Why does DC want me to gouge my own eyes out?

Hey, what's this?


Why, it's Joe Chill, the killer of Thomas and Martha Wayne, getting his head blown off just as Bruce is about to kill him! Joe, obviously, has had better days.

Why, oh why would Greg post this gruesome picture? Well, I think you comic book geeks out there know why. Apparently (I write "apparently" because I haven't read it yet) we learn in Infinite Crisis #7 that Joe Chill, the killer of Thomas and Martha Wayne, has been captured, tried, and convicted of those very killings! Huzzah!

Now, I'm not the biggest stickler for continuity, as you know. It's nice and all, but I don't pore over back issues of Detective Comics when it had Green Arrow back-up stories to find out that Ollie has a third nipple and how dare the artists don't draw that today! But let's consider the fate of the lone gunman who took out Thomas and Martha Wayne lo those many years ago. Pre-Crisis stuff was wiped away; I get it. So the mugger becomes some faceless anonymous baddie who is just a symbol of the modern world's horrors, and poor little Brucie can't ever make up for the loss of his parents. Then came Mike W. Barr, ably abetted by the not-yet-insane Todd McFarlane, and in "Year Two," Batman meets the man who killed his parents, Joe Chill, and is about to blast his head off when the Reaper shoots Joe in the head with a gun that apparently causes your entire head to 'splode! That's one powerful gun, I tells ya! But, okay. A new status quo is established. It's 1987.

The Crisis wasn't enough for DC, though. God forbid we leave it alone! So along came Zero Hour! In the zero issue of Batman, we learn that the identity of the killer of Thomas and Martha Wayne remains unknown and that the crime went unresolved. Excellent! Now Batman's war on crime can be seen as a relentless pursuit of his parents' killer, one he can never, ever, ever win! How cool is that? It's 1994.

Well, apparently that wasn't cool enough. So now Joe Chill is incarcerated, although, not having read the issue, I don't know the particulars. I'm sure somebody does!

I'm not going to get into the whole "Why don't real people think comics are cool like we nerds?" thing, but one reason might be because comics fans can have conversations that sound exactly like this:

Neophyte Nerd: Say, whatever happened to the killer of Thomas and Martha Wayne?
Older Nerd: Well, Batman found out it was a guy named Joe Chill who was working for Lew Moxon and when he confronted Chill about it, Chill ran into another room with a bunch of hoods and told them he killed Batman's parents, and the stupid hoods shot him in anger before they could get Batman's name out of him! Oh, those stupid hoods!
Younger Nerd: Man, you're such a tool! Everyone knows that Crisis on Infinite Earths wiped that history out! In "Year Two" (which ran in Detective Comics #575-578), Batman has to make an unholy alliance with Joe Chill and the Gotham gangsters to stop the Reaper, who is carving up people he sees as bad, including gangsters. When Bruce confronts Chill, the Reaper shoots the bad guy in the head and laughs, because he knows that he is the father of Bruce Wayne's fiancèe!
Even Younger Nerd: Oh sure, Older Nerd is a tool! What about you? You're stuck in the Eighties, man! Come on, Zero Hour changed all that, and now Batman's killer is just some random mugger. Get your facts straight, loser!
Grant Morrison: Actually, you're all wrong. As DC's Continuity Caliph, I have decreed that Joe Chill was arrested, tried, and convicted for his heinous crime, and he is now Killer Croc's bitch in Blackgate Prison. So there.
Even Younger Nerd: But isn't Croc on the loose in the latest issues of Batman and Detective?
Grant Morrison (turning into Darkseid): Are you daring to question my mandates! You know I control those weird beams that come out of my eyes and can turn right angles and utterly destroy you!!!!!!
All Nerds: Sorry, sir! You're absolutely correct!!!!
Movie Nerd: I thought the Joker killed Thomas and Martha Wayne?

At which all the nerds and Grant Morrison beat Movie Nerd to death with their authentic replica Batarangs that they bought on eBay.

Normal people walking by would be shaking their heads and saying "No wonder those people never get laid."

I don't care about the status of Joe Chill, you understand. I just wish DC would pick a damned status quo and keep it the damned status quo! The next time someone wants to write a damned Joe Chill story, somebody at DC should have the cajones to say, "No. We're done writing Joe Chill stories. He's in Blackgate prison, sharing a cell with Killer Croc, and that's that. Use your damned imagination and come up with a different story."

I mean, let's review: that's four changes in the story in the past 20 years. Get with it, DC. Pick a foundation and build from that. There are plenty of good Batman stories to tell that DON'T involve who killed his parents.

Sorry. I just have to rant occasionally. You know.

See What It Is!

Do Clothes Make the Character?

As some of you may know, David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane had a dispute about 12 years ago or so, over whether McFarlane was the "co-creator" of the character Venom. Michelinie came up with the idea of a bad guy who used the alien symbiote to try to kill Spider-Man. McFarlane took the design idea of "a big guy in the alien costume" and turned out Venom - basically a monster with the alien costume look, rather than a person wearing the alien costume, complete with a grotesque tongue and giant teeth.

The question remains, then, IS McFarlane the co-creator of Venom?

I think it goes back to the basic question - does the character design of a character define a character? DO clothes make the character?

For a time in the 1970s, John Romita would design pretty much any new character (if an artist didn't already have a design in place, like Dave Cockrum with the All-New, All-Different X-Men) that a Marvel writer came up with. For example, Romita designed the costume for the Punisher.

Is Romita, therefore, the co-creator of the Punisher?

Is Romita the co-creator of Wolverine?

Is designing the character the same thing as "creating" them?

Peter David famously came up with the WACKO theory, which stands for "Writer As Creative King/Overlord," which posits that, unless we are given specific reasons otherwise (like someone saying, "We created it together" or the Silver Surfer, which Jack Kirby came up with out of whole cloth), the writer should be considered the creator of the character, not the artist.

Comics are clearly a visual medium first and foremost, so the LOOK of a character is extremely important.

Enough, though, so as to consider the DESIGN of a character to be co-creation? Even if the background/history/motivation of the character has already been planned out by the writer?

In other words, is character design a necessary component of comic character creation?

I'm thinking yes.

Anyone think otherwise?

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Does this Quesada point make sense?

In the continuing drama of the Spider-Man marriage, Joe Quesada (in his always interesting, at the very least, weekly column, Joe Fridays) wondered why people weren't discussing a point of his, which he seems to think is a big winner. Says Joe,

What I found interesting is that no one seemed to address a very important point I made last week. Knowing that having a child or getting divorce, annulled, separated, or widowed and all those sorts of things aren’t an option, there is not a single story of a married Peter Parker that can’t be told with a single Peter Parker. On the other hand, the exact opposite isn’t true.

I don't get it.

Does that make sense? Does he have some big winner here? It doesn't seem to make sense to me, as I don't see how that is that strong of a point. I mean, PICK a Spider-Man change. Like the organic webspinners. Is there a story out there with organic webspinner Peter Parker that can't be told with webshooters Peter Parker?

In the alternative, does the fact that you can tell stories with Spider-Man living in Avengers Tower that you can't tell if Spider-Man lives in a shitty apartment make the Avengers Tower thing a better plot device? I don't see how it does.

If it's just "The marriage is constraining," then fine, I think people get that - they acknowledge it.

But otherwise, what am I missing here that makes this an awesome point?

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Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #50!

This is the fiftieth in a series of examinations of comic book urban legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the previous forty-nine.

Let's begin!

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: John Romita broke into comics pretending to ink for penciller, while the penciller was actually inking Romita's pencils!

STATUS: True

Some of the most interesting comic book stories, I have noticed, are about how people broke into the business, and the story of how John Romita broke in was so good that I saved it for this here installment of Urban Legends Revealed.

In Alter Ego Vol. 3 #9, Roy Thomas asked John Romita about his start in comics...

Thomas: You mentioned at the 1995 Stan Lee Roast in Chicago [NOTE: See Alter Ego Vol.3 #1] how in '49 you started out penciling for a guy who was really an inker, but who pretended to Stan that he was penciling material which you ghosted for him. Don't you think it's time you finally told us who that artist was?

Romita: The reason I never gave his name was, I didn't want to embarrass him. His name was Lester Zakarin. I met him for the first time in forty years in 1999, at a convention in New York, and he told me he wasn't offended by any of the interviews I'd given. I'd always say that this artist I was ghosting for would tell Stan he could pencil, but actually I'd do the penciling for him, and he just inked my pencils.

[Here's one of the issues in question, Strange Tales #3]



But Stan was one of the few editors who'd ask guys to make changes. And when he asked Lester Zakarin to change something, he would panic. So I would go into the city with him and I'd wait at the New York Public Library, which was very close to where Timely was, at the Empire State Building. Zakarin would get the corrections from Stan and tell him, "I can't draw in front of people. It has to be absolutely quiet. I'm going to a friend's office. I'll do these corrections and bring them back in the afternoon." Then he'd meet me at the library, and I'd do the corrections, and then he'd go back to Stan. [laughs]

Later on, in an interview with Tom DeFalco for his excellent book of interviews, "Comic Creators on Spider-Man," Romita told the aftermath of the story...

I ghosted for Lester for about a year and a half, until I got drafted in 1951 and we drifted apart. I worked for Stan all that time and he didn't even know who I was. I was stationed at Governors Island after I finished basic training in 1951. My wife, Virginia, was working on Wall Street at the tiem, so I would take the ferry and meet her for lunch. I had a free afternoon one day and went uptown to see if Stan Lee had any work for me. I told his secretary that Stan didn't know me, but I had been ghosting for Lester for over a year. She went to speak with Stan and came out a few minutes later with a four-page horror story.

That began a seven-year stint at Marvel, then romance comics at DC for a time before returning to Marvel in the 1960s and becoming a sensation on Spider-Man.

Isn't that a nifty story?

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: The Super-books were not going to marry Clark and Lois until the TV show got involved.

STATUS: False

It's interesting how things come about, isn't it?

The Super-books at one point did a storyline where Lois and Clark break up.



However, it was then announced that Clark and Lois would be getting married on the TV show, Lois and Clark: The Adventures of Superman, so the comics quickly had to catch up, so eight months after the broke up, they both got BACK together and were quickly married.

So it certainly looked like the TV show forced the comic into marrying the couple. In truth, though, it was actually almost the exact OPPOSITE.

The following piece is from Michael Bailey's article on the 10th anniversary of Superman's death from the Superman Homepage. It's a good deal more efficient than me just splicing together different interviews on the subject.

With four teams of creators and four titles that had such a tight continuity it was necessary for the creative forces and the editor to meet and discuss upcoming story ideas and map the future of Superman. At these "Super Summits" Carlin and crew produced the "Superman Charts," which were a general plan for the next year that would be revised and updated as the stories were actually produced. In an e-mail interview conducted for this article Dan Jurgens described how the story meetings would work. "There were anywhere from seven to twenty people gathered all in those meetings, each with their own ideas, who somehow had to conjure a coherent story from a boiling cauldron of conflicting ideas," he wrote. "It was very difficult, at times, for the writers to let go of some of their ideas and notions in order to make everything fit together for the overall good of the united stories. In retrospect, it's a wonder it worked as well as it did."

Dan was quick to point out the person responsible for the success of the format. "Mike Carlin, one of the best editors this field has ever seen, deserves a tremendous round of applause for focusing us. The creative teams were like a band, a collection of diverse experiences and notions, and he was the producer who put it all together for 'the sound.'"



One of these summits was held to discuss not the death of Superman but the wedding of Lois and Clark. Clark had proposed at the beginning of Superman #50 and by the time the issue ended Lois had accepted. A few months later in the pages of Action Comics #662 Clark even told Lois the truth about his double life. It was an event in real life as well when the press picked up on the story and Superman got some ink in newspapers and mentions of telecasts across the country. Even the most skeptical reader was beginning to wonder if DC was actually going to go through with it and indeed they would have if it wasn't for a medium seemingly more powerful than comics; television.

DC president Jenette Kahn had been working for several years to sell the concept of a Superman television series. The series would be different, though, and at one point had the title Lois Lane's Daily Planet. In 1991 Les Moonves, head of Lorimar Television and writer/producer Deborah Joy Levine helped sell the series to ABC television with a new title, Lois and Clark: The Adventures of Superman. Despite the fact that the show would not air until the fall of 1993 the mere fact that the show was being developed had an effect on the comics.



Mike Carlin discussed the Super Summits that would deal with the wedding with comic historian Les Daniels in his book Superman: The Complete History. "There was one [Summit] where we literally came into hoping to talk about the wedding with the TV people, but the show got put on hold for a while and they weren't there. We were stuck. And I do think that there was some resentment from the talent that they weren't able to do what they had planned." The reason for this was simple. As Carlin put it, "DC's decision was that it would be a good idea to hold off the wedding and do it at the same time as the TV show, if it got that far."

So the creative team was left with a story vacuum. Despite the fact that the wedding was on hold the teams still needed to produce stories to fill the comics to put on out to the stands. The solution came from something that had become a running gag at the Super Summits. Mike Carlin told Comics Scene Magazine in 1993, "This isn't the first Superman meeting where somebody said, 'Let's kill him off'; this is not the first meeting or plotting session I've gone to on any character where they said, 'Let's kill him.' I mean that happens in life and that happens in comics. At the meeting we had planned to do another story, but due to extenuating circumstances we had to push that back a little bit and then we had to fill the gap. So somebody said, "Let's kill Superman.'"

So yes, years later, it was a push by the TV show that got Clark and Lois married, but not before the TV show KEPT them from being married!



It's interesting how things come about, isn't it?

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Venom was originally going to be a woman.

STATUS: True

In the same book of Spider-Man interviews, David Michelinie talks about the origin of Venom...

Interestingly enough, he was a character I started to introduce in Web of Spider-Man, and he was actually supposed to be a she. I began with the alien costume that had come back with Spider-Man from Secret Wars, and had been used throughout your [DeFalco's] run. It was basically in limbo at the time, having already been rejected by Spider-Man. I was intrigued with the idea that there was this thing that did not trigger Spidey's spider-sense. Most people forget that the spider-sense is a very unique power, and that Spider-Man really depends upon it. I actually started Venom's story in two issues of Web.

In Web #18, Peter Parker is waiting for a subeway train. A hand comes from the crowed and pushed him in front of the train. He leaps to safety, but he's spooked because someone was able to sneak up on him and his spider-sense didn't react.



I set up another scene in Web #24 where he's stuck to the side of a building. Someone suddenly reaches out of a window, yanks him by the ankle and sends him falling. Peter starts to really freak out because someone is getting past his defenses.



I originally wanted the character to be a woman. She was pregnant and about to give birth. Her husband is rushing to get to a hospital. He runs into road to flag down a cab, but the cabbie is looking up at Spider-Man who is fighting someone - I think it might even have been the Living Monolith from my graphic novel. The cabbie doesn't see the husband and accidentally hits and kills the guy. The woman sees her husband splattered in front of her just as she goes into labor. She loses the child and her mind at the same time, and is institutionalized. Though she eventually gets her mind back, she blames Spider-Man for the death of her husband and her child. The alien costume, which has also been hurt by Peter Parker, is drawn to the woman because of her intense hatred of Spider-Man. The costume then bonds with her to try to kill Peter.

When I was switched to Amazing, Jim Salicrup told me he wanted to do something special in #300, and he suggested I introduce a new character. I hit him with my idea of using the alien costume. Though he liked it, he wasn't sure the readers would see a woman as a physical threat to Spider-Man, even a woman enhanced by the alien costume. At that point I came up with the Eddie Brock angle.

Pretty odd point by Salicrup, no?

Oh well, it would have been interesting, no?

plus equals

Well, that's it for this week, thanks for stopping by!

Feel free to drop off any urban legends you'd like to see featured!!

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No, sweet Jeebus, no! Anything but that!

Comics: They don't make 'em like they used to.

What I bought - 10 May 2006

It was a slow week (for me, at least), as only five floppies made it home with me. The rest lay crying on the table, because they knew that only the cool comics get to go home with me! Interestingly enough, three books ended story arcs. Okay, maybe that wasn't that interesting, but in this world of six-issue arcs, it's something.

This week's theme: Comics that disappointed Greg! The only one that didn't was the one I didn't read!

Ex Machina #20 by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, and Tom Feister
$2.99, DC/Wildstorm

I'm going to spoil the ending, because I think it's important, so if you haven't read this yet and are planning to in the near future, you might want to skip down. Just so you know.

I read this very carefully, after my experience with issue #19, and it was still flimsy. WTF, Wildstorm? Staple your damned books better! Anyway, the war protest story comes to an end, a little strangely. I don't have much of a problem with Vaughan leaving things murky because that's how real life is, but the bad guy seems just a little too vague. Mitchell uses his powers to track him down, and the debate he has with Bradbury about it is interesting reading, but when he finds the guy, it's unsatisfying. The bad guy doesn't tell us anything about why he released the poison gas, and we don't find out, except that it's not about religion. The fact that he's a self-proclaimed atheist bothers me a bit, simply because I wonder if Vaughan did it so he wouldn't be seen as picking on Muslims. I mean, let's face it, as much as I dig Muslims from a historical perspective, the guys who destroyed the World Trade Center called themselves Muslims. The bad guy, Sammir Hallouda, says he's a scientist, and that if Americans keep thinking "this" is about religion, they're going to lose the war on terror. It's just a weird few pages, and like I said, it's not very satisfying.

The ending is what matters in the book, anyway. The terrorist strike was the catalyst, but the reaction of New Yorkers (the murder of Sikhs and other non-Muslim but vaguely swarthy people) and the fate of Journal is what's important in the story. At the end of this issue, Journal dies. It's a shame, because she and Wylie are interesting characters, but why I'm not pissed off about it like I was when certain other female characters died (Robina in Desolation Jones #6) is because of the difference in tone. Journal's death doesn't feel mean-spirited; it's a logical consequence of a terror attack, and it wasn't an attack on Mitchell to make him feel pain. When people go to a protest and poison gas is launched into their midst, people are going to die. That's just the way it is. Journal is a much better character than Robina was, and her death affected me more, but it didn't make me angry, it just made me a bit sad and made me wonder how Mitchell and his staff will deal with it. I'm curious as to how this will play out, unlike in Desolation Jones, where the circumstances of Robina's death just make me want to stop reading. It is, as I wrote, a difference in tone - it feels like Vaughan did agonize a bit over killing off Journal, whereas it felt like Ellis got rid of Robina with just a tiny bit of glee. But that's just my opinion.

As usual, this continues to be a wonderful book, and the events of this issue add a bit more depth to it and open up new stories. I'll be interested to see where Vaughan goes now.

As a bit of an aside, the priest at the end tells Mitchell that he's giving Journal her last rites. "Last rites" is an archaic term that is no longer used in the Catholic church. It's called "anointing of the sick" and has been called such for a long time (since the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, maybe). Lay people and people ignorant of Catholicism still call it "last rites," but would a priest really call it that? I know she was dying, but wouldn't he still call it the correct term? Maybe he's just old school. Anyway, a minor nit to pick, but it still bugged me.

Fables #49 by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, and Steve Leialoha
$2.75, DC/Vertigo

This is another vaguely disappointing issue, because the main storyline doesn't really go anywhere. Mowgli finds Bigby and convinces him to come back to Fabletown, but it's not terribly dramatic. Bigby just makes up his mind, leaves his cabin in the woods and the girl he hooked up with, and they're off. It's surprisingly boring.

The best parts of the issue are the ones setting up the next big story. "The winds are changing" is the big theme, as the North Wind leaves the Farm unexpectedly, strong winds come to the farm, Bigby's girlfriend - Sarah - returns to civilization (and I expect we'll see her again, because if not, what's the point of showing her returning to civilization), Gepetto feels something strange happening ("probably just a change in the winds," he says), and the bodiless pig Colin shows up and tells Snow he's moving on because things are going to get better for her. Well, I don't buy that last bit, because it's drama, after all, but these various portents make the issue interesting even though Mowgli's confrontation with Bigby threatens to bog it down. The idea of Mowgli going after Bigby was certainly an intriguing one and probably needed to be told, but it's weird how dull it actually was.

Anyway, issue #50 is next, so I'm sure feces will hit the fan. This is still a good book, but Willingham has been treading water for a while. I hope he gets it in gear next issue.

She-Hulk #7 by Dan Slott and Will Conrad
$2.99, Marvel

Another hideous cover. And not to be too nit-picky (shut up), but I was under the impression that Jen was NOT a personal injury lawyer. Therefore, if you slip and fall, she's NOT the one to call. I could be wrong, though.

I'm missing Juan Bobillo already. Sigh. It's not that Conrad's art is all that bad, it's just kind of bland. Bobillo brought such weird energy to the book, and I have a feeling that part of its charm is now gone. We'll see what Paul Smith brings to our favorite chick Hulk, and maybe they'll get a regular artist who can make this the kind of nifty book everyone should be reading again.

It's not a bad issue, but as we continue our theme for this week, it's vaguely disappointing. Jennifer inexplicably has not yet realized that Starfox may have used his powers on her when they made the beast with two backs in her Avengers days. How can you not even think it? Slott screws up for us Marvel idiots when he doesn't even give us any hint as to whether Eros can control his powers or not. There's a lot of hinting around about it, but we never get a definitive answer. I'm sure somebody out there with a lot more knowledge than I possess can let me know, but it's that fine line in comics between assuming your readership knows everything because they're hard core fans and telling them way too much and boring them to tears. In this case, I think Slott errs on the side of the former, and I just wish he had let us know if Starfox can or cannot turn his power on and off. Especially as it's a legal case, that's probably a key point.

I'm not really sure what the point of this two-issue story was. I assume Slott wanted to examine sexual harassment and assault in the Marvel U., but this is certainly not the place to do it. There are several interesting scenes in these issues, including when the some Avengers don't want to testify on Starfox's behalf because they're not sure if he's manipulating them or not. This book, with its emphasis on superhero law, could be a place where these issues are thrashed out, but the light tone Slott has in place, plus the quick treatment of the case, makes this an inappropriate story. It just felt too serious to be treated so cavalierly and quickly.

Wolfskin #1 by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp
$3.99, Avatar

Ellis dips his foot into the Avatar pool occasionally, and the results can be gut-wrenching (Scars), entertainingly horrific (the Strange Killings mini-series), or of no interest to me whatsoever (Black Gas - I'm just not into zombies). I didn't have particularly high hopes for Wolfskin, thinking it would be just a nice Conan-esque tale of a barbarian butchering people he doesn't like.

On that front, I'm not disappointed. Our hero (not given a name, and Wolfskin, which I'll call him, is a title) is accosted in the forest by a bunch of guys who attack him, which is of course a bad idea. He slaughters them in particularly gruesome fashion, but is brought up short when their leader, a vaguely Asian-looking fellow, pulls an old-fashioned rifle on him. Wolfskin is appropriately contemptuous of this cowardly weapon, but it allows the Asian dude to chat with him and let him know the situation, which is that he and his brother rule a divided village, and the fact that the one half of the village just lost five good fighters means that the other half will now attack. Wolfskin is honor-bound to defend them, or so the Asian dude says. At the end of the issue, he considers it. Of course he'll fight - what's the point otherwise?

Ryp's art is spectacular and bloody, and is the highlight of the issue. Ellis' story, however, is just simplistic. It's not terribly entertaining, and it drags when the Asian guy explicates the situation. I know it's just a set-up issue, and for a set-up, Ellis follows the Golden Rule of fiction: hook your audiences with excitement (the bloody battle in the woods) and then explain the situation once they're hooked. Okay, it's a perfectly serviceable comic book. But there's no reason to buy it in its single-issue format, because the trade paperback should read much better. I have to pre-order it because my store wouldn't carry it otherwise, so I'm on the hook for the series (or at least the first few issues, which means I'll get the whole thing), but I wouldn't bother if I were you. Unless you come back in a few months and I tell you the collected edition will be worth it. We'll see. At least sympathetic women don't get shot in the head (and yes, I'm not letting that go).

MINI-SERIES I BOUGHT BUT DID NOT READ.
Batman: Secrets #3 (of 5) by Sam Kieth
$2.99, DC

For now, I'm just drooling over the art.

There you have it. No, I did not buy 52, even with The God Of All Comics attached to it. I will continue to resist!

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Full Details on the Devil's Due Promotion

Check it out here on their website.

Be forewarned, though, the website has this weird trailer for an upcoming GI Joe storyline - it is loud and annoying!

Reviews for the 5/10 Comic Week

Wildcats: Nemesis #9 (Wildstorm)

Thunderbolts #102 (Marvel)

Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #25 (DC)

She-Hulk #7 (Marvel)

American Virgin #3 (Vertigo)

The Xeric Grant Is Good!

As I've spoken about it in the past, the Xeric Grant is one of the coolest things that has happened to comics in the past two decades. A great example of a creator (Peter Laird) giving back to the comic book community, giving creators some money to further their comic book endeavors with.

Anyhow, the latest grant winners were announced just recently, so I figured I'd share them with you folks here, in case you didn't see them.

Emily Blair – Living Statues
Alexis Frederick-Frost – La Primavera
Joshua Kemble – NUMB
Jason McNamara and Tony Talbert – First Moon
Nate Neal – (Bison image)
Pat Palermo – Cut Flowers
Mark Price – Consider Everything in Bad Shape

I am not familiar with this group, outside of McNamara and Talbert, who I know from the preview of their upcoming project from AiT/Planet Lar, "Continuity."

Would anyone mind sharing what they know about these comic creators? I'd love to know more about Xeric Grant winners.

See the recipients!

Casanova Will Be Good

Why wasn't I informed that there was a seven-page preview up of Casanova #1 at Newsarama?

Heads will roll! Heads will roll!!

Here is the preview, all you folks who are curious about this book from Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba, that is only $1.99 and will most likely rock most heavily.

I don't even think Fraction mentioned it on his OWN site. It's a goddamned conspiracy, is what it is.

And one last review for the 5/3 Comic Week

Infinite Crisis #7 (DC)

Barr. Davis. Neary. Batman.

I shouldn't have to say anymore than that, but I will! A new Comics You Should Own column is up, featuring Detective Comics #569-574, written by Mike W. Barr, drawn by Alan Davis, and inked by Paul Neary. Such good comics! Such a shame it was so brief!

Comics' magna opera: Part 3 - What have we learned and what happens next?

Part 1: quasi-masterpieces on books with company-owned characters.

Part 2: masterpieces by creators who own the characters or who worked on books that the companies didn't care about.

I said it last time, and I'll say it again: I really appreciate all the comments either suggesting other masterpieces or debating the ones I mentioned. Very interesting stuff, and definitely books I need to read.

So what have we learned about comics' masterpieces? Well, we've learned that I need to read more comics! Other than that, I think this is a fascinating topic to ponder because of the way comics have changed in recent years and how we have come to appreciate what can be done with them. Early on, comics were completely disposable (which is why Action Comics #1 costs so much) and geared toward children. We can argue all we want about EC publishing horror comics for adults, and they were, but the large percentage of comics were geared toward children (and even those horror comics were probably purchased by children to a large degree). I would also argue that they were an immature art form. The superhero is the ultimate expression of this immaturity - every superhero is the heroic father figure (yes, even Wonder Woman) to some degree, and the fact that the stories were hopelessly devoid of nuance makes them even more immature. I don't want to bash early comics - if we read them today, we can certainly appreciate why they were so popular - but I think it's not a stretch to call them immature. Even the war comics were immature - Captain America punching Hitler in the face is certainly an attractive option, but ignores the realities of the world in the 1940s. Winning the Second World War was not as easy as a man dressed in an American flag punching a German dictator, although it would have been nice. More wish-fulfillment, more father figure. Don't worry - Captain America will save us!

In the Dark Ages of the 1950s, comics actually branched out a bit when superheroes fell out of favor, but by the time the Marvel Age started, superheroes were back with all their inherent foibles. Stan Lee and Co. tried to move forward, but I would argue that they weren't quite as revolutionary as we want to make them. Sure, Peter Parker had problems, but at the end of the day, he was a superhero, and was trapped by the problems of superheroes. Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and the rest of the Marvel Bullpen of the 1960s were also still working as wage slaves, and although the first 122 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, say, form a coherent whole that is wonderful to read in a short time, it still feels disjointed, not only because of the different creators who worked on the title, but because comics were still, by and large, a disposable form of entertainment, and therefore Marvel had to keep bludgeoning us over the head with Peter's personal problems, for instance, because we might forget them after a few months. It's the same problem you get when you read any of those early Marvel comics - how the hell many times can the Fantastic Four fight Dr. Doom or Namor or Dr. Doom teamed up with Namor? It gets frustrating reading them all at once, but due to the serial and disposable nature of comics, kids reading them probably wouldn't have minded, because they had thrown away the comic they bought three months ago and therefore couldn't go back and remind themselves that Namor had just shown up.

I mentioned in my first post that the first true comic book masterpieces can be found in the 1970s. Some people challenged me on this by referencing Little Nemo, but I stick by it. So there. Why the 1970s? I think it was because the comics professionals from the 1960s were growing up, and for the first time, their characters were growing up too. Unlike DC, Marvel didn't keep their characters in a strange time warp - they were allowed, however slowly, to age, and this added a dimension to comics that had never been seen - the possibility, however slight, of mortality. Mortality is a wonderful thing for art - it adds that tinge of sadness to any story, and adds substance to what we see because we know it's going to end. We will never see a new Rembrandt (well, we might, because they keep digging them out of Dutch attics), because he's dead. We will never learn what happens after Great Expectations ends (not that we want to, because spending that much time with those people is enough, but you get my drift). We will, however, continue to open up a comic book every month and see Bruce Wayne, young and vibrant as ever, even as we grow old. On the one hand, this adds stability and comfort to comics - I'm only 34, but I feel a sense of nostalgia and continuity with the past whenever I read a Batman book. On the other hand, it limits what you can do with the character, not because you're not allowed to kill him (good drama isn't just about that), but because he can't even move forward as a character. Brian's post about Joey Q ripping the Peter Parker-Mary Jane Watson marriage is a syndrome of this. Peter Parker is one of the few mainstream superheroes who has actually moved forward in his life. He graduated from high school, he went to college, he got a job, he entered grad school, he dropped out of grad school, he got married - all of this while maintaining a superhero life. This is what people do, but now Marvel is wondering how to wreck his marriage just because writers can't be bothered to figure out how to write it. They want Peter to be "on the market," because then he can hook up Felicia Hardy again! Or date a woman who's also a supervillain, but he doesn't know it! Or have to choose between two women and agonize about it for pages and pages and issues and issues! Or have to hide his secret identity from his girlfriend! OOOOOOHHHHHH!

With this kind of thinking, it's no wonder that very few masterpieces can be found in the more traditional superhero comic books. Good stories, sure, but few masterpieces. In my first post on the subject, many people suggested books that I was already thinking about for my second post, which is to say books that were created by one person and allowed to run their course. There are many examples of masterpieces on corporate-owned superheroes, but most of the time, they are superheroes no one cares about and therefore the creator is allowed to do whatever he wants. Claremont's X-Men were not top sellers when he began telling the Phoenix Saga. Nobody cared about Dr. Fate or Starman. Most of the examples people gave were of series that only became top sellers because the talent working on them made them great. And what happens when a title becomes a top seller? The company publishing it wants to keep it there and does not want to mess with the formula at all. And we get a lot of recycling of the Phoenix, instead of realizing that it's not the Phoenix story necessarily that people reacted so favorably to, but the fact that Claremont was doing something bold. Most corporate characters are not allowed to grow as characters, especially the top sellers or icons (Superman is not really a top seller, but he's still an icon), because DC and Marvel think they can hook new readers by recycling stuff and they can keep old readers with nostalgia. Therefore it is very difficult for writers to come onto a top selling title and change things. Morrison had the power to make some changes on X-Men, but at the end of the day, exactly what did he change? He killed Jean - boy, that's pretty bold, considering how no one had ever done that before. He killed Magneto - whoops, no he didn't. Morrison wrote very good stories, but he really did very little to change the status quo except for his idea that mutants were the next stage of evolution, and even that he didn't really run with too much. Mutants are just too entrenched for Marvel to allow really bold storytelling on the titles. It's a shame, because a lot of talented writers want to work on the books, which would probably bring in readers because they are good writers, but they are hamstrung once they get on the books - just read Milligan's shadow of a good book on X-Men, where we can see hints of goodness before it lapses back into mutant melodrama.

As we moved into the 1970s and early 1980s, creators began to realize that comics were a medium for telling stories beyond simple superhero stories. Again, EC and other publishers had paved the way for this, but as creators got more savvy about business practices, as creators got older (remember, a lot of creators in the early days were very young), and as companies began to realize that people were keeping their collections instead of throwing them away, the market was able to deal with long-running narratives instead of one-and-done issues. Comics fans were growing up, too, and they weren't necessarily growing out of comics, as they had always done before. Creators pushed for more rights and recognition, too, so comic book fans could demand a book written by Steve Englehart, say, or drawn by Barry Smith. The cult of the creators began here, to the point that today, it's often not the characters that draw fans, but the creators. How many people bought X-Men simply because Morrison was writing it? Forty years ago, it didn't really matter who was working on the books - the characters were the draw. Once that began to shift in the 1970s, it became easier for a creator to seize control of a book and make it his own, or demand that the companies allow them to write or draw their own books. As the corporate comic company structure began to fracture, independent companies allowed creators more freedom, and therefore they were able to sit down and write more personal stuff, which is not necessarily a prerequisite of a masterpiece (as I've mentioned before), but it doesn't hurt. This has led to a Golden Age of Comics, as I've written about before, and I think that if comics are not yet a mature art form, they are getting close. We have nuances in comics writing that we did not have fifty years ago, we have themes that were not written about when the Comics Code was in full effect, we have all the sorts of things that make art great. Certain people (you know who you are!) can bemoan the fact that Superman isn't heroic anymore, and that's certainly a concern, but it's more interesting to look at what makes someone a hero even though they might not be perfect or can someone be a hero in a world where things are not black and white, or why some people are heroic and others are not and why some heroes lose their way. This is the stuff of real drama, and of real masterpieces. Comics may have swung too far to that side, as I mentioned when I wrote about Watchmen, but that's not the fault of Alan Moore, it's the fault of bad writers who want to be Alan Moore. The reason why comics may be a mature art form now is because they are able to encompass both the heroic ideal and a critique of the heroic ideal. Fifty years ago they did not have that subtlety. Masterpieces are not simplistic. They challenge our perceptions and they make us wonder about our ideas about the world. Simple morality tales about Captain America punching Hitler or Batman beating up Osama bin Laden, as much as they might make us feel gung-ho, are not masterpieces. The Green Berets is not a masterpiece; Apocalypse Now is. There's certainly a market for heroes, but that's not all that comics can do anymore, and that's good thing.

So what happens after someone writes a masterpiece? I would argue that nobody sits down to write a masterpiece, they are simply organic creations that come about because a writer is particularly devoted to that piece of work, and it becomes about more than just telling a good story. Good stories are fine, but a masterpiece informs us about the medium and lingers in our imagination and connects to us emotionally. That's why, even if you don't like some of the choices I made, very few people thought I was completely off-base. We can argue that Moonshadow and not Dr. Fate is DeMatteis' masterpiece, and if you say Moonshadow, I don't have a problem with it. But the fact remains that both those works were deeply personal to DeMatteis, and both affect us emotionally, and both have lingered in the popular imagination. Nit-picking over which is less didactic and therefore "better" doesn't negate either one. Masterpieces evolve slowly, especially in comics, and I would argue that very rarely (if ever) does someone sit down and think, "I'm going to write a masterpiece." If they did, it would probably automatically disqualify the work, because it would be far too self-conscious.

But what about after the masterpiece is done? In other forms of entertainment, it might actually be easier to "recover" from writing a masterpiece. Dark Side Of The Moon, after all, is still on the freakin' charts, and Pink Floyd is probably still making good money off of it, so they could take their time coming up with another album. Some artists can never recapture that certain glory they found in their masterpiece. Catch-22 is the only book anyone ever thinks of when someone mentions Joseph Heller, even though Picture This is a more mature work of fiction. Heller could never escape it, going back for a sequel years later. The same thing has happened with Slaughterhouse-5, which remains Vonnegut's masterpiece despite dozens of other books. Michael Jackson never recovered from the fame that accrued to him with Thriller (a great album, by the way). Some artists move on and continue to reach further, occasionally matching their earlier masterpieces or even surpassing them. After the first two Godfather pictures, Coppola made Apocalypse Now. After Taxi Driver, Scorsese made Raging Bull. Then he made Goodfellas. Don DeLillo wrote White Noise and then expanded his vista with Underworld. It can be done.

I wanted to keep my focus on one masterpiece per creator, even though a lot of you suggested works that might also be considered magna opera. I did that simply because of space and time constraints, but also because I tried to look at these things objectively (as best I could) and not just look at great stories or even creators I liked. Therefore I tried to limit myself. However, some creators do seem to move on easily and write another masterpiece. One of the reasons why I can't understand why John Ostrander isn't a bigger name in comics is because of his track record. I have only read the first twenty or so issue of GrimJack, but I know that it's a brilliant comic. I have praised Suicide Squad before without giving particulars, but trust me: it's another brilliant comic book. Either one of those could be considered his masterpiece, and both were written before The Spectre, which is also brilliant. After that he began working on a J'onn J'onzz series, which didn't last, but it was certainly an intriguing read. Comic book creators do move on - more than other artists, who can live off residuals and the accolades of the greater population, comic book writers and artists need to keep producing to keep money coming in (just ask William Messner-Loebs and Dave Cockrum, to name two prominent examples of people damaged by lack of funds).

It's easier for those people working on what I would call "quasi-masterpieces" to move on, obviously. Chris Claremont and John Byrne had to produce Uncanny X-Men #139 a month after their magnum opus ended, because of the nature of the publishing business. Sure, they could have quit the book, but Marvel would have still published a next issue. The nature of serial publishing among the corporate comics culture means not only is it difficult to produce true masterpieces in that arena, but that's it also easier to move on from those stories and to undermine them later. It certainly helps to read the Phoenix Saga if you have no knowledge of what comes afterward, because I don't think I'm alone when I say that when I read it now, I keep thinking of how Marvel has continually shat upon a beautiful story (and yes, that includes Morrison's attempts to re-write the Phoenix Saga). Jesse, Cassidy, and Tulip will always be as they are at the end of Preacher. Tommy and Nat will always be dead. Linda and Eric Strauss will always be inhabiting new bodies, loving each other in San Francisco somewhere. And Christine Spar will always be dead on a rooftop with Argent slain next to her. We can trust these masterpieces, because they are complete works.

But because they're so personal to the creators, it's interesting to track what they do next. Some people quit the job altogether - Gaiman stepped away for five-six years to write novels, and who the hell knows what happened to James Robinson (seriously - where the hell did he go?). Alan Moore got rich and flaky, and is one of the few people who has consistently been able to produce exactly what he wants, despite slumming on WildC.A.T.S for a few years. Interestingly enough, it seems like a lot of creators find their way back to the very thing they rebelled against in the first place - corporate-controlled characters. Morrison went off and did Invisibles, which is his personal work (but, again, not his masterpiece, because it's not very good), but he came back and did JLA and X-Men. Ennis is writing The Punisher, which everyone says is very good, but it's still a Marvel character who can be completely retconned if Marvel wants. During his time on Transmetropolitan, Ellis wrote Come In Alone (maybe that's his masterpiece?), decrying the corporate culture of superheroes, but when Marvel threw some money at him to write Ultimate Galactus, he didn't tell them to go jump in a lake. I'm not saying these books aren't any good, but it's interesting that a lot of writers (in this instance, artists don't really count) seem to want to back off from the challenge for a while. Maybe they need to be re-energized after completing a massive work. I'm not sure. There's nothing wrong with creators going for the easy cash - this is a job, after all, and everyone needs to pay bills - but it's an interesting idea to consider. Does writing something like a masterpiece take it all out of these people and they need to recharge? You'll notice that Morrison's next project after Seven Soldiers is ... Batman. No matter how much of a "hairy-chested love god" Morrison makes him, he's not going to change Batman, and this run will not be his masterpiece, I can predict. Even All-Star Superman isn't changing the character of Superman in any fundamental way. It's Morrison goofing around.

These days, of course, writers move back and forth easily from corporate superheroes to their own, more personal work. It's not that writers have become more flexible, it's that the opportunities to create their own personal work are present more often. J. Michael Straczynski probably doesn't necessarily need to write comic books (maybe he blew all the money he made on Babylon 5 on hookers and blow, but I doubt it), but he does. This allows him a bit more freedom, and I'm still convinced that Marvel only publishes The Book of Lost Souls because JMS has done so well on Amazing Spider-Man. The same principle probably works for Powers. These writers have become popular on the mainstream stuff, so they can push for their own vanity projects (which, deep down in their souls, they probably want to be remembered for rather than their work on a regular superhero book). I'm generalizing here, but I don't think I'm too far off.

This easy switch between the two forms of books means, unfortunately, that it appears more difficult to focus on the more personal work. Since mainstream superhero books need to be on time, it's easier to allow the personal work to fall behind. Since Marvel and DC can pay more, it's easier to sell out and go waste your time on X-Men instead of working on that masterpiece. I'm not saying that masterpieces aren't being written right now. 100 Bullets is a magnum opus. Ex Machina may be. Fables may be. Sleeper might count, and The Losers might work. These creators (with the exception of Willingham and Harris) are still early in their careers, so let's just see. Rising Stars should have been Straczynski's, but it fell apart. Independent companies give creators a lot more freedom to write their own sorts of books, but their precarious nature and scheduling weirdness makes it difficult to capture the imagination of the reading public as well as the Big Two can. I keep pimping Rex Mundi, and I think it three or four years, when it's completed, it will stand as a masterpiece, but it's been dogged by ragged scheduling and therefore might have to wait until it is all collected in trades to have a better impact.

The rise of specialty comic stores and the Internet mean that it's both easier and harder for someone to write a masterpiece. Obviously, comic book shops can carry a wider selection than newsstands did, and proprietors can advocate for various books that might not find an audience right away. The Internet is another good way to spread word of mouth, but it also means we're judging things instantly, before the entire work is seen, and therefore might kill a book before it really gets good. I wonder how many people would have screamed bloody murder on the Internet when they got their hands on Swamp Thing #21 - it would have been akin to Brian's "outrage" at the retcon of Spider-Man's origin. DC might have caved and told Moore to bring back the classic Swamp Thing, or they may have simply waited until he was done and then brought on Larry Hama to rewrite the origin back to the way it was. And nobody wants that! So we can give more attention to these strange, glorious works of literature descending upon us, but we can also tear them to shreds. I'm not sure how much creators are influenced by the white noise of the Internet (not a lot, I'll bet), but its power has to be acknowledged. It would be nice to think of people creating "art" in a vacuum and screw the popular sentiment, but I wonder if it exists.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we're in a Golden Age of Comics. It will be interesting to see comics continue to grow as an art form, and to read these wild magna opera that spring from the minds of these writers and artists. These are the kind of books that you can sit down and read in ten or twenty years and still get blown away. And that's a good thing for comics.

Read More

More Reviews for the 5/3 Comic Week

Marvel Team-Up (Marvel)

Free Scott Pilgrim (Oni)

Was Your Free Comic Book Day Good?

I got a big kick out of Joe Rice's story here about his outing with his class of students to Rocketship for Free Comic Book Day.

How about the rest of you? Anyone else have a good Free Comic Book Day story?