean, how about a nice warm welcome for longtime comic book reader, 10-month-old columnist, first-time blogger, Graeme McMillan, whose new comics blog Fanboy Rampage! just debuted this week.  Looks like it's going to be focused on Graeme surfing various comic book sites and message boards, then reporting back with his special blend of cynicism and love.  Or as he puts it, "I read comics websites so that you don't have to."  (One suggestion, Graeme:  Add a comments feature as soon as possible!)

Fun Facts about Mr. McMillan:

• Favorite Creators:  Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch
• Most Eagerly-Awaited Comic: (tie) ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR, Chuck Austen's upcoming run on ACTION COMICS
  
• Plus: Writes with an accent.

Also added some other links to the right, including: Franklin Harris, Joey Valdez, and Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag.  And I've rearranged Johnny Bacardi to be listed under his real name, David Allen Jones.  My apologies for taking so long to add these great sites to my blogroll.  ¶ 2:06 PM | |

  What, CrossGen Worry?
While reports of CrossGen's demise now seem premature—they're still publishing comics, and the Bullpen remains in place (even if it's a bit smaller than it used to be)—they still appear to be having trouble resolving some of the problems that got them into such hot water with the fan and pro communities:  Elayne Riggs has just written today that her husband Robin still hasn't been paid for the fill-in work he did for CrossGen.  And to add insult to injury, CrossGen returned some of Robin's original artwork with the stamp "Art and text Copyright CrossGen" across the back [emphasis Elayne's].  As Elayne points out, the art is not the property of CrossGen, because Robin never signed a contract waiving his rights—mainly because he never received a contract in the first place.

Come on, CrossGen:  Get your act together and pay the freelancers you owe money.  I hate to kick a company when it's down, but it grates on my nerves to see CrossGen out pimping its upcoming books when the creators on old ones still haven't been reimbursed yet.  Besides, the sooner you clear up this mess, the sooner you start building back some of the trust and goodwill you've eroded in your fans.

UPDATE: Well, who knows how all this will affect freelancers ever getting paid, but CrossGen has just announced the cancellation of nine more titles (THE FIRST was recently cancelled with issue #37).  The Pulse's version of this story also has this to add about the freelancer situation: "THE PULSE has emailed several freelancers asking if payment was received October 1st, and have been told that they still have not been paid or given any information from CrossGen about when to expect payment."  No details about which freelancers were contacted or who responded.  ¶ 9:00 AM | |

  October Preorders for December Comics
Now that it's mid-month, I realized I'm going to have to finalize my monthly comics order pretty soon.   I've gotten in the habit of reading through Previews when I first get it early in the month and throwing everything that looks interesting into my cart.  Then as the order deadline draws nearer, I return to my cart and remove things that don't seem as exciting for whatever reason.  One of the first things to go is the MillarWorld books.  I thought they sounded interesting when I first heard about them, but the recent previews of WANTED, CHOSEN, and RUN on various sites have convinced me otherwise.  I found the interview with Top Cow Editor-In-Chief Jim McLauchlin about WANTED particularly grating:  "The extreme and shocking stuff that's there, I think, is there for a really good reason. It's there because it really advances the story and it's there because it's cool...We want your jaw to drop when reading this and it will."  I had hoped the MillarWorld books would rely a little less heavily on the gratuitous flash I've come to associate with Millar's work, but it sounds as though these books will actually increase the pointlessness quotient.  (CHOSEN still sounds promising to me, but I think I'll wait to see what others' reactions are and perhaps pick up the trade if there is one.)

And for all those who thought this description of WANTED sounded cool:

In a way the high concept of this might be all your worst nightmares are true. Every conspiracy theory, ever, is true. The Illuminati exists, they're running the world and guess what, they're super villains. That's a bit of what this is about. As a core concept, that's really cool. The idea that there's a senior council of twelve people that control the world economy, that's spooky. Then assume that there's those twelve people and they're all like Lex Luthor. That's really spooky!

You might want to check out this book, which did the whole "supervillain secret council ruling the world" thing several months earlier.

OK, now onto the all the "Previews Review" columns for guidance in assembling my order.

First off is Previews Review but, sadly, they don't have anything on the October catalog yet.

Next is Comic Readers (an excellent site I neglected to mention in last month's "Previews Review" column roundup).  Comic Readers splits up its Previews sifting into four columns (each hilariously titled "Hundred Pages of Huh"):  Small Press; Mainstream; Manga; and Collectibles.  I really like this division because it keeps good stuff in the back of the book from getting lost in the shuffle.  (Hopefully visitors to the site don't just ignore everything except the "Mainstream" listing.)  Anyway, here are some of the things that jump out at me from their recommendations (ignoring the "Collectibles" section):

Small Press:

• MANIAC KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!  by Richard Sala (Fantagraphics Books).  Definitely.  I've only recently discovered Sala's work through Peculia, but I'm looking forward to reading more of his quirky humor/horror stuff.
• MARIKO PARADE by Frederic Boilet & Kan Takahama:  Maybe.  I remember seeing this everywhere when I was in Paris, but I think I'd like to check it out before I buy it.
  

Mainstream:

• TALES OF THE VAMPIRES #1 (Dark Horse Comics).  Possibly.  I like the creators (Joss Whedon and Cameron Stewart) but I'm a little burned out on all things Buffy.
• VERTICAL (DC/Vertigo): Most Likely.  Mainly for the artwork from Mike Allred & Philip Bond.
• PLASTIC MAN: Probably Not.  I was thinking of getting this, but the sample pages in Previews put me off, ironically.  It looks as though the storytelling will be even more stretched out (ooo - bad Plas pun) than your average Marvel comic.
• AVENGERS/JLA #4:  Duh.
• ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #1:  Absolutely Not.  (And despite what Comic Readers claims, I don't think Chuck Austen has signed an exclusive deal with DC; as far as I know, he's still slated to write a lot of Marvel books, such as AVENGERS and UNCANNY X-MEN, even as he writes Superman in ACTION COMICS for DC.)

Manga:

• RUROUNI KENSHIN Volumes 1 & 2: Likely.  Especially considering that each 208-page volume is only $8.  And the near-universal buzz I hear for this series doesn't hurt, either.  

Johanna Draper Carlson reminds me that HALO & SPROCKET is getting its first collection.  I found the first issue of the series in a bargain bin not too long ago and enjoyed it, so I'll probably be getting the trade.  I also think I'll check out the big (352-page) and cheap ($20) collection of JACK STAFF comics, since it's always looked interesting (and reminded me of Union Jack, a little-used Marvel character I have an inexplicable fondness for).  And like Johanna, I'm excited that DC is putting out another SUPERGIRL ARCHIVES, but I'll probably wait to order this from Amazon.  Johanna also points out a couple of old/updated books I already own, but I'd definitely recommend them to readers who don't have them yet:   The SLINGS & ARROWS COMIC GUIDE (a "browsable, readable, quite entertaining critical reference guide that covers tons of comic titles with attitude and wit" as Johanna puts it); and MANGA! MANGA! THE WORLD OF JAPANESE COMICS, a wonderful resource for those wondering what all the fuss is about these Japanese comics.  Finally, Johanna has a similar experience to the one I had with the Plastic Man preview:  "I really appreciate the extended DC art previews, especially when they help me decide not to spend my money."  Exactly.

Augie De Blieck Jr. focuses exclusively on trades this time around, which reflects his growing inclination to "wait for the trade" like more and more comic fans nowadays.  Augie corrects an oversight in his weekly column by recommending the collected edition of the excellent SLEEPER series, Out in the Cold.  (Just giving you a hard time, Augie - I definitely know what it's like to fumble for words to describe things I just really like.)  Augie also points out something from Marvel that slipped my notice (one, because I'm not big on Marvel; and, two, because I seem to have misplaced my separate "Marvel Previews" supplement—I wonder if Marvel considered that when they made the decision to break off from the main Previews catalog):  AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: 500 COVERS, a "two volume hardcover slipcase edition reprinting all 500 covers of Marvel's venerable series."  Might be kind of fun as a coffee table type book, but that $75 price tag sobers me up real fast.  Augie is annoyed with Wizard for offering their BEST OF X-MEN "limited deluxe" hardcover in this Previews, since the book was only supposed to be available to those who bought Wizard #0.  Augie also recommends the HALO AND SPROCKET collection.  Yes, yes!  I'm ordering it already!!  And I'm seriously considering getting the Elegant. Sophisticated. Expensive. KYLE BAKER CARTOONIST (not "KYLE BAKER PRESENTS" as Augie refers to it) as well.

Ninth Art's Chris Eckman soldiers on, despite the wearying size of Previews, and manages to find a couple things to recommend.  I will be picking up THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF THE ESCAPIST #1 by Michael Chabon and, uh, "various."  Yes, the $8.95 price tag is intimidating, but it's also an 80-PAGE GIANT (not affiliated in any way with DC Comics).  The solicit from Dark Horse claims this collection will feature "the first new story in seven years written and drawn by Howard Chaykin," but I swear I just saw an Hourman story completely written and drawn by Howard Chaykin come out a couple weeks ago.  Perhaps DC was getting back at Dark Horse for snatching up the Escapist rights by undercutting Dark Horse's hype a bit?  Dark Horse is also putting out STRIP SEARCH, an anthology collection of work by new talent.  It sounds interesting, but I'll probably wait to look it over first.  Chris mentions a couple things already covered above (KYLE BAKER: CARTOONIST; VERTICAL; JACK STAFF), and he also plugs Alternative Comics' 8 1/2 GHOSTS, which looks really interesting to me, especially now that publisher Jeff Mason has announced that they'll be reformatting the book "to be a really nice oversized 8-1/4 inches by 10-5/8 inches using very luxurious, heavy text and cover paper stock" for the same $3.95 price.  Chris also mentions some great magazines that I'll be getting—THE COMICS JOURNAL #258 (the Ditko issue) and COMIC ART #5 (always a sharp-looking mag).

D. Emerson Eddy makes a couple recommendations (look here, here, and here).  Like me, D. is tired of Mark Millar's tendency to write shock for shock's sake (and like me, D. enjoyed Millar's largely ignored run on SWAMP THING).  Ironically, the MillarWorld project that most interests D. is THE UNFUNNIES, the book whose sole reason for being appears to be...to shock for shock's sake.  D. also spots a book from iBooks that caught my eye as well—BLACKSAD, an anthropomorphic noir thriller.  I was all set to get this—until I saw the price tag: $12.95 for 48 pages.  I don't care if it's FULL COLOR OVERSIZE DELUXE FORMAT as the ad explains in ALL CAPS; that just seems a tad steep to me.  (D. disagrees with me, citing the book's expected high-end production values as a justification for the cost.  You can find our exchange here.)

Chris Allen looks through Previews (scroll down til you hit the section titled "December Previews – Escapist Fiction and Futuredrama").  The MASKS: TOO HOT FOR T.V. special sounds silly, but I think it's supposed to.  I'll check this out, especially with the talent lined up (Ed Brubaker and Doug Mahnke; Marc Andreyko and Richard Corben; Patton Oswalt and Amanda Conner; Jill Thompson and Tony Akins; and Judd Winick and Whilce Portacio).  Chris offers his thoughts on other stuff, too, but either I've mentioned it already or I'm simply not interested.

Finally, Randy Lander and Dave Farabee scour through Previews in two parts (The Big Four and The Indies) over at The Fourth Rail.  Randy's "Big Four Pick Of The Month" is a book called SLEEPER, which is getting its first TPB collection, Out in the Cold.  I'll echo Randy's recommendation:  Everyone should be reading SLEEPER, so buy this trade if you've been putting off checking out this series.  Most of the other books Randy and Dave discuss have been covered above, but they do mention the ASTRO CITY/ARROWSMITH one-shot, which (as a fan of both series) I'll be getting, and RUMBLE ROYALE #1, an anthology that appeals to me due to the artistic talent involved (Cameron Stewart (Catwoman); Kagan McLeod (Infinite Kung-Fu); and Chip Zdarsky (Prison Funnies)).

Lord, after all that, is there anything I'm interested in that hasn't already been listed?  I guess a couple things, but nothing really new—it's mainly ongoing stuff I already know I'm enjoying, such as BATTLE ROYALE VOL 5; GOON #4; FINDER vol. 5: DREAM SEQUENCE (missed this when it was first solicited); and all the DC series I read, with one change:  I finally decided to drop JSA (both the regular series and that dreadfully dull mini-series), so that leaves me with GOTHAM CENTRAL, HERO, HUMAN TARGET, SLEEPER, TOM STRONG, and WONDER WOMAN. 

Final Check:  Did everyone remember to order this book?  OK?  Good.  ¶ 12:22 AM | |

  BIG CONTEST Ends, small contest Begins
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in Grotesque Anatomy's first-ever BIG CONTEST —Mr. Ed Cunard.  Here is Ed's winning entry in response to the question "DC or Marvel?":

DC, without a question.

I feel the need to qualify this, though. While I read very few mainstream-type comics, those I do read generally come from Marvel. That said, the question isn't which does one prefer. It's more open-ended than that.

There are many reasons that I would place DC over Marvel.

1. The imprints. Vertigo, Wildstorm, the Cartoon Network stuff... DC offers more variety in what it publishes than Marvel. I'd say DC offers more diversity than the fan-favorite CrossGen comics, because no matter how one dresses up the CG line, it's still heroic fiction. CG will likely never publish anything like Kuper's "The System."

2. The heritage. Hell, perhaps we should bury DC on this one, and not praise them, but superhero comics wouldn't be what they are today (or in any decade) if it hadn't been for Max Gaines' empire. Marvel may have revolutionized the genre, but to throw an analogy to music, there would be no hip-hop without disco.

3. The willingness to take chances. We're not talking Marvel MAX, or Marvel Knights, or even a self-doubting superhero. While DC may have the reputation of being the staid father-figure of the publishing houses, they've got the title for taking chances. The first real female super hero lead. The absorption of other intellectual property (Captain Marvel, Charlton characters, Plastic Man). Giving Alan Moore Swamp Thing. The (overdone in my opinion) gay-bashing angle in Green Lantern (at least they tried). Social relevance in Green Arrow/Green Lantern. The Milestone imprint. Combining the Batman mythos with jazz music for "Batman: Jazz", a little-read but excellent miniseries (and, judging from discussion, I may be the only one to have read it). Taking the iconic American superhero and making him a communist in a time when patriotism is at a jingoistic fervor. Doing revamps before the rest of the cool kids (the Silver Age revolution, Crisis, S:MOS, Batman: Year One, etc.). Hell, taking a chance on Jonah Hex.

4. Titles that hold up long after the first read. Any fool can rattle down DC's best and brightest: Watchmen. Sandman. Transmetropolitan. Preacher. Miller's Batman.

5. Pimping for capitalism. All entertainment mediums do it. DC's more honest. I mean, the theory of putting a gorilla in a burning jail cell to sell comics - priceless.

6. Spreading the word. Yeah, Marvel's had some success with film properties as of late, but DC's been doing it forever. The Superman radio show and serials. The Batman serials. The televised Superman, in various incarnations (the George Reeves version, the Lois & Clark version, Superboy, Smallville). The Max Fleisher Superman cartoon. The Superman films. The Batman films. Hell, the Swamp Thing film. Taking unknown characters (a la Birds of Prey) and taking a shot with them in the competitive television marketplace. The Flash television show. Batman: The Animated Series. Justice League. Teen Titans. Hell, using Batman in OnStar commercials qualifies.

7. Giving Siegel and Shuster "fair" retribution (although, in this sense, "fair" meaning passable, not just) way before Marvel credited Kirby, Ditko or Joe Simon.

8. Giving us the "Marvel Age of Comics". Without DC, we never would have seen the Fantastic Four, as DC printed and distributed Marvel's early titles because of some poor business decisions of Goodman's company.

It would have been too easy to go the route of neither, and instead demonstrate why the smaller publishers make what the "big two" offer look rather silly. Instead, I took the question at face value. While Marvel (at this stage) gets what little money I allocate to superhero fantasy, DC's intrinsic value is higher across the spectrum.

There were several things I liked about this entry.  First of all, for someone whose attention span slash reading comprehension has been forever corrupted by many too many PowerPoint presentations, I appreciate lists (as astute readers of this blog probably guessed long ago, given the number of entries that simply turn into bullet point lists).  Secondly, gorillas; gorillas are always good.  Finally, I liked the fact that Ed—who admits that most of his mainstream comic dollar goes to Marvel—could look at the question objectively and decide that DC comes out on top.

And now, the final installment in the trilogy of contests to promote this blog, the small contest:  For this one, all you have to do is post something—anything—in this thread.  Then I'll draw a winner at random.  Winner gets two comics (hence this being the small contest):  BIRDS OF PREY #56 (first issue by the new creative team of Gail Simone and Ed Benes) and BIRDS OF PREY SECRET FILES AND ORIGINS #1 (both of which, I believe, sold out).  Contest ends October 30th.  As with the previous two contests, I'll cover all shipping costs.  ¶ 12:20 PM | |

  Jess Lemon Reviews WATCHMEN
And, surprise, she liked it.  But she still finds room for a little anger towards the comics industry (or at least the mainstream comics industry, as Jess carefully qualifies it).

Sadly, Jess mysteriously vanished shortly after she wrote her review.  Luckily Jess had the foresight to send the final draft of her journal to The Pulse.  But brother Andy says not to worry, because they received a voice mail message from Jess saying that she was in a better place now (or at least a place with a lot of comics).

I wonder if this means The Pulse is finally going to retire the Jess Lemon gag.  I would think this would be the time to do it:  Best to end on a high note that sums up the point of the column rather well (even if the point is somewhat suspect).

Oh, and my guess for Jess's final word?  It starts with an r and ends with a d but it ain't Rosebud.  ¶ 10:01 PM | |

  JLA/AVENGERS Breaks 200K - Again!
Or not.  Who knows?  But Newsarama has their analysis of September 2003 order numbers up, and their estimates are slightly higher than ICv2's (by about 9%), which puts JLA/AVENGERS #1 over the 200,000 mark in retailer orders.  I still think Marvel's phrasing in the original press release was odd, though, so I'm not breaking out the noisemakers just yet.

But whichever way you slice it, BATMAN #619 was the clear winner in terms of sales.  Which must mean that there were a lot of frustrated fans out there.  ¶ 3:16 PM | |

  Buy SLEEPER!
Over on Newsarama, Ed Brubaker pimps the upcoming SLEEPER trade, Out In The Cold, which collects the first six issues of "season one" of this excellent Wildstorm series.  The TPB comes out in December, so make sure to include it in your October preorders if you're interested in this book.  I'll mention this again when I get around to doing my overview of this month's "Previews Review" columns, but I thought SLEEPER deserved its own separate mention.  It's a great book that is criminally underordered, so I'm really hoping that more people pick this up.  (And Brubaker touches on some interesting points regarding the problems of the direct market, so the Newsarama article is worth reading even if you're already a SLEEPER fan.)

For those who need more convincing, here's a roundup of positive reviews for SLEEPER:

• Paul O'Brien
  
• Randy Lander
• Don MacPherson
  
• Paul Brian McCoy
• Alan David Doane
• Matt Martin
• Greg McElhatton
  
• Chris Allen
• Matthew Clark
  
• Johnny Bacardi
  

As far as I know, this book has been universally beloved by reviewers.  I honestly can't recall seeing one single negative review of this comic (he foolishly uttered, thereby issuing the challenge for someone to find a counter-example...)  So why don't you check this out and see what the love's all about?

(And in case any of the SLEEPER creative team read this:  Any chance of an oversized hardcover of the entire first season in black & white?)  ¶ 1:29 PM | |

  Previews Review for Today, 10/15
Previews Review is still up and running with a new SHIPPING THIS WEEK column (covering books hitting stores today, Oct. 15th).  There's a nice discussion about pricepoint sensitivity, focusing especially on manga and the youngsters who devour it.  Will a kid with $20 to spend prefer two thinner manga volumes for $10 apiece, or will he buy the thicker manga book priced at $15?  I dunno, but it's an interesting point to consider.  I know I often find myself doing a little mental math to figure out if a collection is a good deal or not, but I don't know if other consumers do this, let alone younger kids.  I'm guessing many people simply assign threshold boundaries to certain types of goods (DVDs should run between $20-25; CDs around $15; $10 for a manga TPB...) and balk whenever a particular item exceeds their upper limit, even if the item in question is "special" in some respect (longer movie or lots of extras; bonus songs; additional pages; etc.).  I wonder how much thought publishers give to this issue.  I'd be curious to learn how publishers decide to price their books.

Looking at the books Previews Review highlights, I'm interested in Viz's FLOWERS & BEES by Moyoco Anno.  Their description of the book sounds intriguing, especially the notion of playing around with masculine and feminine ideals of beauty.  Viz's site lists it under their shôjo books but there's no further info to be found.  Guess I'll have to check it out in the bookstore.  ¶ 11:53 AM | |

  BIG CONTEST! Last Day! (Medium Contest. Seven More Days.)
Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter the BIG CONTEST for your chance to win ten TPBs from Marvel and DC.  All you have to do is stop by the Grotesque Anatomy Forum and answer "Marvel or DC?"

The Medium Contest is also still running.  Here's your chance to win UZUMAKI, the horror manga that everyone's talking about, in time for Halloween.  Just let us know "What scares you most?" by October 21st.  Don't let a haiku win!  (Just kidding, Sean:  That was very frightening for a haiku.)  ¶ 11:00 AM | |

  50,000,000 Manga Fans Can't Be Illiterate
Still exhausted from the four-day wedding extravaganza of my sister-in-law and her husband (congratulations, Fawn and Jim!).  I know I should be writing about Bill Jemas and his re-positioning, but I really don't care:  I don't read much Marvel (last Marvel book I got was the second NXM hardcover), and I don't know that this restructuring will really change much.  From all accounts, it still sounds as though the movies will drive much of the content in the comics.

I do care about annoying stereotypes about comic books, however.  Here's a piece from Slate talking about "Japan's obsession with comics" (or, "Japan Cliché No. 2: Manga"):

Of all Japan's cultural proclivities, the ubiquity of manga (comic books) perhaps puzzles me most. Japan's tightrope formality, its crushing conformity, its really teeny consumer electronics—these all make sense in geo-historical context. But I have yet to see an adequate explanation for why a nation with one of the world's highest literacy rates would become so obsessed with cartoons.

Yeah, because only illiterates read comics. Gah.

The rest of the article (part of the aptly-named "Tokyo on One Cliché a Day" series) devotes most of its attention to Japanese cartoon porn.  Given the lazy manner in which the article generalizes about topics (the author watches three hentai anime and concludes that all Japanese men harbor secret schoolgirl-rape fantasies), I can imagine someone coming away from this piece with the impression that all Japanese comics and animation are pornographic.  From there, it would only be a short leap to concluding that all Japanese comics and animation should be banned.  After all, everyone knows that comics are only for children, right?  Just ask Jesus Castillo.  ¶ 5:52 PM | |

  Latest EW Comics Coverage
In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly (#733, 10/17/2003), the "Listen2This" insert (available via subscription only) features reviews of the following comics:

• The Matrix Comics: Volume One: A-
• Supreme Power: B
• Invincible: A-
• Vampirella Comics Magazine: B-
• Scarlet Traces: A

Brian Michael Bendis also discusses Kabuki, his all-time favorite graphic novel, and several upcoming comics are plugged (Sparks: An Urban Fairytale; JLA: Liberty and Justice; and Fray: Future Slayer).

Finally, in the magazine's regular content, Sandman: Endless Nights makes EW's "Must List":  "Our lonesome nights are over.  After seven years, the Sandman (and lovely li'l Death, above) triumphantly returns."  ¶ 1:05 PM | |

  Self-Embassment Theatre
My mom just sent me this.  I have no idea when I did this, but I'm going to guess high school.  Does every comic book fan have embarrassing stuff like this in his closet?


I'm sure there must be a comic character named "Vengeance" out there, most likely created by Rob Liefeld.  If anyone knows, drop me a line so I know who to sic the lawyers after.  ¶ 7:12 PM | |

  Comic John Pimps Comic Pimp
Just as I was feeling down about the mess that is comics retailing, along comes James Sime, The Comic Pimp, with a great idea for getting comics into the hands of the general public:  Comic stores in the fucking airport.  It's a novel idea, but Sime doesn't address how this concept would be implemented.  I have no idea how feasible the idea is—I imagine leasing retail space in an airport is pretty pricey—but I think Sime's basic argument is sound:  Comics (particularly graphic novels and TPBs) would be a nice entertainment option for the captive traveling audience.  I'm thinking that digest-sized books (such as most manga series or CrossGen's Travelers) might actually have an advantage over larger TPBs, since the compact size makes them more portable.  If Sime's idea took off, perhaps comics publishers would publish alternate "airport-sized" versions of their books to appeal to space-conscious travelers.

So, who's going to come along and run with Sime's idea?  Has anyone ever tried this before?  What are the biggest obstacles to making this work?  I hereby call on the best and the brightest of the comics blogosphere to put their minds to work on this problem!  ¶ 5:46 PM | |

  Jess Lemon Samples "Golden Age" Comics
Pronounces them "dumber than a bag of hammers."  Yes, Jess has turned her critical eye to DC's recent WORLD'S BEST COMICS sampler.  If you've been reading Jess's pieces regularly, you can probably write the review yourself at this point.

And in a strange follow-up comment, Jen Contino seems to defend and diss "Golden Age" comics simultaneously:  "I LOVED this book! But, then again, I love the archives, like the old campy fun comics, and am impressed that 50 years ago 10 and 11 year olds could draw comics and make more money than their parents."  I've heard that teenagers often worked on these old comics (Siegel and Shuster were both around 19 when they started publishing fanzines, and 24 when Action Comics #1 finally saw print), but 10-year-olds?  And maybe Jen knows some really talented kids, but to me saying that something looks like it was drawn by a 10-year-old is more a criticism than a compliment.  ¶ 2:48 PM | |

  The Direct Market: Anecdotes From The Field
I ventured out into the realm of brick-and-mortar comic book shops again today.  I was tracking down some comics for a friend and thought I'd use the opportunity to pick up the latest issue of The Comics Journal, if only to read fellow comics blogger J.W. Hastings' review of the first Y: The Last Man trade.  The search for my friend's comics took me to two shops, neither of which had a copy of TCJ #255.  At the first shop, the worker didn't seem to know what I was looking for when I asked if they carried The Comics Journal, so I began describing it ("You know, it's the comics magazine put out by Fantagraphics, the company that hates all superhero comics...")  The clerk still didn't seem to follow me, but he explained that they didn't really carry much in the way of magazines (other than stacks of Wizard, of course).  At the second shop, the staff there knew what I was talking about, but they were already sold out of all their copies.  "Shoot, and I didn't even get a chance to read it yet," lamented one employee.

Speaking of sell-outs, I had to go to the second store because the first shop was missing one of the books I was hunting down for my friend, NEGATION #21.  When I asked the clerk if they might have any extra copies hiding elsewhere, he explained that everything they had was out on the shelves.  "Besides," he added, "CrossGen doesn't really sell for us.  Especially now with all the problems they're having."  While I can understand this—even CrossGen loyalists are beginning to question their purchases or drop books in light of the company's uncertain future—it also seemed to be a strange statement given that NEGATION was sold out back to issue #16, and that I snatched up the last copy of SOJOURN #27. 

I can certainly sympathize with retailers:  It can't be easy to gauge how many copies you should order for each of the hundreds (thousands?) of comics listed each month in Previews.  And as someone who buys his comics through an online shop, I certainly don't think I should expect to be able to waltz into a random comic shop at sporadic intervals and demand specific issues of particular titles.  But I do wonder how comic shops are able to serve casual shoppers (if there are such beasts in comic shops) if they don't have enough stock to satisfy intermittent buys like mine.  Then again, since retailers can't return unsold books, shops probably can't afford to have extra shelf copies of every series.  Which is probably why many shops encourage regulars to preorder their comics.  Which can be problematic on the customer's end, since you're ordering things sight unseen and may end up with some real stinkers in your pull box.  Which leads to many fans giving up on the monthlies and instead "waiting for the trade" since they can browse through the floppies at the shop and find out what others thought about a series before ponying up their own money for the full story in one package.  But if too many people do this, low preorders may cause a series to be canceled before it ever sees print.  "Not enough orders to justify publication.  Sorry." 

The more I think about it, the more fucked up the comics industry seems.  Or perhaps I'm not thinking things through enough.  Maybe Dirk Deppey can explain it all to me.  I know he's given a lot more thought to these issues than I have.  ¶ 8:44 PM | |

  Overthinking My Own Snarkiness
Here's a first for me:  A blog entry inspired by a comment on an earlier blog entry of mine (don't you just love the incestuous, self-referential nature of blogging?)  Matthew Clark wrote:

Uh, Huh - and they wonder why people don't want to jump into the comics world. There is now so much discourse continuity to sift through before you even have to worry about the stories.   Do these guys know who they are copying or is it supposed to be ironic?

This got me thinking a bit more about what it was that bugged me about the WORLDWATCH piece on ComiX-Fan.  Was it simply that the concept of superheroes as celebrity gods lording it over mere mortals feels played out?  Do I really believe that every revisionist-superhero book needs to be some Bold Step Forward In The History Of Mainstream Superhero Comics?  If so, why didn't any of the previous permutations on this concept draw my ire?

I think what it comes down to is this:  I don't so much mind the reuse of things that have been done before—as Eve Tushnet points out, often times playing with conventions and twisting or tweaking them in new ways can create fresh stories; and as I myself said in defense of JLA/AVENGERS #1, "I'm not sure I see how using a familiar format is in and of itself a strike against [something]"—but I do mind bad hype.  What annoys me about the WORLDWATCH announcement is that it ignores all the obvious precursors it likely owes inspiration to.  By comparing WORLDWATCH to only two superhero comics (and two decades-old series, at that), the creators seem to be implying that they are the first ones to come up with this unique twist of "rockstar superheroes ruling the world."  Which is especially disingenuous when your book "homages" so many similar works in title (STORMWATCH), character names (Power Princess was the Wonder Woman analogue in SQUADRON SUPREME), and character design (Derenick's Warrior Princess looks a lot like Jim Lee's Wonder Woman from "Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating the DCU" only with even less clothing and even faker-looking breasts; I won't even comment on the obvious AUTHORITY influences for some of the other characters).

And in anticipation of the "But you haven't read the story yet, so you can't criticize it!" objection (which a friend has already jokingly invoked here):  I'm not criticizing the actual, finished product; I can't, since I haven't read it.  I'm simply reacting to the information currently available to me, which, at the moment, is pure hype.  It's no different to reacting to a trailer for an upcoming movie and deciding, "Well, that looks like crap."  I'm often surprised when creators (or marketers, or other fans) become upset when people react unfavorably to promotional efforts.  The whole point of hype is to generate awareness in a project.  Of course, the hope is that the awareness will be positive, but there's no way to control or guarantee that response.  Some individuals' reactions may take the form of disgust, distaste, or even simply disinterest.  So don't cry foul if people do respond to your efforts to get their attention, but it's not the reaction you wanted.  Live by the hype, die by the hype.  ¶ 7:12 PM | |

  Hmmm - If Only I Could Figure Out Why This Seems So Familiar...
Over on ComiX-Fan, there's a thread announcing Chuck Austen and Tom Derenick's upcoming (and presumably creator-owned) series, StormWatch I'm sorry, WorldWatch.  According to the piece,

WorldWatch is a large group of Superhero protectors, a-la the JLA or the Avengers, only on a much larger scale. They have protected the planet for decades from a myriad of world threats. Recent years have brought turmoil to the group, however, as power struggles, accusations of improper behavior, and lack of any meaningful supervision has lead to trouble among the team. What do you do when the rules don't seem to apply to you? When it seems as though you can get away with anything because no one has the power to call you on your excesses? When you're the most powerful thing on the planet, and you're convinced you're right, and know what's best for the entire world?

WorldWatch leader Warrior Princess, along with her second-in-command Doc Gullivar, find themselves struggling to bring order and structure to a team that has degraded into, essentially, a group of unruly "rock stars". They hope to return the group to its former glory and remind them of what they once were... heroes, and they may have the help they're looking for in a possible savior who calls himself Monarch, a man who genuinely seems to know what a hero should be. Or is it already too late?

Gee, good thing nothing like this has ever been done before.  ¶ 9:44 PM | |

  Greg McElhatton Reviews GYO #1
Greg McElhatton weighs in with his review of GYO #1 over at iComics.  He likes it much more than I did, mainly because GYO never strikes him as silly or ludicruous as it did me.  Greg also has reviews for Ito's other horror manga, UZUMAKI and TOMIE.  I'm surprised that I hadn't run across these reviews before, but I'd definitely recommend reading them, especially if you're trying to determine whether it's worth the effort to enter the "Win UZUMAKI!" contest.  ¶ 3:59 PM | |

  Fool Me Once...
ICv2 has released its analysis of comic book orders for September 2003, as well as lists of the Top 300 Comics and Top 50 Graphic Novels.  At first I was confused by the fact that ICv2 was estimating orders for JLA/AVENGERS #1 at only 189,919 copies.  Doesn't ICv2 read the press releases it puts up on its own website?  But then I went back and re-read the original press release and noticed that Marvel never claimed that JLA/AVENGERS #1 actually sold over 200,000 copies to direct market stores; Marvel only stated "unprecedented demand has led to the production of over 200,000 copies of JLA/AVENGERS #1 for shipment to the direct market" [emphasis mine].  Damn, and like a rank amateur, I fell for Marvel's carefully crafted spin.  That's it—from here on out, I'm going to have to ratchet up the cynicism a couple notches.  (Of course, it could also be that ICv2's numbers are wrong:  It seems to be a perennial complaint that their estimates are overly conservative.  In which case I'm still determined to be more cynical—I'll just direct that attitude ICv2's way.)  ¶ 10:31 AM | |

  Trick or Treat
For those of you who haven't seen it already, Sean Collins is currently running a "Horror Month" theme (more cleverly titled "Where the Monsters Go") on his blog.  Recently he asked readers to suggest some good horror comics to him, and he repeated the plea over on the TCJ message boards.  So far the clear favorite of respondents seems to be Junji Ito's UZUMAKI series.  And as much as I like to be unique and contrarian, I'm afraid I'm going to have to fall in line and join the chorus of UZUMAKI boosters.  Sean, you really should be reading this manga.  To provide you with some motivation, I present a small sampling of images from the second volume of UZUMAKI (which is where I first jumped in to the series, so it's still the volume I remember most vividly).  I don't know if these images satisfy your criteria of the monumental horror-image, but they certainly disturbed me and stuck with me.


Which leads me to the announcement of this blog's new contest, the Medium Contest:  Head over to the forum and respond to the topic, "What scares you most?"  The contest will run through October 21st and the winner (defined as whoever writes the entry I end up picking) walks away with a complete set of the UZUMAKI books (three volumes in all). Once again, I'll cover shipping.  (For those of you unfamiliar with UZUMAKI, Bill Sherman just wrote an excellent review and overview of the series on his blog, so rather than attempt my own write-up that would pale in comparison, I'll just direct readers to his piece.)  Sean, this is your big chance to get your hands on UZUMAKI for free!

Moving from horror to humor, SHORT CUTS Vol. 2 by Usamaru Furuya is still disturbing in many (though different) ways.  SHORT CUTS is a two-volume manga series collecting Furuya's short strips revolving around Japanese "ko-gals," defined on Viz's site as "ultra trendy teenage girls" and "highly evolved creature[s] of Japan's frantically trendy consumer culture."  I suppose ko-gals are like the modern Japanese equivalent of American Valley Girls.  Anyway, the strips in the books involve these beautiful yet shallow creatures (sometimes very tangentially), but the humor is fairly surreal and dark.  One series of strips deals with a homeless family whose father rents his wife and child out to strangers to make money.  Another recurring gag centers around Super-Girl Candy, a Powerpuff-like heroine who only rescues "cute things."  Happening upon a burning school, Super-Girl Candy ignores the homely schoolgirls' pleas for help, instead focusing her attention on the cute rabbits trapped on the roof.  As I said, it's all rather dark and twisted, but I found the book amusing.

So far the only other review I've seen of this book was at Comic Readers, and their reviewer didn't think the second volume measured up to the first:

Usamaru Furuya continues and concludes his exploration of the phenomenon of ko-gals in his bizarre and diverse collection of short strips called Short Cuts. As he did in the first volume, Furuya utilizes a variety of artistic styles and writing techniques to dissect the Japanese fascination with their high school girls. Also again, Short Cuts is filled with many pop culture references that are going to fly over the heads of us North American readers. Thank god for Akemi Wegmuller's footnotes at the back of the book.

Furuya's strips are bitingly funny, perverse and explorative, but this collection is weaker than the first because of a couple of things. First, Furuya repeatedly uses a small bunny-like character to represent himself as the manga-ka, sticking himself in the strips, and often making himself the main focus as he struggles to come up with ideas or fights with his creations. These kinds of strips fall flat in a collection focusing on ko-gals. Secondly, many of Furuya's ko-gal strips fall short in emotional impact, whether it is funny, sad, scary or creepy, even if his art is still a wonder. It seems as if all of Furuya's best strips were collected in Short Cuts volume 1, but then again, perhaps by the second volume, I've simply become desensitized to the message. (Chad Boudreau)

I haven't read the first volume recently, so perhaps Boudreau is right that the second volume isn't as good, but how could he not love a book that exposes the limitations of the clichéd "Angel/Devil" moralistic dichotomy?:


The Details: Story & art by Usamaru Furuya.  Published by Viz; 128 B&W pages; $12.95 US (although Viz's website incorrectly lists the price as $9.95).  ¶ 1:31 AM | |

  NEW X-MEN, Old Art
Newsarama has an interview with Marc Silvestri about his upcoming stint on NEW X-MEN (issues 151-154).  There are, of course, plenty of sample images.  All I know of Silvestri's art from his 80s run on UNCANNY was what I saw in the X-Men: Inferno TPB (which you can still win - click here for details!) but his "new" art looks like an unholy union between the styles of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld:  Angular faces with plenty of scratch marks (Lee) combined with little to nothing in the way of backgrounds (Liefeld) equals me once again pining for NXM's supposedly "regular" artist, Frank Quitely.  ¶ 3:34 PM | |

  Welcome Back, PreviewsReview!
PreviewsReview.com is back, and they have a nice update looking over comics coming out 10/8.  I won't see any of these comics for another month, but I did preorder TRUE PORN ANTHOLOGY and am looking forward to it.  So far I've been hearing good things about it from those lucky enough to score an early copy at SDCC or SPX.  I may also have to check out Image's WALKING DEAD from creators Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore.  It sounds similar to Dark Horse's LONE by Stuart Moore and Jerome Opeña, although I haven't read either book yet so I don't know how accurate that impression is.  The new "Digest Edition" of SIDEKICKS TRANSFER STUDENT has 50 extra "never-before-seen, not-available-anywhere-else" pages in it?  Well, that's annoying.  I thought this new version was just a reprint of the earlier TRANSFER STUDENT TPB plus THE SUBSTITUTE one-shot.  Oh well.  ¶ 12:48 PM | |

  Review Roundup: JLA/AVENGERS #1

WHO FARTED?!??

Now that I've read JLA/AVENGERS #1, I wanted to see what other reviewers were saying about the issue.  I'd already read Jess Lemon's review over at The PULSE (best response to Jess's review came from J. Kevin Carrier over on the Micah Wright forum: "Yeah. I'm the Bizarro Jess Lemon -- 'Me want superheroes to be MORE ridiculous.'  The writers take themselves and the characters WAY too seriously, and have sucked all the enjoyment out of the genre. Grant Morrison is about the only guy writing superheroes who even comes close to getting it.  'Oh boo hoo, they're shooting beams from their hands and fighting giant starfish, it's just too far-fetched.'  Amateur hour. Let's give Jess a couple of Bob Kanigher METAL MEN issues and watch her head explode!") but I knew that there had to be some dyed-in-the-wool comics fans who were reviewing this comic.  Here's a sampling of what I found:

• Franklin Harris described the book as "crisply drawn, fast-paced and, at times, quite funny."  (Franklin also reacts to Jess Lemon's review in a separate entry.)
  

• Paul Brian McCoy of Silver Bullet Comics gave the comic 2.5 bullets (out of a possible 5) "for successful pandering" but only 2 bullets "for actual creative effort" and warned "don't start acting like it's the best thing you've read in a while, because then I'll know you're just faking."  (I actually thought Paul raised some interesting points in his review, especially with respect to how well Pérez's hyper-detailed, hyper-crammed art really serves the story, but he lost me with gratuitously crass comments such as "corporate masturbation.")

• A different SBC reviewer, Ray Tate, gave it 5/5 bullets, but after reading McCoy's interview, we know Tate's just faking it.

• Randy Lander and Don MacPherson both gave it a "Recommended (8/10)" rating.  Randy called it "a gorgeous, slam-bang super-hero epic 20 years in the making" and Don described it as "an action-oriented story that celebrates the extensive histories and traditions of two distinct forces in pop culture."  Don also made an interesting observation about what might underpin the differences between each universe's attitude toward its respective heroes (which Busiek uses to great effect):  "It all stems from the origins of each continuity. The DC Universe has its roots in the 1940s, when American pride was strong and trust in the country's leaders was unequalled. Marvel's characters, on the other hand, really took off in the 1960s, when its readership was immersed in philosophies of rebellion and growing corruption in government."

• I was surprised (as was Paul himself) that Paul O'Brien liked JLA/AVENGERS as much as he did.  I never expected him to give it an A.

• Augie De Blieck  Jr. was also surprised to find how much he enjoyed JLA/AVENGERS.  It wasn't so much that Augie didn't know what he was getting into; he had the "big boffo" "cosmic storyline" pegged pretty much from the start.  But despite that, as Augie wrote, "Kurt Busiek pleasantly surprised me with a cosmic storyline that not only doesn't seem to stick its head up where the sun doesn't shine, but also could pull some clever things out of its hat."  (At least it was pulling things out of its hat...)  Augie does have some problems with the art, though, including the proportions on heads and faces (which also bugged me):  "Superman's head on the second panel three pages from the end looks no better proportioned than what most people would lance into Rob Liefeld for."  Yowch - comparing Pérez's artwork to Rob Liefeld's?  I hope Augie's flame insurance is paid up, because that's not a comparison that's going to sit well with die-hard Pérez fans.

• The aptly-named "Axe To Grind" review said:  "JLA/Avengers #1 encompasses everything that is wrong with the medium; An overpriced wankfest where the characters are one dimensional, the dialogue is insipid and a plot that obviously caters to the lowest common denominator."  (I have no idea who wrote this review; it appears on the site of Fremto, "a division of our comic store located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada."  Perhaps Fremto is a self-aware store (kind of like Ego, The Living Planet; or Krakoa, The Living Island) and wrote the review itself.  If so, nice work, Fremto!  I'm sure you'll eventually master the concept of parallel construction.)

• But by far my favorite review of JLA/AVENGERS was the tag-team crossover review between Alan David Doane and Chris Allen.  Alan played the bad cop to Chris's good, but Chris got off many good lines despite his casting:  "[T]hat cover just about says it all, huh? I guess we'd just be trading clichés, but one would hope the characters would be moving on it, instead of posing for a mall photographer's family portrait and looking the wrong way. 'You folks want the hearth background or the giant starfish?'"  And Chris also seemed to take issue with Pérez's faces:  "Pérez drew [Superman] much better back in ACTION COMICS, rather than this J.C. Penney mannequin on the cover."  (The CBG variant of the review has ADD's numeric score for the book: 3.5/5.  Which is interesting, because if I were still using a ten-point scale as I did when I first started reviewing, that's equivalent to what I would have given (7/10) if I'd been forced to assign the book a rating.)

And for those who (like me) were sure that they were missing things in the first issue, X-Fan has a very helpful thread on JLA/AVENGERS Annotations.  It doesn't mention if Starro ever appeared in SPOOKY ECHINODERM TALES or not, but it's still a good resource for fans old or new.  ¶ 10:16 AM | |

  Blog Tweaking
Added a couple more links to the 'Comic Book News & Opinion' section.  I've also added the ability to comment directly on the site via HaloScan.  I'll still run the Delphi forum as well, which I like for more in-depth discussions, and just plain goofy stuff (see this, this, and this, for example); but I also understand that many people just like a more immediate outlet for their comments.  So from now on visitors to the blog have whichever option they prefer using to tell me what an idiot I am.  Huzzah for customer choice!  ¶ 10:59 PM | |

  Realization of the Obvious Theatre: COMICS TOO DAMNED EXPENSIVE
I had to go to an actual comic store yesterday (seems MOC's pull list feature missed the last issue of LoEG for some reason).  While I was there I browsed through some of the "hot" comics that are popular nowadays.  I was surprised to find that the store still had copies of #1 and #2 of SUPERMAN/BATMAN.  I considered getting it until I saw the price:  $2.95?  For a book featuring two of DC's flagship heroes?  Since DC had to know this would be a top-seller, I'm assuming this is a case of DC wanting to goose a little more money out of the project by putting a sturdier cover on it (as Marvel's been known to do with many of its books).  My pricepoint sensitivity was offended, so the impulse buy was thwarted.  (I was also thinking of checking out SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT since Graeme's enjoying that so much, but once again three bucks seemed too much for a purchase motivated by semi-curiosity.)

If someone with my disposable income isn't willing to plop down $3 to check out something new, how likely is it that kids (or their parents) will shell out hard-earned money for a couple minutes of entertainment?  The price/value ratio for comics is seriously out-of-whack.  And as Johanna tracks, the average cost for monthly comics continues to rise.  Please, won't someone think of the children?  ¶ 12:55 PM | |

  Everybody Was Cos-mic Fighting
OK, as I promised before I went on vacation, here are the details on the BIG CONTEST to promote this blog:  Simply go to the forum and respond to the question of "Marvel or DC?" by October 15th.  Yeah, it's rather open-ended, but that's how I want it.  Interpret the question any way you want.  Answer however you see fit—one word, one thousand words, one image—I don't really care.  Whoever comes up with the response that amuses me the most wins.

So what can you win?  10 trade paperbacks, 5 from Marvel and 5 from DC:  The Punisher: Army of One by Ennis and Dillon; Inhumans by Jenkins and Lee; X-Men: Mutant Massacre; X-Men: Days of Future Present; X-Men: Inferno; Batman: The Long Halloween; The Joker: Devil's Advocate; JLA: Year One;Young Justice: Sins of Youth; and Superman For All Seasons (HC; all others are SC).  All books are in good condition, if that kind of thing matters to you, although I can't vouch for the quality of each book's content.  I'll cover the cost of shipping the books to the winner, although I'll chose the slowest method possible to save money.

So why am I doing this?  Well, to be honest, the reasons are somewhat selfish.  I've already mentioned the goal of promoting the blog, but I'd also like to encourage people to register to post in the blog's Delphi forum. (Yes, you have to register, but a Delphi Basic membership is free.  And I know people complain about signing up for sites, which I admit is a nuisance, but there are tools to help you deal with such tedium.  I recommend RoboForm.)  And since the goal is to get people to use the forum, I'm afraid I'm going to be insistent on that point:  Entries via email or other methods will not be accepted.  Finally, I'm just looking to clear up some space in my office.  I suppose the fact that I'm getting rid of these books could be taken as some indication of my opinion on the books' respective quality, but I believe several of these books have been fairly well-received by others, so don't let my lack of attachment to these books dissuade you from trying to win them.  If you win these books and end up liking them, then I think we'll end up with one of those "win-win" situations here:  I accomplish a little Fall cleaning and you give the books a good home.  And since I'm always accumulating more and more comics (much more than I can neatly store), I'll probably be running similar contests in the future, so stay tuned.  I've already got an idea for another contest, this time involving some books I really do like...

Next, in the spirit of Marvel vs. DC (and big things that turn out not to be so big after all), I thought I'd weigh in with a few thoughts on JLA/AVENGERS #1.  Yes, I finally got my monthly fix of comics this week, so I'm slowly making my way through last month's books.  I realize everyone else has probably already said everything there is to say about this book—heck, even Jess Lemon has already reviewed it (a sure sign that a book is "old" by most fans' standards)—but, hey, I'm the egomaniacal despot running this blog, so I get to write about whatever the hell I want, regardless of how far past the expiration date that topic might be.

"Batman will never guess that it is I, Tim Drake, disguised as Green Lantern!"

I'd been trying to avoid reviews of JLA/AVENGERS #1 until I'd read it myself, but even so I've managed to pick up on a general sense of "Meh" regarding this comic.  My sense of things is that most gripes have revolved around the story, but I haven't picked up on any complaints about the art.  Which surprises me, because the art was what disappointed me the most.  It's not bad, but there are some elements that I found distracting.  The first thing I noticed (which was kinda hard not to notice, since it's plastered all over the cover(s)) was that Pérez's faces seem sort of...off.  I think it's something to do with the proportions; in several places characters seem to have too much chin and too little forehead.  And one character consistently looks like another character to me:  Pérez's Green Lantern is so baby-faced that I kept mistaking him for Robin.  Finally, (and this is unlikely to be Pérez's fault) but the art often appears blotchy in places:  Lines look jagged, scratchy, pixelated.  I'm guessing this is something that happened in the printing process, but I found it annoying (especially in a "prestige format" book).

As for the story, I'm somewhat conflicted about it.  On one hand, yes, it does feel overly familiar in places:  Universes dying (Crisis); random pairings of various concepts from the two universes (DC vs. Marvel); a cosmic scavenger hunt pitting teams against each other (Contest of Champions; Avengers vs. West Coast Avengers 1987 annuals; The Silver Age); Grandmaster and Metron acting all aloof and mysterious (pretty much every "cosmic" comic Marvel and DC have ever put out...)  On the other hand, it feels fitting that this project invokes the structure of similarly-themed works that have come before it.  Maybe it's an elaborate justification for the fact that I did enjoy the story overall, but I'm not sure I see how using a familiar format is in and of itself a strike against the book.  Sure, I acknowledge that the execution of this structure might not work for everyone (I do sympathize for the Jess Lemons of this world—real or imagined—who struggle to make sense of who all these colorful characters are and what their motivations might be; and I know there are many who find Busiek's writing overly expository, or Pérez's art needlessly cluttered), but I guess the selfish fanboy in me doesn't really care:  I know who these characters are, and I'm enjoying the ways that Busiek and Pérez are employing them.  (So much for my ambitions of being an objectively critical reviewer.)

Bottom line:  I think on some level everyone knew what a Busiek/Pérez JLA/AVENGERS project would be like.  This isn't to say that I think it's obvious how the story is going to turn out (although it may very well be obvious to more astute readers).  But I do think it's a bit disingenuous to buy a big, cosmic superhero team-up and then complain when you get a big, cosmic superhero team-up.  (With an obvious exemption for Ms. (?) Lemon because brother Andy wasn't there to guide her selection in this instance.)  ¶ 11:56 AM | |

  Alan David Doane...Reborn!
Guess I deleted the link for ADD under 'Bloggers' a bit too soon.  Turns out Alan has started up a whole new blog, simply titled ADD.  Welcome back, ADD - it'll be interesting to see what your new blog evolves into.  (And what is this officially classified as?  A reboot?  A reimaging?  Revamp?  Retcon?  Will there be variant editions of the new launch? Inquiring fanboys want to know...)  ¶ 1:47 PM | |

  Counting Down CrossGen
So the October 1st deadline has apparently come and gone without any of the freelancers receiving payment from CrossGen. In fact, one freelancer actually stepped forward to inform people that he still hadn't received payment as of yesterday.  Meanwhile, CrossGen remains locked in a bunker mentality, refusing to release any statement on what's happening at the company.  The silence on the big issues everyone's talking about is baffling:  Wouldn't it be better to address the company's recent restructuring and the ongoing freelancer issue directly rather than let speculation run rampant? It's not like CG is engaging in a total media blackout, after all:  Bill Rosemann is still starting inane threads (such as this one about Way of the Rat appearing in Cinescape) in the "CG Buzz" section of CrossGen's message boards.  If CG was hoping things would simply "blow over" if they didn't feed the beast, that strategy seems to be backfiring:  Even staunch CrossGen defenders and boosters are beginning to speak in terms of "losing faith" in the company.  If the company's dedicated fanbase is crumbling, things look pretty grim for the future of CrossGen, even if they do solve their "primary financial short-term issues" by October 9th.  ¶ 9:38 AM | |